June 3 in Amsterdam; June 4,5
Briefings around Holland <H.Labohm@freeler.nl>
June 6 Press briefing on NIPCC in Dusseldorf, Germany; interviews <limburg@grafik-system.de>
June 7 Cologne, Mainz
June 8 Frankfurt <stotko@vdst-akademie.de>
June 9 Briefing in Fkft,Stuttgart
<stotko@vdst-akademie.de>
June 12 Huckelrieden: NIPCC Briefing of Bundestag group [not open]
June 13,14 Vienna.
Luncheon talk Hayek Institute
<barbara.kolm@hayek-institut.at>
June 15 Venice and Padova
June 16 Padova-Verona – (Brixen)-
Milan <Renato.A.Ricci@lnl.infn.it>
June 17, 18 Milan.
Interviews, lectures, Luncheon talk June 18 <carlo.stagnaro@brunoleoni.it>
June 19-22 Paris.
Seminar <preiter@pasteur.fr>
June 23 Brussels. Seminar at Royal Observatory; Briefing at EU
Parliament
<roger.helmer-assistant@europarl.europa.eu>
June 24-26 London.
Luncheon talk on NIPCC at CPS on June 25 < jill@cps.org.uk>
*********************************
“People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid
of what might be learned if it continues.”
George Will, in reference to climate science
========================================
“As University of California physicist John Holdren has
said, it is possible that carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as
a billion people before the year 2020.”
-
Paul
Ehrlich, The Machinery of Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986),
p. 274.
Were they predicting the ethanol mandate that’s supposed
to save the world from global warming?
********************************************
The announcement by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
amounted to the government's first use of the Endangered Species Act to list a
species as menaced because of a loss of habitat caused by global warming. [ITEM
#1]. SO --- HOW WILL THEY PROVE THAT GW
IS HUMAN-CAUSED? IF THEY SUE THE
GOVT, WE WANT TO RESPOND.
McCain goes for Cap&Trade [ITEM #2]. But it has been part of his record; he
cannot deny it But he should proclaim
loudly: “I will always follow the best science.”
WSJ: The Ethanol horror story [ITEM #3]
How to explain current global cooling: Trying hard to
keep the Greenhouse scare going [ITEM #4]
The US public is doubting GW, polls show. Why don’t the media and politicians? [ITEM #5]
Cal Thomas on the need for Climate Debate [ITEM #6]
The real GW catastrophe is the economic damage from
mitigation [ITEM #7]
In praise of CO2 [ITEM #8]
GW war on the family [ITEM #9]
*****************************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
For years the modelers said
they had The Exact Analysis. Now they
admit their models don’t work very well - so they need Megamillions for
computing power to better convert GI to GO.
But there is no point to increase resolution (at great cost) while the
atmospheric physics of clouds and WV remains incomplete.
[Comment on Editorial:
Nature 453, 257 (15 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453257a; The next big climate challenge:
Governments should work together to build the supercomputers needed for
future predictions that can capture the detail required to inform policy.]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Oregon Petition
Project: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science
and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed
a petition rejecting claims of global warming alarmism at 10:00 AM on Monday,
19 May 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington D. C. The complete
list will be available at www.petitionproject.org on Monday morning.
***********************
BELOW THE BOTTOM
LINE:
Obesity contributes to
global warming: study
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL1572011320080515?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food
they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in
size (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine).
--------------------------------------------------
Apocalypse around the
corner? Climate change and human extinction--are you ready to be fossilized?
Just like the dinosaurs http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=118533
############################################
1. LISTING THE POLAR BEAR
UNDER THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
Comment by National Center for Public Policy Analysis
President Amy Ridenour
Washington, D.C. - The decision to list the polar bear as
"threatened" announced today by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
was probably the best that could be expected from a government agency operating
under a severely-flawed Endangered Species Act, but it is a regrettable
decision nonetheless.
The Secretary's clear intent to deny environmental organizations the power to
regulate the energy use of the American people through Endangered Species
Act-related lawsuits is commendable, but it is only through a failure of
lawmaking that such a threat to representative government is even possible.
It remains to be seen if the Secretary's effort to keep the development of
climate policies it belongs -- with Congress -- will succeed.
Environmental organizations will continue to try to use the Endangered Species
Act to impose energy-use restrictions on the American public, but no climate
policy should be adopted without the consent of the public as expressed through
the votes of their elected representatives in Congress.
Those politicians who support the effort to impose climate policy without
public consent are doing so due to political expediency. The present
majority leadership of the House and Senate claim to be persuaded that the
theory that human beings are causing significant climate change is correct, yet
it is unwilling to push energy-use restrictions through Congress because the
public does not support this action. The Congressional leadership is
taking the coward's way out.
*********************************
2. MCCAIN’S EMBARRASSING CLIMATE SPEECH
By Steven Milloy
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080515.html
While no one knows who first uttered the sentiment, “It’s better to say
nothing and seem a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt,”
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain’s speech this week on climate
change certainly supports the phrase’s validity.
McCain spoke at the facilities of Vestas Wind Technology, an
Oregon-based firm that manufactures wind power systems. The irony of the
setting was rich, given McCain’s outspoken opposition to pork-barrel spending.
He even risked his presidential hopes by criticizing ethanol subsidies ahead of
the all-important Iowa caucuses.
Next to solar power, however, wind power is the most heavily subsidized
form of energy. Taxpayers cough up an astounding $23.37 per megawatt hour of electricity produced, according to
the Wall Street Journal. In contrast, coal and natural gas are only
subsidized to a tune of $0.44 and
$0.25, respectively.
McCain lauded wind as a “predictable source of energy.” He must have
missed this Feb. 27 headline from Reuters “Loss of wind causes Texas power grid
emergency.” The electric grid operator was forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of
power to customers within 10 minutes.
“Our economy depends upon clean and affordable alternatives to fossil
fuels,” McCain stated. What he’s talking about is not quite clear since our
current economy is about 75 percent dependent on fossil fuels and will remain
that way for at least the next 25 years, as solar and wind technologies remain
only marginal sources of energy.
If anything, we are likely to be even more dependent on fossil fuels in
the future as nuclear power, which now provides about 20 percent of our electricity,
shrinks in availability as a supply of energy. Although our energy needs are
ever-growing, construction of nuclear power plants is not keeping pace -- not
one has come online in the last 30 years. Even if a few nuke plants are
constructed during the next decades, they will not supply enough power to keep
nuclear power at the 20 percent level.
McCain then demonstrated how little he knows about the science of
global warming: “No longer do we need
to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a
dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets.
And I’ve seen some of this evidence up close…”
Global warming alarmism, however, is entirely based on the “guesswork
and computer modeling” that McCain says isn’t necessary. The reason that the
United Nations relies on “guesswork and computer modeling” is because the
glaciers that are receding have been doing so since at least the 19th century,
before significant human output of greenhouse gases. In any event, the melting of glaciers is not evidence that humans
are involved. Glaciers have been advancing and retreating for hundreds of
millions of years. Just because humans are witnessing changes in glaciers does
not mean that humans are causing them.
“We have seen sustained drought in the Southwest, and across the world
average temperatures that seem to reach new records every few years. We have
seen a higher incidence of extreme weather events,” McCain stated. But that
“sustained drought” is why the Southwest is commonly known as a “desert” -- and
it was a desert long before industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.
As to global temperature, the world has cooled since 1998 and the
latest research from UN-approved researchers indicates that more global cooling
is on the way.
With respect to extreme weather events, I can’t think of a single
scientist – even an alarmist scientist – who has the temerity to stand up and
link specific weather events with climate change. McCain’s apparent climate
mentor, Al Gore, learned this lesson the hard way last fall.
McCain touted a so-called cap-and-trade system for controlling
greenhouse gas emissions, citing the supposed success of the 1990 Clean Air Act
amendments’ cap-and-trade system for the sulfur dioxide emissions linked to
alleged phenomenon of acid rain. But
even if acid rain was a genuine environmental problem -- and studies leading up
to the 1990 law cast significant doubt -- controlling sulfur dioxide emissions
is many orders of magnitude easier than controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
The volume of sulfur dioxide emissions to be eliminated is much smaller, the
sources (coal-fired power plants) are relatively few and the smokestack
technology is comparatively inexpensive.
McCain said that “A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will
be heard and welcomed all across the American economy.” This is unlikely, since
cap-and-trade’s economic harms have been exposed and condemned by the likes of
the Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, and
renown economists such as Alan Greenspan and Arthur Laffer. Even the Clinton
Administration warned of the economic harms that would be caused by
cap-and-trade.
Although China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, vows not to
reduce its emissions, McCain says the U.S. should act anyway. So as China,
India and other developing nations become the world's greenhouse gas
smokestacks, thereby nullifying any reductions made by the U.S., McCain
willingly condemns the U.S. to more expensive and less available energy
supplies for no environmental benefit whatsoever.
Undaunted by facts, McCain appears to be programmed with every
nonsensical Green platitude and policy -- a truly worrisome situation since
global warming regulation is shaping up to be the most important domestic
policy issue of the upcoming election.
Many McCain supporters believe he is the candidate to lead the country
at a time of war. But there is a war of sorts at home too -- the struggle
against the Greens for control over vital domestic energy and economic policy.
We can’t afford to lose the latter war, either.
------------------------
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a
junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at
the Competitive Enterprise Institute
********************************************
3. THE BIOFUELS BACKLASH
Wall Street Journal May 7th, 2008
St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, and for 30 years we
invoked his name as we opposed ethanol
subsidies. So imagine our great, pleasant surprise to see that the world
is suddenly awakening to the folly of
subsidized biofuels. All it took was a
mere global "food crisis."
Last week chief economist
Joseph Glauber of the USDA, which has
been among Big Ethanol's best friends in Washington, blamed biofuels for
increasing prices on corn and soybeans. Mr. Glauber also predicted that corn
prices will continue their historic rise because of demand from "expanding
use for ethanol." Even the environmental left, which pushed
ethanol for decades as an alternative to
gasoline, is coming clean. Lester Brown, one of the original
eco-Apostles, wrote in the Washington
Post that "it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel
mandates have failed." We knew for sure the tide had turned when Time
magazine's recent cover story,
"The Clean Energy Myth," described how turning crops into fuel
increases both food prices and
atmospheric CO2. No one captures elite green wisdom better than Time's Manhattan editors. Can Vanity Fair be far
behind?
All we can say is, welcome
aboard. Corn ethanol can now join the scare over silicone breast implants and the pesticide Alar as
among the greatest scams of the age. But before we move on to the next green miracle cure, it's worth recounting
how much damage this ethanol political
machine is doing. To create just one
gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of
tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a
federal mandate that forces it into our
gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a
third of America's corn crop while yielding
fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption. In December the Congressional Research
Service warned that even devoting every last
ear of American-grown corn to ethanol would not create enough
"renewable fuel" to meet
federal mandates.
According to a 2007 OECD
report, fossil-fuel production is up to
10,000 times as efficient as biofuel, measured by energy produced per
unit of land. Now scientists are
showing that ethanol will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. A February report in the journal Science found
that "corn-based ethanol, instead of
producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30
years . . . Biofuels from switchgrass,
if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%." Princeton's Timothy Searchinger and
colleagues at Iowa State, of all places, found that markets for biofuel encourage farmers to level forests and
convert wilderness into cropland. This
is to replace the land diverted from food to fuel.
As usual, Congress is the
last to know, but maybe even it is catching on. Credit goes to John McCain, the first presidential
candidate in recent memory who has refused to bow before King Ethanol. Onetime ethanol opponent Hillary Clinton
announced her support in 2006, as the
Iowa caucuses beckoned. In 2006 Barack Obama proposed mandating a staggering 65 billion gallons a year of
alternative fuel by 2025, but by this Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" he was suggesting that maybe
helping "people get something to
eat" was a higher priority than biofuels.
Mr. McCain and 24 other
Senators are now urging EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to consider using his broad waiver authority
to eliminate looming biofuel mandates.
Otherwise, the law will force us to consume roughly four times the
current requirement by 2022. In fact,
with some concerned state governments submitting helpful petitions, Mr. Johnson could largely knock out the
ethanol mandate regime, at least temporarily.
Over the longer term, however, this shouldn't be entrusted to unelected
bureaucrats. The best policy would
repeal the biofuel mandates and subsidies enacted in the 2005 and 2007 energy bills. We say repeal because there
will be intense lobbying to keep the subsidies, or transfer them from projects that have failed to those that
have not yet failed.
Like Suzanne Somers in
"American Graffiti," the perfect biofuel is always just out of reach, only a few more billion dollars in
subsidies away from commercial viability. But
sometimes even massive government aid can't turn science projects into
products. The industry's hope continues
for cellulosic ethanol, but there's no getting around the fact that biofuels require vegetation to make fuel.
Even cellulosic ethanol, while more efficient
than corn, will require countless acres of fuel if it is ever going to
replace oil.
Perhaps some future technology will efficiently
extract energy from useless corn stalks and fallen trees. But until that day, Congress's ethanol subsidies are
merely force-feeding an industry that
is doing far more harm than good. The
results include distorted investment decisions, higher carbon emissions, higher
food prices for Americans, and an
emerging humanitarian crisis in the developing world. The last thing the poor of Africa and the
taxpayers of America need is another scheme to
conjure gasoline out of corn and tax credits.
*****************************
4. THE
GLOBAL-WARMING MYTH
By
Patrick J. Michaels, The Washington Times, 16 May 2008
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080516/EDITORIAL/8210510/-1/RSS_EDITORIAL&template=printart
On May Day, Noah Keenlyside of Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Science,
published a paper in Nature forecasting no additional global warming
"over the next decade."
Al Gore and his minions continue to chant that "the science is
settled" on global warming, but the only thing settled is that there has
not been any since 1998. Critics of this view (rightfully) argue that 1998 was
the warmest year in modern record, due to a huge El Nino event in the Pacific
Ocean, and that it is unfair to start any analysis at a high (or a low) point
in a longer history. But starting in 2001 or 1998 yields the same result: no
warming.
The Keenlyside team found that natural variability in the Earth's oceans will
"temporarily offset" global warming from carbon dioxide. Seventy
percent of the Earth's surface is oceanic; hence, what happens there greatly
influences global temperature. It is now known that both Atlantic and Pacific
temperatures can get "stuck," for a decade or longer, in relatively
warm or cool patterns. The North Atlantic is now forecast to be in a cold stage
for a decade, which will help put the damper on global warming. Another Pacific
temperature pattern is forecast not to push warming, either.
Science no longer provides justification for any rush to pass drastic global
warming legislation. The Climate Security Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and
John Warner, would cut emissions of carbon dioxide - the main "global
warming" gas - by 66 percent over the next 42 years. With expected
population growth, this means about a 90 percent drop in emissions per capita,
to 19th-century levels.
Pressure to pass impossible-to-achieve legislation, like Lieberman-Warner, or
grandstanding political stunts, like calling polar bears an "endangered
species" even when they are at near record-high population levels, are
based upon projections of rapid and persistent global warming.
Proponents of wild legislation like to point to the 2007 science compendium
from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deemed so authoritative
it was awarded half of last year's Nobel Peace Prize. (The other half went to
Al Gore.) In it there are dozens of computer-driven projections for
21st-century warming. Not one of them projects that the earth's natural climate
variability will shut down global warming from carbon dioxide for two decades.
Yet, that is just what has happened.
If you think about it, all we possess to project the future of complex systems
are computer models. Therefore, if the models that serve as the basis for policy
do not work - and that must be the conclusion if indeed we are at the midpoint
of a two-decade hiatus in global warming - then there is no verifiable science
behind the current legislative hysteria. What does this mean for the future? If
warming is "temporarily offset" for two decades, does all the
"offset" warming suddenly appear with a vengeance, or is it delayed?
Computer models, like the one used by Keenlyside, et al., rely on
"positive feedbacks" to generate much of their warming. First, atmospheric
carbon dioxide warms things up a bit. Then the ocean follows, raising the
amount of atmospheric water vapor, which is a greater source of global warming
than carbon dioxide. When the ocean does not warm up, it seems that the
additional warming is also delayed. All of this may mean that we have simply
overestimated the amount of warming that results from increases in atmospheric
carbon dioxide.
That final point has been a subject of debate for a long time. Several recent
publications in the peer-reviewed literature argue that observed changes in
temperature show the "sensitivity" of temperature to increasing
carbon dioxide is lower than earlier estimates. All of this suggests a
21st-century warming trend that will be lower than the average value calculated
by the climate models in the IPCC compendium.
But who really knows? Before Keenlyside dropped his bombshell, few scientists
would have said publicly that global warming could stop for two decades. Anyone
raising that possibility would doubtlessly have been treated to the smug reply
that "the science is settled," and that only the most bumptious
ignoramus could raise such a question.
One final prediction: The teeming polar bear population will be listed as
"endangered," and in the next year or two, Congress will pass a bill
mandating large and impossible cuts in carbon dioxide. What is
"settled" is the politics, not the science.
------------------------
Patrick J. Michaels is
senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.
*****************************
5. AMERICANS COOLING TO GLOBAL WARMING:
by Lawrence Solomon, May 15, 2008
All three U.S. presidential hopefuls have made global warming a
high-profile issue in their campaigns. In this they are out of step with the
broad electorate, which ranks global warming well down the scale of important
issues. The public's increasing skepticism is particularly surprising given the
overwhelming air time that the press has given to the notion that global
warming spells doom.
According to a new Pew Poll released last week, for the U.S. population
as a whole, only 47% believe that the earth is warming due to man made causes.
Democrats are likeliest to believe this (58%) and Republicans least likely
(27%) with Independents split right down the middle (50%).
Although most Democrats
believe man is the culprit, they don't take the crime too seriously. When asked
to prioritize global warming among the many concerns that face Americans --
everything from terrorism to crime to government ethics -- global warming comes
in 15th out of 21. Independents take a dimmer view, ranking global warming the
18th most important issue, and Republicans rank it last, as the 21st most
important. Overall, according to a poll released in January, only 35% of
Americans said global warming should be a top priority for the president and
Congress this year, down from 38% a year earlier.
---------------------------------------------
Lawrence Solomon is
executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The
world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria,
political persecution, and fraud.
E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
**********************************
6. CAL THOMAS ON THE NEED FOR CLIMATE DEBATE
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/mccain_joins_global_warming_cu.html
No,
the most relevant question is whether global warming is true. Cults ignore
evidence and facts contrary to their blind faith. ...
Instead of buying into the claims of global warming alarmists who seek more
control over our lives through big government intrusion, McCain should demand a
debate on the issue. Global warming cult leaders won't debate. Al Gore has refused
every debate challenge, asserting the facts are undeniable and that global
warming is real. That's another mark of a cult leader; he will tolerate no
doubters.
Growing numbers of atmospheric scientists and others with related expertise are
emerging from the global warming cult and testifying to their conversions. They
are mostly ignored by the media and by politicians who have embraced the
cultists' doctrines.
On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian prime minister
asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming
alarmists:
'Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so
there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. ...
Significant (scientific) advances have been made since the (Kyoto) protocol was
created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing
greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about
climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have
concluded it was not necessary.'"
Among the noted converts is Claude Allegre, a member of the French Socialist
Party and a former Minister of National Education. Allegre is also a member of
the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences. He once was a believer in the
"science" behind global warming, but no more. He, too, wants a debate
and his ranks are growing. If global warming alarmists are right, they will
only strengthen their position by having robust debates, not between
politicians who seek votes, but among scientists who seek truth. The issue is
too important to allow politicians to decide it for us because it has the
potential to drastically change the way we live.
***************************************************
7. GORE IS RIGHT. CLIMATE CHANGE
CATASTROPHE IS IMMINENT!
http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=websterb&date=080515
Excerpt (courtesy Marc Morano): : I've been a long-time skeptic of global warming/climate change alarmism. I've written many times about the folly of the IPCC/Gore claim that human emissions of CO2 will bring about "catastrophic" change for human society. Well, I now freely admit I was wrong - but not for the reasons most often cited by alarmists. [] The danger and cost to human society from climate change will be catastrophic and is, apparently, unavoidable. But ironically, while the catastrophe to which I refer is unquestionably human-caused, it is completely avoidable. Therein lies the rub.
The danger is not from a
catastrophe arising from soaring temperatures and human misery that alarmists
claim will follow (a highly debatable proposition). The catastrophe that seems
unstoppable is the human misery that will unquestionably arise from the massive
costs of soaring imprudent government regulation of CO2 emissions in the form
of Gore-enriching "cap and trade" schemes that will, in the end,
provide no discernable impact on global climate. []
A further irony of the
pending economic catastrophe that will be brought about by climate change
legislation is that there is a strong likelihood that the next 20-30 years
could see dramatic cooling brought about by climate forces that, up until now,
the IPCC/Gore alarmists have claimed were not major climate change forces. The
reason why the IPCC has been blind-sided by this act of nature (global cooling)
is simple. They simply do not understand enough about climate science and
climate change forces to come to any rational conclusions. But that has not
stopped them from issuing dire warnings based on irresponsible use of
inadequate computer simulations based on incomplete data for climate models
that do not reflect a sufficient understanding of climate science!
This UN effort
(the IPCC is a creation of the UN) appears to be the most successful effort
ever launched at destroying the US economic system (capitalism) that is
routinely taught as the cause of all evil, even in the US university system.
You have to give the Left credit for their tenacity. They make up with
perseverance what they lack in common sense.
**********************************************
8. LOUD AND PROUD IN PRAISE OF CARBON
By David Archibald, The West
Australian, May 8, 2008
John Connor of The Climate Institute says that my boat, my car and I
are destroying the environment. My work says the opposite. The more carbon
dioxide you put into the atmosphere, the more you are helping all plants on the
planet to grow, and of course that makes you a better person. Virtue is in
direct proportion to your carbon dioxide output. What of the temperature, you
ask? Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but the effect is strongly
logarithmic. The first 20 ppm achieves 1.5 degrees of heating, but it takes
more than another 400 ppm to equal that. By the time we get to the current
level of 384 ppm, carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. From
here, every 100 ppm extra may be worth 0.1 of a degree.
So how does the IPCC
achieve 5 degrees of heating from a doubling of the pre-industrial level of
carbon dioxide to 560 ppm? They do it by cheating. Their computer models are
written so that a little bit of carbon dioxide-caused heating puts more water
vapour in the air. Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas, so they have the
heating compounding away until they get a number that will melt icecaps, kill
polar bears and all the other effects of their apocalyptic visions. Their view
of the Earth’s climate is that it is tremendously unstable, prone to thermal
runaway at the slightest provocation. In fact it is the opposite, a buffered
system that dampens disturbances. Tropical seas can’t get warmer than 31
degrees because they start evaporating too rapidly to get any hotter.
Similarly, high level tropical clouds part to vent radiation to space. The
Earth is just about perfect for sustaining equable living conditions over a
good proportion of its surface
What is strange is that the
wailing of the global warming proponents is in the face of a temperature record
that does not support their theory. Peak global temperature was in 1998 and we
have had ten years of cooling since. The satellite record shows that the
temperature of the Southern Hemisphere has been flat for the last 30 years. The
Earth’s failure to warm has become quite annoying to the global warmers, and
signs of cognitive dissonance are appearing in their camp. Surely a few more
years of cooling will leave only the true believers in their misanthropic
ideology, and the truly idiotic. Or is that moment with us now?
The next decade will not be
a good time to be a Canadian wheat farmer. In fact the current high grain
prices caused by the mandated levels of ethanol in US petrol are just a warm up
to the main event: a big reduction in mid-latitude grain production due to
shorter growing seasons and unseasonable frosts. The global warmers do not have
a monopoly on apocalyptic visions. Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
will help agricultural production a little. A 300 ppm increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide would increase wheat yields by 50%. Australia is a dry continent
and we will benefit more than most others.
The next question is how to
get more of that beneficial carbon dioxide up in the atmosphere where we need
it. Non-OPEC oil production peaked in 2002, with flow on effects to the prices
of coal and LNG. It won’t be cheap to do good from here. The good news for
Australia is that coal-to-diesel plants are profitable at US$40 per barrel. At
the current oil price, they are extremely profitable, and Australia has plenty
of coal. The conversion process produces abundant carbon dioxide, so it is
win-win all round.
--------------------------------------------------------------
(David Archibald is a Perth-based scientist working in the fields of
climate and cancer research. He also explores for oil in northern Western
Australia.)
*****************************************************
9. GLOBAL WARMING – LATEST EXCUSE FOR WAR ON
FAMILY
By Don Feder, May 9, 2008
Procreation is killing the planet, and traditional religion is to
blame, Global-Warming cultists insist.
First the industrial revolution had to go. Then it was to the wall with
oil company executives, those malignant Carbon Interests. Next, SUVs were
declared enemies of the planet. Now,
the left’s attention has shifted back to its perennial targets – large families
and “patriarchal” religion.
In a commentary in the April
21st. edition of USA TODAY (“Might our religion be killing us?”), Oliver “Buzz”
Thomas quotes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- a tool of the
global village idiots at the United Nations -- to the effect that Global
Warming, caused by CO2 emissions, will lead to “drought, starvation and species
extinction.” (Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies ... rivers and seas
boiling… forty years of darkness… dogs and cats living together!)
The culprits are religions
that oppose birth control and abortion and instruct us regarding fructification
and multiplication. Thomas even names names: “Now, consider the Roman Catholic
Church’s continued opposition to modern birth control or the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints’ (i.e. Mormons) encouragement of large families … .
Many Orthodox Jews and some Muslims also eschew birth control.”
Only “some Muslims”? Bet
Planned Parenthood isn’t doing a land –office business in Mecca. These benighted faiths are literally
drowning us in kids, causing CO2-levels to rise, the hole in the ozone-layer to
grow, and polar bears to float away on break-away chunks of the rapidly
shrinking Arctic ice cap.
But, what can you expect
from churches mired in a literal reading of Scriptures? Thomas asks. “I
recognize that religious organizations tend to be conservative institutions.
Their continued opposition to equal rights for woman and gays is a good
example.” By failing to ordain women
and opposing abortion and homosexual marriage, conservative denominations prove
their resistance to progress and human rights, Buzz sneers.
Said reactionary tendencies
also are evident in their callous disregard for the environment. (For the left,
the quintessential spiritual experience would be an abortion performed at a
same-sex marriage ceremony, while transgendered ushers throw condoms instead of
confetti, and bridesmaids confiscate handguns from passersby.)
Says Thomas: “In the
interest of preserving our planet and our species, shouldn’t religious
organizations be encouraging smaller families? Do our spiritual leaders need
additional divine revelation to realize that our current doctrines – which
threaten to take the entire world down with us – have become ethically and
theologically questionable?” Welcome to
the Church of Choice – services performed by the Reverend Rodham, Sundays at 9
and 11.
For 200 years, the left has
been fixated on an imaginary overpopulation crisis. In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that wars, famine and plagues were
needed to reduce the “surplus population” else we would soon inhabit Planet
SRO. In his 1969 book, “The Population
Bomb” (the prequel to “An Inconvenient Truth”), Paul Ehrlich forecast worldwide
famine by 1975. Natural resources would
be severely depleted and arable land exhausted in a futile effort to keep up
with the population explosion. Soon, we would be reduced to eating each other
-- like Democratic presidential candidates in late April of an election year.
That none of these doomsday
scenarios came to pass is irrelevant to the left. Hysteria is the only way to
propagate their creed. The Today Show’s Matt Lauer insists: “The stark reality
is that there are too many of us. And we consume too much … The solutions are
not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption.” Spoken like a
TV personality feigning an idea.
How many people are too
many? They never tell us. As Dr.
Jacqueline Kasun noted in “The War
Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control”
(1998), humans occupy 1% to 3% of the earth’s land surface. A decade ago, all 5.8 billion of us could
have fit in the state of Texas, with each having 1,269 square feet of
living-space – the equivalent of a ranch house. Since 1900, the world’s population has quadrupled, while the
planet’s GDP has increased between 20 and 40 times.
In 1960, India had to import
food to deal with periodic famines. Today, with twice the population it had
then, India is a net food exporter. Worldwide, half as many people die of
starvation today as in 1900, even though we have four times as many people.
Those who starve to death now are mostly victims of government-engineered
famine.
A 1990 report of United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that by employing what were
then the most up-to-date technologies, the earth could yield enough to feed 30
to 35 billion. So, we’re not running
out of food or space. How about natural resources? In 1948, the world’s oil
reserves were estimated at around 600 billion barrels. By 2000, the estimate
was revised slightly upward – to 3 trillion barrels. The actual figure is anyone’s
guess.
Having failed with the
foregoing, the left now has hit on what it believes to be the ultimate strategy
to advance population control – Global Warming. Families are about to feel the
blade of the guillotine in the coming Green Terror.
In May, 2007, an outfit called the Optimum Population Trust
warned that if the British didn’t voluntarily limit population size, it would
be up to the state to force them to be environmentally conscious in the bedroom.
(FYI, in the U.K., the birth rate is well-below replacement level.) The Trust
warned that the average lifetime “carbon footprint” of a child born in Britain
was the equivalent of 620 roundtrip flights between London and New York.
Last December, Barry
Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of
Western Australia, urged the government in Canberra to levy a $5,000 “baby tax”
and an annual $800 “carbon tax,” for each addition child born to a family with
two children. All of the left’s crusades begin with proselytizing and end in
coercion.
“Every newborn baby in
Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average
of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of
resources typical of our society,” Walters writes. The left is incapable of
viewing individuals as anything other than polluters, never as producers or
innovators – let alone seeing them in spiritual terms, as manifestations of
God’s goodness.
Global Warming is the left’s
perfect storm – a force to demolish faith, family and freedom. There’s no area
of our lives that can’t be invaded – taxed, controlled, regulated or
obliterated – in the name of serving and protecting the planet. Unlike food production and oil reserves, the
myth of man-made Global Warming is resistant to factual analysis. The left
treats it as revealed truth and skeptics are scorned as heretics and troglodytes – the scientific equivalent of
Holocaust-deniers. Al Gore, the movement’s P.T. Barnum-cum-Grand Inquisitor,
compares them to the cranks who believe the earth is flat.
If Global Warming didn’t
exist, the left would have to invent it. In fact, they did. As Nigel Calder,
former editor of the British magazine New Scientist explains: “Twenty years
ago, climate research became politicized in favor of one particular hypothesis,
which redefined the study as the effect of the study of greenhouse gases. As a
result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science
are greeted with impediments to their research careers.”
Still, the evidence is there
for those not blinded by dogma. Al Gore’s brain is melting faster than the
Arctic ice cap, which is making a spectacular comeback. A February 18, 2008
story in the London Daily Express notes that Arctic ice levels, which had
shrunk from 13 million to 4 million sq. km., between January and October 2007,
are now almost back to their original levels. In the meantime, according to the
paper, “Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is
usual for the time of year.”
In New England, I spent much
of the past winter shoveling Global Warming.
The entire Northern Hemisphere experienced the coldest winter in
decades. Again, from the Daily Express: “Even the Middle East saw snow, with
Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman and northern Saudi Arabia reporting the heaviest
falls in years and below zero temperatures. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, snow and
freezing weather killed 120 people.”
So many inconvenient facts
that contradict the myth of Global Warming. In the United States, the 10
hottest years on record were all in the 1920s and 1930s. (Those Model A Fords
have wide carbon tire-tracks.) Temperatures rose between 1910 and 1945, fell
from 1945 to 1975, and rose again for the next 20 years – which bears no
relationship to the production of greenhouse gasses.
In an open letter to U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (December 13, 2007), 100 eminent scientists from
all over the world observed: “It is not possible to stop climate change, a
natural phenomenon that has affected humanity throughout the ages. … The United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued increasingly
alarming conclusions about the climate influences of human produced
carbon-dioxide (CO2), a non- polluting gas that is essential to plant
photosynthesis.”
Not only is there no
reliable evidence that reducing CO2 emissions will affect climate change, the
signers note, but “because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the
current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from
future climate change rather than to decrease it.”
Not that human suffering
ever stopped the left. It wants and needs man-made Global Warming as a way to
counter what it considers the most potent threats to its agenda -- faith and
family. The left must have its
scapegoat. This is absolutely essential. For Marx it was the bourgeoisie. For
the ‘60s New Left, it was America – spelled with a “k.” White males are the
villains of multiculturalism. Now, it’s babies and retrograde churches that are
destroying the planet. The environment has assumed the role of the proletariat,
the Third World and racial minorities in earlier models of damnation and
salvation.
In particular, the left
cringes at the thought of Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Jews and Mormons
having lots of children -- passing their misogynistic, homophobic,
species-centric, suicidally archaic worldview to the next generation. The left has always worried about the
reproductive patterns of certain people. As Jonah Goldberg explains in his book
“Liberal Fascism,” from the beginning, racial eugenics was a project of the
left -- or progressives, as they called themselves then and now.
H.G. Wells, a hero of
pre-World War II progressivism (a socialist who wrote science fiction, much
like Al Gore), said that in order for humankind to move to the sunny uplands of
utopia, “swarms of black and brown, and dirty (lower class) white and yellow
people” would have to be discouraged from breeding – or physically eliminated.
Moreover, Goldberg explains, “The foremost institution combating eugenics
around the world was the Catholic Church.”
For those like Oliver “Buzz”
Thomas (perpetrator of the aforesaid USA TODAY commentary), hordes of rapidly multiplying
Catholics, Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews have taken the place of
“swarms of black and brown, and dirty white and yellow peoples.”
The irony here is that,
unlike Global Warming, rapidly declining birthrates is a reality, not a theory.
Worldwide, in 1970, the average woman had 6 children. Today, that average is
only 2.8, with further declines forecast.
If current trends continue, by 2050, the world will hold 248 million
fewer children under 5 years of age than it does today. The crisis we will
confront in this century isn’t overpopulation, but a birth-dearth leading to
population decline. When it comes to maintaining civilization, people are the
one indispensable element. By heeding
His words and having large families, those reactionary believers indicted by
Green Jacobins are doing God’s work, as well as humanity’s.
In his USA TODAY diatribe,
Thomas writes: “Population growth hits hardest in poor nations, and, as poverty
increases, public health declines. I am quite certain that God is not the
author of human misery, but by preaching against birth control at the same time
we are preaching against abortion, it seems that we are making God out as
cruel, a buffoon or both.” Thomas believes the word of God is negotiable – and
must be constantly reinterpreted so as not make him “cruel, a buffoon or both.”
Buzz has it backward. Poor
countries are often rich in natural resources but lacking in human capital. By
encouraging or forcing emerging nations to limit their population, Global
Warming hysterics are dooming them to perpetual poverty. God, on the other hand, tells us that
children are the true source of prosperity as well as happiness. Ultimately, it comes down to this: do we
listen to God or a guy called Buzz? Hmmm, tough decision.