We have had many requests to meet in person
with our TWTW readers and hold discussions
on the science and politics of the GW issue.
Thanks
to the generosity of our donors – for which sincere thanks – we will have
travel funds to arrange briefings in many cities. All are invited!
Needless to say, we welcomed this idea and
plan to start here in the DC area in January, and continue in Florida, Texas,
Arizona, California (possibly in Feb), in NY and New England (possibly in
March), and in Ohio/ Chicago in May.
SEPP’s initial conference will be on
Saturday, Jan 10, 10AM to Noon, at the Marriott Gateway Hotel in
Arlington, VA. It's right at the Crystal
City Metro stop (Blue and Yellow line) and there is also plenty of free
parking. It looks like we will have
about 50 people attending. There is
no further need to reply.
After all this e-mail correspondence, I look
fwd to meeting many of you in person during 2009.
We wish you a Happy New Year!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
"The liberal
world order will not let go of their global-warming assault on free economies
until hell freezes over -- by which point, obviously, the global-warming theory
will be visibly disproven." -- Tony Blankley
********************************
THIS
WEEK
The Big Motown
Bailout – and Global Warming
There seems to be a consensus in Congress, and even in the White House, to
bail out GM and Chrysler with a multi-billion dollar injection of cash.
What this will do is essentially transfer money from taxpayers to the UAW, the
autoworkers’ union. This will raise a question of equity, since there are
many other deserving groups that will ask for financial support -- not least
taxpayers themselves, and a future generation of workers who will be paying off
huge federal debts.
Some foresaw the demise of the Detroit Big Three. But it came about more suddenly and sooner,
in 2008, because of the oil price spike (which ruined the market for profitable
SUVs) and because of the credit collapse brought on by the mortgage crisis.
(Actually, if the oil spike and credit crunch had never occurred, the auto
companies might have been on track to recover.)
One can argue about whether past management or shoddy cars share much of
the blame; but in any case, those reasons are no longer valid. (Sales for all auto companies have fallen by
like percentages in recent months, so product mix is not the problem.) Instead, Detroit carries two major burdens:
1) the huge cost of autoworkers’ wages, healthcare and pensions; and 2) the
strident (and costly) demands from Congress and environmentalists, with global
warming as their latest excuse.
The UAW burden on the average car was at least $1000 and made the Big Three
uncompetitive with Japanese cars manufactured in the United States with
non-union labor.
The environmental burden is really two-fold. The oil price spike could
have been moderated (and may have never occurred) if the enviros and Congress
had not insisted on stopping offshore drilling and oil development in
Alaska. But the other burdens are even more insidious. The first
round of fuel-economy standards, imposed in the late 1970s, cut into the market
share of US manufacturers and gave foreign companies the foothold they needed
to expand sales in the US. Recent tightening of the standards for light
trucks (including SUVs) are squeezing GM, Ford, and Chrysler much more than
Toyota, Honda, and Nissan.
What exacerbated the situation was that the domestic companies, who knew how to manufacture fuel-efficient cars overseas at reasonable cost, were not permitted to add them to average out their fuel-efficiency numbers -- an important concession to the UAW engineered by Congress.
Even more disturbing is the new fuel-economy legislation (HR6) passed by Congress and signed into law in December 2007. Under the new law, an additional 40% increase in fuel economy is required -- whether consumers want it or not. The only way to accomplish that while still selling full-size pickups and SUVs is with hybrid technology that consumers aren't willing to pay for. In theory, "plug-in hybrid" vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt could pull up the average economy of more conventional vehicles, but they require large, expensive batteries and a price increase of over $10,000 to cover their cost. Such vehicles do not make economic sense -- even with gasoline at $3 to $4 per gallon.
Although the new federal fuel-economy standards are bad enough, the state of
California is bent on one-upmanship. Within days of the federal bill’s
passing, the California Air Resources Board announced plans to set carbon-dioxide
standards that require even higher fuel economy. Some in Congress have
even proposed preventing manufacturers from suing states that adopt more
stringent standards. Of course, we all know that the impact on CO2 levels
would be negligible and the impact on climate unmeasurable. But here
we're talking about ideology: “saving the climate” seems more important than
saving the economy and jobs
The outcome does not look too promising. So far, the UAW has not shown
much willingness to compromise in order to save Detroit -- and
jobs. Even if the bailout goes through as planned, the future of a
government-run automobile industry appears bleak. So bankruptcy may be
inevitable -- perhaps even within months, or whenever the money runs out.
There are those who argue that the companies should be put into bankruptcy now
rather than later -- and those who argue that no one would buy a car from a
bankrupt company. The answer, I think,
is to have what might be called a “virtual bankruptcy.” This is essentially
an arbitration process, presided over by an experienced retired bankruptcy
judge, whose decisions are binding on the companies, autoworkers, and all other
concerned parties. It would produce the same outcome as a Chapter-11
reorganization but without the stigma of a bankruptcy. Whether such a plan – or indeed any
alternative – will satisfy enviro-extremists, bent on demonizing CO2, is very
much an open question.
***********************
SEPP Science Editorial #1-09 (1/3/09)
John Christy and Roy Spencer (Univ
of Alabama, Huntsville -- UAH) pioneered the methodology of extracting
climatologically useful atmospheric temperature data from the satellite
microwave (MSU) instrument – a great achievement, since the instrument was not
designed for this purpose.
The analysis requires many kinds of corrections. A competing group, RSS, pointed to one correction that the UAH group had overlooked: the influence of a slight decrease in satellite altitude due to orbit decay [1998]. UAH immediately made this correction -- a small change in the analysis algorithm. It increased the temperature trend slightly -- although it is still much smaller than the surface trend.
But the RSS trend, based on an independent analysis of the same basic satellite readings, continued to show a larger, more positive trend than UAH – with the independent balloon data supporting UAH. This discrepancy between RSS and UAH became a hot topic -- which has persisted. Neither group, both very competent, could pinpoint the exact cause.
In Dec 2002, at a CCSP workshop in Arlington ,VA, I heard a full presentation of the RSS results by Carl Mears. I noticed that the RSS temp record showed a small 'jump' around 1993, where a transition occurred between two satellites, with only a short overlap in time. I then e-mailed Mears and Spencer (and a few others), and suggested a comparison of RSS and UAH trends before and after 1993, to see if that might be the origin of the discrepancy. It's really an obvious idea; I was not prepared (or capable) to dig into the detailed analyses of the two groups to isolate the actual cause.
Such a comparison has just been performed by Douglass and Christy (my co-authors in a 2007 paper) in an appendix to a paper on climate sensitivity (published in Energy & Environment, Aug 2008). As I had expected, in support of the UAH result, they now find agreement between RSS and UAH trends -- although I will hold up until Carl Mears confirms this result.
Apparently, D&C do not consider their finding of great importance. I beg to differ. To see why, pls look at Figs 9a and 9b in the NIPCC report "Nature Not Human Activity Rules the Climate"
http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf -- and move the RSS point to coincide with UAH. Disagreement between greenhouse models and observed trends now becomes quite obvious – and strengthens the NIPCC conclusion that “Nature, not human activity, rules the climate.”
****************************************************************
1. 2008: A sea change in the global
warming debate?
2. 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved
3. California’s new regulations on diesel emissions
4. Global
warming facts: Who checks the authorities?
5. The best argument against Cap&Trade: Money and lobbyists hurt European
efforts
6. Victims of global warming
could sue oil and power companies
7. The IPCC Report: What the
Lead Authors really think
8. The ‘Warm’ turns: It’s
the Sun, Stupid!
9. Al Gore’s global warming
debunked by kids!
***************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
Al Gore: The real
Flat Earther http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84811 How many times in history has any scientific
theory had as much dissent from scientists as global warming? Six hundred and
fifty scientists from all over the world have challenged the global warming
claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
and by former Vice President Al Gore.
See
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6
Link
should work: If not, try this one:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=37283205-c4eb-4523-b1d3-c6e8faf14e84&CFID=79660542&CFTOKEN=49919163
**********************************************
Two new valuable climate blogs appeared this
week. Dr. Roy W. Spencer, author of the
best selling book, Climate Confusion, and Principal Research Scientist
at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, has started blogging at www.drroyspencer.com. Dr. Robert Bradley, author of Capitalism
at Work: Business, Government, and Energy, and others now blog at http://masterresource.org/.
*************************************
As reported in the
Belfast (No Ireland) Telegraph, 31 Dec 2008:
Environment minister Sammy Wilson: “I still think man-made climate
change is a con. Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one
giant con that is depriving third-world countries of vital funds to tackle
famine, HIV and other diseases.”
The DUP minister
has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that ongoing
climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind. But while acknowledging his views on global
warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP said he was not prepared to be
bullied by eco fundamentalists.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/environment-minister-sammy-wilson-i-still-think-manmade-climate-change-is-a-con-14123972.html
**********************************
Solar Meets
Polar as Winter Curbs Clean Energy: Many alternative energy sources like wind turbines
and
solar panels experience problems in cold weather. Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of
renewable energy. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/business/26winter.html?th&emc=th
This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks, and
solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps
most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with
snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine.
*************************
Israel pioneers electric car network http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/3687048/Israel-pioneers-electric-car-networtk.html
Israel has signed a deal with an electric
transport company to install thousands of recharging points for electric cars
across the country. The network, run by
US-based firm Better Place, will be the first nationwide network of its kind in
the world. In a pilot project, Better
Place will install 500 of the charging points by the end of this year in
cities, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. It expects to have 500,000
charging points by the time the first cars are marketed. Given Israel's small size, the company
expects relatively little need for changing batteries. A return trip from
Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, for example, covers only 75 miles.
Better Place has signed deals for similar
electric car networks in San Francisco, Hawaii, Denmark and Australia, but the
project in Israel is the first spanning a whole country. Renault-Nissan will supply the electric cars.
*****************************************
UNDER THE BOTTOM
LINE
Jim Hansen is at it
again, but now a little more confrontational than usual:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf For comment see http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/01/01/nasas-hansen-obama-use-global-warming-redistribute-wealth
For a rebuttal of
the ‘facts’ in the Hansen letter to Obama, see this analysis by Richard
Courtney http://co2sceptics.com/attachments/ftp/Heansen-Obama_letter_comments.pdf
*********************
“German CEOs for
Climate Protection” -- the modern alchemists, changing carbon into gold – for
themselves, of course http://www.initiative2grad.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2
###################################
1. 2008:
A SEA CHANGE IN THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE?
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13816&red=y#comments
When I began
writing about global warming climate change, public outcry was
tremendous. Amid a sea of media stories about the sins of our wasteful
lifestyle, no one wanted to hear about contradictory research, conflicting
data, or skeptical scientists. Now, over two years later, a funny thing has
happened. The roles have shifted. My stories are the staid and ordinary
ones. It's the fellows predicting flood, famine, and disaster who are
generating all the controversy. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. What happened?
2008 was the year
predicted to be the "hottest in a century". Instead it became
the coldest of the decade. It was the year the North Pole would "melt
entirely, allowing you to swim to it". Instead, nuclear-powered
icebreakers became trapped in unseasonably thick ice. It was a year of
record-breaking cold and snow, everywhere from Baghdad to the beaches of
Malibu. It was the year the "Gore Effect" entered the public
vocabulary, as whenever global warming protestors got together to march, they
were met with blizzards and ice storms.
Let's hope
schadenfreude isn't a sin. Polls are clear. Despite the media's
increasingly shrill tone and ever-more unrealistic predictions, the public has
lost all faith in global warming. After all, how many times can you say that
this time the science is now finally proven, without being laughed at?
In some respects,
that's good. It means less chance of implementing incredibly damaging
policies, policies that will have disastrous impacts on standards of living,
especially among the poor. In other ways, it's bad. The overselling of
inconclusive conjectures as "proven science" is leading some to
distrust science itself.
Given that, I think
the year should conclude with a reminder of just what the scientific debate --
minus its alarmist media trappings-- is really all about. As a moderately
well known skeptic, I sometimes surprise people when I say I believe in global
warming. If we define the term as, "man is having some impact on global
temperatures", then the evidence is fairly clear. That statement in
itself, though, means nothing. Are we impacting it enough to matter? Can CO2
cause catastrophic climate change?
That debate
revolves around a single number, one so important we have a special name for
it. Climate Sensitivity. How much will
the earth warm if we double the amount of atmospheric CO2, or its equivalent in
other greenhouse gases? That value is called climate sensitivity. If all else
remains equal, it’s fairly easy to calculate: about half a degree C, a figure accepted
by most proponents and skeptics of AGW alike. It's also a value far too small
for concern. With that sensitivity, the planet would warm by maybe a quarter of
a degree by the year 2100. Yawn.
But there's a
wrinkle in that simple calculation. As greenhouse gases rise, other things
change as well. Some are positive feedbacks, which lead to more warming. Some
are negative feedbacks, which counteract the warming. Scientists in the
modeling community tend to believe positive effects predominate; they bandy
about sensitivity values from 2C all the way up to 6C or more. Observational
earth scientists (primarily geologists, meteorologists, and some atmospheric
physicists) tend to believe negative effects dominate, and that the actual
value may be even smaller than 0.5C.
The problem is that
no real evidence exists for strong positive feedbacks. Worse, they seem
contradicted by the paleo-climatic history of the planet, which has never
experienced runaway warming even when CO2 levels were ten or more times higher
than they are today. Over geologic time, CO2 correlates very poorly with
temperature, leading one to conclude that it's a very weak greenhouse gas.
There is other
evidence against a high sensitivity. But the real point is this. Whichever side
is right, the media (and a few researchers) have forgotten one of the basic
rules of science. Until a theory can predict the unexpected, it should always
be viewed critically. The ancient Greeks knew the stars moved, and they had a
thousand theories to predict why it would keep happening. Until we can
explain past climate shifts and successfully predict future trends, global
models are educational toys. Not indisputable evidence.
Some pundits are
calling 2008 the year global warming was disproven. I prefer to call it the
year science triumphed to alarmism.
***************************************************************
2. 2008 WAS THE YEAR
MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING WAS DISPROVED
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
By Christopher Booker, 27 Dec 2008
Even the more
cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks
to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed
to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling
effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the
temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific
consensus" in favor of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as
in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists,
including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying
to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically
engineered artifact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer
models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst
recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those
self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician
in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000
politicians, officials, and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next
year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are
waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic
schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy
to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.
Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of
dollars, pounds, and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of
carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions
trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more
useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to
"biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and
futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.
As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast
approaching from the fact that unless we get on very soon with building enough
proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few
years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a
halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our
politicians along with those of the EU and President Obama's US were brought
back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.
***********************
3. CALIFORNIA’S NEW REGULATIONS ON DIESEL
EMISSIONS.
UCLA epidemiologist Prof James E. Edstrom, PhD and MPH,
who has exposed the shoddy science EPA used to link passive smoking to lung
cancer, is Research Professor at the University
of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health and Johnson Comprehensive
Cancer Center. His research focuses on the epidemiology of cancer and other
major chronic diseases in well-defined populations within California and
the United States. He is currently investigating lifestyle and environmental
factors in several large cohorts, including the California Cancer Prevention
Study and national samples available from the National Center for Health
Statistics. Here’s his take on California’s new regulations on diesel
emissions.
“On December 12, the California Air Resources
Board (CARB) approved the most stringent regulations in the nation governing
diesel emissions, justified primarily by CARB’s contentions that diesel fine
particulate air pollution causes about 4,000 premature deaths per year in
California. These regulations are estimated to cost more than $5 billion
to implement and will add an unnecessary burden on the already struggling
California economy.
Before the vote, I presented CARB with evidence
from six different studies that there is no current relationship between
fine particulate air pollution and mortality in California. In addition,
several other California professors and I provided CARB with substantial
additional evidence justifying postponement and reassessment of these Draconian
diesel regulations.
However, CARB ignored all of this evidence and instead relied on a CARB Staff
Report with selective evidence not applicable to California. In addition,
the lead author of this CARB Staff Report falsely claimed to have a Ph.D. in
statistics from UC Davis and made other serious errors. I described my
indignation at these new regulations and at CARB’s obfuscation regarding
questions about its report in a December 24 San
Diego Union-Tribune
editorial. Hopefully, CARB’s diesel regulations will be reassessed
before California's economy is further damaged.”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/dec/24/lz1ed24top19121-sacramento-stench/?uniontrib
**************************************************
4. GLOBAL WARMING FACTS: WHO CHECKS THE AUTHORITIES?
By T J Olson, January 1,
2009
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20090101/LETTER/812319996/1025&title=T%20J%20Olson:%20Global%20warming%20%91facts%92
To check a letter
skeptical of man-made global warming (by R. A. Geise, “Global warming: Bah,
humbug!” Dec. 23), the editors of The Summit Daily quoted the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the high-level of
certainty for the claim that recent man-made global warming is pretty definite
to them. Authority in science was therefore invoked to counter an ordinary
citizen’s doubts. But who checks the authorities? In science, evidence does,
because if the science is any good, evidence always trumps theory. To our good
fortune, the founding director of the satellite division of the U.S. Weather
Service, S. Fred Singer, did so only a few days ago. Allow me to present
“Keeping the IPCC Honest” below [TWTW Dec 27], editing his technical language
only for clarity and general readability.
*******************
5. THE BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST
CAP&TRADE: MONEY AND LOBBYISTS HURT EUROPEAN EFFORTS TO CURB
GASES
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/worldbusiness/11carbon.html?_r=1
By JAMES KANTER and JAD MOUAWAD, December 10, 2008
BRUSSELS -- The European Union started with a high-minded ecological goal:
encouraging companies to cut their greenhouse gases by making them pay for each
ton of carbon dioxide they emitted into the atmosphere. But that plan unleashed a lobbying
free-for-all that led politicians to dole out favors to various industries,
undermining the environmental goals. Four years later, it is becoming clear
that the system has so far produced little noticeable benefit to the climate
but generated a multibillion-dollar windfall for some of the Continent’s
biggest polluters.
As President-elect Barack Obama considers how to curb the gases that contribute
to global warming, Europe’s struggle with the problem illustrates the momentous
task ahead for the United States.
European politicians, who acknowledge that their system got off to a rocky
start, contend that after an initial experimental phase that lasted from 2005
to 2007, the system has improved. But some outside analysts doubt Europe can
achieve its lofty goals.
The original European plan called for issuing a restricted number of permits to
emit carbon dioxide, the main gas that contributes to global warming, then
creating a market in which they could be freely traded. If a company produced
more gas than its permits allowed, it would be penalized by having to buy more;
if it managed to reduce emissions by switching to cleaner fuels or
technologies, it would be able to sell its permits to polluting companies. The
marketplace would set the price.
In the United States, a similar market approach is credited with reducing acid
rain, another environmental problem. The system encourages efficiency and
innovation by rewarding companies that can cut the most pollution at the lowest
cost.
But global warming is a far larger, more complicated problem than acid rain,
and setting up a workable market in Europe has proved to be difficult and
contentious. As the incoming Obama administration contemplates creation of an
American market, Washington has already seen the beginnings of the same
lobbying frenzy that bedeviled Europe.
Beseeched by giant utilities and smokestack industries that feared for their
competitiveness, the European Union scrapped the idea of forcing industries to
buy their permits, with the money going to public coffers. Instead, governments
gave out the vast majority of the permits for nothing, in such quantity that
the market nearly collapsed. The basic question of whether to sell permits,
give them away, or do some of both has yet to be resolved in the United States.
"Everybody will fight their own corner," said Nicholas Stern, a
British economist, who recommended that the United States charge for a
substantial number of permits rather than dole them all out as the Europeans
have. "That’s why it’s so important to have a clear conception from the
start, to start off with a clear strategy."
After the initial crash, Europe tightened its system and issued new permits,
and they have acquired substantial value. Nearly $80 billion will change hands
in 2008 on the European emissions market, making it by far the world’s largest,
according to estimates by Andreas Arvanitakis, an analyst at Point Carbon, a
research firm.
Much of the cost of the European system is being paid by the public in the
price of goods and services, including higher electricity bills, but whether
the money is doing any good is an open question. The amount of carbon dioxide
emitted by plants and factories participating in the system has not fallen.
Their emissions rose 0.4 percent in 2006 and another 0.7 percent in 2007.
Meanwhile, a series of disputes has erupted about the way companies are
carrying out the system. The case of
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, illustrates the many problems in Europe’s
approach. For instance, RWE, a major German power company and Europe’s largest
carbon emitter, received a windfall of about $6.4 billion in the first three
years of the system, according to analyst estimates. Regulators in that country
have accused utilities of charging customers for far more permits than was
allowable.
This week, leaders of the European Union are meeting in Brussels to shape the
next phase of their system, and find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20
percent by 2020. They also seek to close loopholes worth billions to various
industries, while confronting the same tug of war between long-term
environmental goals and short-term costs that proved so vexing the first time
around.
The European summit meeting coincides with a round of negotiations among 190
nations to establish a new global treaty limiting greenhouse emissions, a
treaty the Obama administration might seek to join.
From the start, Margot Wallstrom, the former European Union’s environment
commissioner, now a vice president of the European Commission, said she was
lobbied heavily by governments and by companies seeking to limit the financial
burden.
The initial idea of charging for many of the permits never got off the ground.
Many politicians feared that burdening European industries with extra costs
would undercut their ability to compete in a global marketplace. In the end,
the decision was made to hand out virtually all the permits free.
With European Union oversight, individual countries were charged with setting
emissions levels and distributing the permits within their borders, often to
companies with strong political connections.
Juergen Trittin, a former Green Party leader who was the German minister of
environment from 1998 to 2005, recalled being lobbied by executives from power
companies, and by politicians from the former East Germany seeking special
treatment for lignite, a highly polluting soft brown coal common around central
Europe.
The framework of the European system put governments in the position of
behaving like "a grandfather with a large family deciding what to give his
favorite grandchildren for Christmas," Mr. Trittin said in an interview.
The debates on what limits to set for carbon dioxide emissions were
particularly arduous. Mr. Trittin recalled a five-hour "showdown" in
March 2004 with Wolfgang Clement, then the economy minister, in which he lost a
battle to lower the overall limit. It was eventually set at 499 million tons a
year, a reduction of only 2 million tons.
In a recent e-mail message, Mr. Clement did not challenge the details of his
former colleague’s account, but he characterized as "just nonsense"
Mr. Trittin’s claims of undue industry influence. He said the Greens were
unrealistic about what could be achieved. "I reproached them and I’m doing
this still today that at the end of their policy there is the
de-industrialization of Germany," Mr. Clement said. "That’s our
conflict."
Eberhard Meller, the president of the Federation of German Electricity
Companies, which represents companies like RWE, said, "Good sense triumphed
in the end." For his part, Mr. Clement eventually joined the supervisory
board of RWE Power, in 2006.
The benefits won by German industry were substantial. Under the plan that the
European Union originally approved for Germany, electricity companies were
supposed to receive 3 percent fewer permits than they needed to cover their
total emissions between 2005 and 2007, which would have forced them to cut
emissions.
Instead, the companies got 3 percent more than needed, according to the German
Emissions Trading Authority, the regulatory agency, a windfall worth about $374
billion at the peak of the market. German lawmakers also approved exemptions
and bonuses that could be combined in dozens of ways and allowed companies to
gain additional permits.
"It was lobbying by industry, including the electricity companies, that
was to blame for all these exceptional rules," said Hans Juergen Nantke,
the director of the German trading authority, part of the Federal Environment
Agency.
After the system kicked off, in 2005, power consumers in Germany started to see
their electrical bills increase by 5 percent a year. RWE, the power company,
received 30 percent of all the permits given out, more than any other company
in Germany.
The company said its price increases from 2005 to 2007 predominantly reflected
higher costs of coal and natural gas. But the company acknowledged charging its
customers for the emission permits, saying that while it may have received them
free from the government, they still had value in the marketplace.
The German antitrust authority later investigated. In a confidential document
sent to RWE lawyers in December 2006, that agency accused RWE of "abusive
pricing," piling on costs for industrial clients that were
"completely out of proportion" to the company's economic burden,
according to the document, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Without admitting wrongdoing, RWE last year agreed to a settlement that should
provide lower electricity rates to industrial customers in Germany from 2009
through 2012.
Meanwhile emissions have risen at RWE’s German operations since the trading
system began. The company emitted nearly 158 million tons of carbon dioxide in
2007, compared with 120 million tons in 2005, according to its annual reports.
The company said its emissions rose in part because one of its nuclear power
stations, which emit no carbon dioxide, was off line for a while.
Juergen Frech, the chief spokesman for RWE, said that charging customers for
the carbon permits was "beyond reproach," and added that the company
will spend more than $1 billion this year to comply with the emissions trading
system. RWE also said it is investing $41 billion over the next five years in
projects including renewable energy and developing cleaner ways to generate
electricity from coal mined in Germany.
For all the problems with the European system, some experts say it is simply
too early to judge whether it will succeed. As the region that went first with
mandatory carbon trading, Europe was bound to make some initial mistakes, they
said. "People who don’t want to do anything about carbon emissions in the
United States are quick to say the European system was a failure," said
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington.
"But they don’t understand this was an experiment to learn how to get
things right."
Supporters of carbon trading in Europe contend that significant reductions
should be achieved, starting this year because limits on emissions have been
tightened. But negotiations on how to meet even more ambitious targets after
2012 are in danger of coming undone as the economy worsens.
Poland, which depends on coal-fired plants for 95 percent of its electricity,
has threatened to block the next phase of Europe’s emissions plan unless a way
is found to lessen the burden on its energy sector. Its fears echo the position
of some American states that depend on coal for their electricity; they worry
about huge cost increases should Congress pass a global warming bill.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is leading the political horse-trading on
Europe's new system after 2012.
"Europe," he said on Saturday in Poland, "must be an
example for others."
============================================
SEPP comments: The hypocrisy of politicians is blatant;
putting the blame on lobbyists. “They
made me do it.” And environmental
apologists call the European failure of Cap&Trade “an
experiment to learn how to get things right." Presumably, US politicians are immune to lobbyists. Fat chance!
Meanwhile, China says that everyone on the
planet should get identical GH gas emission rights
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B77IC20081208?sp=true
**************************
6. VICTIMS OF GLOBAL WARMING
COULD SUE OIL AND POWER COMPANIES
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/3686735/Victims-of-global-warming-could-sue-oil-and-power-companies.html
Flood victims and those affected by extreme
weather conditions could soon be able to sue oil and power companies they blame
for global warming, according to a climate change expert.
Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University,
said: "We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather
event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human
activity. And people adversely affected
by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their
losses. This is going to be hugely important."
Allen has developed a technique, which involves
running two computer models to simulate the conditions that led to extreme
weather events. One model includes human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases,
and the second assumes the industrial revolution never happened and that carbon
levels in the atmosphere have not increased over the last century.
Prof Allen's team used the new technique to
assess whether global warming worsened the UK floods in autumn 2000, which
affected 10,000 properties, disrupted power supplies and led to train services
being cancelled, motorways closed and 11,000 people evacuated from their homes
- at a total cost of £1bn. Although he would not comment on the results before
publication, he said people affected by floods could "potentially"
use a positive finding to begin legal action.
Prof Allen and his colleagues previously
demonstrated that man-made warming at least doubled the risk of heat waves such
as the 2003 event that killed 27,000 people across Europe. However no legal
action resulted from their findings but the researchers said this was partly
because most of the deaths were in France, where the legal system makes such
cases difficult.
Several cases been tried by US states
unsuccessfully but lawyers say it is only a matter [of time] before class
actions are brought. But environmental law barristers say establishing
"causation" or the relationship between conduct and result would be
one of the main difficulties.
============================================
SEPP Comment: Bring it on! Such lawsuits will give us the chance to
expose phony climate science
*******************************************************************
7. THE IPCC REPORT: WHAT THE
LEAD AUTHORS REALLY THINK
by Ann Henderson-Sellers
Former Director, World Climate Research Programme at the World Meteorological
Organisation
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/35820
Here I want to go back and check whether the first glimpse we received of the
"real gut feeling" of some of the IPCC authors and coordinators as
they finished up the humungous task of completing the Fourth Assessment Report
held steadfast throughout the Sydney meeting process and the subsequent
re-writings of views and clarification and sometimes perhaps cleaning up of
opinions. I have done this because I believe it is essential for the climate
change research community to be transparent and honest about what it can and
cannot deliver and how, if ever, current inadequacies can be resolved.
What follows is the text I drafted one year ago which itself came entirely from
quotes from IPCC lead authors responding to a questionnaire sent out by
GCOS-WCRP-IGBP. The full details of the questionnaire and the replies
submitted, some of which came in after this draft was written, have since been
restricted but an early summary can still be found.
In this article I report what these eminent folks said, Every bullet point comprises a reply
submitted by an IPCC respondent in mid-2007 and the only editing has been to
improve the English, clarify or spell out acronyms. .. . .
. . . Serious inadequacies in climate change prediction that are of real
concern
8. THE ‘WARM’ TURNS
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 12/30/2008
The
Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess
what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.
As we've noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may
indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall
records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.
Global thermometers stopped rising
after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees
Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate
models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.
When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100
or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly
drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.. But
this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet. The first
seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no
sunspots at all zero something that has not occurred since 1913.
According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three
previous such events what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums
have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice
Age (1500-1750).
The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a
reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be
ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited
hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by
man.
The answer to this dilemma has supposedly been found by two Stanford
researchers, Richard Nevle and Dennis Bird, who announced their "findings"
at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in
December. According to them, man not only is causing contemporary warming. He
also caused the cooling that preceded it.
According to Bird and Nevle, before Columbus ruined paradise, native Americans
had deforested a significant portion of the continent and converted the land to
agricultural purposes. Less CO2 was then absorbed from the atmosphere, and the
earth was toasty.
Then a bunch of nasty old white guys arrived and depopulated the native
populations through war and the diseases they brought with them. This led to
the large-scale abandonment of agricultural lands. The subsequent reforestation
of the continent caused temperatures to drop enough to bring on the Little Ice Age.
Implicit in this research is that the world would be fine if man wasn't in the
way. We either make the world too cold or too hot, a view held by many in high
places.
In a speech at Harvard last November, Harvard
physicist John Holdren, President-elect Obama's choice to be his science
adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology,
presented a "top 10" list of warming solutions.
Topping the list was "limiting population," as if man was a
plague upon the earth. This is a major tenet of green dogma that bemoans the
fact that the pestilence called mankind comes with cars, factories and
overconsumption of fossil fuels and other resources.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton
Geoscience Centre of Canada's Carleton University, says: "I and the
first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent
correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate.
This is not surprising. The sun … is the ultimate source of energy on this
planet."
Indeed, a look at a graph of solar irradiance from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration shows little solar activity during the Little Ice
Age and significant activity during recent times.
Don't blame Dick and Jane; blame sunspots.
************************************************
9. AL GORE’S GLOBAL WARMING DEBUNKED BY KIDS!
Posted
on January 1, 2009 by nhiemstra
http://conservativemeanderings.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/al-gores-global-warming-debunked-%E2%80%93-by-kids/
Al Gore’s global
warming philosophy has been debunked by many scientists and studies, and now it
has met the same fate at the hands of children, in The Sky’s Not Falling
video/essay contest, sponsored by World Net Daily Books, formerly World
Ahead Media.
The contest was
launched early in 2008 and was designed to highlight the absurdities, untruths
and downright lies that children are being taught daily about climate change in
public school. Russell Young, a Minnesota writer who captured first place in
the essay competition, explained the importance of using celebrities such as
Gore and the medium of movies to enhance the educational experience for
students. Here are just a few other films schools might use for their teaching
curriculums. The Polar Express could be used for instruction on transportation
systems. Alien, could be used to teach students about anatomy and homeland
security, all at the same time, he wrote.
Far fetched, you
say. Maybe, but Moby Dick taught me all I ever needed to know about whales, and
I’m a marine biologist, he said. Kids across America are being victimized by
global warming hysteria, according to Holly Fretwell, author of The Sky’s
Not Falling: Why Its OK to Chill About Global Warming. I wanted to know
what kids just like mine are hearing in their classrooms, Fretwell said.
Running a contest was a fun way to go about it. All of us, and our children in
particular, are being confronted daily with half-truths and falsehoods about
global warming, noted Fretwell. Its just plain wrong. She said that was her
inspiration for the book in the first place. “I want kids to get excited about
science and to understand that it’s human ingenuity and a can-do spirit, not
government sanctions, that will lead us to a bright environmental future. I
want kids to learn how to become critical thinkers,” she said.
Contest winners will receive a cash prize, a copy of The Great Global Warming Swindle DVD courtesy of junkscience.com, and copies of The Sky’s Not Falling for their local school library and their kids science classroom.