Eco-Psychos

This chapter consists of two sections. The first, much larger section, explores the silly, corrupt, and often draconian manner in which government and special interest groups pursue the ostensible goal of environmental conservation. The second section explores the environmentally and agriculturally abusive and irresponsible practices of the biggest (and most infamous) corporations in collusion with governments.

Evidently, eco-psychos come in two flavors: those groups who commit atrocities against people and their property in a holy war to return the planet to the condition it would be in absent humanity — i.e. those who align themselves with the environment as existential other, in opposition to the human race, the existential we — and those corporations who commit atrocities against the environment and by implication against humanity, as they wage economic war against their competitors and grab as much power and influence as they can. If either type of extremist organization is left to its own devices, doom is quite likely, though only the environmentalist holy warriors actually premeditate doom for humanity.

The contemporaneousness of these two diametric alignments is characteristic of a Hegelian dialectic. Ye olde establishment has a soft spot for this arrangement, so this might be no accident.

Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who reputedly met with Ken Lay in an LA hotel room on May 17, 2001 -- was subsequently elected to replace Davis. Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted in testimony before Congress that Enron was a zealous proponent of cap-and-trade as dreamt of by climate stability activists. On September 27, 2006, Schwarzenegger signed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, imposing CO2 cap-and-trade on California. In February 2007, Schwarzenegger signed a memorandum envisioning imposition of a regional cap-and-trade regime in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington (all of which have Democratic governors, except California).

The key difference with the cap and trade proposals is that, unlike Enron's criminal conspiracies, caps would have force of law, expunging economic freedom. The consequences (hyperinflation, shortages, blackouts, fiscal emergencies, government instability) would be global.

If laws are implemented at the subnational level, as in Schwarzenegger's program, non-captive industry would simply flee across constitutionally open and tarriff-free borders to more favorable economic climes, and the concrete economic pain of those who remain would be expressed politically, compelling comprehensive policy reversal. If the laws are implemented at the national level, the results will be global, because either industry will collapse in the nations that implement the laws (with global repercussions, in the cases of the US, EU/G7, or Japan, among others less likely to implement), or those nations will erect onerous trade barriers on imports from non-implementing nations (disrupting global trade, but allowing domestic industry to limp along).

Which brings us to the risk that cap-and-trade will tax the global market system to the point of collapse, and that this may indeed be accompanied by dissolution of the Western political order, with the practical possibility of a new wars, indeed wars that pit former trade partners against each other.

Here is a summary by Richard Lindzen (Alfred P. Sloan Prof. of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT), excerpted from a talk he gave at the Ford Hall Forum on 2007-Apr-22, of the argument against the CO2-causes-warming hypothesis that justifies the draconian cap-and-trade proposals:

The primary source of current alarm consists in future scenarios based on impact studies. I should emphasize that impact studies are not forecasts. Beth Daly reported in the Globe on the IPCC impact report a couple of weeks ago. Every scenario was preceded by a `could' or a `may.' Impact studies begin with climate projections with large warming, and essentially let their imaginations wander through computer simulations to come up with scary scenarios that might happen if a dozen or so unlikely conditions are met. Every scientist, Daly interviewed, covered himself with caveats. The only individual to make the absurd claim that we are already experiencing the impacts in New England was someone called Peter Frumhoff, who Daly correctly identified as a representative of an environmental advocacy group, Union of Concerned Scientists. As an aside, it has been the practice of some environmental advocacy groups to adopt names like Union of Concerned Scientists and Woods Hole Research Center which serve to confuse the public into thinking that these are scientific organizations. As already noted, all impact studies depend on a long chain of requirements, and the likelihood of any consequence of this chain being correct is minimal. The production of scary consequences depends in large measure on the gross inability of models to actually obtain an answer. For example, among the 19 models used by the IPCC, the predictions of arctic sea ice reduction by 2100 range from 100% to about 10%. This gives us plenty to choose from in producing impacts, but the wide range itself tells us that the models are totally unreliable.

There is, however, one link, in particular, that if broken, serves to destroy all the impact projections. All such scenarios depend on a sensitive response of the climate to projected increases in greenhouse gases. Let's spend a few minutes on this issue. Al Gore, in Inconvenient Truth (an ambiguous title if ever there was one) puts forward a line of argument that he maintains should be clear to any kindergarten child. He begins by showing a 650 thousand year record for temperature and carbon dioxide levels inferred from the Vostok ice core taken in Antarctica. He notes that carbon dioxide and temperature go together, and hence carbon dioxide is implicated in driving climate. Apart from violating the cardinal rule that correlation is not causality, he also ignores the details of the graph he presents which shows that the 4 preceding warm periods had higher temperatures than we currently have despite having lower levels of CO₂. He ignores the fact that temperatures appeared to drop long before CO₂ levels fell (as well as the findings from higher resolution studies that temperatures rose before CO₂ did). In addition he ignored the fact that the changes in CO₂ associated with the cycles of ice ages seems, according to current models, to have demanded sensitivities well beyond what is regarded as possible. The above comments are simply based on the graph Gore showed and current results. However, the inference of temperature and CO₂ as well as the dating of cores is a complex and uncertain matter, and it would be less than prudent to treat such measurements dogmatically. Who knows how the interpretation is likely to change? Nevertheless, neither what we now think nor the graph Gore showed offer support for Gore's interpretation except perhaps for the kindergarten child who appears to be his target audience.

Having thus determined the importance of CO₂, Gore proceeds to explain why CO₂ leads to warming. He basically claims that CO₂, as a greenhouse gas (which is to say a gas which absorbs in the infrared but is transparent in the visible portion of the light spectrum) serves as a blanket for the surface of the earth, preventing it from radiating away the energy it has absorbed from the sun, and thus maintaining an energy balance. Unfortunately, this picture is incorrect as well. (This is widely recognized, but it is commonly maintained that the real picture is too complex for the ordinary citizen.) In reality, the surface doesn't cool primarily by radiation because there is too much greenhouse material (mostly water vapor and clouds) to allow this to happen effectively. Rather heat is bodily carried away by air currents which deposit heat well within the atmosphere from where it can be radiated to space because there is less greenhouse material above this level. Adding greenhouse gases elevates the level from which radiation can escape, and because, for complex reasons, the temperature decreases with altitude, the radiation (which depends on the 4^th power of the temperature at the level at which the radiation originates) becomes too small to balance the incoming solar radiation. In order to reestablish balance, it is necessary for the atmosphere at the emission level to warm up. The relation of warming at this level to warming at the surface is by no means clear, but recent model studies designed to isolate these processes shows that greenhouse warming is concentrated at the emission level in the tropics where the warming rate is about 2.5 times the rate at the surface. Both satellite and balloon measurements show that warming at this level is only about three quarters of what is observed at the surface, and, from the model results, we see that only about 40% of this can be attributed to greenhouse forcing. Thus, only about 30% of the warming at the surface can be due to greenhouse forcing. Consequently, most of the warming at the surface is not due to greenhouse warming. Moreover, as I will soon note, the surface warming is already much less than models suggest on the basis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This is not to say that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have absolutely no effect, but rather that the effect is very small compared to the normal changes that the climate is always undergoing. It is even smaller than the already too small response seen at the surface.

leaked email archive from University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit

from the Washington Post, 2009-Dec-11, by letters@charleskrauthammer.comCharles Krauthammer:

The new socialism

In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.

With the Senate blocking President Obama's cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

from the Orlando Sentinel, 2010-Jan-27, by Robert Block and Mark K. Matthews:

Obama aims to ax moon mission

Cape Canaveral and Washington — NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama's long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new "heavy-lift" rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.

In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.

There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station — a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years.

The White House budget request, which is certain to meet fierce resistance in Congress, scraps the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration and signals a major reorientation of NASA, especially in the area of human spaceflight.

"We certainly don't need to go back to the moon," said one administration official.

Everyone interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity, either because they are not authorized to talk for the White House or because they fear for their jobs. All are familiar with the broad sweep of Obama's budget proposal, but none would talk about specific numbers because these are being tightly held by the White House until the release of the budget.

But senior administration officials say the spending freeze for some federal agencies is not going to apply to the space agency in this budget proposal. Officials said NASA was expected to see some "modest" increase in its current $18.7 billion annual budget — possibly $200 million to $300 million more but far less than the $1 billion boost agency officials had hoped for.

They also said that the White House plans to extend the life of the International Space Station to at least 2020. One insider said there would be an "attractive sum" of money — to be spent over several years — for private companies to make rockets to carry astronauts there.

But Obama's budget freeze is likely to hamstring NASA in coming years as the spending clampdown will eventually shackle the agency and its ambitions. And this year's funding request to develop both commercial rockets and a new NASA spaceship will be less than what was recommended by a White House panel of experts last year.

That panel, led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, concluded that to have a "viable" human space-exploration program, NASA needed a $3 billion annual budget hike, and that it would take as much as $5 billion distributed over five years to develop commercial rockets that could carry astronauts safely to and from the space station.

Last year, lawmakers prohibited NASA from canceling any Constellation programs and starting new ones in their place unless the cuts were approved by Congress. The provision sends a "direct message that the Congress believes Constellation is, and should remain, the future of America's human space flight program," wrote U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., last month.

Nevertheless, NASA contractors have been quietly planning on the end of Ares I, which is years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget. NASA has already spent more than $3 billion on Ares I and more than $5 billion on the rest of Constellation.

In recent days, NASA has been soliciting concepts for a new heavy-lift rocket from major contractors, including Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Pratt & Whitney. Last week, a group of moonlighting NASA engineers and rocket hobbyists proposed variations on old agency designs that use the shuttle's main engines and fuel tank to launch a capsule into space. According to officials and industry executives familiar with the presentations, some of the contractor designs are very similar to the one pressed by the hobbyists.

Officially, companies such as Boeing still support Constellation and its millions of dollars of contracts. Some believe that in a battle with Congress, Ares may survive.

"I would not say Ares is dead yet," said an executive with one major NASA contractor. "It's probably more accurate to say it's on life support. We have to wait to see how the coming battle ends."

Few doubt that a fight is looming. In order to finance new science and technology programs and find money for commercial rockets, Obama will be killing off programs that have created jobs in some powerful constituencies, including the Marshall Space Flight Center in Shelby's Alabama. But the White House is said to be ready for a fight.

The end of the shuttle program this year is already going to slash 7,000 jobs at Kennedy Space Center.

One administration official said the budget will send a message that it's time members of Congress recognize that NASA can't design space programs to create jobs in their districts. "That's the view of the president," the official said.

from BBC News, 2010-Jan-29:

'Bin Laden' blames US for global warming

A new message said to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has blamed global warming on the US and other big industrial nations.

The audio tape, broadcast on al-Jazeera TV, urges a boycott of the US dollar "to free humankind from slavery".

It comes days after another tape said to be from Bin Laden was released, praising the attempted bombing of a US airliner on 25 December.

The authenticity of neither tape has been verified.

But IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist activity, has said the voice on the earlier tape appeared to be that of Bin Laden.

"All industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming," the latest tape says.

"This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that."

The tape criticises the administration of former US President George W Bush for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on combating climate change.

"Bush the son, and the [US] Congress before him, rejected this agreement only to satisfy the big companies."

The tape also urges a boycott of the US dollar. "I know that there would be huge repercussions for that, but this would be the only way to free humankind from slavery... to America and its companies."

Responding to the earlier audio tape, also broadcast on al-Jazeera, US President Barack Obama said it indicated how weakened Osama Bin Laden had become.

"Bin Laden sending out a tape trying to take credit for a Nigerian student who engaged in a failed bombing attempt is an indication of how weakened he is, because this is not something necessarily directed by him," he said.

A Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is charged with attempting to blow up a transatlantic US airliner over Detroit on 25 December.

The Yemen-based regional wing of al-Qaeda has said it was behind the attempted attack.

from the Washington Post, 2010-Jan-29, by Juliet Eilperin:

U.S. pledges 17 percent emissions reduction by 2020

The United States pledged Thursday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels under an international climate agreement, though it made its commitment contingent on passing legislation at home.

The Obama administration submitted its much-anticipated reduction target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat under the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding deal brokered by the United States last month at the U.N.-sponsored climate talks. Under the deal President Obama helped secure in Copenhagen, major emitters of greenhouse gases are expected to "inscribe" their reduction targets by Jan. 31.

The commitment states that the United States will cut its emissions "in the range of 17 percent, in conformity with anticipated U.S. energy and climate legislation, recognizing that the final target will be reported to the Secretariat in light of enacted legislation." It remains unclear if Congress will pass a comprehensive climate bill this year.

Ned Helme, president of the D.C.-based Center for Clean Air Policy, said as the deadline approaches, it is becoming clear that the world's biggest carbon emitters are going to follow through on voluntary pledges they made in the run-up to last month's talks.

"Now the smoke has cleared, people are now taking the Copenhagen Accord more seriously," Helme said. "You're going to see all the major players sign up."

Several key developing nations, such as China and India, have not yet indicated what they will commit to under the agreement.

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, said in a statement Thursday the administration expects "that all major economies will honor their agreement in Copenhagen to submit their mitigation targets or actions as provided in the Accord."

On the same day the United States made its pledge public, the low-lying Marshall Islands announced it would reduce emissions 40 percent by 2020 under the accord. "If one of the smallest and most vulnerable island states can take action, the largest countries have no excuse not to follow our example," said Marshall Islands Foreign Minister John Silk.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-29:

Insecurity and Change Commission
Never mind Madoff, SEC gumshoes are on the climate beat.

Mary Schapiro never uttered the word "Madoff" a year ago, in her first public speech as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now Ms. Schapiro is once again forcing investors to ask whether she understands her mission.

On Wednesday Ms. Schapiro and two Democratic colleagues on the SEC overruled the two Republicans and issued guidance to public companies about disclosing the risks of global warming. You read that correctly.

The agency that spent more than a decade ignoring evidence of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion fraud; the agency that spent even longer constructing a credit-ratings oligopoly that still threatens investors; the agency that in 2004 encouraged Wall Street firms to increase leverage and then failed to monitor them—this agency now has spare time to meditate on climate science.

Ms. Schapiro took pains to note yesterday that the SEC is simply telling companies how to disclose information that could be material. "We are not opining on whether the world's climate is changing, at what pace it might be changing, or due to what causes. Nothing that the commission does today should be construed as weighing in on those topics," she said.

Right. And it is pure coincidence that Ms. Schapiro works for a President seeking to limit carbon emissions administratively, as his cap-and-tax bill dies in the Senate. If this was an order from the White House or House Speaker's office, Ms. Schapiro may have had little leverage to push back, as Congress ponders whether financial reform will leave her jurisdiction intact.

While it does not explicitly carry the force of law, this new SEC guidance can have only one result: more corporate disclosures about global warming risk. This advances the White House goal of making a carbon-capped economy a fait accompli, harassing energy-intensive industries by making them publish negative information about themselves, and, as a side benefit, creating new litigation raw material for the plaintiffs bar. Congressmen Joe Barton (R., Tex.) and Greg Walden (R., Ore.) were probably too kind in a letter to Ms. Schapiro this week when they called the idea "a breathtaking waste of the Commission's resources."

The one hint of wisdom in the proposal could ironically cause the most damage. As readers are well aware, while the harm from global warming is speculative, the harm from global warmists is real. Given this fact, it makes sense that if the SEC unwisely forces companies to write global-warming disclosures, they should reflect the risks from lawmakers and lawyers more than the risks from actual warming.

The SEC is asking companies to disclose both types of risks. Imagine the burden if, for example, one year ago health-care companies had been given new guidance on disclosing the risks of ObamaCare. Who could have predicted that health-care reform bills in the House and Senate would tack hard to the left, pass both bodies, and then stall when Massachusetts went Republican?

Can you imagine being a health-care CEO trying to quantify for investors the risks at each stage in this drama? Can you imagine a less productive use of company time? Or a more refined industrial process for manufacturing pointless lawsuits? Jack Welch may soon be studying this rule as the Six-Sigma gold-standard of bureaucratic inanity.

Let's hope Ms. Schapiro and Democratic colleagues Elisse Walter and Luis Aguilar will reconsider this guidance and consider focusing on the securities markets. Someone out there might be trying to defraud investors.

from the Wall Street Journal Asia, 2010-Jan-13, by Tom Switzer:

The Climate is Changing
The rise of Tony Abbott is part of a worldwide reconsideration of the costs of cap-and-trade.

When I say the climate is changing, I do not mean, as many people do, that man-made global warming is destroying Planet Earth. I mean that the politics of climate change is changing rapidly all over the globe. Al Gore's moment has come and gone.

In the United States, Democrats, nervously facing midterm elections, are calling on President Obama to jettison the cap-and-trade bills before the Senate. In Canada, the emissions-trading scheme—another term for cap-and-trade—is stalled in legislative limbo. In Britain, Tories are coming out against David Cameron's green stance. In the European Union, cap-and-trade has been the victim of fraudulent traders and the carbon price has more than halved to $18.50 per ton. In France, the Constitutional Council has blocked President Nicolas Sarkozy's tax on carbon emissions that was set to take effect in the New Year.

In Copenhagen, meanwhile, the United Nations' climate-change summit went up in smoke. And in Mexico City later this year hopes for any verifiable, enforceable and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases—and to bring in developing nations such as China and India that were, insanely, omitted from the Kyoto protocol in 1997—are a chimera.

Add to this that Washington was buried by record-breaking snowfalls last month, that hurricane activity is at a 30-year low in the U.S., that London is bracing itself for its coldest winter in decades, and that there has still been no recorded global warming this century, and it is no wonder public skepticism is rising across the world.

Nowhere is the changing climate more evident than in Australia. Last month, the Senate voted down the Labor Government's legislation to implement an emissions-trading scheme. Polls show most Aussies oppose the complicated cap-and-trade system if China and India continue to chug along the smoky path to prosperity. The center-right Liberal-led opposition, moreover, is now led by Tony Abbott, a culture warrior who has described man-made global warming in language unfit to print in a family newspaper and cap-and-trade as "a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy."

Until Mr. Abbott's election as opposition leader last month, the climate debate in Australia had been conducted in a heretic-hunting, anti-intellectual atmosphere. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd claimed that climate change is the "greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time." In clear breach of the great liberal anti-communist Sidney Hook's rule of controversy—"Before impugning an opponent's motives, answer his arguments"—Mr. Rudd linked "world government conspiracy theorists" and "climate-change deniers" to "vested interests." Much of the media, business and scientific establishment deemed it blasphemy that anyone dare question his Labor Party's grand ambitions.

Australians had heard a lot of science, much of it poorly explained. But the "dismal science" had been conspicuously absent from the climate debate. There was very little serious analysis of the economic consequences of climate change: What choices did we have to mitigate its effects, and how much would these choices cost us? Labor ministers had emitted a lot of hot air about global warming and the urgency with which resource-rich Australia (which accounts for only 1.4% of global emissions) must act.

All of this has now utterly changed: Australia's debate has entered a new phase, one that goes beyond the religious fervor and feel-good gestures that had held sway all too often. Suddenly, political strategists are thinking the unthinkable: far from presaging an electoral debacle that was inevitable under Mr. Abbott's green predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, the issue could be a godsend for conservatives Down Under.

Already, Mr. Abbott—an Anglophile, Rhodes scholar, patron saint of Australian conservatives and protégé of former Prime Minister John Howard—is gaining ground in the polls. In their first test at the ballot box since they killed the government's climate legislation last month, his Liberal Party recorded impressive victories in by-elections in Sydney and Melbourne—confounding the conventional wisdom that opposition to cap-and-trade will damage a center-right party in metropolitan seats.

In this environment, Mr. Abbott deserves praise for persuading Australia's conservatives to fight Labor on climate change—even when the liberal wing of his own party would happily bow to Mr. Rudd. Not only will he raise the temperature over the inevitable higher costs in energy, transport and groceries under the next tax—and thus appeal to Labor's working-class and coal mining and other energy-intensive constituencies—Mr. Abbott will also radiate the technological optimism that has characterized the human species since time immemorial. His case is not an appeal to do nothing, but to avoid doing something stupid. And unilateral Australian action in a post-Copenhagen world would be stupid: Economic Pain For No Environmental Gain. Not a bad slogan during an election scare campaign.

To be sure, Mr. Rudd remains politically popular on the back of a strong local economy that has weathered the global financial storm. But as the changing climate shows, Mr. Abbott is tapping into a more skeptical mood about climate change. If he wins the federal election later this year, Australia's opposition leader will be a role model to conservative skeptics around the world.

Mr. Switzer is a research associate at Sydney University's United States Studies Centre and editor of the Spectator Australia.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-17, by Patrick J. Michaels:

How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus
The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg. I should know.

Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).

But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant."

The bible I'm referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It's our canon, and it's all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.

A refereed journal, Climate Research, published two particular papers that offended Michael Mann of Penn State and Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. One of the papers, published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), was a meta-analysis of dozens of "paleoclimate" studies that extended back 1,000 years. They concluded that 20th-century temperatures could not confidently be considered to be warmer than those indicated at the beginning of the last millennium.

In fact, that period, known as the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP), was generally considered warmer than the 20th century in climate textbooks and climate compendia, including those in the 1990s from the IPCC.

Then, in 1999, Mr. Mann published his famous "hockey stick" article in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), which, through the magic of multivariate statistics and questionable data weighting, wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent "Little Ice Age" (a cold period from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century), leaving only the 20th-century warming as an anomaly of note.

Messrs. Mann and Wigley also didn't like a paper I published in Climate Research in 2002. It said human activity was warming surface temperatures, and that this was consistent with the mathematical form (but not the size) of projections from computer models. Why? The magnitude of the warming in CRU's own data was not as great as in the models, so therefore the models merely were a bit enthusiastic about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Mr. Mann called upon his colleagues to try and put Climate Research out of business. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," he wrote in one of the emails. "We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

After Messrs. Jones and Mann threatened a boycott of publications and reviews, half the editorial board of Climate Research resigned. People who didn't toe Messrs. Wigley, Mann and Jones's line began to experience increasing difficulty in publishing their results.

This happened to me and to the University of Alabama's Roy Spencer, who also hypothesized that global warming is likely to be modest. Others surely stopped trying, tiring of summary rejections of good work by editors scared of the mob. Sallie Baliunas, for example, has disappeared from the scientific scene.

GRL is a very popular refereed journal. Mr. Wigley was concerned that one of the editors was "in the skeptics camp." He emailed Michael Mann to say that "if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official . . . channels to get him ousted."

Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Wigley on Nov. 20, 2005 that "It's one thing to lose 'Climate Research.' We can't afford to lose GRL." In this context, "losing" obviously means the publication of anything that they did not approve of on global warming.

Soon the suspect editor, Yale's James Saiers, was gone. Mr. Mann wrote to the CRU's Phil Jones that "the GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there."

It didn't stop there. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory complained that the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) was now requiring authors to provide actual copies of the actual data that was used in published papers. He wrote to Phil Jones on March 19, 2009, that "If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available—raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations—I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals."

Messrs. Jones and Santer were Ph.D. students of Mr. Wigley. Mr. Santer is the same fellow who, in an email to Phil Jones on Oct. 9, 2009, wrote that he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap" out of me at a scientific meeting. He was angry that I published "The Dog Ate Global Warming" in National Review, about CRU's claim that it had lost primary warming data.

The result of all this is that our refereed literature has been inestimably damaged, and reputations have been trashed. Mr. Wigley repeatedly tells news reporters not to listen to "skeptics" (or even nonskeptics like me), because they didn't publish enough in the peer-reviewed literature—even as he and his friends sought to make it difficult or impossible to do so.

Ironically, with the release of the Climategate emails, the Climatic Research Unit, Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley have dramatically weakened the case for emissions reductions. The EPA claimed to rely solely upon compendia of the refereed literature such as the IPCC reports, in order to make its finding of endangerment from carbon dioxide. Now that we know that literature was biased by the heavy-handed tactics of the East Anglia mob, the EPA has lost the basis for its finding.

Mr. Michaels, formerly professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia (1980-2007), is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

from the Washington Examiner, 2009-Nov-29, by Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

Climategate denial foundering on army of Davids

Last week a hacker -- or, perhaps more likely, an inside "whistleblower" -- leaked huge amounts of data from the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia in Britain. The leaks demonstrated that many "insider" scientists were conspiring to block publication of dissenting views in peer-reviewed journals, while suggesting that there was data-fudging, and deliberate evasion of Freedom Of Information requests, perhaps even including deliberate destruction of data.

Worse still, the computer models themselves appear to be jerry-rigged and deeply flawed. As Declan McCullagh reported on the CBS News website, independent programmers were appalled:

“As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU's code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU's climate model.

“One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: ‘I feel for this guy. He's obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources.’

“Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: ‘Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!’ and ‘APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION.’ Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: ‘Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!’”

None of this inspires confidence. As Megan McArdle noted on the Atlantic Monthly's website: "The IPCC report, which is the most widely relied upon in policy circles, uses this model to estimate the costs of global warming. If those costs are unreliable, then any cost-benefit analysis is totally worthless. Obviously, this also casts their reluctance to conform with FOI requests in a slightly different light.”

Yes, they're acting as if they've got something to hide. But the establishment's response has been to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

Climate Czar Carol Browner responded: "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists. These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real."

The problem is that the "2,500 scientists" she refers to were relying on data and models that, it now appears, may have been fake. Garbage in, garbage out. Plenty of scientists believed in Piltdown Man, too, for a while.

Big media are downplaying the problem too -- while Declan McCullagh has done great reporting on CBS's website, the network's broadcast coverage has been quite different. Likewise, the New York Times and Washington Post, while covering the matter, have downplayed its significance.

It seems clear that the Obama administration, and the folks in traditional media, think this is a story better ignored.

It won't work. While Big Media folks ignore the story, the alternate media are all over it.

From blogs, to talk radio, to Facebook and Twitter -- and, of course, the Obama administration's bete noire, Fox News -- this story is sweeping the nation and the world (it has already provoked resignations in Australia). With the data made available online, individuals and groups continue to search through the records and find new nuggets of information.

Polls have shown growing public skepticism, both in the U.S. and abroad, even before the Climategate revelations. That is now likely to grow.

For politicians, hitching their wagon to the carbon-control star was already an iffy proposition given widespread economic problems and public skepticism. In light of the Climategate revelations, many of them are likely to view it as something closer to suicide.

My prediction: The Copenhagen global warming conference will feature a lot of pretty words and promises, and no admission that things have changed. But we'll see little or no actual movement, as politicians around the world realize that there's no percentage in pushing these programs on an increasingly wary public.

Examiner contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a University of Tennessee College of Law professor who blogs at InstaPundit.com and hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.com.

from the Times of London, 2010-Jan-20, by Jeremy Page:

UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning

The UN's top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said yesterday that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.”

The stunning admission is certain to embolden critics of the panel, already under fire over a separate scandal involving hacked e-mails last year.

The 2007 report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. It caused shock in Asia, where about two billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers for their fresh water supplies during the dry seasons.

It emerged last week that the prediction was based not on a consensus among climate change experts but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. That scientist, Syed Hasnain, has now told The Times that he never made such a specific forecast in his interview with the New Scientist magazine.

“I have not made any prediction on date as I am not an astrologer but I did say they were shrinking fast,” he said. “I have never written 2035 in any of my research papers or reports.” Professor Hasnain works for The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi, which is headed by Rajendra Pachauri, head of the climate change panel.

Dr Pachauri has defended the panel's work, while trying to distance himself from Professor Hasnain by saying that the latter was not working at the institute in 1999: “We slipped up on one number, I don't think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what's happening with the climate of this Earth.”

Professor Hasnain confirmed that he had given an interview to Fred Pearce, of New Scientist, when he was still working for Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1999. “I said that small glaciers in the eastern and central Himalaya are declining at an alarming rate and in the next 40-50 years they may lose substantial mass,” he said. “That means they will shrink in area and mass. To which the journalist has assigned a date and reported it in his own way.” Mr Pearce was not immediately available for comment.

Despite the controversy, the IPCC said that it stood by its overall conclusions about glacier loss this century in big mountain ranges including the Himalayas. “This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment,” it said.

The scandal threatens to undermine the panel's credibility as it begins the marathon process of drafting its Fifth Assessment Reports, which are due out in 2013-14. Georg Kaser, a leading Austrian glaciologist who contributed to the 2007 report, described the glacier mistake as huge and said that he had warned colleagues about it months before publication.

The error is also now being exploited by climate sceptics, many of whom are convinced that stolen e-mail exchanges last year revealed a conspiracy to exaggerate the evidence supporting global warming.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environment Minister, said on Tuesday the scandal vindicated his position that there was no proof that Himalayan glaciers were melting abnormally fast. “The IPCC claim that glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,” he said.

Monitoring Himalayan glaciers is extremely difficult because most of them lie in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the word at an altitude of more than 5,000 metres (16,000ft).

Most studies until now have therefore been based necessarily on a mixture of outdated and incomplete data, satellite imagery, photography, and anecdotal evidence.

Last year, however, TERI launched a project to install high-tech sensors on three glaciers which it will use as benchmarks to assess the situation across the Himalayas.

Professor Hasnain, who is running the project, said that he would soon be presenting a report on the status of Himalayan glaciers, based on research works by Indian and international scientists published in different peer reviewed journals across the world.

He hopes that these studies will help to produce more incontrovertible evidence that the Himalayan glaciers are under threat. In the short term, however, it seems they will do little to convince climate change sceptics, or to repair the image of the IPCC.

from the Times of London, 2010-Jan-24, by Jonathan Leake:

UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC's 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.

The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 - an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.

Since then, however, The Sunday Times has discovered that the same bogus claim has been cited in grant applications for TERI.

One of them, announced earlier this month just before the scandal broke, resulted in a £310,000 grant from Carnegie.

An abstract of the grant application published on Carnegie's website said: "The Himalaya glaciers, vital to more than a dozen major rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, are melting and receding at a dangerous rate.

"One authoritative study reported that most of the glaciers in the region "will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming, resulting in widespread water shortages,"

The Carnegie money was specifically given to aid research into "the potential security and humanitarian impact on the region" as the glaciers began to disappear. Pachauri has since acknowledged that this threat, if it exists, will take centuries to have any serious effect.

The money was initially given to the Global Centre, an Icelandic Foundation which then channelled it, with Carnegie's involvement, to TERI.

The cash was acknowledged by TERI in a press release, issued on January 15, just before the glacier scandal became public, in which Pachauri repeated the claims of imminent glacial melt.

It said: ""According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades."

The same release also quoted Dr Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist who, back in 1999, made the now discredited claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

He now heads Pachauri's glaciology unit at TERI which sought the grants and which is carrying out the glacier research.

Critics point out that Hasnain, of all people, should have known the claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 was bogus because he was meant to be a leading glaciologist specialising in the Himalayas.

Any suggestion that TERI has repeated an unchecked scientific claim without checking it, in order to win grants, could prove hugely embarrassing for Pachauri and the IPCC.

The second grant, from the EU, totalled £2.5m and was designed to "to assess the impact of Himalayan glaciers retreat".

It was part of the EU's HighNoon project, launched last May to fund research into how India might adapt to loss of glaciers.

In one presentation at last May's launch, Anastasios Kentarchos, of the European Commission's Climate Change and Environmental Risks Unit, specifically cited the bogus IPCC claims about glacier melt as a reason for pouring EU taxpayers' money into the project.

Pachauri spoke at the same presentation and Hasnain is understood to have been present in the audience.

The EU grant was split between leading European research institutions including Britain's Met Office, with TERI getting a major but unspecified share because it represented the host country.

The "Glaciergate" affair has seen Pachauri come under increasing pressure in India, prompting him to call a press conference yesterday (Saturday) where he dismissed calls for his resignation and said no action would be taken against the authors of the erroneous section of the IPCC report.

He said: "I have no intention of resigning from my position," adding the errors were unintentional and not significant in comparison to the entire report.

However, other questions remain. One of the most important is in connection with Pachauri's earnings.

In an interview with The Sunday Times he said his only income came from his salary at TERI. However TERI does not publish his salary and he refused to divulge it.

In India questions are also being asked about Pachauri's links with GloriOil, a Houston, Texas-based oil technology company that specialises in recovering extra oil from declining oil fields . Pachauri is listed as a founder and scientific advisor.

Critics say it is odd for a man committed to decarbonising energy supplies to be linked to an oil company.

The problems come at a bad time for the IPCC which is recruiting scientists for its fifth report into the science and impacts underlying global warming.

Yesterday, Pachauri said he intended to remain as director of the IPCC to oversee the fifth IPCC assessment report dealing with sea level rise and ice sheets, oceans, clouds and carbon accounting. The report is expected by 2014.

from the Daily Mail of London, 2009-Dec-16, by Stephen Glover:

50 days to save the world? I might listen to the doomsayers if they weren't such ludicrous hypocrites

Not many people understand climate change. But they can recognise hypocrisy when they see it, and are also likely to count their spoons whenever wild-eyed politicians invoke the impending end of the world.

On Tuesday, Prince Charles flew to Copenhagen to attend the climate change summit, where he delivered a keynote speech.

He informed his audience that 'the world has only seven years before we lose the levers of control'. Not at all long, then.

For the Prince this was an important speech with an important message.

If we have so little time, and man-made climate change is such a terrifyingly imminent threat, he might have taken a boat or train to Copenhagen, or even, as a symbolic gesture, decided to walk.

But he commandeered a jet belonging to the Queen's Flight, generating an estimated 6.4tons of carbon dioxide, 5.2tons more than if he had used a commercial flight.

Meanwhile his fellow prophet of doom, Gordon Brown, was making his own way to Copenhagen the same day.

This is the man who proclaimed in October that we had '50 days to save the world'. Before leaving he conjured up on a television programme the certainty of 'floods and droughts' with 'climate change evacuees and refugees' if agreement is not reached in Copenhagen.

Mr Brown chartered a 185-seat Airbus to take him and 20 aides to Denmark. Was a smaller plane producing less carbon dioxide not available?

Could he perhaps have shared an aircraft with Prince Charles? Might he have considered taking a scheduled flight to the Danish capital, of which there were 16 on Tuesday?

Evidently not. It is odd, isn't it, how climate change doomsayers such as Prince Charles and Mr Brown are so often unprepared to make the smallest sacrifice in their own daily lives to address a threat which they assert is literally deadly.

Presumably any contribution would be helpful. And it is not easy in life to persuade people to give up things if you are almost ostentatiously unwilling to do so yourself.

The Copenhagen summit, supposed to produce an agreement limiting greenhouse gases, has, according to experts, the same carbon footprint as a medium-sized African country such as Malawi.

There are an amazing 34,000 delegates attending the event, and the grander among them are forced, says my colleague Robert Hardman in Copenhagen, to park their private jets in Norway because Denmark has run out of Tarmac, and to procure their gas-guzzling limousines from Germany.

Show me a climate control zealot and I can often show you a hypocrite, and a hypocrite, moreover, who speaks in apocalyptic terms about the world coming to an end - at a time not long hence and usually implausibly specific - if the rest of us do not immediately curb our lifestyles so as to produce fewer greenhouse gases.

The double standards and the grotesque exaggeration go hand in hand.

Some, at least, of the zealots do not really, honestly believe that things are as bad as they say. If they did, they might not go on serenely generating carbon emissions on such a scale.

They are trying to shock us into action by employing emotive language and invoking terrible dangers. In other words, they are treating us as fools.

Politicians shamelessly twist the facts to scare us witless. There has been an appalling case in Copenhagen this week.

Former U.S. Vice-President and climate change zealot Al Gore attributed to Dr Wieslaw Maslowski, an eminent climate change scientist, the belief 'that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years'.

Dr Maslowski promptly denied that he would ever 'try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as that'.

Seven years left in which we can tackle the problem. Fifty days to save the world. The North Pole melted within a few years.

Such outrageous claims, repeated by hundreds of politicians, and amplified by uncritical journalists whose brains have been captured by the climate change lobby, not a few of whom are to be found at the BBC, are bound to foster growing doubts in the public mind.

When he stated there were '50 days to save the world', Mr Brown spoke of a looming 'catastrophe' which, if not dealt with, 'would be greater than the impact of both World Wars and the Great Depression combined'.

Such talk is a debasement of language. The world does not stand, as it did in 1940, at the very edge of an abyss, and to suggest that it does (as has the prominent scientist James Lovelock) would be an offence against history if it were not so ludicrously overblown.

Mr Brown embraces the extremism of climate change zealots partly by way of displacement.

There are the pressing political problems such as the state of the public finances that are extremely difficult to solve, and there is climate change, where the most hair-raising predictions are eagerly endorsed by most in the media and political class, and can scarcely be countered now.

What will the public think of politicians and climate scientists if in ten or 20 years' time their wildest forecasts should prove unfounded?

We should listen to more measured voices - not those who rule out the possibility of man having any role in climate change, or pretend that global warming is not happening, but those who think the hysterical political response is disproportionate to the severity of the threat.

One such voice is the world-renowned British-born physicist Freeman Dyson, who has written that 'the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated' and decried 'the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models'.

We may not understand climate change, but we do know when we are victims of fraud

Nor should we forget that little more than 30 years ago the scientific and political consensus was exactly the opposite of what it is today, as the BBC2 programme Earth: The Climate Wars reminded us on Tuesday in what was an unusual spasm of climate change objectivity on the part of the Corporation.

In 1972 a group of distinguished scientists wrote a letter to the U.S. President, Richard Nixon, expressing their fear that the world was entering a new Ice Age.

If those scientists were so completely wrong then, it is not an affront to reason to question whether the more outlandish climate scientists and their supporters might not be overstating their case now.

Does this make me a 'flat earther' - a term of abuse recently employed by Gordon Brown to describe those who, unlike him, do not claim that Armageddon is around the corner?

If the avoidance of lunatic historical parallels or apocalyptic forecasts makes one a flat earther, I accept the charge gladly.

But I can't help wondering whether the real flat earthers may not turn out to be those like Prince Charles and Gordon Brown who count the months to disaster while merrily generating more carbon dioxide than a small African town does in a year.

Should we be surprised that the British public, confronted by this ugly combination of myopic hypocrisy and doommongering, is becoming increasingly sceptical?

As I say, we may not understand climate change, but we do know when we are victims of a fraud.

from the Times of London, 2010-Jan-10, by Dominic Lawson:

Brrrr, the thinking on climate is frozen solid

Here's how it is down our way. The oil tank that powers our central heating is running worryingly low, but for days fuel lorries have been unable to navigate the frozen track that links us to the nearest main road. We would have gained much welcome heat from incandescent light bulbs, but as those have been banned by the government as part of the “fight against climate change”, no such luck.

On the good side, the absence of delivered newspapers — even the faithful paperboy has given up the unequal struggle to reach us — means I won't be getting any more headaches from attempting to read newsprint under the inadequate light shed by “low-energy” bulbs. Nevertheless, the news has reached our Sussex farmhouse that the Conservatives have already begun the general election campaign, covering hoardings nationwide with pictures of David Cameron looking serious.

Many will be appalled by the promise of months of being force-fed with party political argument. There is something much worse than being confronted with non-stop debate, however: it is the prospect of being offered no choice and no debate when all three main parties have the same policy. This is what happened in the general election of 1992, when the Conservative government and its Labour and Liberal Democrat opponents were united in the view that sterling should remain linked to the deutschmark via the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM). This had been forcing the unnecessary closure of thousands of businesses as Bank of England interest rates went up and up to maintain an exchange rate deemed morally virtuous by the entire political establishment — and, indeed, by every national newspaper.

As everyone now knows (and as we deeply unfashionable “ERM deniers” warned at the time), it would all end in tears. A few months after that general election, the re-elected Conservative government was compelled by the forces of reality to abandon this discredited bulwark of its economic policy, a humiliation that destroyed the Tories' reputation for competence or even common sense.

Now, almost a generation later, we face another election in which the main parties are united in a single masochistic view: that the nation must cut its carbon emissions by 80% — this is what all but five MPs voted for in the Climate Change Act — to save not just ourselves but also the entire planet from global warming. For this to happen — to meet the terms of the act, I mean, not to “save the world” — the typical British family will have to pay thousands of pounds a year more in bills, since the cost of renewable energy is so much higher than that of oil, gas and coal.

The vast programme of wind turbines for which the bills are now coming in will not, by the way, avert the energy cut-offs declared last week by the national grid. Quite the opposite: as is often the case, the recent icy temperatures have been accompanied by negligible amounts of wind. If we had already decommissioned any of our fossil-fuel power stations and replaced them with wind power, we would now be facing a genuine civil emergency rather than merely inconvenience.

There are other portents of impending crisis caused entirely by the political fetish of carbon reduction. As noted in this column three weeks ago, the owners of the Corus steel company stand to gain up to $375m (£234m) in European Union carbon credits for closing their plant in Redcar, only to be rewarded on a similar scale by the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism fund for switching such production to a new “clean” Indian steel plant. That's right: the three main British political parties — under the mistaken impression that CO2 is itself a pollutant — are asking us to vote for them on the promise that they are committed to subsidise the closure of what is left of our own industrial base.

The collapse of the UN's climate change summit in Copenhagen makes such a debacle all the more likely. Countries such as India, China and Brazil have made it clear they have not the slightest intention of rejecting the path to prosperity that the developed world has already taken: to use the cheapest sources of energy available to lift their peoples out of hardship, extreme poverty and isolation. Britons may be forced by their own government to cut their carbon emissions — equivalent to less than 2% of the world's total; but we can forget about the idea that this will encourage any of those much bigger countries to defer their own rapid industrialisation.

Just as the British public never shared the politicians' unanimous worship of the ERM totem (which is why the voters' subsequent vengeance upon the governing Tories was implacable), so the public as a whole is much less convinced by the doctrine of man-made global warming than the Palace of Westminster affects to be: the most recent polls suggest only a minority of the population is convinced by the argument. This has caused some of the more passionate climate change catastrophists to question the virtues of democracy and to hanker after a dictatorial government that would treat such dissent as treason. As Professors Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch warned in Der Spiegel last month: “Climate policy must be compatible with democracy; otherwise the threat to civilisation will be much more than just changes to our physical environment.”

The threat of a gulf between a sceptical public and a political class determined — as it would see it — on saving us from the consequences of our own stupidity can have only been increased by the Arctic freeze that has enveloped not just Britain but also the rest of northern Europe, China and the United States. Of course one winter's unexpected savagery does not in itself disprove any theories of man-made global warming, as the climate change gurus are hastily pointing out. Steve Dorling, of the University of East Anglia's school of environmental sciences — yes, the UEA of “climategate” email fame — warns that it is “wrong to focus on single events, which are the product of natural variability”.

Quite so; but it would be easier to accept the point that a particular episode of extreme and unexpected cold was entirely due to “natural variations” if the UEA's chaps had not been so adept at publicising every recent drought or heatwave as possible evidence of “man's impact”, and if David Viner (then a senior climate scientist at UEA) had not made a headline in The Independent a decade ago by warning that in a few years “British children just aren't going to know what snow is”.

A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”

After reading this I printed it off and ran out into the snow to show it to my wife, who for some minutes had been unavailingly pounding up and down on our animals' trough to break the ice. She seemed a bit miserable and, I thought, needed cheering up. “Darling,” I said, “the Met Office still insists that we are enjoying an unseasonably warm winter.”

“Well, why don't you tell the animals, too?” she said. “Because that would mean they are drinking water instead of staring at a block of ice and I am not jumping up and down on it in front of them like an idiot.”

from the Telegraph of London, 2010-Jan-8, by Gerald Warner:

BBC: forecast of a mild winter 'wasn't actually wrong'. And they called climate sceptics 'deniers'

Fasten your seat-belt before you read this one. It's a corker. It is a quote from Susan Watts, BBC Science Editor, on Newsnight, as she attempted to explain why the abysmal failure of climate “scientists” to predict current weather conditions does not in any way reduce their credibility in predicting global warming. Watts said: “In fact that seasonal forecast predicting a mild winter wasn't actually wrong, but it left people with the wrong impression.”

If you think I am making this up, I cannot honestly blame you. I can only invite you to go to BBC iPlayer and view Newsnight for 7 January, in order to hear this garbage for yourself. So, the prediction of a mild winter “wasn't actually wrong”. Does the term “in denial” have any more graphic illustration than that? If you look out the window you might get the impression of Arctic conditions. But please remember, that is only an impression – a wrong impression. In scientific terms, it is baking hot.

In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited there is an entertaining passage in which Rex Mottram, an adventurer, is taking instruction in the Catholic faith, in order to marry an heiress. Devoid of belief, he is anxious to conform. Asked by the priest, if the Pope predicted rain would it be bound to happen, he says yes. And if it didn't rain, persists the priest? “I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.”

That is the territory we are now in with climate change. Global warming is all around us, only we are too sinful/sceptical/denying to see it. The total, insupportable falsity of the whole AGW scam is so blatant that its apologists' excuses are now not so much infantile as cretinous. A week ago we had the Gulf Stream Guff, but that could hardly account for conditions in Beijing, so that has faded from the radar. Now we are urged, imperiously and superciliously, to distinguish between “weather” and “climate”.

Aha! Another ploy calculated to appeal to the “sophisticates”. “If you knew the first thing about it, you would not make the basic mistake of confusing weather with climate…” Zzzz… Coming from a bunch of clowns who have confused heat with cold, drought with snow, and fact with fiction – that is rich. If you need some light relief in these grim conditions, turn to the Met Office website.

There, under the heading “How our forecasts have improved”, you will read: “Through continual investment in research, supercomputing and observations, Met Office scientists have steadily improved the accuracy of our forecasts. All of the forecasts we produce are stored and their accuracy assessed, so that we can learn from what went wrong with inaccurate forecasts and make sure that they keep getting better.”

Not since Soviet reports, circa 1952, of record tractor production figures for the Ukraine have the claims of any government agency, anywhere on earth, displayed such detachment from reality. The same applies to the BBC, which must be broken up and sold off by the government that replaces Dave in 2015. It is now churning out lies on a scale that would have made the commissar in charge of Radio Moscow under Stalin blench. The breathtaking words of Watts were followed by a studio debate involving two supporters of climate change orthodoxy. (What did you expect – Monckton, Delingpole, some revisionist deviationist from the party line?)

When confronted with the fact that the map published by the Met Office early last month still shows Britain in orange (the warmest category), Keith Groves, Met Office director of operations, responded: “I think you have to be very careful about how you use this information.” I'd go along with that. The Met Office predicted a “mild winter”. The definition of a mild winter is temperatures above 4.3C. While Newsnight was broadcasting this twaddle, temperatures were plunging to as low as – 22.3C.

The line being taken among climate alchemists now is: “We admit we cannot predict whether a season will be hot or cold; we are lousy at forecasting the weather over a week, a month, a quarter or a year. But when it comes to forecasting conditions in 2030, we are infallible.”

The references above to the Soviet Union are deliberate. I employ them because of the very real parallel with the present situation. The global warming frauds always had Plan A and Plan B in preparation. Plan A was to brainwash the population of Britain, America and the rest of the developed world into believing in man-made global warming. That was the preferred option; but it has failed.

Plan B, which will now come into operation, is to replicate what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Nobody believed in the economic illiteracy that was Marxism-Leninism any more; but jobs, promotion, status, even retaining one's liberty depended on paying lip service to it. Those are the terms on which the ideology of Global Warming will now be imposed on a sceptical population: by bribery, coercion, brainwashing of children, employment and promotion blackmail.

That is the agenda. Unless, of course, we do something firm, decisive and possibly very nasty about it.

from the Telegraph of London, 2010-Jan-8, by Gerald Warner:

'This will be the warmest winter in living memory' – defiant Met Office staffer

To think I placed an incredulity warning at the beginning of my previous post! How could I have foreseen this one coming? The whole “climate change” scenario has now assumed such Disneyland characteristics, it is impossible to keep pace with the escalating extravagance of the global warmists' fantasies. We truly are in the territory where the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

For those who missed it, I feel obliged to share the following gem from Dominic Lawson's excellent piece on the Sunday Times Online yesterday. It provides a unique insight into the extent to which the Met Office, in its crusade to support the global warming scam, has lost touch with any sense of reality. Lawson quotes from a Met Office staffer's internet posting to a newspaper last week:

“This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”

Beam me up, Scottie! The calm, insouciant pride with which this apparatchik casually reveals how the Met Office arrives at its fiddled climate statistics is a measure of the contempt felt by the warmist establishment for the mug punters who provide its funding. An average of the 15 highest readings is a meaningless statistic; nor is it, in any realistic sense, an average. An average is reached by taking the highest and the lowest figures and calculating the mean in between.

How about factoring in the 15 lowest readings between November and March – recalling that one of those was –22.3C last week – and discovering from that what kind of winter, on average, we had? The situation is that, in contradiction of all true scientific method, the outcome has been predetermined (“the data has already been recorded”) and the task set is to cobble together any kind of ludicrous statistics that will support the myth of global warming.

It is slowly dawning on the public that our lives are controlled by charlatans and buffoons. Our MPs are thieves and now our climate “scientists” are exposed as propagandists working solely to shore up a predetermined, but now universally discredited, thesis. There is more than climate at stake here. Until recently, scientists enjoyed the kind of authority that formerly attached to clergymen; now they are distrusted. One by one, the pillars of society are collapsing into a heap of contemptible rubble, with anarchic consequences to follow.

This kind of outrageous imposture from once imposing and trusted public bodies invites derision and a vacuum of authority. The mainstream media, unless they come to their senses very quickly and unhitch themselves from complicity in the global warming scam, are similarly doomed to relegation. Meantime, enjoy “the warmest winter in living memory”.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009-Dec-21, by Nigel Lawson:

Time For Plan B
The only breakthrough in Copenhagen was China's success in leaving Europe out in the cold.

The world's political leaders, not least President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are in a state of severe, almost clinical, denial. While acknowledging that the outcome of the United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen fell somewhat short of their demand for a legally binding, enforceable and verifiable global agreement on emissions reductions by developed and developing countries alike, they insist that what has been achieved is a breakthrough and a decisive step forward.

Just one more heave, just one more venue for the great climate-change traveling circus—Mexico City next year—and the job will be done.

Or so we are told. It is, of course, the purest nonsense. The only breakthrough was the political coup for China and India in concluding the anodyne communiqué with the United States behind closed doors, with Brazil and South Africa allowed in the room and Europe left to languish in the cold outside.

Far from achieving a major step forward, Copenhagen—predictably—achieved precisely nothing. The nearest thing to a commitment was the promise by the developed world to pay the developing world $30 billion of "climate aid" over the next three years, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020. Not only is that (perhaps fortunately) not legally binding, but there is no agreement whatsoever about which countries it will go to, in which amounts, and on what conditions.

The reasons for the complete and utter failure of Copenhagen are both fundamental and irresolvable. The first is that the economic cost of decarbonizing the world's economies is massive, and of at least the same order of magnitude as any benefits it may conceivably bring in terms of a cooler world in the next century. After all, the reason we use carbon-based energy is not the political power of the oil lobby or the coal industry. It is because it is far and away the cheapest source of energy at the present time and is likely to remain so, not forever, but for the foreseeable future.

Switching to much more expensive energy may be acceptable to us in the developed world (although I see no present evidence of this). But in the developing world, including the rapidly developing nations such as China and India, there are still tens if not hundreds of millions of people suffering from acute poverty, and from the consequences of such poverty, in the shape of malnutrition, preventable disease and premature death.

So for the developing world, the overriding priority has to be the fastest feasible rate of economic development, which means, inter alia, using the cheapest available source of energy: carbon energy.

Moreover, the argument that they should make this economic and human sacrifice to benefit future generations 100 years and more hence is all the less compelling given that these future generations will, despite any problems caused by warming, be many times better off than the people of the developing world are today.

Or, at least, that is the assumption on which the climate scientists' warming projections are based. It is projected growth that determines projected carbon emissions, and projected carbon emissions that (according to the somewhat conjectural computer models on which they rely) determine projected warming (according to the same models).

All this overlaps with the second of the two fundamental reasons why Copenhagen failed, and why Mexico City (if our leaders insist on continuing this futile charade) will fail, too. That is the problem of burden sharing, and in particular how much of the economic cost of decarbonization should be borne by the developed world, which accounts for the bulk of past emissions, and how much by the faster-growing developing world, which will account for the bulk of future emissions.

The Stern Review, quite the shoddiest pseudo-scientific and pseudo-economic document any British Government has ever produced, claims the overall burden is very small. But of course if that were so, the problem of how to share the burden would be readily overcome—as indeed occurred with the phasing out of chorofluorocarbons (CFCs) under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. But the true cost of decarbonization is massive, and the distribution of the burden an insoluble problem.

Moreover, any assessment of the impact of any future warming that may occur is inevitably highly conjectural, depending as it does not only on the uncertainties of climate science but also on the uncertainties of future technological development. So what we are talking about is risk.

Not that the risk is all one way. The risk of a 1930s-style outbreak of protectionism, if the developed world were to abjure cheap energy and faced enhanced competition from China and other rapidly industrializing countries that declined to do so, is probably greater than any risk from warming.

But even without that, there is not even a theoretical (let alone a practical) basis for a global agreement on burden-sharing, since, so far as the risk of global warming is concerned (and probably in other areas too) risk aversion is not uniform throughout the world. Not only do different cultures embody very different degrees of risk aversion, but in general the richer countries will tend to be more risk-averse than the poorer countries, if only because we have more to lose.

The time has come to abandon the Kyoto-style folly that reached its apotheosis in Copenhagen last week, and move to plan B.

And the outlines of a credible plan B are clear. First and foremost, we must do what mankind has always done, and adapt to whatever changes in temperature may in future arise. This enables us to pocket the benefits of any warming (and there are many), while reducing the costs. And since none of the projected costs are new phenomena, but the possible exacerbation of the problems our climate already throws at us, addressing these problems directly is many times more cost-effective than anything discussed at Copenhagen. Nor does adaptation require a global agreement, although we may well need to help the very poorest countries (not China) to adapt.

And beyond adaptation, plan B should involve a relatively modest increased government investment in technological research and development—in energy, in adaptation and in geoengineering.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the Copenhagen debacle, it is not going to be easy to get our leaders to move to Plan B. There is no doubt that calling a halt to the high-profile climate-change traveling circus risks causing a severe conference-deprivation trauma among the participants. If there has to be a small public investment in counseling, it would be money well spent.

Lord Lawson was U.K. chancellor of the exchequer in the Thatcher government from 1983 to 1989. He is the author of "An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming" (Overlook Duckworth, paperback 2009), and is chairman of the recently formed Global Warming Policy Foundation (www.thegwpf.org).

from the Washington Post, 2009-Dec-12, by Ariana Eunjung Cha, with Liu Liu contributing:

Looming population crisis forces China to revisit one-child policy

SHANGHAI -- Wang Weijia and her husband grew up surrounded by propaganda posters lecturing them that "Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "One more baby means one more tomb."

They learned the lesson so well that when Shanghai government officials, alarmed by their city's low birthrate and aging population, abruptly changed course this summer and began encouraging young couples to have more than one child, their reaction was instant and firm: No way.

"We have already given all our time and energy for just one child. We have none left for a second," said Wang, 31, a human resources administrator with an 8-month-old son.

More than 30 years after China's one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed "little emperors," a population crisis is looming in the country.

The average birthrate has plummeted to 1.8 children per couple as compared with six when the policy went into effect, according to the U.N. Population Division, while the number of residents 60 and older is predicted to explode from 16.7 percent of the population in 2020 to 31.1 percent by 2050. That is far above the global average of about 20 percent.

The imbalance is worse in wealthy coastal cities with highly educated populations, such as Shanghai. Last year, people 60 and older accounted for almost 22 percent of Shanghai's registered residents, while the birthrate was less than one child per couple.

Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission, has said that fertile couples need to have babies to "help reduce the proportion of the aging population and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future." Shanghai is about to be "as old -- not as rich, though -- as developed countries such as Japan and Sweden," she said.

A gradual easing

Written into the country's constitution in 1978, China's one-child policy is arguably the most controversial mandate introduced by the ruling Communist Party to date. Couples who violate the policy face enormous fines -- up to three times their annual salary in some areas -- and discrimination at work.

Chinese officials have credited the policy with helping the country avoid critical strain on its natural resources, while human rights advocates have denounced abuses in the enforcement of the policy. In rural areas, some officials have forced women pregnant with a second child to undergo abortions. In addition, many couples have had sex-selective abortions, leading to an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio.

In recent years, population officials have gradually softened their stance on the one-child policy. In 2004, they allowed for more exceptions to the rule -- including urban residents, members of ethnic minorities and cases in which both husband and wife are only children -- and in 2007, they toned down many of their hard-line slogans.

Qiao Xiaochun, a professor at the Institute of Population Research at Peking University, said central government officials have recently been debating even more radical changes, such as allowing couples to have two children if one partner is an only child.

In July, Shanghai became the first Chinese city to launch an aggressive campaign to encourage more births.

Almost overnight, posters directing families to have only one child were replaced by copies of regulations detailing who would be eligible to have a second child and how to apply for a permit. The city government dispatched family planning officials and volunteers to meet with couples in their homes and slip leaflets under doors. It has also pledged to provide emotional and financial counseling to those electing to have more than one child.

The response has been underwhelming, family planning officials say.

Disappointing response

Although officials in one rural town on the outskirts of Shanghai say they saw an uptick in applications from couples wanting a second child after the campaign was launched, the more urban districts report no change. Huinan township, with a population of 115,000, for instance, is still receiving just four to five applications a month.

Disappointed Shanghai officials say that, despite the campaign, the number of births in the city in 2010 is still expected to be only about 165,000 -- slightly higher than in 2009 but lower than in 2008.

Feng Juying, head of the family planning committee in Shanghai's Caolu township, said financial considerations are probably the main reason many people don't want more children. "They want to give the best to their first," she said.

Yang Jiawei, 27, and his wife, Liu Juanjuan, 26, said they would love to have two children and are legally allowed to do so. But like many Chinese, they have only the scant medical and life insurance provided by the government. Without a social safety net, they say, the choice would be irresponsible.

"People in the West wrongly see the one-child policy as a rights issue," said Yang, a construction engineer whose wife is seven months pregnant with the couple's first child. "Yes, we are being robbed of the chance to have more than one child. But the problem is not just some policy. It is money."

Other couples cite psychological reasons for hesitating.

Wang, the human resources administrator, said she wants an only child because she was one herself: "We were at the center of our families and used to everyone taking care of us. We are not used to taking care of and don't really want to take care of others."

Chen Zijian, a 42-year-old who owns a translation company, put it more bluntly. For the dual-career, middle-class parents who are bringing the birthrate down, he said, it's about being successful enough to be selfish. Today's 20- and 30-somethings grew up seeing their parents struggle during the early days of China's experiment with capitalism and don't want that kind of life for themselves, he said.

Even one child makes huge demands on parents' time, he said. "A mother has to give up at least two years of her social life." Then there are the space issues -- "You have to remodel your apartment" -- and the strategizing -- "You have to have a résumé ready by the time the child is 9 months old for the best preschools."

Most of his friends are willing to deal with this once, Chen said, but not twice.

"Ours is the first generation with higher living standards," he said. "We do not want to make too many sacrifices."

from AsiaNews.it, 2009-Dec-11:

Beijing tells world to fight climate change through one-child policy

The Chinese government proposes population controls as global weapon to fight climate change problems. The head of the Chinese delegation calls on the United States to make deeper cuts in carbon emissions. European leaders adopt a three-year € 6 billion plan to help developing countries. UN summit participants accept first draft proposal.

Copenhagen (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Population controls can save the environment and the international community should adopt China's one-child policy with that objective in mind, Chinese government sources said. The head of China's delegation to the UN Conference on Climate in Danish capital urged US President Barack Obama to cut greenhouse gases. European leaders pulled an all-nighter to reach a deal on helping developing countries fight global warming. The € 6 billion (US$ 9 billion) aid package would be spread over three years.

China defended its family planning policy as a way to reduce global warming. According to Beijing, its one-child and birth control policies, which include forced abortions and sterilisations on unwilling women, are part of its global strategy to fight climate problems and should be adopted by the international community.

In spite of the gross violation of human rights, the strategy has been a “great success” according to Chinese authorities. “I'm not saying that what we have done is 100 per cent right, but I'm sure we are going in the right direction," said Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China.

China's top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua called on US President Barack Obama to increase a U.S. offer to cut greenhouse gases. He said China would discuss a 2050 emissions goal only if rich nations offered more cash and carbon cuts, adding that emissions cuts should be “at least 40 per cent” over 1990 levels by 2020.

A successful outcome for the summit largely depends on agreement between the United States and China, which together generate 40 per cent of global carbon emissions.

The Chinese delegate said that poor or developing countries must be guaranteed "sufficient, additional and sustainable" financial and technology.

In the meantime, the European Union said it was ready to allocate € 6 billion (US$ 8.8 billion) to developing countries to promote clean energy technologies.

Meeting in Brussels, the 27 assembled heads of state and government hammered out a deal, but doubts remain over the capacity of the Union's eastern members to provide funds.

In a joint press conference, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged € 1.7 billion (US$ 2.5 billion) in fast start money.

In the morning, participants reached an agreement on a first official draft, which would set the ceiling for higher temperatures at 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. This would be the starting point for further negotiations in the coming days, which would include all world leaders.

from Reuters, 2009-Dec-11, by Lucy Hornby with editing by Paul Tait:

China says population controls help fight climate change

BEIJING - China's efforts at population control have helped mitigate the human impact on climate, a family planning official said, underlining Beijing's sense its achievements are being overlooked at the Copenhagen summit.

China's "one-child" policy has created heart-ache for millions of Chinese couples but has also allowed the country to grow economically without having to deal with the exploding population numbers faced by many developing countries.

According to Chinese calculations, the one-child policy has resulted in 400 million fewer people than would otherwise have been born.

"Such a decline in population growth leads to a reduction of 1.83 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in China per annum at present," the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhao Baige, vice minister of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying on Friday.

China has limited the number of children in each family for nearly three decades, with current regulations allowing one child for urban couples, and a second child for rural dwellers whose first child is a girl. Ethnic minorities may have more children.

In practice, China's policies have softened in recent years. Many wealthier people have paid fines to have a second child, and penalties in the countryside are no longer as punitive.

But women still complain of forced abortions, sterilizations, and invasive bureaucratic oversight.

"A solution to climate change is closely related to population management. China's experiences show that long-term, balanced development can only be achieved through population management and other effective measures," Zhao said.

A draft text released at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen said the world should at least halve world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with rich nations taking the lead.

China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, argues that developed nations should bear the burden of cutting emissions because they are responsible for historical emissions while they were industrializing.

It says they should pay for developing nations to acquire the technology and equipment to fight global warming.

from NewsBusters.org, 2009-Dec-11, by Carolyn Plocher:

The Canadian Financial Post: `The Whole World Needs to Adopt China's One-Child Policy'

"The `inconvenient truth' overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world," declared Canadian journalist Diane Francis in her Dec. 8 article titled "The Real Inconvenient Truth: The Whole World Needs to Adopt China's One-Child Policy."

Francis, an editor-at-large, published her article in Canada's national business newspaper, The Financial Post, the day after the much-hyped climate change conference kicked off in Copenhagen. She argued that "China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict."

"China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy," said Francis. "Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet."

Francis wrote direly that there would be irreversible consequences unless "all countries drastically reduce their populations."

Ironically, she failed to mention that China's fertility rate of 1.7 children per woman is actually higher than that of Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and many other European countries. In fact, many of Europe's current problems assimilating the massive influx of non-Europeans are the result of a declining population, which has caused a shortage in the labor force and strained the ability of the young to support the growing number of elderly.

Even the birthrate of the author's own country, Canada, isn't high enough to sustain its population, and Japan's has begun to so deeply affect its economy that the country's thinking of paying its citizens to have more children - $3,400 per year per child.

To more vividly argue against the notion of overpopulation, the Web site overpopulationisamyth.com explains through a mathematical equation that the entire world could quite easily live in Texas, leaving the rest of the Earth entirely vacant.

"Given an average four person family," it explained, "every family would have a 66' x 66' plot of land, which would comfortably provide a single family home and yard - and all of them fit on a landmass the size of Texas."

Francis also conveniently didn't mention in her article that, according to the book "Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth" (2006), not only have the worldwide population growth rates significantly slowed but the food per capital level is the highest in history. What's more, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has pointed out that the "root cause" of past famines "has been political instability, not global food shortage." That statement was supported by Amartya Sen, the renowned Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, who demonstrated that nations with democracy and free press (neither of which Francis' much beloved China has) had virtually never suffered from a severe famine.

The 2008 documentary "Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family" depicted how the world's declining population growth rate will place us all in "social and economic jeopardy":

The engines of commerce will be strained as the workers of today fail to replace themselves and are burdened by the responsibility to support an aging population. Government programs will slow-bleed by the decrease in tax dollars received from an ever shrinking work force. The skyrocketing ratio of the old retirees to the young workers will render current-day social security systems completely unable to support the aging population.

But if that means saving a tree, Diane Francis is willing to risk it. Except, of course, she did not offer her readers any thoughts on how to enforce this worldwide one-child mandate.

UPDATE: H/t to the several commenters who pointed out that Francis has two children of her own.

from the New York Times, 2009-Dec-22, by Todd Woody:

Desert Vistas vs. Solar Power

AMBOY, Calif. — Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.

But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation's fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California's effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.

Developers of the projects have already postponed several proposals or abandoned them entirely. The California agency charged with planning a renewable energy transmission grid has rerouted proposed power lines to avoid the monument.

“The very existence of the monument proposal has certainly chilled development within its boundaries,” said Karen Douglas, chairwoman of the California Energy Commission.

For Mrs. Feinstein, creation of the Mojave national monuments would make good on a promise by the government a decade ago to protect desert land donated by an environmental group that had acquired the property from the Catellus Development Corporation.

“The Catellus lands were purchased with nearly $45 million in private funds and $18 million in federal funds and donated to the federal government for the purpose of conservation, and that commitment must be upheld. Period,” Mrs. Feinstein said in a statement.

The federal government made a competing commitment in 2005, though, when President George W. Bush ordered that renewable energy production be accelerated on public lands, including the Catellus holdings. The Obama administration is trying to balance conservation demands with its goal of radically increasing solar and wind generation by identifying areas suitable for large-scale projects across the West.

Mrs. Feinstein heads the Senate subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Interior Department, giving her substantial clout over that agency, which manages the government's landholdings. Her intervention in the Mojave means it will be more difficult for California utilities to achieve a goal, set by the state, of obtaining a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020; projects in the monument area could have supplied a substantial portion of that power.

“This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn't be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm that invested in a solar developer called BrightSource Energy. In September, BrightSource canceled a large project in the monument area.

Union officials, power industry executives, regulators and some environmentalists have also expressed concern about the impact of the monument legislation, but few would speak publicly for fear of antagonizing one of California's most powerful politicians.

The debate over the monument encapsulates a rising tension between two goals held by environmental groups: preservation of wild lands and ambitious efforts to combat global warming.

Not only is the desert land some of the sunniest in the country, and thus suitable for large-scale power production, it is also some of the most scenic territory in the West. The Mojave lands have sweeping vistas of an ancient landscape that is home to desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, fringe-toed lizards and other rare animals and plants.

As conflicts over building solar farms in the Mojave escalated earlier this year, Mrs. Feinstein trekked to the desert in April. The senator's caravan, including the heads of two of the nation's largest utilities, top energy regulators and a group of environmentalists, bumped along a dirt track and pulled up to a wind-whipped tent. Inside, executives with a Goldman Sachs-owned developer waited to make their case for building two multibillion-dollar solar power plants.

The presentation over, the entourage rolled on to the next solar project site to hear the developer's pitch. Mrs. Feinstein gave the developers a hearing but was not moved by their arguments, according to five people present on the tour. The senator seemed concerned about the visual effect of huge solar farms on Route 66, the highway that runs through the Mojave, they said.

“When we attended the onsite desert meeting with Senator Feinstein, it was clear she was very serious about this,” said Gary Palo, vice president for development with Cogentrix Energy, a solar developer owned by Goldman Sachs. “It would make no sense for us politically or practically to go forward with those projects.”

Another project, a huge 12,000-acre solar farm by Tessera Solar, was canceled last week, and the company cited Mrs. Feinstein's opposition.

Steven L. Kline, chief sustainability officer for Pacific Gas and Electric, called the proposed monument “prime territory” for solar development and noted that the loss of the planned solar projects would hurt his company's efforts to comply with state renewable energy mandates. The utility was planning a solar farm in the monument area.

“In the near term, it would have a very substantial impact,” he said, emphasizing that in principle, P.G.& E. supports Mrs. Feinstein's efforts to preserve sensitive desert lands. “Over time those projects will be built somewhere else and we'll have benefits of the power.”

Mrs. Feinstein has long championed desert preservation, sponsoring legislation in 1994 that created Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve. Five years later, she pushed for federal money to help acquire nearly 500,000 acres owned by Catellus.

A small Southern California environmental group, the Wildlands Conservancy, had negotiated the acquisition of the Catellus property and raised tens of millions of dollars for its purchase from a major benefactor, the financier David Gelbaum, a former hedge fund manager turned philanthropist.

The Catellus holdings consist of hundreds of small parcels that form a checkerboard across the Mojave.

“The whole objective was to preserve the core of the Mojave Desert,” said David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy. “To a large extent this land is the connective tissue that holds the desert together.”

When Mr. Myers became aware that solar and wind developers had applied to lease federal land that included the former Catellus holdings, he contacted the senator.

The legislation to protect a million acres of desert land would include 266,000 acres of the former Catellus lands. (The balance of the half-million acres of Catellus property is already protected, in various ways.) The proposed renewable energy projects would have occupied about 30,000 acres of Catellus land, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

“If all this solar development took place in the Mojave, the higher you climb the more industrialized the vistas would look,” Mr. Myers said recently as he walked past bighorn sheep tracks and scrambled up a peak overlooking the Trilobite Wilderness Area.

Mr. Myers stresses that he is not against large-scale solar power plants but prefers that they be concentrated on already disturbed farmlands. In recent months, he said, he has worked with solar developers to find alternative sites.

On Thursday, Mrs. Feinstein introduced legislation to provide a 30 percent tax credit to developers that consolidate degraded private land for solar projects. She followed that on Monday with the legislation to create the 941,00-acre Mojave Trails National Monument and the 134,00-acre Sand to Snow National Monument.

“I strongly believe that conservation, renewable energy development and recreation can and must co-exist in the California desert,” Mrs. Feinstein said in a statement. “This legislation strikes a careful balance between these sometimes competing concerns.”

Developers and environmentalists say Mrs. Feinstein has modified the monument legislation to address some of their issues. The 2.5 million acres set aside in a draft version of the monument act has been shrunk to around one million acres, allowing at least two projects to proceed. The bill also includes provisions designed to accelerate approval of renewable energy projects on federal land.

That is not likely to mollify monument opponents, including unions that were anticipating the creation of thousands of construction jobs.

“Unfortunately, Senator Feinstein wants to wall off a large part of the desert based on historical land ownership rather than science,” said Marc D. Joseph, a lawyer for California Unions for Reliable Energy. “It seems the wrong approach to where solar should go and where it shouldn't go.”

But John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento, said the monument legislation would put so much land off limits for development that it might actually spur a more vigorous state and federal effort to compensate by creating renewable energy zones. “The problem is,” he said, “if you take a million acres off the table, what are you going to replace it with?”

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-7, by Bret Stephens:

The Totalities of Copenhagen
Global warming and the psychology of true belief.

'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Is it not obvious that the vision of apocalypse as it was revealed to Saint John of Patmos was, in fact, global warming?

Here's a partial rundown of some of the ills seriously attributed to climate change: prostitution in the Philippines (along with greater rates of HIV infection); higher suicide rates in Italy; the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia; an increase in strokes and heart disease in China; wars in the Middle East; a larger pool of potential recruits to terrorism; harm to indigenous peoples and "biocultural diversity."

All this, of course, on top of the Maldives sinking under the waves, millions of climate refugees, a half-dozen Katrina-type events every year and so on and on—a long parade of horrors animating the policy ambitions of the politicians, scientists, climate mandarins and entrepreneurs now gathered at a U.N. summit in Copenhagen. Never mind that none of these scenarios has any basis in some kind of observable reality (sea levels around the Maldives have been stable for decades), or that the chain of causation linking climate change to sundry disasters is usually of a meaningless six-degrees-of-separation variety.

Still, the really interesting question is less about the facts than it is about the psychology. Last week, I suggested that funding flows had much to do with climate alarmism. But deeper things are at work as well.

One of those things, I suspect, is what I would call the totalitarian impulse. This is not to say that global warming true believers are closet Stalinists. But their intellectual methods are instructively similar. Consider:

• Revolutionary fervor: There's a distinct tendency among climate alarmists toward uncompromising radicalism, a hatred of "bourgeois" values, a disgust with democratic practices. So President Obama wants to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% from current levels by 2050, levels not seen since the 1870s—in effect, the Industrial Revolution in reverse. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, insists that "our lifestyles are unsustainable." Al Gore gets crowds going by insisting that "civil disobedience has a role to play" in strong-arming governments to do his bidding. (This from the man who once sought to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.)

• Utopianism: In the world as it is, climate alarmists see humanity hurtling toward certain doom. In the world as it might be, humanity has seen the light and changed its patterns of behavior, becoming the green equivalent of the Soviet "new man." At his disposal are technologies that defy the laws of thermodynamics. The problems now attributed to global warming abate or disappear.

• Anti-humanism: In his 2007 best seller "The World Without Us," environmentalist Alan Weisman considers what the planet would be like without mankind, and finds it's no bad thing. The U.N. Population Fund complains in a recent report that "no human is genuinely 'carbon neutral'"—its latest argument against children. John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, cut his teeth in the policy world as an overpopulation obsessive worried about global cooling. But whether warming or cooling, the problem for the climate alarmists, as for other totalitarians, always seems to boil down to the human race itself.

• Intolerance: Why did the scientists at the heart of Climategate go to such lengths to hide or massage the data if truth needs no defense? Why launch campaigns of obstruction and vilification against gadfly Canadian researchers Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick if they were such intellectual laughingstocks? It is the unvarying habit of the totalitarian mind to treat any manner of disagreement as prima facie evidence of bad faith and treason.

• Monocausalism: For the anti-Semite, the problems of the world can invariably be ascribed to the Jews; for the Communist, to the capitalists. And as the list above suggests, global warming has become the fill-in-the-blank explanation for whatever happens to be the problem.

• Indifference to evidence: Climate alarmists have become brilliantly adept at changing their terms to suit their convenience. So it's "global warming" when there's a heat wave, but it's "climate change" when there's a cold snap. The earth has registered no discernable warming in the past 10 years: Very well then, they say, natural variability must be the cause. But as for the warming that did occur in the 1980s and 1990s, that plainly was evidence of man-made warming. Am I missing something here?

• Grandiosity: In "SuperFreakonomics," Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner give favorable treatment to an idea to cool the earth by pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, something that could be done cheaply and quickly. Maybe it would work, or maybe it wouldn't. But one suspects that the main reason the chapter was the subject of hysterical criticism is that it didn't propose to deal with global warming by re-engineering the world economy. The penchant for monumentalism is yet another constant feature of the totalitarian mind.

Today, of course, the very idea of totalitarianism is considered passé. Yet the course of the 20th century was defined by totalitarian regimes, and it would be dangerous to assume that the habits of mind that sustained them have vanished into the mists. In Copenhagen, they are once again at play—and that, comrades, is no accident.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Dec-7, by Juliet Eilperin and David Fahrenthold, with Steven Mufson contributing:

Obama administration formally declares danger of carbon emissions

The Obama administration formally declared Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation.

The move, announced by Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson, comes as the largest climate change conference in history gets underway in Copenhagen. It finalizes an initial "endangerment finding" by the government in April.

Speaking in an ornate room at EPA headquarters, Jackson said that greenhouse gases are "disrupting the natural balance in our atmosphere and changing our climate . . . The overwhelming amount of scientific evidence shows the threat is real."

Jackson said that she did not know when the EPA would reveal detailed plans for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, or if the agency would wait to see if the U.S. Senate passes climate legislation early next year. Jackson said that legislation was still the best way to tackle the problem -- but said she was not trying to prod Congress with Monday's finding.

Instead, Jackson said, the administration was bound to follow the U.S. Supreme Court's order in 2007 to determine if these emissions endanger public health.

"There are no more excuses for delay," she said. "This administration will not ignore science and the law any longer."

Jackson will speak at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference Wednesday; her address is titled "Taking Action at Home." President Obama, who will attend the end of the U.N. talks Dec. 18, has sent a series of recent signals to the international community that the United States will curb its carbon output as part of a new global climate deal.

The endangerment finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision in which the court ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases qualify as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.

Businesses argue that such a finding would mean even emitters as small as a mom-and-pop grocery store would be forced to comply with onerous greenhouse gas regulations. The administration has crafted rules that would exempt facilities that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent annually. But it remains unclear whether that exemption would hold up in court.

"An endangerment finding from the EPA could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery."

Business leaders warned that EPA regulations on greenhouse gases would be tied up in litigation for years and that the announcement was politically motivated to coincide with the opening of the international climate change summit in Copenhagen.

"This action poses a threat to every American family and business if it leads to regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Such regulation would be intrusive, inefficient, and excessively costly," said the American Petroleum Institute president Jack Gerard in a statement. "There was no compelling deadline that forced EPA's hand on this decision. It is a decision that is clearly politically motivated to coincide with the start of the Copenhagen climate summit."

Facilities that produce at least 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent yearly account for nearly 70 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.

Environmentalists said the scientific finding will spur Congress, which has yet to enact a final climate bill, to take action. The House passed a bill in June, but the Senate will not take up its version until 2010.

Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said officials on the state and local level "are extraordinarily pleased that President Obama is making this endangerment finding. It will trigger subsequent measures to continue on the road toward making significant progress to address the global warming problem."

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Dec-7, by John Fund:

EPA? Politics? Perish the Thought!

Talk about an accelerated change of climate. The Environmental Protection Agency will reportedly declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant today, setting the stage for extensive government regulations that will dramatically increase costs for business.

In a sense, the Obama administration is presenting an alternative Christmas present to the climate change summit that opens in Copenhagen today. The U.S. Senate failed to pass a cap-and-trade treaty in time for the summit, leaving the administration with nothing to offer beyond a presidential visit. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's unexpected but exquisitely timed announcement allows White House officials to save face and the president to be hailed as a hero in the Danish capital.

EPA's move comes shortly after its initiative was sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review, a process that normally requires a bit of time. The sudden approval will strike many as particularly bizarre on the heels of a scandal calling into question the underlying science of climate change. Leaked emails from Britain's Climatic Research Unit have already prompted the head of the CRU unit to step down pending an investigation. The United Nations has opened a parallel probe. More disturbing is news that CRU destroyed raw data for its global surface temperature series. Equally serious are questions about how data was manipulated by the CRU's ad hoc computer programming.

But the political calendar and fear that any delay would further undermine the case for declaring carbon a pollutant are clearly driving the EPA's decision. And the Obama administration wonders why business is loath to create new jobs. Given the massive overhang of regulatory uncertainty and higher taxes, it's a wonder anyone is hiring at all today.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Dec-6, by georgewill@washpost.com:

The climate-change travesty

With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth's last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate-change meeting. Its organizers had hoped that it would produce binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars, and micromanagement of everyone's choices.

China, nimble at the politics of pretending that is characteristic of climate-change theater, promises only to reduce its "carbon intensity" -- carbon emissions per unit of production. So China's emissions will rise.

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Disclosure of e-mails and documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Britain -- a collaborator with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- reveals some scientists' willingness to suppress or massage data and rig the peer-review process and the publication of scholarly work. The CRU materials also reveal paranoia on the part of scientists who believe that in trying to engineer "consensus" and alarm about warming, they are a brave and embattled minority. Actually, never in peacetime history has the government-media-academic complex been in such sustained propagandistic lockstep about any subject.

The Post learns an odd lesson from the CRU materials: "Climate scientists should not let themselves be goaded by the irresponsibility of the deniers into overstating the certainties of complex science or, worse, censoring discussion of them." These scientists overstated and censored because they were "goaded" by skepticism?

Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be "goaded" into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word "deniers" to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

Skeptics about the shrill certitudes concerning catastrophic man-made warming are skeptical because climate change is constant: From millennia before the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300), through the Little Ice Age (1500 to 1850), and for millennia hence, climate change is always a 100 percent certainty. Skeptics doubt that the scientists' models, which cannot explain the present, infallibly map the distant future.

The Financial Times' peculiar response to the CRU materials is: The scientific case for alarm about global warming "is growing more rather than less compelling." If so, then could anything make the case less compelling? A CRU e-mail says: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment" -- this "moment" is in its second decade -- "and it is a travesty that we can't."

The travesty is the intellectual arrogance of the authors of climate-change models partially based on the problematic practice of reconstructing long-term prior climate changes. On such models we are supposed to wager trillions of dollars -- and substantially diminished freedom.

Some climate scientists compound their delusions of intellectual adequacy with messiah complexes. They seem to suppose themselves a small clerisy entrusted with the most urgent truth ever discovered. On it, and hence on them, the planet's fate depends. So some of them consider it virtuous to embroider facts, exaggerate certitudes, suppress inconvenient data, and manipulate the peer-review process to suppress scholarly dissent and, above all, to declare that the debate is over.

Consider the sociology of science, the push and pull of interests, incentives, appetites and passions. Governments' attempts to manipulate Earth's temperature now comprise one of the world's largest industries. Tens of billions of dollars are being dispensed, as by the U.S. Energy Department, which has suddenly become, in effect, a huge venture capital operation, speculating in green technologies. Political, commercial, academic and journalistic prestige and advancement can be contingent on not disrupting the (postulated) consensus that is propelling the gigantic and fabulously lucrative industry of combating global warming.

Copenhagen is the culmination of the post-Kyoto maneuvering by people determined to fix the world's climate by breaking the world's -- especially America's -- population to the saddle of ever-more-minute supervision by governments. But Copenhagen also is prologue for the 2010 climate change summit in Mexico City, which will be planet Earth's last chance, until the next one.

from Commmentary's Contentions blog, 2009-Dec-9, by J. E. Dyer:

Climate in Wonderland

“[T]he different branches of arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
— The Mock Turtle, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

The global climate debate bears an increasing resemblance to Alice's interview with the White Queen. The world's hardworking climate agencies can't seem to issue a single proclamation without contrary evidence popping up, as if on cue, somewhere else. That doesn't, of course, stop the agencies from issuing proclamations, however much they may deviate from the reality certified to a weary public by actual data.

After yesterday's leak of the “Danish text,” a backroom proposal for a Copenhagen agreement that has the G-77 developing nations in an uproar, it looked like we had identified this climate summit's Most Ridiculous Moment — and it was a wholly political one. But today the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has gone the authors of the Danish text one better and announced that the current decade, 2000-2009, is on track to be the “warmest since records began in 1850.”

One wonders whom the WMO imagines to be its audience for such a counterfactual pronouncement. More than one online news outlet has responded promptly with links to the celebrated reports from climate scientists in the past two years that global average temperatures have actually been falling since 1998.

But if that's not enough to tone down the WMO, perhaps this is: a remarkable study performed by Australian Willis Eschenbach of temperature data from Darwin, on Australia's north coast, in its raw versus “homogenized” state (h/t: Hot Air). The latter state reflects manipulation of the data by climate scientists at East Anglia University — Climategate U. — to homogenize it for the representation of long-term trends. Such homogenization is, in principle, a perfectly legitimate practice; but in my experience (largely dealing with wave propagation for maritime applications), the manipulation doesn't, if performed properly, change the direction of the trend line of a data set.

Eschenbach's eye-opening analysis shows that for the Darwin observation area, the homogenization of temperature data by the East Anglia Climate Research Unit produced a trend line that moves upward, whereas the raw temperature observations show a downward trend over the same 120-year period. Eschenbach's summary is short, readable, and well worth the time. The graphics alone are head shakers. Not since McIntyre and McKittrick debunked the “Hockey Stick” graph have I seen such compelling evidence of the improper manipulation of climate data.

There just isn't a “scientific” excuse for data homogenization to turn a long-term downward trend into an upward one. The “Climate in Wonderland” debate is taking Benjamin Disraeli's famous aphorism about “lies, damned lies, and statistics” to a whole new level. There may be some comfort in the knowledge that this pattern in human discourse has been with us for some time. But Disraeli spoke from an era that had not yet seen Nazi Germany, the USSR, or Communist China. The cost of ignoring the statistical manipulation done to advance political causes has gone up exponentially since Disraeli's century.

from Commmentary's Contentions blog, 2009-Dec-9, by Jonathan Tobin:

Copenhagen Ultimatum: Pay or Die!

While the poorer countries squabble with the richer ones at the Copenhagen global-warming jamboree, at least some of those in attendance have given a passing thought to how much the grand schemes being cooked up there will cost the rest of us. The New York Times reports that the International Energy Agency estimates that the tab for the goals set at the conference for energy infrastructure alone “will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030.”

If you think that's a scary number, the Times's advice is don’t worry about it. After all, while it is “a significant sum,” it's only “a relatively small fraction of the world's total economic output.” Which means that while the environmental alarmists are planning to place crippling handicaps on a global economy in the throes of a historic slowdown, it's no problem because there will be at least some money left for the rest of us after Al Gore's favorite “green” companies reap gigantic profits.

But the alternative isn't pretty for those of us who are still reluctant to fork over the dough and trust those who say the Climategate e-mails are meaningless chatter, not an insightful look at the closed and corrupt world of climate science. Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who is in Copenhagen to track climate policy for the bank, has views about the issue that make Gore look like a conservative. According to Parker, those who worry about how to pay for all the Copenhagen plans aren't looking “at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race. Period.”

So much for reasoned argument and analysis. Not even the most alarmist and far-fetched scenarios envisioned by Gore and company pose any such threat. But that's the spirit of Copenhagen for you. As the global-warming crowd escalates demands for support of the various ploys they claim will help the situation, they are forced to keep raising the temperature of the fears they are stoking, no matter how unreasonable they might be.

But the bottom line here is that the plans being discussed represent a major drain on world capital as well as the pockets of taxpayers, while simultaneously enacting measures that will limit the ability of the economy to recover. Copenhagen's ultimatum to the world is to stop thinking critically about the issue and just pay or die.

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Dec-5, by Andrew Gilligan:

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".

The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.

At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries – Britain excepted – are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week's unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change "saboteurs" reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.

In Copenhagen there was a humbler note among some delegates. "If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence," said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. "Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys."

As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right – they probably have – but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners' apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness – funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like – can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.

In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. "If Martin Luther King had come along and said 'I have a nightmare,' people would not have followed him," he said.

Over the next two weeks, that positive vision may come not from the overheated rhetoric in the conference centre, but from Copenhagen itself. Limos apart, it is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilised pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism so beloved of British greens.

And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.

The US, which rejected Kyoto, is on board now, albeit too tentatively for most delegates. President Obama's decision to stay later in Copenhagen may signal some sort of agreement between America and China: a necessity for any real global action, and something that could be presented as a "victory" for the talks.

The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure.

from Fox News, 2009-Nov-30, by George Russell:

Document Reveals U.N.'s Goal of Becoming Rule-Maker in Global Environmental Talks

Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion "as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity," according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world's would-be environmental watchdog.

The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world's top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to "the center of political and economic decision-making" around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of UNEP at the tables of world power, as a rule-maker and potential supervisor of the New Environmental Order.

The positions argued in that paper now appear to be much closer at hand; many of them are embedded in a four-year strategy document for UNEP taking effect next year, in the immediate wake of the much-touted, 11-day Copenhagen conference on "climate change," which starts on Dec. 7, and which is intended to push environmental concerns to a new crescendo.

The major difference is that the four-year UNEP plan expresses its aims in the carefully soporific language that U.N. organizations customarily use to swaddle their objectives. The Swiss document makes its case passionately — and more important, plainly — than any U.N. official document ever would.

The ambitious paper, entitled "The UNEP That We Want," was the product of a select group of 20 top environmental bureaucrats and thinkers, including UNEP's current No. 2 official, Angela Cropper. The document was later delivered to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Other participants included Janos Pasztor, currently head of the team pushing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's unprecedented Seal the Deal lobbying campaign to pressure U.N. member governments into signing a new environmental agreement at Copenhagen; Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the World Conservation Union; Dominic Waughray, currently head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum; and Maria Ivanova, a Bulgarian academic who is director of the Global Economic Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

Another important attendee was John Scanlon, listed on UNEP's website as principal advisor to UNEP's Steiner. Among other things, Scanlon is credited in his UNEP biography with being the leader in developing UNEP's new medium-term strategy, "Environment for Development," covering the period from 2010 to 2013. The draft version of the strategy was presented to a UNEP's Governing Council and a meeting of the world's environmental minister's in February 2008, and subsequently approved.

The Swiss paper was written not by Scanlon but by Mark Halle, the Europe-based director of trade and investment for an influential environmental think-tank, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which originated in Canada and now operates in some 30 countries. IISD, which still has heavy Canadian government support, bills itself as a research institute promoting policies that are "simultaneously beneficial to the global economy, the global environment and to social well-being."

Even though all of the Swiss participants took part in the brainstorming, the responsibility for the ideas in the paper are his own, Halle emphasized to Fox News, after he was contacted last week about the document. The paper itself says it offers "elements," not a "complete offering," of what UNEP should consider for its role in the years ahead.

Despite those limitations, the report was "very well received" by UNEP's hierarchy, according to Halle, and "it has had a great impact internally." He added, "I have participated in several discussions and presentations of the ideas."

Click here to read Halle's document.

In fact, there is a high degree of overlap between the ideas pulled together at the small Swiss meeting of experts and the ideas that also appear in the new strategic plan for UNEP, a copy of which has been obtained by Fox News.

Click here to read the UNEP four-year strategy.

Those ideas are being espoused at a highly charged time. Both environmentalists and the entire United Nations, led by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are still fervently pressuring governments around the world to sign a legally binding and more global successor to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas suppression, which expires in 2012. At the moment, that deal appears likely to be delayed, at least until next spring, as some wealthy countries, including the U.S., balk at the high cost and potentially crippling economic impact of targets to reduce carbon emissions into the earth's atmosphere, even though President Barack Obama supports an ambitious Copenhagen deal.

But UNEP's strategic plan, as well as the IISD document that grew out of the Swiss gathering, look well beyond the horizon of Copenhagen in suggesting the outlines of the world's environment-centered future, to what the strategic plan calls "the next phase in the evolution of UNEP."

Among other things, both documents argue for:

—a "new and central position for environmentalism in the world's thinking," as the Swiss paper puts it. "The current environmental challenges and opportunities will cause the environment to move from often being considered as a marginal issue at the intergovernmental and national levels to the centre of political and economic decision-making," says the medium-term plan.

—a new position in the international power game for UNEP, reaching far beyond the member governments that currently finance its core budget and make up its normal supervisors. "It will have to make itself relevant well beyond the world of those already concerned with the environment, including very prominently its own formal constituency," as the Swiss paper puts it.

UNEP will "actively reach out to Governments, other United Nations entities, international institutions, multilateral environmental agreement secretariats, civil society, the private sector and other relevant partners to implement the Medium-term Strategy," says the UNEP document.

—a major restructuring of international institutions to merge environmental issues with economics as the central priority. "We require an Environmental Bretton Woods for the 21st Century," Halle argues — a reference to the meeting that laid the foundations of Western international finance and economic regulation after World War II. "The linkages between environmental sustainability and the economy will emerge as a key focus for public policymaking and a determinant of future markets opportunities," according to the UNEP strategic plan.

—new environmental rules, regulations and standards, and the linking of existing environmental agreements, in a stronger global lattice-work of environmental law, with stronger authority to command national governments. The Swiss paper calls it a series of "ambitious yet incremental adjustments" to international environmental governance. Indeed, the document says, UNEP's "role is to 'tee up' the next generation of such rules."

The UNEP four-year strategy puts it more obliquely, and only in a footnote on page 7 of the document: "UNEP will actively participate in the continuing international environmental governance discussions both within and outside the United Nations system, noting the repeated calls to strengthen UNEP, including its financial base, and the 'evolutionary nature of strengthening international environmental governance.'"

—an extensive propagandizing role for UNEP that reaches beyond its member governments and traditional environmental institutions to "children and youth" as well as business and political groups, to support UNEP strategic objectives.

As the Swiss paper puts it, UNEP "should pioneer a new style of work. This requires going beyond a narrow interpretation of UNEP's stakeholders as comprising its member states — or even the world's governments — and recruiting a far wider community of support, in civil society, the academic world and the private sector." At the same time the paper warns that these groups need to be "harnessed to the UNEP mission without appearing to make an end-run around the member governments."

The official four-year plan uses more restrained language in declaring that "civil society, including children and youth, and the private sector will be reached through tailor-made outreach products and campaigns.... Civil society will also be engaged to assist with UNEP outreach efforts." (The term "civil society," as used by the U.N., usually refers to organizations and associations that have received formal recognition from one branch or another of the sprawling world organization.)

—along with increased political leverage for UNEP, bringing increased financial leverage to its cause, once again by reaching beyond the national environmental ministries that traditionally are the organization's financial base to more powerful sectors of government as well as business and other interest groups that will see profit and advantage in the new, environment centered approach.

Says the Swiss paper: "UNEP must focus on priorities that meet two characteristics: they should appeal to the more powerful [government] ministers responsible for economic policy; and they should empower environmental ministers at the cabinet table. UNEP's message is not for environment ministers — the already converted.... It must aim higher."

As UNEP's four-year strategy more circumspectly puts it: "Mobilizing sufficient finance to meet environmental challenges, including climate change, extends well beyond global mechanisms negotiated under conventions. It will require efforts at local, national and global levels to engage with Governments and the private sector to achieve the necessary additional investment and financial flows."

As far as UNEP itself is concerned, the document says, the organization "will raise contributions from the private sector, foundations and non-environmental funding windows…Funds will also be drawn from humanitarian, crisis and peacebuilding instruments, where appropriate."

—Perhaps the most important function both documents see for the newly enhanced UNEP is to seek influence as the world's guiding arbiter of a new measurement of human development. "We believe the environmental argument should be recast in terms of its importance for and potential contribution to prosperity, stability and equity," the Swiss paper argues.

Or, more discreetly, as the strategy document puts it: "Integrated environmental assessments that highlight the state of the environment and trends will be used to inform decision-makers and ensure UNEP plays its lead environmental role in the United Nations system and strengthens its capacity to respond better to the global, regional and national needs of Governments."

According to Halle, however, in an e-mail exchange with Fox News, there are signs that the hugely ambitious role he and his fellow-thinkers sketched for UNEP as religion's main competitor are "beginning to happen." Halle pointed to UNEP's espousal this year of a so-called Green Economy Initiative, a proposal to radically redesign the global economy and transfer trillions of dollars in investment to the world's poorest developing countries, but one that is couched in terms of providing new green jobs, an end to old, unfair carbon-based energy subsidies, and greater global fairness and opportunity. Halle called the development "quite exciting."

The Green Economy Initiative, also called the Global Green New Deal, is a major counterpart to the new treaty on greenhouse gas suppression that all branches of the United Nations, and a horde of environmental organizations, are lobbying loudly to bring to agreement at the environmental summit in Copenhagen.

It is certain to remain a UNEP rallying cry long after the Copenhagen meeting is over — and while the other brainstorming ideas that went into the new four-year strategy, not to mention the strategy itself, go into effect.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.

from the Times of London, 2009-Nov-29, by Jonathan Leake:

The great climate change science scandal
Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.

“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department's databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.

In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.

It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones's belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.

Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.

What's more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones's statistical tricks were now public property.

Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”

Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.

The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.

Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?

THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.

That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.

The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?

The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.

Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.

Plotted out, Mann's data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.

That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.

George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.

A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.

Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann's hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.

Some critics believe that the unit's findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what's controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.

David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.

Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.

A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”

IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.

“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”

Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.

This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world's understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, `Trust us'.”

WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.

Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.

Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”

The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.

This weekend many of Jones's colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn't have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”

The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-2, by Daniel Henninger:

Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).

Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.

This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.

The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant—with implications for a vast new regulatory regime—used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-29, p.A20:

Sins of Emission
The ethanol boondoggle is also an environmental catastrophe.

Donning FDR's cape, Eisenhower's stripes and JFK's boat shoes, President Obama observed in Florida on Tuesday that his "clean energy economy" will require "mobilization" on the order of fighting World War II, building the interstate highway system and going to the moon. Of course, the only "mobilization" going on at the moment is on behalf of ethanol, whose many political dispensations the biofuels lobby is finding new ways to preserve even as the evidence of its destructiveness piles up.

The latest embarrassment arrives via the peer-reviewed journal Science, not known for its right-wing inclinations. A new paper calls attention to what the authors (led by Princeton's Tim Searchinger) call "a critical accounting error" in the way carbon emissions from biofuels are measured in climate-change programs world-wide. Bernie Madoff had a few critical accounting errors too.

Though you won't hear it from the biofuels lobby, ethanol actually generates the same amount of greenhouse gas as fossil fuels, or more, per unit of energy. But this was still supposed to be better than coal or oil because ethanol's CO2 is "recycled." Since plants absorb and store carbon that is already in the atmosphere, burning them as fuel would create no new emissions, whereas fossil fuels release CO2 that has been buried for millions of years.

With everything supposedly balancing out, the cap-and-trade programs run by the United Nations and European Union—and maybe soon the U.S.—treat biofuels as carbon-neutral. The Science study argues that this is a false economy, because it doesn't consider changes in land use. If mature forests are cleared to make room for biofuel-growing farms, then the carbon that would otherwise accumulate in those forests ought to be counted on ethanol's balance sheet as well.

Cap-and-trade programs exacerbate the problem because developed countries (where emissions are putatively capped) get credit for reductions from ethanol—despite the fact that their biofuels are generally grown in developing countries (where emissions aren't capped). So if Malaysians burn down a rain forest to grow palm oil that ends up in German biodiesel, Malaysia doesn't count the land-use emissions and Germany doesn't count the tail-pipe emissions.

Given these incentives, the authors cite a study showing that by 2050, "based solely on economic considerations, bioenergy could displace 59% of the world's natural forest cover. . . . The reason: When bioenergy from any biomass is counted as carbon neutral, economics favor large-scale land conversion for bioenergy regardless of the actual net emissions." In other words, not only is cap and trade self-defeating on its own terms but it also risks creating a genuine ecological disaster.

By way of a solution, Mr. Searchinger and his coauthors modestly suggest doing away with the regulatory three-card monte and counting net ethanol emissions from where they are actually emitted. But this is political heresy on Rep. Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee, which passed its own cap-and-tax program in July with the votes of farm-state Democrats, because the bill all but banned the Environmental Protection Agency from studying land-use changes. So much for letting "the science" guide public policy.

In Florida, Mr. Obama said the only people who could oppose his climate plan are "those who are afraid of the future." On this one, at least, the President is right.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-17, p.A21, by Lamar Alexander:

Energy 'Sprawl' and the Green Economy
We're about to destroy the environment in the name of saving it.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with solar collectors to generate electricity. He's also talking about generating 20% of our electricity from wind. This would require building about 186,000 50-story wind turbines that would cover an area the size of West Virginia not to mention 19,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission lines.

Is the federal government showing any concern about this massive intrusion into the natural landscape? Not at all. I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.

The House of Representatives has passed climate legislation that started out as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. It has morphed into an engine for raising revenues by selling carbon dioxide emission allowances and promoting "renewable" energy.

The bill requires electric utilities to get 20% of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. These renewable energy sources are receiving huge subsidies all to supposedly create jobs and hurry us down the road to an America running on wind and sunshine described in President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address.

Yet all this assumes renewable energy is a free lunch — a benign, "sustainable" way of running the country with minimal impact on the environment. That assumption experienced a rude awakening on Aug. 26, when The Nature Conservancy published a paper titled "Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America." The report by this venerable environmental organization posed a simple question: How much land is required for the different energy sources that power the country? The answers deserve far greater public attention.

By far nuclear energy is the least land-intensive; it requires only one square mile to produce one million megawatt-hours per year, enough electricity for about 90,000 homes. Geothermal energy, which taps the natural heat of the earth, requires three square miles. The most landscape-consuming are biofuels — ethanol and biodiesel — which require up to 500 square miles to produce the same amount of energy.

Coal, on the other hand, requires four square miles, mainly for mining and extraction. Solar thermal — heating a fluid with large arrays of mirrors and using it to power a turbine — takes six. Natural gas needs eight and petroleum needs 18. Wind farms require over 30 square miles.

This "sprawl" has been missing from our energy discussions. In my home state of Tennessee, we just celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yet there are serious proposals by energy developers to cover mountains all along the Appalachian chain, from Maine to Georgia, with 50-story wind turbines because the wind blows strongest across mountaintops.

Let's put this into perspective: We could line 300 miles of mountaintops from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Bristol, Va., with wind turbines and still produce only one-quarter the electricity we get from one reactor on one square mile at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.

The 1,000 square-mile solar project proposed by Mr. Salazar would generate, on a continuous basis, 35,000 megawatts of electricity. You could get the same output from 30 new nuclear reactors that would fit comfortably onto existing nuclear sites. And this doesn't count the thousands of miles of transmission lines that will be needed to carry the newly generated solar power to population centers.

There's one more consideration. Solar collectors must be washed down once a month or they collect too much dirt to be effective. They also need to be cooled by water. Where amid the desert and scrub land will we find all that water? No wonder the Wildlife Conservancy and other environmentalists are already opposing solar projects on Western lands.

Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape. Before we find ourselves engulfed in energy sprawl, it's imperative we take a closer look at nuclear power.

Mr. Alexander is a Republican senator from Tennessee and a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

from the Washington Examiner, 2009-Nov-8, by Michael Barone:

More evidence that global warming alarmism is a religious cult

Every so often a sentence you read in a news story catches your eye. Consider this sentence in a November 6 Washington Post story headlined, “Environmental groups at odds over new tack in climate fight.”

"It's a lack of faith in the American public," said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona nonprofit, talking about the light-on-climate ads used by bigger groups. "If the scientists, the environmentalists in our country do their jobs, and explain the test of climate change, the public will come along."

“A lack of faith.” Faith is what religion asks of us. We have confidence in the practical application of scientific theories (think of astronauts in launch phase) but faith in religious dogma (that there will be life after death). And what, by the way, is “the test of climate change.”

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Nov-3, by Stephen Adams and Louise Gray:

Climate change belief given same legal status as religion

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

The decision regards Tim Nicholson, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger plc, who claims he was made redundant in July 2008 due to his "philosophical belief about climate change and the environment".

In March, employment judge David Heath gave Mr Nicholson permission to take the firm to tribunal over his treatment.

But Grainger challenged the ruling on the grounds that green views were political and based on science, as opposed to religious or philosophical in nature.

John Bowers QC, representing Grainger, had argued that adherence to climate change theory was "a scientific view rather than a philosophical one", because "philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof."

That argument has now been dismissed by Mr Justice Burton, who last year ruled that the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was political and partisan.

The decision allows the tribunal to go ahead, but more importantly sets a precedent for how environmental beliefs are regarded in English law.

Mr Nicholson, 42, from Oxford, told a previous hearing that his views were so strong that he refused to travel by air and had renovated his house to be environmentally-friendly.

But his beliefs led to frequent clashes with Grainger's other managers, while he said that Rupert Dickinson, the firm's chief executive, treated his concerns with "contempt".

Once Mr Dickinson flew a member of staff to Ireland to deliver his Blackberry mobile phone after leaving it in London, Mr Nicholson claimed.

Mr Nicholson hailed the Employment Appeals Tribunal ruling as "a victory for common sense" but stressed climate change was "not a new religion".

He said: "I believe man-made climate change is the most important issue of our time and nothing should stand in the way of diverting this catastrophe.

"This philosophical belief that is based on scientific evidence has now been given the same protection in law as faith-based religious belief.

"Belief in man-made climate change is not a new religion, it is a philosophical belief that reflects my moral and ethical values and is underlined by the overwhelming scientific evidence."

His lawyer Shah Qureshi, head of employment law at Bindmans LLP, argued that if the ruling had gone against them, "the end result would be that the more evidence there is to support your views, the less likely it would be for you to enjoy protection against discrimination".

Grainger now plans to contest Mr Nicholson's claim of unfair dismissal at tribunal.

Dave Butler, its corporate affairs director, said: "This decision merely confirms that views on the importance of environmental protection are capable of amounting to a philosophical belief.

"We are looking forward to addressing the issues at tribunal level and demonstrating that there was no causal link between Mr Nicholson's beliefs and his redundancy."

The grounds for Mr Nicholson's case stem from changes to employment law made by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, in the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003.

The regulations effectively broaden the protection to cover not just religious beliefs or those "similar" to religious beliefs, but philosophical beliefs as well.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Nov-12, by Kimberley A. Strassel:

The EPA's Paranoid Style
Employee arguments against cap-and-trade legislation aren't welcome.

Give the Environmental Protection Agency credit: At least it practices equal opportunity censorship of its employees.

Dr. Alan Carlin, a 37-year agency veteran, was muzzled earlier this spring. Dr. Carlin offered a report poking holes in the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming. His superior, Al McGartland, complained the paper did "not help the legal or policy case" for Team Obama's decision to regulate carbon, told him to "move on to other issues," and forbade him from discussing it outside the office.

Now come Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, married, and each with more than 20 years tenure at the EPA. They too are dismayed by Democrats' approach to climate, though for different reasons. Dedicated environmentalists, they created a 10-minute YouTube video arguing Congress's convoluted cap-and-trade bill was a "big lie" that is too weak. They instead propose imposing taxes, lots of them, on fossil fuels.

Their views aren't new. Earlier this year the duo sent a letter to Congress making the same case. The video has been out for some time, and the pair got clearance from the EPA before they ran it. Mr. Zabel in the opening notes that "nothing in this video is intended to represent the views of EPA or the Obama Administration." It wasn't until the couple ran a high-profile op-ed in the Washington Post in October that the agency nerved out.

A few days after the op-ed, Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel were contacted by an EPA ethics official telling them to remove the video or face "disciplinary action." EPA says the clearance was subject to "ethics guidelines," which it claims the couple violated. The agency said the video could go back up if it was altered to remove a picture of an EPA building, and to delete mentions of their EPA employment. In particular, Mr. Zabel was not to say that he'd worked on cap-and-trade issues.

Meet the Obama EPA, and its new suppressing, paranoid style. It was the president who once ripped the Bush administration for silencing scientific critics, and it was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson who began her tenure promising the agency would operate like a "fishbowl." But that was before EPA realized how vastly unpopular is its plan to usurp Congress and regulate the economy on its own, based on its bizarre finding that CO2 is a danger to health.

Faced with unhappy members of Congress, dissenting employees, an opposition business community, and a backlash on the science, Mrs. Jackson is no longer a fan of open government. The goal now is to rush the agency regulations through as quickly as possible, squashing threatening dissent and deflecting troublesome questions.

Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Darrell Issa recently put out a report documenting the EPA's slippery handling of its carbon rule, in which it truncated the process and dismissed contrary views. The Chamber of Commerce has been waiting all year for a response to its request for a hearing into the science underlying the regulation. Not a peep.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in September requested a discussion with the agency about carbon regulation and legislation. That discussion has yet to happen. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter recently quizzed Mrs. Jackson about a provision in Congress's climate legislation that would give the president awesome power over energy regulation. Mrs. Jackson said it was a "premature" discussion. "The EPA is playing dirty to get green," says Rep. Sensenbrenner. "The agency can't be allowed to silence its scientists just because what they say threatens to delay its political agenda."

There is a legitimate debate over what right administrations have to clamp down on rebel staffers, yet the EPA's stomp on dissenting views appears unprecedented. Dr. Carlin says he's been treated "relatively well" since the blow-up. Yet he has been forbidden from working on climate or attending climate seminars. When asked how this compares to previous administrations, Mr. Carlin says that years ago he actually believed the science was "correct"—a position that put him at odds with the Bush administration.

Mr. Carlin knew one of his top supervisors back then disagreed with him. "At no time did he say don't work on it, don't express these views which are contrary to mine. And he in effect allowed me to work on climate change for five years. . . . I had no problems until March of this current year."

The problem for the EPA is that the Williams-Zabel dust-up is growing, and underlining the gap between the agency's transparency rhetoric and reality. The very media and activists who ran hit jobs on Mr. Carlin are, of course, now furious the agency is quieting card-carrying environmentalists. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a left-leaning outfit that represents scientists has latched on to the Williams-Zabel video, is lamenting that "EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees" and promising to assist with any litigation.

If the EPA were so proud of this power grab, it ought to be eager to have a discussion, right?

from the New York Times, 2009-Nov-9, printed 2009-Nov-10, p.A22, by John M. Broder and Leslie Kaufman:

Environmental Agency Warns 2 Staff Lawyers Over Video Criticizing Climate Policy

The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

The agency, citing federal policies, told the two lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are married and based in San Francisco, that they could mention their E.P.A. affiliation only once; must remove language specifying Mr. Zabel’s expertise and their years of employment with the agency; and must remove an image of the agency’s office in San Francisco.

They have been told that if they do not edit the video to comply with the policy, they could face disciplinary action.

The video, titled “The Huge Mistake,” was produced and posted in September. But the agency did not issue its warning until The Washington Post published a widely cited opinion article by the couple on Oct. 31 that raised concerns, echoing those in the video, about cap-and-trade legislation that the Obama administration supports.

Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel say cap and trade, in which the government sets a limit on gases that contribute to global warming and then lets companies trade permits to meet it, can be easily gamed by industry and fail to reduce the emissions linked to global warming.

On Thursday, Mr. Zabel said, regional ethics officers with the agency met with him to express concerns about the video and to demand that it be taken down by the next day. Ms. Williams was traveling and did not take part in the meeting.

E.P.A. officials said the agency did not object to the content of the video or the op-ed article or challenge the couple’s right to express their opinions. But they said that government ethics rules required them to state that the opinions were their own and not those of the agency.

“E.P.A. has nearly 18,000 employees, and all of them are free to — and many do — publicly express their views on issues of the day, including issues that are central to E.P.A.’s mission,” Scott Fulton, the agency’s general counsel, said in a statement. However, the video did say the opinions were those of Mr. Williams and Ms. Zabel and were not meant to represent the agency.

In addition, Mr. Williams and Ms. Zabel say they quickly removed the video from their Web site and YouTube. But they said that others had copied the video and put it up on separate YouTube accounts and that it is still easily found.

from the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog, 2009-Nov-9, by Keith Johnson:

Is the Environmental Protection Agency trying to stifle dissenting views on climate change?

The EPA has told two longtime agency veterans and outspoken critics of the administration's cap-and-trade plan to remove any references to the agency in their critiques and to get approval for any future “outside writing projects.” That includes removing their critical video from You Tube.

Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, a married couple and EPA lawyers in San Francisco, have been railing against cap-and-trade proposals for a while. Most recently, they had a sharply-worded op-ed in the Washington Post that said current legislation would be ineffective and even counterproductive.

The couple stressed that the views they expressed were their own—not the agency's. But they also stressed that their years of experience with the EPA, and specifically working on other cap-and-trade programs, informed their views.

Now Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has jumped into the fray. The organization, which groups public-sector employees concerned with environmental questions, has re-posted the banned video and come out in defense of the two attorneys:

“EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees who have every right to speak out as citizens,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, who has re-posted the original video and its script. “EPA reversed itself because someone in headquarters had a tantrum about their Washington Post essay.”

When Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel first started publicly criticizing cap-and-trade, in the spring of 2008, the EPA gave them a green light. As we noted at the time, “An EPA spokeswoman confirmed that the agency cleared the couple to write the letter, `provided that it was written in their personal capacity and were not speaking on behalf of the agency.'”

We've asked the EPA for comment today.
UPDATE: This from EPA General Counsel Scott Fulton:

EPA has nearly 18,000 employees and all of them are free to – and many do - publicly express their views on issues of the day, including issues that are central to EPA's mission. The only requirement is that employees adhere to the government’s ethical regulations, which are in place to ensure that EPA and other agencies maintain the highest possible ethical standards at all times.

One EPA official said that the agency’s response wasn’t due to the content of the attorneys’ writings, but to the way they highlighted their EPA experience in making their arguments, which runs counter to agency rules federal regulations.

The lawyers' criticism hasn't always gone down well in environmental circles, because many greens worry the pair are providing more ammunition to critics of climate legislation. But even folks who shudder at the lawyers' argments worry that the current spat doesn't look good for free speech, notes Dave Roberts at Grist.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Oct-26, by John Fund:

Here, Kitty, Kitty . . .
Is it time to eat Fluffy in order to save the planet?

I've always wanted to read an environmental book that was brutally honest about the size of the sacrifices the greens are demanding of average people. Now Brenda and Robert Vale, two professors at New Zealand's Victoria University and winners of a United Nations Global 500 Award for Environmental Achievement, have filled that market niche. Their new book is provocatively titled: "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living."

They argue that the carbon pawprint of a typical canine is twice that of an SUV that's driven 6,000 miles a year. The main reason is all the energy that goes into producing meat for its diet. Keeping a cat is the equivalent of owning a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters are as bad for the planet as owning a plasma TV.

In order to stave off global warming, the Vales suggest pet owners swap dogs and cats for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits. "There is certainly some truth in the fact that if we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat, and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things on our environment," the authors write.

The authors issue a dire warning about the eco-hazards of a wealthy lifestyle. If everyone shared the standard of living of Americans, they say, humanity would need five planet Earths to sustain itself. Thus it's allegedly time to take drastic measures: People should ride bikes for all but the longest errands, and they should give up holidays. The authors even offer marriage advice: Don't get divorced until you find a new partner so you can save the environmental cost of maintaining two homes.

Robert Vale says the couple wrote their book because current efforts fall so pitifully short in tackling the world's environmental problems. "There are so many wussy sustainability books out there. It's a bit more complex than grocery bags and light bulbs."

I agree. That's why getting people to think about eating Fido will help clarify just how far-reaching the aims of radical environmentalists are.

from BBC News, 2009-Oct-9, by Paul Hudson:

What happened to global warming?

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-26, by Bret Stephens:

Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics
Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose.

Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.

Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or one of his little helpers.

The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.

Could it work? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think it might, and they're a smart bunch. Also smart are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, whose delightful "SuperFreakonomics"—the sequel to their runaway 2005 bestseller "Freakonomics"—gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of place in their lengthy chapter on global warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own.

Mr. Gore, for instance, tells Messrs. Levitt and Dubner that the stratospheric sulfur solution is "nuts." Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress blog, accuses the authors of "[pushing] global cooling myths" and "sheer illogic." The Union of Concerned Scientists faults the book for its "faulty statistics." Never to be outdone, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman scores "SuperFreakonomics" for "grossly [misrepresenting] other peoples' research, in both climate science and economics."

In fact, Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication. Nor are they global warming "deniers," insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."

More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another." In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn't the sole province of painters, politicians and news anchors.

But perhaps their biggest sin, which is also the central point of the chapter, is pointing out that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Hence world hunger was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the development of new and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection and mortality rates in hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their hands.

Hence, too, it may well be that global warming is best tackled with a variety of cheap fixes, if not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the ocean. Alternatively, as "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing until the state of technology can catch up to the scope of the problem.

All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. And little wonder: As Newsweek's Stefan Theil points out, "climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?

Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence. It's just the same with global warming, which is what makes the clear-eyed analysis in "SuperFreakonomics" so timely and important. (Now my sincere apologies to the authors for an endorsement that will surely give their critics another cartridge of ammunition.)

from Canada Free Press, 2009-Oct-29, by Marc Morano:

Leading Climate Scientist: Cap and Trade Could Ruin US Economy
Dr. Steve Running said any climate change solution needs to involve all nations

BILLINGS- As debate over climate change legislation heats up on Capitol Hill, the Director of the University of Montana's Climate Change Studies Program, and a co-author of a Nobel Prize winning report, says cap and trade legislation could ruin the US economy.

During a Wednesday morning interview with statewide radio talk show host Aaron Flint on “Voices of Montana,” Dr. Steve Running said any climate change solution needs to involve all nations.

“We have to have all the major nations in agreement on future progress,” said Running.

Running is a co-author of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and founder of the Climate Change Studies program at the University of Montana. He added, “If the US passed a cap and trade and other countries did not, it wouldn't work. It would ruin the US economy and it wouldn't save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there's no doubt about that.”

Nonetheless, Running called on the United States to show leadership on the issue of addressing climate change, saying other countries will follow suit. “Voices of Montana” is a Northern News Network talk show that airs statewide on more than a dozen radio stations each weekday morning.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-3, by William McGurn:

American Babies Are Ruining Everything
The truth is more brains will likely mean cleaner energy technologies.

Forget about the birthers, and the nutty claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

More and more, we are hearing from people who might best be described as anti-birthers. Their claims have nothing to do with long- versus short-form Hawaiian birth certificates. Instead, they advance a simple proposition: that the birth of each additional American child is a kind of calamity for the environment.

The most recent example of anti-birth thinking comes from Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax of Oregon State University. In a study called “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals,” they suggest that if you truly care about the environment, it's not enough to trade your SUV for a Prius, use the right lightbulbs, or limit your lawn to organic fertilizers. To the contrary, you need to start thinking about something way more important: i.e., having one less child.

The “basic premise,” the study reports, is that “a person is responsible for emissions of his descendents.”

When Mr. Murtaugh runs the numbers, he finds some alarming results. Take an American woman who checks all the green boxes: She recycles, installs energy efficient windows, cuts back how much she drives, and so on. Yet simply by having two children, Prof. Murtaugh reports, she will add nearly 40 times the amount of carbon dioxide emissions she had saved with those lifestyle changes. No wonder the Los Angeles Times Web site reports on this study under the title “Tie Your Tubes and Save the Planet?”

The president's science adviser, John Holdren, appears to share Mr. Murtaugh's worries about too many Americans. In a 1973 article, he argued that “210 million [Americans] now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be too many.” He concluded that we should encourage women to have fewer children.

When questioned about this during his confirmation hearings, Mr. Holdren said he no longer thinks it “productive” to focus on the “optimum population” (possibly because America now has 304 million people). But he gave no indication of abandoning the underlying idea that having more Americans is a big problem.

Little more than a week ago, two British doctors writing in the British Medical Journal made the same point—this time about British babies. Each new birth in the U.K., they note, will end up resulting in 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a new birth in Ethiopia.

Their conclusion? British couples need to be told that having one less child “is the simplest and biggest gift anyone can make” to a habitable planet. Britain, they suggest, needs to promote an “environmental ethics” where having fewer children is “analogous to avoiding patio heaters and high carbon cars.”

In some ways, this focus on American and British births is an improvement over the previous bout of overpopulation worries. Back in the 1970s, when the experts complained about people having too many children, they meant Chinese, Filipinos, Latin Americans, Africans, et al.

Many still believe this is so. At least for the moment, however, the American mom who brings a new life into this world seems to be regarded as more of an environmental menace than the Bangladeshi mother who does the same.

There's a larger trouble with this point of view, of course, and it has nothing to do with the arithmetic. However new-sounding the language about “carbon footprints” may be, what we have here is the same old Malthusian view of people breeding themselves to destruction.

Mr. Murtaugh may reject this—he stresses in an email that he suggests no policies, offering only “some complicated arithmetic showing the likely effects of an individual's reproductive activities on future carbon emissions.”

Maybe. But accept his assumptions, and it means that when a friend has a baby, you have to think we're all the worse for it. It means that instead of celebrating the development that brings things like refrigeration, cars and calories to people who don't now have them, we fear the day that a child in Manila enjoys enough of the blessings of life to have the same carbon footprint as a kid from Minnesota.

And if we really think the answer is below-replacement level fertility, it should mean taking a closer look at places such as Japan and Europe, where we can see what happens to societies when people stop having children.

The real answer, of course, is to have a little more faith in the creative powers of human beings. Given the freedom to grow and innovate, surely the same people who have licked polio, sent a man to the moon, and given us a revolution in information will sooner or later come up with new technologies that will provide for our energy needs while being friendlier to the environment.

The task is not without its challenges. But we're not likely to get far with a “science” that defines the problem as American babies.

from City Journal, 2009-Spring, by Peter W. Huber:

Bound to Burn
Humanity will keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere, but good policy can help sink it back into the earth.

Like medieval priests, today’s carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness—about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.

But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too—because they’re not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you’d best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can’t possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.

If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington’s power to bankrupt almost anything—in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That’s another whole United States’ worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.

Cut to the chase. We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

We don’t control the global supply of carbon.

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves—about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.

Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon—almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet’s third great carbon reservoir—the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that’s all they’ve got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won’t—not any time in the foreseeable future.

We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor—the other 80 percent—are already the main problem, not us. Collectively, they emit 20 percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot more carbon individually, but they have a lot more children. Their fecundity has eclipsed our gluttony, and the gap is now widening fast. China, not the United States, is now the planet’s largest emitter. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and others are in hot pursuit. And these countries have all made it clear that they aren’t interested in spending what money they have on low-carb diets. It is idle to argue, as some have done, that global warming can be solved—decades hence—at a cost of 1 to 2 percent of the global economy. Eighty percent of the global population hasn’t signed on to pay more than 0 percent.

Accepting this last, self-evident fact, the Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion—including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—aren’t. These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn’t going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future—unless it does it the old-fashioned way, by getting poorer. But the current recession won’t last forever, and the long-term trend is clear. Their populations and per-capita emissions are rising far faster than ours could fall under any remotely plausible carbon-reduction scheme.

Might we simply buy their cooperation? Various plans have circulated for having the rich pay the poor to stop burning down rain forests and to lower greenhouse-gas emissions from primitive agricultural practices. But taking control of what belongs to someone else ultimately means buying it. Over the long term, we would in effect have to buy up a large fraction of all the world’s forests, soil, coal, and oil—and then post guards to make sure that poor people didn’t sneak in and grab all the carbon anyway. Buying off people just doesn’t fly when they outnumber you four to one.

Might we instead manage to give the world something cheaper than carbon? The moon-shot law of economics says yes, of course we can. If we just put our minds to it, it will happen. Atom bomb, moon landing, ultracheap energy—all it takes is a triumph of political will.

Really? For the very poorest, this would mean beating the price of the free rain forest that they burn down to clear land to plant a subsistence crop. For the slightly less poor, it would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

And with one important exception, which we will return to shortly, no carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to being able to do that. Fossil fuels are extremely cheap because geological forces happen to have created large deposits of these dense forms of energy in accessible places. Find a mountain of coal, and you can just shovel gargantuan amounts of energy into the boxcars.

Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City’s total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.

It’s often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller—and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.

This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident—which didn’t harm anyone, and wouldn’t even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job—ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power’s heyday. Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and—as America’s nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established—it’s both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it.

But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money.

And countries that don’t trust nuclear power on their own soil must hesitate to share the technology with countries where you never know who will be in charge next year, or what he might decide to do with his nuclear toys. So much for the possibility that cheap nuclear power might replace carbon-spewing sources of energy in the developing world. Moreover, even India and China, which have mastered nuclear technologies, are deploying far more new coal capacity.

Remember, finally, that most of the cost of carbon-based energy resides not in the fuels but in the gigantic infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Those costs are sunk, which means that carbon-free alternatives—with their own huge, attendant, front-end capital costs—must be cheap enough to beat carbon fuels that already have their infrastructure in place. That won’t happen in our lifetimes.

Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too—which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less.

The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that’s freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid.

To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions—even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana’s current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along.

But true carbon zealots won’t settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can’t run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn’t get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity.

The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil—but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won’t trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.

By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. The carbon police acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it. But carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.

Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper’s, “Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power.” Google itself (the “don’t be evil” company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, “disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam.” But Lithuania’s grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company’s next huge farm will be “near” the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line. All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies—centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation—that have made it such a frugal energy user. But in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism,” Spring 2008).

So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. “Green jobs” means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.

The grand theory for how the developed world can unilaterally save the planet seems to run like this. We buy time for the planet by rapidly slashing our own emissions. We do so by developing carbon-free alternatives even cheaper than carbon. The rest of the world will then quickly adopt these alternatives, leaving most of its trillion barrels of oil and trillion tons of coal safely buried, most of the rain forests standing, and most of the planet’s carbon-rich soil undisturbed. From end to end, however, this vision strains credulity.

Perhaps it’s the recognition of that inconvenient truth that has made the anti-carbon rhetoric increasingly apocalyptic. Coal trains have been analogized to boxcars headed for Auschwitz. There is talk of the extinction of all humanity. But then, we have heard such things before. It is indeed quite routine, in environmental discourse, to frame choices as involving potentially infinite costs on the green side of the ledger. If they really are infinite, no reasonable person can quibble about spending mere billions, or even trillions, on the dollar side, to dodge the apocalyptic bullet.

Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the “Zero-Infinity Dilemma.” The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable—but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn’t be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn’t melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that’s a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.

To judge by actions rather than words, however, few people and almost no national governments actually believe in the infinite rewards of exorcising carbon from economic life. Kyoto has hurt the anti-carbon mission far more than carbon zealots seem to grasp. It has proved only that with carbon, governments will say and sign anything—and then do less than nothing. The United States should steer well clear of such treaties because they are unenforceable, routinely ignored, and therefore worthless.

If we’re truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa. Don’t try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet’s carbon sinks—the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it—that’s the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide. Beyond that, weather and the oceans naturally sink about one-fifth of total fossil-fuel emissions. We should also investigate large-scale options for accelerating the process of ocean sequestration.

Carbon zealots despise carbon-sinking schemes because, they insist, nobody can be sure that the sunk carbon will stay sunk. Yet everything they propose hinges on the assumption that carbon already sunk by nature in what are now hugely valuable deposits of oil and coal can be kept sunk by treaty and imaginary cheaper-than-carbon alternatives. This, yet again, gets things backward. We certainly know how to improve agriculture to protect soil, and how to grow new trees, and how to maintain existing forests, and we can almost certainly learn how to mummify carbon and bury it back in the earth or the depths of the oceans, in ways that neither man nor nature will disturb. It’s keeping nature’s black gold sequestered from humanity that’s impossible.

If we do need to do something serious about carbon, the sequestration of carbon after it’s burned is the one approach that accepts the growth of carbon emissions as an inescapable fact of the twenty-first century. And it’s the one approach that the rest of the world can embrace, too, here and now, because it begins with improving land use, which can lead directly and quickly to greater prosperity. If, on the other hand, we persist in building green bridges to nowhere, we will make things worse, not better. Good intentions aren’t enough. Turned into ineffectual action, they can cost the earth and accelerate its ruin at the same time.

Peter Huber is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and the coauthor, most recently, of The Bottomless Well. His article develops arguments that he made in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate in January.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009-Nov-4, by Leonardo Maugeri:

The Crude Truth About Oil Reserves
The coming century will overflow with petroleum.

It offends conventional wisdom. It will also seem nasty to the doom-sayers, who for decades have predicted an oil scarcity that never came. But the 21st century is very likely to overflow with oil. There are at least three main reasons for this.

First, oil reserves are finite. This is incontrovertible. But even so, no one knows how finite they are. And since we don't know the total amount of oil resources existing underground, it's impossible to calculate the curve of future supply.

The inadequate data we rely on today are from the U.S. Geological Survey, and put the stock of conventional oil resources at least seven to eight trillion barrels. More than two trillion of these are currently deemed to be recoverable, while "proven" reserves are around 1.2 trillion barrels. (The world consumes around 30 billion barrels of oil per year.)

Unconventional oil resources (including ultra-heavy oils, tar sands, shale oils, etc.) may equal the amount of conventional ones, thus doubling the overall figure.

Yet, the concept of resources and reserves is dynamic. Throughout history, new exploration and the development of new technologies have allowed to discover new oil frontiers and to develop them. What's more, the U.S. Geological Survey's figures may well be underestimated. In spite of the one trillion barrels of oil that we have already consumed, the total available reserves continues to grow.

Second, new technologies allow us to extract much more oil than initially assumed. Today, we recover on average less than 35% of the oil contained in known fields, up from 20% in 1980. Even the most mature oil country, the United States, still holds huge volumes of unexploited oil underground. Although the country's proven oil reserves are now only 29 billion barrels, the National Petroleum Council (NPC) estimates that 1.124 trillion barrels are still left underground, of which 374 billion would be recoverable with current technologies.

Actually, there already are technologies that allow to recover much more oil from the ground. Generally known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies, they entail injecting an oil reservoir with chemicals, heat, steam, heavy gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen, and more. Studies and pilot projects are under way using microbes and magnetic forces as well.

The problem with EOR is that it's not cheap. And because for most of the 20th century, oil has been cheap, EOR technologies were considered uneconomical—so they have been rarely used. But where they have been used, the results have been astonishing, leading to the revival of many oil fields that had been considered exhausted. One of the most famous cases is the Kern River field in California. Discovered in 1899, it had produced around 40 million barrels of oil as of 1942. At that time, it was thought that it only had 20 million barrels of additional oil left. Yet, revived through steam injection, the Kern River field had produced two billion barrels as of 2007, and still holds more than 600 million barrels.

Third, only one third of our planet has been sufficiently explored for discovery of new oil deposits. Once again, this is because it was not economical or technically feasible to undertake big and sophisticated exploration campaigns when oil was abundant and cheap, as it was for most of the past century.

What's more, oil exploration has been mainly a North American phenomenon, with the U.S. and Canada accounting for around 90% of all oil-exploration wells ever drilled on the planet. This fact is startling but not well-known. In Saudi Arabia, for example, only about 300 exploration wells have been drilled since the beginning of the oil age in the Kingdom, compared to several hundred thousand in the United States. The contrast is even more striking with respect to Iran, Iraq, and many other large oil countries. Blessed with big oil discoveries in the first half of the 20th century, most big producers simply didn't need to take on extensive exploration or develop sophisticated technologies.

But when new exploration technologies do take root, the results are remarkable. In the past few years, the industry has succeeded in striking oil at depths below 10,000 feet of water and 20,000 feet below the seabed—as in the Gulf of Mexico and the Brazilian offshore. Moreover, new technologies have enabled geologists to see what lies beneath layers of underground salt, which are unevenly distributed beneath the seabed and sometimes thicker than 15,000 feet. The removal of this obstacle is leading to several major ultra-deep offshore discoveries. Fifteen years ago, all this was simply unthinkable.

Technology, thus, is key to discovering and recovering oil from underground. To better grasp this notion, the reader must recall one thing: Contrary to common belief, oil is not held in great underground lakes or caves. Unfortunately, it's imprisoned in a rocky structure, in which there seems to be no room for oil. But beyond the reach of the human eye, a world of often-invisible pores and micro-fractures entrap minuscule droplets of oil, like pumice entraps water. All this makes oil exploration and production so complex, challenging, and often highly expensive.

But a new era is coming, and not only because oil prices are historically high (at $50 per barrel, most EOR technologies become profitable). Other more important factors are at work as well.

To start with, many of the largest oil basins in the world are approaching what I call technological maturity—they are reaching their production limits using conventional technology. This istrue of fields from the Persian Gulf countries to Mexico, Venezuela and Russia. In order to maintain their production in the future, new technologies will be required in these fields.

The second factor is the limited access to oil resources for Western oil companies. Today, more than 90% of the world's oil is under the direct control of producing countries through their national oil companies. The current wave of resource nationalism can only worsen this situation, because several important producers are already able to manage the development of their "easy" oil on their own. Recovering more oil from mature oil fields and discovering it in new, daunting frontiers is the only way to open up new growth opportunities in an otherwise shrinking world for Western oil companies.

Critics may argue that there may actually be plenty of oil left underground, but "easy" and cheap oil is gone forever. This view is partially true. But it is also true that today's difficult oil will turn into tomorrow's easy oil, thanks to cost reductions due to large-scale application of currently expensive technologies. In the 1970s, North Sea oil was considered among the most difficult and expensive oil on our planet. But a decade after initial production had begun, the cost of extracting it had been cut in half.

For these reasons, I dare to make a prediction. By 2030, more than 50% of the known oil will be recoverable. At the same time, the amount of known oil will have significantly grown by then, and a larger portion of unconventional oils will be commonly produced, bringing the total amount of recoverable oil reserves to something between 4.5-5 trillion barrels. What's more, a significant part of "new" reserves will come from the ability to better exploit what we already have.

By 2030 we will have consumed another 650-700 billion of our reserves. Added to the oil burned so far, this implies a reduction of around 1.6 trillion barrels from the 4.5-5 trillion figure. Yet, if my estimates are correct, we will have plenty of oil for the 21st century.

Mr. Maugeri is the author of the book "The Age of Oil" ( 2006) and of the upcoming book "Beyond the Age of Oil: The Myths and Realities of Fossil Fuels and their Alternatives" (2010). He is senior executive vice president of the Italian oil company Eni, and a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-29, by Eric Felten:

Save the Planet? Even the Indians Have Reservations

For a moment there, it looked as if the bitter, decade-long feud over building a "wind farm" in federal waters off Cape Cod was finally over. The plan to put 130 giant wind turbines out on a shoal in Nantucket Sound was never met with the enthusiasm one would expect for such a grand green energy project. Though some environmentalists actually supported the scheme, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, the elites of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and the Cape have tilted at the windmills, deriding them as "visual pollution." The complaints, feints, objections and lawsuits, the regulatory tangles and legislative brickbats, have succeeded in delaying construction for years.

But after it seemed that the last of the hurdles had been cleared a new objection has suddenly surfaced, putting the wind farm on hold yet again: The local Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribes are claiming that the Nantucket Sound is sacred ground. They say that they will no longer be able to practice the religious ritual of greeting the morning sun if distant turbines litter the horizon.

Don't scoff—Native Americans have had some luck with claims that cluttered sightlines violate their religious freedom. Last year, the U.S. Army abandoned construction of a warehouse near the Medicine Bluffs in Oklahoma. The Comanche Nation had sued, saying that the land is sacred. A federal judge decided in its favor, ruling "an unobstructed view of all four bluffs is central to the spiritual experience of the Comanche people." The fiasco cost the Army some $650,000.

The Supreme Court put limits on the sacred-ground gambit in 1988, finding that the Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom does not require cordoning off every acre of land that someone claims to have spiritual significance. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that even if "government action would interfere significantly with private persons' ability to pursue spiritual fulfillment according to their own religious beliefs," that didn't amount to a prohibition of religion.

Still, the lawsuits keep coming. Just this summer, the Supreme Court put an end to five years of litigation over fake snow at an Arizona ski resort. The Snowbowl slopes have never enjoyed reliably robust powder. The owners came up with a plan to pump recycled wastewater from nearby Flagstaff up the mountain and then use it to manufacture snow, as many resorts do. The Hopi, Navajo, Apache, Havasupai and Hualapai tribes objected that the plan would desecrate the mountain. The high court declined to hear their complaint, perhaps because of its expansive implications: The tribes believe that the entire San Francisco Peaks mountain range is central to their religious traditions.

One active litigant of sacred spaces has been Bobby C. Billie, the spiritual leader of a small group of Native Americans who call themselves the Independent Traditional Seminole Nation of Florida (not to be confused with officially recognized Seminole Tribe of Florida). Mr. Billie has worked with the Sierra Club to object to developments that, he says, impinge on burial grounds and other sacred spaces. Which could be just about any building south of Disney World, since he has claimed all of southern Florida to be sacred ground.

Nonindigenous peoples aren't the only threat to hallowed places. The Ute Indian Tribe is trying to build a fish-hatchery using water from Big Springs, Utah; a dissident group of Ute spiritual leaders has been protesting that "the springs are a traditional religious site that must flow naturally without being tapped into a pipeline." Protesters trying to block construction that they consider "a sacrilege" were arrested at Big Springs last month. According to the local newspaper, the Vernal Express, the tribal court has leaned toward letting the hatchery be completed but still hasn't figured out how to resolve the complaint that the tribe itself is defiling sacred ground.

The alliance of Native Americans and Anglos opposing construction also has its limits. Their interests may be aligned off Cape Cod for the moment, but just a month ago, out in the Southwest, the Navajo and Hopi tribes told environmental groups to get lost. The Navajo Nation is trying to build a new coal-fired power plant, and they've tired of outsiders' pesky intrusions. Tribal president Joe Shirley Jr. complained that environmentalists "put the welfare of fish and insects above the survival of the Navajo people."

On the Cape, affluent locals have paired with Indian tribes to thwart environmentalists; in Florida and elsewhere, Native Americans have paired with environmentalists to thwart affluent local developers; and when the tribes are themselves the local developers, they find themselves at odds with all their old allies. It gets awfully messy but makes for a vivid picture of the complications to come as more oxes get Gored. As the outsize obligations of going green proliferate, they may no longer fit so comfortably with the way that even the enlightened like to live.

The Boston Globe has editorialized that "of all the gimmicks that opponents of Cape Wind have resorted to, working with the Wampanoag tribes to protect all of Nantucket Sound for cultural reasons wins the prize for sheer cynicism." True enough. But the Cape Wind affair isn't just another case of NIMBYism run amok; it is a good test of just how durable fashionable environmental convictions are. Wind turbines whirring on the scenic horizon might seem a small price to pay for the cause, but they have proved to be a big headache. The controversy suggests that even the eco-friendliest may start to have second thoughts when fidelity to green principles entails giving up hot showers in the morning or air-conditioning in the summer. We may find that the "truth" is a bit too inconvenient after all.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-4:

The 'Absurd Results' Doctrine
Turning the carbon screws on businesses so they lobby Congress for cap and trade.

'In recent years, many Americans have had cause to wonder whether decisions made at EPA were guided by science and the law, or whether those principles had been trumped by politics," declared Lisa Jackson in San Francisco last week. The Environmental Protection Agency chief can't stop kicking the Bush Administration, but the irony is that the Obama EPA is far more "political" than the Bush team ever was.

How else to explain the coordinated release on Wednesday of the EPA's new rules that make carbon a dangerous pollutant and John Kerry's cap-and-trade bill? Ms. Jackson is issuing a political ultimatum to business, as well as to Midwestern and rural Democrats: Support the Kerry-Obama climate tax agenda—or we'll punish your utilities and consumers without your vote.

The EPA has now formally made an "endangerment finding" on CO2, which will impose the command-and-control regulations of the Clean Air Act across the entire economy. Because this law was never written to apply to carbon, the costs will far exceed those of a straight carbon tax or even cap and trade—though judging by the bills Democrats are stitching together, perhaps not by much. In any case, the point of this reckless "endangerment" is to force industry and politicians wary of raising taxes to concede, lest companies have to endure even worse economic and bureaucratic destruction from the EPA.

Ms. Jackson made a show of saying her new rules would only apply to some 10,000 facilities that emit more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, as if that were a concession. These are the businesses—utilities, refineries, heavy manufacturers and so forth—that have the most to lose and are therefore most sensitive to political coercion.

The idea is to get Exelon and other utilities to lobby Congress to pass a cap-and-trade bill that gives them compensating emissions allowances that they can sell to offset the cost of the new regulations. White House green czar Carol Browner was explicit on the coercion point last week, telling a forum hosted by the Atlantic Monthly that the EPA move would "obviously encourage the business community to raise their voices in Congress." In Sicily and parts of New Jersey, they call that an offer you can't refuse.

Yet one not-so-minor legal problem is that the Clean Air Act's statutory language states unequivocally that the EPA must regulate any "major source" that emits more than 250 tons of a pollutant annually, not 25,000. The EPA's Ms. Jackson made up the higher number out of whole cloth because the lower legal threshold—which was intended to cover traditional pollutants, not ubiquitous carbon—would sweep up farms, restaurants, hospitals, schools, churches and other businesses. Sources that would be required to install pricey "best available control technology" would increase to 41,000 per year, up from 300 today, while those subject to the EPA's construction permitting would jump to 6.1 million from 14,000.

That's not our calculation. It comes from the EPA itself, which also calls it "an unprecedented increase" that would harm "an extraordinarily large number of sources." The agency goes on to predict years of delay and bureaucratic backlog that "would impede economic growth by precluding any type of source—whether it emits GHGs or not—from constructing or modifying for years after its business plan contemplates." We pointed this out earlier this year, only to have Ms. Jackson and the anticarbon lobby deny it.

Usually it takes an act of Congress to change an act of Congress, but Team Obama isn't about to let democratic—or even Democratic—consent interfere with its carbon extortion racket. To avoid the political firestorm of regulating the neighborhood coffee shop, the EPA is justifying its invented rule on the basis of what it calls the "absurd results" doctrine. That's not a bad moniker for this whole exercise.

The EPA admits that it is "departing from the literal application of statutory provisions." But it says the courts will accept its revision because literal application will produce results that are "so illogical or contrary to sensible policy as to be beyond anything that Congress could reasonably have intended."

Well, well. Shouldn't the same "absurd results" theory pertain to shoehorning carbon into rules that were written in the 1970s and whose primary drafter—Michigan Democrat John Dingell—says were never intended to apply? Just asking. Either way, this will be a feeble legal excuse when the greens sue to claim that the EPA's limits are inadequate, in order to punish whatever carbon-heavy business they're campaigning against that week.

Obviously President Obama is hellbent on punishing carbon use—no matter how costly or illogical. And of course, there's no politics involved, none at all.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Oct-12, by John Fund:

Al Gore's First (and Probably Last) Q&A
A Nobel Prize winner takes a few questions.

Before President Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize, the real signal that the Norwegian Nobel committee had become politicized was its 2007 prize to Al Gore, largely for his global warming film "An Inconvenient Truth."

For a public figure, Mr. Gore has been strangely reluctant to answer questions or debate the more controversial parts of his work. But over the weekend, he deigned to take a few questions during a meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin.

Irish documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer was in the line. A former Financial Times journalist, his new film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong," is a direct refutation of Mr. Gore's thesis and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor. When his turn came, Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about a court case in Britain in which a parent had objected to "An Inconvenient Truth" being shown to British schoolchildren because it was largely propaganda, not science.

Mr. Gore swatted away the question by claiming the judge had found in favor of his film. He also briefly addressed one of the objections to his film by scoffing at claims that polar bears weren't an endangered species. Mr. McAleer tried to follow up by pointing out that polar bear populations were increasing, but his microphone was quickly cut off. Organizers insisted that several other people were waiting with questions and they had to move on.

In fact, Mr. Gore didn't answer Mr. McAleer's question and was wrong on the facts. The British court found that An Inconvenient Truth "is a political film" riddled with scientific errors. The judge also held that requiring the film to be shown in schools would be a violation of law, unless accompanied by "guidance" pointing out its errors. The judge concluded that the claimant who objected to the film "substantially won this case by virtue of my finding that, but for the new guidance note, the film would have been distributed in breach of sections 406 and 407 of the 1996 Education Act."

As for polar bears, Mr. McAleer was correct: Surveys show their numbers are increasing.

Mr. McAleer, whose film premiers this weekend, says he's more disappointed in the environmental journalists who give Mr. Gore cover than in the former vice president. Mr. Gore is simply doing what any propagandist with a weak case would do -- avoiding serious debate or exchange. To quote the late William F. Buckley, "There is a reason that baloney rejects the grinder."

from the San Jose Mercury News, 2009-Oct-5, by Dana Hull:

Apple quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce over global warming views

Adding momentum to the revolt against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Apple on Monday resigned from the business group because of its opposition to federal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

Apple is the fourth company and the largest, as well as the first tech company, to part ways with the chamber as the debate over global warming legislation heats up in Congress. It is also the most significant defector because Apple is a leading American brand and consumers strongly identify with its products.

"Apple's departure is a clear signal that more and more of the chamber's members want it to download a new tune when it comes to climate change," said Peter Altman of the National Resources Defense Council.

"There is a growing recognition in the business community that strong clean-energy and climate legislation is the way to strengthen our economy, reduce our oil imports and reduce pollution, but the chamber is turning a deaf ear to the trend."

The chamber is the world's largest business federation, representing 3 million dues-paying businesses large and small. It has a formidable lobbying operation in Washington, touting on its Web site that it "consistently leads the pack on lobbying expenditures." Membership is voluntary and there are no concrete consequences for quitting.

The group has come under fire for opposing an Environmental Protection Agency plan, announced last week, that would allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from nearly 14,000 coal-burning power plants. The chamber also actively opposed the Waxman-Markey energy bill that was passed by the House in June. And a senior chamber official recently drew ridicule when he called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to evaluate evidence of global warming, referring to the 1925 trial of Tennessee teacher John Scopes, who was convicted of teaching evolution. Environmentalists called it a stalling tactic, saying the scientific evidence of climate change is overwhelming.

"Apple is committed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world," Catherine Novelli, Apple's vice president of worldwide government affairs, said in a letter to Thomas Donahue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. "We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases."

The move comes amid efforts by Apple to burnish its green image. The Cupertino-based company revealed its carbon footprint — or total greenhouse-gas emissions — for the first time last month, announcing on its Web site that 53 percent of the 10.2 million tons of annual carbon emissions it takes responsibility for comes from consumer use of its products.

The company has taken a broad view of greenhouse gas emissions, using a "life-cycle analysis" to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for each product, from production to transportation, consumer use and recycling.

"We believe it has resulted in the broadest possible measure of the carbon footprint for each of our new products," Apple said in response to a lengthy questionnaire by the Carbon Disclosure Project, which publishes emissions data for the world's largest corporations. "No other electronics company reports this information at the product level, but we think they should."

Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, which promotes recycling, said Apple has made great strides in recent years. Many of the casings of its products are now made not of plastic but aluminum, which is easier to recycle. Apple also has improved the energy efficiency of its products and has increased its recycling efforts. And it has phased out some of a the worst toxics, including brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

"Apple is not waiting for legislation to ban these substances," the company boasts on the detailed "Environment" section of its Web site. "Not only is every Mac, iPod, and iPhone free of PVC2 and BFRs, we are also qualifying thousands of components to be free of elemental bromine and chlorine, putting us years ahead of anyone in the industry."

The exodus from the chamber began last month, when PG&E announced it was leaving because of the group's "obstructionist tactics" over efforts to regulate global warming. Two other utility companies — PNM of New Mexico and Chicago-based Exelon — followed PG&E's lead. Athletic shoemaker Nike resigned from the chamber's board of directors but has chosen to remain a member in hopes of changing the federation's climate-change policy from within.

As pressure on the chamber has mounted, speculation had grown about which Silicon Valley company would be the first to quit.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work fighting global warming, has been on Apple's board of directors since 2003. Apple declined to comment about Gore's role, if any, in its latest green efforts and decision to leave the Chamber of Commerce. Gore's personal office in Tennessee declined to comment.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-2:

California's Man-Made Drought
The green war against San Joaquin Valley farmers.

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state's water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a "biological opinion" imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year's government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley's water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state's farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years. In August, 50 mayors from the San Joaquin Valley signed a letter asking President Obama to observe the impact of the draconian water rules firsthand.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he "doesn't have the authority to turn on the pumps" that would supply the delta with water, or "otherwise, they would be on." He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a "God Squad" is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor's request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a "severe drought" in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth.

As the crisis has deepened, the political stakes have risen as well. In late August, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack came to the devastated valley to meet with farmers and community leaders. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has pledged to press the issue with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "There are 30 lawsuits on the biological opinions and two separate opinions, one for the smelt and one for the salmon," Ms. Feinstein said, "The rules need to be reconsidered."

The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit on behalf of three farmers in the valley, calling the federal regulations "immoral and unconstitutional." Because the delta smelt is only found in California, the Foundation says, it does not fall under the regulatory powers provided by the Constitution's Commerce Clause. On a statutory basis, the Fish and Wildlife Service also neglected to appropriately consider the economic devastation the pumping restrictions would bring.

Things in California may have to get so bad that they endanger Democratic Congressional incumbents before Washington wakes up, but it doesn't have to be that way. Mr. Salazar has said that convening the God Squad would be "admitting failure" in the effort to save the smelt under the Endangered Species Act. Maybe so, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of humans are also at stake. If the Obama Administration wants to help, it can take up Governor Schwarzenegger's request that it revisit the two biological opinions that are hanging farmers and farm workers out to dry.

from the Far Eastern Economic Review, 2009-Sep-22, by Henry I. Miller:

Life, Death and DDT

Scientists recently discovered in Southeast Asia the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drugs for treating malaria, the artemisinins. Though it is ominous, that finding is hardly surprising, given the widespread misuse of the drugs (such as underdosing and failing to administer it with other antimalarials), the widespread appearance of sub-potent counterfeits, and the tendency of pathogens to develop resistance in the face of evolutionary pressure.

This is a public-health and economic catastrophe in the making. Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes, is one of the worst scourges on the planet, particularly for the inhabitants of poor tropical countries. Forty-one percent of the world's population lives in areas where malaria is transmitted, and each year 350 million to 500 million cases of malaria occur world-wide.

Malaria imposes substantial costs on individuals, families and governments. Costs to individuals and their families include purchase of drugs; travel to and treatment at clinics, lost days of work, absence from school, and expenses for preventive measures. Costs to governments include maintenance of health facilities, purchase of drugs and supplies, public health interventions such as insecticide spraying or distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, lost days of work with resulting loss of income, and lost tourism.

Such costs are a huge economic burden on malaria-endemic countries and impede their economic growth. It has been estimated in a retrospective analysis that economic growth per year of countries with a high incidence of malaria was 1.3% lower than that of countries without malaria.

Approximately 40% of the global population at risk of the disease – some 1.3 billion people – resides in Southeast Asia. The World Health Organization estimates that in that region alone malaria causes 90-160 million infections and more than 120,000 deaths a year. Often, those who survive are terribly debilitated, a drain on their families and society, and condemned to an abbreviated lifespan.

The monumental costs of malaria are perhaps best understood in the context of “Global Burden of Disease” analysis, which assesses and permits comparisons of mortality and loss of health due to diseases, injuries and risk factors for all regions of the world. The overall burden is calculated using the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY), a time-based measure that combines years of life lost due to premature mortality and years of life lived in impaired health. Of 1.6 billion total DALYs throughout the world from all causes in the year 2000, about 3.7 million were attributable to malaria in Southeast Asia.

Artemisinins, originally discovered in China, are safe and exhibit potent, rapid antimalarial activity. In combination with other anti-malarials, they have been used effectively for several years to treat multiple-drug-resistant malaria. With resistance to the artemisinins likely to increase, however, and in the absence of a vaccine, elimination of the vehicle that spreads the disease – the Anopheles mosquito – is the key to preventing epidemics, but flawed public policy limits the available options.

In 1972, on the basis of data on toxicity to fish and migrating birds (but not to humans), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned virtually all uses of the pesticide DDT, an inexpensive and effective pesticide once widely deployed to kill disease-carrying insects. DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which stigmatized the chemical and effectively constituted a prohibition for any purpose.

Although DDT is a (modestly) toxic substance, there is a world of difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment – as farmers did before it was banned – and using it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects. (When it is used at all, it is now sprayed indoors in small amounts to prevent mosquitos from nesting.) A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison.

The regulators who banned DDT also failed to take into consideration the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, some of which are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. With DDT unavailable, many mosquito-control authorities are depleting their budgets by repeated spraying with short-acting, marginally effective insecticides. Moreover, even if mosquitoes become resistant to the killing effects of DDT, they are still repelled by it. An occasional dusting of window- and door-frames is extremely effective.

Since the banning of DDT, insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue have been on the rise. In fact, the huge toll of diseases spread by mosquitos has caused some public health officials to rethink DDT's use. In 2006, after some 50 million preventable deaths, the U.N.'s World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed the use of DDT to kill and repel malaria-causing mosquitoes. At the time, Arata Kochi, the World Health Organization official in charge of malaria said, “We must take a position based on the science and the data. One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT."

But policies based on science and data enjoy a short half-life at the U.N., and in May of this year, with a notable absence of fanfare, WHO reverted to endorsing less effective methods for preventing malaria. In a May 6 statement, the WHO and the U.N. Environment Program announced that their goal is "to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner.” In the absence of effective vaccines or new antimalarial drugs – and the funding and infrastructure to deliver them – this decision is tantamount to mass murder, a triumph of radical enviropolitics over public health.

How can we drain the public policy swamp?

First, the U.S. and other national governments should undertake a re-evaluation of the voluminous data on DDT that have been compiled since the 1970's, and regulators should make DDT available immediately at least for indoor mosquito control.

Second, governments should oppose international strictures on DDT and withhold all funding from U.N. agencies that oppose the use of the “best available technology” (including DDT) to control mosquito-borne diseases.

Third, public health officials should embark on a campaign to educate local authorities and citizens about the safety and potential importance of DDT. People now hear only the reflexively antipesticide drumbeat of the environmental movement, the lamentable legacy of the benighted Rachel Carson and her acolytes.

In order to curb the scourge of malaria, we must destigmatize DDT and use it widely but appropriately. Millions of lives are at stake.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was formerly an official at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Food & Drug Administration.

from the Wall Street Journal Asia, 2009-Sep-29:

Kiwi Carbon Race
New Zealand taxes itself just for the sake of being green.

The global warming religion runs so deep today that most politicians figure it's best enact some sort of green policy, regardless of whether or not that policy actually reduces global warming. Exhibit number one is New Zealand.

The National Party-led government announced last week amendments to the country's existing emissions-trading scheme, fulfilling a campaign pledge. Some sectors will now enter the scheme earlier than planned, while the country's largest export industry, agriculture, will get a two-year reprieve. Wellington's bureaucrats will also measure businesses' "emissions intensity" rather than set hard emissions targets, so that firms aren't penalized for their expansion plans.

The Minister for Climate Change Issues, Nick Smith, said the changes take "a responsible approach to the climate-change problem caused by greenhouse gas emissions while being realistic about how much a small country like New Zealand can contribute." The Nationals are nominally conservative and keen to appear pro-business.

What Mr. Smith didn't say is that from an environmental perspective, it doesn't really matter what New Zealand does. The island nation contributes 0.2% of total global emissions. The amended scheme isn't expected to reduce even that already-miniscule figure much.

The economic cost to business is also hard to estimate, given that the new bill contains carveouts for certain industries and provisions to amend the legislation in future. The government says by 2030, the fiscal cost could reach 2.2 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.6 billion). Independent economists put that figure much higher because Kiwi businesses will become less competitive internationally as their costs rise.

The Nationals are pushing to pass the bill before the December United Nations climate-change meeting. "This emissions-trading scheme will be the first of any country outside of Europe and, as of 1 July 2010, will be the most comprehensive," Mr.Smith enthused. But to what end?

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-28, p.A15, by Bjørn Lomborg:

Technology Can Fight Global Warming
Marine cloud whitening, and other ideas.

We have precious little to show for nearly 20 years of efforts to prevent global warming. Promises in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to cut carbon emissions went unfulfilled. Stronger pledges in Kyoto five years later failed to keep emissions in check. The only possible lesson is that agreements to reduce carbon emissions are costly, politically arduous and ultimately ineffective.

But this is a lesson many are hell-bent on ignoring, as politicians plan to gather again—this time in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December—to negotiate a new carbon-emissions treaty. Even if they manage to bridge their differences and sign a deal, there is a strong likelihood that tomorrow's politicians will fail to deliver.

Global warming does not just require action; it requires effective action. Otherwise we are just squandering time.

To inform the debate, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has commissioned research looking at the costs and benefits of all the policy options. For example, internationally renowned climate economist Richard Tol of Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute finds that a low carbon tax of $2 a metric ton (1.2 tons U.S.) is the only carbon reduction policy that would make economic sense. But his research demonstrates the futility of trying to use carbon cuts to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which many argue would avoid the worst of climate change's impacts.

Some economic models find that target impossible to reach without drastic action, like cutting the world population by a third. Other models show that achieving the target by a high CO2 tax would reduce world GDP a staggering 12.9% in 2100—the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.

Some may claim that global warming will be so terrible that a 12.9% reduction in GDP is a small price to pay. But consider that the majority of economic models show that unconstrained global warming would cost rich nations around 2% of GDP and poor countries around 5% by 2100.

Even those figures are an overstatement. A group of climate economists at the University of Venice led by Carlo Carraro looked closely at how people will adapt to climate change. Their research for the Copenhagen Consensus Center showed that farmers in areas with less water for agriculture could use more drip irrigation, for example, while those with more water will grow more crops.

Taking a variety of natural, so-called market adaptations into account, the Carraro research shows we will acclimatize to the negative impacts of global warming and exploit the positive changes, actually creating 0.1% increase in GDP in 2100 among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In poor countries, market adaptation will reduce climate change-related losses to 2.9% of GDP. This remains a significant, negative effect. The real challenge of global warming lies in tackling its impact on the Third World. Yet adaptation has other positive benefits. If we prepare societies for more ferocious hurricanes in the future, we also help them to cope better with today's extreme weather.

This does not mean, however, that we should ignore rising greenhouse-gas emissions. Research for the Copenhagen Consensus Center by Claudia Kemfert of German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin shows that in terms of reducing climate damage, reducing methane emissions is cheaper than reducing C02 emissions, and—because methane is a much shorter-living gas—its mitigation could do a lot to prevent some of the worst of short-term warming. Other research papers highlight the advantages of planting more trees and protecting the forests we have to absorb C02 and cut greenhouse gases.

Other more speculative approaches deserve consideration. In groundbreaking research, J. Eric Bickel, an economist and engineer at the University of Texas, and Lee Lane, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, study the costs and benefits of climate engineering. One proposal would have boats spray seawater droplets into clouds above the sea to make them reflect more sunlight back into space—augmenting the natural process where evaporating ocean sea salt helps to provide tiny particles for clouds to form around.

Remarkably, Mr. Bickel finds that about $9 billion spent developing this so-called marine cloud whitening technology might be able to cancel out this century's global warming. The benefits—from preventing the temperature increase—would add up to about $20 trillion.

Climate engineering raises ethical concerns. But if we care most about avoiding warmer temperatures, we cannot avoid considering a simple, cost-effective approach that shows so much promise.

Nothing short of a technological revolution is required to end our reliance on fossil fuel—and we are not even close to getting this revolution started. Economists Chris Green and Isabel Galiana from McGill University point out that nonfossil sources like nuclear, wind, solar and geothermal energy will—based on today's availability—get us less than halfway toward a path of stable carbon emissions by 2050, and only a tiny fraction of the way towards stabilization by 2100.

A high carbon tax will simply hurt growth if alternative technology is not ready, making us all worse off. Mr. Green proposes that policy makers abandon carbon-reduction negotiations and make agreements to seriously invest in research and development. Mr. Green's research suggests that investing about $100 billion annually in noncarbon based energy research could result in essentially stopping global warming within a century or so.

A technology-led effort would have a much greater chance of actually tackling climate change. It would also have a much greater chance of political success, since countries that fear signing on to costly emission targets are more likely to embrace the cheaper, smarter path of innovation.

Cutting emissions of greenhouse gases is not the only answer to global warming. Next week, a group of Nobel Laureate economists will gather at Georgetown University to consider all of the new research and identify the solutions that are most effective. Hopefully, their results will influence debate and help shift decision makers away from a narrow focus on one, deeply flawed response to global warming.

Our generation will not be judged on the brilliance of our rhetoric about global warming, or on the depth of our concern. We will be judged on whether or not we stop the suffering that global warming will cause. Politicians need to stop promising the moon, and start looking at the most effective ways to help planet Earth.

Mr. Lomborg teaches at the Copenhagen Business School and is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is the author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" (Knopf, 2007.)

from the Guardian of London, 2009-Sep-16, by Suzanne Goldenberg:

Investors call for action on global warming
More than 180 of world's biggest investors aim to overcome opposition in US and elsewhere to climate change legislation

More than 180 of the world's largest investors, with collective assets of $13tn, put their combined weight behind a passionate call for strong US and international action on global warming in New York today.

"We cannot drag our feet on the issue of global climate change," said Thomas DiNapoli, who heads the $116.5bn New York state pension fund. "I am deeply concerned about the investor risks climate change presents, and the human cost of inaction is unthinkable."

The summit drew together managers of the world's leading investment funds, including those from HSBC, Henderson, Schroders, Société Générale and Scottish Widows, and pensions funds from California public employees to the BBC and Church of England. It was aimed at overcoming entrenched opposition within the US and elsewhere to climate change legislation, by showcasing the scale of investor support for climate change action and the potential for mobilisation of private capital.

"For anybody who suggests that regulating carbon or acting on climate change is impractical, here is appropriate contradiction," said Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, the green investor network that helped organise the conference. However, she warned: "Investors are ready to put money into green tech, but they are not going to act until the government acts and makes clear that the right incentives are in the right place."

The investors' endorsement for action on climate change comes amid signs of a loss of momentum in the final stretch of negotiations towards a deal to tackle global warming in Copenhagen in December. The group warned that failure to act effectively would have disastrous consequences in human and economic terms.

In contrast to inaction, Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 Stern report on the economics of climate change, said: "Building a low carbon economy creates opportunities for investment in new technologies that promise to transform our society in the same way as ... electricity or railways did in the past." He added: "Unmitigated climate change poses a threat to the global economy."

In their joint statement the investors supported the tougher targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions put forward for negotiation at Copenhagen, including cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries of 25-40% by 2020.The conference was held amid rising frustration that the US Congress and the international negotiations are faltering in the final days before Copenhagen. Stern, in his remarks, said it was time to move away from the "quarrelsome stupid politics" surrounding climate change.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-30, by Daniel Yergin:

Why Oil Still Has a Future
Demand in the developing world trumps new technology.

On Aug. 28, 1859, in the backwoods of northwest Pennsylvania, the first successful oil well went into production in the United States, ushering in an energy revolution that would make whale oil obsolete and eventually transform the industrial world. Yet 150 years later, even as demand increases in developing countries, oil's position in the global economy is being questioned and challenged as never before.

Why this debate about the single most important source of energy—and a very convenient one—that provides 40% of the world's total energy? There are the traditional concerns—energy security, diversification, political risk, and the potential for conflict among nations over resources. The huge shifts in global income flows raise anxieties about the possible impact on the global balance of power. Some worry that physical supply will run out, although examination of the world's resource base—including a new analysis of over 800 oil fields—shows ample physical resources below ground. The politics above ground is a separate question.

But two new factors are now fueling the debate. One is the way in which oil has taken on a second identity. It is no longer only a physical commodity. It has also become a financial asset, along with stocks, bonds, currencies and the rest of the world's financial portfolio. The resulting price volatility—from less than $40 in 2004, to as high as $147.27 in July 2008, back down to $32.40 in December 2008, and now back over $70—has enormous consequences, and not only at the gas station and in terms of public anger. It makes it much more difficult to plan future energy investments, whether in oil and gas or in renewable and alternative fuels. And it can have enormous economic impact; Detroit was sent reeling by what happened at the gas pump in 2007 and 2008 even before the credit crisis. Such volatility can fuel future recessions and inflation.

That volatility has become an explosive political issue. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently called in these pages for a global solution to "destructive volatility," although they added that there are "no easy solutions."

The other new factor is climate change. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming mammoth United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen this December, carbon regulation is now part of the future of oil.

But are big cuts in world oil usage possible? Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency project that global energy use will increase almost 50% between 2006 and 2030—with oil still providing 30% or more of the world's energy.

The reason is something else that is new—the globalization of demand. No longer are the growth markets for petroleum to be found in North America, Western Europe and Japan. The United States has already hit "peak gasoline demand."

The demand growth has now shifted, massively, to the fast-growing emerging markets—China, India and the Middle East. Between 2000 and 2007, 85% of the growth in world oil demand was in the developing world. This shift continues: This year, more new cars have been sold in China than in the United States. When economic recovery takes hold, what happens in emerging countries will be the defining factor in the path for overall consumption.

There are two obvious ways to temper demand growth—either roll back economic growth, or find new technologies. The former is not acceptable. Thus, the answer has to lie in technology. The challenge is to find alternatives to oil that can be economically competitive—and convenient and reliable—at the massive scale required.

What will those alternatives be? Batteries and plug-ins and other electric cars—today's favorite? Advanced biofuels? Natural-gas vehicles? The evolving smart grid, which can integrate plug-ins with greener electric generation? Or advances in the internal combustion engine, increasing fuel efficiency two or three times over?

In truth, we don't know, and we won't know for some time. For now, however, it is clear that the much higher levels of support for innovation—and large government incentives and subsidies—will inevitably drive technological change.

For oil, the focus is on transportation. After all, only 2% of America's electricity is generated by oil. Until recently, it appeared that the race between the electric car and the gasoline-powered car had been decided a century ago, with a decisive win by the gasoline-powered car on the basis of cost and performance. But the race is clearly on again.

Yet, whatever the breakthroughs, the actual impact on fuel use for the next 20 years will be incremental due to the time it takes to get large-scale mass production up and running and the massive scale of the global auto industry. My firm, IHS CERA, projects that with aggressive sales volumes and no major bumps in the road (unusual for new technologies), plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles could constitute 25% of new car sales by 2030. But because of the slow turn-over of the overall fleet, gasoline consumption would be reduced only modestly below what it would otherwise be. Thereafter, of course, the impact could grow, perhaps very substantially.

But, in the U.S., at least for the next two decades, greater efficiency in the internal combustion engine, advanced diesels, and regular hybrids, combined with second-generation biofuels and new lighter materials, would have a bigger impact sooner. There is, however, a global twist. If small, low-cost electric vehicles really catch on in the auto growth markets in Asia, that would certainly lower the global growth curve for future oil demand.

As to the next 150 years of petroleum, we can hardly even begin to guess. For the next 20 years at least, the unfolding economic saga in emerging markets will continue to make oil a global growth business.

Mr. Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA, is author of "The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" (Free Press), out in a revised edition this year. His article on the future of oil appears in the most recent issue of Foreign Policy.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-16, by Gregg Easterbrook:

The Man Who Defused the 'Population Bomb'
One of America's greatest heroes remains little known in his home country.

Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.

As a young agronomist, Borlaug helped develop some of the principles of Green Revolution agriculture on which the world now relies including hybrid crops selectively bred for vigor, and "shuttle breeding," a technique for accelerating the movement of disease immunity between strains of crops. He also helped develop cereals that were insensitive to the number of hours of light in a day, and could therefore be grown in many climates.

Green Revolution techniques caused both reliable harvests, and spectacular output. From the Civil War through the Dust Bowl, the typical American farm produced about 24 bushels of corn per acre; by 2006, the figure was about 155 bushels per acre.

Hoping to spread high-yield agriculture to the world's poor, in 1943 Borlaug moved to rural Mexico to establish an agricultural research station, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Borlaug's little research station became the International Maize and Wheat Center, known by its Spanish abbreviation CIMMYT, that is now one of the globe's most important agricultural study facilities. At CIMMYT, Borlaug developed the high-yield, low-pesticide "dwarf" wheat upon which a substantial portion of the world's population now depends for sustenance.

In 1950, as Borlaug began his work in earnest, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, with Borlaug's concepts common, production was 1.9 billion tons of grain for 5.6 billion men and women: 2.8 times the food for 2.2 times the people. Global grain yields more than doubled during the period, from half a ton per acre to 1.1 tons; yields of rice and other foodstuffs improved similarly. Hunger declined in sync: From 1965 to 2005, global per capita food consumption rose to 2,798 calories daily from 2,063, with most of the increase in developing nations. In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that malnutrition stands "at the lowest level in human history," despite the global population having trebled in a single century.

In the mid-1960s, India and Pakistan were exceptions to the trend toward more efficient food production; subsistence cultivation of rice remained the rule, and famine struck. In 1965, Borlaug arranged for a convoy of 35 trucks to carry high-yield seeds from CIMMYT to a Los Angeles dock for shipment to India and Pakistan. He and a coterie of Mexican assistants accompanied the seeds. They arrived to discover that war had broken out between the two nations. Sometimes working within sight of artillery flashes, Borlaug and his assistants sowed the Subcontinent's first crop of high-yield grain. Paul Ehrlich gained celebrity for his 1968 book "The Population Bomb," in which he claimed that global starvation was inevitable for the 1970s and it was "a fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself. Instead, within three years of Borlaug's arrival, Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production; within six years, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals.

After his triumph in India and Pakistan and his Nobel Peace Prize, Borlaug turned to raising crop yields in other poor nations especially in Africa, the one place in the world where population is rising faster than farm production and the last outpost of subsistence agriculture. At that point, Borlaug became the target of critics who denounced him because Green Revolution farming requires some pesticide and lots of fertilizer. Trendy environmentalism was catching on, and affluent environmentalists began to say it was "inappropriate" for Africans to have tractors or use modern farming techniques. Borlaug told me a decade ago that most Western environmentalists "have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things."

Environmentalist criticism of Borlaug and his work was puzzling on two fronts. First, absent high-yield agriculture, the world would by now be deforested. The 1950 global grain output of 692 million tons and the 2006 output of 2.3 billion tons came from about the same number of acres three times as much food using little additional land.

"Without high-yield agriculture," Borlaug said, "increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation, losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion." Environmentalist criticism was doubly puzzling because in almost every developing nation where high-yield agriculture has been introduced, population growth has slowed as education becomes more important to family success than muscle power.

In the late 1980s, when even the World Bank cut funding for developing-world agricultural improvement, Borlaug turned for support to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a maverick Japanese industrialist. Sasakawa funded his high-yield programs in a few African nations and, predictably, the programs succeeded. The final triumph of Borlaug's life came three years ago when the Rockefeller Foundation, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced a major expansion of high-yield agriculture throughout Africa. As he approached his 90s, Borlaug "retired" to teaching agronomy at Texas A&M, where he urged students to live in the developing world and serve the poor.

Often it is said America lacks heroes who can provide constructive examples to the young. Here was such a hero. Yet though streets and buildings are named for Norman Borlaug throughout the developing world, most Americans don't even know his name.

Mr. Easterbrook is a contributing editor of the Atlantic and author of the forthcoming "Sonic Boom," due out by Random House in January 2010.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Jul-22, by Holman W. Jenkins Jr.:

Climate of Evasion

Stephen Fielding, an independent Australian senator, may end up casting the swing vote next month when the Labor government submits its greenhouse emissions trading plan to parliament. His vote is so important that he was allowed to put three questions in writing to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong about why Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government believes man-made carbon dioxide emissions are the main drivers of climate change. Senator Fielding also enlisted three skeptical scientists to review the government's answers.

The most striking sentence from their exchange, however, had nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. It was a plea by the skeptics for a Royal Commission of Enquiry to examine the state of climate science: "The scientific community is now so polarized on the controversial issue of dangerous global warming that proper due diligence on the matter can only be achieved where competent scientific witnesses are cross-examined under oath and under strict rules of evidence."

An amazing statement -- and a fair reflection of what the debate has come to. In this country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has petitioned EPA for a legal hearing into its scientific evidence for manmade climate change, for good reason if you read the technical support document accompanying EPA's recent finding that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. To give one example, the EPA cites as evidence of manmade climate change the fact that recent temperatures were higher than any "comparable period during the preceding four centuries" -- i.e., a period carefully designed to exclude a well-known warming when the Vikings colonized Greenland. On a similar question, Australia's Climate Minister Woo breezily dismissed long-term evidence of climate variability and the absence of a past connection between warming and CO2 on the bogus grounds that, "in terms of timescales of importance for humans, the last 2,000 years are most relevant, because this is the period over which our civilizations have developed."

Putting government scientists under oath to force them to distinguish what is evidence and what is speculation might seem a sad commentary on the climate debate. In both the U.S. and Australia, such a proceeding is overdue.

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Aug-31, by Andrew Porter:

Britain facing blackouts for first time since 1970s
Britain is facing the prospect of widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, government projections show.

Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years, according to official figures.

The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast.

Not since the early 1970s when the three-day week was introduced to preserve coal has Britain faced the prospect of reationing energy use.

The gap between Britain's energy needs and demand throws fresh doubt on the Government's assertion that renewable energy can make up for dwindling nuclear and coal capabilities.

Over the next 10 years, one third of Britain's power-generating capacity needs to be replaced with cleaner fuels. But last night the Conservatives said that Labour had refused to face up to the problem.

The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in a document that accompanied the Government's Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, outlined the plan amid much fanfare.

Under the plan, 40 per cent of the UK's electricity will need to come from low-carbon energy sources including clean coal, nuclear and renewables.

Accompanying the report is an appendix, only published online, which warns of power shortages. It details supplies and expected demand between now and 2030.

It highlights the first short-fall in 2017. The “energy unserved” level reaches 3000 megawatt hours per year.

That is the equivalent of the whole of the Nottingham area being without electricity for a day.

By 2025 the situation worsens with the shortfall hitting 7000 megawatt hours per year. That is the equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain.

Greg Clark, the shadow climate and energy change secretary, said: “Britain faces blackouts because the Government has put its head in the sand about Britain's energy policy for a decade. Over the next 10 years we need to replace one third of our generating capacity but Labour has left it perilously late, and has been forced to admit they expect power cuts for the first time since the 1970s.

“The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of a new generating capacity, and to take steps to ensure that as a matter of national security there is enough capacity to provide a robust margin of safety.”

Mr Clark also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.

It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".

The last time Britain experienced regular power cuts because of shortages of supply was in the early 1970s, when a miners' strike caused coal restrictions. The country was forced to do everyday tasks by candlelight and a three-day week was imposed on all but essential services to try and conserve electricity.

The looming problem in Britain is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants. They are the victim of an EU directive designed to cut pollution.

In addition, four existing nuclear power plants are set to be shut, adding to the need for new sources of energy.

Labour failed for several years to commit to a new generation of nuclear power stations. Several reviews and rows with the green lobby delayed any definitive statement on the issue.

The Government has now given the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power, but it remains up to private energy firms to build the plants. Ministers have been urged by business and the power companies to provide more incentives to make building new power stations more attractive.

As yet no new nuclear power stations have been put forward for approval by the Government.

The privatised power stations have been slow to commit to building new capacity because of Government intransigence and their own misgivings over whether profits can be made.

If plans are approved for new nuclear power stations then they will trigger public consultations and possible inquiries, further delaying the day when new electricity sources can be switched on.

It means that there will not be any new nuclear power stations before 2018. Any drive for renewables, in particular wind farms, is unlikely to meet the gap left.

Under Mr Miliband's new plan it is predicted that by 2020 there will be around 30 per cent of electricity coming from renewables, 10 per cent from Carbon Capture and Storage - even though the technology is still not certain – and only about 8 per cent from nuclear, which is about half of the current level.

There will be huge reliance in the short term on gas, with up to 50 per cent of electricity coming from gas fired power stations.

Despite the belated commitment for new nuclear power stations, Mr Miliband has expressly ruled out giving any financial help to companies contemplating the move. The CBI had hoped that the Energy and Climate Secretary would help by putting a floor of the carbon price and therefore acting as an incentive.

Only a few existing nuclear sites like Sizewell B in Suffolk will still be generating electricity in 2020.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “We are moving in the right direction towards low carbon energy but we are in transition, we can't just click our fingers and expect to end carbon emissions overnight. In the near turn there will be a need for the continued use of fossil fuels.

“We're determined the imports of those fuels should be diverse and the emissions from them capped by the emission trading scheme. We will need to import more gas in the short term – that's why diversifying our import options for gas is important – something else that is happening already.”

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Sep-12, by Richard Gray:

Official responsible for light bulb ban is a former communist

The man responsible for the Europe-wide ban on traditional light bulbs can be revealed as a former Soviet Communist party member from Latvia.

Andris Piebalgs, 51, the European Commissioner for Energy, leads the team which drafted the controversial regulations that will see all incandescent bulbs phased out by 2012.

Far from being a faceless bureaucrat, Mr Piebalgs has waged a public war against opponents of the ban, mocking their stance and accusing them of being “resistant to change”.

Five UK MEPs – including representatives of Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Liberal Democrats – endorsed the policy in a vote earlier this year, before the ban started to take effect at the beginning of this month.

Mr Piebalgs was a Communist party member in the 1980s, when he worked as a headteacher in what was then part of the USSR.

He went on to become a government minster in newly-independent Latvia, then a diplomat, before being appointed to the European Commission in 2004.

Writing on his blog, he likened the negative reaction to energy-saving light bulbs from many consumers to the response generated by past inventions such as the automobile and the telephone.

He recounted how the British Parliament had passed the Red Flag Act in 1865, which required early motor cars to have someone walking in front of them carrying a red flag.

He said: “Great ideas are sometimes slow to catch on ... These are understandable reactions as people are naturally resistant to change and more comfortable with what they (sic) already familiar with.

“Much like the car and the telephone caught on with everyone, I have no doubt that once Europeans start using the modern alternatives to the inefficient light bulbs, they will start to enjoy the advantages they have to offer.”

His comments in his blog, on the Commission's website, brought angry responses from across Europe.

Martin Callanan, a Conservative MEP who opposes the bulb ban, said: “That is a stupid and ignorant assessment. Rather than forcing people to switch my removing their choice we should be using the right incentives to encourage change.”

One critic left a comment on the blog pointing out that when cars was invented, the authorities did not ban horses.

Ferran Tarradellas, spokesman for Mr Piebalgs, said the Commissioner had not intended to cause offence with his blog entry.

He said: "He was just putting forward explanations of why there is some resistance by people to new things. He was trying to say it was understandable some people react to some things with a certain amount of resistance."

The regulation to ban incandescent light bulbs falls under the so called Eco-design directive, which came into force in 2005, setting rules to make electronic products across the EU more energy-efficient.

The European Council, made up of the leaders of all EU member states, decided at 2007 at a summit chaired by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, that the Commission should draw up proposals under the directive to phase out old-style bulbs.

Mr Piebalgs' department was asked to draft the plans.

The regulations were drawn up in a two-year process in discussions with consumer groups and the light bulb industry before a draft was put before the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

When the issue came to a vote in the Environment Committee of the European Parliament in February of this year, a proposal to block the regulations were defeated by 44 votes to 14.

John Bowis, then a Conservative MEP, was the only UK member of the committee to vote against the ban.

He said last night: “It was clear to me, after having heard from a number of health groups, that there was a risk to health with low-energy bulbs.

"There is some evidence of these bulbs causing burns, migraines and affecting people with sight problems.

“I am not totally against low-energy light bulbs, but I do not think incandescent light bulbs should be phased out until there are enough adequate alternatives.”

The UK MEPs who voted in favour of the ban were Bairbre de Brun (Sinn Fein), Jill Evans (Plaid Cymru), Linda McAvan (Labour), Glenis Willmott (Labour) and Fiona Hall (Liberal Democrat).

Mrs Hall said: “I am a long-standing supporter of bringing in low-energy lighting.

"It is understandable that people are nostalgic and reacting negatively to change, but the fact is we do need to change as we can't achieve the sort of cuts in greenhouse gases we need to achieve by carrying on as we have in the past.”

Two British MEPs on the committee, Chris Davies (Lib Dem), a supporter of the ban, and Martin Callanan (Conservative), an opponent, were unable to attend the vote due to other commitments.

from the Wall Street Journal Asia, 2009-Aug-20:

Renewable Tax Down Under
Australia's pols choose a green dream over economic reality.

Australia generates about 85% of its electricity from coal because it has a lot of it and it's cheaper than any other form of energy. Yesterday, political parties on both the right and left decided that was a bad thing, and passed a law to make Australians pay more for energy.

Welcome to loony environmentalism 101, Canberra edition. The Renewable Energy Act passed yesterday requires Australia to produce 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, up from 8% today. Both the ruling Labor Party and opposition Liberal Party hailed the bill as a triumph in the fight against carbon pollution.

Setting a renewable energy target Down Under will do nothing to reduce global carbon emissions. Australia produces only 1.5% of total global emissions. Its emissions per capita are high, but that's because there is a lot of demand for Australian coal, and not many Australians to produce it.

It's easier for politicians to talk about virtue rather than numbers because the numbers don't add up. The Productivity Commission, an independent government body, last year estimated that by 2010 it would cost 30-35 Australian dollars ($25-29) to produce one megawatt hour of electricity from black coal. Wind costs A$55-80, and solar power, A$250-400. Renewable energy is a nice idea, but it's not economically viable.

That's why the Productivity Commission concluded that a renewable energy target would not reduce emissions but "impose additional costs," "most likely lead to higher electricity prices," and "provide a signal that lobbying for government support for certain technologies and industries over others could be successful."

In other words, yesterday's bill is a victory for private sector opportunists who can now cash in on uneconomic schemes that wouldn't be possible without public money—at the expense of Australian taxpayers. The Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne estimates the renewable energy target could raise energy prices by an average of 10%.

If Europe's experience with subsidizing renewable energy is any guide, this green dream could cost real jobs, too. A study released earlier this year from Gabriel Calzada Alvarez estimated Spain lost 2.2 jobs for every "green job" created.

If Australia's politicians really wanted to encourage renewable energy, then it's time to debate nuclear power. Like coal, Australia has a plethora of uranium reserves. It may not be sexy to talk about nuclear plants versus wind farms, but it makes more economic sense.

from Creators Syndicate Inc. via RasmussenReports.com, 2009-May-27, by Tony Blankley:

Economic Reality of 5 Million Green Jobs

In 1845, the French economist Frederic Bastiat published a satirical petition from the "Manufacturers of Candles" to the French Chamber of Deputies, which ridiculed the arguments made on behalf of inefficient industries to protect them from more efficient producers: "We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us.

We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds -- in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country."

This famous put-down highlights the problem of claiming that protecting inefficient producers creates good jobs. Obviously, the money the French would have wasted on unneeded candles could have been spent on needed products and services -- to the increased prosperity of the French economy.

I mention this in the context of the Obama administration's assertion that by subsidizing alternative energy sources, it will create 5 million green jobs. To that end, Congress passed in the stimulus bill $110 billion to subsidize and otherwise support such green efforts. And in conceptual support of that argument, the administration has referred to "what's happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they're making real investments in renewable energy."

Well, in March, one of Spain's leading universities, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, published an authoritative study "of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources." The report pointed out: "This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style 'green jobs' agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created."

The central finding of the study is that -- treating the data optimistically -- for every renewable-energy job that the government finances, "Spain's experience . reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created."

Despite expensive and extensive green-job policies, a surprisingly low number of jobs were created. And about two-thirds of those "green" jobs were just to set up the energy source, in construction, fabrication, installation, marketing and administration. Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable sources of energy.

Each wind industry job created in Spain required a subsidy of about $1.4 million. Overall, the average subsidy cost for each green job was about $800,000 (571,138 euros). And to create about 50,000 green jobs, Spain lost 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, principally in metallurgy, nonmetallic mining and food processing and in the beverage and tobacco industries.

Each green megawatt brought on line destroyed 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy (8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy and 5.05 by mini-hydropower). The total higher energy cost -- the higher cost of renewable energy over the market price of carbon-based energy -- between 2000 and 2008 was about $10 billion. Moreover, the report concluded, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."

The high cost of green energy predictably drove energy-intensive Spanish companies and industries out of Spain to countries with cheaper carbon-based energy, while the cost to Spanish taxpayers of renewable-energy subsidies was "enormous . 4.35 percent of all (value-added taxes) collected, 3.45 percent of the household income tax, or 5.6 percent of the corporate income tax."

There is much more in the report, which at about 50 pages in length would make useful reading for our elected representatives. Those who are worried about global warming may, after studying this report, still want to subsidize renewable-energy production. But it will be hard for such people to honestly continue to believe that they can think they are addressing global warming while creating millions of net new jobs.

Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington.

from news.CNET.com, 2009-May-1, by Erik Palm:

Study: Electric cars not as green as you think

The environmental benefits of electric cars are being questioned in Germany by a surprising actor: the green movement. But those risks don't apply in the U.S., the American electric-car lobby asserts.

The German branch of the environmental group World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) has conducted a study together with IZES, a German institute for future energy systems, on the environmental impact of electric vehicles in Germany.

Just like the U.S., Germany has an ambitious goal of introducing electric vehicles. Germany, which today has 41 million cars, aims to have 1 million electric cars or plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2020. The conclusion of the study is that these electric cars only reduce greenhouse gases marginally.

The study, which was published in German in March, has not been widely circulated in English yet. The WWF Germany said a summary in English is set for publication this summer.

"What surprised us was that the carbon dioxide savings were so small," Viviane Raddatz, vehicle expert at WWF Germany, said in a phone interview from Berlin.

In a best-case scenario, the WWF assumes that the 1 million electric cars or plug-in vehicles would be running on renewable electricity and used at maximum mileage. Electric vehicles do not yet have the range of regular cars.

The carbon dioxide emission reductions from these 1 million electrical vehicles in Germany's transportation sector would be only 1 percent, according to the study, and overall national carbon dioxide emissions would only be cut by 0.1 percent. "That is not a very big deal," Raddatz said, adding that "it is not going to help us out of the transportation emission mess."

Worst-case scenario
A worst-case scenario would be that the electric cars would run on electricity from coal instead of from renewable sources.

That could be the case when extra electricity is needed to charge the plug-in cars in the early evening. That's when commuters could significantly add to the electricity demand at a time of day when people are returning home and electricity use is already peaking.

Today, the German plants that deliver marginal electricity are fueled by coal. That is the main problem, according to the study. The research adds that to produce the same amount of energy, coal emits more carbon dioxide than even gasoline.

"The irony is that you don't need a lot more electricity for electric cars," Raddatz, said. "But the problem is that if they cause these peaks, we would have to have power plants that would be ready to start (as) the massive charging starts."

An electric car with a lithium ion battery powered by electricity from an old coal power plant could emit more than 200g of carbon dioxide per km, compared with current average gasoline car of 160g of carbon dioxide per km in Europe, according to the study. The European Union goal for 2020 is 95g of carbon dioxide per km.

Load management needed
The WWF said smart systems that help manage the energy load and battery charge systems could smooth the peaks overnight. With more than 1 million vehicles plugged in, load management is essential, but a smart grid is not enough, according to the study. A lot of electricity storage is needed as well.

"Car batteries are one thing, but you need to develop other kinds of storage as well," Raddatz said. You want to make sure you can get a lot of energy from renewable or you have no CO2 savings."

Germany has voted to phase out nuclear power by 2020, so the WWF has not considered that energy source in its study after 2020.

As mentioned before, the WWF assumes that only half the current transportation system could be replaced by electric cars.

The study says that with electric cars' present range they could only replace, at best, half of the kilometers driven.

President Obama has set a goal for the U.S. to have 1 million electric vehicles by 2015.

The Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA), the lobby organization for electric cars in the U.S., said that the risks raised by the WWF study in Germany will not be the same in the U.S.

"For the U.S., there will be environmental benefits because the grid is getting cleaner," said Jennifer Watts, spokeswoman for EDTA. She quotes a study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory saying that 73 percent of light-duty vehicles could be connected to the grid today without a problem, and that an EPRI study shows that each region of the country will yield reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when the electric car is introduced.

Still a place for electric cars
The German study--which limited its scope to studying energy efficiency and did not consider the economics of electric vehicles--does not rule out the electric car. It emphasizes that electric cars could have a future role for low-carbon urban transport for individuals. It also suggests that marginal electricity should come from a clean source and a smart grid, with smart load management needed. But that system would take a long time to develop, the study stresses.

"The electric car is a serious option for low-carbon future transportation," Raddatz said, "but must be linked with renewable energy to make the difference."

Erik Palm, a business reporter for Swedish national television, is joining CNET News as a spring 2009 fellow with Stanford University's Innovation Journalism program. When he's not working, he enjoys kayaking and exploring California's hiking trails.

from the National Post of Canada, 2009-Apr-24, by Lawrence Solomon:

Australia becoming a Denier Nation

A break from faith in Australia! The continent down under, which until recently adhered to a strict form of global warming dogma, is experiencing an enlightenment.

“Beware the climate of conformity,” warns the headline for a column on global warming in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years,” starts the column by Paul Sheehan, one of Australia's top authors. “Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I — and you — capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits?”

Sheehan closes by answering in the affirmative, with “a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.”

“Wong is wrong on ETS,” runs an editorial in The Australian, criticizing Climate Change Minister Penny Wong for her proposal to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme in the midst of a recession. Instead, the newspaper asks the government to listen to the Australian Coal Association and the Australian Industry Group and postpone any decision for at least a year, if not forever. Jobs and the economy should not be threatened, the paper declares, particularly when climate change is an unproven theory.

“Garnaut turns on Government's greenhouse scheme,” reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, advising its audience that “The future of the Government's greenhouse gas trading regime is under question again, this time from the man who helped to design it.

“Ross Garnaut — who headed the Government's review of climate change policy — has told a Senate Committee that it might be better if the scheme in its current form is not passed into law.

“That adds to the growing uncertainty about emissions trading, which is due to be up and running by next year.”

Still more: “Climate change science isn't settled,” announces an opinion piece in The Australian by Canadian geologist Jan Veizer of the University of Ottawa. Veizer mocks the notion that “the tiny — biologically controlled — carbon cycle drives the climate.”

And more: “Planet doomsayers need a cold shower,” writes Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald, in an extensive article that damns “the global warming scare campaign.” She cites at length a hugely influential new book by University of Adelaide geologist, Ian Plimer, Heaven And Earth (subtitled “Global Warming: The Missing Science”). It is “a comprehensive scientific refutation of the beliefs underpinning the idea of human-caused climate change,” she explains, pointedly noting that Plimer's book was written “for those out there with an open mind wanting to know more about how the planet works. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open.”

Plimer's book could not have landed at a more opportune time. With Australia's resource-based economy rocked by recession, large swathes of the public are for the first time asking themselves if the job losses and economic dislocations that would come of reducing carbon dioxide emissions are really necessary. At the same time, the Australian Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy is hearing testimony on the wisdom of an Emissions Trading Scheme. Not only have the politicians running the proceedings decided to allow climate sceptics to express themselves, much of the press has decided to report their views fairly.

Into this global warming glasnost that Australia is experiencing steps Plimer, with perspectives that would once have been derided and dismissed.

To those who claim it is economically prudent to curb greenhouse gases based on the information known to date, Plimer responds that the business world would never “make trillion-dollar decisions without a comprehensive and expensive due diligence.” To those who claim that an overwhelming consensus of scientists associated with the United Nations climate change report have concluded that man is responsible for bringing us to global warming catastrophe, Plimer points to the report's chapter dealing with man's role, which is “based on the opinions of just five independent scientists.”

Thanks to Plimer, the press and politicians, Australia is likely to become the developed world's third Denier Nation, after the Czech Republic, where only 11% of the public blame humans for global warming, and the United States, where only 34% blame humans.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

from BBC News, 2009-May-12, by Chris Mason:

Belgian city plans 'veggie' days

Ghent -- The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.

Starting this week there will be a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors will opt for vegetarian meals.

Ghent means to recognise the impact of livestock on the environment.

The UN says livestock is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, hence Ghent's declaration of a weekly "veggie day".

Public officials and politicians will be the first to give up meat for a day.

Schoolchildren will follow suit with their own veggiedag in September.

It is hoped the move will cut Ghent's environmental footprint and help tackle obesity.

Around 90,000 so-called "veggie street maps" are now being printed to help people find the city's vegetarian eateries.

from the Denver Post, 2009-Apr-22, by David Harsanyi:

Harsanyi: Save the humans

Get ready for a dazzling display of environmental alarmism this week as Washington takes up the evils of modern living.

When it comes to the Earth's demise, no one is innocent. Take, for instance, the recent story about a group of scientists who are wagging their scrawny fingers at our rotund brothers and sisters for contributing to the planet's demise by relentlessly stuffing their pudgy faces. (Eat green; be green!)

You see, eating more means humans must produce more food — and more CO2. It means we must raise more soon-to-be juicy steaks that have a tendency to emit greenhouse gases that reek. You might find the thought of regulating food intake and livestock flatulence a bit bizarre, but, hey, if it means saving the Earth, why not?

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency did bravely move forward by finding that things like smokestacks and breathing — or anything related to greenhouse gases — endanger the public health and welfare. And since the EPA can now regulate CO2, it can have a say in nearly everything we do with little regard for silly distractions like economic tradeoffs.

We're not talking about your cars or soon-to-be extinct trucks, but your scooters and toasters, your dryers, your coffeehouses, Subaru dealerships, organic-produce collectives, and your pets. (Do you really need two dogs? Come to think of it, do you really need two children?)

It's not going to be easy. Climate change is the cause of — and caused by — everything. Reputable news pieces regularly allege, without any evidence, that climate change is the culprit in hundreds of dreadful events. From the decline of outdoor youth hockey, to the scourge of teenage drinking, to the massacre in Darfur, you guessed it, global warming is always the boogeyman.

Who knew that a shift of 0.04 degrees Celsius in a decade could be so terrible?

What's worse than the EPA grabbing power over CO2? Well, leading Luddite and Congressman Henry Waxman is worse. His proposal sets carbon reduction goals of 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050, and, with cap-and-trade, effectively nationalizes energy production.

This incremental destruction of prosperity is probably going to have to be modified as soon as citizens get a taste of reality. But how could any reasonable or responsible legislator suggest an 83 percent cut in emissions without any practical or wide-scale alternative to replace it, or any plan to pay for it all?

When people are on a crusade, I guess, logic rarely plays a part. And when Waxman and friends hold climate-change hearings this week, they will feature more than 50 witnesses, the majority, no doubt, prepared to spin some exceedingly (non) chilling tale to the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.

I suspect that few of them will mention a new report from the non- partisan Tax Foundation on cap-and- trade policy that illustrates all American households would face an annual cost of nearly $144.8 billion per year — "disproportionately borne by low-income households, those under age 25 and over 75 years . . . and single parents with dependent children."

Even fewer will mention a new Rasmussen poll that shows only one out of three voters now believe global warming is caused by human activity — the lowest number ever. Forty-four percent of likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent blame some other reason.

This shift in public opinion may be a blip or it may be a trend. But if we're ever to enact energy policy that is both environmentally responsible and economically reasonable, we're going to need a rational discussion. We haven't come close yet.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-16, by Pete du Pont:

Sapping America's Energy
Global-warming legislation would drive up the cost of everything.

If Americans don't start paying attention to what Congress is up to, our nation's energy policy may seriously change for the worse. A bill styled the American Clean Energy and Security Act, sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, soon goes before the House. The enactment of laws to combat global warming is an established priority of the new administration and Congress, and their impact on the lives and opportunities of America's people would be substantial and detrimental.

As Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted last month, "Waxman-Markey would put big government in charge of how much energy people can use. It would be the biggest government intervention in people's lives since the second world war, which was the last time people had to have rationing coupons in order to buy a gallon of gas." And for what? According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Earth's average rate of warming in the 30 years from 1977 to 2007 was just 0.32 degree Fahrenheit per decade, and the global surface temperature has remained virtually flat since 1998.

The Waxman-Markey bill contains some serious mistakes. Slighting nuclear power is one. Nuclear plants generate no carbon dioxide or other pollution, and the 104 already in operation provide America with 73% of its CO2-free electricity generation. It is estimated that each new nuclear plant would employ some 2,000 workers to build and 500 to 600 people to operate. America could use some 40 more nuclear plants, but in the Waxman bill and the Obama administration's policies, additional nuclear power plants are likely nonexistent.

Cap-and-trade policies are another part of the bill intended to give the government more regulatory authority over the energy industry and a great deal more money--perhaps trillions of dollars--some of which would be available to grant to favored people and industries. The bill's outline does not say who would the energy allowances free, who would have to pay for them, and how much they would pay, but it does intend to make energy much more expensive and less available to consumers. Electricity, oil and large manufacturing businesses (which are jointly responsible for 85% of America's greenhouse emissions) would have to obtain at some price federal government pollution permits--"tradable federal permits," or "allowances," for each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. These permits would require reduced plant emissions over time, from a mandate of 3% below 2005 levels in 2012, to 20% in 2020, 42% in 2030, and 83% in 2050.

Another economic mistake at the core of the Waxman bill is the reinstatement of protectionism. Since America's energy restrictions would not apply to manufacturers of goods America imports, unregulated foreign companies could sell their goods in America at lower costs, and thus U.S. manufacturers could be "put at a disadvantage relative to overseas competitors." The Waxman bill would seek to remedy this by making companies eligible for rebates determined and allocated by Washington. If the president found that the rebates "do not substantially correct competitive imbalances" he could establish what Mr. Waxman calls a "border adjustment program" that would require foreign companies to pay for special allowances to "cover" the "carbon contained in U.S.-bound products."

In other words, America would add an international carbon tariff--a global energy tax--to imported goods (just as there was in the Boxer-Lieberman bill that was defeated last year). That would amount to strong protectionism and lead to matching tariffs on goods exported from America.

Not included in the Waxman discussion draft summary is the question of what will become of the cash the government would receive from selling the cap-and-trade allowances. In the Boxer-Lieberman bill, it was estimated that auctioning off half the permits would gain the government some $3.3 trillion by 2050, and that would be handed out by the government to pet projects like "environmental" job training, "wildlife adaptation," international aid, domestic mass transit and so on.

But rather than creating a new subsidy, wouldn't we be better off distributing those revenues to the American people, who would have to pay the carbon tax through higher-priced electricity and manufactured goods? Such an idea was recently offered by author Peter Barnes: send the trillions of dollars received from the companies buying the permits to people as a "cap-and-trade dividend" in the form of equal personal checks for all Americans. The Obama administration thinks the opposite--that a majority of the money raised by cap-and-trade should be sent only to taxpayers making under a certain amount as a part of his Making Work Pay credit.

The Waxman-Markey plan intends to give the federal government near-total control of America's energy supplies and usage. Depending upon how the allowances are organized, it may also create the largest redistribution of money from American families to the federal government since the creation of the American income tax. To keep America prospering, our economy growing, and jobs expanding, we need not less energy, but more of it; not higher energy prices but lower ones; and more energy generation through nuclear power, clean coal and offshore oil and gas as well as possible new energy sources. Waxman-Markey will take us in one direction, but to keep America prospering we need to go in the opposite one.

from the New York Times, 2009-Apt-17, by John M. Broder:

E.P.A. Clears the Way for Regulation of Warming Gases

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that threaten public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that for the first time in the United States will regulate the gases blamed for global warming.

The E.P.A. said the science supporting its so-called endangerment finding was “compelling and overwhelming.” The ruling triggers a 60-day comment period before any proposed regulations governing emissions of greenhouse gases are published.

Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said: “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama's call for a low-carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation.”

She said that combatting the emissions that create greenhouse gases would help create millions of new jobs and lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil by fostering a more fuel-efficient transportation industry.

As the E.P.A. begins the process of regulating these climate-altering substances under the Clean Air Act, Congress is engaged in writing wide-ranging energy and climate change legislation that could pre-empt any action taken by the agency. President Obama and Ms. Jackson have repeatedly said that they much prefer that Congress address global warming rather than have the E.P.A tackle it through administrative action.

The United States has come under fierce international criticism for trailing other industrialized nations in moving to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants. With this move, and the parallel action by Congress toward a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases, the American government can now point to concrete progress as nations begin to write a new international climate change treaty.

However, the E.P.A.'s announcement on Friday did not include any specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases or new requirements for energy efficiency in vehicles, power plants or industry. Those would emerge after a period of comment and rule-making or in any legislation approved by Congress.

Two years ago this month, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether greenhouse gases harm the environment and public health and, if not, to explain why. Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that they do, but top officials of the George W. Bush administration suppressed the finding and took no action.

In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the finding were justified. Friday's announcement is the fruit of that review. The E.P.A. action was approved after two weeks of scrutiny by the White House Office of Management and Budget's regulatory affairs arm.

According to the E.P.A. announcement, the proposed finding was based on rigorous scientific analysis of six gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — that have been widely studied by scientists around the world. Their studies showed that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human activity, the agency said, and these high levels are very likely responsible for the increase in average temperatures and other changes in the earth's climate.

Among the ill effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and the other gases, the agency found, were increased drought, more heavy downpours and flooding, more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires, a steeper rise in sea levels, more intense storms and harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.

Environmental advocates applauded a decision that they had sought for years.

“At long last, the E.P.A. has officially recognized that carbon pollution is harmful to our health and to the climate,” said David Doniger, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council and one of the lawyers in the Supreme Court case. “The heat-trapping pollution from our cars and power plants leads to killer heat waves, stronger hurricanes, higher smog levels, and many other direct and indirect threats to human health.”

“With this step,” he added, “Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama administration have gone a long way to restore respect for both science and law. The era of defying science and the Supreme Court has ended.”

Auto companies, utilities and other emitters have long dreaded this day but reacted with caution because the regulatory process has just begun and they hope to address their concerns in the legislation now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Roger Martella, general counsel at E.P.A. during the Bush administration, said the finding marks the official start of an era of controlling carbon emissions in the United States.

“The proposal, once finalized, will give E.P.A. far more responsibility than addressing climate change,” Mr. Martella said. “It effectively will assign E.P.A. broad authority over the use and control of energy, in turn authorizing it to regulate virtually every sector of the economy.”

The E.P.A. said that it was not immediately proposing any new rules and reiterated the administration's stance that a legislative solution is far preferable.

“Today's proposed finding does not include any proposed regulations,” the agency statement said. “Before taking any steps to reduce greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, E.P.A. would conduct an appropriate process and consider stakeholder input.

“Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue and create the framework for a clean energy economy.”

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-24:

Reckless 'Endangerment'
The Obama EPA plays 'Dirty Harry' on cap and trade.

President Obama's global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but why let an irritant like democratic consent interfere with saving the world? So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.

The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.

This is a momentous decision that has the potential to affect the daily life of every American, yet most of the media barely noticed, and those that did largely applauded. When America's Founders revolted against "taxation without representation," this is precisely the kind of kingly diktat they had in mind.

Michigan Democrat John Dingell helped to write the Clean Air Act, as well as its 1990 revision, and he says neither was meant to apply to carbon. But in 2007 five members of the Supreme Court followed the environmental polls and ordered the EPA to determine if CO2 qualified as a "pollutant." The Bush Administration prudently slow-walked the decision. As Peter Glaser, an environmental lawyer at Troutman Sanders, told Congress in 2008, "The country will experience years, if not decades, of regulatory agony, as EPA will be required to undertake numerous, controversial, time-consuming, expensive and difficult regulatory proceedings, all of which ultimately will be litigated."

The Obama EPA has now opened this Pandora's box. The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant. Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered. For global warming, this is going to be a hugely expensive futility parade.

Greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere, and it doesn't matter where they come from. A ton of emissions from Ohio has the same effect on global CO2 as a ton emitted in China; and even if Ohio figured out a way to reduce its emissions to zero, it would still have no control over the carbon content in its ambient air. But under the law, EPA would be required to severely punish Ohio -- and every state -- for not complying with NAAQS.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all "major" sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes "any building, structure, facility or installation." This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as SOX or NOX, but it's extremely low for carbon. Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA's preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude.

The EPA took the highly unusual step of not accompanying its endangerment finding with actual proposed regulations. For now, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims her agency will only target cars and trucks. That is bad enough. It probably means, for example, that California's mileage fleet burdens will seep out to every other state. So even as taxpayers are now paying tens of billions of dollars to prop up GM and Chrysler, Ms. Jackson will be able to tell the entire auto industry it must make even more small cars that consumers don't want to buy.

Still, why confine the rule only to cars and trucks? By the EPA's own logic, it shouldn't matter where carbon emissions come from. Carbon from a car's tailpipe is the same as carbon from a coal-fired power plant. And transportation is responsible for only 28% of U.S. emissions, versus 34% for electricity generation. Ms. Jackson is clearly trying to limit the immediate economic impact of her ruling, so as not to ignite too great a business or consumer backlash.

But her half-measure is also too clever by half. By finding carbon a public danger, she is inviting lawsuits from environmental lobbies demanding that EPA regulate all carbon sources. Massachusetts and two other states have already sued in federal court to force the EPA to create a NAAQS for CO2.

Which brings us back to the Obama Administration's political roulette. Democrats know that their cap-and-tax agenda is losing ground, notably among Midwestern Senators. The EPA "endangerment" is intended to threaten businesses and state and local governments until they surrender and support the Obama agenda. The car industry is merely the first target, meant to be the object lesson.

Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey put it this way at MIT recently: "Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your Congressman or Senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? . . . Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation in terms of how the EPA process will include them."

This "Dirty Harry" theory of governance -- Do you feel lucky? -- is as cynical as it is destructive. And contra Mr. Markey, if cap and tax is killed this year, it will be done in by Democrats, many of whom are starting to realize the economic harm it would inflict. In March, the Senate voted 89 to 8 on a resolution vowing to pass a climate bill only if "such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices."

That's called democracy, but for the Obama Administration such debate is an inconvenient truth. If they can't get Congress to pass their agenda, they'll use EPA and the courts to impose it. How lucky do you feel?

from BBC News, 2009-Apr-13:

Attenborough warns on population

The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become a patron of a group seeking to cut the growth in human population.

On joining the Optimum Population Trust, Sir David said growth in human numbers was "frightening".

Sir David has been increasingly vocal about the need to reduce the number of people on Earth to protect wildlife.

The Trust, which accuses governments and green groups of observing a taboo on the topic, say they are delighted to have Sir David as a patron.

Fraught area

Sir David, one of the BBC's longest-standing presenters, has been making documentaries on the natural world and conservation for more than half a century.

In a statement issued by the Optimum Population Trust he is quoted as saying: "I've never seen a problem that wouldn't be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more."

The Trust, which was founded in 1991, campaigns for the UK population to decrease voluntarily by not less than 0.25% a year.

It has launched a "Stop at Two" online pledge to encourage couples to limit their family's size.

Other patrons include Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and Dame Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall institute.

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said population was a fraught area of debate, with libertarians and some religious groups vehemently opposing measures by governments to influence individual fertility.

In turn, the Trust accuses policy makers and environmentalists of conspiring in a "silent lie" that human numbers can grow forever with no ill-effects.

In January 2009, Sir David revealed that he had received hate mail from viewers for not crediting God in his nature programmes.

His most recent documentary focused on how Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution and why it remained important.

[Darwin would take rather a dim view of Attenborough. -AMPP Ed.]

from the Australian, 2009-Apr-18, by Greg Roberts:

Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice -- fast ice and pack ice -- does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.

Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off -- I'm talking 100km or 200km long -- every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

from the National Post of Canada, 2009-Mar-28, by Vanessa Farquharson:

What's the point of Earth Hour

When the great blackout happened in August, 2003, it was a nerve-wracking but thrilling experience. People walked out of their homes and into public spaces; they ate entire tubs of ice cream; they came together and relied on various unplugged forms of entertainment to get through the night.

Tonight's Earth Hour is like a lightweight version of this. You can still blow-dry your hair, charge your cellphone, check your email, make toast and heat your home to 25 C-- just as long as your lights are switched off between 8:30 and 9:30 p. m.

What if your lights are compact fluorescent bulbs? What if your house is powered by windmills through a company like Bullfrog? Well, it doesn't really matter, because this is about symbolism.

Now in its third year, the original Earth Hour took place in Sydney, Australia, and saw over two million homes and businesses turn off their lights. The aesthetic impact alone was so impressive that last year, an estimated 50 million people around the world took part in the event, during which major landmarks such as the CN Tower and Golden Gate Bridge were plunged into temporary darkness. This evening, the goal is to have a billion people, including businesses and government organizations, switch off their lights.

Many are already on board: According to one survey, 70% of Canadians plan on taking part in Earth Hour; The Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto will be dimming its iconic neon sign; restaurants such as Toula are offering candlelit dinners; and the Ontario Science Centre is hosting a "Star Party," where guests can view the night sky with high-powered telescopes and listen to First Nations storytelling and live drumming.

Although these are nice ideas and will surely provoke some sort of reflection on the state of our climate, how effective will these events actually be?

Ron Pushchak, a Ryerson University professor who specializes in urban planning and environmental assessment, has been studying the impact of green movements for years. He believes Earth Hour may not be very influential yet, but there's a lot of potential for it to gain traction as the years go by.

"The original Earth Day remains the single largest public demonstration in the Western world," he says. "People of all walks of life were out in the streets, marching, chanting, demonstrating, insisting we change the way environmental decisions were being made. ... Following that, a flurry of important legislation, real changes in policy, began to occur."

But will an hour have the same effect on climate change?

"In this case, a symbolic gesture is exactly what we need," he argues. "It creates the impression that there's a consensus shared amongst the population, and that's what politicians like to see. But we need it all the time, every year, to really engage the hearts and minds of people."

And that's the tricky part. Even getting to an hour poses some philosophical dilemmas, as evidenced by the About page of the campaign's website:

"People of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote-- switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming."

So if David Suzuki were to leave his bathroom light on by accident, he'd be supporting global warming?

Should every person feel compelled to take part in this because it's the right thing to do, morally speaking, or because it feels good to make a green statement? Is there a concrete way to measure the effectiveness of Earth Hour? Should it be limited to just lighting, or should we be trying to reduce all forms of energy during this time? And must those who refuse or are unable to take part be admonished for doing so?

As Pushchak suggested, perhaps it just takes time to figure these things out. In the meantime, however, let's hope Canadians switch off their lights at more logical times throughout the year -- like, say when they leave the room -- and do this regardless of whether they're being watched.

Vanessa Farquharson's book, Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days will be published next month by Wiley ($18.95).

from RealClearPolitics.com, 2009-May-16, by Jay Ambrose:

Al Gore's Hypocrisy Astounding

Here's the first thing you shouldn't do in front of Al Gore: Be skeptical about catastrophic, human-caused global warming. He will rip your reputation apart, just as he once did to reputable, honorable scientists in congressional hearings.

Here's the second thing you shouldn't do in front of Al Gore: Ask him whether he himself might have the kind of conflict of interest that he takes for granted in others. For heaven's sake, do not get into the question of whether he might make a lot of money with the passage of a global warming cap-and-trade tax that he has been fighting for.

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee thought it might be interesting to find out. After all, Gore is associated with a venture capital company that has invested about $1 billion in companies that just might make a bundle should cap-and-trade become law. So she asked if he would benefit.

Emitting a sigh made infamous in a debate way back when, Gore first replied that "a green economy . . . is good for all of us." He then said yes, he was a partner in the venture capital company, adding quickly and emphatically that "every penny" he made from environmental investments went to the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection.

With a smirk on his face, he huffed that no one who knew him would ever think he had been working on the global warming issue for 30 years for "greed." When Blackburn said she wasn't making accusations, he said, "I understand exactly what you're doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does."

Blackburn called it quits at about that point, although she could have noted that Gore was founder and chairman of the non-profit group he mentioned. She could have explored whether some of the money he gives to the group redounds to him in other ways, such as expense-paid trips. She could also have gotten into reports that his net worth is now $100 million, when it was put at $2 million when he left politics. She could have pursued the tax advantages of his charitable donations.

But she didn't, and I think it is just as well she didn't. The money Gore's made since he was vice president seems to come mostly from Internet ventures and speeches given at $175,000 a whack, and I doubt seriously that his campaign on global warming has anything much to do with money. The man is a true believer, or so I believe.

And yet, his hypocrisy is astounding. While he cannot believe anyone could ever conceivably have reason to question his motives, he has never hesitated to question the motives of those who differed with him. In that case, you were bought out by ExxonMobil or are an equivalent of Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi-scheme swindler.

Congressional hearings he conducted in 1992 have been described as inquisitorial show trials. One victim, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, has written about scientists being "in the crosshairs" of Gore, who "tried to bully" them into changing "their views and supporting his climate alarmism." Lindzen also refers to a failed Gore effort to "enlist Ted Koppel (then a TV host) in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists."

Lindzen is viewed by some as one of the nation's foremost climatologist. Unlike Gore - whose movie and slide show have been rife with error - he knows what he is talking about, probably a major reason Gore won't debate him. Lindzen years ago did about $10,000 worth of work as a witness for fossil-fuel companies. There was nothing wrong with that, and he clearly was not corrupted by it.

Whatever Gore believes, the global warming debate is not over, but what should be over is waging it as an ad hominem contest in which science itself is hurt along with scientists whose arguments should be weighed on their merits.

from WorldNetDaily.com, 2009-Mar-29:

Al Gore ignores 'Earth Hour'
Driveway to Nashville mansion flooded with electricity

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" may have inspired many to participate in yesterday's "Earth Hour" by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., but maybe the former vice president didn't get the memo.

Drew Johnson, the president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, decided to drive by Gore's mansion in Nashville at 8:48 p.m. and records that floodlights were on illuminating the driveway leading up to the main quarter.

"I pulled up to Al's house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48 p.m. – right in the middle of Earth Hour," he wrote on his blog. "I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on."

He added: "The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore's mansion. I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn't be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees."

Earth Hour was deemed a huge success by its organizers, the World Wildlife Fund. The group estimated that 1 billion worldwide took part.

From an Antarctic research base and the Great Pyramids of Egypt, from the Colosseum in Rome to the Empire State building in New York, illuminated patches of the globe went dark last night to highlight what the group believes is a man-made threat of climate change. Time zone by time zone, nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries dimmed nonessential lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., according to organizers.

WWF called the event, which began in Australia in 2007 and grew last year to 400 cities worldwide, "the world's first-ever global vote about the future of our planet."

The United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, called the event a clear sign that the world wants negotiators seeking a climate change agreement to set an ambitious course to fight global warming.

The event was initiated with hopes of impacting talks in Bonn this week to craft a deal to control emissions of the heat-trapping gases supposedly responsible for "global warming." The talks are due to culminate in Copenhagen this December.

"Earth Hour was probably the largest public demonstration on climate change ever," de Boer told delegates from 175 nations. "Its aim was to tell every government representative to seal a deal in Copenhagen. The world's concerned citizens have given the negotiations an additional and very clear mandate."

from the New York Times website, 2009-Feb-23, by John Tierney:

Honest Science in Washington

What kind of advice should scientists give to politicians? I take up that question in my Findings column about Roger Pielke Jr.’s book, “The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics,” which argues that too many scientists stealthily pass off their own political views as incontestable scientific truths. As a result, they’re tempted to try to win political debates by hyping their own expertise and denigrating their opponents as “unscientific.”

One of the “stealth issue advocates” discussed in the book is John P. Holdren, the Harvard physicist who is awaiting confirmation as Mr. Obama’s science adviser. As you can see in his confirmation hearing in the Senate, he’s a smart and articulate scientist, and says he has abandoned some of his previous neo-Malthusian stances, like his support for “population control measures” and his belief that 280 million Americans would likely be “too many.”

But I share Dr. Pielke’s concern about some of the debating tactics used by Dr. Holdren and his allies. Dr. Holdren began his career collaborating with the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, a master of the apocalyptic forecast and the contemptuous argument from authority.

When the economist Julian Simon published an article in Science in 1980 questioning ecologists’ gloomy predictions of resource scarcity, Dr. Ehrlich dismissed him as a member of “space-age cargo cult.” Explaining to economists like him that commodities must inevitably become more scarce and expensive, Dr. Ehrlich wrote, “would be like attempting to explain odd-day-even-day gas distribution to a cranberry.” He criticized Science for even publishing the article and wondered how it passed peer review: “Could the editors have found someone to review Simon’s manuscript who had to take off his shoes to count to 20?”

Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Holdren were was so confident in their expertise that they accepted Dr. Simon’s challenge to bet about the future price of natural resources. They wagered $1,000 — and lost decisively. But that loss didn’t diminish the neo-Malthusians’ contempt for the other side when Dr. Simon’s arguments were updated in 2001 by Bjorn Lomborg. As Dr. Pielke notes in his book, Dr. Holdren joined in an unusual effort by scientists to denounce Dr. Lomborg as unscientific. Dr. Holdren accused Dr. Lomborg of “complete incompetence,” complained that Dr. Lomborg had “wasted immense amounts of the time of capable people,” and labeled his ideas “dangerous for the future of society.”

What lessons do you draw from Dr. Pielke’s book and from Dr. Holdren’s past? And what kind of advice should Dr. Holdren and other scientists be giving to Mr. Obama?

(Here’s Dr. Holdren’s statement (pdf) at the Senate confirmation hearing. Here’s background on the Holdren-Lomborg fracas, and here are some examples of Dr. Holdren’s doomsaying. On his MasterResource blog, Rob Bradley has collected more of Dr. Holdren’s writings, including some withering e-mail messages.

(Here’s a link to Dr. Pielke and his writings about science and politics. And here is a new example of the kind of scientific hype that worries Dr. Pielke: Al Gore has just removed a graph from his global-warming presentation in response to criticism from Dr. Pielke, as my colleague Andrew Revkin reports.)

from the Guardian of London, 2009-Mar-18, by David Adam:

Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist [sic -AMPP Ed.] has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.

He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".

Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.

Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."

He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. "It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."

from the Guardian of London, 2009-Mar-11, by David Adam:

UN climate chief: US carbon cuts could spark 'revolution'

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday March 12 2009

We said in the article below that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is charged with leading the fight against climate change. The IPCC advises that it does not itself take policy positions. It publishes surveys of scientific and technical literature, and advises the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a political forum for negotiating international responses to climate change

---

Copenhagen -- The head of the UN body charged with leading the fight against climate change has conceded that Barack Obama will face a "revolution" if he commits the US to the deep carbon cuts that scientists and campaigners say are needed.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said domestic political constraints made it impossible for the US president to announce ambitious short-term climate targets similar to those set by Europe. And he questioned the value of a new global climate deal without such a US pledge.

His words come as scientists at the Copenhagen conference said that modest IPCC estimates of likely sea level rise this century need to be increased. Extra melting in Greenland could drive sea levels to more than a metre higher than today by 2100, they said.

Obama has said the US will work to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Europe has pledged to cut them by 20-30% on 1990 levels by 2020. The IPCC says developed nations should aim for 25-40% cuts by then to avoid dangerous climate change.

Speaking on the fringes of a high-level scientific conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Pachauri told the Guardian: "He [Obama] is not going to say by 2020 I'm going to reduce emissions by 30%. He'll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step."

Pachauri's remarks echo those of Todd Stern, the US president's new chief climate negotiator, who said last week that it was "not possible" for the US to aim for 25-40% cuts by 2020.

Such a stance could threaten attempts to agree a new global deal to regulate carbon emissions to replace the existing Kyoto protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012. Campaigners say a new treaty must be agreed at UN talks in Copenhagen this December.

Obama has called for 80% carbon cuts by 2050, but insiders say that such long-term pledges will do little to convince developing nations such as China to sign up to a new climate deal. British officials say meaningful US involvement in the short term is crucial to agree a new treaty.

Pachauri told the Guardian the US needed to do more in the short term. But he questioned whether there would be sufficient domestic movement for the US to agree stricter targets in December. He said it was "hard to say" if a new deal would be meaningful without such a step.

from Front Page Magazine, 2009-Mar-12, by Michael Goldfarb:

Obama's Global Warming Straddle

In his February 24 address to Congress, President Obama asked for "legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution." But don't assume that this administration, in contrast to its predecessor, is overly concerned about the threat to humanity from global warming.

When the president unveiled his budget later that week, it became clear that even if so-called cap-and-trade legislation is passed this year, the administration has no plans to start taxing emissions until 2012. A president who warned of catastrophe should Congress delay implementing his economic agenda seems in no particular rush to cut down on greenhouse emissions. No doubt he has been quietly briefed on just how devastating his cap-and-trade regime would be to a fragile economy.

So it's a hollow victory for climate alarmists. As it happens, besides being an election year, 2012 is also supposed to be the point of no return for action on climate change. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient with Al Gore of the Nobel Peace Prize, warned after collecting his prize in Norway that "if there's no action before 2012, that's too late."

Last year Gore himself opined that "we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis." Such warnings have become routine--20 years ago, in 1989, the head of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program, Noel Brown, issued the same dire prediction, claiming that there was a "10-year window of opportunity" to stop the runaway train of global warming.

After two decades in which environmentalists have urged immediate government action or else, a unified Democratic government has finally made such action possible--but it is, thankfully, not imminent or assured. The timing of any legislation will be determined by the political climate in Washington, and not the temperature in the Arctic.

Whatever else it accomplishes, cap and trade will be a huge tax on the productive sectors of the economy. The "cap" is a government-imposed limit on total emissions; companies then buy permits from the government to emit pollutants up to the amount of the cap, and can then trade these permits with each other. The process of issuing and pricing the permits will be an invitation to astonishing amounts of lobbying and favor-seeking. Cap and trade, in the words of MIT's Richard Lindzen, will be "a bureaucrat's dream."

According to a recently released study by the George C. Marshall Institute, the cost of cap and trade to the overall economy--depending on the size and scope of the legislation--is anywhere from a 0.3 percent to 3 percent drop in GDP in 2015 below what it would otherwise be. The report, as noted by the National Center for Policy Analysis, estimated that Americans would see their "electricity prices jumping 5-15 percent by 2015, natural gas prices up 12-50 percent by 2015, and gasoline prices up 9-145 percent by 2015." The numbers are staggering, which is why the Obama administration plans to divert some of the permit revenues to its "making work pay" tax credit, reimbursing low-income individuals up to $400 a year and $800 for couples. It won't be enough.

The Senate failed to pass cap-and- trade legislation in 2007--the Lieberman-Warner bill--which the Marshall Institute estimates would have cost each American household $1,100 in 2008, rising to $1,437 by 2015, and $2,979 in 2050. Obama's plan is far more ambitious, and would be a far greater burden to American taxpayers. The administration projects that the tax would raise some $650 billion for federal coffers between 2012 and 2019.

The other reason for not hurrying up with a carbon tax may well be that the science underlying climate-change alarmism has taken a beating. "It's been a catastrophic year" for global warming activists, says Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded think-tank. All of a sudden, "the observations are very inconvenient."

In May 2008, Nature magazine published a peer-reviewed study that came to a startling conclusion: "Global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming."

Just as problematic, a few months prior to that report NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed the results of a new study of ocean temperatures. "The oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years," NPR reported, and "that could mean global warming has taken a breather." In fact, the oceans--like the rest of the planet--have cooled of late. The scientist overseeing the research protested that the cooling was "not anything really significant," and that the results shouldn't be interpreted as evidence against warming, but with surface temperatures and water temperatures declining, the case for a radical reining-in of industrial economies has become even weaker than it already was.

The public is right to be skeptical. According to a Pew poll released in the days following Barack Obama's inauguration, Americans rank "dealing with global warming" dead last among 20 policy priorities for this administration--just 30 percent believe it should be a top priority, 8 percentage points less than two years ago, and well behind such concerns as strengthening the military (44 percent), defending the United States against terrorism (76 percent), and strengthening the economy (85 percent).

Marc Morano, an aide to Senator Jim Inhofe (Capitol Hill's most notorious climate change skeptic), barrages the press daily with news stories and press releases casting further doubt on global warming. He thinks he's winning, and the numbers seem to confirm it. "The Earth has failed to warm," he says, and despite "all the money spent, the awards, the press, the chorus from Hollywood, it hasn't made a dent" in public opinion.

There's a poll for that, too. Last April, Gallup released numbers showing that just 37 percent of Americans worry "a great deal" about global warming, "a percentage that is roughly the same as the one Gallup measured 19 years ago." And if 37 percent sounds high, it's not. Out of 12 environmental problems Gallup polled, the 37 percent figure put global warming just third from the bottom, ahead of only urban sprawl and acid rain--a term that hasn't made a headline on the front page of the New York Times in nine years.

The skeptics may not be winning the debate in the media, but they're "winning the reality" according to Bjørn Lomborg, author of the bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg points out that despite "tremendous amounts of worrying .??.??. if you look at actual reductions in CO2 over the last few years, nothing." Lomborg isn't opposed to government action, but he derides cap-and-trade regimes as a way for politicians to "put on a tax and get people to think it's a cool thing."

But unlike Europe, which implemented its own cap-and-trade system in 2005, Americans don't seem to think taxes on carbon are particularly "cool." Warner-Lieberman fell a dozen votes short of cloture, with several Democrats crossing the aisle to help Republicans kill it. Morano says that if the Senate takes up the issue again, it could produce an "immigration-style shutdown" on the Hill.

Which is not to say that cap and trade can't be rammed through this year. There are a lot more Democratic votes than there were in 2007, as well as a popular president who seems to be giving the measure his full support. And whatever its effect on global levels of greenhouse gases, it will allow the federal government to "control every aspect of our economy," says Horner. In Obama's Washington, that's unfortunately a recommendation.

Michael Goldfarb is online editor of The Weekly Standard.

from the Telegraph of London's web site, 2009-Mar-17, by James Delingpole:

Now even Moonbat has surrendered on global warming why can't Barry Obama?

All right, so George Monbiot didn't actually use the "s" word in his Guardian column today. (Like a Japanese soldier in 1944, he'd rather commit hara kiri than that). But the meaning is there all the same in key sentences like:

"It's over."

and

"Now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can."

The significance could not be plainer. George "Moonbat" Monbiot, high priest of the Anthropogenic Global Warming movement (UK branch), has finally conceded what serious scientists have been saying all along. That there is nothing human kind can do to stop climate change.

"Mitigation (limiting greenhouse pollution) has failed," he announces.

For many of us - the "climate change deniers" who, Monbiot once declared, should be put on a par with "Holocaust deniers" - this is an historical moment as glorious as it is unlikely.

Indeed it's almost as exciting and heart-gladdening and exquisitely schadenfreude-inducing as if the Pope had suddenly said to Galileo in 1634: "Crikey I've been a complete berk! You were dead right all along. Heliocentrism really is the only sensible way of understanding our universe."

So let's say it one more time, shall we? George Monbiot, the eco-doommonger who - more than perhaps anyone in Europe - has been pushing for ever-more-stringent, intrusive and expensive government measures to combat "climate change" has finally conceded that the war is lost. "Der Krieg ist verloren" as one of his fellow deep-green, animal-rightist tofu munchers - his name eludes me - once put it a few years back.

Why is this such good news? Well if you believe - as an ever-increasing body of respected scientists and economists do - that climate change is a perfectly natural process with which man meddles as his peril, then your biggest worry right now won't be "global warming". It will be all those well-meaning but utterly misguided attempts by Barack Obama and the European Union to try to stop it.

And you'd be right to worry too, for the real damage Barack Obama and his fellow world socialists are about to do to the global economy and the cause of liberty in the name of environmentalism is at least as scary as anything predicted in George Monbiot's sci-fi fantasy books about climate doom.

Obama's disastrous "cap and trade" tax on carbon emissions - proposed cost to the US economy: $650 billion - will not only hit US business at its lowest ebb, and make it decreasingly competitive in the global economy, but will also punish consumers by dramatically increasing energy prices and the cost of living.

The knock-on effects of this to the global economy are incalculable but will unquestionably deepen and prolong the world recession.

But maybe even less bearable than the cost will be the Gestapo-like intrusion into free citizens' private lives. When I tell US audiences on Talk Radio that in Britain now we actually have microchips installed by local authorities in our dustbins so as to monitor the ecological correctness of our waste disposal, I'm sure they think I'm exaggerating. It's true, though, and it's a typically shameful example of the bullying, controlling instinct behind so much nurturing, caring green ideology.

This is one of the paradoxes I explore in the "Barbecue The Polar Bears" chapter in Welcome To Obamaland. How is that people supposedly dedicated to all the nice things in life - nature, animals, trees - can be so astonishingly vicious, nasty and fascistic in their policies? This, I suggest, is what makes them so dangerous a political movement.

"At least with the Nazis you knew where you stood: they were never in it for the peace, love, and harmony. Nor were the Stalinists; nor were the Maoists; nor are the Islamofascists. It's much easier to take a stand against a cause whose values are quite clearly inimical to your own. Much harder when they're whispering gently in your ear idyllic visions of a brighter, cleaner, more natural future where the lion shall lie down with the lamb and those Truffula trees will blossom once more."

Thanks to Obama's wholesale subscription to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth eco-porn fantasy and his terrifying determination to place the implementation of his left-liberal social agenda before the needs of the US economy, these are exactly the  zealots who'll be controlling our lives.

Will they be basing their policy on hard science? Hardly. Not given the number of inaccuracies Al Gore managed to insert in An Inconvenient Truth. Not given the record of Barack Obama's science advisor John P Holdren.

A committed, unashamed and intemperate Warmist, Dr Holdren has declared that climate "skeptics" are "dangerous" and once wrote a rebuttal of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist so riddled with errors ("strong on contempt and sneering, weak on substance" said the Economist) it was said to have contained more mistakes in 11 pages than in the 540 pages of Lomborg's entire book.

Dr Holdren is an old friend of Paul Ehrlich, author of the now massively ridiculed The Population Bomb (1968) which predicted that by the 1980s 100s of millions would have starved to death because of declining resources, and argued that the only solution were mass sterilisation programs, and the quarantine and abandonment of countries too far gone to save from collapse.

Ehrlich's idiotic book inspired a famous bet by the economist Julian Simon that this coming "age of scarcity" was a nonsense. To prove it, he invited Ehrlich to name any five resources and bet him $1,000 that they would be cheaper in ten years' time. Ehrlich consulted his favourite scientific Nostradamus - yes top expert John P Holdren - who helped him come up with the list of five metals (chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten). In 1990, when the time limit expired, Holdren and Ehrlich turned out to be wrong on all counts. Simon won his bet.

It would be a great and funny story,  except that John "Nostradamus? Not" Holdren and the possibly even more terrifyingly committed eco-activist Carol Browner (Assistant to the President for Climate and Energy Change) are now the people responsible for telling President Obama what to think and do about climate change.

Let us not dwell on such miseries though, for we would only end up doing what so many greens would prefer us to do and kill ourselves - thus sparing Mother Gaia the hideous indignity of our defiling presence in her sacred bio-temple.

Let us instead dwell with love, sympathy and Christian charity on the plight of George Monbiot. What is he going to do now, as he has confessed today, his most sacred cause is lost?

My personal suggestion, if no one else will have him, is to employ him as assistant at a ski resort I'm planning to open up in Africa's Mountains Of The Moon. (Or Mountains of the Moonbat, as I may have them rechristened) They don't get much snow at the moment - so can presumably be snapped up for development for a very reasonable rate - but given what we know of the climate-predictive powers of people like Monbiot, Gore, and Holdren, I think we're about due for the snowiest period in history since the Little Ice Age.

It won't quite make up for the ruination caused by Obama's carbon taxes, I'm sure. But hey, so long as this Climate Change Terror Regime continues in power we'll just have to grab what little consolation we can when we can, where we can.

from Reuters, 2009-Mar-7, by Pete Harrison, with additional reporting by Anne Jolis and editing by David Brunnstrom and Charles Dick:

Never waste a good crisis, Clinton says on climate

BRUSSELS - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience Friday "never waste a good crisis," and highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy-intensive way.

Highlighting Europe's unease the day after Russia warned that gas flows via Ukraine might be halted, she also condemned the use of energy as a political lever.

Clinton told young Europeans at the European Parliament that global economic turmoil provided a fresh opening. "Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security," she said.

Europe sees the United States as a crucial ally in global climate talks in Copenhagen in December, after President Barack Obama signaled a new urgency in tackling climate change, in stark contrast to his predecessor George W. Bush.

Europe has already laid out plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions to about a fifth below 1990 levels in the next decade, while Obama has proposed a major shift toward renewable energy and a cap and trade system for CO2 emissions.

But with many countries in the grip of a punishing recession, some question whether businesses can muster the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to cut carbon emissions.

"Certainly the United States has been negligent in living up to its responsibilities," said Clinton, on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state.

"This is a propitious time ... we can actually begin to demonstrate our willingness to confront this."

Clinton said she was encouraged by China's stance on climate change during a visit there last month.

"It is very important that at the beginning of this effort, China has expressed a willingness to participate," she told reporters. "They realize they've just surpassed the unfortunate record that we just held of being the largest carbon emitter."

POLITICAL LEVER

Many politicians argue that the economic crisis, energy security issues and climate change can all be dealt with in a "New Green Deal," replacing high-carbon infrastructure with green alternatives and simultaneously creating millions of jobs.

"There is no doubt in my mind the energy security and climate change crises, which I view as being together, not separate, must be dealt with," Clinton added.

She attacked the use of energy as a political weapon, echoing Europe's worries after repeated spats between Russia and gas transit country Ukraine hit EU supplies in recent years.

"We are ... troubled by using energy as a tool of intimidation," she said. "We think that's not in the interest of creating a better and better functioning energy system."

Clinton is set to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for dinner in Geneva in the hope of improving relations after a post-Cold War low during Bush's presidency.

The latest cuts to Russian gas exports in January forced the closure of factories, hospitals and schools in Eastern Europe in mid-winter.

A new row between Ukraine and Russia appeared to have been averted Thursday after state-owned Gazprom said Ukraine settled payments at the heart of the disagreement.

But European leaders were rattled by the warning of cuts to supply by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

from the Washington Post, 2008-May-30, p.A13, by Charles Krauthammer:

Carbon Chastity
The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-11, by John Fund:

Goracular
Al Gore, the infallible pope of global warming.

Once again Al Gore has ducked the chance to debate critics of his global warming doomsday predictions. The former vice president loves to lecture others on the need to address global warming, but usually insists on appearing alone and largely unchallenged at conferences.

At the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California, Mr. Gore was initially scheduled to appear with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a noted skeptic on global warming. Mr. Gore changed his schedule so he could appear the previous day. President Klaus told me this week that the major reason he agreed to travel from Europe was the chance to interact with Mr. Gore. "I don't understand all of this reluctance to engage with others," he told me.

Sounds to me like a case of bologna rejecting the grinder. Mr. Gore knows that the science backing up his calls for dramatic reduction of carbon emissions is increasingly shaky and that even adopting the Kyoto targets for such reductions would do little to address the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Several other critics of Mr. Gore also tried to interact with him at the conference -- with little success. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at Harvard, asked Mr. Gore during the Q-and-A period what exactly he was trying to accomplish in practical terms with his proposals. Mr. Gore ignored the substance of the question and snidely said he was trying to save humanity.

The next question came from Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who has assembled a group of Nobel Prize winners who say many other global problems such as clean drinking water merit attention before futile efforts to deal with an exaggerated fear of global warming. "I don't mean to corner you, or maybe I do mean to corner you, but would you be willing to have a debate with me on that point?" asked Mr. Lomborg.

"I want to be polite to you," Mr. Gore replied. He then proceeded to say Mr. Lomborg's work had been discredited. "The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a 'on the one hand, on the other hand' issue," he said. "It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake."

Mr. Soon noted to me that while some scientific journals have challenged Mr. Lomborg's early work, none have disputed his contention that many other problems should be addressed with a higher priority than controlling carbon emissions. "He once again won't engage his critics," he sighs, referring to Mr. Gore.

I have a possible explanation. The last time Mr. Gore did debate anyone it was during the 2000 presidential race when he took on George W. Bush, not exactly a stellar orator. Mr. Gore managed to demonstrate enough arrogance and pomposity that he is generally thought to have lost those exchanges and blown his lead in the polls.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-9:

Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.

Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

The Coasts v. Middle America Top 10 (left column) and bottom 10 states in greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, per capita CO2-equivalents, in tons Wyoming 154.4 New Jersey 16.6 North Dakota 94.5 Florida 16.4 Alaska 73.5 Washington 16 West Virginia 73.1 Oregon 14.9 Montana 49.2 Massachusetts 14 Louisiana 45.6 Connecticut 13.4 Indiana 43.8 Vermont 13.1 Nebraska 41.8 California 12.8 Kentucky 41.7 New York 12.4 Iowa 39.7 Rhode Island 12.1 Source: Climate Analysis Indicators Database, World Resources Institute

Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.

All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.

We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.

Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.

And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.

Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-13:

Who Pays for Cap and Trade? -- II

We don't mind an intellectual fight, and in a nearby letter, two economists at Resources for the Future take aim at our Monday editorial on how the costs of cap and trade will be distributed across regions and income groups. Dallas Burtraw and Richard Sweeney call it "a bait-and-switch argument." Mr. Sweeney added on his blog that "The Wall Street Journal is an idiot."

That's how the global-warming clerisy debates these days, but we'll try to take their argument seriously. They claim that by citing state-level CO2 production data, rather than CO2 consumption data, we exaggerated regional differences. This is distortion disguised as verisimilitude.

It's true that discrepancies in per capita emissions -- 73 tons in West Virginia versus 12 tons in Rhode Island, for instance -- reflect the fact that carbon-heavy power plants and industries are based in some states and not others. It's also true that electricity crosses state lines, and that -- as cap and trade raises prices -- a consumer in California who buys a car built in Michigan, say, will bear some of its carbon costs.

However, one reason we didn't mention per capita consumption figures is that, strictly speaking, they don't exist. The economic literature on the incidence of cap and trade extrapolates carbon consumption by region from the government's Consumer Expenditure Survey. But nearly every human activity has some carbon cost associated with it. Consider the emissions of "consuming" french fries at a fast food restaurant:

There's CO2 in fertilizing and harvesting the potatoes; processing, freezing, then transporting them; and still more when they're cooked. Now multiply that by the entire economy. One danger of a carbon tax -- especially if it is poorly designed -- is it that its costs will ripple throughout complex energy chains in ways that economic modeling can't quantify.

Still, in the spirit of comity, we'll mention the work of Messrs. Burtraw and Sweeney, who wrote a 2008 paper finding that cap and trade disproportionately hits the poorest households and that those effects are exacerbated in some regions over others. That was our argument too.

Of course, ultimately the incidence of a carbon tax depends on how the revenues it takes from the public are redistributed back to the public. Yet Congress, being Congress, is incapable of designing even a marginally efficient system -- and given environmental politics and state carbon realities, the losers will be concentrated in noncoastal regions that rely most on coal and manufacturing.

And therein lies the value of emissions production data. Not only does cap and trade tax at the point of production (even if some of those costs are ultimately borne by consumers elsewhere), but it also shifts economic activity away from those industries. The states that produce the most emissions are going to see the strongest ancillary declines in income and increases in unemployment. The top carbon states -- in absolute, not per capita, emissions -- include Ohio (No. 3), Pennsylvania (No. 4), Indiana (No. 7) and Michigan (No. 9).

What really drives cap-and-trade idolaters like Messrs. Burtraw and Sweeney to schoolboy taunts is their fear that the American people might figure this out. Then their dreams of having government command a huge new chunk of the economy might collapse.

from City Journal, 2009-Winter, by Max Schulz:

The Green-Jobs Engine That Can’t
Inefficient eco-friendly technologies destroy more jobs than they create.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to transform America’s energy economy by creating millions of “green jobs.” Accepting his party’s nomination at the Democratic convention in Denver, Obama proclaimed: “I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy—wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.” This new energy economy, Obama explained weeks later at the second presidential debate in Nashville, would be an “engine of economic growth” to rival the computer and one, moreover, that we could build “easily.” Though he would have quibbled with Obama over details, Republican candidate John McCain similarly praised the virtues of creating millions of these environmentally friendly jobs, both as an answer to the nation’s economic woes and as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

In a time of grave economic uncertainty, it’s surely positive news that we can agree on the benefits of green jobs, right? Not quite. If the green-jobs claim sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Holding it up to the light exposes it as economically hollow. Making matters worse, a powerful green-jobs movement has emerged, made up of left-wing antipoverty activists and union leaders, all of them clamoring for a more conventional kind of green: government dollars.

What exactly is a “green job,” anyway? The definition seems maddeningly vague. According to Time, “if you make wind turbines or solar panels, your job is reliably green.” But the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), a leading proponent of the cause, says that green employment isn’t reserved for scientists and researchers; the industry also needs “project managers, accountants, assemblers, IT professionals, customer service reps, marketing professionals and account executives.” ASES estimates that more than 8 million people already work in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and it predicts that figure to quadruple by 2030. But ASES acknowledges that no real standards exist for what constitutes a green job, so these numbers are fuzzy. Work in an energy-intensive smelting plant producing steel for a wind turbine, and you might wind up in the green-jobs column, despite the belching pollution. According to the Political Economy Research Institute, a left-wing think tank, even truck driving could be green, since long-haulers “will be in demand to transport wind turbines as well as switchgrass and woodchips for biofuels.”

Obama has yet to provide much in the way of particulars on his green-jobs agenda, though he has proposed a “renewable portfolio standard” that would require 25 percent of our electricity to come from clean sources—a move that would boost demand for windmills, solar farms, and other clean but expensive technologies (clean nuclear power, reviled by environmental groups, would be excluded). Obama has also announced a massive new national-infrastructure and public-works agenda that would foster green jobs.

The paucity of details to date isn’t surprising. For all the talk about green-job creation, there’s an unavoidable problem with renewable-energy technologies and the policies that promote them: from an economic standpoint, they’re big losers. Renewables can’t produce the large volumes of useful, reliable energy that our economy needs at attractive prices. Government subsidizes renewables because—all things being equal—the free market won’t. In many cases, these subsidies amount to little more than welfare for companies and industries with political connections.

The green subsidies are considerable. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37. Yet even with decades of these massive handouts, as well as numerous state-level mandates for utilities to use green power, wind and solar energy contribute less than one-half of 1 percent of our nation’s electricity. Compare the green energy subsidies to the energy sources reviled by environmentalists, such as natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). With relatively little government largesse, these sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.

The alternative technologies at the heart of Obama’s plan, relying on more such government handouts and mandates, will inevitably raise energy prices—and high power prices are job killers. Industries that make physical products, whether cars or chemicals or paper cups, are energy-intensive and will gravitate to low-energy-cost locales—which is why California and New York, with some of the highest electricity prices in the country, have lost manufacturing jobs in droves. But it’s not just manufacturers that need cheap electricity: Google, the poster child of California’s information-technology economy, houses its massive server farms not in the Golden State but in places with lower electricity costs, like North Carolina and Oregon. Policies that drive up energy costs across the nation, as Obama intends, will drive many of these jobs not elsewhere in the country but overseas.

Keep in mind, too, that the traditional industries currently supplying Americans with reliable, affordable energy already employ millions of workers. The American Petroleum Institute reports that the oil and gas industry employs 1.6 million Americans. Coal mining directly and indirectly supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to the National Mining Association and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A radical plan to transform our energy economy in favor of clean, renewable energy technologies would put many of those men and women out of work.

But won’t all those new green jobs make up for whatever economic hardship results? That’s the contention of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, among the best-known and most influential evangelists for a green economy. In his most recent bestseller, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America, Friedman argues that a government-directed green program would rebuild America’s national strength and bolster our economy for the twenty-first century—regardless of whether global warming turns out to be a serious problem (which he believes it is). Friedman likens his proposal to training for the Olympic triathlon. “If you make it to the Olympics, you have a much better chance of winning, because you’ve developed every muscle,” he writes. “If you don’t make it to the Olympics, you’re still healthier, stronger, fitter, and more likely to live longer and win every other race in life.”

It’s a nice analogy, but Friedman, like Obama, sees only the upside. Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg, author of books like The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, which decries climate-change alarmism, agrees that global warming is real and man-made, but he differs with Friedman’s response. “It is foolish to deny climate change,” says Lomborg. “But it’s also foolish to deny climate economics, which Friedman does.” Lomborg notes that Friedman’s argument “simply fails to address the cost of his proposed solutions, and fails to weigh those costs against the benefits.”

Obama and Friedman have become the latest proponents of a common economic fallacy. One version holds that the Second World War and its aftermath were a boon for the American and European economies, since militarizing in America and rebuilding Europe spurred much-needed economic activity. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman peddled another version when, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, he suggested a possible silver lining: the destruction of the World Trade Center would require new construction and therefore reinvigorate economic activity downtown.

Such thinking was effectively debunked a century before World War II. The nineteenth-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat made an invaluable contribution to modern economics by demolishing the notion that a broken window is a good thing inasmuch as it provides work for the glazier. As Bastiat observed, the money that goes to pay the glassmaker would, had the window never been broken at all, have supported some other productive enterprise. Society as a whole winds up poorer, even if the glassmaker profits.

With his promise of 5 million new green jobs, Barack Obama heaves a brick straight through Bastiat’s window. Yesterday’s glazier is tomorrow’s solar-panel installer. The green-jobs promise amounts to killing jobs in efficient industries to create jobs in inefficient ones—hardly a recipe for economic success. William Pizer, a researcher with Resources for the Future and a lead author of the most recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reinforced the point at a symposium last April: “As an economist, I am skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You’ll have new industries, but they’ll be doing what old industries did but [at] a higher net cost. . . . You’ll be depleting other industries.” Consumers will be hurt, too, Pizer notes. Digging deeper each month to pay for expensive renewable energy, they will have less to save or spend in other areas of the economy.

There may be legitimate arguments for taking dramatic steps to fight climate change. Boosting the economy isn’t one of them.

Higher costs and job losses aren’t the only drawbacks of the green-jobs push. We also must contend with a burgeoning activist movement that is mobilizing around the idea of a green economy. Many of these activists come from self-styled environmental organizations, but some aren’t typical environmentalists in any sense of the word. These unlikely eco-cadres—largely composed of labor union officials and inner-city community organizers—appear far less interested in protecting the environment than in agitating for “economic justice” and airing ethnic, racial, and other grievances.

That was the case with many of the participating organizations involved in the nationwide Green Jobs Now National Day of Action last September. The list of partner organizations reads like a roll call of left-wing activism. Most of the major environmental organizations were there, such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with many lesser-known groups. But so were numerous decidedly non-environmental outfits, including the well-known Acorn, MoveOn, and Codepink. Color of Change—an organization “dedicated to strengthening Black America’s political voice”—was on hand, as was the Hip Hop Caucus. Democracia USA sought to mobilize Hispanics, while numerous union locals boosted turnout at various sites around the country.

Inner-city Oakland may well be the heart of this new movement. Mayor Ron Dellums, formerly one of Congress’s most left-wing legislators, has pioneered the Oakland Green Jobs Corps (OGJC), which began dispersing money this fall for eligible groups to run so-called green-job-training programs. According to OGJC documents, “The program will have a special focus on providing ‘green pathways out of poverty’ by recruiting and training people with barriers to employment (e.g., lack of job skills, lack of education, language/cultural barriers, or history in juvenile/criminal justice system).”

Dellums had help from an Oakland-based community activist named Van Jones, who played a large role in persuading Congress to pass a Green Jobs Act in 2007 that will soon start funneling more than $125 million to antipoverty and environmental groups across the country. Jones is perhaps the leading proponent of harnessing the green-jobs wave to benefit low- or no-skilled candidates, many with troubled backgrounds. A relentless self-promoter, he has had a hand in starting or directing many of the best-known green-jobs advocacy groups: Green for All, the Apollo Alliance, Color for Change, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He is also a skilled quotesmith who has become a go-to guy for reporters looking to add flavor to stories about the environment. He often talks about the green economy being not just for the Ph.D., but also for the “Ph.-do.” Friedman profiles Jones in Hot, Flat, and Crowded and records this Jones aphorism for disaffected youth: “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun.” Jones has written his own book, The Green Collar Economy, which promises both to rescue the economy and to save the environment (all for just $25.95).

Reading Jones’s book or the many interviews he has given, one gets the impression that he is passionately committed to the environment. He talks up the need for a “green New Deal,” for instance, that will “help our Rust Belt cities blossom as Silicon Valleys of green capital.” But scroll through the websites and reports of the many organizations with which he’s been connected, and one begins to suspect that this “green” commitment is less about nature than about welfare—for inner-city residents without the skills or knowledge to compete in a twenty-first-century economy, and for the professional poverty organizations that collect the money for government job-training programs.

If Jones and his compatriots in the green-jobs movement truly wanted to help poor minorities, they might start by taking a long, hard look at the history of government-run job-training programs. In terms of money wasted, skills not imparted, and opportunities lost, the history of such programs is abysmal. “Many, if not most, of the participants in federal jobs and job-training programs would be better off today if the programs had never existed,” observes journalist James Bovard, who has written extensively on the failures of job-training efforts. “The primary beneficiaries of federal jobs programs have been the legions of social workers, consultants, and ‘manpower experts’ that have made a good living off these flounderings for 25 years.” Bovard made those remarks in 1986; they are no less relevant today.

It would be comforting to think that the new Community-Organizer-in-Chief has better sense on the green economy than his Oakland counterparts. If he does, he’ll recognize that the best way to a greener, more prosperous future would be for the government simply to set goals and parameters for the private sector, and then step aside and let the market work. That might mean instituting a carbon tax or a greenhouse-gas-emissions cap-and-trade program. It might even mean banning new coal plants outright. What it emphatically does not mean is spreading around yet more taxpayer wealth to uneconomic industries and establishing make-work programs for parolees and high school dropouts.

Max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Energy Policy and the Environment.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-4, by Robert Bryce:

Let's Get Real About Renewable Energy
We can double the output of solar and wind, and double it again. We'll still depend on hydrocarbons.

During his address to Congress last week, President Barack Obama declared, "We will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."

While that statement -- along with his pledge to impose a "cap on carbon pollution" -- drew applause, let's slow down for a moment and get realistic about this country's energy future. Consider two factors that are too-often overlooked: George W. Bush's record on renewables, and the problem of scale.

By promising to double our supply of renewables, Mr. Obama is only trying to keep pace with his predecessor. Yes, that's right: From 2005 to 2007, the former Texas oil man oversaw a near-doubling of the electrical output from solar and wind power. And between 2007 and 2008, output from those sources grew by another 30%.

Mr. Bush's record aside, the key problem facing Mr. Obama, and anyone else advocating a rapid transition away from the hydrocarbons that have dominated the world's energy mix since the dawn of the Industrial Age, is the same issue that dogs every alternative energy idea: scale.

Let's start by deciphering exactly what Mr. Obama includes in his definition of "renewable" energy. If he's including hydropower, which now provides about 2.4% of America's total primary energy needs, then the president clearly has no concept of what he is promising. Hydro now provides more than 16 times as much energy as wind and solar power combined. Yet more dams are being dismantled than built. Since 1999, more than 200 dams in the U.S. have been removed.

If Mr. Obama is only counting wind power and solar power as renewables, then his promise is clearly doable. But the unfortunate truth is that even if he matches Mr. Bush's effort by doubling wind and solar output by 2012, the contribution of those two sources to America's overall energy needs will still be almost inconsequential.

Here's why. The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that total solar and wind output for 2008 will likely be about 45,493,000 megawatt-hours. That sounds significant until you consider this number: 4,118,198,000 megawatt-hours. That's the total amount of electricity generated during the rolling 12-month period that ended last November. Solar and wind, in other words, produce about 1.1% of America's total electricity consumption.

Of course, you might respond that renewables need to start somewhere. True enough -- and to be clear, I'm not opposed to renewables. I have solar panels on the roof of my house here in Texas that generate 3,200 watts. And those panels (which were heavily subsidized by Austin Energy, the city-owned utility) provide about one-third of the electricity my family of five consumes. Better still, solar panel producers like First Solar Inc. are lowering the cost of solar cells. On the day of Mr. Obama's speech, the company announced that it is now producing solar cells for $0.98 per watt, thereby breaking the important $1-per-watt price barrier.

And yet, while price reductions are important, the wind is intermittent, and so are sunny days. That means they cannot provide the baseload power, i.e., the amount of electricity required to meet minimum demand, that Americans want.

That issue aside, the scale problem persists. For the sake of convenience, let's convert the energy produced by U.S. wind and solar installations into oil equivalents.

The conversion of electricity into oil terms is straightforward: one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 1.64 megawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, 45,493,000 megawatt-hours divided by 1.64 megawatt-hours per barrel of oil equals 27.7 million barrels of oil equivalent from solar and wind for all of 2008.

Now divide that 27.7 million barrels by 365 days and you find that solar and wind sources are providing the equivalent of 76,000 barrels of oil per day. America's total primary energy use is about 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Of that 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent, oil itself has the biggest share -- we consume about 19 million barrels per day. Natural gas is the second-biggest contributor, supplying the equivalent of 11.9 million barrels of oil, while coal provides the equivalent of 11.5 million barrels of oil per day. The balance comes from nuclear power (about 3.8 million barrels per day), and hydropower (about 1.1 million barrels), with smaller contributions coming from wind, solar, geothermal, wood waste, and other sources.

Here's another way to consider the 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day that come from solar and wind: It's approximately equal to the raw energy output of one average-sized coal mine.

During his address to Congress, Mr. Obama did not mention coal -- the fuel that provides nearly a quarter of total primary energy and about half of America's electricity -- except to say that the U.S. should develop "clean coal." He didn't mention nuclear power, only "nuclear proliferation," even though nuclear power is likely the best long-term solution to policy makers' desire to cut U.S. carbon emissions. He didn't mention natural gas, even though it provides about 25% of America's total primary energy needs. Furthermore, the U.S. has huge quantities of gas, and it's the only fuel source that can provide the stand-by generation capacity needed for wind and solar installations. Finally, he didn't mention oil, the backbone fuel of the world transportation sector, except to say that the U.S. imports too much of it.

Perhaps the president's omissions are understandable. America has an intense love-hate relationship with hydrocarbons in general, and with coal and oil in particular. And with increasing political pressure to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, that love-hate relationship has only gotten more complicated.

But the problem of scale means that these hydrocarbons just won't go away. Sure, Mr. Obama can double the output from solar and wind. And then double it again. And again. And again. But getting from 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to something close to the 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day needed to keep the U.S. economy running is going to take a long, long time. It would be refreshing if the president or perhaps a few of the Democrats on Capitol Hill would admit that fact.

Mr. Bryce is the managing editor of Energy Tribune. His latest book is "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence'"(Public Affairs, 2008).

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Feb-27:

An Inconvenient Tax
Cap and trade yields 'climate revenues.' But don't call it a t--.

That didn't take long. The same week that President Obama promised (again) that "95% of working families" would not see their taxes rise by "a single dime," his own budget reveals that taxes will rise for 100% of everyone for the sake of global warming. Ahem.

You don't even have to burrow into yesterday's budget fine print to discover the "climate revenues" section, where the White House discloses that it expects $78.7 billion in new tax revenue in 2012 from its cap-and-trade program. The pot of cash grows to $237 billion through 2014, and at least $646 billion through 2019. If this isn't tax revenue, what is it? Manna from heaven? The offset from Al Gore's carbon footprint?

If it brings in revenue that the government then spends, it's a tax, and politicians should start referring to it as such. The Administration in fact projects that these "climate revenues" will become the sixth largest source of federal receipts by 2019, outpaced only by individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare and (barely) excise taxes. We're supposed to be living in a new era of fiscal honesty, so let's start with cap and trade.

Of course it's easy to see why Democrats don't want the public to think of cap and trade as a tax. Tax increases aren't popular, as Mr. Gore learned when he and Bill Clinton tried to impose a BTU tax in 1993. The complex cap-and-trade tax would ripple throughout the energy chain and ultimately the entire economy. All consumers, not just "the rich," would pay more for goods and services that use carbon energy -- though some would pay more than others. A majority of those "95% of working families" probably lives in the middle of the country that relies far more on manufacturing and coal-fired power than do the better-off coastal regions.

Mr. Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu was refreshingly candid on this point with the New York Times earlier this month. Given that higher prices are supposed to motivate the changes necessary to reduce carbon energy use, Mr. Chu said he was worried that climate taxes may drive jobs to countries where costs are cheaper. "The concern about cap and trade in today's economic climate," he said, "is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be completely politically sellable." You are correct, sir.

Meanwhile, the political class loves a cap-and-trade tax because it gives them new economic and political power. Congress would create a new property right to expend CO2, setting a price per ton on carbon output, and then Congress would also get to determine the distribution of allowances. The Administration wants all of them to be auctioned off, which is what creates the giant revenue windfall. The politicians would then decide how to spend all of that new "climate revenue."

Mr. Obama's budget proposes to spend this windfall on two items: $15 billion a year in more subsidies for alternative fuels, and $65 billion or so a year to finance tax subsidies for workers, many of whom don't pay income taxes. In other words, once this cap-and-trade tax is on the books, the revenue stream will create political constituencies that depend on it.

No new pot of gold goes uncontested, however, so you can assume that Mr. Obama's priorities will not go unchallenged. Already on Capitol Hill, Charlie Rangel's tax committee and Henry Waxman's energy clan are feuding about who gets to divvy up the spoils. Not to mention who gets the political control that will become a source of tens of millions in new campaign contributions from thousands of affected businesses.

By the way, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that cap-and-trade taxes would actually throw off as much as $300 billion every year -- not merely $78.7 billion -- and in a footnote the Obama budget implicitly acknowledges that its $645.7 billion estimate is a lowball: "All additional net proceeds will be used to further compensate the public." No doubt.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-5, by Kimberley A. Strassel:

The Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets
Cap and trade is going to cost them.

Jim Rogers is not happy with the Obama administration. Ever since the White House unveiled its costly climate program, the CEO of Duke Energy has been arguing the proposals amount to nothing more than a tax. Indeed.

Mr. Rogers belongs to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, about 30 companies that decided they were going to dance with the U.S. government to the tune of global warming legislation. The group demanded a "cap-and-trade" system, figuring they'd craft the rules so as to obtain regulatory certainty, with little upfront cost. At the time, Mr. Rogers explained: "If you don't have a seat at the table, you'll wind up on the menu."

Duke sat, yet it and its compatriots are still shaping up to be Washington's breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Obama plan will cost plenty, upfront, which will be borne by Mr. Rogers's customers. The Duke CEO tells me that he still sees opportunity to change the proposal: "This is not my first rodeo, in terms of working with the legislative process." There nonetheless may be a lesson here for companies that invite the U.S. government to saddle them with huge, expensive regulations.

"People are learning," says William Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which has been cautious about embracing a climate plan). "The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It's opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate."

Truth is, any cap-and-trade system is a tax, even if Mr. Obama's plan has only started to force business proponents to admit it. The government sets a cap on how much greenhouse gas can be emitted annually. Companies buy and sell permits that allow them to emit. Customers bear the price of those permits.

But the political question was always how that first batch of permits would end up with companies. Corporate support rested on the belief they'd be "allocated," for free. This would allow them to delay the day when they'd have to pass costs on to consumers, and ignore, for now, the "tax" question.

It didn't take long for the pols to figure out they could auction off permits and spend the loot. President Obama's auction bonanza would earn the feds $650 billion in 10 years, according to the administration's budget estimate -- and that's a low, low, low estimate.

Thus Mr. Rogers's lament. No one can now pretend that this isn't going to cost, and Duke is going to be tagged as tax collector via higher electricity bills. If the customer outrage won't be enough, some utilities will also be forced into fights with state regulators, who have to approve the rate-hike requests.

Congress isn't sympathetic. Most Democrats want the money to spend, while many Republicans have written off companies asking for government freebies. "What you saw when [the Climate Action Partnership] was draping itself in the name of saving mankind, what they were really doing was trying to create the largest earmark in modern history," says Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker of the "allocation" system.

Mr. Corker has been having fun exposing the self-dealing in recent climate bills. Companies aside, he blew an early whistle on Congress's ambitions to use an auction system to enrich itself. During last year's debate on Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D., Calif.) climate bill, he offered an amendment to require rebates of all auction funds to American families. It helped kill the bill, as did a growing awareness among Midwest and Southern Democrats that the legislation would disproportionately hammer their industries and constituents.

Mr. Obama is promising to return auction money to Americans, via a tax cut he proposed on the campaign trail. Mr. Corker calls this a "sleight of hand," since people were counting on a tax cut in any event. Nobody told them they'd have to fund it with higher energy costs. It's also a wealth transfer -- electricity users in coal-heavy Ohio, for instance, will be funding tax cuts for green Californians. Not that congressional spenders have any intention of using this money for tax cuts in the first place.

All this foreshadows the political battles to come. With the business community moving more uniformly against the bill, the administration will be looking to cut a deal. One way to buy support is to offer a certain percentage of the permits for free. Next comes the fight over how much money the government gets to keep versus how much goes to states or individuals. Expect a lot of political courting of Midwest and Southern members, on whom the fate of the Obama plan hinges.

Business leaders might do better to use this as an opportunity to kill the beast. They might get some credit for protecting their customers from what they are now, finally, admitting is a giant tax -- in the middle of a recession.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-5:

Green Trade War
Warming to protectionism.

Just as more scientists acknowledge that we don't know as much about the Earth's climate as Al Gore says, it's becoming clearer that environmental policies won't lead to some green economic boom. See the latest trans-Atlantic spat over biodiesel.

EU trade ministers voted Tuesday to apply punitive tariffs to biodiesel imported from the U.S. The measure is supposed to level the playing field for European producers, who complain that U.S. subsidies for the crop-based fuel have led to a 25-fold increase in American biodiesel sales to Europe since 2006. Neither side is in the right here -- which makes the case such a good illustration of the way green policies warp markets.

Like other renewable fuels, biodiesel isn't commercially viable without subsidies. But the combined power of the U.S. environmental and farming lobbies is enormous, so subsidies they receive. And it doesn't stop at taxpayer cash: Congress, in its wisdom, has also mandated ever-higher biofuel production quotas. The result is a glut of biofuel capacity. So long as oil prices are sky-high, as they were for much of 2008, alternative fuels such as biodiesel didn't look bad to consumers. But now that gasoline prices have dropped sharply, even biodiesel subsidized to the tune of $1 a gallon won't sell.

Enter Europe, which claims U.S. biodiesel makers are dumping their excess fuel on EU markets, taking advantage of U.S. subsidies to undercut domestic firms. If EU environmental policies were really about the environment, this arguably would be a good thing. More green fuel for everyone, and on the cheap to boot.

Not so fast. It turns out that Europe -- which also isn't known for restraint in supporting farmers -- is more interested in protecting its own biodiesel industry than in seeing motorists fill their tanks with low-carbon fuel. Hence the new tariff, which comes out to $400-$500 per ton. Aside from the costs of all this subsidizing and penalizing, the EU's tariff makes things worse by encouraging its inefficient biodiesel producers to stay in the market. And all of this despite evidence that fuels like biodiesel increase CO2 emissions compared with fossil fuels.

This cycle of wastefulness is bound to repeat itself, and not only when it comes to biodiesel. Imagine if Europe finally liberalizes its electricity market. If, say, a German company tried to sell subsidized wind power to neighboring Poland, undercutting Polish competitors, Warsaw might well object -- just as Europe objects now to cheap U.S. biodiesel. EU leaders could carve out exceptions to trade reforms for renewable energy. But that would only undermine the good done by market liberalization.

We keep hearing about the coming "green tech" bounty. But green-collar jobs will continue to cost more in subsidies and lost efficiency than the jobs themselves are worth. Not to mention the positions that are lost along the way in other firms or industries, or never created because energy costs more for everyone. A report last year by the economic research institute RWI Essen found that €205,000 in subsidies were spent for each solar-industry job created in Germany, and that the net effect on employment was negative.

With a recession in full swing, neither Europe nor the U.S. can afford this kind of green revolution.

from BBC News, 2009-Feb-18, by Margaret Ryan:

Is it selfish to have more than two children?

Is having more than two children selfish? The future of the planet rarely plays a part when planning a family, but that's got to change, say environmental campaigners.

Parents who have more than two children are "irresponsible" for placing an intolerable burden on resources and increasing damage to eco-systems, says a leading green campaigner.

Curbing population growth through contraception must play a role in fighting global warming, argues Jonathon Porritt.

This week, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which Mr Porrit is a patron, launched its "Stop at Two" online pledge to encourage couples to limit their family's size. Mr Porritt said earlier this month: "I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible."

He is not advocating a compulsory limit but told the BBC that couples should "connect up their concerns with the natural environment with their decisions as prospective parents".

"Every additional human being is increasing the burden on this planet which is becoming increasingly intolerable," says Mr Porritt, who runs the government's Sustainable Development Commission.

Each extra person in the UK emits around 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum, he argues, but he warns population is a subject even some environmentalists think too controversial to discuss.

The total fertility rate - the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime - reached 1.90 in the UK in 2007, meaning 190 children were born for every 100 women, according to the Office for National Statistics. UK fertility rates have not been this high since 1980.

The UK population alone is expected to increase from 61 million to 77 million by 2051 but the OPT believes the UK's long-term sustainable population level may be lower than 30 million.

"The more couples decide to have just one or two children, or even remain childless, the more they can relieve pressures on rapidly deteriorating ecosystems and alleviate demand for dwindling energy and food resources," says policy director Rosamund McDougall.

If women in the UK stopped at two children, this would cut the UK's forecast population by an estimated seven million by 2050, the OPT suggests.

But for mother-of-five Rosie Whitehouse, green issues did not play a part in her and her husband's decision to have a large family.

"Life isn't as simple as that," says Mrs Whitehouse, a former journalist.

"For most women the environment doesn't figure at all. I was making programmes about global warming when I became pregnant with my first son, who is now 20, and it didn't enter my head," she says, although she can understand why Mr Porritt feels justified in raising the issue.

"I didn't think about money and what it was going to cost either. I just had this romantic idea," she says.

Mrs Whitehouse, 47, who works full-time and lives in London, queries whether larger families necessarily place a greater burden on the environment.

"Money is important so you don't buy ready-made meals. I cooked up cauldrons of soup."

'No more toys'

And just because you have five children "it does not mean you have five times the amount of plastic toys," she says. "You just have to say 'no more'."

She has four children still living at home aged 18, 15 and twins aged 10 and says they are environmentally aware. But she does not believe green issues will be uppermost in her daughters' minds when they come to think about having a family.

"Pregnancy is introspective. It is a selfish time, especially when you first find out, " she says.

It's a sentiment echoed by mother-of-three Siobhan Freegard who says environmental considerations aren't even on the radar when couples think about how many children they want.

"If you polled mums and asked them for 10 reasons why they would not want more children the list would include money, sleepless nights and the strain on relationships," says Ms Freegard, of the online parent network Netmums.

The bottom line would certainly seem to focus the minds of many parents, judging by recent research. The average cumulative cost of raising a child from birth to the age of 21 is about £193,000, according to a survey by the insurer Liverpool Victoria.

Ms Freegard says it is "crazy" to think the impact on the environment would even figure in the family planning process.

She has two sons, aged 12 and six, and a nine-year-old daughter. With the birth of her youngest, she felt they were a proper family, although managing three children hasn't been easy: "It was messy and I lost control of things, but in a good way."

And as one of five children herself, she extols the virtues of a large family, for example in having siblings to share caring for a parent.

"It's about having some support and sharing the load. I wanted to recreate that for my own children."

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Sep-9, by Richard Pindar:

'Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change'

Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.

Every £4 spent on family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas a minimum of £19 would have to be spent on low-carbon technologies to achieve the same result, the research says.

The report, Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.

If these basic family planning needs were met, 34 gigatons (billion tonnes) of CO2 would be saved – equivalent to nearly 6 times the annual emissions of the US and almost 60 times the UK's annual total.

Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust at the LSE, said: “It's always been obviously that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can't shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up.”

UN data suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 million.

The research is published on the day that the Government's climate change advisers, the Climate Change Committee, warned households and industry that a planned 80 per cent reduction in emissions are likely to prove insufficient.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Feb-18, p.A2, by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin:

EPA May Reverse Bush, Limit Carbon Emissions From Coal-Fired Plants

The Environmental Protection Agency will reopen the possibility of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, tossing aside a December Bush administration memorandum that declared that the agency would not limit the emissions.

The decision could mark the first step toward placing limits on greenhouse gases emitted by coal plants, an issue that has been hotly contested by the coal industry and environmentalists since April 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

The industry has vigorously opposed efforts to regulate those emissions, asserting that the policy should be set by Congress. Moreover, technology for capturing carbon dioxide emissions is expensive and virtually untested.

Environmental groups, however, say that building new coal plants with conventional technology locks in additional greenhouse gas emissions for the entire 30-to-40-year lifetimes of the power plants, making it difficult to slow climate change. They have been urging the Obama administration and state governments to use the Supreme Court ruling to block air pollution permits for new coal-fired power plants and to rely on renewable energy and energy-efficiency measures to meet power needs.

In response to a Sierra Club petition involving a permit for a coal plant in Bonanza, Utah, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said yesterday that the agency would take a new look at the issue and solicit public comment. Jackson added that the memorandum issued by her predecessor, Stephen A. Johnson, two months ago should not restrict states weighing air pollution permits for new coal plants.

"It couldn't be a bigger turnaround from what the Bush administration tried to force on them at the last minute," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, noting that the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board had ruled in November that utilities needed to take carbon dioxide emissions into account when applying for permits. "It . . . throws all these projects up in the air. A coal plant was already a bad bet for ratepayers and investors, and now it's a huge gamble."

In a carefully worded letter, Jackson said any authority considering whether to grant an air pollution permit to a coal-fired utility "should not assume the [Johnson] memorandum is the final word on the appropriate interpretation of the Clean Air Act." But she did not issue a stay on the Bush administration memorandum.

Coal industry advocates found some hope in that distinction, saying Jackson's move may not signal a push for new regulation. Washington lawyer Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a former EPA official in the Bush administration, said, "It's kind of a clever procedural move that allows the Obama folks to say that they are distancing themselves from the Johnson memo without changing anything. It says they need to go through a rulemaking process to figure out how they are going to regulate carbon."

John Stowell, vice president for environmental policy for Duke Energy, one of the nation's largest utilities, said he "wasn't surprised" by the announcement. Industry officials expect the federal government to impose a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, he said, and are hoping that Congress will adopt an economy-wide plan rather than relying on the executive branch to target specific sectors.

"It serves as a reminder that it's coming, but we still expect it to be done through the legislature and not the regulatory process," he said, noting that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and others have signaled that the committees they chair will pass climate legislation by the end of the year. "They're all saying it's urgent. The president's saying it's urgent -- 'We're going to get it done this Congress.' And I believe them."

Jackson's letter could prompt some state authorities to reassess how they grant air pollution permits to new plants. LS Power plans to build the 1,590-megawatt White Pine Energy Station in Nevada, and state officials recently issued a document warning that if Johnson's memo were withdrawn or revised before the permit had been issued, they would "suspend further action on the permit application until that application is made consistent with EPA's revised position."

Vicki Patton, deputy general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said the new administration had sent a broad message to utilities: "They're signaling clearly that the government is fundamentally rethinking the policy of an appropriate approach to regulating global warming from new coal plants."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-31, by Stephen Moore:

California's 'Green Jobs' Experiment Isn't Going Well

Los Angeles

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was all smiles in 2006 when he signed into law the toughest anti-global-warming regulations of any state. Mr. Schwarzenegger and his green supporters boasted that the regulations would steer California into a prosperous era of green jobs, renewable energy, and technological leadership. Instead, since 2007 -- in anticipation of the new mandates -- California has led the nation in job losses.

The regulations created a cap-and-trade system, similar to proposed federal global-warming measures, by limiting the CO2 that utilities, trucking companies and other businesses can emit, and imposed steep new taxes on companies that exceed the caps. Since energy is an input in everything that's produced, this will raise the cost of production inside California's borders.

Now, as the Golden State prepares to implement this regulatory scheme, employers are howling. It's become clear to nearly everyone that the plan's backers have underestimated its negative impact and exaggerated the benefits. "We've been sold a false bill of goods," is how Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello, who has been the GOP's point man on environmental issues in the legislature, put it to me.

The environmental plan was built on the notion that imposing some $23 billion of new taxes and fees on households (through higher electricity bills) and employers will cost the economy nothing, while also reducing greenhouse gases. Almost no one believes that anymore except for the five members of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). This is the state's air-quality regulator, which voted unanimously in December to stick with the cap-and-trade system despite the recession. CARB justified its go-ahead by issuing what almost all experts agree is a rigged study on the economic impact of the cap-and-trade system. The study concludes that the plan "will not only significantly reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions, but will also have a net positive effect on California's economic growth through 2020."

This finding elicited a chorus of hallelujahs from environmental groups. The state finally discovered a do-good policy that pays for itself. Californians can still scurry around in their cars, heat up their Jacuzzis, and help save the planet. But there was a problem. The CARB had commissioned five economists from around the country to critique this study. They panned it.

Harvard's Robert Stavins, chairman of the federal Environmental Protection Agency's economic advisory committee under Bill Clinton, told me that "None of us knew who the other reviewers were, but we all came up with almost the same conclusion. The report was severely flawed and systematically underestimated costs." Another reviewer, UCLA Prof. Matthew E. Kahn, a supporter of the new regulations, criticized the "free lunch" aspect of the report. "The net dollar costs of each of these regulations is likely to be much larger than is reported," he concluded. Mr. Stavins points out that if these regulations are a net boon for businesses and the economy, "why would you need to impose regulations like cap and trade?"

The Sacramento Bee, which has editorialized in support of the new regulations, was aghast at CARB's twisted science. We have to "be candid about the real costs of the transition," a cautionary editorial advised. "Energy prices will rise, and major capital investment will be needed in public transit and new transmission lines. Industries that are energy intensive will move elsewhere."

The green lobby has lectured us for years that global warming is all about the sanctity of science. Those who question the "scientific consensus" on catastrophic atmospheric changes are belittled as "deniers." Now, in assessing the costs, the greens readily cook the books and throw good science out the window. "To most of the most strident supporters of this legislation," says Mr. Niello, "the economic costs don't really matter anyway, because we are supposedly facing an environmental apocalypse."

Mr. Schwarzenegger fits into that camp. He recently declared: "I recommend very strongly that we move forward . . . . You will always have people saying this will lose jobs."

Meanwhile, the state is losing jobs, a lot of them. California's unemployment rate hit 9.3% in December, up from 4.9% in December 2006. There are now 1.5 million Californians out of work. The state has the fourth-highest housing foreclosure rate in the nation, has lost more businesses than any state in recent years, and is facing a $40 billion deficit. With cap and trade firmly in place, the economic situation is only likely to get worse.

Other states are plundering the Golden State's industries by convincing businesses to pick up stakes and move out before the cap-and-trade earthquake hits. Governors and Washington politicians who want to reduce their "carbon footprint," but are worried about the more immediate crises of cascading unemployment, unbalanced budgets, and the housing-market collapse, would be wise not to follow California's lead. Green policies have a tendency to push states into the red.

Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

from the Village News of Fallbrook California, 2009-Feb-19:

Senator Hollingsworth, Republicans call for appeal on water restrictions

SACRAMENTO — Last week, Senator Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta) and 27 Republicans sent a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging him to call upon the President and the Secretary of the Interior to convene the Endangered Species Committee. The letter requests an appeal of water restrictions on California as mandated by federal court rulings to protect the Delta smelt.

“Every drop of water is a valuable commodity in California and it is crucial that we protect what little we have,” stated Senator Hollingsworth. “We are not only facing a natural drought, but one that is court-imposed, which will only worsen our current economic situation and impact many California communities and farmers who are already facing severe water restrictions.”

Under the provisions of a 1978 amendment of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a committee comprised of seven Cabinet level members called the Endangered Species Committee can be convened to hear exemptions from the ESA's stringent provisions. The plea to lift the water restrictions complies with the exemption requirements, in that there is no reasonable alternative to the agencies' action and that the action is of extraordinary regional importance. The Governor is the only non-federal official who can request the Committee be convened to relax the regulations.

Following two years of drought and the current dismal snowpack, California's water reserves have become dangerously low and the court-ordered water delivery restrictions have diminished supplies from the state's two largest water systems by almost 30 percent.

“The Governor has wisely directed state agencies and departments to take immediate action to address the serious drought conditions that exist in California,” concluded Hollingsworth. “Republicans in the Legislature are hopeful he will take further action and request that the federal government intervene on our behalf as well.”

from the New York Times, 2009-Feb-21, p.A14, web-posted 2009-Feb-20, by Jesse McKinley:

Governments Deal New Blow to Drought-Stricken California Farmers

SAN FRANCISCO — In a blow to California farmers struggling with a persistent drought, federal authorities released projections on Friday showing that little or no water would be available from federal sources this year for agricultural use.

State water supplies were also expected to be severely curtailed, state officials said.

The announcements — from the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources — confirmed fears long held by farmers, who had been warned in recent months to expect little water from state and federal reservoirs, which are collectively less than half full.

“It's grim news,” said Tim Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, whose members serve both urban and agricultural needs and represent about 93 percent of water delivered in the state.

Federal officials said new estimates showed that the Central Valley Project, the large irrigation system operated by the reclamation bureau, would be able to provide zero to 10 percent of its contracted deliveries.

If the zero estimate proves true, it would effectively eliminate hundreds of farmers' principal water supply. Water supplies to wildlife refuges, cities and industrial sources would also see smaller cutbacks, but agriculture would be hardest hit.

“If this isn't the bottom,” Mr. Quinn said, “I don't want to be around for the bottom.”

The estimates are based on runoff from rain and snow, which has been below normal in California since 2007, though recent storms — and a soggy weekend forecast — could improve things. The estimates will be updated late next month.

State officials said even heavy rains in the coming weeks would not be enough to change the estimates significantly.

“The reservoirs are so low we probably need a couple of years of above-normal precipitation,” said Lester A. Snow, the director of the Department of Water Resources, which serves the water needs of some 23 million Californians, both in agricultural areas and in cities.

Mr. Snow predicted that conservation measures would need to be intensified, something also suggested this month by Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles. Mr. Snow, whose department would deliver just 15 percent of contractors' requests, said he had pressed for more water storage and water recovery efforts like desalinization and wastewater recycling.

“If we don't have a significant change in snowpack, the expectation is that most of Southern California is going to have to go to mandatory conservation,” Mr. Snow said. “They can't afford to have sprinklers go off in rainstorms or irrigating sidewalks.”

In agricultural areas, meanwhile, studies have shown that the drought and restrictions on water use prompted by environmental concerns could result in tens of thousands of job losses and more than 800,000 acres of farmland taken out of production. Consumers could also be affected: California is the nation's leading producer of a variety of fruits, vegetables and other foods.

The office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would announce emergency measures next week addressing the drought. Other officials, meanwhile, were looking elsewhere for help.

“Maybe the best thing is to try to remain optimistic, especially with the incoming storm,” said A. G. Kawamura, the state secretary of agriculture. “Let's just pray it's a good one.”

from the Washington Post, 2009-Jan-29, p.A3, by Dana Milbank:

With Al Due Respect, We're Doomed

The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that "would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth -- and this is within this century, if we don't change."

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle's premonitions. "Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy," he beseeched.

"Geothermal energy," the Goracle prophesied. "This has great potential; it is not very far off."

Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. "I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand," the Goracle spoke.

A third asked the legislative future -- and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. "The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it," he said.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. "What does your modeling tell you about how long we're going to be around as a species?" he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. "I don't claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator."

It was a jarring reminder that the Goracle is, indeed, mortal. Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases such as "unified national smart grid" the way he once did "no controlling legal authority" -- and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.

"Tennessee," gushed Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Gore's home state, "has a legacy of having people here in the Senate and in public service that have been of major consequence and contributed in a major way to the public debate, and you no doubt have helped build that legacy." If that wasn't quite enough, Corker added: "Very much enjoyed your sense of humor, too."

Humor? From Al Gore? "I benefit from low expectations," he replied.

The Goracle's powers seem to come from his ability to scare the bejesus out of people. "We must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization," he said. And: "This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced." And: It "could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force."

Though some lawmakers tangled with Gore on his last visit to Capitol Hill, none did on the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Dick Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican, agreed that there will be "an almost existential impact" from the climate changes Gore described.

As such, the Goracle, even when questioned, was shown great deference. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), challenging Gore over spent nuclear fuel, began by saying: "I stand to be corrected, and I defer to your position, you're probably right, and I'm probably wrong." He ended his question by saying: "I'm not questioning you; I'm questioning myself."

Others sought to buy the Goracle's favor by offering him gifts. "Thank you for your incredible leadership; you make this crystalline for those who don't either understand it or want to understand it," gushed Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who went on to ask: "Will you join me this summer at the Jersey Shore?"

The chairman worried that the Goracle may have been offended by "naysayers" who thought it funny that Gore's testimony before the committee came on a morning after a snow-and-ice storm in the capital. "The little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis," Kerry said at the start of the hearing.

The climate was well controlled inside the hearing room, although Gore, suffering from a case of personal climate change, perspired heavily during his testimony. The Goracle presented the latest version of his climate-change slide show to the senators: a globe with yellow and red blotches, a house falling into water, and ones with obscure titles such as "Warming Impacts Ugandan Coffee Growing Region." At one point he flashed a biblical passage on the screen, but he quickly removed it. "I'm not proselytizing," he explained. A graphic showing a disappearing rain forest was accompanied by construction noises.

The Goracle supplied abundant metaphors to accompany his visuals. Oil demand: "This roller coaster is headed for a crash, and we're in the front car." Polar ice: "Like a beating heart, and the permanent ice looks almost like blood spilling out of a body along the eastern coast of Greenland."

The lawmakers joined in. "There are a lot of ways to skin a cat," contributed Isakson, who is unlikely to get the Humane Society endorsement. "And if we have the dire circumstances we're facing, we need to find every way to skin every cat."

Mostly, however, the lawmakers took turns asking the Goracle for advice, as if playing with a Magic 8 Ball.

Lugar, a 32-year veteran of the Senate, asked Gore, as a "practical politician," how to get the votes for climate-change legislation. "I am a recovering politician. I'm on about Step 9," the Goracle replied, before providing his vision.

Prospects for regulating a future carbon emissions market? "There's a high degree of confidence." The future of automobiles in China and India? "I wouldn't give up on electric vehicles." The potential of solar power in those countries? "I have no question about it at all."

Of course not. He's the Goracle.

from the Associated Press, 2009-Feb-15:

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

SANTA FE, N.M. - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don't think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn't warmed. We know it has or we'd all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there's disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth's crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he's heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven't been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It's one of the few times you've seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it's coloring their objectivity."

___

Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com

from FoxNews.com, 2009-Jan-30, by Steven Milloy:

Obama's Oval Office Hypocrisy

As reported on JunkScience.com on Thursday…

The New York Times reported on Thursday, January 29 that:

“…the capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He's from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Could this be the same Barack Obama who said last May that:

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say `OK.' … That's not leadership. That's not going to happen.”

And could this be the same Barack Obama who is looking to sign a stimulus bill that would spend billions of dollars installing millions of “smart meters” that would enable your power company to prevent you from being as comfortable as he is on hot and cold days?

While our new president is warm-and-toasty in the Oval Office, is he considering the plight of Michigan's Marvin Schur, a 93-year World War II veteran, who was recently found frozen to death courtesy of a malfunctioning electricity “limiter” device installed by his power company?

Change has come to Washington. Elitism is dead. Long live elitism.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

from the Australian, 2008-Dec-15, by Bjorn Lomborg:

Hot air from Obama

IN one of his first public policy statements as America's president-elect, Barack Obama focused on climate change, and clearly stated both his priorities and the facts on which these priorities rest. Unfortunately, both are weak, or even wrong.

Obama's policy outline was presented via video to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Governors' Global Warming Summit, and has again been shown in Poznan, Poland, to leaders assembled to flesh out a global warming road map. According to Obama, "few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change".

Such a statement is now commonplace for most political leaders across the world, even though it neglects to address the question of how much we can do to help America and the world through climate policies v other policies.

Consider, for example, hurricanes in America. Clearly, a policy of reducing CO2 emissions would have had zero consequence on Katrina's devastating effect on New Orleans, where such a disaster was long expected. Over the next half-century, even large reductions in CO2 emissions would have only a negligible effect.

Instead, direct policies to address New Orleans' vulnerabilities could have avoided the huge and unnecessary cost in human misery and economic loss. These should have included stricter building codes, smarter evacuation policies and better preservation of wetlands (which could have reduced the ferociousness of the hurricane). Most importantly, a greater focus on upkeep and restoration of the levees could have spared the city entirely. Perhaps these types of preventative actions should be Obama's priority.

Likewise, consider world hunger. Pleas for action on climate change reflect fears that global warming may undermine agricultural production, especially in the developing world. But global agricultural/economic models indicate that even under the most pessimistic assumptions, global warming would reduce agricultural production by just 1.4p er cent by the end of the century. Because agricultural output will more than double during this period, climate change would at worst cause global food production to double not in 2080 but in 2081.

Moreover, implementing the Kyoto Protocol at a cost of $180 billion annually would keep two million people from going hungry only by the end of the century. Yet by spending just $10 billion annually, the UN estimates that we could help 229 million hungry people today. Every time spending on climate policies saves one person from hunger in 100 years, the same amount could have saved 5000 people now. Arguably, this should be among Obama's top priorities.

Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies: "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

Yes, global warming is happening, and mankind is partly responsible, but these statements are - however eloquent - seriously wrong or misleading.

Sea levels are rising, but they have been rising at least since the early 1800s. In the era of satellite measurements, the rise has not accelerated (actually we've seen a sea-level fall during the past two years). The UN expects about a 30cm sea-level rise during this century, about what we saw during the past 150 years.

In that period, many coastlines increased, most obviously The Netherlands, because rich countries can easily protect and even expand their territory. But even for oft-cited Bangladesh, scientists just this year showed that the country grows by 20sq km each year, because river sedimentation wins out over rising sea levels.

Obama's claim about record droughts similarly fails even on a cursory level: the US has in all academic estimates been getting wetter through the past the century (with the 1930s dust bowl setting the drought high point). This is even true globally during the past half-century, as one of the most recent scientific studies of actual soil moisture shows: "There is an overall small wetting trend in global soil moisture."

Furthermore, famine has declined rapidly in the past half century. The main deviation has been the past two years of record-high food prices, caused not by climate change but by the policies designed to combat it: the dash for ethanol, which put food into cars and thus upward pressure on food prices. The World Bank estimates that this policy has driven at least 30 million more people into hunger. To cite policy-driven famine as an argument for more of the same policy seems unreasonable, to say the least.

Finally, it is simply wrong to say that storms are growing stronger every hurricane season. Even for the Atlantic hurricane basin, which we tend to hear about most, the total hurricane energy (ACE) as measured by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declined by two-thirds since the record was set in 2005. For the world, this trend has been more decisive: maximum ACE was reached in 1994 and has plummeted for the past three years, while hurricanes across the world for the past year have been about as inactive as at any time since records began to be kept.

Global warming should be tackled [Lomborg's opinion—mine isn't so simple -AMPP Ed.], but smartly through research and development of low-carbon alternatives. If we are to get our policies right, it is crucial that we get our facts right.

Bjorn Lomborg is the author of The Sceptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-24:

Blowhards
The fabulous debate over wind power on Nantucket Sound.

For all the hype about the Bush Administration's oil-and-gas energy bias, one of its last official acts was to give the go-ahead to what could be America's first offshore wind farm -- thus enraging more than a few self-deputized environmentalists. Such are the ironies of the wilderness of mirrors known as the Cape Wind project.

For the last seven years and counting, the green entrepreneur Jim Gordon has been trying to build a fleet of wind turbines in federal waters near the upscale seascapes of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The site seemed ideal, given the stiff ocean breezes and the eco-friendly politics in Massachusetts. The company says its 130 towers could meet 75% of the region's electricity needs and reduce carbon emissions by some 734,000 tons every year.

The sort of people who can afford to use "summer" as a verb are in favor of all that. Completely in favor, really. But they did want to raise one quibble. Unfortunately, the wind farm would create "visual pollution" in Nantucket Sound, particularly the parts within sight of their beachfront vacation homes.

Mr. Gordon went ahead anyway, and the opposition rose to gale force. Supposedly the wind farm will lead to everything from the disruption of seabird habitats to "desecrating ancient American Native burial sites," in the words of Glenn Wattley, the head of an antiwind outfit funded by the likes of Bunny Mellon. But what really upsets these well-to-do Don Quixotes is the thought of looking at windmills that would appear about as tall on the horizon as the thumbnail at the end of your outstretched arm.

Then there is the political saga, with the Kennedy family as the Hyannis Port Sopranos, supplying the muscle. While Ted Kennedy was castigating President Bush for destroying the environment, the Senator was working furiously behind the Congressional scenes to kill Cape Wind. He even had the inspiration of getting former GOP colleague Ted Stevens of Alaska to slip wording into a spending bill that would have handed a veto to then-Governor Mitt Romney, another aesthetically minded opponent. Robert Kennedy Jr., a Time magazine "hero of the planet," tried to get the Sound designated as a national marine sanctuary to bar development.

Incredibly enough, this political sabotage has so far failed. And last week the Interior Department issued its long-awaited regulatory study, mostly finding "negligible" environmental impact -- apart from a "moderate" impact on the scenery. If the Obama Administration signs off, construction could begin next year.

Mr. Kennedy blustered that the report was rushed out: amusing, considering it runs to 2,800 pages. Bill Delahunt, the windy Cape Democrat, also denounced the action as "a $2 billion project that depends on significant taxpayer subsidies while potentially doubling power costs for the region."

Good to see the Congressman now recognizes the limitations of green tech, such as its tendency to boost consumer electricity prices -- but his makeover as taxpayer champion is a bit belated. Green energy has been on the subsidy take for years, including in 2005 when Mr. Delahunt was calling for "an Apollo project for alternative energy sources, for hybrid engines, for biodiesel, for wind and solar and everything else." The reality is that all such projects are only commercially viable because of political patronage.

Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf ran the numbers and found that the effective tax rate for wind is minus-163.8%. In other words, every dollar a wind firm spends is subsidized to the tune of 64 cents from the government. The Energy Information Administration estimates that wind receives $23.37 in government benefits per megawatt hour -- compared to, say, 44 cents for coal. Despite these taxpayer crutches, wind only provides a little under 1% of U.S. net electric generation.

We'd prefer an energy policy that allows markets to shape the sources that predominate -- which would almost certainly put Cape Wind out of business. But President Obama seems determined to unload even more subsidies on green developers as he seeks to boost renewables to 10% of the U.S. electricity mix by the end of his first term and 25% by 2025; their share today is about 9% (5.8% of which is hydropower).

We wouldn't be surprised to see the President's green future wrestled to the ground by the likes of Mr. Delahunt, the Kennedys and other anticarbon Democrats. Environmentalists love the idea of milking Mother Nature for power, but they hate the hardware needed to make it work: huge windmills, acres of solar panels, high-voltage transmission lines to connect them to the places where people live. Of course, they still totally, absolutely, wholeheartedly support green energy -- as long as it gets built where someone else goes yachting.

from PajamasMedia.com, 2009-Jan-30, by James Lewis:

Anthropogenic Global Warming: The Greatest Fraud in History?
The credibility of science may never recover.

Like famished swine shoving each other aside to get to the trough, self-proclaimed scientists and real politicians are again launching headline upon headline to claim yet another disaster in the name of utterly unproven global warming. Did you know that the flock of geese that flew into US Airways jet engines this month in New York City were put there by global warming? And that London fogs, or rather their absence, are making global warming worse?

Yep. It’s right there in the paper, Maud.

As scientific skeptics are finally discovering the courage to speak out, the hype machine is faltering just a little.

But President Obama just appointed a True Believer to be science czar in the White House. So we can expect the politicians to keep hammering on this little piggy bank until the last golden coin drops out. You’ll be paying for the biggest false alarm in history for years to come.

But what worries me most is that the credibility of science may never recover — and perhaps it shouldn’t. Credibility has to be earned, and once it’s squandered may never be recovered. By now far too many scientists have knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a truly planetary scale.

Why should scientists who’ve gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be trusted again? They shouldn’t. Would you entrust your life savings to Bernie Madoff? Right.

I’m not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely judge what others do in their fields. And yet it’s been flamingly obvious for years now that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy science. That’s why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.

If that’s true, anybody who cares about science should be outraged. Even if you don’t care about that ask yourself if you want your next medical exam to be honest. Or the next time you drive across a traffic bridge, do you want the engineering tests to be falsified? If scientific corruption becomes endemic, we risk losing one of the great jewels of our culture.

So here are some fundamental violations of scientific integrity that any thoughtful person should recognize. I’m not going to touch on climatology — the case against the warming hypothesis has already been made very well by experts. I just want to talk scientific common sense.

Threatening the skeptics.

Scientists get seduced by enticing ideas and bits of evidence all the time. That’s why every scientist I’ve ever known is a thorough-going skeptic, even about his or her own data. Especially about one’s own data, because one’s career is on the line if it doesn’t check out. So we need skepticism in ourselves and others. Good science honors the rational skeptic.

Which is why it’s beyond outrageous that AGW believers are publicly attacking thoughtful skeptics — not on the facts, but on their sheer temerity in doubting their precious orthodoxy.

According to the Guardian:

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

That is Stalinism; it is never, ever done in real science. Stalin shot real scientists and promoted scientific frauds who helped to kill Soviet food production. Right there we know we’re looking at political corruption and not real science.

Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr spent decades debating quantum mechanics. Neither side tried to criminalize the other. Einstein’s stubborn skepticism actually led to spectacular new findings. Skepticism turned out to be one of his great gifts to the world.

Today’s public attack on skeptics should trigger loud alarm bells in the minds of scientists. It is indecent as well as dangerous.

Pop media hype.

AGW is heavily promoted through the popular media. But the pop media are utterly incompetent when it comes to any scientific or technical question. An English or journalism degree just doesn’t prepare you; nor do news editors want you to tell the truth. In the media a good story always beats out technical facts.

But in reputable science nothing is published without careful peer review, and the more spectacular the hypothesis, the more intensive the reviews are going to be. That’s why peer-reviewed journals are so vital to a healthy science, and why the constant evasion of peer review by global warming fanatics is a sign of their scientific weakness. If the evidence was solid, they would not have to run to the nearest headline-hunting journalist.

Bad data without apology.

In AGW bad data has been very widespread, and judging by past performance, it may still be endemic. Thermometers are placed in hot areas in the cities, and the data is shamelessly generalized to the whole world. The infamous “hockey stick” temperature diagram has been exposed. James Hansen has brought NASA to its lowest point ever by repeatedly endorsing false data.

In any healthy field of science, that disastrous empirical record would have discredited the hypothesis. But while the data seems to crash periodically, the models don’t change in their catastrophism.

Read the headlines in SCIENCE magazine any week, and you can see that grinding process of doubt, clarification, and constant revision going on. In real science researchers can be forgiven for making a few errors, but not many — known or suspected frauds are denied tenure or fired. They are essentially blacklisted for the rest of their careers. The process is utterly Darwinian, and it works.

Except for the global warming hype. Here, we’re supposed to accept the word of media types who know nothing about science, and care only about the next big headline.

Here are seven more fundamental violations of scientific integrity in the AGW game.

1. Never confuse lab results with nature. Richard Feynman said that the physics we know is the simple part; natural physics in the real world is far too simple for blind generalization.

2. In real science we never label a speculative idea to be true by fiat. Ordinary scientists would lose their reputations simply by mislabeling a wild hypothesis as the truth. They would be isolated like a cyst in the human body, blocked from spreading the infection.

2. In real science the burden of proof is always on the proposer, never on the skeptics.

3. In real science `data surrogates” are never accepted without long-term testing.

Until a decade or two ago we didn’t have satellites to measure global temperatures. Before that time we had to rely on very spotty and locally distorted surface thermometers, or even worse, ice core surrogates for real world temperatures. But those core samples take decades of testing and open debate before we know what they really measure. It took centuries for the mercury thermometer to be adopted. Can we really believe the story that ice cores and tree cores tell us the truth about global temperatures eons ago? I don’t know, but in a toxified field of research, I don’t trust it.

4. In real science we never smuggle untested premises into the words we use.

The very term “greenhouse gas” is an unproven assumption. Don’t even use it unless you are prepared to prove that C02 and methane actually raise world temperatures. So far the evidence doesn’t look good.

5. In real science we never corrupt the integrity of research by slanting grants toward any preconceived idea. Nor do we allow ourselves to be rushed into making huge claims without adequate testing and debate. Political deadlines mean nothing in real science.

6. In the real world, much less real science, we never, never believe politicians when they claim to know a scientific truth; they are unqualified, and they are professional liars.

Al Gore is a sick joke. The same can be said about the establishment media, and yes, even about scientist-politicians.

Scientists are as corruptible as anybody else. Good scientists do have a conscience, but it’s the double-checking mechanisms of science that makes it trustworthy. We routinely see corrupt accountants and clergy in the news, and the news business itself is deeply corrupted and untrustworthy. The question is, do you build in checks and balances? Reporters are always rushed and deadline-driven, and they always trade off their integrity against the daily pressure for headlines.

All this affects you personally. Don’t doubt that your life and mine depend upon healthy science and medicine, and yes, even on honest journalism.

7. Finally, in real science we never confuse an infant research effort with a mature science that has been checked and triple-checked over decades.

Climate modeling is just a toddler science, barely able to waddle around the living room. It’s a nice idea to try modeling the earth’s atmosphere. But nature is inconceivably more complex than what we ever see in a laboratory jar. There are no proven “greenhouse gases” in the real atmosphere, just as there are no proven causes of alcoholism or obesity. Alcoholism is an incredibly complex mix of nutrients, heredity, epigenetics, exercise, lifestyle, early learning, puberty, social support, economics, food availability, optimism, toxins, sunshine, interactions, feedback loops, and all the unknown unknowns.

Try to build little computer models of alcoholism and you learn nothing new — because it’s the evidence that’s missing. Computer models of the atmosphere are just as premature. Climate modeling is a baby “science” just like the quack cures for alcoholism or obesity.

Most scientifically savvy people understand this perfectly well. It’s not news — except to the news media, who just don’t want to know. They will never ruin a good story with facts. Journalists don’t get fired for being wrong.

AGW therefore looks to be the biggest fraud in the history of science. The AGW hype machine may signal the worst breakdown ever in the normal, healthy process of open debate and endless testing that makes for good science. It’s pathological science — which is not science at all.

What’s happening today is very dangerous. It can infect other parts of the sciences, medicine, and technology. If honest scientists cannot stand up to the pressure we are in deep, deep trouble as a society. Bad science kills people.

That institutional breakdown could spread — perhaps it has already spread — to other fields that have been politicized. This is very bad.

Ultimately the only solution may be to cauterize the proliferating mass of corruption. That can only be done by the new media, which are not playing footsies with political frauds.

All we can do is keep telling the truth, and listen to honest debate. Keep on doing that, and this sickness may yet pass, without killing the patient.

James Lewis is a scientist by trade, and carps as a hobby about the passing parade of human fraud and folly.

from the Canada Free Press, 2008-Dec-22, by Tim Ball:

The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models
Completely inadequate IPCC models produce the ultimate deception about man made global warming

E. R. Beadle said, “Half the work done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does this with purpose and great effect. They built the difference between appearance and reality into their process. Unlike procedure used elsewhere, they produce and release a summary report independently and before the actual technical report is completed. This way the summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said. Climate science is made to appear what it is not. Indeed, it is not even what is in their Scientific Report. 

The pattern of falsifying appearances began early. Although he works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Stephen Schneider was heavily employed in the work of the IPCC as this biography notes.

Much of Schneider’s time is taken up by what he calls his “pro bono day job” for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II of the IPCC from 1997 to 2001 and a lead author in Working Group I from 1994 to 1996. Currently, he is a Coordinating Lead Author for the controversial chapter on “Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risks from Climate Change,” in short, defining “dangerous” climate change.” - Pubmedcentral.nih.gov

He continued this work by helping prepare the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released in April 2007.

Schneider, among others, created the appearance that the Summary was representative of the Science Report. However, he provides an early insight into the thinking when speaking about global warming to Discovery magazine (October 1989) he said scientists need, “to get some broader based support, to capture the public’s imagination…that, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have…each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.” The last sentence is deeply disturbing--there is no decision required.

The Summary for Policymakers is designed to convince everyone that global warming is due to human production of CO2. In SPM AR4 issued in April 2007 they say, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” The term “very likely” is from a table reportedly produced by Schneider and means greater than 90%. Professor Roy Spencer says about probabilities in this context. “Any statements of probability are meaningless and misleading. I think the IPCC made a big mistake. They’re pandering to the public not understanding probabilities. When they say 90 percent, they make it sound like they’ve come up with some kind of objective, independent, quantitative way of estimating probabilities related to this stuff. It isn’t. All it is is a statement of faith.”

So they create an appearance of certainty about a human cause of warming. But what is the reality? The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models. In every record of any duration for any time period in the history of the Earth, temperature increase precedes CO2 increase. So an incorrect assumption that a CO2 increase will cause temperature increase is built into the computer models. That is damaging enough, but the computer models themselves are completely inadequate to represent global climate or make any predictions about future climate. But don’t believe me. The IPCC Technical Report (“The Physical Science Basis”) produced by Working Group I and released in November 2007, says so.

Problems begin with the definition of climate change used because it requires they only consider human causes. From the United Nations Environment Program (article 1) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.” But you cannot determine the human portion unless you understand natural climate change. As Professor Roy Spencer said in his testimony before the US Senate EPW Committee, “And given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research.”

Media and public are allowed to believe the IPCC make climate predictions, but they don’t. The First Assessment Report (Climate Change 1992) said, “Scenarios are not predictions of the future and should not be used as such.” While the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios says; “Scenarios are images of the future or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts. Climate Change 2001 continues the warnings; “The possibility that any single in emissions path will occur as described in this scenario is highly uncertain.” In the same Report they say, “No judgment is offered in this report as to the preference for any of the scenarios and they are not assigned probabilities of recurrence, neither must they be interpreted as policy recommendations.” This is a reference to the range of scenarios they produce using different future possible economic conditions. Of course, they didn’t build in the recent financial collapse.

Climate Change 2001 substitutes the word projection for prediction. Projection is defined as follows, “A projection is a potential future evolution of a quantity or set of quantities, often computed with the help of a model. Projections are distinguished from predictions in order to emphasise that projections involve assumptions concerning e.g. future socio-economic and technological developments that may or may not be realised and are therefore subject to substantial uncertainty”.

This and similar statements are based on the unproven hypothesis that human produced CO2 is causing warming and or climate change. The evidence is based solely on the output of 18 computer climate models selected by the IPCC. There are a multitude of problems including the fact that every time they run them they produce different results. They use an average of all the runs. The IPCC then take the average results of the 18 models and average them for the results in their Reports.

Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeler at the European Centre for Medium - Range Weather Forecasts said, “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.” This comment is partly explained by the scale of the General Circulation Models (GCM). The models are mathematical constructs that divide the world into rectangles. Size of the rectangles is critical to the abilities of the models as the IPCC AR4 acknowledges. “Computational constraints restrict the resolution that is possible in the discretized equations, and some representation of the large-scale impacts of unresolved processes is required (the parametrization problem). “ (AR4 Chapter 8. p.596.)

The IPCC uses surface weather data, which means there is inadequate data in space and time for most of the world to create an accurate model. Limitations of the surface data are surpassed by an almost complete lack of information above the surface. An illustration of the surface problem is identified by the IPCC comment of the problems of modeling Arctic climates.

“Despite advances since the TAR, substantial uncertainty remains in the magnitude of cryospheric feedbacks within AOGCMs. This contributes to a spread of modelled climate response, particularly at high latitudes. At the global scale, the surface albedo feedback is positive in all the models, and varies between models much less than cloud feedbacks. Understanding and evaluating sea ice feedbacks is complicated by the strong coupling to polar cloud processes and ocean heat and freshwater transport. Scarcity of observations in polar regions also hampers evaluation.” (AR4.,Chapter 8, p593.) Most of the information for the Arctic came from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and a diagram from that report illustrates the problem.

The very large area labeled “No Data” covers most of the Arctic Basin, an area of approximately 14,250,000 km2 (5,500,000) square miles). Remember, certainties of arctic ice conditions are core to Gore’s alarmism.

In the Southern Hemisphere the IPCC identifies this problem over a vast area of the Earth’s surface. “Systematic biases have been found in most models’ simulation of the Southern Ocean. Since the Southern Ocean is important for ocean heat uptake, this results in some uncertainty in transient climate response.” (AR4. Chapter 8. p. 591.)

Atmosphere and oceans are fluids governed by non-linear rather than linear equations. These equations have unpredictability or randomness - also known as chaos – it explains why the models get different results every time they are run. These problems well known outside of climate science were specifically acknowledged in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” (TAR, p.774.)

Validation is essential for any model before using it for predictions. A normal procedure is to require proven evidence that they can make future predictions to a satisfactory level of accuracy. The IPCC use the term evaluation instead of validation, but they don’t evaluate the entire model. To do so they say shows problems but the source is not determined. Instead they evaluate at the component level. This means they don’t evaluate the important interactions between the components at any level.

IPCC Report AR4 makes a remarkable statement not repeated in the Summary for Policymakers. It speaks to the lack of valuation, which explains the failure of their projections. “What does the accuracy of a climate model’s simulation of past or contemporary climate say about the accuracy of its projections of climate change? This question is just beginning to be addressed, exploiting the newly available ensembles of models.” (AR4, Chapter 8. p.594.)

A simple single word definition of science is the ability to predict. It is not used by the IPCC, yet they present their work as scientific predictions. Media and the public generally believe the IPCC is making predictions and that is clearly the assumption for government policies. Sadly, members of the IPCC do nothing to dissuade the public from that view. All previous “projections” were wrong. The most recent example is the period from 2000 to 2008. IPCC predicted warming but temperatures went down while CO2 increased. Finally, the IPCC AR4 itself explains why IPCC model projections fail.

“Models continue to have significant limitations, such as in their representation of clouds, which lead to uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change.” (AR4, Chapter 8. p.600)

It is hard to imagine a better example of Beadle’s axiom paraphrased as follows, “Half the work done by the IPCC is to make things appear what they are not.”

Dr. Tim Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.  Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Oct-20:

Obama's Carbon Ultimatum
The coming offer you won't be able to refuse.

Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming "solution." But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail -- or rather, greenmail -- Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda.

Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.

The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings." The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.

These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress -- even with strongly Democratic majorities -- might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.

Climate-change politics don't break cleanly along partisan lines. The burden of a carbon clampdown will fall disproportionately on some states over others, especially the 25 interior states that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. Rustbelt manufacturing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will get hit hard too. Once President Bush leaves office, the coastal Democrats pushing hardest for a climate change program might find their colleagues splitting off, especially after they vote for a huge tax increase on incomes.

Thus Messrs. Obama and Grumet want to invoke a political deus ex machina driven by a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act to force Congress's hand. Mr. Obama and Democrats can then tell Americans that Congress must act to tax and regulate carbon to save the country from even worse bureaucratic consequences. It's Mr. Obama's version of Jack Benny's old "your money or your life" routine, but without the punch line.

The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn't believe he'll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way: "The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus."

Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It's another example of "change" you'll be given no choice but to believe in.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Jan-16, by Stephen Moore:

How Green Is My Putin?

Bravo to the Competitive Enterprise Institute for launching a new campaign lampooning the inane Chevron ads that encourage Americans to use less energy. It's about time someone attacked a marketing subterfuge in which a major energy company urges its customers to use less of its product. CEI says that Vladimir Putin should be "Chevron's Man of the Year" for withholding oil and gas from Ukraine and elsewhere.

The Chevron campaign is infuriating and based on the Malthusian notion that using energy is a bad thing. TV and newspaper ads are being run most heavily run in Washington, D.C., featuring men and women who say earnest things like: "I will use mass transit more," and "I will ride my bike to work," and "I will unplug things." The implication seems to be: If only we didn't have cars and electronic gadgets, the world would be a wonderful place.

Chevron's long-running campaign plays into the left's war against the automobile, and it's not clear why an oil company would want to encourage this (though Detroit probably sees an attempt to make sure that Detroit, rather than Big Oil, wears the "kick me sign" in Congress). As Sam Kazman, an analyst at CEI, points out: "Oil gets demonized by lots of groups these days, but the notion of an oil company dissing its chief product seems perverse, and doesn't bode well for the future of mobility."

Chevron spokesmen say the campaign is a public service that advances the greening of the planet. But if oil is such an evil extraction, why does Chevron keep drilling holes in the ground to get it out? As energy expert Robert Bradley tells us, oil supplies are not running out, and today's oil price of $37 a barrel is about the lowest in 100 years when adjusted for wage levels. Someone ought to inform Chevron management that energy is the primary resource behind all economic advancement. To be anti-energy is to be against furthering human progress.

CEI has produced a new poster that is a classic. Mimicking the Chevron campaign, it shows a photo of Mr. Putin and the caption reads: "I will ship less gas to Europe." As Mr. Kazman puts it, "Putin may have monetary and military reasons for his action, but he's also reducing energy use and encouraging conservation."

By Chevron's standards, Mr. Putin is a great humanitarian and steward of the environment -- just don't try telling that to Eastern Europeans.

from the Australian, 2008-Sep-19, by Brendan O'Neill:

Snow-roots campaign a form of green self-hate

AT first it seemed like a joke. Unsolicited forumemails informed me I could buy badges (or buttons, as Americans call them) with the slogan Polar Bears for Obama. Then I heard there was a T-shirt, available from the CafePress online store for $26.99, that said Polar Bears for Obama-Biden beneath a picture of a sad-looking polar bear cub. You can also buy shopping bags, bumper stickers and mugs that celebrate the polar bear-Obama love-in. There is a website called PolarBears ForObama.com, which describes itself as a snow-roots campaign against Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who is a big meanie.

Good one, I thought. Sometimes elections need to be shaken up with a bit of quirkiness, and if it can be snow-coated, animal-related quirkiness, that's all the better. Only now I'm not so sure it was a joke after all. The polar bear issue - or what we may call, for want of a better and less insane phrase, the polar bear vote - has become big news. Serious newspapers have published articles titled "Love polar bears, loathe Sarah Palin". MSNBC analysed the differences between Palin and her boss, John McCain, on the polar bear issue. Palin is referred to as a polar bear hater, and at an anti-Republican rally in Alaska last week one protester wore a polar bear suit and wielded a sign saying: Polar Bear Moms Say No to Palin.

No doubt some will put this down to the nuttiness of US politics. In fact, it reveals more about the nuttiness of the politics of climate change. The politicisation of the polar bear in the US presidential campaign is hinged on Palin's opposition to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. In May this year, Palin, as Governor of Alaska, said she would sue the federal Government for labelling polar bears as officially threatened. She argued that giving special protection to polar bear habitats would cripple oil and gas development off Alaska's northern and northwestern coasts. She also said there was not enough evidence to support the listing of polar bears. On this basis, she is known as a polar bear hater and campaigners are claiming that if polar bears had the vote they would definitely support Obama because, as one baby polar bear says, "My daddy says Sarah Palin doesn't like us."

Call me a polar bear hater (actually, some people already have), but it just so happens that Palin has a point. There is not exactly a groundswell of evidence that polar bears are going extinct. In fact, experts claim global polar bear numbers have increased during the past 40 years.

In 2001, the World Conservation Union found that of 20 polar bear populations, one or possibly two were in decline, while more than half were stable and two sub-populations were increasing. Its more recent study in 2006 found a somewhat less rosy picture, but it wasn't that bad: of 19 polar bear populations, five were declining, five were stable and two were increasing (there wasn't enough data to judge the fortunes of the remaining seven populations). The global population has increased from about 5000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today.

Today's widespread polar bear concern is shot through with myth and misinformation. One of the nine scientific errors found in Al Gore's horror film An Inconvenient Truth, following a case brought in the British High Court last year, concerned his claims about polar bears. Gore claimed a scientific study had discovered that polar bears were drowning because they had to swim long distances to find ice. Yet the only scientific study Gore's team could provide as evidence was one showing that four polar bears had recently been found drowned because of a storm. According to Bjorn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, the international tale about polar bears suffering at the hands of ruthless mankind springs from this single sighting of four dead bears the day after an abrupt windstorm.

It may be true that as a result of hunting and human intervention around the North Pole, polar bears will suffer. But the politics of the polar bear is not a scientific, fact-driven phenomenon: it is a morality tale. It is an anthropomorphic story every bit as daft as Bambi in which the polar bear has become a symbolic victim of man's wanton destruction of the planet. The polar bear has become the poster boy of the green lobby. It featured heavily in An Inconvenient Truth. Leonardo DiCaprio posed with one on the front cover of a special green issue of Vanity Fair. The bear he posed with - Knut from Berlin Zoo - is having his life story turned into a blockbuster movie, with Suri Cruise (daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) reportedly lined up to provide his voice. Leaflets inviting people to join green movements now come with photos of stranded (or allegedly stranded) polar bears. So do adverts for low-energy light bulbs.

It was not scientific fact that elevated the polar bear to this privileged status of Bambi-style victimhood; it was the human self-loathing of the environmentalist moment. We are expected to believe that our most simple everyday activities, from what light bulbs we use to how many cups of tea we drink, are directly and terribly affecting polar bears thousands of kilometres away. So now you find serious green commentators saying things such as: The idea that turning on your kettle helps to drown polar bears has never really sunk in with many people. Yes, there's a reason for that: because when I turn on my kettle it has absolutely no effect whatsoever on any polar bear anywhere in the world. And that is a fact.

On the basis of some twisted or at least questionable facts, and conveniently cropped, heart-rending photos, the polar bear has come to represent human guilt and self-doubt. In the past, we Catholics were told not to misbehave because God would be displeased. It was said that if we wasted our food, then a little black baby would die. Today we are told that if we don't watch our energy use, trim our carbon footprint, follow Gore and make regular donations to various green groups, then polar bears will die. The great white bear of the north has taken the place of God in the clouds as the barometer of human behaviour and morality.

The political promotion of this animal represents the denigration of human desire, the subordination of the human will to the animalistic fearmongering of environmentalism.

In a more profound sense, then, the politics of the polar bear represents the disavowal of human interests, which come to be seen as grubby, greedy and destructive. The intervention of the polar bear even into the US election is striking. That many Democratic Party supporters and radical activists are claiming to act on behalf of the polar bear, even dressing up as bears for anti-Palin protests, shows the extent to which environmentalism threatens to empty politics of its human, self-interested, democratic component. Some people are not representing themselves in the election but are speaking for the cute (eh?), voiceless polar bear. Polar Bears for Obama does not spring from the typically dumb Disneyfication of US politics but from the misanthropic, people-less politics of being green.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of online magazine Spiked.

from the Economist, 2008-Jul-10:

Out of the wilderness
People are shunning the great outdoors. Blame conservationists, not video games

ON JULY 4th, normally the busiest public holiday of the year, tourists were put off by high petrol prices and more than 300 wildfires raging across California. On Memorial Day, traditionally the beginning of the summer season, it was cold. In 1999 there was a grisly murder. In 1997 the Merced river flooded, inundating a hotel and wiping out hundreds of campsites. There are always excuses for the absence of people in Yosemite National Park.

The number of visitors to California's most spectacular valley has dropped for nine out of the past 13 years, and seems to be heading down again this year. Even in 2007—a relatively busy year—attendance was 11% below the mid-1990s peak. In America as a whole the number of visitors to national parks and historic sites peaked in 1987. Visitors are staying for less time and camping less often, especially in the wilderness. And rangers are hearing less American-accented English. Were it not for British and German tourists enjoying the weak dollar, the parks would be desolate.

Falling enthusiasm for what the writer Wallace Stegner called America's “best idea” is especially striking in such a fast-growing part of the country. Since 1994 California has swollen from 31.5m to over 38m people. The speediest growth is inland, close to parks like Joshua Tree, Sequoia and Yosemite. The same pattern holds further east. Larry Swanson of the Centre for the Rocky Mountain West notes a strong correlation between population increase and proximity to national parks and forests. Americans plainly think it is a good idea to live near national parks, but they are not so keen on visiting them.

Americans are retreating from other outdoor activities too. Despite an explosion in the deer population, the number of hunters fell from 19.1m to 12.5m between 1975 and 2006. Fishing has declined more steeply, particularly among the young. This worries everybody from urban liberals (who fret about the health of a generation growing up indoors) to rural conservatives (who fear that public lands will be closed to hunters if not enough turn up). The “No Child Left Inside” act, which would pay for children to be taught about the delights of the countryside, is trundling through Congress. Nebraska now provides turkey-hunting lessons for women.

By contrast, it is not clear to everyone in the National Park Service that the lack of visitors is a problem, admits Dean Reeder, its tourism director. Some rangers, indeed, seem to view visitors as an impediment to the smooth running of the parks. Wiser heads know this is folly. As Americans lose interest in the national parks, they will become less willing to pay for them through taxes. Some worry about Hispanics, a fast-growing group that seems resistant to the call of the wild.

Like many things that go wrong in America, the drift away from nature is commonly blamed on television, video games and the internet. This is implausible. The number of park visitors rose steeply between the 1950s and the mid-1980s, even as the first two electronic lures spread. Rather more credible is the explanation that Americans are more fearful for their children and have become unwilling to leave them in the company of strange men, green-hatted or otherwise. But the biggest reason of all is competition.

Attendance at national parks was not the only thing that peaked between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. In 1991 America's homicide rate reached 9.8 per 100,000 people. Many cities were known for lawlessness and grot; not surprisingly, holiday-makers were passing them up for greener spots. Then, miraculously, the murder rate began to slide, falling to just 5.5 per 100,000 in 2000. Led by New York, cities spruced themselves up and began to attract more tourists.

Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces, a consultancy, reckons Americans have rediscovered the pleasures of densely-populated, exciting places. Not all of these are cities, although they tend to look like them. In 1994, the year Yosemite's crowds were at their thickest, MGM announced plans to build a casino on the Las Vegas strip that resembled New York. By the time it was finished, three years later, work had begun on Paris and Venice. Shopping malls began to transform themselves from covered boxes into ersatz downtowns open to the elements.

Yosemite is long on staggering views but short on what most people would today regard as entertainment. It contains fewer diversions than it once did. Scott Gediman, the park's spokesman, points out that it used to have a Cadillac dealership and a zoo. Although pretty, Yosemite's hotels are basic compared to most cities (if they were in Las Vegas they would have been dynamited long ago). Camp Curry, a vaguely military cluster of fixed tents and cabins, has hardly changed in a century.

As in other national parks, Yosemite's rooms tend to sell out in descending price order. Expensive hotels go before cheaper ones—indeed, they routinely book up as soon as reservations can be made, 366 days in advance. Cabins with bathrooms go before cabins without. This suggests there is pent-up demand for luxury hotel rooms. Not only is there little chance more will be built; it is proving almost impossible to put up a handful of campsites.

The Merced river flood of 1997 almost halved the number of campsites in Yosemite Valley. Today there are just 464, accommodating 2,700 people at most. The park wants to build more, although not nearly as many as there were before the flood. This plan, which is part of a modest package of improvements to the park's infrastructure and one of its hotels, has been opposed by local conservation groups on the ground that it fails to address threats to the valley's ecology.

So far conservationists have managed to block the renovations. And they have opened a broader front in the battle against development. Earlier this year a federal court ruled that the National Park Service must limit human use of Yosemite Valley. That may mean a daily cap on visitor numbers. If the park imposes one, the example is likely to spread across America. This will create pressure to solve environmental problems by turning more people away.

This is a shame, and a self-defeating exercise. America's environmental movement emerged in the 19th century to push for national parks. In the 20th century it sold them to the public through photographs and writing. It now seems bent on driving people away from them.

from the Times of London, 2009-Jan-11, by Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods:

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches
Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines - about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

Though Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it operates. When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn't go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.

It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google's infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises energy consumption. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has also set up a website www.CO2stats.com. “Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy,” he said.

Google said: “We are among the most efficient of all internet search providers.”

Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.

A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes' computer use).

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.

“It's not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”

Though energy consumption by computers is growing - and the rate of growth is increasing - Newcombe argues that what matters most is the type of usage.

If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that's good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.

Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month. Last week Stephen Fry, the TV presenter, was posting “tweets” from New Zealand, imparting such vital information as “Arrived in Queenstown. Hurrah. Full of bungy jumping and `activewear' shops”, and “Honestly. NZ weather makes UK look stable and clement”.

Jonathan Ross was Twittering even more, with posts such as “Am going to muck out the pigs. It will be cold, but I'm not the type to go on about it” and “Am now back indoors and have put on fleecy tracksuit and two pairs of socks”. Ross also made various “tweets” trying to ascertain whether Jeremy Clarkson was a Twitter user or not. Yesterday the Top Gear presenter cleared up the matter, saying: “I am not a twit. And Jonathan Ross is.”

Such internet phenomena are not simply fun and hot air, Newcombe warns: the boom in such services has a carbon cost.

from TechNewsWorld.com, 2009-Jan-12, by Renay San Miguel:

Harvard Physicist Sets Record Straight on Internet Carbon Study

A Harvard researcher spent much of Monday setting the record straight about his research and how it relates to Google's energy consumption. A Sunday Times of London story reported that conducting two Google searches generates as much carbon dioxide as boiling water, though the researcher denies singling out Google.

A story in the Sunday Times of London sent Google's public relations machine into an advanced search for answers. The Times reporters wrote about a new Harvard study that examines the energy impact of Web searches. The story's lead paragraph: "Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research."

One problem: the study's author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. "For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."

And the example involving tea kettles? "They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics," Wissner-Gross said.

Was Google Burned by Energy Story?

The Times story is giving Google a chance to talk about the company's green initiatives and its efforts to pursue cleaner energy technologies on several fronts, Google spokesperson Jamie Yood said. "This comes from the top, from (cofounders) Larry (Page) and Sergey (Brin), who are really dedicated to this. There's an acknowledgment that Google is using energy and on the business front it makes sense to get this energy cost as low as possible," Yood told TechNewsWorld. "And on the environmental front, they are passionate about climate change and are really involved. They recognize that if we're going to use energy, let's try to figure out how to do this as minimally as possible."

That includes the use of biodiesel shuttles and electric cars to and from its Mountain View, Calif., campus, offering bikes for employees to ride from building to building on that campus, and using recyclable materials throughout those buildings. And when it comes to its server farms, "we do believe we have the most energy efficient data centers."

Google takes exception on its Official Google blog to the statistics quoted in the Times story regarding the energy used to Web search vs. boiling a kettle of water. A speedy search uses less energy, the company claims; about the same amount of energy as the human body uses in about 10 seconds.

Google has asked to see a copy of the study, and Wissner-Gross says he is more than happy to send them one.

One of the Times article's authors had interviewed a Google engineer "whose job is to look at data centers to make sure they're more energy efficient, and he didn't really use any of his material," Yood said.

Google's Side of Things

Greenpeace doesn't really focus on the energy efficiencies used by Google or Web companies in general, said spokesperson Daniel Kessler. It is more focused on electronics products, the toxic materials used and company recycling initiatives. However, Google gets high marks for its green efforts in Washington D.C., Kessler said. "I commend Google for its lobbying and the legislative work they're doing when it comes to clean energy," Kessler told TechNewsWorld. "In the whole tech sector, they're really on the forefront on taking action regarding the climate."

Google's data centers burn through a lot of energy in the course of providing answers to search queries around the world, and the cheapest form of that energy right now is coal, said Roger Kay, principal at Endpoint Technologies Associates, who keeps a close eye on the environmental policies at IT companies.

"It's taking that electricity bill they've got and kind of making it a proportion of the total expenditure of the generation of electricity, and then allocating that as a cost to Google and saying that's their responsibility, their piece of it," Kay told TechNewsWorld. "It's just modeling, a modeling exercise that may not necessarily be a reflection of reality."

The location of the information needed in a Web search may also play a part, Kay said. "If you're looking for the latest on Brad Pitt, then that's likely to be stored in multiple servers towards the edge of the network, where it will be an easy search. Google through its traffic management knows a lot of people are interested in that. But if you want to read Cicero's works, which haven't been read for a while, you may have to go deep into the network."

The Researcher's Take

Wissner-Gross, who manages the Web site CO2stats.com to help educate people about energy efficiencies on the Internet, has been inundated with press requests since the Times story was published. The Times quoted him correctly in the story as saying, "A Google search has a definite environmental impact" and "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," he confirmed.

"I don't think anybody would disagree with those statements," Wissner-Gross said. "Everything online has a definite environmental impact. I think everybody can agree on that, including Google."

There's a difference between regular servers and those used in advanced data centers, Wissner-Gross said, and he acknowledges that Google would have a financial interest in maintaining an energy-efficient infrastructure. "Energy consumption may be a higher fraction of infrastructure costs for large companies like Google than the hardware itself."

In between answering reporters' e-mails and appearing on CNBC, Wissner-Gross has had a lot of time to think about why the Sunday Times focused on Google in its story. "The short answer is, it's a really easy way to sell papers. Google is a very successful company and it's a very easy way to get readership by making grandiose claims about them."