News & Commentary March 19, 2010

 

Buying Votes With Water

The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform.

One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. (IBD)

 

This tax on fizzy drinks stinks

Whether it is cigarettes, booze or soda, it’s not the place of the taxman to dissuade us from our enjoyable bad habits.

They are nutritionally valueless, apparently. They rot your teeth. They make you fat. They may cause diabetes, heart disease and even pancreatic cancer. So who could possibly object to taxing fizzy drinks? I could. The idea may be gaining fans on both sides of the Atlantic, but the last thing we need is the taxman deciding what we eat and drink. (Rob Lyons, spiked)

 

Supplement may slow overweight kids' fat gain

NEW YORK - Supplements containing the dietary fat conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) may help overweight kids curb the amount of fat they gain over time, a small study suggests.

Researchers found that overweight and obese children who took the CLA supplement for seven months showed less fat accumulation than a comparison group of children given a placebo.

However, children on the supplement also showed a dip in their blood levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and a lesser gain in bone mass over time.

The findings suggest that while CLA might help slow body fat gain, its overall safety and effectiveness for children needs to be studied further, the researchers note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

CLA is an unsaturated fatty acid found in beef, lamb and dairy products; the CLA in supplements is generally derived from vegetable oils that are rich in linoleic acids.

Animal research has found that CLA can help melt away body fat, and some studies have suggested the same may hold true in humans. One recent study, for example, found that obese women with diabetes shed a couple pounds of body fat, on average, after taking CLA for four months.

Lab research on the fatty acid has suggested that it may be particularly effective at preventing fat accumulation in young animals. But the effects on overweight children have been largely unknown. (Reuters Health)

 

Can't make up their minds? Taking blood pressure pills cuts risk of dying

NEW YORK - People with high blood pressure who want to reduce their risk of having a stroke or dying prematurely should get their prescriptions filled and see their doctor regularly.

In a large study of Medicaid patients, researchers found that the more closely a person adhered to his or her doctor's recommendations for filling their blood pressure medication prescription, the lower his or her risk of stroke and death.

Taking just one more pill as recommended each week (from a one-a-day regimen) cut stroke risk by 9 percent and death risk by 7 percent, Dr. James E. Bailey of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis and colleagues report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

They looked at the medical records of about 49,000 Tennessee Medicaid patients for 1994 to 2000 to determine if blood pressure medication refill adherence or frequency of physician visits influenced risk of stroke or death. The researchers also investigated whether the type of blood pressure-lowering drugs a patient took was associated with stroke or risk of dying.

Patients were taking two different types of blood pressure drug on average, although some were taking as many as six. Sixty percent of the patients filled their prescriptions less than 80 percent of the time, and were classified as non-adherent to their medication.

During follow-up, which ranged from 3 to 7 years, 619 study participants had a stroke and 2,051 died.

Patients who were non-adherent were a half-percent more likely to die over a five-year period compared to adherent patients. Blood pressure drugs known as thiazide diuretics, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and beta blockers all cut death risk by 3 to 4 percent, while thiazide diuretics also cut stroke risk. (Reuters Health)

 

If this pans out it really will be a breakthrough: New attack on cancer forces cells to grow old & die

CHICAGO - Instead of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die, they said on Wednesday.

Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely, without going through the normal aging process known as senescence.

But a study in mice showed that blocking a gene in this pathway called Skp2 triggered the aging process, causing cancer cells to stop dividing and halting tumor growth.

The finding may offer a new strategy for fighting cancer, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues reported in the journal Nature. (Reuters)

 

Drug-resistant TB killed 150,000 in 2008

WASHINGTON - Multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis killed 150,000 people in 2008 and infects between 400,000 and 500,000 people globally, according to World Health Organization estimates released on Thursday.

WHO said the numbers suggest the hard-to-treat infection is spreading and said there is an urgent need for countries to set up labs to fight it.

So-called MDR-TB is especially common in Russia, Tajikistan, China and India, WHO said in a report. It said an especially hard-to-treat form called extensively drug resistant TB or XDR-TB is also growing.

"Almost 50 percent of MDR-TB cases worldwide are estimated to occur in China and India. In 2008, MDR-TB caused an estimated 150,000 deaths," the WHO report said.

The report uses new methods and new surveillance data from countries around the world, so the figures cannot be compared to older surveys of MDR-TB. But WHO said the findings are startling and show a need to find infected patients and treat them promptly. (Reuters)

 

Tests for genes don't predict breast cancer better

BOSTON - Studying genes linked to breast cancer may someday lead to better treatments, but they do little to improve a doctor's ability to predict who is likely to develop a tumor, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Their study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that testing for 10 errant bits of genetic code linked to breast cancer was no better for screening than asking old-fashioned questions involving a woman's conventional risk factors. These include family history, age of fertility and age when a first child was born.

Only when these questions were combined with genetic testing did the ability to predict a tumor improve. "It was not enough improvement to matter for the great majority of women," team leader Sholom Wacholder of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a statement. (Reuters)

 

Anti-malaria funding must be tripled - campaigners

PARIS - Funding to combat malaria must be more than tripled if the mosquito-borne disease which kills nearly a million people a year is to be fought effectively, health campaigners said on Thursday.

Presenting a report covering the past decade, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership said a jump in financing had helped to contain the disease but more needed to be done.

"In all the countries where there is sufficient financing, we are reaching our goals," said Awa Marie Coll-Seck, executive director of the partnership, which is backed by the World Health Organisation.

Total annual global funding was about $2 billion at the end of 2009, far short of the estimated $6 billion required annually to expand the campaign, the partnership said. (Reuters)

Interior spraying with DDT is both cheaper and more effective and it should be far more widely deployed.

 

Honest Food Labels

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has said one of her priorities is to improve the information on food package labels. Her new crackdown on dishonest nutritional claims by food manufacturers is a welcome sign that she means business.

Earlier this month, the agency made public 17 letters it had sent to food companies, accusing them of inflating nutritional claims or masking undesirable ingredients. Several products, including Gorton’s Fish Fillets and Dreyer’s bite-size Dibs ice cream snacks, were cited for labels boasting that they contained no trans fat, even though they had high levels of saturated fat. POM pomegranate juice was cited for misleading claims on the company’s Web site, which is listed on juice bottles, that said the juice could prevent or cure disease like hypertension, diabetes and cancer. (NYT)

Honest labeling is good but methinks they are too excited about how much notice consumers take of labels. Fats, trans, saturated or otherwise are really a synthetic "problem" and basically irrelevant as consumer information (they wouldn't get a mention if activists hadn't stampeded politicians searching for an "issue" into banning them). True, the pomegranate claims are garbage but most consumers can recognize snake oil sales pitches guaranteed to "cure coughs, colds and pimples on the belly -- removes stains, too!".

Worthy of a broadsheet editorial? Meh...

 

Global Warming: We’ve Passed The Rubicon (For Now)

Gallup:

For only the second time in more than two decades and the second straight year, Americans are more likely to say economic growth should take precedence over environmental protection when the two objectives conflict (53%) than to say the reverse (38%).

Our thoughts: this figure has been greatly affected by the highly embarrassing ClimateGate (and all its aftershocks) and the downturn in the economy. It’s fairly likely that a return to focus on “environmental protection” will occur when wallets are fat again, though it’s not clear whether that will include a return to caring about Global Warming or whether there will be a new cause celebre. (The Chilling Effect)

 

Households face fines for not recycling 'almost everything they throw'

Householders could be forced to recycle virtually everything they throw away or face fines under new government proposals to cut landfill.

Under the plans, paper and card, food, garden waste and plastics would have to recycled, composted or burned for energy.

A 12 week consultation on the proposals will be announced by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, on Thursday.

Traditional black bins would be scrapped and replaced with a number of recycling containers including slop buckets for food.

Residents who persistently flout the rules by not sorting rubbish properly or refusing to recycle could be hit with penalties of hundreds of pounds. (TDT)

 

The "Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability"? Oh boy...  China and India: Neighbors need to collaborate for sake of global environment

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- With large and growing economies and populations, China and India will strongly influence the quality of the global environment for years to come. While their political relationship is strained, it's critical the two countries work together to slow global warming, deforestation, water shortages and other environmental issues, says a Michigan State University scientist and colleagues. (Michigan State University)

 

World votes to continue trading in species on verge of extinction

Their sheer size and strength have made them among the most celebrated of endangered species, yet they have all been betrayed — by vested interests at a UN meeting on wildlife protection.

Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar. (The Times)

If any of these species are genuinely at risk of extinction (highly doubtful) then activists have only themselves to blame for this failure. They've been crying wolf for 50 years, so why should anyone listen now?

 

'So there you are!' Britain's rarest wildflower returns from the dead after 23 years

It is the most mysterious wildflower in Britain, the strangest, the rarest, the hardest to see, and it was given up for lost. But like a wandering phantom, the ghost orchid has reappeared.

After an absence of 23 years, during which it was declared extinct, this pale, diminutive flower, the most enigmatic of all Britain's wild plants, rematerialised last autumn in an oak wood in Herefordshire. (The Independent)

 

Jump to site menu or to Climate News & Views

National Association For Gun Rights

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
(The Unites States Constitution, Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.)
The first ten Amendments collectively are commonly known as the Bill of Rights.

Climate/Climate change/Global warming

 

As Senate Trio Advances Climate Measure, Energy-Only Bill Remains a Possibility

Under pressure to quickly produce a bill, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) yesterday shared an eight-page outline of their draft plan in a closed-door meeting with major industry groups.

That's openness, transparency and democracy for you....

The senators also hope to send their proposal to EPA and the Congressional Budget Office by the end of next week for a five-to six-week analysis, although the timing on that depends in part on two legislative counsel staffers who are out on maternity leave.

and that's labor laws for you....

(ClimateWire)

 

The Texas Petition against the U.S. EPA’s Endangerment Finding: A User’s Guide (Part II in a series)

by Chip Knappenberger
March 18, 2010

“Texas’ challenge to the EPA’s endangerment finding on carbon dioxide contains very little science….”

- Andrew Dessler, Gerald North, et al….., “On Global Warming, the Science Is Solid,” Houston Chronicle, March 7, 2010. [Also see yesterday's Part I post on Dessler/North.]

Last month, the State of Texas filed a petition for reconsideration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (summary here) against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Petition lays out why the EPA’s reliance on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide an assessment of climate change science was a very bad idea.

After documenting flaws in the scientific literature, flaws in scientific behavior, flaws in the IPCC process, and flaws in the IPCC’s conclusions, Texas asks the EPA to re-examine its conclusions regarding climate change and its potential impacts on human health and welfare, and this time, not to rest its conclusions on the biased opinion of the IPCC.

In other words, Texas asks the EPA to do the work themselves—something they are mandated to do anyway.

The complete Texas Petition is available here in a single pdf file. But for easier navigation, we have broken the full Petition up into its individual sections, and linked them into the Table of Contents page, which is reproduced below.

Hopefully, this will enable you to read through it in a more directed fashion so that you can go straight to which ever section you may be most interested in and see how Texas lays out its case for Reconsideration. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

 

The LA Times Refuses To Report Honestly on Costs of Climate Law

by William Yeatman
18 March 2010 @ 11:29 am

Why can’t the LA Times be fair about the costs of AB 32, California’s global warming law?

Last week, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found that the “net jobs impact” of AB 32 is “likely to be negative.” No surprises there-AB 32 is designed to raise the price of energy, and expensive energy hinders economic growth.

The LA Times, however, was unconvinced. The editorial board juxtaposed the LAO analysis with a report from the California Air Resources Board asserting that AB 32 would create 120,000 jobs. The LA Times asked, “Which is right?”

As if the answer is in doubt!

There’s a more important question: Why is the LA Times citing a discredited report? CARB’s rosy economic analysis of AB 32 was eviscerated by…

Read the full story (Cooler Heads)

 

Questions Swirl Around U.N.'s Climate Auditors

A little-known group called the InterAcademy Council has been made the voice of authority on the credibility of climate change, leaving critics scratching their heads -- and some key questions unanswered. (Gene J. Koprowski, FOXNews.com)

 

Pushing to protect their media monopoly: ABC should be praised for fair reports on climate change

An open letter to Mr Maurice Newman, Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Scientists are fairly measured in their public statements. Years of training instils a care with words, and avoidance of value judgements. Well, sod that, I'm angry.

What has me fuming is your speech last week to ABC staff in which you accuse your senior journalists of "group-think" in favouring the scientific consensus on climate change. You refer to "a growing number of distinguished scientists [that are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research" and you claim that these poor folk are being suppressed in the mainstream media.

Who are these distinguished scientists? I don't know of a single credible climate scientist who doubts human-induced climate change. (SMH)

Quite a rant from Michael Ashley.

Pity he neglects to mention skeptics don't need an alternate theory, or that we have no evidence of unusual warming.

Parenthetically, this exposes the absurdity of both the "we don't know of anything else that could be responsible, so it must be people's CO₂ emissions" and the "skeptics must produce a viable alternative hypothesis" because, as far as we can tell, the bulk of allegedly alarming warming trends appear to be artifacts of measurement and statistics as opposed physical reality.

Furthermore, evidence indicates repeated episodes of equivalent or greater warmth since the last great ice age, which rather lets the air out of claims of unprecedented warmth and/or unique causation.

Be that as it may it is always the responsibility of proponents to defend their own hypothesis and of everyone else to attempt to invalidate it.

So, open letter to Michael Ashley: What is the precise expected mean surface temperature of planet Earth? (he can't tell us because no one can -- we lack sufficient knowledge about and precision measurement of Earth's albedo during various cycle phases and solar conditions) and what is Earth's absolute mean surface temperature? (something else we don't know or even have an agreed definition of).

 

Begley the believer: Their Own Worst Enemies: Why scientists are losing the PR wars.

It's a safe bet that the millions of Americans who have recently changed their minds about global warming—deciding it isn't happening, or isn't due to human activities such as burning coal and oil, or isn't a serious threat—didn't just spend an intense few days poring over climate-change studies and decide, holy cow, the discretization of continuous equations in general circulation models is completely wrong! Instead, the backlash (an 18-point rise since 2006 in the percentage who say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, Gallup found this month) has been stoked by scientists' abysmal communication skills, plus some peculiarly American attitudes, both brought into play now by how critics have spun the "Climategate" e-mails to make it seem as if scientists have pulled a fast one. (Sharon Begley, Newsweek)

Actually Sharon, people are finally beginning to question the dogma because a few in the media (mainly across the Atlantic) actually dared to mention the fraud exposed in the climategate leaks. The pontifications of the idolized IPCC have at last been examined and found wanting. It's as simple as that.

 

Mistake or mistakes?

Little Rajendra can't even make up his mind whether the IPCC has made "mistakes" (plural) or a "mistake" (singular). And this is the man whom the BBC and others cast as the world's leading "climate scientist".

Hillariously, Sharon Begley of Newsweek then offers us a piece headed, "Their Own Worst Enemies", with the strap: "Why scientists are losing the PR wars."

I say "hillariously" because la Begley goes on to cite, with evident agreement, a certain Randy Olson, who tells us: "Scientists think of themselves as guardians of truth ... Once they have spewed it out, they feel the burden is on the audience to understand it" and agree.

Clearly, that is the driving assumption behind erstwhile railway engineers and self-proclaimed "climate scientist" Rajendra Pachauri. La Begley might care to reconsider her thesis that climate scientists have problems because they are poor communicators and because have failed to master "truthiness".

Another, possibly more plausible explanation is that many of the lead figures – like Pachauri – are pathological liars and they have been caught out.

But what is also a massive turn-off is the airy arrogance of so many of the warmists, such as Chris Smith, chairman of the UK's Environment Agency. He tells us, in what is obviously an agreed line, often repeated, that "we cannot allow a few errors to undermine the overwhelming strength of evidence that has been painstakingly accumulated, peer-reviewed, tested and tested again."

Yet, almost in the same breath he tells us, "We need to take the argument back to the sceptics, and make the powerful, convincing and necessary case about climate change much clearer to everyone." Compare the two statements and what is on offer is neither powerful nor convincing.

And that is their problem ... and they don't have the first idea of how to fix it. (EU Referendum)

 

The Economist in advocacy mode: The clouds of unknowing

There are lots of uncertainties in climate science. But that does not mean it is fundamentally wrong

FOR anyone who thinks that climate science must be unimpeachable to be useful, the past few months have been a depressing time. A large stash of e-mails from and to investigators at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia provided more than enough evidence for concern about the way some climate science is done. That the picture they painted, when seen in the round—or as much of the round as the incomplete selection available allows—was not as alarming as the most damning quotes taken out of context is little comfort. They offered plenty of grounds for both shame and blame.

At about the same time, glaciologists pointed out that a statement concerning Himalayan glaciers in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was wrong. This led to the discovery of other poorly worded or poorly sourced claims made by the IPCC, which seeks to create a scientific consensus for the world’s politicians, and to more general worries about the panel’s partiality, transparency and leadership. Taken together, and buttressed by previous criticisms, these two revelations have raised levels of scepticism about the consensus on climate change to new heights.

Increased antsiness about action on climate change can also be traced to the recession, the unedifying spectacle of last December’s climate-change summit in Copenhagen, the political realities of the American Senate and an abnormally cold winter in much of the northern hemisphere. The new doubts about the science, though, are clearly also a part of that story. Should they be? (The Economist)

They are making quite a push, see items following:

 

Spin, science and climate change

Action on climate is justified, not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not

CLIMATE-change legislation, dormant for six months, is showing signs of life again in Washington, DC. This week senators and industrial groups have been discussing a compromise bill to introduce mandatory controls on carbon (see article). Yet although green activists around the world have been waiting for 20 years for American action, nobody is cheering. Even if discussion ever turns into legislation, it will be a pale shadow of what was once hoped for.

The mess at Copenhagen is one reason. So much effort went into the event, with so little result. The recession is another. However much bosses may care about the planet, they usually mind more about their bottom line, and when times are hard they are unwilling to incur new costs. The bilious argument over American health care has not helped: this is not a good time for any bill that needs bipartisan support. Even the northern hemisphere’s cold winter has hurt. When two feet of snow lies on the ground, the threat from warming seems far off. But climate science is also responsible. A series of controversies over the past year have provided heavy ammunition to those who doubt the seriousness of the problem.

Three questions arise from this. How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again? Behind all three lies a common story. The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists. (The Economist)

Admit the uncertainty: we have no way of knowing whether earth is warmer or cooler than should be anticipated. There is an excellent chance the planet is merely rebounding from the Little Ice Age.

 

Conflicted: Brian Hoskins on climate change (The Economist)

So, the science is not in doubt but climate models are lousy?

Actually, as process models (which is what they really are) climate models are developing nicely, we learn much from them about what is happening in observed phenomena. As prognostic tools, however, they are worse than useless and anyone attempting to use them for such purpose should be firmly beaten about the head until they come to their senses.

Hoskins's attempt at defending the science rings somewhat hollow given that we do not know earth's expected or current mean temperature with sufficient precision to know whether it is warmer or cooler than should be anticipated, which means all this fuss may be over a perfectly natural recovery from the Little Ice Age (no one knows whether increasing levels of the trace gas carbon dioxide has any effect on global mean temperature at all).

Remember that the 16 most trusted and developed climate models can't agree better than about a 5 °C range for earth's unforced ("natural") mean surface temperature. See the results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project control series here. Over the 80-year simulation one-third of the models never suggest a temperature as low as we think the word has been for the 20^th Century average.

 

Cap-and-trade's last hurrah: The decline of a once wildly popular idea

IN THE 1990s cap-and-trade—the idea of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by auctioning off a set number of pollution permits, which could then be traded in a market—was the darling of the green policy circuit. A similar approach to sulphur dioxide emissions, introduced under the 1990 Clean Air Act, was credited with having helped solve acid-rain problems quickly and cheaply. And its great advantage was that it hardly looked like a tax at all, though it would bring in a lot of money.

The cap-and-trade provision expected in the climate legislation that Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been working on, which may be unveiled shortly, will be a poor shadow of that once alluring idea. Cap-and-trade will not be the centrepiece of the legislation (as it was of last year’s House climate bill, Waxman-Markey), but is instead likely to apply only to electrical utilities, at least for the time being. Transport fuels will probably be approached with some sort of tax or fee; industrial emissions will be tackled with regulation and possibly, later on, carbon trading. The hope will be to cobble together cuts in emissions similar in scope to those foreseen under the House bill, in which the vast majority of domestic cuts in emissions came from utilities. (The Economist)

But there is no excuse for it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is an environmental resource, an asset and neither we nor the planet will benefit in any way from its constraint. Furthermore acid rain is a particularly ridiculous reason to expand a bad idea because it was a non-extant problem too. It was a problem for a while - about 3-4 billion years ago - but that wouldn't have troubled aerobic life because oxygen didn't really begin to accumulate until about 3 billion years ago.

 

Airbus gets a crafty upgrade by flying the flag for biodiversity

A380 airliner to feature official logo for UN, despite aviation being a major source of emissions that threaten biodiversity

Who do you think might just have been granted the right to display the official logo of the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity? A conservation body, perhaps. Or a new brand of organic food?

Well, no. It's an aircraft manufacturer, actually. The world's largest aircraft manufacturer: Airbus Industries. The European company that is doing more than anyone else, Boeing included, to increase the number of flights we take, and thus the airline industry's contribution to climate change. ( Fred Pearce, The Guardian)

Poor Freddy, he still seems to think the UN genuinely has concerns about the climate. Don't worry Fred, they never did, it's just a means to an end.

 

Hysterical, in both senses: Canadian government 'hiding truth about climate change', report claims

Canada's climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, according to a 40-page report by a coalition of 60 non-governmental organisations.

"This government says they take climate change seriously but they do nothing and try to hide the truth about climate change," said Graham Saul, representing Climate Action Network Canada (CAN), which produced the report "Troubling Evidence".

"We want Canadians to understand what's going on with this government," Saul told IPS.

Climate change is not an abstract concept. It already results in the deaths of 300,000 people a year, virtually all in the world's poorest countries. Some 325 million people are being seriously affected, with economic losses averaging 125 billion dollars a year, according to "The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis", the first detailed look at climate change and the human impacts.

Released last fall by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, the report notes that these deaths and losses are not just from the rise in severe weather events but mainly from the gradual environmental degradation due to climate change. ( Stephen Leahy for IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network)

The Guardian had been getting a bit better but, like an alcoholic in a bar, I guess, they've chosen to run a piece by a headless chook called Stephen Leahy (readers will remember a number of his pieces back in the days I could still stomach braving the IPS site).

 

Still trying to hamper agriculture by any means possible: Damage to peat bogs driving climate change

Some of the most beautiful areas of England are releasing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year because of damage to peat bogs, environment watchdogs have warned. (TDT)

 

Weather balloon data backs up missing decline found in old magazine

Jo Nova has more from Frank Lansner on what older records, this time from weather balloons, tell us about recent adjustments to the temperature record. WUWT readers may recall Rewriting the decline where the graph from National Geographic below raises some questions about temperature graphs today.

Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976

Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing “decline” in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original “hide the decline” statement comes from the ClimateGate emails and refers to “hiding” the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It’s known as the “divergence problem” because tree rings diverge from the measured temperatures. But Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs and that measured temperature did decline from 1960 onwards, sharply. But in the GISS version of that time-period, temperatures from the cold 1970’s period were repeatedly “adjusted” years after the event, and progressively got warmer. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

 

Overheating detected in Arctic

Not everyone writing for Nature is a warming alarmist. Take Johannes Oerlemans, professor of meteorology at Utrecht University’s Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who takes a stick to Henry Pollack, author of the latest scare-book:

A World Without Ice opens with a strong foreword from Al Gore: the science has been done — now we must act. .... Pollack’s patchwork assessment of the science of ice and climate ... gets off to a bad start by adding drama. Writing in his preface that “Throughout most of Earth’s history, ice has been an indomitable force of nature”, Pollack sidesteps the consensus view that for the majority of Earth’s past there was little or no ice…

Similarly, he cites mountain glaciers as the direct source of water for almost a quarter of the world’s population, when in reality the bulk comes from rain and seasonal snow…

In his investigation of the regional effects of global warming on ice, snow and permafrost, Pollack adopts a fearful tone, suggesting that any change in the environment should be interpreted as a local disaster. He lists the many locations where glaciers are retreating, sea-ice coverage is shrinking, permafrost thawing and ski areas declining. And he cautions that “in only a few decades the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free in the summer, for the first time in 55 million years”.

Yet he forgets that, during the Holocene climatic optimum about 9,000 to 6,000 years ago when summer temperatures in the subarctic regions were 2–5 °C higher than today, the Arctic Ocean in summer was probably ice-free on a regular basis…

Again, his discussion of the ice sheets and sea-level rise is too dramatic: for example, it has not been established that the Greenland ice sheet will melt away in a few centuries once we pass the ‘tipping point’....

For example, it is clear that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently losing mass, but there is abundant evidence that the shrinkage has been happening for the past 15,000 years, mainly in response to rising sea levels initiated by deglaciation in the Northern Hemisphere.

(Andrew Bolt)

 

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, March 18th 2010

London has a new building that can shred birds, appropriately called ‘The Razor’, the green mask slips to reveal some very inconvenient truths and we learn about the missing link between cargo cults and global warming science. (Daily Bayonet)

 

Column - CSIRO shames itself

THE CSIRO, once our top scientific institution, this week showed how shoddy and politicised it’s become.

It’s issued State of the Climate, a pamphlet it drew up with the Bureau of Meteorology, to silence the sceptics of catastrophic man-made warming.

“Climate change is real,” it announced. The proof was that Australia’s mean temperature went up 0.7 [°C] since 1960, seas were rising in some places by 3mm a year, and less rain now fell on our most settled areas.

Phew. That’s put me in my place. Or so you’d think from the uncritical coverage this propaganda got from the ABC, The Age and even the Herald Sun.

But the document, barely even six pages, despite its big graphs, is a testament not to the truth of man-made warming, but to the CSIRO’s decline.

First, no one doubts “climate change is real”. Climate changes all the time. For the CSIRO to suggest this is the debate is dishonest.

We’re also talking about global warming, so why does the CSIRO give only Australian temperatures? (Andrew Bolt)

 

Chill Out: Matt Nisbet on Politicized Climate Science

Matt Nisbet, a communications scholar at American University, has a thoughtful and hard-hitting essay at Slate arguing that climate scientists need to step back from a war footing, because they are waging a battle for public opinion that they've already won. The most likely casualty of continued open warfare on climate skeptics will be science itself.

Here is an excerpt:

If communication researchers have trouble establishing clear evidence of a significant impact for Climategate, what explains the apparent overreaction by scientists and their bunker mentality? Past research shows that individuals more heavily involved on an issue, such as climate scientists, often tend to view even objectively favorable media coverage as hostile to their goals. They also have a tendency to presume exaggerated effects for a message on the public and will take action based on this presumed influence. The call to arms that "science is getting creamed" and that there is a need for an "aggressively partisan approach" are examples of how these common miscalculations about the media have colored the outlook of climate scientists.

Scientists are also susceptible to the biases of their own political ideology, which surveys show leans heavily liberal. Ideology shapes how scientists evaluate policy options as well as their interpretations of who or what is to blame for policy failures. Given a liberal outlook and strong environmental values, it must be difficult for scientists to understand why so many Americans have reservations about complex policies that impose costs on consumers without offering clearly defined benefits. Compounding matters, scientists, like the rest of us, tend to gravitate toward like-minded sources in the media. Given their background, they focus on screeds from liberal commentators which reinforce a false sense of a "war" against the scientific community.

The scientists seem to believe they can prevail by explaining the basis of climate change in clearer terms, while asserting the partisan motives of "climate deniers." This has been the strategy since the early days of the Bush administration, yet for many members of the public, a decade of claims about the "war on science" are likely ignored as just more elite rancor, reflecting an endless cycle of technical disputes and tit-for-tat name calling. What are needed are strategies that transcend the ideological divide, rather than strengthen it.

I differ a bit from Nisbet in his prescription -- he thinks scientists should work to engage the public and opinion leaders. In contrast, I think scientists need to demonstrate leadership by helping to open up space for a wide-ranging discussion of policy options among specialists, rather than enabling a small clique of activists to try to shut down any such discussion in the name of science.

These views are not mutually exclusive, of course. However, any public engagement is futile from a policy perspective without viable policy options on the table. And tight now climate policy lacks viable options.

Nisbet is one the mark when he concludes:

By getting out of the lab and away from their echo chamber of like-minded views about climate politics, researchers would learn how other people view climate change, and what should and can be done about it.

(Roger Pielke Jr)

I wouldn't be so sure about public opinion having been "won" - the public are not likely to react too well when they finally find out gorebull warbling has exactly no basis in fact.

 

Future low solar activity periods may cause extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia

Abstract:

The observed winter temperatures for Turku, Finland (and also generally for North America, Europe and Russia) for the past 60 winters have been strongly dependent on the Arctic Oscillation index (AO). When the Arctic Oscillation index is in "positive phase", high atmospheric pressure persists south of the North Pole, and lower pressures on the North Pole. In the positive phase, very cold winter air does not extend as far south into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase. The AO positive phase is often called the "Warm" phase in North America. In this report I analyzed the statistical relation between the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation index (QBO is a measure of the direction and strength of the stratospheric wind in the Tropics), the solar activity, and the Arctic Oscillation index and obtained a statistically significant regression equation. According to this equation, during negative (easterly) values of the QBO, low solar activity causes a negative Arctic Oscillation index and cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia, but during positive (westerly) values of the QBO the relation reverses. However, the influence of the combination of an easterly value of the QBO and low solar activity on the AO is stronger and this combination is much more probable than the opposite. Therefore, prolonged low solar activity periods in the future may cause the domination of a strongly negative AO and extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia. (Jarl R. Ahlbeck)

Downloadable article: This article is information rich. For easy browsing and printing, we provide it in pdf format only.
Download, enjoy and debate. Download pdf

 

Oh... HSBC bankers turn climate crunch champions

Bankers may not be the world's most popular people, but at HSBC they have the good of the planet at heart – the bank has invested $35 million in sending employees to assess the potential effects of climate change and preach the green gospel to colleagues back at the office. Serena Allott joins a group of volunteers in India. (TDT)

 

Carbon traders voice fears over recycled carbon credits

Resale of surrendered Certified Emission Reduction credits by Hungarian government prompts warning that "double counting" could damage the integrity of the EU emissions trading scheme. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network

If they mean integrity as in "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty" then the EU emissions trading scheme would appear unassailable -- how can you damage something which does not exist in the first place?

 

All the usual suspects, still carrying on carrying on: The Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies

The Climate Response Fund (www.climateresponsefund.org), in collaboration with the Climate Institute (www.climate.org), has developed this international conference to propose norms and guidelines for experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques. The Conference has the overall goal of minimizing risk associated with scientific experimentation on climate intervention or climate geoengineering, and will focus exclusively on the development of risk reduction guidelines for climate intervention experiments. (CRF)

 

EDITORIAL: Obama surrenders gulf oil to Moscow

The Russians are coming - to drill in our own backyard

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Offshore oil production makes economic sense. It creates jobs and helps fulfill America's vast energy needs. It contributes to the gross domestic product and does not increase the trade deficit. Higher oil supply helps keep a lid on rising prices, and greater American production gives the United States more influence over the global market.

Drilling is also wildly popular with the public. A Pew Research Center poll from February showed 63 percent support for offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. Americans understand the fundamental points: The oil is there, and we need it. If we don't drill it out, we have to buy it from other countries. Last year, the U.S. government even helped Brazil underwrite offshore drilling in the Tupi oil field near Rio de Janeiro. The current price of oil makes drilling economically feasible, so why not let the private sector go ahead and get our oil? (The Washington Times)

 

It’s Time to Let Virginia Drill

At last Thursday's Summit on Virginia's Energy Future in Richmond, Governor Robert McDonnell delivered a detailed talk on the state's energy opportunities and the bi-partisan commitment of the legislature and Virginia's US Senators and Congressional delegation to capitalize on them, including its offshore oil, gas and wind resources. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)

 

Earth friendly alternative to gas flaring

Petrobras’ search for a compact GTL plant that fits on a FPSO might be at an end

Two gas-to-liquids plant developers will soon be testing competing modular GTL designs for Brazil’s largest oil company, government-controlled Petrobras. The GTL process results in an unrefined synthetic oil, or syncrude, that can be blended back in with a field’s mainstream oil. 

If at least one of the two modular GTL plants proves successful—i.e. economically feasible—it could go a long way to reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the flaring of unwanted natural gas from remote oil fields. (GoO)

 

Breaking the Obama Code: The Green Money Machine

As a few dozen dot-com billionaires gathered in a Palo Alto living room one evening in early 2007, then-Senator Obama rallied potential new donors over the speakerphone. After the call, host John Roos, a prominent lawyer, emphasized what most of his guests already knew. The clean-energy revolution was gaining momentum. The election in 2008 would be the critical moment. The ethics-based green revolution could be passed into law, and Obama was their guy. Roos raised much money and opened many doors for Obama that evening. In May 2009, despite initial criticism from Japan, Roos was given the plum appointment of U.S. Ambassador.

Roos, who had handpicked his guest list carefully, was a kingmaker in the progressive, green, and Bay Area billionaires club. The polls showing America's rising concerns about ocean levels reflected the hard work of Silicon Valley hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. (Patti Villacorta, American Thinker)

 

Green jobs... Report says China is squeezing U.S. firms out of its massive wind-power market

WASHINGTON – U.S. companies are getting squeezed out of the big Chinese wind-power market even as Dallas investors are bringing Chinese firms here via a big wind farm in Texas, according to a new industry report.

"They've used every measure you could possibly think of to enhance production of renewable energy equipment in China," said report author Alan Wolff of the trade law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk won a pledge from the Chinese last fall to drop rules giving preference to Chinese makers of wind-power equipment. But Kirk's office hasn't seen any evidence that the pledge has been carried out, said spokeswoman Carol Guthrie.

Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers are entering the U.S. wind market under a joint venture led by Dallas investor Cappy McGarr. (Dallas Morning News)

 

Micronesia beats civilization, 1-to-0

As I wrote in December and January, Greenpeace CZ has been trying to find primitive tribes all over the world that would help Greenpeace CZ to harm the Czech energy industry by following the template envisioned by Michael Crichton in State of Fear.

In the book, eco-terrorist groups initiate lawsuits against industrial corporations based on claims of sunk islands due to global warming. To make their case stronger, they also engineer some artificial disasters themselves. Greenpeace CZ has brutally stolen Crichton's copyrights and started with this stunning unethical manipulation in the real world.


Climate change kills Greenpeace. Similar pictures convinced the Micronesian chieftains. Not sure whether the Greenpeace activists realize that they may deserve what they're training.

After dozens of failed attempts, Micronesia agreed to be guided by Greenpeace CZ which was a surprise even for the non-violent yet deeply obnoxious advocacy group itself. So Greenpeace CZ has prepared some dirty propaganda against the coal power plant in Prunéřov, sent them to Micronesia, and the Micronesia officials sent them back to the Czech ministry of environment.

The latter agreed to investigate the statements that the Czech power plants would raise the sea levels and sink the islands of Micronesia. ;-) So the minister and his allies chose an independent Norwegian panel that would try to find problems with the upgrade plans for Prunéřov.

Of course, if someone wants to look for problems, he will find them. The Czech media reported today that the Norwegian folks found out that ČEZ, the key Czech electric utility, is not planning to use the "best available technology" on the market.

Why the hell should it be using the "best available technology"? Every sane company has to decide - and has both the duty and the basic right to decide - about a trade-off between quality and price. Different companies choose different technologies. Clearly, the environmental standards in Norway are more strict because Norway is an extremely rich country and most of its citizens are mollycoddled sissies. Our GDP per capita (PPP) is $24,400 a year, slightly less than one-half of the Norwegian one ($53,000 a year) and it does make some difference when it comes to the luxury we require.

» Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)

 

Electric cars and 40 new nuclear power stations to meet climate change targets

Every car on the road will need to be electric and there will be solar panels on every home, 10,000 wind turbines onshore and 40 new nuclear power stations if the Government is to stand a chance of meeting strict climate change targets, engineers have warned. (TDT)

 

What energy crisis?

You can tell that civilisation as we know it is coming to an end when they call a car "The Leaf", the new Nissan electric fantasy which is going to cost the British taxpayer £20.7 million in grants, topped up with a soft loan from the European Investment Bank of £197.3 million.

We are told that this thing will have an average range of 100 miles and a top speed of 90mph, although the egregious hacks writing this stuff forget to tell us that it is one or the other – not both. They don't tell either that you need a calendar rather than a speedometer to gauge the acceleration.

Nor, of course, do they tell you that, in terms of net efficiency, the electric car performs far less well than a petrol-driven motor, by the time you have taken into account the power station and transmission losses, to say nothing of the conversion losses in charging the batteries.

And then, since about 40 percent of our electricity comes from coal, and will do so until it is replaced by gas generation, the odds are that this wonderful "green" car will be driven by fossil fuels, only very inefficiently at one stage removed.

None of this, of course, will impinge in the slightest on the greenie brain – or that of Mr Brown who is so proud of this exercise in applied fatuity. But, not only – as we saw yesterday – do green issues bring out the meanness, they make you stupid as well.

A far better option – in terms of energy efficiency, thus reducing your "carbon footprint", if that's what turns you on – is to use gas power directly. Or, rather than use coal to produce electricity, use it to produce petrol and drive a sensible car.

That is certainly an option the being looked at. According to the Globe and Mail, researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have developed an economic and clean way to turn lignite, the cheapest kind of coal, into synthetic crude which can then be refined into petrol.

This is the answer to a gas-guzzler's prayer. Canada, for instance, has more energy in its "proven, recoverable" reserves of coal than it has in all of its oil, natural gas and oil sands combined: 10 billion tons. The world has 100 times more: one trillion tons. These reserves hold the energy equivalent of more than four trillion barrels of oil. They are scattered in 70 countries, mostly in relatively easy-to-mine locations and mostly in democratic countries.

The United States alone has 30 percent of the world's reserves, and if the technology can be scaled up successfully, this could represent a historic moment in energy production – a secure supply of petroleum and liberation from the tyranny of the Middle East and other unstable regions.

What with the promise of shale gas and the potential for thorium-powered nuclear reactors – and access to a plentiful supply of fuel – there is no prospect of an energy shortage some time soon, not for a hundred years or more. And by that time, we will doubtless have other technological solutions, not that any of us will be around to care.

But, of course, that does not account for today's greenies, who are intent on driving us back into the economic dark ages, saddling us with dead-end technology, all in pursuit of their mad obsession over global warming. Thus, do we see public money frittered away on "The Leaf". I cannot wait for autumn. ((EU Referendum)

 

Jump to site menu or to General News & Views