Junkscience.com -- Archives, October 2009

WASHINGTON -- With President Barack Obama bidding to overhaul the health-care system, tighten bank oversight and make industries pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions, some trade-association chiefs have decided to compromise with the party in power.

Not Thomas Donohue. On many of Mr. Obama's priorities, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is working to defeat the administration—delighting some members, causing some to quit and sparking a furious reaction from the White House and left-wing activists. In the process, he has made the Chamber one of Mr. Obama's most visible opponents. (Stephen Power, WSJ)

BOSTON - The biggest U.S. business organization has fallen out with influential parts of Corporate America because of its trenchant opposition to climate-change legislation making its way through Congress.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's opposition to the climate bill has already cost it prominent members including Apple Inc and California utility PG&E Corp.

And this week two of the lobbying group's most powerful members, the conglomerate General Electric Co and the telecommunications equipment provider Cisco Systems Inc told Reuters they do not see eye-to-eye with the group on climate regulations.

"The Chamber does not represent our views on the urgent need for climate legislation," said Peter O'Toole, a spokesman for GE, the largest U.S. conglomerate. "We need climate legislation and a price for carbon in the U.S. now."

The Chamber, which represents some 3 million U.S. businesses ranging from massive multinationals to mom-and-pop operations, says its positions take into account the needs of many sorts of businesses across a range of industries.

"Our goal is to have the positions that we actually take stances on be reflective of the democratic majority of the broad majority of the business community," said Eric Wohlschlegel, a Chamber spokesman. "There are cases, not just with energy, where companies are going to peel off and take different positions than the Chamber." (Reuters)

There are people out there who manufacture money from nothing. Literally. The rest of the world has to earn it, but some are in it from the start–where money is created from the ether. (JoNova)

Six words to expose the scam - After two years of distilling this down, it’s come to me that it only takes six words: Banks want us to trade carbon

Years from now historians will write about gullible leaders who go down in history as the ones who sold their nations to Goldman Sachs. Fools who thought they might look important trying to save the planet, but who instead were negligent, ignoring the science and slavishly committing their productive workers to pay tribute to a parasitic layer of financial houses. (JoNova)

The push to flatten us into submission to the International elites is going just as planned. The Copenhagen Climate Treaty is set to take off December 8th, 09 just weeks away and President Obama has promised to sign it.

This would cede our sovereignty to the International elites running this Treaty. Once the Senate had ratified this, international taxes and new rules would be levied on the American people to lower the mythological effect of carbon emissions. This would lead beautifully to its domestic relative and nightmare, the Cap and Trade Bill, also a carbon emissions bloodhound Obama will gladly sign. Neither of these international schemes should happen. We must fight them with all that we have.

The UN has been exploring international controls and a one world Government for decades while the U.S. has largely looked the other way. One of the UN’s offspring, boldly declaring their real agenda was started clear back in 1945, UNESCO – United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. Their declared goal laid out for all to see is to push for a standardized one-world culture in preparation for world government. (Laurie Roth, CFP)

OSLO - U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December are unlikely to agree a legally binding treaty and even backers of a robust pact are reluctantly starting to look to new deadlines in 2010.

After months of saying there is no "Plan B" despite bogged-down negotiations, the United Nations, host Denmark and some other European countries say Copenhagen may at best reach a political deal to step up the fight against global warming.

That is a setback for those hoping that the Dec. 7-18 conference will end with a treaty text that would be sent to all countries to be ratified and thus gain legal teeth. Agreeing to extra talks in 2010 risks a loss of momentum. (Reuters)

When Barack Obama was elected president, he was heralded as a possible savior for climate- treaty talks that had dragged on for years while George W. Bush rejected limits on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

“America is back” at the United Nations negotiating table, Democratic Senator John Kerry declared after the November election. Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard said U.S. emissions policy moved forward 35 years overnight.

Instead, Obama may send empty-handed envoys in December to the table in Copenhagen where 192 countries will try to assign emissions reductions because Congress has given him no mandate. With the 27-nation European Union, Japan and Australia ready to pledge cuts of more than 20 percent only if other nations follow suit, the stage is set for promises to collapse.

“How can we expect other major players to move their position until they know that in the end the U.S. is also going to deliver?” Hedegaard, chairwoman of the UN talks running from Dec. 7-18, said in an interview.

The possible domino effect, along with a continuing split between the U.S. and China, erode chances for a strong treaty, negotiators and political scientists say. (Bloomberg)

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and some Senate Democrats expressed fresh urgency on Tuesday about the need to address climate change and refashion the nation’s energy economy.

But they faced determined opposition from Republicans, new concerns from some Democrats and reminders of the financial, technological and political hurdles in remaking the way the nation produces and consumes power. (NYT)

The Senate testimony of Sec. Chu is predicated upon false assumptions, points out Christopher Monckton in a succinct letter to Senators posted by the Science and Public Policy Institute [SPPI], a Washington DC –based NGO.

The letter points out that Chu’s testimony cites the now-outdated 2007 Climate Assessment Report of the IPCC and a subsequent but also now-outdated MIT study, saying global warming by 2100 would be 7-11 Fº. “These excessive estimates are founded solely on computerized guesswork,” says Christopher Monckton, former adviser to UK Prime Minister Thatcher and current SPPI policy adviser.

Monckton reviews a number of recent papers having appeared in the peer-reviewed literature that put the man-made warming scare to rest, and render regulation of CO2 emissions needless and blindingly fatuous. (TransWorldNews)

UNITED NATIONS — Just weeks before an international conference on climate change, the United Nations signaled it was scaling back expectations of reaching agreement on a new treaty to slow global warming.

Janos Pasztor, director of the secretary-general's Climate Change Support Team, said Monday "it's hard to say how far the conference will be able to go" because the U.S. Congress has not agreed on a climate bill, and industrialized nations have not agreed on targets to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions or funding to help developing countries limit their discharges. (AP)

The BBC has an interesting article (thx DB!) on an east-west split within the EU on financing adaptation under a potential international climate agreement.

Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” I never took such claims entirely seriously. But then I heard this statement from a Montana writer, Jim Robbins, interviewed by the “sustainability reporters” of government-funded Marketplace Radio:

Darned if he isn’t using terms like “atheists” and “disbelief” in a discussion of global warming. Almost as if he were, you know, a theologian.

Reporter Sarah Gardner, by the way, says that “in my own lifetime, average temperatures in this country have gone up more than 2 degrees.” That doesn’t sound like that much — maybe like moving from Washington to Richmond? But anyway, unless Sarah is about 200 years old, she seems to be exaggerating.

For a different view of global warming — not that of an atheist or even a skeptic, just a non-fundamentalist or non-apocalyptic — see this short paper or this book by climatologist Pat Michaels. (David Boaz, Cato at liberty)

The cheap thrill of global warming - Ed Miliband’s ‘climate map’ confirms that climate change is the only thing providing New Labour with a sense of mission.

You’ve probably seen the advert by now. A little girl is resting in her dad’s arms as he reads her a bedtime story. As the portentous music indicates, something is not right about this story and its rather sad illustrations. One picture shows a dog drowning as water floods the town, another shows bunny rabbits weeping upon the parched earth. (Tim Black, sp!ked)

A few weeks ago, the British government aired an outrageous commercial with "drowning pets" on TV. Hundreds of viewers have complained. The great news is that the narration has been corrected. Here is the fixed version of the commercial:

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism provides some interesting data on the focus of attention on blogs and the mainstream media. The graph to the right shows the top issues for the week October 19 to 23. "global warming" is a top topic on the blogs, along with the "balloon boy" and a "cross dressing ban." Meanwhile the traditional media is focused on the economy, Afghanistan and health care.

There are of course plenty of ways to interpret this information, and my first reaction is that if your topic is sandwiched between the balloon boy and cross dressing, and nowhere to be seen in the MSM, then you've probably got a PR problem on your hands. (Roger Pielke Jr)

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. (WSJ)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has long been known worldwide for its engineering programs, and a symposium at MIT this week will draw scientists from around the globe to focus on a hot facet of the field -- climate engineering.

The title of the symposium itself underscores the questions surrounding climate-changing science: "Engineering a Cooler Earth: Can We Do It? Should We Try?"

Climate engineering may sound a little Frankensteinian and worrisome, but it's not a new concept. Governments and militaries have tried over the years to control the weather for various reasons -- and have mostly failed.

In the past decade, though, scientists have made major strides in developing technologies to cool the globe, and some of these processes are are gaining momentum among those who think drastic measures are needed to control the warming Earth.

The subject is rife with controversy, including whether intentional climate engineering itself is even new. (CNN)

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. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

MADRID - European non-ferrous metals producers may move to countries where environmental legislation is less strict unless the impact of forthcoming measures is reduced, an industry spokesman said on Thursday.

Javier Targhetta, president of Eurometaux, said the industry was concerned over high and unpredictable power costs, the added cost of a new emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2013 and a new registry of chemicals, amongst other issues.

Industry group Eurometaux estimates non-ferrous metals makers directly and indirectly employ one million people in Europe, and contribute 2 percent of its economic output. (Reuters)

BEIJING - China's busy climate change diplomacy has become increasingly feverish weeks before crucial talks that could forge a new pact to fight global warming, or end in rancor that could rebound onto the world's biggest emitter.

President Hu Jintao told President Barack Obama last week that China wants a successful outcome in Copenhagen when the world gathers from December 7 to wrangle over the proposed new climate pact, and the topic is sure to feature when Obama visits Beijing in mid-November.

Recent weeks have brought a flurry of meetings between China and other big hitters in the negotiations, including India. Global warming will feature too at a China-European Union summit late in November.

But Chinese diplomats and advisers doing footwork for the negotiations have echoed growing international gloom, warning the Copenhagen talks could end with a feeble agreement that evades key issues or even fails to reach a deal.

"The real negotiations will be after Copenhagen," Yi Xianliang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official involved in the climate talks told a meeting in Beijing last week. "Copenhagen will be a starting point, not an ending point." (Reuters)

TOKYO, Oct 23 - Japan cautioned on Friday that it could water down planned 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if other rich nations fail to make deep reductions as part of a U.N. deal due in Copenhagen in December. (Reuters)

Ottawa will have to lead a massive restructuring of the Canadian economy, with wealth flowing from the West to the rest of the country, if it is to meet its climate-change targets, a landmark report has concluded.

The Conservative government's goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 can be achieved, but only by limiting growth in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

This is the finding of a report, financed by the Toronto Dominion Bank and conducted by two environmental organizations, that for the first time offers a detailed regional breakdown of the economic impacts of pursuing a strategy of fighting global warming. (Globe and Mail)

A landmark report on the economic impact of meeting climate-change targets has run into a storm of opposition, with Western provinces calling it divisive and the federal government saying it would spell economic disaster.

“We would be extremely opposed to any kind of a carbon tax or some other kind of tax that would result in a significant wealth transfer from our province to any other province or area of the country,” said Saskatchewan Energy Minister Bill Boyd.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice said there is no way Western Canadians could absorb the deep economic hit projected by the report's environmentalist authors – the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute. (Globe and Mail)

In keeping with my goal to permit a diversity of views to be posted on my weblog by published climate scientists, below is a post by Len Ornstein.

Guest Weblog By Len Ornstein titled “How to Quickly Lower Climate Risks, at ‘Tolerable’ Costs?”

The data on climate change are very noisy. The physics of hydrodynamic systems like the oceans and atmosphere behave somewhat ‘erratically’ and ‘chaotically’, (especially in comparison, for example, to the physics of the ‘predictability’ of the Earth’s orbit around the sun) and in addition, the choices that are made about how to collect climate data, also can be subject to some uncertainty and error. So it’s not surprising that attempts to discern ‘trends’ in climate data are subject to a good deal of uncertainty. This is characteristic of all scientific data; only it’s especially severe in climate science.

Scientist construct models of the world and then they (or others) observe the behavior of relevant, discrete, worldly events to test whether the models are useful for ‘prediction’ of future events and/or interpolation of unobserved ‘past events’ in between already observed events. In general, the larger the number of ‘pertinent’ observations, and the more similar are the ‘results’ to one another, the more ‘likely’ it is that calculated means (or trends of means), are representative of ‘reality’. Likewise, the closer a model prediction comes to such a measured trend, the more robust may be its ability to ‘predict’. To communicate how likely reality has been estimated by the measurements and by the model, science tries to cope with likelihood by using ‘agreed upon’ metrics of uncertainty – such as confidence intervals – to help make discussion of uncertainty more tractable. But the public is used to ‘statements of fact’, and mistrust the weasel words of confidence intervals; most haven’t yet learned that nothing that can be said about real world ‘facts’ is either absolutely certain – or absolutely false.

So when some scientist suggests that the mean of a ‘calculated trend’ of some kind of climate ‘feature’ (e.g., global mean surface temperature (GMST)) is biased on the high side because of measurement errors of a particular kind – and another says that the trend is underestimated for perhaps just the opposite reasons – the public often sees it as an ideological difference (which it sometimes may be!). But more commonly, it’s an honest difference of opinion that stems from the different data histories with which these scientists have experience. Both respect the general significance of the confidence interval around the mean of the trend. But because they differ on what they consider pertinent, one may favor the data closer to the bottom of the confidence interval – and the other, closer to the top.

On a small number of issues, I differ with Roger. His experience and mine differ widely, and I expect we can each learn from one another. His comments on the following matters will be appreciated: (Climate Science)

As I have written previously, I am very concerned about geoengineering as a way to mitigate climate change from the addition of CO2 and other greenhouse gases; e.g. see

The claim in the Levi Physics Today article that geoengineering “intervention” [can] prevent or slow changes in the climate system is completely wrong. Geoengineering would cause changes in the climate system! The Levi focus almost exclusively on the role of the addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is blind to the importance of altering the spatial pattern of climate forcing as a result of geoengineering.

I do find that Len’s study further confirms the role of landscape change (in this case deliberate change) as a first order climate forcing. However, this means that weather patterns will be altered since the spatial distribution of diabatic heating in the atmosphere will be different (e.g. see also our study of this diabatic heating effect due to aerosols in Matsui and Pielke 2006). The teleconnection effect seen in their model runs seem muted at very long distance (e.g. see Figure 5) but they are present. For example, there is a possible effect on Atlantic hurricanes, as noted in Section 6 of Ornstein et al. This raises the issue of unintended consequences. With respect to Atlantic tropical cyclones, these bring much needed rain to the western tropical and subtropical Atlantic Ocean land areas as well as the southeast USA. If this is altered, as suggested in the model results, this would be an unintended negative effect to those countries.

I do agree with Len on the concern on the biogeochemical effect of added atmospheric concentrations of CO2. We do not know all of the potential effects, but there will be some. Thus the elevation of CO2 to too high a concentration should be prevented, and the engineering of Len’s proposal seems feasible. However, as written above, unintended consequences on the climate elsewhere would need to be very thoroughly studied.

I remain convinced that the mitigation approach with the least negative effects is the air capture of CO2 as discussed in

In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages (TDT)

Yesterday the Cooler Heads Coalition hosted Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Video of Dr. Lindzen’s presentation, “Deconstructing Global Warming,” will be available shortly, but his power point presentation is online now.

Two years ago, a United Nations scientific panel won the Nobel Peace Prize after concluding that global warming is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by man.

Then came a development unforeseen by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC: Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop.

That has reignited debate over what has become scientific consensus: that climate change is due not to nature, but to humans burning fossil fuels. Scientists who don't believe in man-made global warming cite the cooling as evidence for their case. Those who do believe in man-made warming dismiss the cooling as a blip triggered by fleeting changes in ocean currents; they predict greenhouse gases will produce rising temperatures again soon.

The reality is more complex. A few years of cooling doesn't mean that people aren't heating up the planet over the long term. But the cooling wasn't predicted by all the computer models that underlie climate science. That has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect.

"There is a lot of room for improvement" in the models, says Mojib Latif, a climate scientist in Germany and co-author of a paper predicting the planet will cool for perhaps a decade before starting to warm again -- a long-term trend he attributes to greenhouse-gas emissions. "You need to know what you can believe and can't believe from the models."

The renewed discussion of inherent shortcomings in climate models comes on the cusp of potentially big financial commitments. In five weeks, diplomats from around the world will meet in Copenhagen to try to hash out a new agreement to curb global greenhouse-gas emissions. The science continues to evolve. (Jeffrey Ball, WSJ)

UPDATE: October 27 2009: Seth Borenstein has alerted us to a full version of his article, which does include more details on the study [only the version I posted below was seen on the google news search yesterday]. The study approach itself is also available (see). My recommendation to focus on the more recent years using the more appropriate metric, upper ocean heat content trends, remains. I have suggested to Seth that he interview Jim Hansen to update what he wrote in 2005. I also deleted the statement about the independence of the study as requested by Seth and substantiated by the longer AP story. It was completed independently of NOAA.

“WASHINGTON — The Earth is still warming, not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming, according to an analysis of global temperatures by independent statistics experts.

The review of years of temperature data was conducted at the request of The Associated Press. Talk of a cooling trend has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time. And U.S. government figures show that the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping.

Global warming skeptics are basing their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. They say that since then, temperatures have fallen — thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, dropped again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998.

“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”

Statisticians said the ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.”

This article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.

trends and anomolies in the upper ocean heat content permits a quantitative assessment of the radiative imbalance of the climate system.

Jim Hansen agrees on the use of the upper ocean heat content as an important diagnostic of global warming. Jim Hansen in 2005 discussed this subject (see). In Jim’s write-up, he stated

“The Willis et al. measured heat storage of 0.62 W/m2 refers to the decadal mean for the upper 750 m of the ocean. Our simulated 1993-2003 heat storage rate was 0.6 W/m2 in the upper 750 m of the ocean. The decadal mean planetary energy imbalance, 0.75 W/m2, includes heat storage in the deeper ocean and energy used to melt ice and warm the air and land. 0.85 W/m2 is the imbalance at the end of the decade.

Certainly the energy imbalance is less in earlier years, even negative, especially in years following large volcanic eruptions. Our analysis focused on the past decade because: (1) this is the period when it was predicted that, in the absence of a large volcanic eruption, the increasing greenhouse effect would cause the planetary energy imbalance and ocean heat storage to rise above the level of natural variability (Hansen et al., 1997), and (2) improved ocean temperature measurements and precise satellite altimetry yield an uncertainty in the ocean heat storage, ~15% of the observed value, smaller than that of earlier times when unsampled regions of the ocean created larger uncertainty.”

As discussed on my weblog and elsewhere (e.g. see and see), the upper ocean heat content trend, as evaluated by its heat anomalies, has been essentially flat since mid 2003 through at least June of this year. Since mid 2003, the heat storage rate, rather then being 0.6 W/m2 in the upper 750m that was found prior to that time (1993-2003), has been essentially zero.

Nonetheless, the article is correct that the climate system has not cooled even in the last 6 years. Moreover, on the long time period back to 1880, the consensus is that the climate system has warmed on the longest time period. Perhaps the current absence of warming is a shorter term natural feature of the climate system. However, to state that the “[t]he Earth is still warming” is in error. The warming has, at least temporarily halted.

The article (and apparently the NOAA study itself), therefore, suffers from a significant oversight since it does not comment on an update of the same upper ocean heat content data that Jim Hansen has used to assess global warming. (Climate Science)

“J’accuse! A statistician may prove anything with his nefarious methods. He may even say a negative number is positive! You cannot trust anything he says.”

Sigh. Unfortunately, this oft-hurled charge is all too true. I and my fellow statisticians must bear its sad burden, knowing it is caused by our more zealous brethren (and sisthren). But, you know, it really isn’t their fault, for they are victims of loving not wisely but too well their own creations.

First, a fact. It is true that, based on the observed satellite data, average global temperatures since about 1998 have not continued the rough year-by-year increase that had been noticed in the decade or so before that date. The temperatures since about 1998 have increased in some years, but more often have they decreased. For example, last year was cooler than the year before last. These statements, barring unknown errors in the measurement of that data, are taken as true by everybody, even statisticians.

The AP gave this data—concealing its source—to “several independent statisticians” who said they “found no true temperature declines over time” (link) Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

On September 21 2009 I posted The Vulnerability Perspective. In it, I identified 5 major resource areas that should be the focus of assessments as to the spectrum of risks from climate variability and change, as well as from other environmental and social threats. I wrote

There are 5 broad areas that we can use to define the need for vulnerability assessments : water, food, energy, health and ecosystem function. Each area has societally critical resources. The vulnerability concept requires the determination of the major threats to these resources from climate, but also from other social and environmental issues. After these threats are identified for each resource, then the relative risk from natural- and human-caused climate change (estimated from the GCM projections, but also the historical, paleo-record and worst case sequences of events) can be compared with other risks in order to adopt the optimal mitigation/adaptation strategy.

Pielke Sr. R.A., and D. Niyogi, 2009: The role of landscape processes within the climate system. In: Otto, J.C. and R. Dikaum, Eds., Landform – Structure, Evolution, Process Control: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Landforms organised by the Research Training Group 437. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, Springer, Vol. 115, in press

we presented a section that introduces a framework to investigate vulnerabilities. The section reads

“Within the climate system, the need to consider the broader role of land-surface feedback becomes important not only for assessing the impacts but also for developing regional vulnerability and mitigation strategies.

The IPCC fourth assessment second and third working groups deal with a range of issues targeted to these topics (Schneider et al. 2007). The IPCC identifies seven criteria for “key” vulnerabilities. They are: magnitude of impacts, timing of impacts, persistence and reversibility of impacts, likelihood (estimates of uncertainty) of impacts and vulnerabilities and confidence in those estimates, potential for adaptation, distributional aspects of impacts and vulnerabilities, and the importance of the system(s) at risk. While a number of potential vulnerabilities and uncertainties are considered (such as irreversible change in urbanization), the resulting feedback on the atmospheric processes due to such changes is still poorly understood or unaccounted for in these assessments. Indeed the UNFCCC Article 1 states: “‘Adverse effects of climate change’ means changes in the physical environment or biota resulting from climate change which have significant deleterious effects on the composition, resilience or productivity of natural and managed ecosystems or on the operation of socio-economic systems or on human health and welfare.” Thus, while the role of landscape is inherent within the UNFCCC framework, the corresponding translation for the assessments still remains largely greenhouse gas driven.

Further, while the climate change projections have largely been at coarser resolution, the impacts and potential mitigation policies are often at local to regional scales. For example, climate models often project increasing drought at a regional scale. The resilience to such increased occurrence as well as changes in the intensity of droughts is, however, dependent on the local scale environmental conditions (such as moisture storage, and convective rainfall), and farming approaches (access to irrigation, timing of rain or stress, etc). As summarized in Adger (1996), an important issue for IPCC-like global assessments is to assess if the top-down approach can incorporate the “aggregation of individual decision-making in a realistic way, so that results of the modelling are applicable and policy relevant”.

Therefore, as the community braces to develop resilience strategies it will becoming increasingly important to consider a bidirectional impact, i.e., not just the role of atmospheric changes (such as temperature and rainfall) on the physical environmental or biota, but also a feedback of the biota and other land-surface processes on further changes in the atmospheric processes – such as reviewed in this chapter.

Klein et al. (1999) sought to assess whether the IPCC guidelines for assessing climate change impacts as well as adapative strategies can be applied to one example of coastal adaptation. They recommend that a broader approach is needed which has more local-scale information and input for assessing as well as monitoring the options. Again the missing link between local-scale features with global scale projections become apparent. The expanded eight-step approach of Schroter et al. (2005), designed to assess vulnerability to climate change, states the need for considering multiple interacting stresses. They recognize that climate change can be a result of greenhouse gas changes which are coupled to socioeconomic developments, which in turn are coupled to land-use changes – and that all of these drivers are expected to interactively affect the human – environmental system (such as crop yields).

To extract the significance of the individual versus multiple stressors on crop yields, Mera et al. (2006) developed a crop modeling study with over 25 different climatic scenarios of temperature, rainfall, and radiation changes at a farm scale for both C3 and C4 types of crops (e.g., soybean and maize). As seen in many crop yield studies, the results suggested that yields were most sensitive to the amount of effective precipitation (estimated as rainfall minus physical evaporation/transpiration loss from the land surface). Changes in radiation had a nonlinear response with crops showing an increased productivity for some reduction in the radiation as a result of cloudiness and increased diffuse radiation and a decline in yield with further reduction in radiation amounts. The impact of temperature changes, which has been at the heart of many climate projections, however, was quite limited particularly if the soils did not have moisture stress. The analysis from the multiple climate change settings do not agree with those from individual changes, making a case for multivariable, ensemble approaches to identify the vulnerability and feedbacks in estimating climate-related impacts (cf. Turner et al. 2003).

Another issue is the coupled vulnerability of the land surface to socioeconomic and climate change processes. This question was addressed byMetzger et al. (2006). They concluded that most assessment studies cannot provide needed information on regions or on ecosystem goods that are vulnerable. To address this question, we can hypothesize that the vulnerability of landscape (V) change is a product of the probability of the landscape change (Lc) and the service (S) provided by the landscape:

The service provided is a broad term and could mean societal benefits (such as recreation), or economic benefits (such as timber and food), or physical feedback as in terms of the modulating impact a landscape may have on regional temperatures or precipitation. While a variety of studies on vulnerability have sought to look at the economic and the societal feedbacks, the physical feedback of the fine-scale land heterogeneities have been critically missing in the literature. It is however important that land heterogeneity and transformation potential be considered at a finer scale because the landscape changes will in turn affect the regional and local vulnerability.

Current economical assessment studies (Stern 2007) conclude that controlling land-use change such as from deforestation provides an opportunity cost in excess of $5 billion per annum. This estimate however appears to only consider the land transformation impact of deforestation and the resulting greenhouse emissions. As summarized in this chapter, the dynamical effects such as changes in rainfall, evaporation, convection, and temperature patterns due to landform changes can cause additional vulnerability (or resilience in some cases) and needs to be considered in such assessments (Marland et al. 2003). Similarly, the UNFCCC Article 3 also seeks afforestation (reforestation minus deforestation) since 1990 as a country’s commitment towards the green house gas emission controls. Not considering the dynamical feedbacks due to such forest land transformation can lead to additional vulnerabilities as described in Pielke et al. (2001a, 2002).”

I plan to have further posts on this topic, focusing on the 5 resource areas of water, food, energy, health and ecosystem function, in future weblogs. (Climate Science)

WASHINGTON - Climate change will mean new health problems for the United States, but public health officials play only a limited role in decisions about how to cope with the changing environment, a report said on Monday.

A study by the Washington-based health advocacy group Trust for America's Health predicted that warming temperatures will mean more infectious diseases while changes in rainfall are likely to bring new disease and safety challenges whether from floods, storms, droughts or wildfires.

Changes in crop-growing conditions and yields could even threaten rural communities with food insecurity. (Reuters)

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” (The Times)

Farmers and meat companies across Britain reacted with a mixture of anger and exasperation yesterday after one of the world’s leading climate change campaigners urged people to become vegetarian to help to fight global warming. (The Times)

Global warming is a myth, or at least far from certain, according to James Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital.

"Peak temperatures world wide were hit in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since," Altucher says. Over the same time period, carbon emissions have gone straight up. "Does that mean the linkage between carbon emissions and temperature is not real?," he wonders. "Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But so far in the past 10 years the evidence is there's no linkage."

Noting there's arguments and counterarguments on both sides of the global warming debate, Altucher declares: "Nobody really knows" whether the globe is heating or cooling or how much is manmade and how much is just the Earth's natural cycle.

For investors, Atucher says the message is clear: Avoid solar stocks, since solar power is "never efficient" without massive government subsidies.

For those looking for ways to invest in a global cooling theme, Altucher recommends Campbell's Soup and American Ecology Group, which does waste management - including nuclear waste. (Tech Ticker)

Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times.

Environmental lobbyists, politicians, researchers and journalists who distort climate science to support an agenda erode public understanding and play into the hands of sceptics, according to experts including a former government chief scientist.

Excessive statements about the decline of Arctic sea ice, severe weather events and the probability of extreme warming in the next century detract from the credibility of robust findings about climate change, they said.

Such claims can easily be rebutted by critics of global warming science to cast doubt on the whole field. They also confuse the public about what has been established as fact, and what is conjecture. (Mark Henderson, The Times)

OTTAWA - The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling development that will make it easier to open up polar shipping routes, an Arctic expert said on Thursday.

Vast sheets of impenetrable multiyear ice, which can reach up to 80 meters (260 feet) thick, have for centuries blocked the path of ships seeking a quick short cut through the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They also ruled out the idea of sailing across the top of the world.

But David Barber, Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, said the ice was melting at an extraordinarily fast rate.

"We are almost out of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere," he said in a presentation in Parliament. The little that remains is jammed up against Canada's Arctic archipelago, far from potential shipping routes.

Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. (Reuters)

Global warming alarmists never take the time to consider that an ice-free Arctic would provide benefits (Barry Zellen, Financial Post)

BRUSSELS - The European Union should shift more of its spending to climate and energy security as part of a radical overhaul of the bloc's budget, according to a draft paper by the EU's executive arm

The proposal, which the European Commission is likely to be table in late November, would mark a long-term shift of funds away from agriculture.

Budgets worldwide could be affected by a new global climate pact to be agreed at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December. (Reuters)

Aerosols' complicated influence on our climate just got more threatening: they could make methane a more potent greenhouse gas than previously realized, say climate modellers.

Drew Shindell, at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues ran a range of computerized models to show that methane's global warming potential is greater when combined with aerosols — atmospheric particles such as dust, sea salt, sulphates and black carbon. (Nature)

For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances -- notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles -- that affect Earth’s climate. And they’ve been aided by ever more sophisticated computer models that make estimating the relative impact of each type of pollutant more reliable. (PhysOrg.com)

SYDNEY - Australia needs to adopt a national policy to combat rising sea levels, which may see people forced to abandon coastal homes and banned from building beachside homes, said a parliamentary climate change committee. (Reuters)

Several endangered species of monkey are likely to be pushed further towards extinction by the effects of climate change, research has suggested.

At least four primates from South America that appear on the international Red List of endangered species are adversely affected by climate phenomena that are predicted to worsen as the world warms, scientists have found.

The muriqui, the Colombian red howler monkey, the woolly monkey and Geoffroy’s spider monkey, have all declined in population either during or soon after recent El Niño events, according to a study from a team at Pennsylvania State University.

Many scientists expect El Niño events, in which abnormally warm ocean temperatures in the southern hemisphere affect the climate, to become stronger or more frequent over the next century. (The Times)

Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc. – Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory, Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria – has a few things to say about solar activity and climate. Thanks to Russ Steele of NCWatch

Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is “not guilty” and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop.

[...] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 752 individual scientists from 442 separate research institutions in 41 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Gallipoli Terrace, Gulf of Taranto, Ionian Sea, Central Mediterranean. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Tornados: Have they increased in frequency and ferocity in response to 20th-century global warming?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Beech (Rodenkirchen et al., 2009), Slender Amaranth (Sudderth and Bazzaz, 2008), Soybean (Matsunami et al., 2009), and Spotted Lady's Thumb (Sudderth and Bazzaz, 2008).

North Carolina Sea Levels Rising Three Times Faster Than in Previous 500 Years, Penn Study Says
October 28, 2009

PHILADELPHIA –- An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.

The rate of relative sea-level rise, or RSLR, during the 20th century was 3 to 3.3 millimeters per year, higher than the usual rate of one per year. Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

There is an important, well written new paper that provides further evidence that land use change significantly influences the use of surface air temperatures in these areas as part of the construction of a global average surface temperature anomaly.

“This study of New York City, New York’s, heat island and its potential mitigation was structured around research questions developed by project stakeholders working with a multidisciplinary team of researchers. Meteorological, remotely-sensed, and spatial data on the urban environment were brought together to understand multiple dimensions of New York City’s heat island and the feasibility of mitigation strategies, including urban forestry, green roofs, and high-albedo surfaces. Heat island mitigation was simulated with the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5). Results compare the possible effectiveness of mitigation strategies at reducing urban air temperature in six New York City neighborhoods and for New York City as a whole. Throughout the city, the most effective temperature-reduction strategy is to maximize the amount of vegetation, with a combination of tree planting and green roofs. This lowered simulated citywide surface urban air temperature by 0.4°C on average, and 0.7°C at 1500 Eastern Standard Time (EST), when the greatest temperature reductions tend to occur. Decreases of up to 1.1°C at 1500 EST occurred in some neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where there is more available area for implementing vegetation planting. New York City agencies are using project results to guide ongoing urban greening initiatives, particularly tree-planting programs.”

The paper is not written specifically with respect to the issue of diagnosing regional representative multi-decadal surface air temperature trends. However, it clearly shows the magnitude of the effect of land use change on surface air temperatures. For example, Table 3 presents a summary of the effect of increased vegetation and higher surface albedo on urban air temperatures during heat waves for different areas of New York City. The average differences for different parts of New York range up to over 1 degree Celsius at 1500 EST and are even larger at individual locations for the maximum effect as shown in Table 4.

This paper effectively shows how deliberate land management can alter the urban temperature environment. It also shows that as the region became urban, temperature trends of these magnitudes occurred due to these landscape changes.

The new Rosenzweig et al 2009 paper, while silent on the issue in its text, is an effective rebuttal of the papers

there remain significant issues with the use of surface air temperatures from land based observations, as a diagnostic of global warming and cooling. (Climate Science)

LONDON - The European Union can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 at almost no cost, according to a report by climate consultancy firm Ecofys released on Wednesday.

EU leaders have a target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. They have pledged to increase the target to 30 percent if other world leaders at a U.N. climate summit this December agree to join in.

By replacing all energy equipment at the end of its life with low-carbon technologies, the 27-nation bloc could halve its greenhouse gas emissions within two decades, the report found. (Reuters)

LONDON - New rewards to store carbon in trees are driving forestry investments, but green groups fear they pose a threat to ancient woodlands and rainforests.

A new environmental focus is driving momentum in the forestry sector, with new demand for wood to replace coal and natural gas in Europe, and emerging markets for carbon offsets.

But a focus on the carbon benefits of trees has exposed differences between some green groups and investors on what counts as "sustainable" forestry. (Reuters)

LONDON - Big energy and engineering companies will reap most profit from a climate deal due in December, as they use their financial and intellectual clout to grab low carbon subsidies.

Utilities and oil companies, among the biggest polluters, are using their market awareness to stay ahead of a climate race, maneuvering to own the most viable low-carbon technologies.

In addition, they are a natural magnet for government incentives as big emitters which have to drive cuts. (Reuters)

Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. Witness the 1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emission permits by 2012). Government has often had a hand in jump--starting a new -industry—both the computer chip and the Internet got their start in American defense research. But it's hard to think of any non-military industry that has been so completely and utterly driven by regulation and subsidies from the start. (Stefan Theil, NEWSWEEK)

CLEAN coal technology will face extraordinary price hurdles over the next 10 years, a major stocktake of all the world's carbon capture and storage projects has found. The report, prepared by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, finds the cost increase to coal electricity generation if fully-fledged clean coal technology is installed will be up to 78 per cent.

If the technology is widely introduced, price increases in generating electricity are likely to significantly increase household power bills.

The report, which looked at all global carbon capture and storage projects around the world, found that it will only be competitive with other energy sources if a high carbon price exists.

That would mean a carbon price of between $61-$112 a tonne, and between $80-90 a tonne for the large-scale technology needed for the massive NSW and Victorian coal plants. (Sydney Morning Herald)

It is no surprise that Mr Rudd’s CCS Institute thinks that Carbon Capture & Storage will not be viable for twenty years (Aust 29th Oct).

A viable business is one that gets no government favours or market guarantees, but earns profits selling products or services to willing buyers in an open market.

There is no evidence that burial of carbon dioxide will have any beneficial effects on climate. Moreover, reducing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere will reduce plant growth and lower the ability of plants to cope with heat and drought.

Under CCS, every tonne of coal burnt produces three tonnes of carbon dioxide for burial. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the source of carbon for all plants, which sustain all animals. It is precious plant food. Sterilisation of this valuable natural resource produces community losses not benefits.

If you combine zero or negative benefits with huge capital and operating costs it is obvious that CCS can NEVER make a profit or be “viable”.

Moreover, every three tonnes of carbon dioxide buried contains one tonne of carbon, the building block of all life on earth, plus two tonnes of oxygen, the gas of life for all animals.

All planets gradually lose their atmospheres by natural processes. To hasten that fatal day by deliberately burying essential life-supporting atmospheric gases is biological suicide.

Spending billions of dollars on burial tombs for the gases of life is as useful to Australians as the pyramids were to the ancient Egyptians.

All of these expensive carbon cemeteries with their gas collectors, compressors and long pipelines to remote burial facilities are destined to be abandoned and, like the pyramids, will stand as mournful monuments to the madness of the modern Pharaohs.

Carbon Capture and Burial is a non-viable idea.

Let’s bury it.

Viv Forbes
Rosevale Qld Australia 4340

Mr Forbes is Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition.

NEW YORK - The demand for coal to generate power and make steel is growing, but environmental bureaucracy is making it more difficult to mine the fuel, the head of Massey Energy said on Wednesday.

"Our government is at least temporarily impeding the attainment of coal's full value ... and frustrating domestic opportunities for production growth," Chief Executive Officer Don Blankenship told Wall Street analysts.

"More production reductions will likely occur in central Appalachia as a result of the generally weak economic conditions and increasing regulatory and permitting constraints." (Reuters)

When industries look for government subsidies for money-losing propositions, a common business model these days, one of the most important strategic elements is to make sure you have a well-oiled public relations machine to keep the facts from getting in the way. Voters don’t like to back money-losers, which means keeping them steadily misinformed or at least confused.

Renewable energy industries — wind, solar, biomass, human treadmills — have a particularly tough job. In North America, where so-called green energy companies and electric utilities are on the brink of receiving uncountable billions in direct subsidies and zillions in indirect subsidies via higher electricity prices, the PR effort is in full swing.

Ontario, Alberta and other provinces along with Ottawa are busy working on wind and solar development schemes, even though they are documented money-losers. U.S. President Obama this week was hailed as “the man who’s done more to advance the cause of renewable energy than anyone in the nation’s history.” Or so said the head of Florida Light and Power after Mr. Obama announced $3.7-billion in economic stimulus spending on smart meters that would make it possible for utilities to manipulate prices and force people to pay more for renewable energy. In Congress this week, debate is raging over a clean energy bill that would direct windfall carbon taxes on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

To what degree do voters in Canada and the U.S. know they are to be come feeder funds for subsidy-seeking industrial firms? If the industry has its way, not too much. What the voters don’t know they shouldn’t be told.

All of which is to introduce a little public relations story related to a commentary we ran on this page last week by the authors of a new German study on Germany’s disastrously wasteful rush into alternative energy. The study, “Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience,” showed how German electricity consumers and the German economy paid dearly for the country’s plunge into wind and solar energy. The program was massively expensive, and the authors of the study warned that other jurisdictions would be well advised avoiding the German model. (Financial Post)

A 2-year-old PG&E program to help customers offset the size of their carbon footprint has drawn little interest and consumer advocates are arguing it should be allowed to expire at the end of the year.

Only 30,000 households and businesses have enrolled in "ClimateSmart," which allows residential and commercial customers of the San Francisco-based utility to add a tax-deductible "donation" to their monthly bill that allows PG&E to buy carbon offsets.

But with California's unemployment rate at 12 percent and many households struggling each month to stay on top of mortgages and other bills, persuading people to give extra money to PG&E has been a hard sell.

Some consumer advocates think the program is a waste of money and should be scrapped.

ClimateSmart charges customers to have the carbon emissions footprint of their gas and electricity use calculated. A small fee — the average is less than $5 a month — is then added to their monthly bill. The revenue generated by ClimateSmart allows PG&E to buy carbon offsets from a variety of projects, including forest conservation efforts in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

"When you plug something into the wall here, you're generating greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else," said PG&E spokeswoman Katie Romans. "We're hoping to make that connection."

PG&E has 5 million "customers of record," or billing addresses, and serves 15 million people from Eureka to Bakersfield.

But so far, only 30,000 customers — 0.6 percent — have enrolled. The largest concentration of ClimateSmart customers is in San Francisco. There are about 4,000 enrolled customers in Silicon Valley, including businesses like Fresh Choice, eBay, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, IKEA and the San Jose Convention Center.

PG&E has asked the California Public Utilities Commission for permission to extend the program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, in hopes that it can increase enrollment.

But consumer advocates with TURN, The Utility Reform Network, say PG&E should just pull the plug.

"The numbers are abysmal, and we think PG&E should just scrap the program altogether," said Mindy Spatt of TURN. "This is not a good deal for consumers."

TURN says that while only 30,000 PG&E customers have enrolled in ClimateSmart since it launched in 2007, all PG&E customers subsidize the costs of the program through the rates they pay. Since its launch, ClimateSmart has collected approximately $4.5 million in contributions from residential, commercial, and municipal customers. TURN argues that PG&E has allocated $12 million for marketing and advertising with little results. (Mercury News)

Would you believe that there are places and times when power companies generate so much renewable energy that they give it away?

In west Texas and Illinois, when the wind blows at night and nuclear plants run around-the-clock, power generators produce more electricity than people need. This oversupply "has forced electricity prices into the negative range," an expert explains-meaning that some customers are paid to use electricity.

The expert is Terry Boston, and he knows what he's talking about. Boston is the CEO of PJM, the company that manages the electricity grid that serves 51 million people in 13 mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C. It's not an everyday occurrence but when demand exceeds supply, "cement manufacturing plants can get paid to take electricity," he says.

It sounds crazy, but there's a perverse economic logic at work. Owners of the wind turbines collect a production tax credit of 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour when they generate electricity, so they don't want to shut the turbines down. So long as they pay customers less than the subsidy to consume power, they make money. Put simply, taxpayers dollars pay the wind companies who pass along a portion to their customers.

"It is not sustainable to have large negative prices for long periods of time," says Boston. No kidding. Think about how you would behave if you were paid to use electricity. You can be sure no one at the cement company is chasing around turning the lights off. (Greener World Media)

If a planned Alaskan pipeline is built, the Petroleum Age could be over before the Mackenzie line is reconsidered (Financial Post)

A proposed green tax to cut carbon emissions would lead to an £800 increase in the average annual household energy bill over the next decade (TDT)

An influential think-tank, supported by the government, will tomorrow urge £150 billion of new green taxes on businesses and households — including a £3,300 levy on new cars.

The recommendations from the Green Fiscal Commission (GFC), to be presented by Lord Turner, head of the committee on climate change — and chairman of the Financial Services Authority — could bring a drastic reshaping of the tax system to curb greenhouse gas emissions and encourage investment in low-carbon technology. Among the proposals are a tripling of fuel duty over the next decade, a household energy tax, and the hefty tax added to the price of every new car. (The Times)

BRUSSELS - The auto industry should stop selling its most gas-guzzling vans and minibuses in the European Union by 2016 or face fines, the EU's executive arm said on Wednesday.

The deadline would be four years later than first envisaged after powerful auto makers pushed hard for a delay until the EU's 27 member states have recovered from the economic crisis.

Average carbon emissions for each van would have to be cut by 14 percent between 2014 and 2016 to 175 grams for every kilometer driven, compared to an EU average of 203 grams today, the European Commission said.

By 2020, van makers would have to hit a target of 135 grams. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - A healthcare reform bill with a government-run insurance option faced an uncertain future in the Senate on Tuesday, with many centrist Democrats uncommitted and Senator Joe Lieberman strongly opposed.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's decision to include a government-run "public" option in the Senate bill failed to sway about a dozen moderates who said they wanted more details before making their decisions.

Democrats said Reid was still short of the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles and pass a bill with a public option, which has become one of the most contentious issues in the debate on President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The healthcare bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives aim to rein in costs, expand coverage to millions of uninsured and bar insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage for the sick.

Health insurer stocks rallied on skepticism that a government-run plan, seen as detrimental to the industry, would win passage. That view was fueled by Lieberman's comments.

Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he would not join Republicans on a procedural vote to block the healthcare bill from coming up for debate, but would be willing to block a final vote on the plan if it remained unchanged.

"I don't support a government-operated health insurance company that will end up costing the taxpayers a lot of money," he told reporters. (Reuters)

On October 11, 2009, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report titled “Potential Impact of Health Reform on the Cost of Private Health Insurance Coverage.” Since then, the media coverage of the health care debate has refocused sharply on the question of the integrity of the report and the validity of its conclusions. How well does the report hold up under scrutiny? Should we be concerned that proposed reforms will drive up private insurance premiums, as the report concludes? Or is the report itself merely a thinly-veiled effort by the insurance industry to protect its own interests, as much of the media coverage has suggested? (Nirit Weiss, STATS)

WASHINGTON — The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic. Now, despite months of planning and preparation, a vaccine shortage is threatening to undermine public confidence in government, creating a very public test of Mr. Obama’s competence.

The shortage, caused by delays in the vaccine manufacturing process, has put the president in exactly the situation he sought to avoid — one in which questions are being raised about the government’s response.

Aware that the president would be judged on how well he handled his first major domestic emergency, the Obama administration left little to chance. It built a new Web site, Flu.gov — a sort of one-stop shopping for information about H1N1, the swine flu virus. It staged role-playing exercises for public health officials and members of the news media. (NYT)

As people across the country clamor for the swine flu vaccine, fewer than half of New York City parents with children in elementary school have given permission for their children to receive the vaccine at school, reflecting some ambivalence about the need for the vaccine or concern about its effects.

Health officials said that while they did not have a citywide figure, 5 percent to 50 percent of parents had given consent for their children to receive the vaccine at schools that had it. At Public School 157 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where health officials opened the school vaccination effort on Wednesday, only a third of students had permission to receive it. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - Patients taking statin drugs were almost 50 percent less likely to die from flu, researchers reported on Thursday in a study providing more evidence the cholesterol-lowering drugs help the body cope with infection.

The findings are compelling enough to justify doing controlled studies in which some patients are given the drugs deliberately and some are not, said Meredith Vandermeer of the Oregon Public Health Division, who helped lead the study.

"Our preliminary study shows these cholesterol-lowering medications called statins are associated with a decrease in mortality," Vandermeer told a news conference at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

"This early research suggests there may be a role for statins in influenza treatment and it should be studied further." (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Low vitamin D levels in the body may be deadly, according to a new study hinting that adults with lower, versus higher, blood levels of vitamin D may be more likely to die from heart disease or stroke.

Vitamin D is an essential vitamin mostly obtained from direct sunlight exposure, but also found in foods and multivitamins. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Contrary to findings from an earlier study, new research suggests that coffee lovers do not face an increased risk of heart failure.

Researchers found that among more than 37,000 middle-aged and older Swedish men, those who regularly drank coffee were no more likely to develop heart failure than those who infrequently, if ever, drank the beverage.

The findings, reported in the American Heart Journal, add to evidence that coffee may not be the heart-health threat it was once suspected to be. (Reuters Health)

If there really were a nation of Oompa Loompas secreted away in some dark, sugar-coated mill churning out candy, they might be singing a slightly different tune about the dangers of over-indulging, based on a recent study in the British Journal of Psychiatry. To their sing-song question, "What do you get when you guzzle down sweets?" the answer now appears to be not just greedy brats, but violent criminals. (Trevor Butterworth, Forbes)

In the history of medicine, nothing has been used so widely and to so little effect as Hirudo Medicinalis--better known as the leech. For two millennia, leeches were used to balance the humors--or to drain the patient of "excess" blood and other substances thought to be the cause of most of humanity's physical and mental ailments. In a similar vein, some doctors and public health advocates are turning to a modern equivalent of the leech--taxes--in order to draw "excess" money from going to "unhealthy" activities, thereby reducing disease and balancing health care spending. (Trevor Butterworth, Forbes)

We follow-up last week's introductory Health News Digest piece on the topic, with one more; this one focuses on some new developments.

Since there are now at least two confirmed cases whereby "Chinese" symptoms have been identified in domestic drywall, the favored term has become "tainted drywall." Of course, domestic stuff so implicated is a very troubling finding, and no reasonable explanation has yet been proffered.

There are those who believe that sulfide-emitting drywall is ultimately caused by bacteria, and this etiology seems to make sense. Recent studies have shown that samples taken from tainted product will culture as much as 10,000 times more sulfate-reducing bacteria as non-affected drywall. Moreover, the observation that tainted drywall requires somewhat elevated temperatures and humidity to become problematical is what one would expect if he were growing bacteria.

If the cause IS bacterial, then remediation can be effected by treatment with chlorine dioxide, which has the additional property of removing the sulfide smell.

WASHINGTON - No need to curse that bad driver weaving in and out of the lane in front of you -- he cannot help it, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.

The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there -- about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

"These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," Dr. Steven Cramer, who led the study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, said in a statement. (Reuters)

DRIVING faster on some NSW roads is safer than driving slowly, two motoring groups say.

With new figures out yesterday showing the state's road toll is well up on this time last year, NRMA Motoring & Services and the lobby group National Motorists Association Australia have argued that speed can save lives.

They say speed restrictions that keep motorists driving on rural roads for long periods may increase the likelihood of an accident occurring as this pushes up levels of fatigue, boredom and frustration.

"Sensible higher limits will rid our roads of much intimidating and aggressive driving," said the NMAA's vice-president, Gavin Goeldner. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Whoever made up the Roads and Traffic Authority's 1990s slogan ''the road is there to share'' has a lot to answer for. It's a big fat lie. The road is not there to share. Roads are built for cars. Pretending otherwise is unfair to motorists and cyclists alike. (Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald)

The Tasmanian Greens today expressed their extreme disappointment at the couldn’t-care-less-attitude of the Bartlett Government and Liberal Opposition, and accused both of prioritising the economics of the forest industry over the long-term health of Tasmanians, after both combined to vote down the Greens’ motion for a total ban on the use of Triazine herbicides in Tasmania. (Tasmanian greens media release)

Health Minister LaraGiddings today said the Government would continue to take advice from health experts informed by world leading scientific data when making decisions about the potential health impact of triazines.

Ms Giddings said there was no credible evidence to support the Greens’ claims that minute concentrations of such chemicals occasionally detected in Tasmania’s water supply had caused elevated levels of cancer.

“Unlike the Greens, the Government is not taking an ideological approach on triazines – we will continue to take the advice of health experts and act accordingly,” Ms Giddings said.

“Issues such as these are being closely monitored by experts in our national regulatory bodies, and if they or our State’s top health experts ever advise the Government that we need to take further action on these chemicals then of course we will do that.

“But the Greens aren’t interested in science or expert advice – they are zealots who think they know best.

“And they will stop at nothing in their misleading fear campaign. (Tasmanian government media release)

It's been only three years since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) after one of the most exhaustive scientific investigations of a commercial product ever undertaken, reauthorized use of the herbicide atrazine, the longtime weed-killing staple of corn growers everywhere. Now, nine months into a new administration that has promised a renewed commitment to science and greater transparency on environmental issues, the EPA says it will re-evaluate atrazine yet again.

The agency's Oct. 7 announcement came just weeks ahead of the expected release of a separate, yearlong study of atrazine done jointly by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the state's Department of Health, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Gregg Regimbal, supervisor of the Pesticide Management Unit in the state's Agriculture Department — which, along with the EPA, has regulatory authority over restricted-use farm chemicals in the state — said it would be premature to speculate on whether atrazine use in Minnesota will be modified as a result of the study, but that the review has been "worthwhile." (William Souder, Minnesota Post)

A Science Advisory Panel of the Environmental Protection Agency is set to meet next week to start a reevaluation of the risk of atrazine. The National Corn Growers Association wants them to postpone that meeting until after the comment period regarding the reconsideration of atrazine’s use closes, a period they’d like to see extended 30 days. NCGA President Darrin Ihnen says the fall is a busy time for corn growers. NCGA wants to ensure they have ample time to submit comments on the importance of atrazine in their farming practices.

Ihnen says after 50 years of use - atrazine is one of the most studied herbicides available on the market. He adds that existing data from both the EPA and World Health Organization shows atrazine can - and has been - used safely.

Originally NCGA notes the EPA only allowed 15 days for organizations to provide written comments on this issue. The American Farm Bureau Federation, CropLife America and Syngenta have also requested an extension. (NAFB News Service)

The National Corn Growers Association is fighting back against food fright scare tactics with some of their own.

The NCGA started a viral email with a Halloween theme and links to the two videos that address some of the top food fears. The email links to a couple of new videos from NCGA that are filled with facts about food production to counteract the “urban legends” that family farmers have been gobbled up by giant corporate monsters that are ravaging the land and poisoning us with unsafe food.

Email Mark Lambert at NCGA to get the viral email to send along to your food friends and foes. It makes a great Halloween card. (AgWired)

WASHINGTON - Foreign aid may provide the best value for money spent by the U.S. government, Bill and Melinda Gates said Tuesday, but few seem to know it.

They launched a new project to try to publicize some public health successes in foreign aid, to encourage the U.S. and other governments to keep giving money.

"Dollar for dollar, global health is America's best investment for saving lives," Gates told reporters. "U.S.-supported global health programs are saving and improving the lives of millions of people."

Gates, the billionaire Microsoft founder who retired in 2008, has given millions of his own money to programs such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization or GAVI and the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

But he said government money is vital, too, and a new website -- www.livingproofproject.org -- shows it is working, he said.

Gates's wife Melinda, who with Gates heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said she helps check up on money that has gone toward helping causes -- and been pleasantly surprised.

"When we make an investment we are going to go back and make sure -- did it work. We see that these things are working," she said. "We realize that we are seeing a lot of hope on the ground. The hope is really palpable."

Gates said he wanted to thank taxpayers and to ask the administration of President Barack Obama, along with Congress, to do more.

"U.S. support has already helped to reduce deaths of young children by more than 50 percent in the past 50 years. If we keep up our commitment, it's possible to cut child mortality in half again," Gates said.

"What's more, we can do it with proven interventions that already exist."

This includes the distribution of AIDS drugs by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR, launched in 2003, a Global Fund project to distribute mosquito nets and insecticides to fight malaria, and the distribution of vaccines to prevent diarrhea and pneumonia by the GAVI Alliance. (Reuters)

CHURCHVILLE, VA—“Environmentalists are standing in the way of feeding humanity through their opposition to biotechnology, farm chemicals and nitrogen fertilizer”—straight talk from billionaire Bill Gates at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines October 15th

Gates could have said with equal truth that the same environmentalists, by demanding organic-only farming, are risking the future of the planet’s wildlife. The world will need more than twice as much food by 2050 to feed a peak population of 8 billion affluent humans and their pets. Gates believes we should get that additional food from higher yields on the 37 percent of the earth’s land area we already farm, not by threatening massive numbers of wildlife species by clearing more land for low-yield crops. (Dennis T. Avery, CGFI)

There is an urgent need for an environmental organisation within the UN system with real political clout (The Guardian)

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, feeding humanity in 2050 — when the world’s population is expected to be 9.1 billion — will require a 70 percent increase in global food production, partly because of population growth but also because of rising incomes.

The organization hopes that this increase can be brought about by greater productivity on current agricultural acreage and by greening parts of the world that aren’t now arable. It is also “cautiously optimistic” that, even with climate change, there will be enough land and probably enough water to do so. It’s important to look at this projection in light of another United Nations goal — preserving biodiversity — and ask whether the two are compatible. (NYT)

Call it the mystery of the European sugar triangle.

It began when Belgian customs officials examined shipping records for dozens of giant tanker trucks that outlined an odd, triangular journey across Europe. The trucks, each carrying 22 tons of liquid sugar, swung through eight nations and covered a driving distance of roughly 2,500 miles from a Belgian sugar refinery to Croatia and back — instead of taking the most direct, 900-mile route.

Along the way the trucks made a brief stop in Kaliningrad, a grim and bustling Russian border checkpoint on the Baltic Sea.

Suddenly the sugar triangle made sense to them. Because Russia, and not Croatia, was listed as the intended destination, the shipments qualified for valuable special payments known as export rebates from the European Union’s farm subsidy program.

Some 200 shipments roared along this route over a three-year-period, investigators say, earning 3 million euros in refunds (about $4.5 million) for the Belgian sugar maker Beneo-Orafti. In the spring, dozens of Belgian and European investigators raided the company’s offices, freezing half of its refunds and initiating an investigation that could cost the company the remaining 1.5 million euros, and possibly more.

In the sprawling European subsidy program — which lavishes more than 50 billion euros ($75 billion at current exchange rates) a year in agricultural aid — no commodity is more susceptible to fraud, chicanery and rule-bending, experts say, than simple household sugar. (NYT)

As the US government ponders a strategy to deal with threatening asteroids, a dramatic explosion over Indonesia has underscored how blind we still areMovie Camera to hurtling space rocks.

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed. (David Shiga, New Scientist)

Losing key members, fending off a high-profile hoax and facing political headwinds, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent a record $34.7 million in the third quarter lobbying against the Obama administration's proposals to overhaul energy policy, financial regulation and health care.

The Chamber's money paid for more than a dozen lobbyists to visit Congress, the White House and agencies from Agriculture to Treasury. Most of the Chamber's positions -- free trade, unfettered credit card lending, Cash for Clunkers rebates -- enjoy broad support among the Chamber's diverse corporate members.

The Chamber's lobbying agenda encompasses virtually any issue that affects business -- so the group has a stance on virtually every issue. Debates on far-reaching effects, such as health care, often occupy the most attention. But the Chamber disclosure also shows the group devoted serious resources to issues important to a smaller number of members -- Internet taxation, immigration enforcement and forcing children to speak English.

However, on one broad issue considered critical to the Obama administration's success the Chamber's anti-regulatory postures created a rift. On the question of how to address climate change, the Chamber has seen a growing number of companies defect. They say the self-proclaimed "voice of business" doesn't speak for them when it denies global warming and lobbies against climate change legislation. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Two of the Senate's most prominent global warming skeptics are taking aim at a potential move by the Obama administration to include climate change as a factor in environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) are demanding information about the administration's ongoing deliberations on whether to amend regulations to require climate change to be one of the elements considered in an environmental impact statement.

The question has been pending since February, when a petition was filed with the White House Council on Environmental Quality by the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and International Center for Technology Assessment.

Saying they are "very concerned about the consequences of CEQ acceding to that request," the senators sent a letter to CEQ head Nancy Sutley asking for a wide range of documents and communications about the issue by Nov. 13. They called NEPA a "bedrock environmental statute" but said it is "not an appropriate tool to set global climate change policy."

"Any attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions must be debated on its merits and not regulated under laws that were never intended for such purposes," they wrote. "We firmly believe that NEPA should achieve environmental goals without unnecessarily obstructing economic development. Requiring analysis of climate change impacts during the NEPA process, especially at the project-specific level, will slow our economic recovery while providing no meaningful environmental benefits." (Greenwire)

The government is trying to terrify you. That is the only possible interpretation of its latest television advertising campaign on the supposed dangers of global warming. Whether or not you accept the scientific premises behind the “bedtime story” advert which is now to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority after attracting over 350 complaints from the public, there is no question that it is propaganda in the strict technical sense of the word.

That is to say, it is an attempt by the state to manipulate opinion and evoke emotional reactions without offering argument or evidence for its case. It accepts uncritically the most extreme rendition of the anthropogenic global warming narrative as if it were entirely uncontentious and presents it in the most sentimentally evocative possible way (ie as a threat to one’s own children and to defenceless creatures generally). It uses the techniques once associated with totalitarian societies not to persuade (which is what advertising properly does) but to coerce: to create fear and guilt. And to what purpose? Without offering constructive argument or serious explanation of the options, we can only assume that this is a campaign designed to browbeat the public into accepting any new restrictions or “green” taxes which government may choose to impose. Fortunately, it seems that ordinary people still have the independence of mind to know when they are being bullied. (Janet Daley, TDT)

Alternate ad: NOT WORK SAFE! Climate Change Bedtime Story (OK until child voiceover, which could stand some improvement)

One brave little girl confronts the cult of climate change. Will the story have a happy ending?

About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.

I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.

But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.

Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.

Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.

In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is…is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.

If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.

It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was, “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”

And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.

In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.

Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?

It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.

Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.

I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 1996 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.

But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?

The IPCC thought it was way cool…until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.

And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.

In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.

And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.

If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.

Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters – either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters – the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion. (Roy Spencer)

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say. (NYT)

A MEDIUM-sized dog has the same carbon impact as a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year, a new book claims.

Time To Eat The Dog: The Real Guide To Sustainable Living also suggests a cat is equivalent to running a Volkswagen Golf.

The findings are based on the amount of land needed to grow food for pets.

Even a pair of hamsters do the same damage as running a plasma television, say the book’s authors Robert and Brenda Vale.

But rabbits and chickens were eco-friendly because they provide meat for their owners, while a canary or a goldfish does little harm to the planet, the authors said. (Daily Express)

Guest post from Cocoa the dog

****************************************************

I am told humans are smart, but sometimes I wonder. I was born back in ‘02, and I have learned a trick or two in my 49 years. But this old dog will never play the kind of trick that Brenda and Robert Vale are playing. They are off by a factor of 20 when comparing the energy to power an SUV with the energy to power a dog.

Brenda and Robert Vale are professors at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. They are either complete mathematical boneheads, or they have simply realized that in today’s world there is no limit to the outrageous claims that they can peddle to other completely credulous humans. They claim in their book “Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living” that I am an energy hdogs – worse than a gas guzzling SUV. Here is their (il)logic, as reported in the New Zealand Dominion Post… (Climate Sanity)

Poor wee Robie McKie, of course: Deep freeze 'arks' to save coral reefs - Researchers fear coral reefs won't survive next 50 years, so cryogenic plans are laid to rebuild them

Scientists are preparing plans to store coral in cryogenic vaults, so that the world's vanishing reefs can be rebuilt once the climate is stabilised.

Researchers consider there is now little chance that coral reefs – which are built by living creatures, and support up to a third of the world's marine biodiversity – will survive the next 50 years. They are threatened by rising sea temperatures and increasing acidification, triggered by rising carbon dioxide levels. (Robin McKie, The Observer)

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government's target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately. (The Observer)

Canadian climate-change scientists say growing skepticism about global warming in the media is confusing federal politicians and causing delays in action that could prevent dangerous changes in the Earth's atmosphere.

The warning comes as Conservatives and Liberals teamed up in Parliament on Wednesday in a vote to slow down legislation, proposed by the New Democrats, to set science-based targets for reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before an upcoming international climate summit this December in Denmark. (Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service)

Our mothers would pack us some sandwiches and give us our tube fare and a few pennies for drinks. We would spend the whole day in the museums of London’s Exhibition row. Our favourite was The Science Museum and especially its Children’s Gallery with all its push button working displays. Oddly enough, the one that stands out in memory is the demonstration of the triple-point of carbon dioxide, in which you could make a liquid appear and disappear like magic. At that time Karl Popper was still actively writing and exploring the philosophy of science, having made the great breakthrough with the statement of the principle of falsifiability.

But that was all in the middle of the last century. In recent times science has received a number of damaging blows at the hands of the New Believers. It was thus almost routine that the appointment of a well-known Global Warming fanatic had been made to the Directorship of the Science Museum. It was only a matter of time before he delivered and the coming Copenhagen Junkfest was the trigger.

The museum has now officially declared Popper to be a non-person, with a new campaign called Prove It. The very title is not just junk science or pseudo-science, it is anti-science. They might as well have an exhibition proving that all swans are white.

They appear, however, to have made a strategic error in allowing people a free vote. It seems that you still cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Almost half a century after those days of sandwiches and wonder, your bending author made a return visit to the Museum to receive the Callendar Silver Medal for contributions to scientific measurement. The completion of a circle. There is no incentive to go back and witness the corruption of an ideal. Something that is now common throughout the world of scientific institutions. How could it all go so wrong, so quickly? (Number Watch)

As a follow up to my recent post about the Science Museum climate propaganda website ‘PROVE IT!’ there is now the opportunity to vote in order to be ‘counted out’ or ‘counted in’ on the basis of the following statement:

“I’ve seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they’re serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen.”

At the time of posting, 511 are ‘in’ and ‘3423′ are ‘out’ including me.

Of course, the British public were not allowed to vote on the unilateral UK Climate Change Act (2008), which sets legally binding, unachievable CO2 emissions reduction targets of 34% by 2020, and 80% by 2050 for the UK’s tiny, less than 2% contribution to global man-made aerial plant food (CO2). We weren’t allowed to vote on the EU ‘Lisbon Treaty,’ and we won’t be allowed to vote on the forthcoming ‘Copenhagen Treaty.’ So use this online vote well! (CRN)

A poll by the Science Museum designed to convince the nation of the perils posed by climate change has backfired after being hijacked by sceptics. (TDT)

Graph: poll online opinon australians carbon climate

The Question: Do increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere pose an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic change in earth’s temperature in the future?

Of 1022 people polled, 55% agreed and 31% opposed (including the 19% who strongly opposed). Nearly half, or 45% are not convinced a catastrophe is on the way due to carbon dioxide. Source: OnlineOpinion

My sense is that the curve of opinion on this complex science is the inverse of what you would expect. Normally on a complex scientific topic, the most common answer would be neither agree nor disagree (or don’t know), and the strong opinions would taper off like a bell curve with few people being sure either way. Instead opinions are polarized. “Catastrophic” is strong language. One side here is passionately wrong.

With 3000 times as much funding supporting the side with professional PR teams, the endless repetition of the assumption that man-made carbon dioxide causes warming is becoming a liability in itself. The more the advocates for action whitewash, the more people grow suspicious. They more they bully, the more people get a gut feeling that things are not right. The harder the activists push, the stronger the opposition becomes. The only thing that would rescue the case for Cap N trade or an ETS is good scientific evidence. James Hansen and Al Gore can hardly claim they can’t get their message across in the media, so we wonder why they keep the evidence a secret?

Results from US polls show that they are even more skeptical and attitudes are changing fast. In results out today the Pew Poll shows that belief in man-made global warming is declining faster than ever and across all voter profiles (See graphic, left). Only 36% of people agreed that human activities warm the planet, down from 47% last year. (Warming the planet is a much weaker claim than the catastrophic one above). Curiously Republican voters convictions started falling in 2007, and Independent voters in 2008. Are Democrat voters next?

In Australia, predictably but disappointingly the group of workers who were the most likely to see the risk of catastrophe as unacceptable were educators (75%). Meanwhile income and disagreement was a U-shaped curve. Those with low incomes and high incomes were like to disagree. Those earning between $25,000 and $75,000 were more likely to believe. For what it’s worth, my unsubstantiated speculation is that the high earning – highly educated, hard nosed business managers are unimpressed with the explanations. The well educated middle class have been exposed to a large amount of the propaganda, but possibly don’t have the tools, the time, or the contacts to understand why it’s wrong (yet). The lower income people don’t need to understand the details of the science to recognize when someone is being rude, dodging the question, or bullying instead of reasoning. They have a street sense that someone is trying to put one over them.

There was a small sample of scientists of which 70% still think that the risk is unacceptable but we have no information on the spread of their specialties. Other surveys of scientists have produced wildly different results — and positions on the potential for catastrophe vary widely from specialty to specialty. For example, 90% of geoscientists at the 2008 Japan Geoscience Union Symposium do not believe the IPCC report. [Source.]

Every day, the critical December summit in Copenhagen grows closer. All agree that climate change is an existential threat to humankind. Yet agreement on what to do still eludes us. (Ban Ki-Moon)

Science is about simplicity

A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.

The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways. (Bob Carter, Quantum)

You may have not noticed but Saturday, October 24th, 2009 was an International Day of Climate Action: see 350.org & Google News.

Hundreds of people in the whole world organized events urging the world's CO2 concentration to return to 350 ppm (350 parts per million: 3.5 molecules out of 10,000 are CO2 molecules). Even in the Czech Republic, a dozen of activists gathered at the Old Town Square, emitting dozens of dirty black "CO2" latex balloons into the air.

(They also used masks of various well-known world politicians for a childish puppet show in which these politicians declare 350 ppm to be the new Copenhagen law.)

A few stupid hippies can easily get into the national TV news if they're on the "right side" (i.e. the far-left side) of the political correctness.

Twenty years ago when the CO2 concentration was at 350 ppm, the environmental activists would fight against things such as latex balloons in the air. They are polluting the environment and some animals may get into trouble when they swallow the balloon.

Today, they don't care. They decided that the CO2 concentration should be 350 ppm - instead of the correct current value, 388 ppm, shown by the world climate widget. (This figure, corresponding to the maximum of 2009, increases approximately by 1.8 ppm a year, and the annual difference between the maximum and minimum due to the seasons on the dominant Northern Hemisphere's lands is around 7 ppm.)

I think that they obtained the meaningless figure of 350 ppm from a pseudoscientist named James Hansen and his 8 collaborators. And because these little green men are mindless brainwashed sheep, they didn't manage to figure out that there is nothing special about 350 ppm: the figure was randomly picked by Hansen et al. in order to produce a new "slogan" for their movement.

Even Gavin Schmidt realizes - and was quoted in The New York Times as saying - that his boss Hansen's focus on 350 ppm completely misses the point. Of course, Schmidt was instantly attacked by RealClimate readers. Well, he helped to create (by brainwashing) thousands of such Frankensteins so he shouldn't be shocked if they kill him on a sunny day.

It's very obvious that there is no qualitative difference between 350 ppm and 388 ppm. And the doubled pre-industrial levels - concentrations near 560 ppm that we may reach sometime before 2100 - are not special, either.

In proterozoic, half a billion years ago (you may think it is a long time ago but the Earth was just 10% younger than it is today), the concentration was around 4,500 ppm. That's 12 times the current value and it seems like a lot.

However, we could actually live there just fine (once we would realize how tasty the food from the picture above is). The unpleasant concentrations are much higher than 4,500 ppm.

Some people start to feel drowsy when the CO2 concentration reaches 10,000 ppm. Below 20,000 ppm, most people still can't notice the elevated concentrations. At 30,000 ppm, their breath speeds up: this is still a result of a deficit of oxygen rather than excess of CO2. Only above 50,000 ppm (5% of the air), CO2 becomes directly toxic.

The warming effect of 4,500 ppm was pretty small, too. The total warming is approximately proportional to the logarithm of the relative concentration increase. You know, the warming doesn't start to accelerate when the concentrations grow (an obvious myth that some people want to be promoted among the gullible laymen): quite on the contrary, the warming effect of one CO2 molecule slows down as the concentration increases.

Sydney yesterday demonstrated the depth of international passion about global warming through several highly pictorial stunts:

Counting the people in the picture, though, I’d say that this is not a global day of action, but global day of apathy. Or, let’s hope, a global day of mounting scepticism.

And that’s even without discounting for the tourists and the unfortunate children who were simply dragged there by parents warning them they may not have a future:

Apologies. From Greenpeace, this proof that the crowds in Sydney may have been even bigger than I sneeringly suggest:

(UPDATE: A reader protests that this second picture is of a Sydney protest a week earlier.)

In Copenhagen, where the world’s leaders will meet in December to discuss slashing emissions - or not:

And in Shanghai, city of 17 million, in a country that is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases:

SBS tries its unprofessional worst to beef up the numbers. Senior correspondent Brian Thomson reports in his most serious voice on a 350 protest from Kiribati, which alarmists have warned for years is about to drown under our warming seas:

Hundreds? Reader Bob counts around 167 on the video, a job SBS factcheckers could have done in a few seconds before airing a falsehood. You’d think if the 100,000 islanders really felt threatened with imminent drowning, a few more of them might wave to the watching world for rescue.

It’s a pity that Thomson didn’t add that the measurements of sea levels around where he’s standing actually don’t support claims of dangerous rises, as warming escalates. Even the Bureau of Meteorology is forced to very reluctantly concede that the very tiny rises (and at one Kiribati station, a tiny fall) measured so far, come nowhere close to the warmists predictions:

Isn’t that a brilliant example of what we’re facing? The BOM suggest we be guided not by the data, but by “opinion”. SBS dutifully ignores the data completely to report only the (exaggerated) opinion. (Andrew Bolt blog)

With some hubub recently over the 350.org day (designed to highlight the opinion that we must return the Earth to a 350 parts per million atmospheric CO2 level) I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at what the reversal might gain us.

For this, I’m drawing on the excellent guest post made by Bill Illis here on 11/25/2008 titled:

One of the graphs (along with a model in a zip file) that Bill presented in that guest post was this graph, which I’ve annotated to show the 350 PPM desired by activists, versus the 388 PPM (MLO seasonally corrected value) where we are now:

Here is the same graph, annotated again with intersecting lines and values, and zoomed on the areas of interest. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

If you'd like to see the dynamics that I describe here in action, have a look at Joe Romm's latest fit. I encourage everyone to have a look. Maybe I touched a nerve? ;-) It is sure going to be fun when my book comes out, stay tuned!

Let me add that for those visiting here for the first time, wanting to see what all the hubbub is about, you can find my publications -- peer-reviewed and otherwise -- at this link. If you have questions about any of this work, or specifically about any of my views, please use this thread to ask, I'm happy to answer. (Roger Pielke Jr)

One of the things that has been obscured by all the hand wringing and arm waiving about global warming is the existence of a threat to our planet that is very real and could arise suddenly. That threat is from non-planetary bodies within the solar system: asteroids, comets and other celestial wanderers. While the world's politicians and tree-hugging blowhards rail about the damage climate change might cause, a symposium was held in San Francisco to address a problem that actually could end life on Earth.

At a symposium during the annual meeting of the AAAS Pacific Division, former US astronauts Rusty Schweickart and Edward Lu stated that the threat of a devastating impact from an unknown asteroid is quit possible, even probable. They further emphasized that the time to plan and prepare is now. What's lacking, they said, is political recognition that asteroids will periodically threaten Earth in the future. Furthermore, Schweickart and Lu suggested that technology is already available that would allow humans to closely track such an asteroid and to redirect its orbit if a collision appeared likely.

Scientists are convinced that such collisions have changed the course of terrestrial life in the past. The Chicxulub impact, now enshrined in textbooks and the public mind as the “asteroid that killed the dinosaurs,” is probably the best know impact induced catastrophe. This most famous extinction was also the most recent: the K-T or end-Cretaceous Extinction, 65 million years ago. Because it was the most recent extinction event, scientists know more about the K-T event than the other great extinctions. The subject of innumerable books and TV shows, most people know the story of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. What most people don't know is that, along with the dinosaurs, 85% of all species on Earth vanished during that time.

In 1990, a team of scientists found conclusive evidence of a well-hidden 110 mile (180 kilometer) wide crater overlapping the seafloor and coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Named the Chicxulub Crater after a nearby village, it was made by a Mt. Everest-size object impacting Earth right at the time of the K-T boundary. Previously, Walter Alvarez and his father, Nobel Prize wining physicist Luis Alvarez, had proposed just such an impact based on finding a layer of iridium enriched sediment at the K-T boundary in several different places around the globe. In 2008, in part for this discovery, Walter Alvarez won the Vetlesen Prize—geology's closest equivalent to a Noble Prize (see “What Catastrophe Awaits?”).

Many scientists believe that asteroid impacts were involved in several of the other six great extinctions that life has endured since the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon, some 545 million years ago. The end-Triassic Extinction, 199 mya, doesn't get much press, coming on the heels of the worst ever extinction (the Permian-Triassic 251 mya), and before the dramatic meteorite impact that extinguished the dinosaurs. As we reported in Chapter 6 of The Resilient Earth, “Ancient Extinctions,” at least two impact craters have been found from around the time of this extinction. One is in Western Australia, where scientists have discovered the faint remains of a 75 mile (120 km) wide crater. The other is a 212 million year old crater in Quebec, Canada, forming part of the Manicouagan Reservoir. The Manicouagan impact structure is one of the largest impact craters still visible on the Earth's surface, with an original rim diameter of approximately 62 miles (100 km).

“What do we do when we find one with our name on it?” asked Schweickart. “It's going to be very important to build public confidence when, 20 years from now, we discover a Near-Earth Object where there's one-in-10 chance that it will hit the Earth,” he added. “That's going to send a panic around the world. At that point, it will be very important to persuade the public that these scientists know what they're doing and can succeed.”

Because every nation on Earth could be affected, and because national interests and abilities are so diverse, preventing future impacts should be a front burner geo-political issue. I would like to know why President Obama was not in attendance at the conference. After all, asteroid collision is a threat that we know has happened in the past, with devastating impact on all earthly lifeforms at the time. Where were the president's science advisers? Does the administration even have a policy regarding this potentially disastrous situation?

Instead, we see the world's politicians preparing to make the pilgrimage to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference, scheduled to take place December 7th through 18th. Those backing the conference include American President Barak Obama, fresh off his humiliating rebuff by the International Olympic Committee's site selection, Chinese President Hu Jintao, and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The official host of the meeting in Copenhagen is the government of Denmark represented by Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister of Climate and Energy and Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. The conference is the the winter political season's must attend party—be there or find yourself out of the media spotlight (something no politician can abide).

The actual conference promises to mark a major attempt at a comeback for the supporters of anthropogenic global warming. AGW has been taking a real pummeling lately, with the announcement that global temperatures have not been increasing for the past decade and a number of scientists expressing skepticism about the UN back hypothesis. In a foreshadowing of the type of overheated rhetoric likely to typify the proceedings, UK PM Gordon Brown warned that the world is on the brink of a “catastrophic” future of killer heatwaves, floods and droughts unless governments speed up negotiations on climate change before vital talks in Copenhagen in December. According to Brown:

Evidently the bombastic Mr. Brown sees for himself a green path to salvation, much like the one followed by Al Gore after his ultimate political failure. Not to be outdone, two British Cabinet ministers, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his brother, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, showed off a doomsday vision of disappearing cities and rising seas. One wonders how many ecological prophets the planet can bear. This is part of the effort to frighten and intimidate nations into signing a new pact limiting CO₂ emissions. All of this is taking place as a blue ribbon panel is preparing to tell NASA not to build its new moon rocket—a vehicle that could be indispensable in any effort to redirect a planet killing asteroid in the future.

The review panel claims that NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goals and one of the cost saving options is pulling the plug on the Ares I rocket. NASA has been working on the Ares I for four years. The giant rocket booster is supposed to replace the space shuttle, which is scheduled to have its final flight in late 2010. Billions have already been spent on the rocket, but not as much as NASA's GISS has spent constructing inaccurate climate models in order to promote the myth of global warming [for details on just how inaccurate those models are see “Seven Climate Models, Seven Different Answers,” or Chapter 14 of The Resilient Earth, “The Limits of Climate Science”].

As I have said before, it always amazes me that many who call themselves ecologists or eco-friendly harbor such animosity for humankind, all the while bestowing upon humanity powers of destruction far beyond our actual capabilities. Those who value the well being of animals, fish and even plants above their fellow Homo sapiens are legion: Green Peace, fruitarians, Peta, militant vegetarians and the human extinction movement to name a few.

Along with discounting the worth of human life, these same characters often claim that humans are destroying all life on Earth: either intentionally, accidentally or just by existing at all. Here is a little something to put human caused climate change's destructive powers in perspective—something that has happened before and will undoubtedly happen again.

Consider the predicted effects of global warming: ice caps may shrink, oceans may rise a few inches and average temperatures increase a couple of degrees. Which threat seems more dire, global warming or global extinction?

No matter, Copenhagen will serve as notice to the citizens of the world that the IPCC and its climate change catastrophists will not go away quietly. We can look forward to more outbreaks of unsubstantiated claims, more proclamations of pending disaster, with every upward tick of the thermometer and every calving glacier. Skeptics, be forewarned—this fight is far from over. In climate science, as in politics, being in the wrong is no reason to give up—the global warming scaremongers will be back.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Why should any self-respecting "green" investor invest in companies developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology?

Because whether or not you hate coal, and whether or not you believe that CCS is a scam perpetrated by the fossil-fuel industry, if you want to make money, CCS looks like a very good sector to be in.

Fact is, governments around the world hope to clean up the atmosphere by spending many billions of dollars on the commercialization of CCS. (Energy Tech Stocks)

Another one bites the dust.

Another energy company has quietly scuttled plans to join the Alberta government's grand experiment to green the province's energy industry. This week, Capital Power announced the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from a power plant's smokestack and stuffing it underground is too expensive.

It is the latest in a long line of potential carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) projects that have proved to be as solid as a puff of smoke.

What is proving fatal to the projects is economics. Companies are realizing the cost is prohibitive, even with massive government aid. Of all the potential CCS projects initially envisioned by proponents, only two have survived. And those only with generous government funding. (Graham Thomson, Edmonton Journal)

The European Union is wondering what to do with billions of unused pollution credits accumulated by Russia, Ukraine and other former communist states of Eastern Europe under the Kyoto Protocol as lawmakers worry about the continuity of the carbon market beyond 2012.

Environment ministers from the 27-member bloc met in Luxembourg on Wednesday (21 October) to thrash out the position that the European Union will take to UN climate talks in December.

But as an international agreement slowly takes shape, the question of what to do with the billions of unused pollution credits accumulated during the 2008-2012 period has become the "elephant in the room" for negotiators.

"There is a lot of money involved," said the European Commission's environment spokesperson Barbara Helfferich. "We haven't clarified our position on this in detail," she told EurActiv after the ministers' meeting on Wednesday.

Kyoto legacy

Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries were granted a certain number of permits to release greenhouse gases in the atmosphere called Assigned Amount Units (AAUs), which are equivalent to one tonne of CO2.

Kyoto targets were decided based on 1990 emission levels. But in the wake of massive deindustrialisation that followed the fall of communism, Eastern European countries are now finding themselves sitting on a huge stockpile of unused pollution credits.

"The Russians have accumulated something like five billion units" during 2008-2012, said an EU diplomat from one of the large EU member states. "This is enormous," he added, saying the amount is equivalent to the effort expected from the entire EU during the upcoming 2013-2020 period.

"We have a big problem of hot air in the system," the diplomat said.

Stefan Singer, director of global energy policy at WWF, warned that the possibility for Russia and Ukraine to carry over their surplus credits after 2012 would probably "sink" international climate talks.

"This amount is more than the entire annual emissions of the EU 27 and may - if traded and sold - sink any environmental integrity of targets for developed countries," he told EurActiv.

Britain and Germany said they wanted to kill off the excess permits, arguing that they undermine the system. (EurActiv)

VANCOUVER — Calculating the difference between a $25 carbon credit purchased in British Columbia and a 14-cent credit purchased in daily trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange is apparently not a matter for simple arithmetic.

The $25 credit is what you, as taxpayers, are forking out to support the B.C. government’s ambitious, precedent-setting plan to make itself carbon-neutral before 2011.

B.C. anticipates that core government agencies and offshoots, including schools and health districts, will be annually responsible by the end of 2010 for about one million more tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions than their conservation efforts can reasonably prevent.

That’s where you come in.

The government’s ambition, announced by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2007, is to compensate for every one of those million tonnes by purchasing carbon credits from businesses and industries that reduced their reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, or coal — and had their efforts certified by independent, third-party auditors.

The credits are collected by Pacific Carbon Trust, a new Crown corporation that pays emitters an unspecified amount for each tonne of CO2 emissions they cut through innovative conservation efforts, and resells them to government at $25 a tonne. (Scott Simpson, Vancouver Sun)

LONDON - A combination of investment risks threatens to obstruct an already stumbling U.N.-backed $6.5 billion market in clean energy projects in emerging nations, years before the scheme's first phase is due to end.

Under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), companies or governments can outsource mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by buying offsets, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), from projects such as wind farms or hydro dams in developing nations.

But with the economic downturn having already dented global investment in clean energy, a mix of political risk in the least developed nations, worries over counter-party credit and growing uncertainty over the scheme's future after Kyoto expires in 2012 could halt CDM funding in the next few years.

After peaking at $7.4 billion in 2007, investment in the CDM dipped by 12 percent last year, according to the World Bank, and observers expect it to fall further this year. (Reuters)

With Copenhagen coming up, we are close to a crunch point. To reach a wider audience I need things like copyright free photos for example. It would help people put this in perspective and understand what we mean when we ask for empirical evidence. I’m putting together another skeptics handbook right now as well as some articles. Things are urgent. Once legislation is in place it will be very very hard to unwind. (JoNova)

Going into the Copenhagen climate change summit, the delegates appear to be competing over who can offer the most ambitious and least realistic targets.

If the upcoming Copenhagen climate change summit fails to result in substantive agreements, as increasingly seems likely, look for the global warming lobby to turn up the extortion heat. Here’s the dilemma:

The United States, Europe, Japan, and other developed countries are steadily cutting per capita emissions. But there remain contentious divisions about what future cuts are technologically and economically feasible. Going into the talks, the delegates appear to be competing over who can offer the most ambitious and least realistic targets so everyone can return from Copenhagen satisfied that they did their part to save the world, at least on paper.

Using 1990 as the benchmark, Britain pledges to reduce emissions by the year 2020, or shortly thereafter, by at least 34 percent. Japan pledges a 25-percent cutback. The U.S. House of Representatives bill passed in June of this year, less ambitious by the airy standards of climate geopolitics but no more realistic, assures a 17-percent reduction from 2005 levels.

But as Roger Pielke, former director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, notes, “the problem with all these promises to achieve deep and rapid cuts in emissions is that no one knows how these cuts are going to happen, and most simply cannot happen as promised. So these countries have turned to designing very complex policies full of accounting tricks, political pork, and policy misdirection.” (Jon Entine, The American)

Gordon Brown’s plan for Europe to lead the world in tackling climate change stands on the brink of failure as a row about its cost threatens to overshadow the European Council.

The Prime Minister was the first to call for a $100 billion (£60 billion) fund to help emerging nations to meet the terms of the replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, to be finalised at a United Nations summit in December.

As part of this, he wants the EU to pledge €10 billion (£9 billion) a year to the fund, but two groups of member states are fighting to block the plan at the council on Thursday and Friday.

Britain, already facing a public spending squeeze, has offered to find €1 billion a year to help to fund the scheme from 2020. (The Times)

Lord Christopher Monchton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, answers critics of his claim that Obama intends to cede U.S. sovereignty at the upcoming COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. (Breitbart TV)

Earlier this week, I addressed a meeting of the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for National Security in Winnipeg. An abbreviated version of my presentation appears below. (National Post)

In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages (TDT)

President Obama will almost certainly not travel to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December and may instead use his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to set out US environmental goals, The Times has learnt.

With healthcare reform clogging his domestic agenda and no prospect of a comprehensive climate treaty in Copenhagen, Mr Obama may disappoint campaigners and foreign leaders, including Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, who have urged him to attend to boost the hopes of a breakthrough.

The White House would not comment on Mr Obama’s travel plans yesterday, but administration officials have said privately that “Oslo is plenty close” — a reference to the Nobel ceremony that falls on December 10, two days into the Copenhagen meeting. (The Times)

The US President has so far “not put his weight behind” a proposed Senate climate bill, says Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (CoP15)

The Copenhagen climate talks, to be held in December, were originally conceived as the final milestone on the road to a global emissions reduction agreement. Now, though, few expect the summit to produce a pact. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with Sweden's climate change envoy about the remaining hurdles. (Der Spiegel)

Highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Africa badly needs an agreement in Copenhagen. But an agreement could become so weak, that it would be better to walk away, some analysts say. (CoP15)

With less than two months to go before the big Copenhagen Conference on global warming, two major nations have said "no thanks" to the no-growth agenda. For that reason alone, so should we.

Following a deal signed late Thursday between China and India, anything we might agree to do in Copenhagen is likely moot anyway. The two mega-nations — which together account for nearly a third of the world's population — said they won't go along with a new climate treaty being drafted in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

They're basically saying no to anything that forces them to impose mandatory limits on their output of greenhouse gas emissions. Other developing nations, including Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, will likely reject any proposals as well.

The deal was already in trouble. Three weeks ago, the Group of 77 developing nations met in Thailand to discuss what they wanted to do about global warming. Their answer: nothing. (IBD)

Energy companies have privately warned the Government that its climate change targets are "illusory" and "delusional" as global leaders prepare to sign up to stricter guidelines at the Copenhagen climate change conference in six weeks. (TDT)

WASHINGTON — The Senate bill aimed at reducing global warming pollution will initially grant billions of dollars of free emissions permits to utilities and industry but will require the bulk of the money be returned to consumers and taxpayers, according to newly released details.

The bill will also provide a cushion to energy-intensive manufacturing companies to ease the transition to a lower-carbon economy and to help them compete internationally, although the subsidies will disappear over time. The measure also sets a floor and ceiling on the price of permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

With these and other changes considered, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that overall cost of the bill at roughly $100 a year per household, similar to that of a House climate change and energy bill passed in June.

The Senate measure, sponsored by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under a cap-and-trade system that sets a nationwide limit on emissions but allows polluters to buy and sell permits to meet it. (NYT)

This morning on CNBC's "Squawk Box," billionaire investor and prominent Obama supporter Warren Buffett slammed the administrations proposed $646 billion carbon tax known as cap and trade as a regressive tax that customers are going to pay for. (John Boehner)

Climate legislation took a small step forward late Friday night as Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) issued a version that includes big benefits for farmers, provisions for deficit reduction and a ceiling on carbon prices.

The proposal, sponsored by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Boxer, calls for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to a level 20 percent below 2005 emissions, a more ambitious target than the 17 percent set in a climate measure approved by the House in June.

The draft, which resembles the House bill, sets the parameters for what promises to be a sharp debate on one of President Obama's top legislative priorities. (WaPo)

Barack Obama's efforts to forge a new American consensus around the need for action on climate change has run into a brick wall of Republican opposition, with senators threatening a boycott of a proposed law to cut carbon emissions.

The Senate opens a three-day blockbuster of hearings on Tuesday, calling 54 administration officials and environment experts to try to push ahead on a climate change law before a meeting in Copenhagen that is supposed to produce a global action plan on climate change. (The Observer)

WASHINGTON – An interest group supported by energy companies is attacking Sen. Lindsey Graham in his own backyard over his willingness to support cap-and-trade legislation.

The Republican has been collaborating with moderate senators to put together bipartisan energy legislation that would link a cap-and-trade program to expanded nuclear energy production and offshore oil and gas drilling. But many in Graham's party view a cap-and-trade program as a tax on energy companies that would be passed along to consumers.

Now the American Energy Alliance, a group funded in part by oil and gas companies that back offshore drilling, is launching a week of radio ads in South Carolina accusing Graham of supporting policies that will weaken the state's already suffering economy.

"So why would Senator Lindsey Graham support new energy taxes called cap-and-trade that will further harm our economy and kill millions of American jobs?" a narrator asks in the radio spot, which went up Thursday. "If that wasn't bad enough, Senator Graham's new energy taxes will have all of us paying more at the pump for a gallon of gas while seeing a 53 percent jump in electricity bills. Who can afford that in this economy?"

The quarter million dollar campaign against Graham will also include television and online ads in the coming weeks.

While he has made efforts to get fellow Republicans on board by advocating for provisions to increase nuclear power and offshore drilling, Graham has not signed onto the leading climate change bill in the Senate, sponsored by Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

His office released a statement Thursday that focused on the Senator's support for nuclear energy and offshore drilling but made no mention of cap-and-trade. (CNN)

Greenpeace and other development agencies have written to the prime minister calling on him to exercise authority over the Treasury and stop it blocking vital climate change initiatives.

The call comes ahead of a report to be published tomorrow by the Green Fiscal Commission (GFC), which will call for a dramatic £150bn shake-up in the country's fiscal system – including a £3,300 tax on new cars and a tripling of fuel duties over the next decade, to be balanced by a cut in income tax and national insurance. (The Guardian)

In the avalanche of publicity stunts being staged in advance of December's Copenhagen conference on climate change, none was more bizarre than the meeting of the cabinet of the Maldives government 20 feet beneath the waves. President Mohammed Nasheed and his ministers sat before desks in scuba gear to discuss the forthcoming submergence of their country, due to global warming.

This prompted an open letter to President Nasheed from Dr Nils-Axel Morner, the former head of the international Inqua Commission on Sea Level Change. The Swedish geologist, who has been measuring sea-level change all over the world for over 30 years, reminded the president that his commission had visited the Maldives six times in the years since 2000, and that he himself had led three month-long investigations in every part of the coral archipelago. Their exhaustive studies had shown that from 1790 to 1970 sea-levels round the islands had averaged 20 centimetres higher than today; that the level, having fallen, has since remained stable; and that there is not the slightest sign of any rise. The most cautious forecast based on proper science (rather than computer model guesswork) shows that any rise in the next 100 years will be "small to negligible". (TDT)

“The most glaring example of this bias [that of the IPCC] has been the lack of interest on the IPCC’s part in figuring out to what extent climate change is simply the result of natural, internal cycles in the climate system…….”

“The IPCC is totally obsessed with external forcing, that is, energy imbalances imposed upon the climate system that are NOT the result of the natural, internal workings of the system…”

“Admittedly, we really do not understand internal sources of climate change. Weather AND climate involves chaotic processes, most of which we may never understand, let alone predict. While chaos in weather is exhibited on time scales of days to weeks, chaotic changes in the ocean circulation could have time scales as long as hundreds of years, and we know that cloud formation – providing the Earth’s natural sun shade – is strongly influenced by the ocean….”

“Thus, small changes in ocean circulation can lead to small changes in the Earth’s albedo (how much sunlight is reflected back to space), which in turn can lead to global warming or cooling. The IPCC’s view (which is never explicitly stated) that such changes in the climate system do not occur is little more than faith on their part….”

The identification by Roy of a much more significant role for internal climate variability in altering even the global average radiative heating over multi-year and longer time scales is a major research finding. This hypothesis was not tested by the IPCC. Of course, none of the IPCC models can skillfully predict, even in retrospect, the multi-year variations that Roy has identified. Thus the IPCC simply chose to essentially ignore this issue.

We presented this perspective of the climate system as a chaotic system in our papers; e.g. see

We look forward to Roy’s seminal publication of “On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing”. Of course, it needs to first hurdle the inappropriate role of some reviewers and even editors as gatekeepers of the IPCC dogma. (Climate Science)

One simple way to separate the influence of humans from natural variation is to fit a simple linear regression containing sinusoidal terms, as shown in previous posts.

The figure below shows the result: linear (dotted red), periodic (dashed red) and their sum (solid red) applied to global temperature data sets (A) GISS and (B) HadCRUT and (C) to a selection of simulation models.

Two sinusoidals of period 21 and 63 years were used, but the phase, or start and end points, were not determined. The model fit results in the lowest points of both oscillations around 1976 (the Great Pacific Climate Shift???) and the highest point just after 2000. Interestingly the period of 21 years is an odd multiple of 63 years which allows the amplitudes to be reinforced.

Its also clear that the climate models have much lower natural variation than observed in Nature. Admittedly, these are averaged results from a selection of models in the KNMI data center, and individual runs show more variation. The lack of variation is a combination of both lack of calibration of climate models with the phase of observed climate oscillations, and the deficit of decadal variation.

An underlying linear increase in these equations is a paltry 0.05C/decade. This linear increase is all that can potentially be attributed to anthropogenic factors: CO2, methane, and Urban Heat Island effects.

This illustration demonstrates the short-sightedness of ignoring natural variation, and the bias introduced by presenting trends beginning around 1950, when temperature increased at about a rate of 0.15C/decade to 2000. This simple empirical model suggests natural variation could have contributed around 0.1C/decade over that period, significantly exceeding the linear trend.

UPDATE #2 October 24 2009: If Dina Cappiello, Seth Borenstein and/or Kevin Freking chose to reply in order to refute my criticism of their statement in the news article, we would be glad to post as a guest weblog.

UPDATE Oct 24 2009: To make sure my text is clear, I repeated “the primary cause”in the text below. As I weblogged on this morning, the human addition of CO2 from fossil fuel emissions is a first order global warming, and more generally a first order climate change forcing. Efforts to reduce the magnitude of the human intervention into the climate system must include mitigation approaches with respect to CO2 emissions. However, by itself, this is only a part of the issue, as other human climate forcings are also of first order importance.

There is an Associated Press [AP] news article today by Dina Cappiello, Seth Borenstein and Kevin Freking titled “Poll: US belief in global warming is cooling”. In this article the reporters perpetuate the myth that

“Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”

We have already documented that a significant minority of climate scientists do not consider greenhouse gases as the primary cause for global warming, and, more generally, [as the primary] cause [of] climate change; e.g. see

In the coming month, we will be presenting another article that documents that the AP authors are erroneous in their claim “that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”

If the reporters want to be balanced in their presentations, rather than lobbyists and advocates, they would persue the validity of their claim. So far, however, they have failed in this journalistic role. (Climate Science)

In response to my post Erroneous Claim in an AP News Article, I have been asked if I consider if the human addition of CO2 is a first order climate forcing. The answer, of course, as I have consistently emphasized in my research papers and presentations, and on my weblog, is a categorical YES (e.g. see, see, see and see).

The human addition of CO2 is a positive radiative forcing as well as a biogeochemical forcing. It is a first order human climate forcing.

2. ”that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”

Item 1 is correct if the time scale is over the last century. Global warming since mid-2003, however, based on the diagnosis of the upper ocean heat content, has halted, at least up through mid 2009.

Item 2 is the “myth”. Even with respect to global warming during the last 100 years, the addition of CO2 is just one of a number of positive radiative forcings (e.g. see), and natural forcings appear to be more significant than previously understood (e.g. see). The statement that the “primary cause” of global warming is a buildup of greenhouse gases is incomplete and, therefore, incorrect.

Thus, while I agree that the human addition of CO2 is a first order climate forcing, the claims that it is the primary human climate forcing is not supported by the science. This means that attempts to “control” the climate system, and to prevent a “dangerous intervention” into the climate system by humans that focuses just on CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases will necessarily be significantly incomplete, unless all of the other first order climate forcings are considered.

Moreover, as I have written on extensively, climate change is much more than global warming and cooling (e.g. see and see). Human caused climate change can occur even in the absence of global warming (such as from land use change). This makes attempts to mitigate climate change a much more daunting problem than assuming that all we need to do is control the human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion into the atmosphere.

For the summary overview of my perspective see Main Conclusions. (Climate Science)

My post “NODC Corrections to Ocean Heat Content (0-700m) Part 2” illustrated the divergence between observed Global Ocean Heat Content (OHC) and the GISS projected rise. Figure 1 shows that GISS models projected a rise of 0.98*10^22 Joules per year, but, since 2003, global OHC has only been rising at 0.079*10^22 Joules per year. How could there be such a significant difference between the projection and the observed OHC data?

Wild vines have grown in Britain for over 50 million years. Only in the Ice Age of the last 2 million have vines retreated from Britain during the glacial maxima, returning during warmer interglacials, such as the present one. The ‘Winelands of Britain’ uses a database of some 500 vineyards ancient and modern, to map the ebb and flow of viticulture correlative with temperature across the British Isles since Roman times.

The winelands of the world occur between the 10-20 degree C. annual isotherms. Between these limits the interplay of geology and climate controls the landscape within a vineyard stands, and the soil in which it grows. The ‘Winelands of Britain’ shows how the interplay of geology and climate forms important winelands such as the Pleistocene terrace gravels of the Thames and other rivers, the sunny southern slopes and dry valleys of the chalk Downs, , and the Palaeozoic rocky rivieras of Wales and the West Country.

The ‘Winelands of Britain’ combines geology with climate change to delineate the past, present, and prospective winelands of England and Scotland. In the present Industrial Revolution Warm Phase abandoned Roman and Medieval winelands are becoming re-established, sometimes with vineyards being re-planted on the sites of ancient ones. New winelands, such as the Weald, have become established in areas that were not de-forested until the Little Ice Age. Some ancient winelands, like the Greensand Hills of Surrey, have not been re-established, due to re-forestation. Since the publication of the first edition in 2004 the northern limit of English vineyards has advanced from Mount Pleasant, Lancashire, to Acomb, Yorkshire, within 5km of Hadrian’s Wall.

Map showing the northern limits of British viticulture in the Roman and Medieval warm phases, the Little Ice Age and the present Industrial Revolution warm phase.

Had the decline in viticulture during the 15th – 19th centuries been due to factors other than climate then the geographic limits of viticulture should have remained unchanged. The restriction of vineyards to southeast England suggests that the ebb and flow of viticulture across Britain is climatically controlled.

This conclusion therefore enables predictions to be made of the future northward advance of winelands if global warming continues. (CRN)

OSLO - Palms flourished in the Arctic during a brief sweltering period about 50 million years ago, according to a study on Sunday that hints at big gaps in scientific understanding of modern climate change.

The Arctic "would have looked very similar to the vegetation we now see in Florida," said Appy Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands who led an international study. Evidence of palms has never been found so far north before.

The scientists, sampling sediments on a ridge on the seabed that was about 500 km (300 miles) from the North Pole 53.5 million years ago, found pollens of ancient palms as well as of conifers, oaks, pecans and other trees.

"The presence of palm pollen implies that coldest month mean temperatures over the Arctic land masses were no less than 8 Celsius" (46.40F), the scientists, based in the Netherlands and Germany, wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That contradicts computer model simulations -- also used to predict future temperatures -- that suggest winter temperatures were below freezing even in the unexplained hothouse period that lasted between 50,000 and 200,000 years in the Eocene epoch.

Palms are quickly killed by frost. (Reuters)

A low energy light bulb which is as bright as conventional models and works with dimmer switches has gone on sale in Britain's shops for – the only problem is that it costs £30. (TDT)

Amid centenary celebrations at BP, the oil giant is squaring up to rivals to secure the fossil fuel resources necessary to underpin future prosperity. (TDT)

Multiple fuels, multiple solutions - TransAlta's carbon-spewing coal plants are part of a ‘green' plan that blends technology and renewable energy

Steve Snyder sees no contradiction in the fact that his company is one of the biggest renewable energy producers in Canada, while it remains a huge greenhouse gas emitter.

Indeed, the chief executive officer of TransAlta Corp. says the electricity generator's mix of coal-, gas-, wind- and hydro-powered plants is eminently logical, as the world begins a shift toward “green” energy but still needs cheap and plentiful electricity generated by traditional means.

The 100-year-old Calgary-based utility is in the process of purchasing Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. – Canada's biggest publicly traded generator of wind and water power. But it has had a “multiple fuels” strategy for more than a decade, Mr. Snyder said, in order to manage risk by spreading the company's activities among several power sources. (Globe and Mail)

SAN FRANCISCO - Schlumberger Ltd, the world's largest oilfield services company, expects new U.S. regulations for a key natural gas drilling process because of public fears about water pollution, its CEO said on Friday.

Asked by an analyst why Schlumberger supported disclosure of "hydrofracturing" fluid ingredients, Chief Executive Andrew Gould said he recognized the concerns of regulators and the public and wanted to be involved in the discussions early on.

"I'm pretty sure that there will be some form of new regulation in order to satisfy the authorities and the public's desire to know that what is being done is safe," Gould said on a conference call on Friday to discuss third-quarter earnings. "And that seems to me a perfectly natural thing to want." (Reuters)

The Danish island of Samso is a mecca for climate protection experts, because its residents generate more energy than they consume -- with wind turbines, solar panels, straw combustion and heat exchangers that extract heat from cow's milk. The small ecotopia will be held up as a model at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. (Der Spiegel)

BOSTON — Taking aim at business interests that have lobbied against an energy and climate bill moving through Congress, President Obama urged lawmakers on Friday to rally around the push toward using more renewable energy.

In a wide-ranging speech on energy and the environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Obama called for legislation that would make “the best use of resources we have in abundance, through clean coal technology, safe nuclear power, sustainably grown biofuels and energy we harness from wind, waves and sun.”

Mr. Obama chided critics of the proposed legislation, saying, “There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs.” (NYT)

Because the Chromium team has just fixed a somewhat serious PDF bug your humble correspondent reported ;-), it's time to look at a much more serious bug, a bug of the Kyoto protocol and the related European laws:

Who says it's green to burn woodchips? - Woodchip power stations are set for a boom. But conservationists are increasingly challenging their green credentials. Special report by Graham Mole

One of the most cherished articles of faith of the green movement – that wood-fuelled power stations can help save the planet – is being increasingly challenged by campaigners and conservationists around the world.

Electricity generated by burning woodchips is on the verge of a global boom. America is planning 102 power stations fuelled by woodchips in the next few years. Europe is reported to be planning a similar, if yet unquantified, expansion. And in Britain, the next three years will see wood-fuelled power station capacity increase sevenfold, requiring, according to the campaign group Biofuelwatch, so much timber that it would need an area 12 times the size of Liechtenstein to grow it.

The power companies say the source will be "sustainable forests", but campaigners and ecologists claim that untold damage will be caused by the burgeoning market for wood. They say that, although traders in the developing world are being tempted to grub up and sell native forests, the chief danger is in the creation of monoculture plantations, where single species of trees are grown in straight rows and little wildlife can establish a home for itself.

They also challenge the "green" assumptions behind woodchip power, claiming that, far from fighting climate change, transporting large amounts of bulk wood across oceans and then burning it will increase carbon discharges by 50 per cent more than would have been caused by burning a fossil fuel like coal. (The Independent)

Ooh! Bad timing with this little feature: Historic chance to halt the scourge of deforestation - In the first of a landmark series on issues behind the climate summit, Michael McCarthy explains why a 'Redd' treaty is vital to cut CO2

At last, the wreck of the rainforests is being tackled. One of the key parts of the Copenhagen climate agreement which the international community will try to construct in December is a comprehensive treaty aiming to reduce deforestation rates in the developing countries by at least 50 per cent by 2020.

Not before time. It has been 20 years since we woke up to the reality of large-scale rainforest loss: in the late 1980s, the terrible scale of destruction in regions such as the Brazilian Amazon, and later, in Indonesia and other areas, dawned on the world, but in the time since then, all we have been able to do, in effect, has been to wring our hands. (The Independent)

A vital safeguard to protect the world's rainforests from being cut down has been dropped from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit, countries which cut down rainforests and convert them to plantations of trees such as oil palms would still be able to classify the result as forest and could receive millions of dollars meant for preserving them. An earlier version of the text ruled out such a conversion but has been deleted, and the EU delegation – headed by Britain – has blocked its reinsertion.

Environmentalists say plantations are in no way a substitute for the lost natural forest in terms of wildlife, water production or, crucially, as a store of the carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere when forests are destroyed and intensifies climate change. (The Independent)

Biofuels have had a rollercoaster ride in the last few years, and their story illustrates some of the best and worst aspects of human behaviour. Best because the use of annual crops to supplement fossil fuels seems sensible and a tremendous amount of ingenuity has gone into ways to make them efficiently. Worst, because the current (first generation) products make little positive contribution to environmental problems, compete with food use of crops and in some cases seem to be little more than a way of keeping farmers happy by paying them a subsidy. Most egregiously, tariff barriers are put in the way of imports of sugarcane ethanol from Brazil, which is the only source which currently makes economic sense.

A much more sensible way to produce fuel from crops is to make use of the cellulosic, structural parts of the plant not used for food: wheat straw or maize cobs, for example. These make up a large proportion – perhaps half – of the biomass produced by food crops, but are at present treated largely as waste. The problem is that breaking down cellulose and related plant materials into fermentable sugars (to replace those derived from maize starch or sugar cane, for example) needs a series of specialised enzymes such as cellulases.

These exist in nature (hence the slow rotting of wood, for example) but no-one has yet come up with a way to convert straw to sugar simply and quickly. This is not for want of trying; large amounts of money have gone into research on the problem, with the expectation that whoever cracks this one will open up a potentially vast market. It is estimated that about one quarter of the world's current consumption of fuel could come from existing agricultural waste, and this could easily be supplemented by woodchips or specialised non-food crops.

Once an appropriate enzyme mix has been developed, a viable process might be in sight. Not surprisingly it is the world's largest maker of industrial enzymes, Novozymes, which claims to have solved the puzzle. According to an interview in the Sunday Times with Steen Riisgard, the company's President and CEO, trials are underway in 30 pilot plants in the USA, China and Brazil, and volume production of the new enzyme mix is due to start next year. According to the article, the first refinery to process biomass will then be opened by Poet, America's largest biofuels producer.

Novozymes are not alone in the race, but we do not yet know whether even this new enzyme or similar ones from competitors will make second-generation biofuels commercially viable. Enzyme cost is an important part of the equation, but there are many other factors, particularly energy consumption and the time needed to break down the cellulose backbone. If this is long, large process tanks are needed, and capital costs begin to rise.

But with the amount of effort going into projects like this, it now seems a question of when rather than if agricultural waste becomes a valuable industrial resource. And not just for fuels; Riisgaard talks of the 'sugar economy' replacing the current oil-based one. Maybe this is a little optimistic, but plant waste will almost certainly make a significant contribution to the global economy before too long. (Scientific Alliance)

A few months ago, Wesley Clark was hawking corn ethanol. Now it’s electric cars. Take your pick – ethanol or electricity. Both of them are worse for the environment than conventional gasoline.

That’s not my claim. That’s the assessment of the National Academy of Sciences, which released a report on Monday on the cost of fossil fuels. But before we turn to the report, let’s review Clark’s history. He’s the retired four-star general who graduated first in his class from West Point. He went on to serve as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. In 2004, he ran for president as a Democrat but quit the race after racking up a single primary win: Oklahoma.

Since then, Clark, like many other retired military types, has re-invented himself as an expert on energy. In that capacity, he’s been carrying water for the corn ethanol scammers. In February, Growth Energy, an upstart group which claims that more corn ethanol production will help the US economy “through cleaner, greener energy,” announced that Clark will serve as its co-chairman and that he “will help America take an important step closer to becoming energy independent.” (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Thanks to a rules loophole you could drive a truck through, a beautiful result looms:

It turns out that government economy ratings aren’t friendly to massive V8s and turbocharged dual-cam sixes, handing them a huge advantage. Holden’s monster V8 – aided by the highway-based course – is pulling figures up to 64 per cent better than listed. One car is notably absent:

A possible reason for this: under highway conditions, the Prius is just a heavy four-cylinder car hauling around unemployed batteries. Its hybrid capacities mainly kick in during low-speed urban running. (Tim Blair blog)

Such is the inevitable nickname given to the proposal to build a major airport in the Thames Estuary as an alternative to further development of Heathrow. Boris Johnson, London's mayor, would like to see it replace Heathrow in time, although present plans merely propose limiting the use of the existing airport and linking it by high-speed rail to the new airport to the east.

Although the estimated cost of £40bn is huge, it may be time for such a radical solution to be considered seriously again. The plans include possible wind farms and tidal barrages which could generate up to 7% of England and Wales's electricity needs, and significant new rail links would be built. This is more than just an airport. Now that an initial feasibility study has been positive, a more detailed study is to be undertaken under the guidance of Sir David King, ex-government chief scientist.

With the appointment of someone of his stature, heavyweight backing from Boris Johnson, and the involvement of the engineer Douglas Oakervee, who planned Hong Kong's successful new airport (also built on an artificial island) this project now has a head of steam up and must have a reasonable chance of coming to fruition.

The costs look high, but the fact is that Heathrow is in the wrong place. Eventual closure would free up a vast site ideally suited to residential and commercial development and end the blight of aircraft noise which affects so many Londoners. But the demand for flying is not going to go away, despite the demands of some environmentalists. How much better, then, to bite the bullet and adopt the best solution for the long term rather than simply the cheapest. (Scientific Alliance)

Daily we are bombarded with claims of a catastrophically heating Earth and the need to take drastic action. One thing we don't do, however, is stop to look at the actual numbers.

We are told the Earth is so many hundredths of a degree from specified norms, in the case of NASA's GISTEMP that averages +0.59 °C for the period 1999-2008 (latest available decade and allegedly the hottest on record), to which we are instructed to add 14.0 °C to derive the globe's mean temperature of 14.59 °C (see footnote of linked file). Immediately we have a problem though, because Earth's 33 °C "normal" greenhouse effect is predicated on Earth's mean temperature of 15 °C, i.e., warmer than its current allegedly overheated state. This is a figure with which NASA's Goddard Institute traditionally agrees, making the current panic somewhat mystifying.

Most of us probably remember the derivation like this (your radii and temperatures may not match precisely and so, as they say, your mileage may vary):

Actually it would be surprising if everyone derived the same value due to rounding and base number variations, just look at these potential causes of confusion:

So there you go, you have a range of 500 kelvins with apparently credible sources.

How much incoming solar radiation is reflected by bright clouds, snow & ice fields, bright deserts, atmospheric dust and other aerosols? Again, we don't know for sure -- commonly this figure (albedo) is cited as 30% (0.3) but it could be anywhere from 28%-32% for an average (it constantly varies with cloud cover, season and regional drought).

In the following form we have plugged in some fairly uncontroversial numbers:
AU (earth's average distance from the sun) = 149,597,870 km;
solar radius = 695,500 km;
pi = 3.1415926535897931 and;
sigma (Stefan–Boltzmann constant) = 0.000000056704.

It was a bit of a toss-up whether we used a solar radius of 696,000 instead as it is very commonly used but this does not materially affect the results below. You've seen these types of forms here before so you can play to your heart's content deriving "expected" temperatures for planet Earth and no one knows what it "should be" for sure so they can't really prove you wrong :-) This form is somewhat more sophisticated than the previous calculator we gave you in that it begins with solar temperatures rather than simply accepting TOA irradiance numbers as provided.

Abstract: An update is provided on the Earth's global annual mean energy budget in the light of new observations and analyses. In 1997 Kiehl and Trenberth provided a review of past such estimates and performed a number of radiative computations to better establish the role of clouds and various greenhouse gases in the overall radiative energy flows, with top-of-atmosphere (TOA) values constrained by Earth Radiation Budget Experiment values form 1985 to 1989, when the TOA values were approximately in balance. The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) measurements from March 2000 to May 2004 are used to TOA but adjusted to an estimated imbalance from the enhanced greenhouse effect of 0.9 W m^-2. Revised estimates of surface turbulent fluxes are made based on various sources. The partitioning of solar radiation in the atmosphere is based in part on the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) ISCCP-FD computations that utilize the global ISCCP cloud data every 3 hours, and also accounts for increased atmospheric absorption by water vapor and aerosols. Surface upwards longwave radiation is adjusted to account for spatial and temporal variability. A lack of closure in the energy balance at the surface is accommodated by making modest changes to surface fluxes, with the downward longwave radiation as the main residual to ensure a balance. Values are also presented for the land and ocean domains that include a net transport of energy from ocean to land of 2.2 Petawatts (PW) of which 3.2 PW is from moisture (latent energy) transport, while net dry static energy transport is from land to ocean. Evaluations of atmospheric reanalyses reveal substantial biases. (em added)

Now, we understand their desire to "get with the program" and support their AGW colleagues' claims but we have a real problem with the emphasized portion. We showed you methods here for calculating atmospheric heating, to quote Dr. John Christy: "In my classes I make the problem simpler by describing what happens in a single atmospheric column of 1 m square. We have about 10,000 Kg of air in that meter squared, so the calculations are simpler. Change in temperature is simply cp*d(T)*mass = Q where Q is the heating rate and cp = 1004 j/K/Kg or essentially d(T) = Q*0.0000001 for the whole column. So, if you dump heat in at a rate of 0.9 j/s/m2, then you can calculate the average rate of temperature change as 0.00000009 per second for the whole column.", which yields 0.00000009 x the number of seconds in a year, or a little over 2.8 °C warming per year.

So where is it? We know atmospheric temperatures have flatlined (or "plateaued" in the IPCC's preferred parlance) since 2001 and we know also that there has been no warming of the upper 700 meters of the oceans either. Are they trying to suggest less than 30% of the Earth's surface preferentially absorbed 100% of the planet's alleged radiative imbalance, sharing none with oceans or atmosphere (an atmosphere where enhanced greenhouse is actually supposed to manifest itself)?

Sorry, not buying it. There's a world of difference between not knowing how energy moves through the system and simply declaring a politically correct "imbalance" which can not in reality exist and when empirical measure demonstrates unequivocally that it is not functioning now or over at least half the period they studied.

Their adjustment of albedo from 31% down to 30.5 implied in the new paper simply don't appear justified, any more than their energy imbalance assumption.

As you saw in the form above, no one knows for sure exactly what temperature Earth "should be", all we have are a range of values according to assumptions made. Is the Earth currently "too warm" or is it simply adjusting to a previous equilibrium state following the Little Ice Age? We don't know -- and nor does anyone else.

Importantly, we haven't even agreed what we are trying to measure when we talk about surface air temperature:

Hansen is being disingenuous with his claims about models, to say the least. Irrespective of the model flavor used, from the most basic to the multipartite coupled models utilizing each other's output as dynamic input, all models are by necessity overly simplistic and inadequate to represent the chaotic, nonlinear coupled system we call climate. While the average of model representations of global climate suggests Earth's mean temperature is about 14 °C (287 K), the 16 most trusted and 'stable' models tested in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) (see original .pdf) are not well able to reproduce this result.

This graphic represents the unforced control runs for the "ensemble" (IPCC-speak for "haven't got a clue if any of these actually represent reality -- throw 'em all together and say the errors average out"). The range starts out guessing mean Earth surface temperature as anything from 11.5 to 16.5 °C (roughly 285-290 K) and ends -- without messing with carbon dioxide levels or anything else -- with the guesses even further apart. If they can't agree where they should start in a 5 °C range how are they supposed to figure out trends an order of magnitude smaller?

Note also that several of these models produce at least as much warming as we think we have measured over the entire Twentieth Century absent any additional forcing whatsoever. Seven of the sixteen controls even suggest the world should be a little (or a lot) warmer than we believe it to be at present (how's that for "consensus"?).

Precipitation results for the various models are similarly erratic, signifying a huge problem in the way models handle the most important greenhouse gas: water vapor. At this time they appear more a disarray of models and we will not be paying attention to model "guesstimations" any time soon.

One thing is for sure: this whole "emergency" is predicated on a few guesses and no real knowledge. Do you really believe it is a good idea to radically change the global energy supply at great expense and certain interruption merely because some people made some scary guesses?

By Steve Milloy
JunkScience.com, October 26, 2009

Fox News blogger, Anne Marie Riha, reported on October 8th that neither Sasha or Malia Obama had received the H1N1 flu vaccine. Now that their father has declared a national emergency due to the swine flu epidemic, will the first daughters finally get the protection that our government insists everyone else's children need?

( http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/08/first-daughters-not-vaccinated-against-h1n1/ )

Interestingly, her post quotes White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' claim that the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.

But, wait a minute Malia Obama has asthma - which automatically places her in the high-risk category as defined by the CDC and other health organizations. And both girls fall within the age-range for recommended vaccination (6-months to 18 years) according to various health authorities.

Although there have been some localized vaccine shortages, public clinics and private pediatricians in the Washington DC metro-area began vaccinating children in Malia and Sasha's age-range the week of October 19th.

Just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that several H1N1 flu shot clinics in Washington DC have been largely deserted due to residents' concerns that they can't trust a vaccine administered by the government.

Several vaccine-refusing parents interviewed (including pregnant women) cited a general mood of mistrust in the African-American community due to events such as the infamous U.S. government-sponsored Tuskegee medical experiments. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303818.html )

Isn't it up to President Obama to set an example for fearful parents?

Government health authorities have been strenuously reassuring parents about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. If the Obamas continue to hold out on the vaccination front, don't we need to ask what they know that the rest of us don't?

WASHINGTON — President Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, allowing hospitals and local governments to speedily set up alternate sites for treatment and triage procedures if needed to handle any surge of patients, the White House said on Saturday.

The declaration came as thousands of people lined up in cities across the country to receive vaccinations, and as federal officials acknowledged that their ambitious vaccination program has gotten off to a slow start. Only 16 million doses of the vaccine were available now, and about 30 million were expected by the end of the month. Some states have requested 10 times the amount they have been allotted. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - Low-income Americans with no more than a high school education appear more likely to get vaccinated against H1N1 swine flu than people with more money and better schooling, according to a poll released on Friday.

A telephone survey of 3,003 U.S. adults conducted by Thomson Reuters found that 49.8 percent of people with lower education levels were very concerned about H1N1, compared with only 29 percent of those with at least a four-year college degree.

Forty-five percent of the less-educated said they and their families were likely to vaccinate, while only 36 percent of college-educated people expected to be immunized.

All told, 47 percent of those surveyed said they were unlikely to seek vaccination. (Reuters)

Gov. David Paterson of New York and his health commissioner have suspended a pioneering regulation that required all health care workers to get vaccinated for the flu — both the seasonal flu and the new swine flu. It is a mistake, and New Yorkers, especially those in hospitals, could pay a high price for it.

The Paterson administration says it needed to save scarce vaccine supplies for the most vulnerable people. Others suspect the administration had given in to the fierce objections of health care workers and their unions.

There are good reasons for making the shots mandatory for all health care personnel. Voluntary efforts seldom persuade more than half to get vaccinated. If they become sick, they may be unable to go to work when they are most needed. Even worse, they may work while contagious with virus, and infect vulnerable patients, causing needless complications and death. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - H1N1 swine flu has become widespread in 46 of the 50 U.S. states, a level comparable to the peak of ordinary flu seasons but far earlier and with more waves of infection expected, a top U.S. health official said on Friday.

"Forty-six states having widespread transmission is the peak of flu season. To be basically in the peak of flu season in October is extremely unusual," said Dr Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Frieden said seasonal flu normally peaks sometime between late November and early March. And he noted that this virus was sickening young adults and children as opposed to seasonal flu, which usually hits people over 65 the hardest.

"We expect that influenza will occur in waves and we can't predict how high, how far or how long the wave will go or when the next will come," he told reporters in a telephone briefing. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped up the pressure on House Democrats on Friday to support her preferred version of legislation that would require the federal government to sell health insurance in competition with private insurers.

Her action came amid indications that Ms. Pelosi had not locked down the votes for the proposal, the most contentious element in a bill that would provide health insurance to more than 35 million people, at cost of nearly $900 billion over 10 years.

Other provisions of the bill, including enhanced Medicare benefits, could take the total cost over $1 trillion, Democrats said. But they promised to offset the cost and avoid any increase in federal budget deficits. (NYT)

Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida has found his calling: death demagogue.

First, he accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to "die quickly." Next, he likened health insurance problems to a "holocaust in America." Now, he's unveiling a new Web site, NamesOfTheDead.com, in memory of the "more than 44,000 Americans (who) die simply because they have no health insurance."

Just one problem: The statistic is a phantom number. Grayson's memorial, like the Democrats' government health care takeover plan itself, is full of vapor. It comes from a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health. But the science is infused with left-wing politics.

Two of the co-authors, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are avowed government-run health care activists.

Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which bills itself as "the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program." Woolhandler is a co-founder and served as secretary of the group.

Sounding more like a MoveOn.org organizer than a disinterested scientist, Woolhandler assailed the current health reform legislation in Congress for not going far enough: "Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives."

How did these political doctors come up with the 44,000 figure? They used data from a health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994. The questionnaires asked a sample of 9,000 participants whether they were insured and how they rated their own health. The federal Centers for Disease Control tracked the deaths of people in the sample group through the year 2000.

Himmelstein, Woolhandler and company then crunched the numbers and attributed deaths to lack of health insurance for all the participants who initially self-reported that they had no insurance and then died for any reason over the 12-year tracking period.

At no time did the original researchers or the single-payer activists who piggybacked off their data ever verify whether the supposed casualties of America's callous health care system had insurance or not. In fact, here is what the report actually says: (Michelle Malkin, IBD)

Far from providing "affordable" care for everyone, as President Obama has promised,1 the main health care proposals working their way through Congress would in fact come at a painful price - higher insurance premiums, more and higher taxes, fewer jobs, lower wages, a reduced standard of living and an erosion of privacy and individual liberty.

Here's what ObamaCare would cost you, and how. (Matt Patterson, National Center)

As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.

Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year — double the rate of last year’s increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

The increases come at a politically fraught time for the insurers, as they try to fight off the creation of a government-run competitor and as they push their case that they have a central role to play in controlling the nation’s health care costs. (NYT)

LONG-term mobile phone users could face a higher risk of developing cancer in later life, according to a decade-long study.

The report, to be published later this year, has reportedly found that heavy mobile use is linked to brain tumours.

The survey of 12,800 people in 13 countries has been overseen by the World Health Organisation.

Preliminary results of the inquiry, which is looking at whether mobile phone exposure is linked to three types of brain tumour and a tumour of the salivary gland, have been sent to a scientific journal.

The findings are expected to put pressure on the British Government – which has insisted that mobile phones are safe – to issue stronger warnings to users. (Daily Express)

A British court last week ordered Esso to pay £300,000 to a widow who lost her husband to asbestos-related cancer. Nestlé is facing a similar legal challenge.

The legal actions come as a private members' bill to help victims of asbestos-related conditions is introduced in the House of Lords. The GMB trade union will also lobby parliament on Wednesday in a bid to force the Government to overhaul compensation regulations for sufferers of pleural plaques, an asbestos-related condition.

Pleural plaques sufferers are currently ineligible for compensation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland following a legal ruling in October 2007, but pressure is building for the law to be overturned. Trade unions believe insurance companies could face claims of up to £1.4bn if the law is overhauled and the insurance industry has lobbied hard against any change. (TDT)

Obese patients taking medications to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol levels are less likely to reach recommended targets for these cardiovascular disease risk factors than their normal weight counterparts, according to new research presented at the 2009 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress hosted by the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. (ScienceDaily)

NEW YORK — When Kathy Perusse had weight-loss surgery and shed 120 pounds, she may have done more than make her own life easier.

She went on to have two daughters, and she may have boosted their chances of avoiding becoming obese, like her two older children are.

That's the implication of research suggesting that something in an obese woman's womb can program her fetus toward becoming a fat child and adult. It's not about simply passing along genes that promote obesity; it's some sort of still-mysterious signal.

The idea has only recently entered conversations between doctors and female patients, and scientists are scrambling to track down a biological explanation. That knowledge, in turn, may provide new ways to block obesity from crossing generations.

While there's some disagreement on how important the womb signal is, "the evidence is building and building that it is a substantial issue," said Dr. Matthew Gillman of Harvard Medical School, who studies prevention of obesity. (AP)

As newspapers last week descended on an Ipswich bungalow to chart the extraordinary life of the world's heaviest man, a fierce debate broke out about how to respond to the surge in obesity in Britain. How much is it a self-inflicted condition? Should the NHS bear the cost of dealing with its effects?

At the age of 48 Paul Mason is immobilised by his own fat. The 70-stone man needs an operation to save him from obesity-related death and the surgery will cost the NHS around £20,000 and require the hiring of special transport to take him across the country to a specialist unit.

It was discovered last week that the world's heaviest man was not in America, the junk food and obesity capital of the world, but in a housing association bungalow in Ipswich eating takeaways and playing computer games. Mason cannot work but needs a team of carers to wash, move and feed him as well as adapted doorways, strengthened furniture and other equipment inside his house. So over the past few years his condition has cost the state hundreds of thousands of pounds. Are we right to ask if this is a self-inflicted condition and question the cost to the taxpayer?

Like illnesses caused by smoking and excessive drinking, some people feel that obesity is not an illness but a lifestyle choice and therefore something for which the NHS should not pick up the bill. The lack of sympathy directed at overweight people is concerning many campaigners who feel that a new area of discrimination is opening up.

Mason's case was uncovered in the same week that a US research team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered that overweight people were treated with a contempt that increased directly in line with their weight. The fatter the patient, the less respect they got from their doctor. (Tracy McVeigh, The Observer)

It is a myth that women have different heart attack symptoms compared to men, according to Canadian researchers.

A study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress found no gender differences in symptoms after studying 305 patients undergoing angioplasty.

They say it is a commonly held belief that men and women feel the effects of a heart attack differently.

Dr Beth Abramson, of Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation, said: "Heart disease is an equal opportunities killer." (BBC)

The Tasmanian Greens are pushing ahead with plans for a state wide ban on triazine chemicals used in the forestry and agricultural sectors.

The Greens' water spokesman Tim Morris says over recent years there have been 139 positive contamination test results for triazine chemicals in Tasmania's rivers with 13 of those coming directly from water treatment plants supplying Hobart and Launceston.

Mr Morris says the number of times atrazine and simazine have been detected in those cities' water supplies is worrying. (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department on Thursday proposed designating more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea and ice along the northern coast of Alaska as critical habitat for the shrinking polar bear population.

The area, the largest single designation of protected habitat for any species, encompasses the entire range of the two polar bear populations that exist on American land and territorial waters. Government scientists estimate that there are roughly 3,500 bears in the two groups, known the Chukchi Sea and the Southern Beaufort Sea populations.

Officials said the bears’ range was shrinking because of the disappearance of sea ice linked to global warming. (NYT)

The Obama administration’s proposed designation of 200,000 square miles of Alaskan waters and sea ice as critical habitat for the polar bear is not just encouraging news for the bear. It signals a more sympathetic attitude toward endangered species, and is further evidence that the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, will take a more measured approach than the Bush administration to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. (NYT)

Given all the hopes for medical progress that ride on biotech progress, one might assume that Congress and the administration would seek ways to encourage investment. One would be wrong.

In San Francisco this week, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is holding its eighth annual investors’ forum. The relentless optimism usually characteristic of corporate communications is missing these days:

“We are coming out of period of intense pressure and conservatism in life sciences investment,” a BIO conference press release said.

“Private equity and capital markets are increasingly failing to fund promising early-stage scientific research, primarily because it is viewed as too high-risk,” Martin Sabarsky, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of HR BioPetroleum, said on behalf of BIO before a congressional hearing. But:

“While today’s uncharted economic environment and evolving legislative landscape pose major challenges . . . we remain optimistic about long-term growth,” said John L. Craighead, BIO’s managing director of investor relations and business development. (James V. DeLong, The American)

The Royal Society has this week launched a new report 'Reaping the benefits – Science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture'. Lord Rees, President of the Society, says in his foreword ' To meet the needs of a growing population with changing consumption patterns, productivity must be enhanced, but it must be done so sustainably… Improvements in farming practices and crop management are essential, but modern genetics must be utilised too.'

The headline messages are that Britain needs to invest £2 billion in agricultural R&D over the next ten years, up to twice the present level, that this research effort should be used in part to actively help with challenges in developing countries, and that the Research Councils should support 'long-term high-risk approaches to high-return improvement of crops' such as nitrogen fixation or improved photosynthetic efficiency.

It is good that the Royal Society has addressed such an important issue as food security and come up with a set of balanced recommendations on how the country's science base can be mobilised to make a difference. Good also that the words 'sustainable' and 'intensive' can now be used together. The message is that the challenges are great and no technology should be left out of the mix.

However, perhaps inevitably, media comment has tended to focus on GM crops. The report is quite clear that all the tools of biotechnology have a role to play and that stretching targets such as nitrogen fixation will have to be tackled using genetic modification. However, this is not the full picture: marker-assisted breeding, ecosystem approaches and improved crop and soil management also have their place, as the authors make clear.

On the other hand, the fact that GM was once again in the news did not bring scare headlines or high-profile attacks. The debate has moved on and there is now a more mature attitude to crop biotechnology. That can only be a good thing. (Scientific Alliance)

A background paper by Germany's Federal Environment Agency earlier this week triggered fearful headlines in some of the country's biggest newspapers. But the agency is distancing itself from the coverage, saying it had presented nothing new in the report -- and that it also sees opportunities in nano. (Der Spiegel)

Levi Strauss & Co. is so worried about CO2 emissions that it quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the Chamber’s opposition to climate legislation.

But if Levi Strauss were really concerned about CO2 levels, it would also go out of business.

According to the company’s own analysis, a typical pair of the company’s jeans is responsible for about:

About 450 million pairs of jeans are sold in the U.S. annually. Of this amount, about one-third are sold by Levi Strauss.

Simple math indicates, therefore, that Levi Strauss annual sales of jeans are responsible for about:

To help Levi Strauss save the planet, then, the answer is clear: we should go naked and it should go broke. (Green Hell)

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will press ahead with climate control legislation, despite difficult odds of passage before December's international summit on global warming.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Reuters Washington Summit that he was putting in long hours on climate issues and believes there was "a reasonably good possibility" that the Congress could deliver legislation reducing carbon dioxide emissions in time for the Copenhagen meeting.

"Look, I'm still going to be optimistic and say there is a chance that there will be a bill that the Senate and House have agreed upon that goes before the president before Copenhagen," Chu said.

But Senator John McCain, who wants to rejuvenate nuclear power in the United States to help reduce carbon pollution, said there's been no progress and he accused Democrats of being "beholden" to environmentalists who oppose an expansion of the industry.

"I'd like to see one concrete commitment on the part of the administration and Democrats," McCain told the Reuters Washington Summit on Wednesday. (International Business Times)

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 - The White House is encouraged by progress on a climate change bill in the Senate and is working to advance it even if a December deadline passes, an aide to President Barack Obama said on Thursday.

Carol Browner, Obama's top adviser on climate and energy issues, told Reuters that White House officials were reaching out to Democratic and Republican senators in an aggressive push to move the bill forward.

"There have been some bipartisan conversations that we find very encouraging," Browner said in an interview. "We are going to continue to do everything in our power to keep this moving."

If a law is not passed by the time U.N. talks on a global warming pact begin in December in Copenhagen, the United States would still have a strong position on the issue in the negotiations, she said.

"Wherever we are in the process, we will be able to manage in Copenhagen."

Browner, who has expressed doubts that a bill would become law by December, said U.S. negotiators would stress Obama's domestic initiatives on climate change and renewable energy since coming into office. (Reuters)

A climate change bill will get top billing Friday with a critical meeting among Democratic leaders to set a timeline for debate, a major speech by President Barack Obama and release of a crucial impact study by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, the lead sponsor of a Senate climate bill, plans to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday to set a timeline for committees to finish work on the legislation – possibly as soon as Thanksgiving. And Environment and Public Works Chairwomen Sen. Barbara Boxer said she plans to release new sections of the climate bill that she co-authored with Kerry on Friday. The release of her bill comes as the EPA is set to release a study of the economic impact of the Senate version of the global warming legislation. (Politico)

The likelihood of climate change legislation making it to the Senate floor this year may be in doubt, but Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) vowed Thursday he would press on with negotiations in order to keep the issue ripe for next year.

“I can’t tell you exactly when we’re going to have a vote, but we’re serious about this,” Kerry said.

Likewise, Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), whose panel shares jurisdiction over climate change legislation, said he does not expect to mark up a bill this year. (Roll Call)

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 - As Congress considers curbs on carbon dioxide pollution, a U.S. report on Thursday urged the White House to prepare now for flooding and other natural disasters brought by global warming.

Federal agencies, working with Congress, state and local governments, should "develop a national strategic plan that will guide the nation's efforts to adapt to a changing climate," said a report by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

John Stephenson, director of GAO's natural resources and environment office, told a congressional panel that higher concentrations of greenhouse gases may have significant effects, including threats to coastal areas from rising seas. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON, DC - As Democratic lawmakers and climate change proponents continue to push cap-and-trade bills through Congress, U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Kit Bond (R-MO) today discussed and released a report, Climate Change Legislation: A $3.6 Trillion Gas Tax, which explains how the proposals will levy a massive new national gas tax on American families, farmers, workers and truckers.

“Cap-and-trade is a giant new gas tax on America’s families, farmers and workers,” said Senator Kit Bond. “We should not increase pain at the pump in these tough times.”

“We can improve the environment and economy through American ingenuity and technological advancement, not with taxes and mandates that increase costs and burden American families and businesses,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

The Hutchison-Bond report reveals how climate legislation, such as the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, will increase the price of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, which is essential to farmers, small business workers, truckers and air passengers. The report details how gas taxes will affect farmers growing crops, workers driving to work, truckers delivering goods and other businesses running operations. The report also highlights that while provisions in proposed climate change bills intend to reduce the impact of these massive costs, the impact is extremely modest and leaving consumers with a $3.6 trillion gas tax bill.

During the news conference today, Senators Hutchison and Bond joined Richard Cortese, a grain and livestock farmer, and Barbara Windsor, owner of a Maryland-based trucking company Hahn Transportation. They represent the small businesses and family farm operations which will be hurt by the current cap-and-trade proposals. Many farmers and ranchers like Cortese will share the pain of a $2.0 trillion gasoline tax and a $1.3 trillion diesel tax. Similar to Cortese and other producers, Windsor and millions of truckers will also suffer under the $1.3 trillion Waxman-Markey diesel tax. The Hutchison-Bond report illustrates how the new gas tax will total 3.6 trillion and affect all users of transportation fuel, directly or indirectly.

In support of the fight against the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer and House-passed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bills, the Hutchison-Bond report is supported by a variety of farming, small business and trucking consumer groups including the American Highway Users Alliance, American Trucking Association, American Farm Bureau and National Black Chamber of Commerce. At the time of the press conference, key details, which would allow for a precise calculation of the gas tax in the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill, remained hidden. However, the Kerry-Boxer bill includes even more mandates than the House bill, which will result in a larger gas tax on Americans.

In general, the mainstream response to the issue of climate change has been reactive, pessimistic, authoritarian, and resistant to change. Those alarmed about a changing climate would stand athwart the stream of climate history and cry “stop, enough!” Rather than working to cease human influence on climate, they want to find a way to make the climate stand still. This focus on creating climate stasis has led to policy proposals that would have been laughed at or dismissed as wacky conspiracy theories in the 1980s. But mainstream anti-climate-change activists are proposing nothing less than the establishment of global weather control through energy rationing, regulations, and taxes, all managed by a global bureaucracy with a goal of leading humanity into a future that will become smaller, more costly, and less dynamic over time. Environmental groups, along with organizations like the United Nations IPCC, are calling for nothing less than imposing climate stasis on a chaotic system. (Kenneth P. Green, Master Resource)

A new poll is out by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that indicates that the public is losing steam on the issue of climate change, but nonetheless, favors action to address accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Once again we have solid evidence that there is plenty of political will for action even if not everyone thinks alike on the issue.

Only 18% of Republicans and only 50% Democrats think that recent warming is because of human activity, as shown in the following chart. the data indicates that advocates should be well past time trying to get everyone to a single view on the scientific aspects of climate change. It just is not going to happen.

Remarkably, only liberal Democrats have shown an increase in concern on the issue, as shown below. meanwhile, it has become of diminishing seriousness for just about every other group of Democrats. What this means is that continued efforts to intensify concern over global warming could have the effect of turning this issue into a being perceived solely as a liberal cause (more so than it is already perceived to be) and alienate the rest of the voting populace, the vast majority of which do not consider themselves to be liberal Democrats.

One reason to stop focusing on what people think about the science of climate change is that a majority of the public supports action on emissions (shown below) and well as international cooperation on climate change (not shown). The policy challenge is thus to design policies that can be effective given the strong political support that has existed on this topic for some time. The realities are that support is about as strong as it is likely to be, and really hasn't changed much over a decade or longer. Efforts to make climate change a top line issue will inevitably backfire. For some these facts may be frustrating, but they are the reality of the issue.

Only 50% of Democratic voters in the U.S. agree with President Obama’s belief that humans are responsible for global warming, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center released today. This figure is down from the 58% average among Democrats in the last three years of the Bush Administration, and represents the first time that a majority of Democrats have not endorsed the man-made theory of global warming.

Independent voters in the U.S., meanwhile, have stopped blaming humans for global warming in even greater numbers. Only 33% now blame us. Last year, independents believed humans were to blame at the same 50% level that Democrats are now at. Republicans are also abandoning the “blame human” stance, dropping from 27% last year to 18% this year.

Among all Americans, only 36% blame humans, the lowest figure yet. Last year, 47% blamed humans. (Financial Post)

HOUSTON, Oct. 22 -- A climate change litigation threat appears to be looming for the oil and gas industry in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision allowing the regulation of greenhouse gases as air pollutants.

Federal courts recently issued conflicting decisions in climate change litigation. One case involved Murphy Oil USA, and another case involved ExxonMobil Corp. and others. Power companies face the same issues.

The recent litigation all stems from an Apr. 2, 2007, decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. That ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts and several other states, US cities, and environmental groups.

On Sept. 21, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in San Francisco allowed a coalition of eight states, New York City, and environmental groups to sue coal-burning utilities over climate change. The San Francisco ruling later was cited in the Murphy Oil ruling.

Anthony Cavender of the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP law firm in Houston said, “Given that the Obama administration has already advocated for tighter regulations related to the environment as a whole, and in particular for tougher policies governing carbon emissions, many plaintiffs may now feel that the time is right to file such suits.” (OGJ)

The Foreign Secretary accused the public yesterday of lacking a sense of urgency in the face of the potentially devastating consequences of climate change.

David Miliband said that people had grown apathetic about the issue when they needed to be galvanised into action before the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

“For a lot of people the penny hasn’t dropped that this climate change challenge is real and is happening now,” he said. “There isn’t yet that feeling of urgency and drive and animation about the Copenhagen conference.” (The Times)

LONDON, Oct 22 - The world lacks a sense of urgency over the importance of the U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen in preventing a "human emergency" affecting hundreds of millions of people, the British government said on Thursday.

With United Nations talks on a new deal to combat global warming less than 50 days away, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said too many people still failed to grasp the scale and urgency of the problem. (Reuters)

BONN, Germany — The industrialized world again in 2007 boosted, rather than reduced, its emissions of global-warming gases, the U.N. reported Wednesday, as international negotiators looked ahead to crucial climate talks in December.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases rose by 1 percent between 2006 and 2007 among 40 nations classified as industrialized under the 1992 U.N. climate treaty, the treaty secretariat reported, detailing data for the latest available reporting period.

It was the seventh consecutive year of an upward trend, it said.

European Union countries did cut their emissions year-to-year, by an average of 1.6 percent, led by Denmark's 6.1 percent reduction. But the United States, the biggest emitter in this group, increased its emissions by 1.4 percent, and the output of heat-trapping gases by Japan, Canada and Australia also rose, the data show. (AP)

PRINCETON, N.J. — What we are doing to our planet, to our children and grandchildren, and to the poor, by our heedless production of greenhouse gases, is one of the great moral wrongs of our age. This Saturday is a day to stand up against this injustice. (Peter Singer, Japan Times)

A new map of the world that details the likely effects of a failure to cut carbons emissions has been developed by Met Office scientists (The Guardian)

Britain faces rising sea levels, floods and drought unless more is done to stop global warming, according to a new map produced by the Government. (TDT)

A nightmare in the not-very-distant future: the map below shows the enormous temperature rises which British scientists believe the planet may be experiencing in as a little as 50 years from now if global warming remains unchecked. (The Indy)

A tiny little bug about the size of a grain of rice has become a focal point in the debate about manmade climate change. Over the last 12 years, the mountain pine beetle has spread quickly through the Mountain West and Canada killing millions of acres of pine trees.

The beetle thrives when conditions are drier and warmer than average and some experts have blamed its spread on manmade climate change and a warming environment. From Canada south to Colorado, images of acres of dead, brown trees amongst their healthy neighbors make for a stark picture of what may be forests in decline.

Global warming activists have been quick to seize on the pine beetle ‘epidemic’ as a sign of things to come and an impending ecological disaster. In truth, drawing the line between manmade climate change and the pine beetle outbreak is a stretch that few experts make. Rather, most see the outbreak as a natural function of forests and in many ways it is Mother Nature correcting man’s previous mistakes.

Colorado finds itself front and center in the battle against the mountain pine beetle. In the coming weeks the state’s forest service will be releasing its annual report and is expected to estimate that 2.5 million acres have been infected by the beetles since 1996 – the largest outbreak in state history. However, that represents a fraction of the state’s forest land and areas are being naturally rehabilitated after the infections pass.

The state’s forest service is reluctant to connect manmade climate change with the outbreak and studies have shown that while the outbreak is large, it is not entirely unprecedented. Sky Stephens, Forest Entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service, says that while climate change is a hot topic, there "hasn’t been a well structured argument” connecting the two. (Tony Hake, Examiner)

Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short reports Fiona Kobusingye. “AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.” (1)

She adds, “Yet Africans are told the biggest threat they face is global warming. Conferences, news stories, television programs, class lectures and one-sided ‘dialogues’ repeat the claim endlessly. They are told using oil and petrol, even burning wood and charcoal, will dangerously overheat our planet, melt ice caps, flood coastal cities, and cause storms, drought, disease and extinctions.” Africans are told climate change threatens humanity more than all the diseases listed above.

Will Alexander of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, points out that since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 not a single person in South Africa has died as a result of provable climate change. But thousands have died from poverty-related starvation, malnutrition and disease. He says, “How dare those who call themselves scientists deliberately suppress this information? How dare they ignore the suffering of all these people? How dare they steadfastly refuse to participate in multidisciplinary studies where their alarmist theories can be demonstrated to be without foundation?” (2) (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

STOCKHOLM — US President Barack Obama should do more to push for a US climate deal, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Thursday.

"I personally feel he ought to be doing a lot more," Pachauri told reporters after a debate on climate change in Stockholm, adding the president "really has to assert himself to see that the US passes legislation" prior to the Copenhagen summit. (AFP)

22 October 2009 – Ensuring that developing countries can access cleaner energy-producing technologies to meet their development needs without increasing pollution will be crucial in the global fight against climate change, a top United Nations official stressed today.

Addressing a high-level meeting in New Delhi on climate change and technology transfer, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang noted that innovation in low-emissions technology still takes place largely in the developed countries.

“But climate change demands urgent action and rapid, wide diffusion,” he told the gathering, which comes with just over a month left to go before countries meet in Copenhagen to ‘seal the deal’ on a new pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The world cannot afford to wait for these technologies to follow the usual path of gradual diffusion, from rich to middle-income to poor countries,” said Mr. Sha.

“Global climate policy will succeed – or fail – depending on whether it brings low-emissions technologies and technologies for adaptation within the reach of poor countries, and poor communities, without further delay.” (UN News)

Developed economies must release green technology to help developing nations cut carbon emissions in the same way that pharmaceutical companies relaxed patents to help sufferers of HIV/Aids, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, said on Thursday.

Mr Singh appealed for a review of intellectual property rights for green technology, saying they needed to be balanced to allow their wider deployment to halt the potential ravages of global warming. He also asked for financial commitments to pay for technology transfer from the global community.

However, his demand was greeted with frustration by officials in developed countries concerned that it would cause further friction in the talks on a new global framework on climate change, set to culminate in a summit in Copenhagen in December. (Financial Times)

A global deal on climate change at December's Copenhagen conference is still within reach, according to Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate and energy minister, who will host the conference.

“I believe that if we want to, then it is still do-able to include an ambitious, binding, political agreement in Copenhagen,” she said, warning that postponing decisions to 2010 would be a mistake.

“If we pass Copenhagen without any result I would not see any guarantees in the world that we would see anything four or six months later.” (European Voice)

Europe attempted to reassert its international leadership in the fight against global warming today, offering to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95% by 2050 and by 30% by 2020 if a climate change pact is sealed in Copenhagen in six weeks' time. (The Guardian)

STOCKHOLM, Oct 22 - The head of the European Commission expressed hope on Thursday that European Union leaders will agree on funding for a global climate change deal at a summit next week, despite deadlock at talks.

EU finance ministers were unable this week to reach agreement on how much funding should be provided for poor countries as part of a deal to tackle climate change which world leaders hope to clinch in Copenhagen in December.

It is now up to EU heads of government to try to break the impasse at an Oct 29-30 summit. (Reuters)

NEW DELHI - Developing nations may need to slow projected growth in their carbon emissions by 15 percent by 2020 if rich countries agree to reduce theirs by up to 40 percent for a new global deal, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.

Negotiations for a global deal to fight climate change, to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, have stumbled on the question of levels of emission cuts to be taken by rich states and developing nations.

A U.N. climate panel report in 2007 said that cuts would have to total 25-40 percent to avert the worst of climate change such as more wildfires, sandstorms, extinctions, rising ocean levels and more powerful cyclones.

At the same time, all but the poorest among developing nations would have to make a "substantial deviation" from baseline by 2020.

"If industrialized countries are reducing by 25-40 percent by 2020, then I think you would also by 2020 perhaps need to see something in the order of a 15 percent deviation below business as usual in developing countries," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference.

So far, 2020 offers of greenhouse gas cuts from developed nations total between 11 and 15 percent below 1990 levels. And most offers are conditional on what others do. (Reuters)

It's official. Rich countries continue to pollute more than ever, and this is evident from the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) figures released by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Developed countries emitted 12.8 per cent more GHGe in 2007 than in 1990, the base year for calculating emissions according to the Kyoto Protocol, despite many of them agreeing to cut back emissions under the protocol's mandate. The US's CO2 emissions have increased by 20 per cent in 17 years. Yet India, with its track record of comparatively less pollution, is a target for rich countries. It is accused of aggravating climate change as an emerging economy. (Times of India)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today asserted that developing countries “cannot, and will not” compromise on development in the context of climate change.

“The challenge before the developing world is how to achieve our developmental goals while at the same time minimising ecological costs. Our per capita consumption of primary energy is less than one-fourth of the world average and our per capita emission of CO2 is among the lowest in the world. Moreover, the energy intensity of our output has been continuously declining in the last 30 years,” said Singh while addressing the New Delhi High Level Conference on Climate Change here today.

In the run-up to the Copehnagen summit, India also asked rich nations to make “serious” efforts to bring down their greenhouse gas emissions to tolerable levels. The climate change summit in Copenhagen in December is expected to deliberate and finalise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to tackle global warming.

“I have stated earlier that we stand committed to ensure that our per capita carbon emissions will never exceed the average of the per capita carbon emissions of developed countries. Equating GHG emissions across nations on a per capita basis is the only just and fair basis for a long-term global arrangement on climate change which is truly equitable,” he reiterated. (Business Standard)

In the face of growing global pressure on limiting carbon dioxide emission, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Thursday said that Indian emission will continue to rise to meet national economic aspirations. (Deccan Herald)

BEIJING — China wants to increase cooperation with the U.S. and other nations to reach a deal at global climate talks in December, Vice Premier Li Keqiang said Thursday.

Li's comments come less than two months ahead of the global climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, that seeks an international agreement on a treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It would replace the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Negotiations have been deadlocked for months amid rising doubts about whether a new pact can be reached in time.

China and the U.S. together account for 40 percent of greenhouse gases, and no treaty would succeed without the participation of both nations. (AP)

The news today from the Pew Institute tells us that many Americans are backing away from the predictions of catastrophic climate change. This may be because many predictions simply haven’t come true.

Most, if not all, WUWT readers know Dr. James Hansen of GISS. He’s credited with jump starting the debate in 1988 with his now famous “sweaty” testimony before Congress in June 1988. See more about the stagecraft of that event here.

Readers might be tempted to think that I’m going to point out the discrepancies between the three different model scenarios that Dr. Hansen presented to Congress in 1988, as shown below. But these model projections are very well known. I’m talking about something else entirely.

In Dr. Hansen’s case, he’s been living the life of a scientist in the media spotlight since, giving thousands of interviews. He’s also taken on the role of activist during that time, getting himself arrested this year for obstructing a public highway.

He likely doesn’t remember this one interview he gave to a book author approximately 20 years ago, but fortunately that author recounted the interview on Salon.com. What is most interesting about this particular Hansen interview is that he dispenses with the usual models and graphs, and makes predictions about what will happen in 20 years to New York City, right in his own neighborhood. Sea level figures prominently.

(From PhysOrg.com h/t to Leif Svalgaard )– Climate scientists recognize that climate modeling projections include a significant level of uncertainty. A team of researchers using computing facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has identified a new method for quantifying this uncertainty.

The new approach suggests that the range of uncertainty in climate projections may be greater than previously assumed. One consequence is the possibility of greater warming and more heat waves later in the century under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) high fossil fuel use scenario.

The team performed an ensemble of computer “runs” using one of the most comprehensive climate models–the Community Climate System Model version 3, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)–on each of three IPCC scenarios. The first IPCC scenario, known as A1F1, assumes high global economic growth and continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels for the remainder of the century. The second scenario, known as B1, assumes a major move away from fossil fuels toward alternative and renewable energy as the century progresses. The third scenario, known as A2, is a middling scenario, with less even economic growth and some adoption of alternative and renewable energy sources as the century unfolds. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Stu has an article up on Spiked about the reaction to Paul Hudson’s BBC article ‘What Happened to Global Warming?’:

While we’re on the subject, it’s strange that no one seems to have mentioned the far more pronounced temperature plateau/decline that occurred between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s. The orthodox explanation for that one is that the cooling effect of white aerosols such as sulphates - released from coal and oil burning - was masking the warming effect of greenhouse gases until various clean air acts allowed the anthropogenic warming trend to re-emerge.

We wrote last year about how alarmists have wielded the aerosol-masking theory to beat down anyone who suggests that the post-war slump is a problem. Here’s George Monbiot:

For Bob Ward, the Swindle’s omission represented one of ‘five major misrepresentations of the scientific evidence’ in the programme.

The trouble is that there remains little empirical evidence to support the idea, as we were surprised to find out when we talked to UC San Diego atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan about his research showing that another type of aerosol - black carbon - had a significant warming effect:

We wouldn’t suggest the aerosol-masking theory is wrong either. What’s interesting is how a neat idea is sold as an established fact, how a working hypothesis has become a truth ‘well-known to all climate scientists’, how ’scientists are investigating’ becomes scientists ‘have explained’. Without the masking theory, the orthodoxy would have a serious problem. The research that shows that decade-long periods of static/declining temperatures are to be expected against the background of a warming trend (see the Spiked article above) makes no claims that such natural variation could account for the much longer post-war slump.

Meanwhile, it will be worth watching to see how the tactics of the climate orthodoxy change as - and if - the present slowdown in temperature rise continues. The slump has already robbed the orthodoxy of much of its potential for short-term alarmism about record temperatures, and the Met, for example, seems already to have ditched its yearly climate forecast in favour of a decadal one. And how long before serious efforts are made to explain the slump in causal terms - not to mention how quickly those investigations are deployed as proof that climate science has nailed it? (Climate Resistance)

Below is quick review of some of the evidence and consequences of a 60 year climate cycle. According to Roy Spencer, the argument that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations alone are sufficient to explain global warming is reasoning in a circle. By ignoring natural variability, they end up claiming that natural variability is insufficient.

However, the recent paper by Craig Loehle finds only a very small linear warming trend is left (potentially attributable to AGW) after subtracting the 60–70 yr cycle. While cause of the 60yr cycles is unexplained at present, he claims the small trend disproves AGW because it is:

That oscillations are persistent features of the climate has been known for a long time. Stoker and Mysak in 1992 reviewed ice cores, tree-ring index series, pollen records and sea-ice extents over the last 10,000 years, finding:

The issue is: How large is the cycle relative to potential warming due to AGW?. Klyashtorin and Lyubushin (2003) demonstrated that a 50–60 year period temperature signal is dominant from about 1650 (the end of the Little Ice Age) in Greenland ice core records, in several very long tree ring records, and in sardine and anchovy records in marine sediment cores. This result was also reported by Biondi et al. (2001), who also made the pithy remark:

A wide range of phenomena move in sync with this cycle. Long-term changes of Atlantic spring-spawning herring and Northeast Arctic cod commercial stocks also show 50-70-year fluctuations: sufficient to predict the probable trends of basic climatic indices and populations of major commercial fish species for up to 20-30 years into the future.

Zhen-Shan and Xian (2007) found China temperature from 1881 can be completely decomposed into four quasi-periodic oscillations including an ENSO-like mode, a 6–8-year signal, a 20-year signal and also a prominent 60-year timescale oscillation of temperature variation. While they found CO2 concentration contributed a small trend, its influence weight on global temperature variation accounted for no more than 40.19% of the total increase.

Perhaps its all a coincidence. Or perhaps we have yet to see much global warming from CO2, and its all going to suddenly leap out and ambush us in 20 years time.

Maybe, but speculation is a mugs game. Just the facts please. The last 50 years coincides with an upswing in the 60 year cycle, and the recent flat global temperatures coincide with the peak and subsequent downturn. (David Stockwell, Niche Modeling)

The dust storms that occurred last month in Australia are an example of how land use change can alter this major weather (and climate) effect even in the absence of any larger scale climate change (thanks to Jos de Laat for alerting us to this).

There are excellent satellite photos of the dust storms of the dust storm (e.g. see).

“Dune fields were once vegetated, but in the past 150 years they have been grazed or cleared for agriculture in some regions, and this has contributed to more dust storms than would otherwise occur with today’s climate.”

“The 1996 State of the Environment Report provided dust storm frequency to show that the annual frequency of dust storm across Australia has
notably decreased since the 1970s (SoE 1996, p 6-30). This was attributed to the improved control of rabbits and (through myxomatosis); the spread of ‘woody weeds’ and Accacia nilotica (Atlas of Australian Resources 1990) and the adoption of conservation tillage.”

As Jos pointed out as a conclusion from these reports, this “yet another example of the influence of human activity via LULC on (regional) climate – in this case farming and the release and subsequent control of non-native species.” (Climate Science)

Wetter winters, drier summers and melting glaciers force changes for people and the hydropower industry. (CoP15)

LONDON/WASHINGTON - A new generation of biofuels, meant to be a low-carbon alternative, will on average emit more carbon dioxide than burning gasoline over the next few decades, a study published in Science found on Thursday.

Governments and companies are pouring billions of research dollars into advanced fuels made from wood and grass, meant to cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline, and not compete with food as corn-based biofuels do now.

But such advanced, "cellulosic" biofuels will actually lead to higher carbon emissions than gasoline per unit of energy, averaged over the 2000-2030 time period, the study found. (Reuters)

The world's policymakers and scientists have made a critical error in how they count biofuels' contribution to human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.

Although the article addresses a wonkish subject -- how to measure the environmental impact of energy sources such as ethanol and wood chips, which absorb carbon as they grow but release it back into the atmosphere when they're burned -- it has broad implications. The method undercounts the global-warming contribution of some bioenergy crops, the team of 13 researchers wrote, because it doesn't factor in what sort of land-use changes might occur to produce them.

"We made an honest mistake within the scientific framing of the debate, and we've got to correct it to make it right," said Steven P. Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the paper's authors.

When calculating the greenhouse-gas emissions limit, government officials in the United States, Europe and elsewhere do not count the carbon that biofuels release when they are burned. But carbon is released when a producer clears and burns trees, even to grow a crop destined for the biofuels market. Officials also established a legal system that limits emissions from energy use but not from land-use activities such as clearing forests.

In recent months, researchers have begun to worry that bioenergy crops could replace the world's forests and savannahs on a huge scale unless climate policies start to take full account of how these crops' production affects greenhouse-gas concentrations. None of the major climate regimes -- including the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union's carbon market and the House-passed climate bill -- account for the carbon released by changing land use for biofuels. (Juliet Eilperin, Washington)

An important but fixable error in legal accounting rules used to measure compliance with carbon limits for bioenergy could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging deforestation, according to a new study by 13 prominent scientists and land use experts published in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Science.

The error affects the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union's Emissions Trading System, and is written into a U.S. climate change bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June. (Princeton)

The law of unintended consequences strikes yet again.

Global plans to tackle climate change, from the Kyoto Protocol to the recently-passed Waxman-Markey bill, have a fatal flaw: They essentially encourage large-scale deforestation, which pretty much undermines the whole idea of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions in the first place.

That’s the argument from a new paper published in Science today, written by Princeton University’s Tim Searchinger and others. The upshot? Clearing out forests to use the wood for bioenergy clearly has an environmental cost, but that’s simply not accounted for in any of the prevailing climate-change programs. Kyoto, the European cap-and-trade plan, and the House climate bill all treat bioenergy as carbon-neutral; nobody counts the effect of disappearing forests. (WSJ)

At his White House forum on health reform back in March, President Barack Obama offered:

In a new Cato study titled, “Yes, Mr. President, a Free Market Can Fix Health Care,” I take up the president’s challenge and explain that markets are indeed the only way to achieve those goals. I also explain how Congress can remove the impediments that currently prevent markets from doing so:

Unlike the president’s health care proposals (which, as Victor Fuchs explains, would merely shift costs), these reforms would reduce costs, expand coverage, and improve health care quality – without new taxes, government subsidies, or deficit spending.

Would a free market be nirvana? Of course not. But fewer Americans would fall through the cracks than under the status quo or the government takeover advancing through Congress.

(Cross-posted at Politico’s Health Care Arena.) (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

That sensible — and hopefully not rhetorical — question was posed by Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) on National Public Radio, according to The Hill.

Regarding recent polling that shows that a new Fannie Med (my term) commands majority support among the public, Landrieu quipped, “I think if you asked, ‘Do you want a public option, but it would force the government to go bankrupt?’, people would say no.”

NEW YORK - When one identical twin develops the developmental disorder autism, the risk of the other developing it is high -- substantially higher than it is for fraternal twins, a new study confirms.

The study, which gathered information from 277 twin pairs in which at least one had an autistic disorder, found that when one identical twin developed an autistic disorder, the other one also did 88 percent of the time.

That compared with 31 percent among fraternal twins. Unlike identical twins, fraternal twins are no more genetically similar than non-twin siblings.

What's more, researchers found, identical twins also had greater similarities in the form of autism that they developed, their level of day-to-day functioning and the risk of intellectual impairment.

The findings, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, confirm the importance of genes in autism development. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Skimping on sleep, is unhealthy, but it doesn't make people fat, according to a new study.

"We hoped we were going to find good evidence for that," Dr. Diane S. Lauderdale told Reuters Health, "because it was such an interesting, intriguing, novel idea, with some reasons to think biologically it made sense. But we found nothing."

Chronic sleep deprivation is thought to be a risk factor for weight gain. While several studies have linked higher body mass index (BMI) to shorter nightly sleep, most have been cross-sectional, meaning they looked only at a single point in time -- making it hard to prove whether sleeping too little leads to weight gain or vice versa, Lauderdale and her colleagues explain in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Also, they say, most studies have relied on people's own estimations of how much they sleep at night, which are notoriously inaccurate. (Reuters Health)

TOPEKA, Kan. — The memory still bothers Ken Keller: A panicked ambulance crew had a critically ill patient, but the man weighed more than 1,000 pounds and could not fit inside the vehicle. And the stretcher wasn't sturdy enough to hold him.

The crew offered an idea to Keller, who was then an investigator with the Kansas Board of Emergency Medical Services. Could they use a forklift to load the man — bed and all — onto a flatbed truck? Keller agreed: There was no other choice.

"I'm sure it was terribly embarrassing to be in his own bed, riding on the back of a flatbed with straps tying him down, going to the hospital, and then have a forklift at the hospital unload him," Keller said.

As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people. (AP)

Doctors can be fairly significant, one would think, in helping people combat obesity-related health problems. But a good working relationship usually begins with respect. And that might be a stumbling block.

In a new study, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report on their questioning of 238 patients -- and their physicians -- from 14 medical offices about their encounters. The patients for whom doctors said they had little respect just happened to have higher body-mass index scores.

Here's the news release. The study is to appear in the November issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

And here's a recent L.A. Times column from Dr. Valerie Ulene suggesting that doctors might be at least partly to blame for those weight problems: What the doc doesn't say: You're overweight

Plus, an article exploring the effect of a physician's excess weight on patients: Does a doctor's weight matter?

Apparently, attitudes about weight can affect both sides of the doctor-patient relationship. (LA Times)

Yale University ecology professor Dr. David Skelly is conducting research find connections between mutations in common green frogs that have reproductive deformities around Central Connecticut and possible water contamination that may affect humans.

“The short answer is that we’ve found lots of deformities,” said Skelly.

A pesticide by the name of atrazine, which is used in agriculture, may be spreading toward the suburbs. Scientists thought the deformities would occur only in agricultural areas.

The frogs being looked at are common green frogs, which are often found in people’s backyards and are formally called Rana clamitans. While looking at agricultural areas, 7 percent of frogs examined had reproductive deformities compared to 21 percent in suburban areas, according to Skelly. Those frogs are growing male and female sexual parts with 13 percent of the male frogs having immature eggs in their testes. (New Britain Herald)

Rightly celebrated as one of this country’s most important environmental statutes, the 1972 Clean Water Act has greatly improved the quality of America’s waters, turning contaminated rivers and lakes into swimmable, fishable and even drinkable waters.

But even its staunchest allies agree that the act has grown old and fallen well short of its goals, crippled by uneven and sometimes nonexistent enforcement by state and federal agencies — particularly during the Bush years, but even before — and by shortcomings in the law itself.

A comprehensive series of investigative articles in The Times by Charles Duhigg makes it clear that the time has come to strengthen enforcement and the law. More than 40 percent of the country’s waters, he found, remain dangerously polluted. Nearly 20 million Americans fall ill every year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses. Polluters — public and private, large and small — treat the law with contempt. Violations have jumped significantly. Penalties for noncompliance are small and rarely assessed. (NYT)

The environmental movement’s “climate change” campaign is mainly an effort to phase out coal-fired electrical generation. This social movement also conducts a much publicized decades-old campaign against nuclear power. Almost forgotten is environmentalism’s first victim – hydro-electricity. When the social movement now called “environmentalism” surged forth in the 1960s it did so just in time to cripple North America’s remarkable and ambitious hydro engineering industry. What follows are seven articles discussing the promise of river development and its nemesis. (William Walter Kay, Environmentalism is Facism)

EVERYONE knows that the dinosaurs were exterminated when an asteroid hit what is now Mexico about 65m years ago. The crater is there. It is 180km (110 miles) in diameter. It was formed in a 100m-megatonne explosion by an object about 10km across. The ejecta from the impact are found all over the world. The potassium-argon radioactive dating method shows the crater was created within a gnat’s whisker of the extinction. Calculations suggest that the “nuclear winter” from the impact would have lasted years. Plants would have stopped photosynthesising. Animals would have starved to death. Case closed.

Well, it now seems possible that everyone was wrong. The Chicxulub crater, as it is known, may have been a mere aperitif. According to Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University, the main course was served later. Dr Chatterjee has found a bigger crater—much bigger—in India. His is 500km across. The explosion that caused it may have been 100 times the size of the one that created Chicxulub. He calls it Shiva, after the Indian deity of destruction.

Dr Chatterjee presented his latest findings on Shiva to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon, on October 18th. He makes a compelling case, identifying an underwater mountain called Bombay High, off the coast of Mumbai, that formed right at the time of the dinosaur extinction. This mountain measures five kilometres from sea bed to peak, and is surrounded by Shiva’s crater rim. Dr Chatterjee’s analysis shows that it formed from a sudden upwelling of magma that destroyed the Earth’s crust in the area and pushed the mountain upwards in a hurry. He argues that no force other than the rebound from an impact could have produced this kind of vertical uplift so quickly. And the blow that caused it would surely have been powerful enough to smash ecosystems around the world. (The Economist)

The United States will designate more than 200,000 square miles in Alaska as a critical habitat for polar bears, a key step towards increasing protection for the threatened species. (TDT)

British farmers must cultivate a new generation of genetically modified (GM) "supercrops" to prevent a global food crisis, the UK's leading scientists have said. (TDT)

Barack Obama's White House has declared war on the largest lobbying organization in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It figures to be a tough fight.

Obama has had a good deal of success winning the support of individual companies by pushing regulations that would cement their market share and increase their profits.

But the chamber represents a wide variety of businesses spread across the economic spectrum. As a group, they would suffer along with the whole economy under the weight of Obama's restrictions, mandates, and taxes.

The White House and liberal groups have leaned on the chamber's members in retaliation for the lobby's opposition to current health care overhaul bills and climate-change legislation. The chamber has responded by ramping up its lobbying efforts to record levels. It spent $34.6 million in the third quarter of 2009, according to reports released Monday -- four times what it spent in the second quarter and the largest quarterly lobbying expenditure by any entity since reporting began a decade ago.

Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten told me that White House is picking a high-profile fight with his group because, given Democratic supermajorities, Obama "needs an enemy" to blame for the difficulty he's having in getting his policies approved.

But there's another reason Obama is running low on enemies: He's already bought off many of the most powerful industries and businesses. (Timothy P. Carney, Examiner)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama is facing accusations his White House is creating an "enemies list," as administration aides step up efforts to marginalize an array of political opponents in American business and media.

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who worked for former president Richard Nixon, said Wednesday the hardball tactics employed by Obama's staff increasingly resemble those his former boss infamously used against critics in the early 1970s.

"Let's not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let's push the street-brawling out of the White House," Alexander said in a speech on the Senate floor.

"As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we've been down this road before and it won't end well. An 'enemies list' only denigrates the presidency and the republic itself."

Alexander's warning to Obama comes as the White House pursues a get-tough strategy against several organizations — from Wall Street banks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Fox News Channel — that have spoken out against the president's domestic agenda.

The White House's most public feud has been against the conservative Fox channel, which aides have labelled a de facto arm of the Republican party. Obama officials this week urged other U.S. news organizations against following Fox stories, and suggested the network be ostracized from the White House press corps.

The administration has also recently sought to isolate the U.S. Chamber, long the dominant voice of American business in Washington, by quietly building alliances with individual CEOs and firms more friendly to Obama's policies. (Sheldon Alberts, Canwest News)

One of the big green lies about global warming science and climate change policy is that the issues are vicious battlegrounds between corporate interests and environmentalists. David Suzuki has been pushing this idea for years, at times going so far as to claim that the National Post and some of its editors/writers are corporate pawns and shills for big business’s anti-climate change agenda. One of Mr. Suzuki’s associates and chairman of the Suzuki Foundation, Jim Hoggan, operates a blog site and has a new book dedicated to the corporate-manipulation theme. Mr. Hoggan claims there exists a concerted public relations assault on climate science and policy that “could not be accomplished without the compliance of media as well as the assent and participation of leaders in government and business.” He talks of “a global PR machine that is too often in the service of special interests and too little concerned about the public interest.”

Let us now return to reality, where this idiot’s guide to climate policy making doesn’t survive 24-hours’ worth of news reports and press releases. The daily news flow is packed with evidence to the contrary and proof that the opposite is true: Big business and the globe’s greatest corporate powers are marching in lock step with governments and environmentalists to impose climate policy on the world and its people. At the Copenhagen climate conference in December, no group looks forward more fervently than big business to a global carbon control agreement filled with firm targets, big tax increases and massive subsidies for special interests all over the world.

If there’s a corporate-driven global PR machine, it’s firmly on the side of climate control, grinding out one corporate climate agenda after another, an avalanche of business-government co-operation the likes of which the world has never seen. And smack in the middle of this global PR machine, shifting the gears and greasing the wheels, are the world’s leading environmentalists and green NGOs: The World Wildlife Fund, David Suzuki, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defence, Forest Ethics, the Pembina Institute and many more. Together with industry, they pressure government in the creation of the green industrial state.

The shape of the green industrial state rises out of a not-so-attractive place in history. The two great theories of modern statism are part of the recent past: Communism has been dead for two decades, discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union; and full-blown fascism, with government in total control of a subservient corporate private economy, has been a non-starter since 1945. What we have now rising out of the ashes to fill the void is climatism. (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

Today, the #1 Czech newspaper, MF DNES ("Youth Front TODAY"), published an interview of a top Czech journalist, Ms Barbora Tachecí, with climatologist Mr Radim Tolasz.

Because I consider him the ultimate role model of a mainstream Czech climatologist, the "guy in the middle" (who also holds, in some sense, the highest climatological job in Czechia), I decided to translate the whole interview so that the readers from the whole world may learn that the climate hysteria is pretty much absent in the Czech climatological circles - and in fact, also in the Czech media.

The printed version starts with a big headline, "Klaus may not be wrong" ("Třeba se Klaus nemýlí"). The electronic version has a more refined title:

Politicians are satisfied as soon as the fight against the climate change is being written about; economists should calculate how much it costs, Dr Radim Tolasz says. Picture: Mr Michal Šula, MF DNES

Klaus may not be wrong but he oversimplifies things, a climatologist says
(title)

Weather fluctuations in recent days have confused everyone. There is an exception: climatologists are not surprised and they will probably never be. This statement was also confirmed by Mr Radim Tolasz, a deputy director for meteorology and climatology of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, in an interview with Ms Barbora Tachecí.

Climate scientists gave lawmakers a primer Wednesday, advising them that temperatures are increasing. It was the first time such experts have been invited to testify at the Utah Legislature.

But Jim Steenburgh of the University of Utah and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville offered the Legislature's Interim Public Utilities and Technology Committee sharply different views of how well-understood climate change is. And, in the end, lawmakers wondered aloud whether learning more will help them make sensible policy.

"I cannot express the frustration I feel as a policy-maker who is not a scientist how difficult it is for me to make policy decisions when it seems the science has become so politicized," said Rep. Lorie D. Fowlke, an Orem Republican and attorney.

"I hope the scientific community in some way will be able to reach a broader consensus," she added. "And I appreciate those who are willing to look at other options before we invest our entire future on science that may not be conclusive."

Several lawmakers expressed a similar uneasiness about making policy on what they see as an ongoing debate in the scientific community. That despite a recent poll published by the American Geophysical Union that found that 97.4 percent of active climate researchers consider human activity a significant contributing factor to recent warming -- a point shared with lawmakers by Steenburgh, professor and chair of atmospheric sciences at the U. (Salt Lake Tribune)

MIAMI - Poverty and climate hazards make the southeast United States the country's most vulnerable area to climate change impact, Oxfam America said on Wednesday.

A report released by the relief organization identified high-risk "hotspots" across 13 southeast states from Arkansas to Virginia where poverty factors combined with high risk of drought, flooding, hurricanes and sea-level rise.

"Social factors like income and race do not determine who will be hit by a natural disaster, but they do determine a population's ability to prepare, respond, and recover when disaster does strike," Oxfam America President Raymond Offenheiser said in a statement accompanying the report.

"As climate change increases and intensifies floods, storms, and heat waves, many of the world's poorest communities, from Biloxi (Mississippi) to Bangladesh, will experience unprecedented stress," Offenheiser added.

Oxfam said the study, using a method developed by experts from the University of South Carolina's Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute, for the first time overlaid risk of climate hazards with social variables. (Reuters)

All the activists out to play: America's dirty little secret - Influence wielded by coal-producing states – 25 of them – is the big reason the U.S. is a climate-change laggard

The United Nations Climate Change Treaty, signed in 1992, committed the world to “avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system.” Yet, since that time, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar.

The United States has proved to be the biggest laggard, refusing to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or to adopt any effective domestic emissions controls. As we head into the global summit in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. is once again the focus of concern. Even now, American politics remain strongly divided over climate change – though President Barack Obama has new opportunities to break the logjam.

A year after the 1992 treaty, Bill Clinton tried to pass an energy tax that would have helped the U.S. to begin reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. The proposal not only failed, but triggered a political backlash.

When the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, Mr. Clinton did not even send it to the Senate for ratification, knowing that it would be rejected.

President George W. Bush repudiated Kyoto in 2001 and did essentially nothing on climate change during his presidency.

There are several reasons for U.S. inaction – including ideology and scientific ignorance – but a lot comes down to one word: coal. No fewer than 25 states produce coal, which not only generates income, jobs and tax revenue, but provides a disproportionately large share of their energy. (Jeffrey Sachs, Globe and Mail)

When I first began working for the Institute for Energy Research, my preliminary research indicated that William Nordhaus (now a co-author of Paul Samuelson’s famous economics textbook) was a great representative of the mainstream case for a Pigovian carbon tax. I have gone on to study his case, presented in articles and a book, in great detail. What I have found is an eager willingness to spot “market failure” coupled with a naive faith in government “solutions.” The full article deals with these big picture issues, but this post will dwell on the narrow technical results–using Nordhaus’s own numbers–that should give average economists pause when it comes to the typical recommendation of a carbon tax to “internalize the externality” of greenhouse gas emissions. (Robert Murphy, Master Resource)

The Government has been accused of exaggerating Britain’s success in fighting climate change by presenting “misleading” figures on carbon emissions.

Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, said that presentation of data by the Department of Energy and Climate Change was “unsatisfactory”.

In a letter to Tim Yeo, the chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, he said that a statistical bulletin released in February “fell short” of the Government’s code of practice.

Sir Michael raised serious concerns about the claim that CO2 emissions had fallen by 12.8 per cent compared with 1990 levels.

Nearly a third of that fall is made up of carbon credits purchased by polluters in an EU trading scheme and do not represent actual cuts in UK emissions. Without the credits, the fall is a much more modest 8.5 per cent. (The Times)

The climate change news from Washington is cautiously encouraging. No one in power is listening to the climate skeptics any more; the economic stimulus package included real money for clean energy; a bill capping U.S. carbon emissions emerged, battered but still standing, from the House of Representatives, and might even survive the Senate. This, along with stricter emission standards in Europe and a big push for clean energy and efficiency standards in China, provides grounds for hope for genuine progress on emissions reduction.

But while climate policy is finally moving forward, climate science is moving faster. One discovery after another suggests the world is warming faster, and climate damages are appearing sooner, than anyone had expected. Much of the policy discussion so far has been aimed at keeping the atmospheric concentration of CO2 below 450 parts per million (ppm) - which was until recently thought to be low enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming. But last year, James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist, argued that paleoclimatic evidence shows 450 ppm is the threshold for transition to an ice-free earth. This would imply a catastrophic rise in sea levels, eventually flooding all coastal cities and regions.

To avoid reaching such a crisis stage, Hansen and a growing number of others now call for stabilizing CO2 concentrations at 350 ppm. The world is now around 390 ppm and rising; since CO2 persists in the atmosphere for a long time, it is difficult to reduce concentrations quickly. In Hansen's scenario, a phaseout of coal use, massive reforestation, and widespread use of carbon capture and storage could allow the world to achieve negative net carbon emissions by mid-century and reach 350 ppm by 2100. (Frank Ackerman, Yale Environment 360)

I always find it interesting when activists and dissidents have neither formal scientific education, nor degrees in the exacting field of climatology. What they do have is a creepy, devoted following willing to do whatever they ask. Especially if that group believes only they can save the Earth.

Enter Jim McKibben. He's the idea guy behind 350.org and is little more than an "American environmentalist and writer" who preys upon the uninformed and the easily influenced. In short, he targets the youth of the world who don’t have the the requisite experience to spot a charlatan.

McKibben lectures his impressionable followers on what he considers safe levels of carbon dioxide, then footnotes it all with end-of-the-world prognostications. Ibid, repeat. Even more worrying is that he specifically targets the world's youth, exacerbating this group's natural tendency to making risky chances, protest unconditionally, challenge authority, and place unconditional faith in a higher power. No, not God. McKibben. (Thomas Richard, CCF)

Advertising Standards Authority to look into £6m campaign accused of scaremongering and misleading the public (The Guardian)

In my opinion, this over the top idea isn’t sustainable at any level. On a personal note, my cat eats with a footprint more like a Volkswagen microbus. I think I’ll give “Minners” a can of dolphin safe tuna tonight, just for spite.

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.

Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created by popular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.

“If you have a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is exactly the same as driving a large car around,” Brenda Vale said. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

From Ohio State University, an explanation for the existence of bloggers like Joe Romm and why many moderate scientists don’t speak out. There’s even “fake data” involved.

I’ve seen this phenomenon of extreme views being the most vocal in my own hometown of Chico, where a small vocal group of people often hold sway of the city council because they are the ones that show up up regularly to protest, well, just about anything. The council, seeing this regular vocal feedback, erroneously concludes that the view accurately represents the majority of city residents. The result is a train wreck, and the council sits there scratching their heads wondering why after making such decisions, they get their ears burned off by people unhappy with the decision. Bottom line, we all need to be more active in the public input process if we want decisions to be accurately reflected.

The key is that the extremists have to believe that more people share their views than actually do, the research found.

The results may offer one possible explanation for our fractured political climate in the United States, where extreme liberal and conservative opinions often seem to dominate.

“When people with extreme views have this false sense that they are in the majority, they are more willing to express themselves,” said Kimberly Rios Morrison, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

How do people with extreme views believe they are in the majority? This can happen in groups that tend to lean moderately in one direction on an issue. Those that take the extreme version of their group’s viewpoint may believe that they actually represent the true views of their group, Morrison said. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Discord reigned supreme at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday (20 October), with the most notable failure in the area of climate financing.

The Swedish EU presidency had hoped to reach an agreement on individual member state contributions towards a EU pot of funding, destined to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Swedish finance minister Anders Borg (centre) struggled to get EU states to agree on Tuesday (Photo: Swedish Presidency)

"It is a disappointing outcome, that we weren't able to reach an agreement," said Swedish finance minister Anders Borg after the meeting.

Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken described the meeting as a "fiasco", adding that the likelihood of failing to secure a global deal in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto protocol was now "very real." (EUobserver)

European Union finance ministers failed to agree Tuesday on how much money they should offer poor nations, so now it's up to the EU's 27 leaders to try to reach a deal on an aid figure next week in Brussels. (CoP15)

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a new report that shows the international Methane to Markets (M2M) Partnership has significantly reduced methane emissions. In 2008, U.S.-supported M2M projects delivered methane emissions reductions of more than 26 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, roughly the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 4.7 million passenger vehicles. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is more than 20 times as potent as CO2.

The M2M Partnership is a public-private partnership that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by promoting the cost-effective, near-term recovery and use of methane, while providing clean energy to markets around the world. (EPA)

European environment ministers have agreed to cut global emissions by 10 percent from planes and 20 percent from ships. (CoP15)

Notwithstanding the border dispute, India and China have agreed to jointly counter global pressure on emission cuts and extend their cooperation in climate change beyond the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December. (Deccan Herald)

In Senate Economics Estimates today, Senator Joyce asked the CSIRO the million dollar question, or should that be the hundred billion dollar question, “Will the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme change the temperature of the globe?”

The answer confirmed my worst fears in that I could not get the answer “Yes”. I was told it would depend on global factors of course! There will be no global factors if the rest of the world is not part of a global scheme. The CSIRO was sensibly and more inclined to tell me that my question was a policy issue. That is correct as it lacks scientific credibility that there will be any discernable change in the climate by reason of an Australian ETS. Later in the morning, the chief scientist said there would be a change in the climate by way of an Australian Emissions Trading Scheme. She also acknowledged there would be a change in the climate if I personally parked my car in the garage.

That is to say an indiscernible change, apart from the fact that the process involved in the most absurd form of minutia, follows the same mathematics as the overall equation of climate change.

The Australian Emissions Trading Scheme is merely a policy, a political statement, a gesture. The cost to the Australian citizen of this massive new tax associated with it, is very real however.

If you are involved in the emission of carbon, which might be from anything as obscure as ironing your clothes, cooking dinner, putting fertiliser on your field or pouring a concrete slab for your house, you will pay the tax. You may not see it but you will definitely pay it.

The removal of wealth from your life and transferred to the Treasury will be discernable, with the commission going to stock brokers and bankers on the way through.

I have to query, is the purpose of the Emissions Trading Scheme to cool the planet, which clearly it will not do, or is it to prop up a parlous state of our Government finances? The more I hear, the more I am inclined to the latter.

Australians will deliver tens of billions of dollars to the Treasury by reason of this tax in the near future.

There is far more empirical evidence in what it will cost you, the resident of Australia, than any scientific evidence that an emissions scheme will do anything for the climate. (Senator Barnaby Joyce)

Four years ago, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner wrote a bestseller called “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” (which begat a popular blog, now at the Times). The sequel, “Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance,” was officially published yesterday but has been heatedly debated for over a week in opinionland, primarily the “global cooling” bit.

That ongoing ruckus is not our topic today. Rather, it’s the robust discussion the controversy has kicked up on the new-fangled environmental strategy known as geoengineering. (Eric Etheridge, The Opinionator)

From the American Chemical Society via Eurekalert yet another reason why we asked “did you check the lake for DDT?”. Also, a review of Miller et al 2005 suggests that Baffin Island glaciers are significant with 37,000 square kilometers of area out of 507,451 square kilometers.

In the press release on the Yarrow Axford study at UC, they say: “The ancient lake sediment cores are the oldest ever recovered from glaciated parts of Canada or Greenland.”

Thus it is certainly not unreasonable to conclude that the lake is a collection point for glacial meltwater. So again I ask the question: did you check the lake for DDT?

Those pristine-looking Alpine glaciers now melting as global warming sets in may explain the mysterious increase in persistent organic pollutants in sediment from certain lakes since the 1990s, despite decreased use of those compounds in pesticides, electric equipment, paints and other products. That’s the conclusion of a new study, scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

In the study, Christian Bogdal and colleagues focused on organic pollutants in sediment from a model body of water –– glacier-fed Lake Oberaar in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland –– testing for the persistent organic pollutants, including dioxins, PCBs, organochlorine pesticides and synthetic musk fragrances. They found that while contamination decreased to low levels in the 1980s and 1990s due to tougher regulations and improvements in products, since the late 1990s flow of all of these pollutants into the lake has increased sharply. Currently, the flow of organochlorines into the lake is similar to or even higher than in the 1960s and 1970s, the report states. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

The whole can of larvae opened up by the flawed University of Colorado study turned press release keeps getting squirmier. The study, led by Yarrow Axford studies midge larvae in sediment cores from Baffin Island to reconstruct temperature for the past and claims that “The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,” and “We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes.”

As I’ve pointed out on WUWT several times, the study is terribly flawed, because they haven’t considered other possible factors, such as DDT and other pesticides being transported into the lake from nearby military outposts and settlements, plus the tendency for transport or organotoxins into glacial ice which ends up in meltwater lakes. Plus the nearby weather station shows no significant warming.

WUWT reader “Ecotretas” points out this July 2009 peer reviewed study Evidence for a warmer period during the 12th and 13th centuries AD from
chironomid assemblages in Southampton Island, Nunavut, Canada by Nicholas Rolland et al, which uses the same techniques, but just one island west of Baffin:

The Rolland et al study temperature reconstruction shows a significantly different result than that of Axford: Read the rest of this entry »

Norm Kalmanovitch <kalhnd@shaw.ca>

Dear Benny,

The pollution resulting from the rapid uncontrolled post war industrial expansion spawned two environmentalist movements. One group primarily composed of physical scientists and engineers set about to directly address the pollution problems by developing facilities and legislative controls that have to date virtually eliminated industrial contamination of soil, water and air.

A second group primarily composed of activists with little or no physical science background did nothing but protest against industry without ever having addressed a single environmental problem for which they created a solution.

While the physical scientists and engineers worked quietly with industry solving the environmental problems, the ideology driven environmentalist activists, used dramatic alarmist rhetoric to gain media control and have become a dominant political force capable of forcing their self serving ideologies on the general public with impunity.

The Earth entered a cooling phase in 1942, and by 1970 the environmentalists found a way to blame this cooling on industrial expansion. The concept was that particulate matter from fossil fuel usage was blocking energy from the sun giving this cooling effect. This concept was incorporated as a parameter in the crude climate models of the time, and the predictions from models run by James Hansen in 1971 projected fifty years of further cooling from the increased use of fossil fuels.

Only four years later, and in spite of the continued increase in fossil fuel usage global cooling came to an end, proving that the models did not have a proper physical basis for relating fossil fuel usage to global cooling.

By 1988, after 13 years of global warming the ideological environmentalists developed a new tact for blaming fossil fuels. The British Government had embarked on a political campaign to promote their nuclear industry and attack the powerful coal unions by creating alarmist scenarios of "runaway global warming" resulting from CO2 produced by coal and other fossil fuels. This was entirely political in nature with absolutely no scientific backing, but it did make the perfect weapon for the environmentalists to promote their anti energy (and anti humanity) ideology. All that was needed was some scientific justification.

As was done in 1971, climate models which were now far more sophisticated provided the science backing. Instead of blaming fossil fuels for blocking incoming solar radiation, the models removed this parameter and replaced it with a newly contrived parameter that now related global warming to the effect of fossil fuel sourced CO2 on the outgoing thermal radiation from the Earth.

This model also produced by James Hansen, projected warming for the next century because of the fossil fuel CO2 emissions that were increasing at a continued accelerated rate. As with the 1971 model, the 1988 model was proven to be false when global warming ended after 1998 even as CO2 emissions continued to rise at unprecedented rates. To make matters worse since 2002, the Earth has been cooling making all of the projections clearly in the wrong direction.

By even the most basic standards of ethical science, models that first predict cooling from fossil fuel usage that are discredited just four years later when warming occurs with increased usage, and then predict warming from fossil fuel usage and are again discredited ten years later as cooling reoccurs with increased usage, would be declared absolutely invalid; but when ideology is involved science protocol is totally abandoned.

As a result of the alarmist predictions of the 1988 climate models of Hansen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed under the auspices of the United Nations. This body was given a science mandate to investigate the possibility of human effects on climate to determine if the projections of Hansen were valid.

The true nature of the IPCC was not that of a science based body, but that of a political body to give scientific legitimacy to false alarmist predictions in order to meet a political self serving environmentalist agenda. Since its inception, the IPCC has used its position of authority to promote its agenda to the detriment of science and even more importantly to the detriment of the global population.

From 1997 to 1998 the average global temperature increased by over half a degree C and from 1998 to 1999 the average global temperature fell by over half a degree C. This was due to an extraordinary el Niño and has nothing to do with either the greenhouse effect or CO2 emissions (CO2 emissions increased from 24.0gt/y in 1997 to 24.2gt/y in 1998 to 24.4gt/y in 1999).

An honest scientific body would have made some sort of statement to this effect, but the IPCC in their 2001 Third Assessment Report and particularly in their Summary for Policy Makers for this report not only made no mention of the fact that from 1998 to 1999 the Earth cooled more than it had ever cooled during the entire global temperature record, but emphatically stated that from 1997 to 1998 the Earth had warmed more than it ever had.

This is an absolute violation of science ethics because the policy makers were purposely misinformed with alarmist rhetoric. This same 2001 report also stated that the observed global warming for the past century which they stated was attributable to CO2 emissions was measured at 0.60°C + 0.20°C. This is only 0.006°C per year making the el Niño temperature spike over eighty times greater than what the IPCC stated was attributable to CO2 emissions, so it is clear that this was stated for the purpose of politically motivated alarmism and not to properly convey information in a scientifically justified manner.

The 2001 IPCC report also included the infamous MBH98 “Hockey Stick” temperature proxy which used physical temperature measurement data up to and including 1998 which gave the alarmist impression of twice the 20th century warming because 1999 was not included.

The Hockey Stick graph became the pivotal evidence that convinced governments around the world to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, that has resulted in such detrimental effects to the global population and global economy.

In this regard the el Niño temperature spike of 1998 may be considered the most significant climate event in recent history, and when one considers the hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people starving because of Kyoto biofuel initiatives that has literally taken their food away and made it into “Kyoto friendly” fuel, this el Niño might also be considered the most tragic climate event as well.

Through diligence and hard work physical scientists were able to correct most of the environmental problems that had been created through industrialization, but there is no scientific effort capable of undoing the damage caused to the global population by the ideological environmentalists. This issue is now out of the hands of the scientists and the only salvation for the global population is the media who must readopt their lost journalistic integrity and expose the true nature of this global fraud.

Norm Kalmanovitch
Calgary Canada

PS This link to a 1999 article is very enlightening http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba299.pdf (via CCNet)

The multi-decadal global surface temperature trend is used (inappropriately; e.g. see) as the primary metric to diagnose the magnitude of global warming and cooling. This post lists major unresolved issues with the use of this surface temperature trend metric, along with examples of recent papers and weblog posts that build on the set of problems identified in our paper

Issues with the global average surface temperature trend assessment [the sections are from the Pielke et al 2007 paper]:

Mahmood, R., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, D. ”>Niyogi, G. Bonan, P. Lawrence, B. Baker, R. McNider, C. McAlpine, A. Etter, S. Gameda, B. Qian, A. Carleton, A. Beltran-Przekurat, T. Chase, A.I. Quintanar, J.O. Adegoke, S. Vezhapparambu, G. Conner, S. Asefi, E. Sertel, D.R. Legates, Y. Wu, R. Hale, O.W. Frauenfeld, A. Watts, M. Shepherd, C. Mitra, V.G. Anantharaj, S. Fall,R. Lund, A. Nordfelt, P. Blanken, J. Du, H.-I. Chang, R. Leeper, U.S. Nair, S. Dobler, R. Deo, and J. Syktus, 2009: Impacts of land use land cover change on climate and future research priorities. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Submitted.

We look forward to further papers on these uncertainties and biases in the use of the use of the surface air temperature to diagnose global climate heat changes. To avoid these problems with respect to their use to diagnose global warming and cooling, however, upper ocean heat content changes should be adopted as the primary approach, as recommended most recently in

NEW YORK - As gas prices rise, more people switch to motorcycles -- and more people die in motorcycle accidents, results of a new study indicate.

"If gas prices increase by a dollar, that leads to about 1,500 more people dying a year on motorcycles," Dr. Fernando A. Wilson of the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth told Reuters Health.

While deaths in car crashes have been falling steadily since the 1990s, motorcycle accident fatalities have risen, Wilson and his team note in the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

To investigate whether price increases at the pump might be a factor, they looked at data from the Fatality Accident Reporting System, which covers every single vehicle-related death on US roads.

Gas prices, in 2007 dollars, fell from $2.06 a gallon in 1990 to $1.36 a gallon in 1998, the researchers found, while the percentage of registered vehicles represented by motorcycles dropped from 2.3 percent to 1.8 percent during that time. But from 1998 to 2006, gas prices nearly doubled, to $2.70 a gallon. And the percentage of motorcycles representing registered vehicles rose too, to 2.7 percent. (Reuters Health)

Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc² was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein's equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc² and its corollary, E = mv².

To my delight, he informed me that he'd already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune.

I love this essay. And I'm proud that Tucker has allowed us to run it. -Robert Bryce (Energy Tribune)

Oil's surge to $82 a barrel in intraday trading Wednesday is significant for two reasons.

First, it represents a 2009 high. In February, oil fetched just $34 a barrel. Second, and more ominously, prices for the first time in a year are butting up against what President Barack Obama believes is a legitimate price for a barrel of crude.

It seems so long ago when oil prices were a grave political issue, with public officials decrying how $140 oil was crushing the average American.

Republicans proposed opening up off-limits energy reserves to treat what they considered a supply-and-demand problem. Democrats suggested large companies were purposefully manipulating the price of their product. Their solution was to institute a punitive tax on so-called windfall profits. (Max Schultz, IBD)

SAO PAULO - Some Brazilian motorists who fuel their cars solely on cane-based ethanol are switching back to gasoline as high sugar prices now make the biofuel more costly in some states.

Brazil is a pioneer in biofuel with its millions of flex-fuel cars that can run solely on ethanol or gasoline, or any mixture of both. Usually cheaper than gasoline, drivers needed no persuasion to switch when flex-fuel arrived in 2003.

But as mills use cane to produce more sugar in response to a world deficit that pushed prices to near their highest in three decades, prices for ethanol, made using the same cane, have leapt up to 50 percent in places in just a few months. (Reuters)

Germany's renewable myth - Germany is seen as a leader in renewable energy, but its experience has been a costly waste

An aggressive policy of generously subsidizing and effectively mandating “renewable” electricity generation in Germany has led to a doubling of the renewable contribution to electricity generation in recent years.

This preference came primarily in the form of a subsidy policy based on feed-in tariffs, established in 1991 by the Electricity Feed-in Law, requiring utilities to accept and remunerate the feed-in of “green” electricity at 90 percent of the retail rate of electricity, considerably exceeding the cost of conventional electricity generation.

A subsequent law passed in 2000 guaranteed continued support for 20 years. This requires utilities to accept the delivery of power from independent producers of renewable electricity into their own grid, paying technology-specific feed-in tariffs far above their production cost of ¢2.9-10.2 per kilowatt hour (kWh).

With a feed-in tariff of ¢59 per kWh in 2009, solar electricity generated from photovoltaics (PV) is guaranteed by far the largest financial support among all renewable energy technologies.

Currently, the feed-in tariff for PV is more than eight times higher than the wholesale electricity price at the power exchange and more than four times the feed-in tariff paid for electricity produced by on-shore wind turbines.

Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300% to remain competitive.

By 2008 this had led to Germany having the second-largest installed wind capacity in the world, behind the United States, and largest installed PV capacity in the world, ahead of Spain. This explains the claims that Germany’s feed-in tariff is a great success.

Installed capacity is not the same as production or contribution, however, and by 2008 the estimated share of wind power in Germany’s electricity production was 6.3%, followed by biomass-based electricity generation (3.6%) and water power (3.1%). The amount of electricity produced through solar photovoltaics was a negligible 0.6% despite being the most subsidized renewable energy, with a net cost of about $12.4 billion for 2008. (Manuel Frondel, Nolan Ritter and Colin Vance, Financial Post)

Renewable energy generates a larger portion of the world’s electricity each year. But in relative terms, solar power generation is hardly a blip on the energy screen despite its long history of technological development. Solar-generated electricity has one major advantage over it’s more ubiquitous cousin wind power: electricity is generated during typical peak demand hours making this option attractive to utilities that value solar electricity for peak shaving. However, the capital cost of all the solar technologies are about $5,000/kW and higher and projects are moving forward only in particular regions within the U.S. with tough RPS requirements and subsidies from states and the federal government.

In Part I, we reviewed the enormous scale and capital cost considerations of photovoltaic projects and then introduced the standard taxonomy of central solar power generating plants. By far the favored technology for utility-scale projects is the concentrated solar power (CSP) option that either produces thermal energy that produces electricity in the familiar steam turbine process or by concentrating the sun’s thermal energy on an air heat exchanger to produce electricity via a gas turbine. In this Part II, we review a sampling of recent projects. In sum, CSP and Stirling engine technology appears to be favored in the U.S., while the “turbine on a stick” projects are gaining a foothold elsewhere.

The final post will explore the latest developments in hybrid projects that combine many of the available solar energy conversion technologies with conventional fossil-fueled technologies. Hybrid projects offer the opportunity for utilities to reduce fuel costs, while simultaneously helping utilities cope with onerous renewable portfolio mandates. (Robert Peltier, Master Resource)

At this point, it's no secret that the Chevy Volt and other plug-in vehicles are not going to come cheap. About the least pricey full-speed electric vehicle may very well be the Nissan Leaf, which after incentives may be in the $27-28,000 range before the extra cost of leasing the battery. While the operational costs of these cars should be substantially less than any internal combustion vehicle, customers rarely think that far ahead when signing up for a car loan. That's especially true when gas remains well under $3 a gallon here in the US.

Speaking at the Business of Plugging In Conference in Dearborn, Michigan this week, GM's VP of Global Program Management told the audience that incentives will need to be increased for plug-in vehicles to start gaining a real foothold in the US market.

Although GM won't announce pricing until its launch a year from now, most observers expect the Volt to run about $40,000. With a $7,500 federal tax credit, it will still be well over $30,000, which is very expensive for a compact car. Unless gas prices get significantly higher or incentives are increased, most buyers are unlikely to find this or other plug-ins to be a good economic proposition. (Auto Blog)

In the 1960s, Stewart Brand became one of the country’s first and most famous champions of a new ecological awareness. His Whole Earth Catalog spoke to a generation of hippies and back-to-nature commune dwellers.

Now, at 70, Stewart Brand is calling on environmentalists to reframe their understanding of the problem — and solutions. It’s too late for back-to-nature, he says. Global warming is beyond that.

To survive now, Brand says, we need nuclear power, genetic engineering, giant cities. We must manage nature or lose civilization.

This hour, On Point: In the face of global warming, Stewart Brand redefines green. (On Point Radio)

In today’s first hour, Whole Earth guru Stewart Brand and energy expert Amory Lovins debated whether the U.S. should build more nuclear power plants in the effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Brand’s new book, “Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto,” takes on a number of what he calls environmental “pieties,” including opposition to nuclear power. He says nuclear is now “green” — and that we can’t afford to oppose it any longer on the old grounds, given the urgent need to address climate change.

Lovins has recently argued against Brand’s view, in a posting at Grist.org, and he layed out his case for us on the air today.

It all mirrors a debate in Washington about whether more nuclear power should be a serious component of a new energy-climate bill.

Six years ago, when I asked an epidemiologist about a report that a smoking ban in Helena, Mont., had cut heart attacks by 40 percent within six months, he thought the idea was so ridiculous that no one would take it seriously. He was wrong.

Since then, 10 other studies have attributed substantial short-term reductions in heart attacks to smoking bans, and last week an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee endorsed their findings. But a closer look at the IOM report, which was commissioned by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests its conclusions are based on a desire to promote smoking bans rather than a dispassionate examination of the evidence.

Thousands of jurisdictions around the world restrict smoking. Some of them are bound to see significant drops in heart attacks purely by chance, while others will see no real change or significant increases. Focusing on the first group proves nothing unless it is noticeably bigger than the other two groups.

The largest study of this issue, which used nationwide data instead of looking at cherry-picked communities, concluded that smoking bans in the U.S. "are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction." It also found that "large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a workplace ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature." (Jacob Sullum, Townhall)

WASHINGTON - Global efforts to immunize children against life-threatening diseases set a record high last year but failed to protect millions of youngsters in the world's poorest countries, health officials said on Wednesday.

A joint report by the World Health Organization, United Nations and World Bank said 106 million babies under the age of 1 were vaccinated in 2008, while a record 120 vaccines became available against a host of diseases from measles and flu to meningitis and a virus linked to cancer.

The data provide a snapshot of an immunization boom that has tripled the global vaccine market to $17 billion in eight years and set off a renaissance of vaccine development aimed at AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and dengue fever.

The report coincides with new efforts to provide the world with a vaccine against the H1N1 flu that WHO declared a pandemic in June.

Immunization, in a downward spiral before 2000, has gained momentum in recent years partly through a financing partnership among WHO, the U.N. childrens' fund UNICEF, the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The partnership, known as the GAVI Alliance, also includes drug makers such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Novartis AG, Crucell NV, Merck & Co. Inc., Sanofi Pasteur and Wyeth.

As a result of recent efforts, vaccines now reach more than 200 million children in developing countries.

But the report also acknowledged significant shortcomings in the immunization campaign, saying that 24 million infants -- almost 20 percent of the children born each year -- did not receive first-year-of-life vaccinations that are common in the wealthiest countries.

The children who missed out typically live in poorly served remote rural areas, deprived urban settings, fragile states and strife-torn regions, mostly in Africa and Asia. (Reuters)

So when Speaker Pelosi says the House bill would cost under $900 billion, what she actually means is that it would cost around $2.25 trillion. (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

According to The Hill, House Democrats are considering re-branding their new government-run health insurance program. A “public option” evidently isn’t catchy enough. Now they’re thinking, “Medicare Part E” as in, Medicare for Everyone.

Pleeeeease don’t throw me into that briar patch. (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

I cannot disagree with Uwe Reinhardt’s response to my previous post at National Journal’s Health Care Experts blog. But his response bears clarification and emphasis.

Improving “population health” generally means “helping people live longer.”

Will Reinhardt go further and acknowledge that, since universal coverage is largely about some other X-factor(s), that necessarily means that advocates of universal coverage are willing to let some people die sooner in order to serve that X-factor?

Just days after the health-insurance lobby released a report criticizing the Senate Finance Committee’s health care overhaul (for not expanding government enough!), Democrats and President Barack Obama lashed out at health insurers, threatening to revoke what the Government Accountability Office calls the insurers’ “very limited exemption from the federal antitrust laws.”

Democrats say they’re motivated by the need to increase competition in health insurance markets. Right.

Combined with what The New York Times described as the Obama administration’s “ham-handed” attempt to censor insurers who communicated with seniors about the effects of the president’s health plan — the Times editorialized: “the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to stretch facts to the breaking point to make a weak case that the insurers were doing anything improper” — it’s hard to argue that this is anything but Democrats threatening to use the power of the state to punish dissidents.

When Republicans were in power, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats are in power, obedience is the highest form of patriotism. (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

The American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.

It is quietly working on a message, to put on its Web site early next year, to emphasize that screening for breast and prostate cancer and certain other cancers can come with a real risk of overtreating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly.

“We don’t want people to panic,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society. “But I’m admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated.” (Gina Kolata, NYT)

NEW YORK - Good news for men who farm U.S. fields. Regular exposure to pesticides used commonly on the farm does not appear to increase the risk of heart attack.

As part of the Agricultural Health Study, between 1993 and 1997, researchers asked more than 54,000 male farmers what pesticides they used regularly, how much time they spent using tractors and other farm equipment, and whether they raised poultry or other livestock.

Dr. Jane A. Hoppin, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and colleagues surveyed roughly 32,000 of these men 5 years later and discovered 839 non-fatal heart attacks.

They also followed the entire study population for nearly 12 years on average and found that a total of 476 farmers died from heart attack.

In analyses adjusted for factors that might increase heart attack risk, such as older age, smoking and being overweight, the researchers found some suggestion of an increased risk of heart attack with exposure to six specific pesticides, although the link was not statistically significant.

These pesticides were the organochlorines aldrin and DDT, the herbicide 2,4,5-T, the fumigant ethylene dibromide, and the fungicides maneb and ziram.

By contrast, five other pesticides - carbaryl, terbufos, imazethapyr, pendimethalin, and petroleum oil - seemed to be associated with a somewhat reduced risk of death from heart attack.

However, none of the 49 pesticides were statistically associated with heart attack, nor did the investigators note similar risk due to other farm-related "exposures."

In a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Hoppin and colleagues point out that farmers commonly have heart attack rates lower than those of the general population.

Hoppin and colleagues say further investigations are needed to confirm their findings and to assess short- and long-term heart-related risks from exposure to pesticides. (Reuters Health) [em added]

NEW YORK - Eating white and oily fish regularly may provide protection against type 2 diabetes, but eating shellfish may have the opposite effect, a study from the UK hints.

The study team noted about 25 percent less risk type 2 diabetes among men and women who reported eating one or more, as opposed to fewer, servings of white or oily fish each week.

Unexpectedly, however, they found that men and women who ate similar amounts of shellfish -- primarily prawns, crab, and mussels -- had about 36 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

But "it may not be the 'shellfish' per se which increased the risk for diabetes," Dr. Nita Forouhi, of Addenbrooke's Hospital, University of Cambridge, noted in an email to Reuters Health.

Rather, the cooking and preparation methods used in the UK, for example, oils used when frying or butter- and mayonnaise-based sauces served with shellfish, may increase cholesterol intake which, in turn, may raise diabetes risk. (Reuters Health)

Contrary to popular belief, new West Australian research shows a higher intake of dairy foods while on a reduced calorie diet can help fight obesity.

As part of her PhD research, Wendy Chan She Ping Delfos, from Curtin University of Technology, compared three serves of dairy with five serves within a lower calorie diet prescribed to overweight participants over 12-weeks.

Dr Chan She Ping Delfos found greater weight loss and reduced risk factors for heart disease and diabetes could ensue.

Subjects who consumed five, rather than three, serves of dairy per day lost more weight and abdominal fat, and had lower blood pressure.

"Many people commonly believe that when trying to lose weight dairy products are key foods that they have to cut out of their diet, as they are high in fat," Dr Chan She Ping Delfos said.

"This study has shown that when trying to lose weight people can actually benefit by increasing the amount of dairy they consume beyond the normally-recommended three daily serves, as long as during the weight loss period total energy intake is less than their requirements. (WA Today)

The new ASTM work group has been formed, to develop a peer-reviewed protocol for home inspection--for Chinese drywall, and this will be followed by an accredited protocol for remediation. We will keep you up-to-date as to our progress right on this blog. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

Oh blimey... Scientists try to calm '2012' hysteria - As an upcoming action movie fuels Internet rumors, several scientists make public statements: The world will not end in 2012, and Earth is not going to crash into a rogue planet.

Is 2012 the end of the world?

If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.

Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time.

"Two years ago, I got a question a week about it," said NASA scientist David Morrison, who hosts a website called Ask an Astrobiologist. "Now I'm getting a dozen a day. Two teenagers said they didn't want to see the end of the world so they were thinking of ending their lives."

Morrison said he tries to reassure people that their fears are groundless, but has received so many inquiries that he has posted a list of 10 questions and answers on the website of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific ( www.astrosociety.org ).

Titled "Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru and Cosmophobia," the article breaks down the sources of the hysteria and assures people that the ancients didn't actually know more about the cosmos than we do.

"The world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012," E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, declared in a statement released Thursday by the observatory and Sky & Telescope magazine. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the magazine's November issue.

Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. Then there's the fact that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, suggesting that the Maya knew something we don't. Finally, end-of-the-worlders have seized upon the hubbub about the 2012 date to proclaim their belief that end times are drawing near. (Los Angeles Times)

Pundits and politicians act as if government can solve almost any problem. At the slightest hint of trouble, the ruling class reflexively assumes that knowledgeable, wise and public-spirited government regulators are capable of riding to the rescue. This certainly is the guiding philosophy of the Obama administration.

So how remarkable it is that this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was shared by Elinor Ostrom, whose life's work demonstrates that politicians and bureaucrats are not nearly as good at solving problems as regular people. Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize (which she shared with Oliver Williamson of UC-Berkeley), is a political scientist at Indiana University. The selection committee said that she has "challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource-users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts". (John Stossel, Townhall)

ROME — Scientists and development experts across the globe are racing to increase food production by 50 percent over the next two decades to feed the world’s growing population, yet many doubt their chances despite a broad consensus that enough land, water and expertise exist.

The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, despite a 12-year concentrated effort to cut the number.

The global financial recession added at least 100 million people by depriving them of the means to buy enough food, but the numbers were inching up even before the crisis, the United Nations noted in a report last week.

“The way we manage the global agriculture and food security system doesn’t work,” said Kostas G. Stamoulis, a senior economist at the organization. “There is this paradox of increasing global food production, even in developing countries, yet there is hunger.”

Agronomists and development experts who gathered in Rome last week generally agreed that the resources and technical knowledge were available to increase food production by 50 percent in 2030 and by 70 percent in 2050 — the amounts needed to feed a population expected to grow to 9.1 billion in 40 years.

But the conundrum is whether the food can be grown in the developing world where the hungry can actually get it, at prices they can afford. Poverty and difficult growing conditions plague the places that need new production most, namely sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. (NYT)

At the urging of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Obama administration is throwing up roadblocks to BP’s upgrading of a large refinery in northwest Indiana.

We’d call the NRDC a bunch of backstabbers, but then again, BP walked face-first into this one. (Green Hell)

For years, leading plaintiffs’ lawyers have promised a legal assault on industrial America for contributing to global warming.

So far, the trial bar has had limited success. The hurdles to such suits are pretty obvious: How do you apportion fault and link particular plaintiffs’ injuries to the pollution emitted by a particular group of defendants?

Today, though, plaintiffs’ lawyers may be a gloating a bit, after a favorable ruling Friday from the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which is regarded as one of the more conservative circuit courts in the country. Here’s a link to the ruling.

The suit was brought by landowners in Mississippi, who claim that oil and coal companies emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that, in turn, caused a rise in sea levels, adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity. (See photo of Bay St. Louis, Miss., after the storm.)

For a nice overview of the ruling, and its significance in the climate change battle, check out this blog post by J. Russell Jackson, a Skadden Arps partner who specializes in mass tort litigation. The post likens the Katrina plaintiffs’ claims, which set out a chain of causation, to the litigation equivalent of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

The central question before the Fifth Circuit was whether the plaintiffs had standing, or whether they could demonstrate that their injuries were “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s actions. The defendants predictably assert that the link is “too attenuated.”

But the Fifth Circuit held that at this preliminary stage in the litigation, the plaintiffs had sufficiently detailed their claims to earn a day in court.

In so holding, the court notably quoted a recent Supreme Court opinion that “accepted as plausible the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming” along with the fact that “rising ocean temperatures may contribute to the ferocity of hurricanes.” (WSJ)

Which industry will the trial lawyers go after next? A suit filed by Mississippi property owners who had losses from Hurricane Katrina might provide a glimpse of the mischief to come.

In less than a month, two federal appeals courts have reversed trial court decisions to throw out global warming lawsuits.

Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a class-action suit against energy companies can proceed. In Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, the plaintiffs are alleging that 30 oil, electric and coal companies are liable because they have made products that contributed to the global warming that intensified the effects of Katrina. The plaintiffs are Mississippians whose property was damaged in the 2005 storm.

On Sept. 21, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City reinstated Connecticut v. AEP. In this suit, eight states, the city of New York and three land trusts are seeking an injunction that would order six power companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Both cases are alarming. Courts shouldn't let plaintiffs sue over global warming when it's nothing more than speculation. But the Comer case is cause for greater concern. (IBD)

I say BRING IT ON. Finally we’ll get to put this absurdity about the connection between global warming and hurricanes to rest, because, it doesn’t exist. I hope the defense will bring in the findings of Ryan Maue at FSU COAPS as shown below.

For years, leading plaintiffs’ lawyers have promised a legal assault on industrial America for contributing to global warming.

Desperate de jour – trying to locate unreported hurricanes prior to the satellite era by looking through old seismometer records in an attempt to prop up the imagined “global warming equals more hurricanes” connection….which we know doesn’t exist and has been debunked time and again. Most recently is was falsified yesterday with FSU’s ACE graph, showing hurricane levels at a 30 year low.

Boulder, CO USA – Seismologists have found a new way to piece together the history of hurricanes in the North Atlantic – by looking back through records of the planet’s seismic noise. It’s an entirely new way to tap into the rich trove of seismic records, and the strategy might help establish a link between global warming and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes.

“Looking for something like hurricane records in seismology doesn’t occur to anybody,” said Carl Ebeling, of Northwestern University in Evanston. “It’s a strange and wondrous combination.”

The research is attempting to address a long-standing debate about whether the warming of sea-surface waters as a result of climate change is producing more frequent or more powerful hurricanes in the North Atlantic. It’s a tough question to answer. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit, the federal court of appeals where I once clerked, has allowed a class action lawsuit by Hurricane Katrina victims to proceed against a motley crew of energy, oil, and chemical companies. Their claim: that the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions raised air and water temperatures on the Gulf Coast, contributing to Katrina’s strength and causing property damage. Mass tort litigation specialist Russell Jackson calls the plaintiffs’ claims “the litigator’s equivalent to the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.’”

In Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, the plaintiffs assert a variety of theories under Mississippi common law, but the main issue at this stage was whether the plaintiffs had standing, or whether they could demonstrate that their injuries were “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s actions. The court dismissed several claims but held that plaintiffs indeed could allege public and private nuisance, trespass and negligence. The court also held that these latter claims do not present a so-called “political question” that the court doesn’t have the authority to resolve. You can read about the Court’s ruling in more detail at the WSJ Law Blog and Jackson’s Consumer Class Actions and Mass Torts Blog.

This is actually the second federal appeals court to rule this way; last month, the Second Circuit (based in New York) held that states, municipalities and certain private organizations had standing to bring federal common law nuisance claims to impose caps on certain companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s the opinion in that case, Connecticut v. American Electric Power Company, and you can read a pretty good summary and analysis here.

Both of these cases, which herald a flood of global warming-related litigation, so to speak, owe their continuing vitality to the Supreme Court’s misbegotten 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. The 2006-2007 Cato Supreme Court Review covered that case in an insightful article by Andrew Morriss of the University of Illinois. (To get your copy of the latest (2008-2009) Review, go here.)

I should note from my own experience at the Fifth Circuit that the panel here consisted of the two worst judges on the court — Clinton appointees Carl Stewart and James Dennis — and one of Reagan’s weakest federal appellate appointments, Eugene Davis. Even Davis, however, wrote separately to note that while he agreed on the standing issue, he would have affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the suit on a different ground (that pesky proximate cause issue).

I predict that the full (16-judge) Fifth Circuit will review this case en banc –and if not that the Supreme Court will eventually take it up (if the district court on remand doesn’t again dispose of the case on causation grounds). (Ilya Shapiro, Cato at liberty)

Yesterday was sure interesting. Nothing like a little personal conflict to motivate dozens of emails to me and plenty of comments across the blogosphere. For better or worse I have a much better sense of how the liberal slime machine works in practice, having been inside now a bit. This is all the more ironic because I consider myself to be cut from a similar political cloth to many of those who are engaged in all out war against me. Here are a few reflections.

Here is how it works. The really giant fish -- public intellectuals like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman -- confer authority on the big fish of the liberal blogosphere. They do so by applauding the work of the big fish and saying that they trust them. This is a useful exchange because the big fish amplify the writings of the giant fish in the blogosphere and do the dirty work of taking down their political opponents by playing some gutter politics that the giant fish would rather not be seen playing. This has the effect of establishing the big fish as people to be listened to, not because they are necessarily right about things, but because the giant fish listen to them and the giant fish set political agendas.

Among these big fish feeding the giant fish are Joe Romm, Brad Delong, RealClimate, and there are of course many others, but these are the ones I have first-hand experience with (lucky me). Each of these professionals has great potential to positively influence policy debates in positive ways. Instead they all actively have chosen to engage in pretty embarrassing and unethical behavior that caters to tribal, echo-chamber politics. Their behavior is not only a poor reflection on them as individuals but it serves to intensify partisan splits and actually work against effective policy making, as has been written about by Cass Sunstein and Clive Crook. (Roger Pielke Jr)

Oct. 20 -- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are so good at tweaking conventional wisdom that their first book, “Freakonomics,” sold 4 million copies. So when Dubner, an old friend, told me their new book would take on climate change, I was rooting for a breakthrough idea.

No such luck. In “SuperFreakonomics,” their brave new climate thinking turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.

“Obviously, provocation is not last on the list of things we’re trying to do,” Dubner told me the other day. This time, the urge to provoke has driven him and Levitt off the rails and into a contrarian ditch.

Their breezy take on global warming unleashed a barrage of highly detailed criticism from economists and climate experts, including a scientist who is misrepresented in the book.

Dubner wonders why everyone is so angry. In part, it’s because the book’s blithe remedies -- “We could end this debate and be done with it, and move on to problems that are harder to solve,” Levitt told the U.K. Guardian newspaper -- are an insult to the thousands of scientists who have devoted their careers to this crisis.

One of the injured parties is Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford University who is quoted (accurately) as saying that “we are being incredibly foolish emitting carbon dioxide.” Then Dubner and Levitt add this astonishing claim: “His research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.”

Provocative, Untrue

That’s provocative, but alas, it isn’t true. Caldeira, like the vast majority of climate scientists, believes cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions is our only real chance to avoid runaway climate change.

“Carbon dioxide is the right villain,” Caldeira wrote on his Web site in reply. He told Joe Romm, the respected climate blogger who broke the story, that he had objected to the “wrong villain” line but Dubner and Levitt didn’t correct it; instead, they added the “incredibly foolish” quote, a half step in the right direction. Caldeira gave the same account to me.

Levitt and Dubner do say that the book “overstates” Caldeira’s position. That’s a weasel word: The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes. Caldeira told me the book contains “many errors” in addition to the “major error” of misstating his scientific opinion on carbon dioxide’s role. (Bloomberg)

SuperFreakonomics isn’t even on sale yet, and the attacks on our chapter about global warming are already underway.

A prominent environmental blogger has attacked us. A well-known environmental-advocacy group pressured NPR into reading a statement critical of the book at the end of an interview I had given on Scott Simon’s Weekend Edition show. Even Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong got in on the action before they’d even read the book. (Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics)

Yes, it’s an ancient cliché: a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. But it’s still accurate.

The final chapter in our forthcoming book, SuperFreakonomics, is about global warming: the risks, uncertainties, misperceptions, and proposed solutions. It has already come in for steep criticism by, among others, a prominent environmental blogger and a well-known environmental advocacy group. Their criticism has radiated into the blogosphere, producing many further stories with headlines like “SuperFreakonomics Gets Climate Change Super Freaking Wrong.”

They have given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not. (Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics)

Take That, Al Baby! Monckton Makes It to the Glenn Beck Radio Program...and Beyond Glenn Beck's third hour of radio this morning delivered a significant blow to the international treaty President Obama is expected to sign in Copenhagen in early December. Mr. Beck spoke for approximately fifteen minutes with Lord Christoper Monckton. A former advisor on science policy to Lady Margaret Thatcher, Monckton has become known around the world as the "Anti Al Gore."

Those who read my previous article, or who have now seen the video of Lord Monckton's October 14th lecture at Bethel University, will already know that his message now extends beyond the global warming lie itself. Rather his Lordship is busily sounding an alarm about where that lie will shortly take us if we do not act quickly to stop it.

Beck and Monckton clearly have an easy conversational rapport. The two have spoken in the past, and both possess an excellent sense of humor. A few humorous moments aside, though, the seriousness of the subject before them was clearly driving the discussion part 1, discussion part 2 . (Kirsten E. Lombard, Right Side News)

WASHINGTON — With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.

The United States and many other major pollutant-emitting countries have concluded that it is more useful to take incremental but important steps toward a global agreement rather than to try to jam through a treaty that is either too weak to address the problem or too onerous to be ratified and enforced.

Instead, representatives at the Copenhagen meeting are likely to announce a number of interim steps and agree to keep talking next year. (NYT)

"We have to focus on what can realistically be done," says UN top climate change official Yvo de Boer. He does not believe in "a fully fledged new international treaty" in Copenhagen. (CoP15)

The Copenhagen climate change conference will not produce a new international treaty, the top United Nations climate change official has said, but the meeting will set out the political framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"A fully fledged new international treaty under the [UN Framework] Convention [on Climate Change] - I do not think that is going to happen," Yvo de Boer, charged with bringing December's negotiations to a successful conclusion, said in an interview with the Financial Times. "If you look at the limited amount of time remaining to Copenhagen, it's clear."

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting in London of 17 of the world's biggest emitters, Mr de Boer predicted governments would agree on the structure of a deal, the technical details of which could be filled in later.

To idealists, including those in some developing country governments and environmental groups, who hoped that this year's conference would produce a replacement to the Kyoto protocol, this might seem like a climbdown.

However, Mr de Boer pointed out: "If you look at the limited amount of time that remains to Copenhagen, we have to focus on what can realistically be done and how that can realistically be framed." (Financial Times)

The two-day meeting in the Major Economies Forum in London ended without news on binding commitments to fight global warming. (CoP15)

... thank God ...

The debate how to "fight against climate change" has advanced from absurd talk by hosts of dopes to their attempts to actually harm the civilization.

The intellectual little green men no longer discuss whether to screw the world economy but how to do it most optimally. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are at stake so you may guess that even relatively small disagreements and modifications of previous plans may induce substantial tension.

Moreover, it's obvious that these disgraceful policies are being mixed with egotistic interests of particular nations and individuals and the desire to increase protectionism, wealth redistribution, and other bad things. We are talking about an explosive mixture of junk.

When Gordon Brown spoke of ‘catastrophe’ yesterday, he wasn’t talking about his premiership or worrying about the UK under a Tory government.

Brown has always been rather quiet on climate change. His government hasn’t, but he has. We’ve always had the impression that he went along with the greening of New Labour a tad reluctantly. It’s as if he thought there were more pressing matters, even if he wasn’t quite sure what they were.

Radio 4’s The World Tonight summoned climate change secretary Ed Miliband to ask him if Brown was exaggerating:

Which would seem like a good moment to remember the cautionary words of climate scientist Mike Hulme:

Brown’s catastrophism and the catastrophic state of his premiership and government are linked of course. As his authority continues to melt spectacularly, his desperation to connect with the media, the electorate and his party is forced to the surface. A few strong words about catastrophic climate change are about the only straws he has left to cling to. Not that it will cut any ice at the ballot box. Brown is just one more green obstacle for the electorate to navigate around. (Climate Resistance)

CAMPAIGN groups will argue in the High Court today that the government is breaking the law by allowing Royal Bank of Scotland to invest in "environmentally damaging and socially irresponsible" projects.

In an unprecedented legal challenge, three groups will argue that the Treasury has failed to stop RBS, which is 70 per cent publicly owned, investing in companies that damage the environment or violate human rights.

The case is being brought by three climate and social justice campaigning groups – Platform, People & Planet and the World Development Movement. They believe taxpayers' funds should be spent only on projects that promote a sustainable and ethical future.

Today's hearing will determine whether their claim can proceed to a full hearing, likely to take place early next year. (The Scotsman)

“Personal carbon rations would have to be mandatory, imposed by Government in the same way that food rationing was introduced in the UK in 1939… Each person would receive an electronic card containing their year’s carbon credits …see the Tyndall Centre’s study on “domestic tradable quotas”… and their recent establishment on the political agenda…the card would have to be presented when purchasing energy or travel services, and the correct amount of carbon deducted. The technologies and systems already in place for direct debit systems and credit cards could be used.”

Preface. This is a factual account of the highly politicised concept of catastrophic man made climate change. The views quoted above are supported in principle by the UK govt but said to be ahead of their time. However, the means to achieve them are now being quietly introduced into main stream thinking through the systematic use of a political agenda that uses the alarming notion of catastrophic man made climate change as the means to force through a measure of social engineering unequalled in the UK in modern times. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

India’s climate change policy was in turmoil yesterday as its Environment Minister admitted that he had made a proposal to adjust the country’s position that caps on greenhouse gases should apply only to rich countries.

Jairam Ramesh denied suggesting that India abandon the Kyoto Protocol in a leaked letter to Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, before the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. He also reaffirmed India’s commitment to the protocol, which imposes binding caps on developed countries’ carbon emissions but does not limit those of the developing world.

However, he admitted sending the letter and suggesting that India should be open to discussing other options in order to shed its reputation as an obstacle to climate change talks. “My note suggested the possibility of some flexibility in India’s stance . . . I have never advocated abandoning the fundamental tenets of the Kyoto Protocol,” he said. (The Times)

With less than two months to go until the big-ticket UN climate change conference in Copenhagen from 7-18 December, are cracks appearing in the tough-as-nails approach that has characterised Indian officialdom?

A leading Indian newspaper reported on Monday that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, suggesting that Delhi should accept a deviation from the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change which puts the onus squarely on developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The letter, if translated into policy, would turn India's negotiating policy on its head.

The government is still to spell out whether or not it has accepted Mr Ramesh's proposal. The leaking of the letter to The Times of India suggests there are differences of opinion within the government on how to approach the negotiations. (BBC)

NEW DELHI: Disapproval by Congress and threat of resignation by a key negotiator on Tuesday forced environment minister Jairam Ramesh to take a U-turn on his statement suggesting radical changes in the country’s stated position on climate change.

In a written clarification, the minister reiterated India’s commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Action Plan. He stated that there is no change in India’s position on not accepting monitoring, verification and review of mitigation actions which are domestically driven and its objection to accept an internationally binding emission targets.

In essence, Mr Ramesh’s clarification was silent on the contentious issues raised in his letter to the prime minister. (Economic Times)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Andrew Revkin, who reports on environmental issues for The New York Times, floated an idea last week for combating global warming: Give carbon credits to couples that limit themselves to having one child.

Revkin later told CNSNews.com that he was not endorsing the idea, just trying to provoke some thinking on the topic.

Revkin participated via Web camera in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on “Covering Climate: What’s Population Got to Do With It” that was held at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. The other participants on the panel were Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic, and Emily Douglas, web editor for The Nation magazine.

At the event, Revkin said: “Well, some of the people have recently proposed: Well, should there be carbon credits for a family planning program in Africa let's say? Should that be monetized as a part of something that, you know, if you, if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward an accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?

“And I have even proposed recently, I can't remember if it's in the blog, but just think about this: Should--probably the single-most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children," said Revkin.

“So should there be, eventually you get, should you get credit--If we're going to become carbon-centric--for having a one-child family when you could have had two or three," said Revkin. "And obviously it's just a thought experiment, but it raises some interesting questions about all this.”

When CNSNews.com later followed up with questions about his comments, Revkin responded in an e-mail.

“I wasn't endorsing any of this, simply laying out the math and noting the reality that if one were serious about the population-climate intersection, it'd be hard to avoid asking hard questions about USA population growth,” wrote Revkin.

“By raising the notion of carbon credits for, say, single-child American families,” he continued, “I was aiming to provoke some thinking about where the brunt of emissions are still coming from on a per-capita basis.”

In a Sept. 19, 2009 blog entry, “Are Condoms the Ultimate Green-Technology?” Revkin cited an August 2009 study by the London School of Economics that highlighted having fewer children as a solution to diminishing our carbon footprint.

The study was sponsored by the British activist group Optimum Population Trust, which advocates reduced population growth.

“More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions,” blogged Revkin. “And recent research has resulted in renewed coverage of the notion that one of the cheapest ways to curb emissions in coming decades would be to provide access to birth control for tens of millions of women around the world who say they desire it. (Edwin Mora, CNSNews.com)

NGOs expressed concern Tuesday that European countries would "cannibalise" aid budgets rather than provide new funding to tackle climate change, after EU ministers failed to agree on the issue.

European finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg failed to agree who will pay what to help developing countries fight global warming after Poland led opposition to plans to boost funding by billions of euros.

Oxfam and other leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) urged European leaders to put new money on the table, saying it is a "make or break issue" ahead of crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

In a joint statement issued in London, they warned that the failure to promise new funding when EU heads of state meet later this month "could scupper a deal on climate change and set back the fight against poverty". (AFP)

Could climate change spark the first worldwide grassroots movement?

Even as politicians dial down expectations for the December 7-18 UN climate talks in Copenhagen, analysts and activists detect a groundswell of anger, channelled through the Internet and voiced especially by the young, demanding action on global warming.

Conventional wisdom says environmental issues wax at times of prosperity and wane when belts are tightened.

But these sources believe that adage no longer holds true in the face of the unique threat posed by climate change.

When the talks to craft a post-2012 climate pact get underway, leaders may find themselves facing a coordinated movement cutting across continents, creeds and class, they argue. (AFP)

Emissions of greenhouse gases from next year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa are expected to be 10 times those of the 2006 tournament in Germany. (CoP15)

A news feature written by a regional BBC reporter has turned out to be a surprising hit on the corporation’s online news site. In ‘What happened to global warming?’ (1), Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate correspondent for the BBC’s Look North in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, asked why the rise in global temperatures seems to have levelled off since the last record-breaking year of 1998. In doing so, he sent the BBC’s visitor statistics soaring.

Following its publication on 9 October, Hudson’s article was the most popular page on the BBC’s science pages for the next week. Climate-sceptical columnists and bloggers praised the BBC for taking seriously an issue that they have been flagging up for a while. The Telegraph’s Damian Thompson hailed it as ‘a clear departure from the BBC’s fanatical espousal of climate change orthodoxy’ (2). Everyone else, it seems, from the Guardian to Nature, are furious for the same reason: because the BBC is taking seriously an issue that sceptics have been flagging up for a while. Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, called it an ‘utterly backwards piece of nonsense’ (3). Such was the volume of outrage that Hudson’s senior colleague, Richard Black, has been motivated to write a rare defence of BBC editorial policy (4). (Stuart Blackman, sp!ked)

If you missed our earlier post here, The California Energy Commission is poised within weeks to do a regulatory smackdown on the thriving screen TV industry. Here’s this week’s cartoon:

On Oct. 17, Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, an island country off the coast of India, held a meeting of his Cabinet underwater to dramatize the risks he says his country faces from rising sea levels caused by global warming. Yesterday, Swedish scientist Nils-Axel Mörner, a specialist in sea level changes, wrote Mr. Nasheed the following letter: (Financial Post)

There is a bit of press covering a just-published paper that concludes that the current climate and ecological conditions in a remote lake along the north shore of Canada’s Baffin Island are unique within the past 200,000 years—and anthropogenic global warming is the root cause. Which of course, spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Somehow, that temperatures there were several degrees higher than present for a good third of the past 10,000 years and that there has been virtually no temperature trend in the area during past 50 years—the time usually associated with the greatest amount of human-caused “global warming”—was conveniently downplayed or ignored.

The research team led by the University of Colorado’s Yarrow Axford, reconstructed the environmental conditions in and around the Baffin Island lake by tracking the behavior of various environmental proxies that they recovered from a long core sample extracted from the lake bottom.

Here is what they concluded that has managed to capture the attention of the press corps (a release from University of Colorado playing up this finding no doubt helped as well):

Figure 1 shows the summer (June, July August) average temperature from the weather station located at Clyde, Northwest Territory, which is located on Baffin Island very near the site of the lake. There is no trend here from 1943 to 2008, the period of available data. The most remarkable events are a couple of very cold summers and one very warm summer—all in the 1970s. Summers in the most recent decade are little different than summers in the 1950s—hardly a sign that human-caused “global warming” has made environmental conditions there particularly unique.

Figure 1. Summer (JJA) average temperature from Clyde, N.W.T. from 1953-2008 (data source: NASA GISS)

Well, perhaps the temperatures during the past 50 years or so are themselves unique in the past 200 millennia?

Figure 2 is a temperature history of the lake as derived by the authors themselves. We’ve added the horizontal red line which shows the authors’ determination of current lake water temperatures, as well as the two red circles which encompass periods during the past 200,000 years in which the lake’s water temperature was higher than current. The most recent one stretched from about 6,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. The existence of this extended warm period during the early Holocene in this region is supported by other paleo-studies (e.g. Miller et al., 2005), so this result is nothing new.

Figure 2. Summer water temperature in the Baffin Island Lake inferred by the authors based on midge (mosquito-like insects)-assemblages. We’ve added the horizontal red line to indicate modern water temperatures, and the red circles to show periods during which the water temperatures were higher than modern values (adapted from Axford et al., 2009).

Given the history of temperatures in the region, both in the recent past and in the more distant past, is it hard to figure why any of this is particularly interesting.

In other words, apparently, the human warming influence on the climate has managed to overcome the natural cooling trend which is trying to take us down into the next ice age and climate conditions which simply would not support a population of 6.5 billion (and growing) homo sapiens.

So, for those concerned about the human condition (which should seem to include most of us) this should come welcome and celebrated news.

Axford, Y., et al., 2009. recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0907094106.

Miller G. H., et al., 2005. Holocene glaciation and climate evolution of Baffin Island, Arctic Canada. Quaternary Science Reviews, 24, 1703-1721. (WCR)

Another recent contradictory study to involving those pesky Chironomids. In this case, more fish during warming periods seem to account for less larval midge remains.

The Abstract below is from a recent paper by Millet, L., Arnaud, F., Heiri, O., Magny, M., Verneaux, V. and Desmet, M. 2009, entitled: Late-Holocene summer temperature reconstruction from chironomid assemblages of Lake Anterne, northern French Alps. The Holocene 19: 317-328: Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Craig Loehle
National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc.
Reprint available from NCASI (PDF)

Global satellite data is analyzed for temperature trends for the period January 1979 through June 2009. Beginning and ending segments show a cooling trend, while the middle segment evinces a warming trend. The past 12 to 13 years show cooling using both satellite data sets, with lower confidence limits that do not exclude a negative trend until 16 to 22 years. It is shown that several published studies have predicted cooling in this time frame. One of these models is extrapolated from its 2000 calibration end date and shows a good match to the satellite data, with a projection of continued cooling for several more decades.

Figure 6. Linear plus period model from Klyashtorin and Lyubushin (2003) overlaid on satellite data after intercept shift. Dotted line is model extrapolation post-2000 calibration period end. a) UAH. b) RSS.

The Scientists Speak:
The Future of CO2 in a Democratic Country: Plants and freedom-loving citizens see things pretty much alike. Featuring Dr. John Christy, University of Alabama, USA.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 751 individual scientists from 441 separate research institutions in 41 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Mixing Zone of the Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents, Off the Coast of Japan. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Extinction (Real-World Observations - Plants: Migrating): Earth's plants are capable of adapting to significant global warming, especially when the air's CO2 content rises concurrently, as well as opportunistically extending their ranges when temperatures rise.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Diasotrophic Cyanobacteria (Kranz et al., 2009), Giant Knotweed (Onoda et al., 2009), Plantago Asiatica (Onoda et al., 2009), and Tomato (Jin et al., 2009).

Coral Reefs of Northern Tanzania: How have they fared in the face of increased climatic disturbance and increased fisheries management?

A few weeks ago I was asked the questions below by Katrine Haugsdal with respect to a survey study titled ”Futures of the Global Energy Game by year 2030″. The questions and answers may be of interest to readers.

This interview is part of a research project on plausible futures of the global energy game by 2030. The research explores how the energy game may develop in this time-horizon, which drivers will be shaping the rules of the game, and what the implications may be for the current and future stakeholder landscape.

1. In your mind, what historic key events have shaped the global energy game to date? What changes in climate do we see today as a consequence of these events?

The politicalization of the climate issue to the extent that only a narrow viewpoint is widely communicated has led to an overstatement of the risk of climate change due to the emissions from human produced sources of energy. We do see a consequence of these emissions (i.e. the changes in atmospheric concentrations of CO2), but the effect on other aspects of the climate system, such as weather patterns which cause drought, floods, hurricanes, etc has been seriously exaggerated relative to natural fluctuations in the climate system and from other human climate forcings such as land use change and aerosols.

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp. http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/Testimony-written.pdf

2. Which organizations in the energy game (companies, regulators, financers, national governments, etc) set the tone that others play by, to date? Are there specific organizations with high/low focus on environment that should be noted in this context?

The IPCC and CCSP assessments, as well as the science statements completed by the AGU, AMS and NRC, are completed by a small subset of climate scientists who are often the same individuals. This oligarchy has prevented science of the climate system to be accurately communicated to policymakers (e.g. see, see and see).

3. Which entrants that have come into the energy game in the last decade have most changed the game, and how? Any entrants with a particular (or total lack of) environmental focus that should be noted in this context?

4. What do you think are the most important external (macro) factors that will influence how the energy game may unfold up to 2030?

The question will be whether the inaccurate communication of climate science to the politicians and to policymakers will continue.

5. Is it likely that we will see changes in the overall (cost/technology/ market) structure in the energy game up to 2030 due to changes in the climate?

Climate has always varied on space and time scale due to natural climate forcings and feedback; e.g. see

Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38. http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-260.pdf

To assume that the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere is going to significantly change the actual risks we have always faced is naïve and misleading. A focus on reducing vulnerability is a much more effective approach; e. g. see Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2004: Discussion Forum: A broader perspective on climate change is needed. IGBP Newsletter, 59, 16-19. http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/NR-139.pdf

6. Do you see any specific technologies that can come into play in this time horizon that can speed up, slow down or stop the climate change? Are there any breakthroughs on the horizon?

7. Who among existing players – or potential new entrants/invaders – do you think will suffer most through 2030 because of changes in the global energy game, and when and why?

Any users of energy will suffer who are prevented from access due to limitations on the types of energy that are produced. For example, if coal could be used to generate electricity and only produce CO2 and H2O, this should be viewed as a major environmental win, not prohibited because CO2 is produced. To limit access to this fuel, when burned cleanly, will result in sectors of the economy and the population suffering.

8. Who among existing players – or potential new entrants/invaders – do you think will prevail most through 2030 because of changes in the global energy game, and when and why?

If the politics of climate science continue to dominate as they are now, the energy community who promotes wind, solar and other alternative energy sources will prevail, although at a significant cost to the economy.

9. What do you think are the most important long-term external risks that players in the global energy game have under-attended to?

The exclusion of energy sources, such as coal before there are adequate replacements, risks serious economic and social upheaval.

10. If you had a crystal ball, and you could ask a question to it about the global energy game to 2030, what would your question be?

11. What experts worldwide would you like to ask about their opinions on the global energy game or climate issues towards 2030?

This is a very good question! My recommendation is that climate scientists who do NOT have a vested interest in the 2007 IPCC report and the USA CCSP reports, [including] those who are labeled as “skeptics”, be commissioned to write a report evaluating the science of those reports (a “red team” exercise). There is one USA NRC report already that did that in 2005

Both reports were essentially ignored in the completion of the IPCC and CCSP reports.

12. Is there anything that we have not talked about and that you consider important for understanding the global energy game by 2030?

I want to emphasize that climate and energy are two distinct issues. There is overlap but they have many aspects that require different policy decisions. To conflate the two together is an inappropriate approach which is doomed to result in ineffective and costly policy decisions. (Climate Science)

The proposed 1,500-megawatt Desert Rock facility near Shiprock, NM has been sent back to the EPA for a new air pollution permit. (1) The EPA originally issued a permit in 2008, but under the new administration appealed to the Environment Appeals Board for permission to rescind the permit and the permission was granted on September 25. Needless to say, opponents of coal-fired power plants around the country were quite pleased.

This appears to be the plan for the future. No new coal plants, no new nuclear plants; rather rely on wind and solar for energy while prices go through the roof.

What did the Navajos think about this latest turn of events? The president of the Navajo Nation joined other Native American leaders in assailing environmentalists who have sought to block or shut down coal-fired power plants that provide vital jobs and revenue to tribes in northern Arizona.

“These are individuals and groups who claim to have put the welfare of fish and insects above the survival of the Navajo people when in fact their only goal is to stop the use of coal in the US and the Navajo Nation,” said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., who presides over America’s largest Indian reservation, which sprawls over three states and claims a population of about 250,000. (2)

In 2005, environmentalists successfully closed the Mojave Generating station in Laughlin, NV after a pollution lawsuit. That shutdown cost the tribe more than $6.5 million per year, and closure of the Navajo Generating Station would wipe out another $11 million. (2)

At this point in time the Navajos would be much better off if they were located in Europe or Asia. Europe, which has led the way in implementing Kyoto Protocol accords will have 40 new coal-fired power plants by 2015. Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired electrical generating plants by 2020 and Italy plans to double its reliance on coal in just five years. (3)

China is building a new coal-fired power plant every week and India will double its coal-based electricity generation by 2020. (3) The combined carbon emissions from the new coal-fired power plants that China and India are building between now and 2012 are five times the total savings of the Kyoto accords. (4) (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

One of the saddest things for me about climate science is how political it has become. Science works by having an open dialog that ultimately converges on the truth, for the common benefit of everyone. Most scientific fields enjoy this free flow of ideas.

There are serious scientific and technological issues in studying our climate, how it responds to human-caused emission of greenhouse gases, and what the most effective solutions will be for global warming. But unfortunately, the policy implications are vast and there is a lot at stake in economic terms.

It seems inevitable that discussions of climate science would degenerate to being deeply politicized and polarized. Depending on which views are adopted, individuals, industries, and countries will gain or lose, which provides ample motive. Once people with a strong political or ideological bent latch onto an issue, it becomes hard to have a reasonable discussion; once you’re in a political mode, the focus in the discussion changes. Everything becomes an attempt to protect territory. Evidence and logic becomes secondary, used when advantageous and discarded when expedient. What should be a rational debate becomes a personal and venal brawl. Rational, scientific debate that could advance the common good gets usurped by personal attacks and counterattacks.

Political movements always have extremists — bitterly partisan true believers who attack anybody they feel threatens their movement. I’m sure you know the type, because his main talent is making himself heard. He doesn’t bother with making thoughtful arguments; instead, his technique is about shrill attacks in all directions, throwing a lot of issues up and hoping that one will stick or that the audience becomes confused by the chaos. These folks can be found at the fringe of every political movement, throughout all of history. Technology has amplified them in recent years. First with talk radio and then with cable TV, the extremists found larger and larger audiences.

The Internet provides the ultimate extremist platform. Every blogger can reach millions, and given the lack of scrutiny or review over content, there is little accountability. Indeed, the more over-the-top the discourse is the better — because it is entertaining. Ancient Romans watched gladiators in much the same way that we read angry bloggers.

That seems to be the case with Joe Romm, a blogger with strong views about global warming and what he calls “climate progress.” In a recent series of blog posts, Romm levels one baseless, bald charge after another. What provoked this? The best summary I’ve seen comes from a comment by DaveyNC to the Freakonomics blog which says:

No, no, no, no — you have committed apostasy; heresy! You are not allowed to speak of warming except in the most emotional, alarmist tones!

You are not allowed to follow an objective, skeptical line of reasoning in this matter. You are not allowed to consider whether or not it is cost-efficient or even possible to cease all carbon emissions; you simply must do it.

That pretty much sums it up, as far as I can tell. SuperFreakonomics dares to comment on climate issues in a manner that Romm sees as contrary to his agenda, so he sets out to smear the book and me as a figure in the book. (Nathan Myhrvold, Freakonomics)

Great new study out of the good folks from the Institute for Energy Research about what American energy prices would look like if we, as lemmings, were to follow the lead of Germany in its support for alternative energy.

John Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister, will today launch a ferocious attack on the “landowners and nimbys” who he says are holding up the installation of wind farms across Britain and thus hindering the fight against climate change.

In unashamed class-warrior style, Mr Prescott lashes out at opponents of windpower who successfully block planning applications for wind turbines because they may spoil their “chocolate box view”. He will tell the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) at its annual conference in Liverpool: “We cannot let the squires and the gentry stop us meeting our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children and our children's children.” (The Independent)

A yellow and black pattern shows full (black) and additional space (yellow) at the temporary storage of High level radioactive nuclear waste at Sellafield nuclear plant

High-level radioactive nuclear waste at Sellafield. The government is considering allowing the industry to dump low-level waste in ordinary landfill sites

The government is poised to allow nuclear power generators to use ordinary landfill sites for dumping "hundreds of thousands of tons" of waste in an attempt to reduce the £73bn cost of decommissioning old reactors.

The move has triggered a swath of applications around the country from big corporations trying to cash in on this potential new business, but infuriated local councils and campaign groups. (The Guardian)

WASHINGTON - Half of those hospitalized with the new H1N1 virus are under 25, a clear illustration that the pandemic is affecting the young disproportionately, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.

They said reports from 27 U.S. states show 53 percent of people sick enough to be hospitalized with H1N1 flu are under the age of 25, with only 7 percent of hospitalizations among people 65 and older.

"This is really, really different from what we see with seasonal flu," the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat told reporters. "With seasonal flu, about 60 percent of hospitalizations occur in people 65 and over.

She stressed the report was incomplete but said if anything, it was underestimating the extent of the pandemic.

And an analysis of 292 deaths from 28 states showed that younger people than usual are also dying, she said.

"Almost a quarter of deaths are occurring in young people under the age of 25. Specifically, 23.6 percent of the deaths are in that age group. About 65 percent of the deaths are in people 25 to 64 years of age," Schuchat said.

Just 12 percent of deaths were among people over 65. In a normal year, 90 percent of those who die from flu are over 65.

With cooler weather, other viruses and infections are showing up, making the picture confusing. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Researchers have long seen signs of autism in children born prematurely, and some studies have suggested that such signs can develop into full-blown autism in childhood. A study out Monday suggests that complications during pregnancy and early life may be responsible for this early risk.

It's unclear just how many children born prematurely will develop autism. The study, in the November issue of Pediatrics, included 1216 children with autistic disorders and 6080 without.

When Dr. Susanne Buchmayer and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, took various factors into account, children who were born at 31 weeks of pregnancy or earlier were about 1.5 times as likely to develop autism compared to babies born at full term. Those born from 32 to 36 weeks were about 1.3 times as likely to develop the condition.

However, when they took complications of pregnancy and early life into account, there were no significant differences between babies born at 36 weeks and earlier and those born later, suggesting that the complications themselves, and not the prematurity, were the link. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Cutting down on processed meats and red meat cooked at high temperatures as well as high-fat diary products may help reduce a woman's risk of risk of developing breast cancer, hints results of a large study on diet and breast cancer.

Western-style diets have been linked to breast cancer, the study team notes in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, as have meat, eggs and dairy foods, but research on these dietary components and breast cancer risk has yielded inconsistent results.

Nearly all studies on the relationship, they add, have been done in populations where most people follow fairly similar eating patterns. This can mean that only the very strongest diet-disease links are identified.

To address this problem, the researchers looked at 367,993 women from 10 different European countries participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. During follow-up, which averaged about nine years, 7,119 women were diagnosed with breast cancer.

While there were no consistent relationships between consumption of meat, eggs or dairy and breast cancer risk, the researchers did find a 10 percent increased risk among women who consumed the most processed meat, while heavy butter consumption boosted risk by 28 percent, but only in premenopausal women.

Risks associated with red meat eating varied country-by-country, with risks being greater in countries where cooking red meat at high temperatures was more popular. (Reuters Health)

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future -- period," President Obama told Congress in a health-care address last month.

Well, that depends on what the meaning of "plan" is.

Senate Democrats wanted to protect doctors from scheduled cuts in Medicare payments over the next 10 years, but there was a problem: Doing so would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit, making mincemeat of Obama's promise. So Democrats hatched a novel scheme: They would pass the legislation separately, so the $250 billion cost wouldn't be part of the main reform "plan," thereby allowing the president to claim that that bill wouldn't increase the deficit.

Republicans, who had been losing traction in their effort to fight a health-care overhaul, could hardly believe the gift the majority had given them. (Washington Post)

The Institute of Medicine issued a report today calling on whole scale changes to the National School Lunch and National School Breakfast programs (although nowhere does it question why we even have national nutrition programs, which surely properly belong to the states and/or school districts. But I digress). The changes all sound sensible enough: setting calorie limits for meals, increasing the amount of whole grains, fruit and vegetables in school meals, and reducing fat and sodium.

We should be grateful that the authors at least acknowledge the budgetary impacts of their recommendations. So often it is assumed that school nutrition programs can and should be changed regardless of the costs to taxpayers. Last week I taped a television debate show called Two Way Street (the show is scheduled to air in January, so check your local listings!) with a woman called Ann Cooper, the “Renegade Lunch Lady” (here’s Ann’s website). Ann is on a mission to “change the way our children are eating”. Her intentions are good, and I certainly agree with her that our woeful agriculture policies are skewing incentives towards certain food groups and away from fruit and vegetables.

Having said that, Ann’s experience with school cafeterias was, from what I can gather, gained in East Hampton, NY and Berkeley, CA. Hardly representative samples of consumers across America (although she has reportedly worked in Harlem and New York City, also). So often “success” in these sorts of places is seen as a scalable blueprint for the rest of the country. Indeed, Ann used her time on the show to encourage viewers to contact their member of Congress and urge increased Federal funding for nutrition programs.

On the contrary, I would argue that people instead encourage their congresscritters to devolve their ill-gotten power over school nutrition programs back to the local school districts, where they can make the best assessment of the costs and benefits of different plans, given local needs and resources. (Sallie James, Cato at liberty)

A few more disturbing findings have come out of Florida in this continuing saga.

First, there was the Brincku video, in which domestically-marked National Gypsum product has been shown to cause the typical "Chinese" symptoms.

Let's see what the Gypsum Association has to say about these developments. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

NEW YORK - People who live in green environs may be less likely than those surrounded by concrete to suffer a range of health problems, particularly depression and anxiety, according to a new study.

Researchers found that among more than 300,000 Dutch adults and children, those living near more "green spaces" tended to have lower rates of 15 different health conditions.

The link was especially strong when it came to depression and anxiety, suggesting, the researchers say, that respite from stress and the hustle and bustle of urban life may be an important for reason for the benefits of green.

The findings are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Past studies have found that people who live in greener environments tend to report better subjective health. But this study is the first to use objective data on specific mental and physical health diagnoses, lead researcher Dr. Jolanda Maas, of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, told Reuters Health in an email. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Have a headache and don't know why? It could be high levels of air pollution.

A study from the densely populated Santiago Province of Chile -- a region surrounded by the Coastal and Andes mountains and, therefore, geographically prone to air pollution - found increased hospital admissions for migraines and other headaches on days of elevated air pollution readings.

Further investigations are needed to confirm the consistency of these findings in different regions, Dr. Sabit Cakmak, with Health Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and co-investigators say. (Reuters Health)

TALKING on a mobile phone distracts people so much that they do not even notice when a clown on a unicycle passes them in the street.

Those motorists who persist in talking on their phone and driving at the same time might look sheepish when they see the results of a new study on "inattentive blindness" published in the upcoming issue of the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Dr Ira Hyman Jr, of Western Washington University, looked at the differences in attention levels of the four different groups of walkers – those who walked alone, those who walked in pairs, those who tuned in to their iPod or those who chatted on their phone.

Of the groups, the most inattentive were the phone talkers, with only about 25 per cent of them able to notice a clown on a one-wheeled bike.

The study also found that people even had trouble walking when they were talking on their mobiles at the same time.

The study fond phone talkers walked more slowly and were more likely to weave their way down the street.

The Coca-Cola Company is all about health lately, apparently. It’s part of the recently launched Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a food industry-led anti-obesity campaign; it’s working with the American Academy of Family Physicians on a nutritional education campaign; and now it’s releasing Coke in a smaller can to help consumers manage their calorie intake.

Well, that’s the stated motive. It’s hypothetically possible that there are also some less altruistic motives for creating 90-calorie Coke containers — for example, the move makes the company look more friendly and health-conscious, and I’d imagine the profit margins are higher for the smaller cans.

Whether it will actually do anything to curb obesity remains to be seen. As Slate points out, people may just wind up drinking two mini cans of Coke instead of one regular can, which basically means they get more calories while feeling better about themselves for drinking in smaller portions.

Of course, as we know from company CEO Muhtar Kent’s recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, it’s not Coke that makes people fat; it’s lack of exercise. If Coke cans are smaller, maybe people will burn more calories just because they have to get up more often to grab a new one.

Or maybe not. Either way, Coca-Cola makes money. (Katherine Glover, BNET)

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials are examining claims on the front of food packages to see if they give a misleading picture of a product's nutritional value, the head of the Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday.

The FDA is looking for violations of food labeling rules and will take action against any "egregious examples," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said.

"Some nutritionists have questioned whether this information is more marketing oriented than health oriented, and judging from some of the labels that we have seen, we think this is a valid concern," Hamburg said.

She said that FDA officials were also developing a regulation that they would propose to define nutritional criteria for claims made on the front of food packages. (Reuters)

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere. (NYT)

Recycling: an eco-ritual we should bin - Reprocessing waste might one day be cost-effective, but for now it's a moralistic reminder that humans are greedy.

Maybe there’s a shortage of sceptical thinkers at the moment, but in the past couple of years I seem to have become the UK media’s go-to guy when they want somebody to say that recycling is a waste of time. As it happens, I’m not ‘against’ recycling – it’s pretty hard to have a principled position on a method of waste disposal – but I am against the way that recycling has been placed on a pedestal as not merely a means of dealing with rubbish, but as potentially a saviour of Planet Earth and a basis for the moral renewal of society. (Rob Lyons, sp!ked)

Research to develop genetically modified crops must be stepped up as part of a £2bn "grand challenge" to avoid future food shortages, an influential panel of scientists said yesterday. In its report, the Royal Society said that GM techniques would be needed to boost yields and help crops survive harsher climates, as the global population rises and global warming worsens.

But the report said GM was not the only answer, and that measures to improve crop management, such as improved irrigation, were needed too. (The Guardian)

The Washington Post reports that a press conference held at the National Press Club today (Oct 19) purporting to be a statement by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversing its position on climate change is a hoax.

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group -- and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress.

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in.

The Post also reported that the prankster was confronted by an official from the real Chamber of Commerce who shouted that the giant business lobby has not changed its mind about global warming.

"This guy is a fake! He's lying! This is a stunt that I've never seen before," said Eric Wohlschlegel, an official at the actual Chamber of Commerce, who said he'd heard about the hoax event from a reporter who'd mistakenly shown up at the chamber's headquarters.

The fake Chamber of Commerce official, who called himself "Hingo Sembra," did not give his real name to reporters, saying only that he represented a coalition of climate activists.

The Guardian UK also reported that the event was a hoax, and it worked way too well.

In today's instant news era, that wasn't quite soon enough. Several green organizations tweeted or blogged on the about-face. Reuters news agency put out a straight news story about the Chamber's apparent U-turn, and the Washington Post and New York Times put the story on their news sites (both later removed the stories from their websites). CNBC actually sought – and got – comment from analysts. It also broke its programming to have a reporter read out the fake press release. (The Energy Collective)

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it was the victim of fraud Monday after a group claiming to represent the organization said the Chamber had switched its position on climate change.

A Chamber of Commerce spokesman said he broke up a group holding a fake press briefing at the National Press Club stating that the Chamber now supports the science of climate change and stringent legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He said the group used a chamber emblem at the briefing.

The spokesman said the Chamber hasn't questioned the science of climate change but rather some of the policies that Democratic leaders are pursuing to cut greenhouse gases. The Chamber is investigating those responsible for the event. An individual who called Dow Jones Newswires and said he represented "the Yes Men" claimed responsibility.

The hoax follows several prominent businesses leaving the Chamber in recent weeks, saying the organization doesn't represent their views on climate legislation. Environmental groups have highlighted the departures in a press campaign as part of an effort to pressure the Chamber to change its opposition to climate legislation under consideration in Congress.

The fraudulent meeting was reported as news by several news organizations, including Reuters, CNBC and Fox Business. The National Press Club, CNBC and Fox Business wouldn't immediately comment. Reuters later issued a correction on the story. Fox Business is a unit of News Corp. (NWS, NWSA), which owns Dow Jones & Company, publisher of this newswire. (Dow Jones)

Will the real U.S. Chamber of Commerce please stand up?

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group -- and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress.

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in.

...

After the jig was up, a real reporter asked the fake spokesman if he thought this kind of event -- if lying about who he was, particularly -- was really going to help his side win the national climate debate.

"Don't know," he said, apparently speaking as himself. (Washington Post )

Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate.

Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year.

Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker. On cap-and-trade, Olympia Snowe's role will be played by Graham as he partners with Kerry to commit the U.S. to the flawed science and disastrous economics of climate change. (IBD)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has turned his back on the latest science, economics, the Republican Party, and American national security, by announcing his new partnership with Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to find “the winning formula” to pass global warming cap-and-trade legislation.

Graham is now touting his view that man-made global warming fears are real and can be “solved” by passing Congressional cap-and-trade legislation. Graham teamed up with Sen. Kerry to write an October 11 New York Times op-ed explaining that the GOP and Democrats should “work together to address an urgent crisis facing the world.”

Graham has latched on to perhaps the silliest of all arguments and the most insulting to voters’ intelligence: that somehow passing a congressional climate bill will lead to fewer wars in the future. (Marc Morano, Human Events)

Murkowski on 'cap and trade' - If the final climate change bill promotes the expansion of nuclear power and oil exploration in the U.S., Sen. Lisa Murkowski might support it.

"Count me as one of those who will keep my mind open as we move forward," Murkowski said in a C-SPAN interview Sunday.

Murkowski is the senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee.

"Murkowski's remarks came after Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) published a column in the New York Times with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in which they vowed to work together to advance legislation tackling global warming," the Washington Post said.

"We can't just count on renewables," Sen. Murkowski said. "We must aggressively start pursuing nuclear" energy, the paper reported.

In a statement Wednesday, she said she supported addressing climate change in a way that is economically safe and environmentally meaningful.

She said she hopes the Graham/Kerry column marks a turning point in the debate. (Fairfax News-Miner)

A co-sponsor of cap-and-trade legislation has tried to convince the public that the regime would cost families only "about a postage stamp a day." The real cost might be closer to next-day delivery rates.

Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, testifying before Congress last week, said the House global warming bill will slow economic growth in the next few decades and cause "significant" job losses in the fossil fuel industry.

During last Wednesday's session of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Elmendorf said the carbon cap-and-trade provisions of the comically named American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 would cut GDP below what it would otherwise have been by 0.25% to 0.75% by 2020. The impact in 2050 would be 1% to 3.5%.

Elmendorf's office issued the same warning in a report last month.

The cap-and-trade legislation, sponsored by Democratic Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California and passed in the House in June, is intended to cut domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050. This would drive U.S. per capita CO2 emission levels "below those of George Washington's first term as president," economist Garrett Vaughn wrote in IBD in August.

Such low emission levels can't be reached without economic pain, and the cost will surely be more than Markey's "postage stamp a day." Any sharp reduction will require the country to move almost entirely away from fossil fuels — not a cheap transition.

Neither would it be meaningful. The churning shift simply would not make a real difference in global CO2 levels. The Environmental Protection Agency itself said drastic CO2 emission cutbacks made in the U.S. are virtually worthless if developing nations China and India don't cut their greenhouse gas emissions. (IBD)

An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints?

It's long been a mantra on the left that people are a plague on the earth, ravaging its surface for food and resources, polluting its atmosphere and endangering its species. Now we are endangering its very climate to the point of extinction. Even the result of our breathing — carbon dioxide — has been declared by the EPA to be a dangerous pollutant.

Treaties like Kyoto and the upcoming economic suicide pact to be forged in Copenhagen have focused on the instruments and byproducts of our civilization. Now the focus is shifting increasingly to the people who built it.

New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not.

Participating via Web cam, Revkin volunteered that in allocating carbon credits as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, "if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?"

He went on to say that "probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children."

"More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions," Rivkin has blogged, wondering "whether this means we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation." Save the trees, not the children. (IBD)

Here is a nice example of a genre. It includes little subtleties such as getting a name wrong that you have previously used correctly, but mainly relies on the hoary old technique of attaching a reply to a question different from the one originally posed.

First, here is the correspondence (in reversed order) as it appears in “Outlook”:

I did not mean fudged according to your definition. I meant it according to the definition of the transitive verb form in my copy of Chambers dictionary. I cite, for example, the continuous rewriting of the past as demonstrated in one of the links in the reference I gave you.

Subject: Re: "James Hansen, notorious among global warming critics as a ruthless fudger of data"

Mr. Brignell,
If you did not mean that Hansen "fudged" data, why did you write that he "fudged" data?

What exactly did you mean by that? The suggestion that I do a Google search hardly suffices -- I am more than familiar with Hansen's work, and am not about to investigate every Google link out there when it's you that is making the claim.

> No, I did not mean that. It should not be difficult to find links to the
> critiques on the web via Google, but if you want somewhere to start you can
> try:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Appell [mailto:appell@nasw.org]
> Sent: 14 October 2009 23:48
> To: webmaster@numberwatch.co.uk
> Subject: "James Hansen, notorious among global warming critics as a ruthless
> fudger of data"

> On your Web page "How we know they know they are lying" at
> http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm
> you write:
> "James Hansen, notorious among global warming critics as a ruthless
> fudger of data...."
> I'd be interested in what evidence you have that Hansen "fudged" data --
> which I take to mean not that calculational mistakes might have been
> made -- which all scientists invariably make -- but that he wrote down
and published "6" (say) when he knew full-well the answer was (say) "3".

It begins with the heartwarming family scene of a father reading a story to his daughter.

But the bedtime tale turns out to be a terrifying account of drowning puppies, rabbits dying of thirst and the end of the world as we know it.

This is the Government's controversial television commercial about the dangers of global warming, which has led to more than 200 complaints being lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority. (Daily Mail)

Author and scientist Michael Crichton identified exploitation of fear by environmental groups in his book “State of Fear”. But in a January 17, 2003 he identified another concern, “Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.” Almost daily mainstream media reports appear to confirm Crichton’s position. Media are usually compliant because they don’t understand the science and are biased by their politics. A good example appeared recently through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). (Tim Ball, CFP)

Science reporting that downplays sober science in favour of the shrill shriek of climate denialists is nothing but propaganda (The Guardian)

Much commentary and debate has arisen surrounding BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson's October 9 article entitled "What happened to global warming?" in which he stated that the warmest year recorded globally was 1998 and therefore suggested that climate change may not necessarily be caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, which have continued to increase since the late 90s.

Hudson outlined the arguments of climate change sceptics, who believe that natural cycles that humans do not influence are in fact responsible for how warm our planet is, such as solar output and ocean cycles. Some argue that we are now in fact in a period of global cooling, rather than warming.
The article is not entirely one-sided, including quotes from scientists who believe that climate change caused by humans is indeed a threat, but the reader is left with the impression that global warming might not exist and might well not be caused by humans. And this is what has attracted so much attention: it appears, as Telegraph writer and apparent climate change sceptic Damian Thompson wrote in a blog post, an "amazing U-turn on climate change," citing views that are often dismissed as minority.

The piece started off on Hudson's blog on the BBC website, but made it onto the official news site a few hours later. As Guardian writer Leo Hickman pointed out, Hudson's article was, if accessed from the BBC news front page, labelled as 'features, views and analysis," but once you reach the article it looks like a simple news story. (Emma Heald, Editors Weblog)

Translation from Czech: L.M.

Instead of participating in the addition of further arguments of the philosophical i.e. unquantifiable type - which is what currently dominates the "ideological clash" between the champions of freedom on one side and the environmentalists and advocates of non-freedom on the other side, let us focus on some elementary economic data, hypotheses, theories, and models which underlie these big "confrontations". Maybe, exactly these considerations will convince a reader or two. Otherwise, the discussion resembles a "dialog of the deaf". It's self-evident that only a small wedge of all these problems has been selected for this article.

It is more than obvious that we are objects in a strange game that is being played with all of us. It is more than obvious that among those who are deciding about these issues on behalf of us, i.e. among the politicians, no genuine dialog about global warming or its costs is taking place - especially not about the costs of mitigation (and I know quite a bit about the situation). It is also more than obvious that a majority of the world's (and even our) politicians - without dedicating any time to a serious investigation of these questions - has concluded that the global warming game is an easy, politically correct, and personally highly beneficial card (which moreover guarantees that they're not and they will never be responsible for the costs of this fight because the costs will be covered by future generations).

A former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says the real purpose of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18 is to use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government.

"At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed," Lord Christopher Monckton told a Minnesota Free Market Institute audience on Thursday at Bethel University in St. Paul.

"Your president will sign it. Most of the Third World countries will sign it, because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it," he told the audience of some 700 attendees. (WorldNetDaily)

“Not Evil Just Wrong,” the new documentary debunking much of the global warming movement, is reaching the public at an opportune time. Not only did the film’s director, Phelim McAleer, just publicly embarrass former Vice President Al Gore at a global warming Q&A, but major news outlets are now revealing the earth’s temperature hasn’t gone up for at least a decade.

Yet, “Not Evil Just Wrong” still won’t get the attention of your average Michael Moore polemic. That’s a shame, since it’s far more balanced than Moore’s body of work and offers a message few mainstream documentaries are willing to touch. (Christian Toto, Big Hollywood)

Not Evil Just Wrong reviewed - “Watch this film, and use the knowledge that you will gain to lobby your Senator to vote against the Australian emissions trading bill.”

This documentary film is an examination of the human effects of environmental alarmism, with especial reference to the still hypothetical “problem” of human-caused global warming. The film is not so much about the science of climate change as it is about explaining the sociology and politics of what is now perhaps the world’s greatest-ever scare campaign. (Bob Carter, Quadrant)

The Copenhagen conference in December must be the moment when nations reach a historic agreement about the future of the planet’s climate, the Prime Minister has said today. (Prime Minister Gordon Brown MP)

17 major economies finish their climate discussions at the Major Economies Forum meeting in London today. The British Prime Minister urges world leaders to attend the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. (CoP15)

The Prime Minister is trying to persuade Barack Obama and other world leaders to seize the moment and clinch a deal at the Copenhagen summit on climate change. Geoffrey Lean assesses his chances of success. (Daily Telegraph)

A two-day meeting of officials from countries responsible for the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions ended Monday in London with hints that rich and developing nations might be able to bridge at least some of their differences on issues hobbling agreement on a new climate treaty.

The session was the sixth in a string of informal meetings of “major economies” — 16 countries plus the European Union — initiated by the Obama administration last spring.

The meetings, building on an earlier series of sessions started by the Bush administration, focused on the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases to build momentum toward a new climate treaty when formal negotiations take place in December in Copenhagen.

At a news conference after the meeting, officials from the United States and Britain rejected the idea that a deadline set by the world’s countries to negotiate a new climate agreement by December would slip. (NYT)

A global treaty to fight climate change is hanging "in the balance", Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, said last night, although there were signs that developed countries were preparing to roll back on their demand that developing countries agree to long-term cuts in emissions.

At the end of a two-day meeting in London of those countries responsible for 80% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, Miliband said: "There is a universal view that we need to get an agreement, but not at any price. It is not a done deal and remains in the balance in my view."

While Miliband felt some progress had been made in London, there was an uncompromising assessment from Barack Obama's climate envoy, Todd Stern, who spoke of "robust" discussion.

He said any agreement would be constructed from commitments made by individual countries, not a global target, and that developing economies, such as China and India, would have to "stand behind" the commitments they made. (The Guardian)

NEW DELHI: India seems to have begun to shuffle its feet in the climate change negotiations. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh, in a confidential letter to the PM, has suggested that India junk the Kyoto Protocol, delink itself from G77 -- the 131-member bloc of developing nations -- and take on greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments under a new deal without any counter guarantee of finances and technology.

This proposal comes just after he wrote to the PM suggesting India permit strict external scrutiny -- just as is done under IMF and WTO -- of the mitigation measures it takes at its own cost.

If accepted by the government, the minister's proposal will radically shift India's stand away from its position on climate negotiations that governments of all political hues have backed since 1990 and which was defended robustly as recently as at the UN talks in Bangkok earlier this month.

The minister has justified the proposed shift of gears by repeating his argument that India need not be seen as a deal-breaker and should try to curb emissions in its own interest. He has also pointed to the advantages -- a permanent seat on the Security Council, for instance -- that it can hope to reap with a changed stance. (Times of India)

New Delhi, Oct 19 With questions raised over his reported views on India's stand on climate change, Union Environment Minister Ramesh today stood by the Kyoto Protocol which seeks deeper emission cuts from developed nations.

"The voluntary actions of developing countries could not be equated with the commitments of developed countries," Ramesh said in a meeting with his Japanese counterpart Sakihito Ozawa who is here to participate in the Climate Change Technology Conference to be held on Wednesday.

Ramesh's views virtually contradicted reports that he had written Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting that India should junk the Kyoto Protocol, delink itself from G-77, permit external scrutiny of measures it takes to check greenhouse gas emissions besides taking binding cuts in carbon emissions. (PTI)

NEW DELHI: Under criticism for a new proposal that suggests a shift in India’s climate change policy, Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State (independent charge), Environment and Forests said his recent communication to the Prime Minister was totally distorted.

“India’s interests alone should drive the negotiations, and legally binding emission cuts and international verification [of India] are non-negotiable. [But] there is no harm in having discussions on other issues,” he told The Hindu on Monday in response to a news report that quoted Mr. Ramesh’s letter to the Prime Minister as suggesting that India walk out of the Kyoto Protocol and the G-77 group of developing countries, with which it has so far been allied. (The Hindu)

Even with the Copenhagen meet on climate change less than 50 days away, the rift over policy within the government is widening (Live Mint)

Barack Obama will attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this year if sufficient progress is made on a deal to stop global warming, US officials said. (Daily Telegraph)

For those reading the tea leaves to understand the actions of various countries preparing for the international climate negotiations later this year in Copenhagen, the broad outlines of the ultimate deal are starting to come into view. The picture being revealed is not a pretty one for anyone actually interested in reducing future emissions to very low levels.

To understand the international climate debate, it is necessary to understand the underlying dynamics that shape the behavior of governments around the world. It is crucial to understand that many elected officials and governments now in power achieved their position, at least in part, through very ambitious promises to take aggressive action to reduce future emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. (Roger Pielke, Jr.)

CARY, North Carolina - U.S. chief executives no longer reject claims of human-caused climate change, putting to rest a dispute that has raged in boardrooms for decades, said the head of PG&E on Thursday.

Members of the Business Council, a group of executives from the top 120 U.S. companies, have altered their beliefs about climate change significantly, said PG&E Chief Executive Officer Peter Darbee in an interview.

Darbee was attending the Business Council's October gathering in Cary, North Carolina.

"No one among the group was arguing the science of climate change," said Darbee. "That debate, at least in that forum, appears to be over. The discussion was really about, 'climate change is happening, it is a challenge of vast proportions and it will require an effort on the part of mankind to respond to this challenge.'"

Darbee also said a tangled web of state and federal laws governing energy use and conservation was delaying action.

"The greatest challenge we face getting our business done is the unintentional gauntlet of government regulation," he said. "What renewable energy developers have to go through -- the hoops and hoops and hoops." (Reuters)

You’ve no doubt heard the Greens demand we copy Germany and invest in “green” energy to create jobs. Here’s Greens deputy leader Christine Milne, for example:

Other green activists - The Age, for instance - have been just as foolish in demanding we copy Germany’s “green jobs” strategy. Tragically, that call is now being heeded by the Rudd Government.

The Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung says government investment in green jobs actually stifles innovation, and it concludes:

Of course, Germany’s Die Zeit warned us earlier this year that the “green energy” revolution the Greens recommended would burn us as badly as it had burned Germany:

A study this year by Spain’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos also tried to warn against the ruinous plans of the Greens, given the devastating results of Spain’s own heavy investment in “green power”:

The suggestion from two key senators that climate change and energy legislation could allow expanded oil and gas drilling has failed to charm the fossil fuel industry that opposed the House bill.

The biggest oil and gas companies and their trade group said they will have to hear a lot more than what Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote in an Oct. 10 New York Times op-ed, which referenced additional drilling as part of a bipartisan approach.

Oil and gas companies fear Senate climate legislation will look much like the House bill that set up a program forcing businesses to buy allowances for carbon emissions. The early years of the cap-and-trade program would give away 85 percent of the carbon permits, but petroleum refiners would receive the smallest share. More drilling won't suffice, an industry spokesman said.

"In short, it's nowhere near a trade off," said Lou Hayden, policy analyst at American Petroleum Institute, trade group for 400 oil and gas companies, refiners, pipeline companies and fuel transporters.

Costs that would be imposed by the House bill are "so great it would restrict a lot of U.S. refining capacity," Hayden added. "Access to domestic oil and natural gas should not be held hostage to a very costly and very unbalanced climate change bill." (ClimateWire)

AUSTIN — Executives of the nation's top oil companies huddled in Austin Monday with the industry's top lobbying group, and while the meetings were private, it was clear that a central topic was climate change legislation that could cost the industry billions.

“It's just not the time to be passing legislation that kills jobs in the United States,” said Larry Nichols, CEO of Devon Energy and chairman of the American Petroleum Institute, following the trade group's annual meeting at a resort hotel east of the city.

The industry has “a lot of education to do” to highlight its importance to the U.S. economy and the flaws contained in proposed climate change policies, API CEO Jack Gerard said. (Houston Chronicle)

Clean energy and the "green jobs" attached to it enjoyed wide support in testimony at a Senate hearing in Pittsburgh today but differences remain about how and how quickly federal policies should push those goals.

Sen Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who hosted the hearing, acknowledged those tensions between "competing interests" in Pennsylvania coal, natural gas and alternative energy industries as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began work on legislation titled "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act," introduced earlier this month.

Michael Peck, North American spokesman for Gamesa USA, a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer with factories and 850 employees in Pennsylvania, urged establishment of a national standard mandating 12 percent renewable energy by 2012.

Stan Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the United Steelworkers international executive board, said the union supports caps on carbon emissions under discussion in Congress but only if the program contains strong protections to prevent job loss to nations that don't enact pollution controls.

Steven Winberg, vice president for research and development for Consol Energy, the state's biggest coal mining company, said the legislation should provide increased funding for development of carbon capture and storage technology. (Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

The small reductions gained by staggering per-tonne costs illustrate what every independent analyst knows: The Harper government's 20-per-cent reduction target will not be met (Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail)

Federal Liberal MP Dennis Jensen says the cause of climate change is still in dispute and has attacked environmentalists as "anti-democratic alarmists".

Dr Jensen, who has spoken out previously on the issue, has also called for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be disbanded.

His comments come as the Coalition struggles with internal division on climate change policy.

In a speech to open the Australian Environment Foundation's annual conference in Canberra today, Dr Jensen said the question of whether climate change was caused by human activity was still up for debate.

"It will come as no surprise that I am sceptical on the anthropogenic component of climate change," he said.

"Climate change is real - the liability of humans in questionable."

Dr Jensen criticised the climate change science and accused the environmental movement of wanting to overthrow democracy.

"While the gap between climate observations and model projection outputs continue to diverge, the ardour and shrill character of the alarmists increases," he said.

Dr Jensen's attack comes as the Coalition begins negotiations with the Government over its emissions trading scheme, an issue which has threatened Malcolm Turnbull's leadership in recent weeks.

On Sunday Mr Turnbull won the support of the party room to push for changes to the scheme but Dr Jensen has lashed out at the use of emissions trading schemes.

"Another reason for my concern is that embarking on setting a price on carbon dioxide is effectively putting a tax on everything and will give the control freaks a level of control on all human enterprise within a nation not seen in democratic history," he said.

Dr Jensen is one of several Western Australian MPs who have urged the Coalition to reject an emissions trading scheme.

The Australian Environment Foundation's website has a link to a petition which opposes the Government's scheme. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

“The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.”

—Albert Schweitzer

The Earth’s climate is prone to sharp changes over fairly short periods of time. Plans that focus simply on stopping climate change are unlikely to succeed; fluctuations in the Earth’s climate predate humanity. Rather than try to make the climate static, policymakers should focus on implementing resilience strategies to enable adaptation to a dynamic, changing climate. Resilience strategies can be successful if we eliminate current risk subsidies and privatize infrastructure. (Kenneth P. Green, Energy Tribune)

In case you missed it…the fact that the 2009 hurricane season in the Atlantic is running as one of the slowest in living memory, is evidence of…anthropogenic Global Warming!

In other other news: the only thing that appears to be able to disprove AGW would be a series of Atlantic hurricane season with zero hurricanes. But that would mean ipso facto a change in global climate, thereby once again demonstrating…AGW! (OmniClimate)

The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space.

Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century.

As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.

The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist.

"We were originally interested in a different topic, the climatological factors influencing forest growth," says Ms Sigrid Dengel a postgraduate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at the University of Edinburgh. (BBC)

The Canadian Arctic is experiencing a heat wave that has seldom been matched in the past 200,000 years, says a new scientific paper based on the study of sediments found at the bottom of a remote lake on Baffin Island.

Scientists looking at the remains of microscopic plants and insects preserved in the lake's crusty bottom say a comparison of flora and fauna found in the remote past and in recent decades suggest temperatures are now so elevated they've rarely occurred.

Over the 200,000 years in question, the sediments revealed a natural ebbing and rising of various species that either favoured warmer or colder climate conditions. But recently there have been unprecedented increases of some algae types dependent on warmer conditions that were almost never found during the pre-industrial era. (Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail)

On the outskirts of Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, climate researchers twiddle with computers displaying maps of the Himalayas. At the press of a button, rivers and mountain passes change colour and watercourses expand to show villages swept away by simulated flood waters.

Not all the researchers at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development are pondering the devastation that would result from the bursting of high-altitude glacial lakes, though. Some are considering what awaits millions of people when the ice and snow caps of the “water towers of Asia” – so called because of the 10 big rivers originating in the peaks – are depleted by global warming. Few are willing to guess when this will happen, but their charts and photographs of retreating snowlines and glaciers have the whiff of inevitability.

Already mountain hydrologists can pinpoint where water stress will be greatest in the years to come. As the availability of water in Himalayan-fed river systems that support 1.3bn people drops, researchers expect the border between India and Bangladesh to be the first flashpoint of an intensifying battle across south Asia. (Financial Times)

A new study has confirmed the astronomical theory of the ice ages, but with a new twist: The shutoff of the meridional ocean circulation, or MOC, and an associated southward shift of tropical monsoon rain belts seems to play an integral role in the melting of glacial period ice sheets. These changes cause warming of the Southern Hemisphere and a rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels, which in turn provides a positive feedback loop that helps drive glacial termination. This is why, every 100,000 years or so, the great Northern Hemisphere ice sheets collapse and glacial conditions give way to a warm interglacial period, such as the Holocene warming humanity is currently enjoying. This, however, does not support recent claims that global warming is causing the Southeast Asian monsoon to fail.

There were two related articles in the October 9, 2009, issue of Science: “Ice Age Terminations” by Hai Cheng et al. and “Monsoons and Meltdowns” by Jeffrey P. Severinghaus, a perspective on the first article. What both articles report is that “the last four meltdowns began when northern sunshine was intensifying, in accordance with the classical Milankovitch or astronomical theory of the ice ages.” Using monsoon cycles to improve dating precision for other sources of historical climate data, Hai Cheng et al. help explain the climate mechanisms that control glacial terminations and the underlying causes of ice age cycles. According to their study, most of the meltdown and sea-level rise occurs during periods of weak monsoons, when the MOC is shut down and CO₂ levels are rising.

The ice age cycle, with its gradual buildup and rapid collapse of ice sheets, has been known to science for more than a half century. As previously reported in this blog, evidence linking Earth's orbital variations seems stronger than ever (see “Confirmed! Orbital Cycles Control Ice Ages”), but the detailed mechanisms at work have remained a mystery. According to Cheng et al.:

Correlating data from a wide varity of sources, including Chinese cave deposits and benthic oxygen isotope ratios, Cheng et al. have produced a detailed history of various paleoclimate factors for the last four glacial terminations. In the figure below (Figure 4 from the article) the light green and yellow bars highlight similar events.

As can be seen from the figure, when an interglacial starts CO₂ levels do increase from the lower levels of the previous glacial. This increase is part of a feedback loop that amplifies the warming trend. None of this is news, the exciting part of the Cheng paper is the link between melting northern ice sheets and weakened monsoons. The link to Heinrich events, brief periods of sudden warming marked by large amounts of ice rafted debris, suggests that the monsoon responds to the breakup of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. According to cave records spanning the last two glacial terminations (T-I and T-II), the monsoon generally follows summer insolation except in times of weak monsoon activity. These distinct “gouges” correlate broadly to Heinrich stadial I (H-I) and to the Younger Dryas (during T-I) and to H-11 (during T-II). For more background information on Heinrich events see “Modeling Ice Age's End Lessens Climate Change Worries” and for more on the Younger Dryas see our book, The Resilient Earth.

According to the perspective by Jeffrey P. Severinghaus, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Cheng et al.'s timing data provide support for the hypothesis that a reduced MOC forces CO₂ out of the Southern Ocean, warming the globe by its greenhouse effect, which in turn causes more melting of the ice sheets, ensuring that the MOC stays in its “off” position—an environmental positive-feedback loop. “The melting ice sheets inject so much low-density fresh water into the North Atlantic that they weaken or entirely shut down the normal sinking of dense water that fuels the ocean circulation,” says Severinghaus. “The loss of this circulation allows sea ice to cover the North Atlantic in winter, preventing ocean heat from warming the air and leading to extremely cold winters in Europe and Eurasia, which seem to weaken the following summer's monsoon in Asia.”

The scenario goes something like this: because fresh water has a lower density than salt water, meltwater runoff into the North Atlantic prevents sinking of water around Greenland. This causes the MOC to weaken and collapse. Without the northward transport of salty tropical water by the MOC the North Atlantic surface waters freshen even more. This fresh surface layer prevents deep convection which enhances winter sea ice formation. Increased sea ice cover causes extremely cold winter air temperatures over the North Atlantic and a southward-shifted atmospheric jet carries the cold air to the Mideast and Indian Ocean regions. Finally, cooling of the North Indian Ocean and the Asian landmass during the winter season weakens and delays the onset of the following summer's monsoon.

What are the possible impacts of these new new hypotheses on global warming driven by human generated CO₂? First off, the data presented here show that nature if fully capable of rapidly transitioning from frigid glacial conditions to more temperate interglacial climes, and it has done so repeatedly without human prodding. Second, regardless of what some have said, there is nothing particularly anomalous about the Holocene warming when compared with the glacial terminations in the past. Cheng et al. do present a number of interesting hypothetical links between the end of the glacial and the rise of CO₂ levels:

These relationships reinforce the well accepted theory that CO₂ is driven by the change in temperature at the end of a glacial period, not the other way around. Indeed, other scientists have recently reported similar observations going back as far as 1.2 million years (see “Change In Ice Ages Not Caused By CO₂”). In fact, the association between cyclically melting ice and the ocean “carbon pump” is well established. While others have stated that no single mechanism could explain the full glacial-interglacial range in CO₂, this report reaches a different conclusion: “Here, we present a scenario in which CO₂ rise could be caused by a set of mechanisms all ultimately linked to the rise in boreal summer insolation. Both rising insolation and rising CO₂, generated with multiple positive feedbacks, drove the termination.”

The addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere would have the biggest impact when levels are lowest, with subsequent temperature increases trailing off in time as concentrations rise. In this sense greenhouse gas warming is a positive feedback but self limiting, if it wasn't Earth's climate would runaway in an upward spiral of increasing temperatures and GHG release. Scientists are just coming to realize that there are massive reserves of GHG in Arctic tundra and in ocean methane clathrate deposits that could drive atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ and CH₄. One recent paper in Nature claims that tundra doesn't even need to fully defrost to emit significant volumes of greenhouse gas. Natural mechanisms have triggered sudden increases in GHG levels in the past, particularly releases of methane, which is a considerably more potent GHG than carbon dioxide.

One of the most spectacular of these events was the PETM some 55 million years ago (see “Could Human CO₂ Emissions Cause Another PETM?”). Earth's climate not only recovered from that warming spike, it eventually entered a cooling cycle 30 million years ago that let to the formation of permanent ice caps on Antarctica and Northern Hemisphere land masses. Eventually this cooling trend resulted in the Pleistocene Ice Age, which dominates our planet's climate to this day. If Earth's climate was predisposed to runaway global warming, and the effects of atmospheric GHGs are potent enough to drive warming on their own, temperatures would have continued to climb since the last glacial termination. Clearly that hasn't happened. Instead, the Holocene climate has been quite stable when compared with glacial period environments, though it has exhibited periods of rising and falling temperatures.

One reader of the Resilient Earth blog asked if the rising in CO₂ levels during glacial terminations contradicted my statement that there have been ice ages when the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere was much higher than today. That statement was not a reference to the conditions that have prevailed during the Pleistocene Ice Age, which has been going on for the past 3 million years or so. It was a reference to earlier ice ages, of which there have been many. For details see my article, “The Grand View: 4 Billion Years Of Climate Change.” There have indeed been ice ages when CO₂ levels have been several times higher than the “unprecedented” levels so alarming to the climate catastrophists.

Cheng et al. have reaffirmed the astronomical theory of the ice ages by using monsoons to improve dating precision across the whole suite of paleodata. The shutoff of the MOC and the resulting southward shift of tropical rain belts holds important lessons for those climate catastrophists who have been pointing to global warming as the cause for the recently diminished monsoon—it is colder weather in the northern hemisphere that stymies the monsoon's arrival. True, the episodes dated by the researchers were each the result of a warming trend, which triggered a cooling backlash to the widespread melting of glacial ice. But those impacts on the monsoon, much more dramatic than the variations seen recently, were triggered by the melting of mile thick glacial ice from North America and Eurasia. As Severinghaus states, “terminations require an existing massive ice sheet, and that Earth's orbit becomes nearly circular every ~100,000 years, eliminating periods of intense sunshine and thereby permitting the gradual accumulation of a massive ice sheet.” The lack of ice sheets covering all of Canada and Northern Europe seems to have escaped the alarmists' notice.

What about all those recent pronouncements that global warming is going to severely impact the normal Southeast Asian monsoon cycle? It must be noted that the changes experienced by Earth's climate during a glacial termination are far more radical than anything projected for global warming, even in the feverish dreams of Al Gore and the IPCC. The volume of freshwater needed to shut down the MOC is more than the output of all the rivers on Earth and the temperature swings involved can be as great as 12°C (22°F). Unfortunately for the sky-is-falling crowd, the recent variations seen in the monsoon are nothing out of the ordinary.

According to a government report cited by the Times of India, climate model studies have shown no significant impact on change in the mean onset of monsoon in the country. “The long-term mean onset date of monsoon in India is 1st June, with a standard deviation of about 8 days,” stated Environment minister Jairam Ramesh in the article dated July 13, 2009. “However, year to year variations in the onset or the propagation are part of the natural variability and cannot be attributed to climate change,” he concluded. No, today's conditions are not at all like previous glacial terminations with their 100,000 year cycle.

One last observation: an interesting exception cited by Cheng et al. is a termination that does not fit neatly into the 100,000-year paradigm. Anomalously weak sunshine 229,000 years ago apparently allowed the accumulation of a massive ice sheet within a short time, causing an exception to the normal glacial-interglacial rhythm. So we see it is not just the Milankovitch Cycles on their own that drives the ice ages, they require a collaboration of orbital dynamics, solar activity and Earth's own climate engine to effect such changes. Yet the supporters of catastrophic climate change insist that humanity will cause unprecedented and irreversible change through the release of CO₂. The climate catastrophists are unable to comprehend the truth—the interaction of our planet and its star is what drives climate change.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Mohammed Nashed, the new president of that string of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, has declared that he is setting up a sovereign wealth fund in order to purchase a new homeland for the inhabitants in the event of sea level rise caused by man-made ‘global warming’. This will come from a tax on the billions of dollars of tourism that the country enjoys – a ‘climate change levy’ that tourists will be glad to pay for, to atone for having contributed to ‘global warming’ by flying to get there. This is keying into the spin and guilt-manipulation that politicians try to engender in us. Other islands, such as Tuvalu, are seeking compensation directly from governments of the developed world for causing ‘global warming’. (Buy The Truth)

“In studies dealing with the impact of land use changes on atmospheric processes, a key methodological step is the validation of simulated current conditions. However, regions lacking detailed atmospheric and land use data provide limited information with which to accurately generate control simulations. In this situation, the difference between baseline control simulations and different land use change simulations can be quite different due to the quality of the atmospheric and land use datasets. Using multiple simulations at the Monteverde Cloud Forest region of Costa Rica as an example, we show that when a regional climate model (RCM) is used to study the effect of land use change, it can produce distinctly different results at regional scales depending on the amount of data available to run the climate simulations. We show that for the specific case of land use change impact studies, the simulation results are very sensitive to the prescribed atmospheric information (e.g., lateral boundary conditions) compared to the land use (surface boundary) information.”

“This analysis suggests that studies that deal with regional atmospheric effects of land use changes may have unknown uncertainties due to inaccuracies in their baseline simulations. We show that for the region around the Monteverde cloud forests in Costa Rica, simulations utilizing standard atmospheric datasets suggest increases in precipitation with lowland deforestation. However, with the added spatial resolution that is provided by special radiosondes, the results are just the opposite. The simulated 2 m air temperature and cloud base heights are also substantially different depending on the quality of atmospheric information provided to the model simulations. Thus the conclusions obtained in land cover change studies can be quite different because of the quality of atmospheric information provided to regional models.

Our results are relevant to the four types of dynamic downscaling reported in Castro et al. [2005]. The time period of integration in this study corresponds to a Type I downscaling in which we initialized our RCM with observed data and integrated it forward using data assimilation of observed data and lateral boundary conditions from the NCEP reanalysis. Our result showed that dynamic downscaling can provide misleading results unless RCMs are provided additional information. The results are also applicable to Type II downscaling because the value-added (skill) of Type I must be equal to or greater than Type II since the insertion of initial conditions and continuous data assimilation provides a real-world constraint to the accuracy of the regional model. In fact, nudging is required in order to prevent the regional model from drifting away from
the real world [Rockel et al., 2008]….

Our results show that RCMs are strongly dependent on the lateral boundary conditions (and nudging) from the GCM (or reanalysis) and are similar to those of Kanamitsu et al., [2009] who found that regional scale dynamical downscaling in the East Asian monsoon region without large scale error correction results in a contamination of seasonal means with the error itself being as large as the seasonal mean. When the RCMs are integrated far enough into the future such that their initial values are forgotten, as shown in Castro et al. [2005] and Rockel et al. [2008], the RCMs cannot add value (skill) with respect to atmospheric features that are resolved within the parent GCM (or reanalysis). Also, the regional climate results are so strongly controlled by the larger scale that they cannot correct for errors that occur within the larger-scale global climate prediction [Chase et al., 2003; Castro et al., 2005; Lo et al., 2008]. What we show in this paper is that the accuracy of even Type I downscaling is degraded without sufficient data on the regional atmospheric structure and these have important implications for land use change impact studies. The findings have implications not only for land cover change studies but also for future climate change predictions such as planned in the Fifth IPCC assessments, since Type III and IV downscaling Castro et al., [2005] must have even less value-added (skill) than Type I and II downscaling.”

Our paper illustrates one of the reasons that dynamic downscaling from global multi-decadal climate model predictions, while creating fine scale features, is really only an illusion of skill over and beyond whatever skill, if any, there is in the parent global IPCC climate model forecast. (Climate Science)

AUSTIN, Texas — New ground measurements made by the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) project, composed of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, The Ohio State University, and The University of Memphis, suggest the rate of ice loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet has been slightly overestimated.

"Our work suggests that while West Antarctica is still losing significant amounts of ice, the loss appears to be slightly slower than some recent estimates," said Ian Dalziel, lead principal investigator for WAGN. "So the take home message is that Antarctica is contributing to rising sea levels. It is the rate that is unclear."

In 2006, another team of researchers used data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to infer a significant loss of ice mass over West Antarctica from 2002 to 2005. The GRACE satellites do not measure changes in ice loss directly but measure changes in gravity, which can be caused both by ice loss and vertical uplift of the bedrock underlying the ice.

Now, for the first time, researchers have directly measured the vertical motion of the bedrock at sites across West Antarctica using the Global Positioning System (GPS). The results should lead to more accurate estimates of ice mass loss.

Antarctica was once buried under a deeper and more extensive layer of ice during a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum. Starting about 20,000 years ago, the ice began slowly thinning and retreating. As the ice mass decreases, the bedrock immediately below the ice rises, an uplift known as postglacial rebound.

Postglacial rebound causes an increase in the gravitational attraction measured by the GRACE satellites and could explain their inferred measurements of recent, rapid ice loss in West Antarctica. The new GPS measurements show West Antarctica is rebounding more slowly than once thought. This means that the correction to the gravity signal from the rock contribution has been overestimated and the rate of ice loss is slower than previously interpreted. (University of Texas)

Warmer temperatures may spur tree growth in some regions of the Pacific Northwest, which could mean reduced carbon in the air, researchers say. (LA Times)

The Interior Department has given Shell approval to drill oil exploration wells in two leaseholds in the Beaufort Sea, which could lead to the first drilling in more than a decade in this area off the north coast of Alaska.

Shell Alaska general manager Pete Slaiby hailed the decision as "another positive step towards the ultimate goal of drilling in 2010."

But environmental groups criticized the move. "There is no safe way to drill in the Beaufort Sea," said Athan Manuel, director of lands protection at the Sierra Club. "Cleaning up an oil spill in the Arctic's broken sea ice is next to impossible, and where there is drilling, there are oil spills." He said a spill could threaten polar bears and bowhead whales.

The two leases were obtained by Shell in 2005 and 2007. The sales are not affected by a recent court decision that sent the current leasing program back to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service for additional analysis.

Shell plans to drill two exploration wells in the far western area of Camden Bay during the July-to-October open-water drilling season next year, using a drill ship retrofitted for operations in arctic Outer Continental Shelf waters. The leases are about 16 and 23 miles north of Point Thompson, Alaska. The company still needs some permits. (Steven Mufson, Washington Post)

The treacherous, ice-choked waters off Alaska have long lured risk-taking fortune hunters seeking furs, fish, or other riches.

Merchant marine companies in the 19th century were so intent on pursuing the lucrative whale-oil and baleen trade that they were willing to lose entire ships, and they did. Vessels were occasionally crushed by masses of shifting sea ice.

Today, the prize is petroleum.

Inspired by higher prices, new technology, and the inescapable fact that Alaska's onshore fields are running dry, companies have put up billions of dollars to start the search for oil and gas in the lightly developed, federally managed Alaska outer continental shelf (OCS). In all, the OCS could hold oil in quantities similar to that at Prudhoe Bay – the oil field that has fueled Alaska's economy for four decades.

Yet those forces of nature so brazenly flouted by traders centuries ago, coupled with the new stresses from a rapidly changing Arctic climate, are giving environmentalists and Inupiat Eskimos pause. If boosters consider the OCS to be the next Prudhoe Bay, critics fear it could be the next Exxon Valdez.

Lawsuits have already forced oil companies to pare back or delay drilling plans. But with the Obama administration set to review offshore drilling rights in the region – promising a balance of economic and environmental needs – the issue is now coming to a head. (Yereth Rosen, Christian Science Monitor)

Forget windmills. Investing in Drax, owner of a 35-year-old British coal-fired power plant, could be a savvier way to profit from Europe's efforts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

Sound far-fetched? Not when considering the skewed incentives and lack of certainty in the EU's policy of reducing CO2 emissions 20% by 2020 partly through ensuring renewable energy meets 20% of demand.

The chief uncertainty surrounds the EU's emissions-trading system, which has led to volatile and unexpectedly low prices, below €15 ($22) a ton, less than half last year's peak. There is no visibility on what carbon will cost after 2020. That is a serious issue given the life of a new power plant is measured in decades, and new technology -- such as carbon capture and sequestration (CSS) -- is years from commercialization.

Unless governments address the uncertainty pushing up the cost of capital for new low-CO2 generation, too little capacity may be built to meet future demand and environmental targets. The recession has simply delayed the crunch, because it has also deterred new investment. In the U.K., plans for two new coal-fired power stations were suspended last week and with them opportunities to test CCS technology.

The U.K. may need 22 gigawatts of new capacity by 2020, and not just to replace aging facilities. Extra capacity will have to be built if wind is to provide a fifth of energy supply, because it is an intermittent power source. Should enthusiasm for wind wane, the double-digit earnings multiples windmill-makers like Gamesa, Vestas Wind Systems and Nordex are trading on may prove too high.

Extending the life of existing plants looks the likely way to ensure the lights don't go out in the U.K. and other countries, requiring politicians to rethink policy. Take Germany's tentative re-evaluation of nuclear power and Belgium's recent decision to delay nuclear decommissioning by a decade. (Matthew Curtin, WSJ)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused both state and federal governments of pushing policies that cause wastage of natural gas and increased electricity charges.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes said that five silly government initiatives have created “The Big Nanny Gas Bubble”.

“The first foolish policy forced electricity suppliers to generate a proportion of their electricity from gas. This increased the demand and price for gas. It also increased the cost of generating electricity.

“Naturally, gas producers, pipeline companies and their suppliers applauded, but power consumers were unimpressed.

“The second silly gas policy promoted and subsidised the replacement of electric heating appliances with gas appliances.

“Naturally, gas producers applauded again. So did gas appliance manufacturers and retailers. Home owners were less enthusiastic.

“The third bad idea from Big Nanny was a law mandating that 20% of electricity is generated from “renewable energy”. The perverse consequence of this policy will be to force the construction of a parallel universe of gas fired power stations to prop up the green generators when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. This will create more demand for gas and further increases in gas prices. It will also increase costs and reduce the reliability of power supplies.

“Naturally, gas companies were delighted. So were Green Energy speculators and Chinese manufacturers. Power consumers were apprehensive.

“The fourth gas wasting scheme is the Ration-N-Tax Scheme from Big Nanny in Canberra. This scheme penalises production of one “greenhouse gas”, carbon dioxide, but not the main one, water vapour, which comprises more than 90% of all so-called greenhouse gases. Both are harmless, non-toxic gases that support all life on earth.

“This policy would encourage power companies to switch from coal to gas, even though they are both hydro-carbon fuels which produce the same two harmless gases when burnt. More rises in gas and electricity prices would follow.

“Naturally, gas companies applauded again, but consumers of electricity and gas became seriously alarmed.

“The fifth stupid gas policy proposed recently by the Queensland government attempts to hide the harmful effects of the other four policies by proposing export embargos and price controls for domestic gas.

“Suddenly, gas producers did not applaud. Nor should anyone else.

“Governments should repeal all these destructive market manipulations and allow producers and consumers to discover that combination of fuels, technologies and cost which best satisfy their values and needs.

“Governments are acting like rogue bulls in the energy china shop.

“Big Nanny must be curbed before she bursts the gas bubble”.

Viv Forbes
MS 23, Rosewood Qld 4340 Australia
Phone 0754 640 533
www.carbon-sense.com

Burning coal underground could be one of the next breakthroughs to increase the world's energy supply, similar to establishment of Canadian oil sands, executives and academics told a conference in London recently.

The world could exploit huge additional coal reserves that are too deep or remote to mine, using a technology that burns the fuel hundreds of meters underground. But the approach is so far untested on a commercial scale, making the initial expense a concern for governments and investors.

"The potential is huge," said Gordon Couch from the International Energy Agency's Clean Coal Centre. "It needs a series of successful demonstrations. Despite 50 years of trials, no commercial use has been demonstrated. Current pilots could result in commercial opportunities within five to seven years."

Higher energy prices and security fears and in particular advances in drilling - the biggest single cost - are focusing new attention on underground coal gasification.

The technology involves injecting air or oxygen into a coal seam, which is burned and heated to produce and then piped to the surface an energy-rich gas that contains hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Electric cars will not be dramatically cleaner than autos powered by fossil fuels until they rely less on electricity produced from conventional coal-fired power plants, scientists said on Monday.

"For electric vehicles to become a major green alternative, the power fuel mix has to move away from coal, or cleaner coal technologies have to be developed," said Jared Cohon, the chair of a National Research Council report released on Monday called "Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use."

About half of U.S. power is generated by burning coal, which emits many times more of traditional pollutants, such as particulates and smog components, than natural gas, and about twice as much of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. (Reuters)

The White House is moving aggressively to remove the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from its traditional Washington role as the chief representative for big business, the latest sign of a public feud ignited by disagreement over the administration's effort to overhaul the health-care system.

Instead of working through the Chamber, President Obama has reached out to business executives, meeting repeatedly with small groups of CEOs in his private White House dining room. He also has dispatched top aides Valerie Jarrett and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to corporate boardrooms. Since the summer, the three have met with some of the biggest names in the business community, including the heads of IBM, Wal-Mart Stores, Time Warner, Eastman Kodak, Starbucks, Amazon.com and Coca-Cola.

In the process, Obama is attempting to rewrite the rules of the game in Washington, where the Chamber and other business lobbying groups have long held a highly visible, and powerful, place at the intersection of policy and politics.

"The question we have is: Does the Chamber really represent the business community the way they used to?" said Jarrett, the president's chief business liaison. "It seems as though their members are disengaging."

Meanwhile, the Chamber is fighting back with its own public relations agenda, launching multimillion-dollar ad campaigns to resist several of Obama's top priorities. Passage of the president's plan could depend in part on how this battle plays out.

R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber's longtime lobbyist, said he has less real access to Obama's chief aides than he had during any previous administration. He said the business events Obama holds at the White House are just for show.

"Going to the Reagan center with 150 people, where the president gives prepared remarks -- I'm sorry, I don't consider that a consultative outreach," Josten said. "That's an event, designed by the White House, for the White House." (Michael D. Shear, Washington Post)

Is it because health care is special? Or is it because we have treated health care as though it were special?

In this Cato video, Goldhill explains why a consumer-driven health care sector would never produce the often horrific problems we see in American medicine, and why the legislation moving through Congress fails to address those problems.

Ironically, even though universal coverage is presumably about helping the sick, the Democrats’ pursuit of universal coverage demonstrates not how much, but how little they care about their neighbors’ health.

Economists Helen Levy and David Meltzer explain, in a book published by the Urban Institute, “There is no evidence at this time that money aimed at improving health would be better spent on expanding insurance coverage than on…other possibilities,” such as clinics, hypertension screening, nutrition campaigns, or even education. In the Annual Review of Public Health, they explain further:

If Democrats were serious about improving health, they would first gather evidence about which of those strategies produces the most health per dollar spent. (As I recommend elsewhere, the $1.1 billion Congress allocated for comparative-effectiveness research should just about do the trick.) Democrats would then fund the most cost-effective strategies, which may or may not include broader insurance coverage.

But the fact that Democrats are pursuing universal coverage without any such evidence necessarily means that they are willing to sacrifice potentially greater health improvements to achieve…whatever else they hope universal coverage will achieve.

Universal coverage is not about improving public health. It is about subordinating health to some X-factor that supporters value even more.

Financial security? (If so, would universal coverage achieve that? Or are there better strategies?) Political power? Dependence on government? Industry subsidies? The appearance of compassion?

(Cross-posted at National Journal’s Health Care Experts Blog.) (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

I’m not a fan of the House Democrats’ proposed takeover of the health care sector. (If there’s one thing that legislation is not, it’s “reform.”) But at least House Democrats were honest enough to include the cost of the $245 billion bump in Medicare physician payments in their legislation, unlike some committee chairmen I could mention.

Unfortunately, House Democrats have since decided that dishonesty is the better strategy. They, like Senate Democrats, now plan to strip that additional Medicare spending out of health “reform” and enact it separately. (Democrats are already trying to exempt that spending from pay-as-you-go rules, making it easier for them to expand our record federal deficits.) Why enact it separately? Because excising that spending from the “reform” legislation reduces the cost of health “reform”!

But why stop there? Heck, enact all the new spending separately, and the cost of “reform” would plummet! Enact the new Medicaid spending separately, and the cost of “reform” would fall by $438 billion! Do it with the subsidies to private health insurance companies, and the cost of “reform” would plunge by $773 billion! All that would be left of “reform” would be tax increases and Medicare payment cuts. Health “reform” would dramatically reduce federal deficits! Huzzah!

Except it wouldn’t, because at the end of the day Congress would be spending the same amount of money.

The only good news may be this. If this dishonest budget gimmick succeeds, then Congress will have “fixed” Medicare’s physician payments. Absent that “must pass” legislation, the Democrats health care takeover would lose momentum, and would have to stand on its own merit. That would be good for the Republic, though not for the legislation.

(Cross-posted at Politico’s Health Care Arena.) (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

The two are intimately connected by a simple proposition: “Most people want more housing and health care than they can afford.” Of course, for “housing” or “health care” one could substitute whatever one wishes: food, clothing, cars, education, entertainment, vacations, you name it. Economists call this the problem of scarcity, and it’s the beginning of economics.

In a free society, most individuals, families, and firms will deal with that problem through such homely measures as creating and husbanding wealth, planning for the future, and living within their means. Some, however, will be indifferent to such discipline and will demand more than they can afford. Enter thus ACORN and the Dems — the party of government. ACORN, like our president, is in the “community organizing” business — a euphemism for putting (some) people in a position to better demand things from government. Some of those demands are perfectly legitimate: reduce crime; fix the potholes. But others, the demands ACORN specializes in, are not thus “common.” They can be satisfied, in a world of scarcity, only by taking from some and giving to others.

And that’s what the housing and health care debates today are largely about. And it’s why on both, the Dems are having difficulty getting their act together, because however much they turn a blind eye toward scarcity or pretend that they all agree, the truth is that they represent discrete constituencies, with discrete conflicting interests. That’s what happens when we’re all thrown into the common pot. What once was decided by individuals, reflecting their own particular interests, is now decided by government — and it’s a Hobbesian war of all against all.

The AP report on ACORN last week illustrated that nicely. ACORN has been in the forefront of those browbeating banks, under the Community Reinvestment Act, to provide housing loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Banks were reluctant to make those loans, of course — until the government stepped in to “guarantee” them. Well, we’ve seen where that ended: we’re all paying the price, especially those who couldn’t afford the homes in the first place, and will be for years to come. AEI’s Peter Wallison details some of that fiasco in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, placing a finger on none other than Barney Frank, who parades now as our savior.

But the same something-for-nothing mindset is at work in the health care debate. Here again, many people want more health care than they can afford, which means that someone else will have to pay for it — the government having nothing except what it takes from us. The pretense that it is otherwise — or that they can redistribute more equitably than the market does — is what drives the Dems to their pie-in-the-sky schemes — until some among them realize that it is they and their constituents who are being taken for a ride. At that point, either the recalcitrant are silenced, with some temporary sop, or the bottom falls out of the scheme, which is what many of us are hoping for here. If not, the housing debacle will prove in time to be a pale harbinger of the health care debacle, at least for those who live to see it.

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 - The pandemic H1N1 flu virus was confirmed in a sample from a hog exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair, the Agriculture Department said on Monday.

It was the first discovery in U.S. hogs.

The discovery does not suggest infection of commercial herds, grown for slaughter, because show pigs and commercial herds are separate components of the swine industry and usually are not commingled, USDA said in a statement.

Samples were taken from Aug. 26-Sept. 1 as part of a research project. Additional samples are being tested.

USDA said last week there was no direct link with an outbreak of H1N1 flu among teenagers housed in a dormitory at the fair at roughly the same time.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the World Organization for Animal Health says there is no reason to restrict trade in pork or pork products.

"People cannot get this flu from eating pork or pork products," said Vilsack in a statement. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Children with autism have mercury levels similar to those of other kids, suggesting the mysterious disorder is caused by a range of factors rather than "a single smoking gun," researchers said on Monday.

The researchers at the University of California, Davis, initially found that children aged 2 to 5 with autism had mercury levels lower than other children because the autistic kids ate less fish, the biggest source of mercury that shows up in the blood.

But when the data were adjusted for lower fish consumption, blood-mercury concentrations among the autistic children were roughly similar to those developing typically. The children with autism had mercury levels in line with national norms.

The findings, published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, come at a time when advocates including parents argue that mercury found in fish, dental fillings, vaccines and industrial emissions are responsible for autism.

The debate became more vehement this month after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said autism was more common than previously thought, affecting one in 91 children, including about one in 58 boys.

"It's time to abandon the idea that a single smoking gun will emerge to explain why so many children are developing autism," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, who led the study.

"Just as autism is complex, with great variation in severity and presentation, it is highly likely that its causes will be found to be equally complex," she said in a statement.

Autism refers to a spectrum of diseases, from severe and profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms. The research area is due for a large infusion of money from President Barack Obama's $5 billion plan to boost U.S. medical and scientific research. (Reuters)

Binge drinking and obesity are fuelling a liver disease crisis among middle-aged Britons, ministers will warn today.

The average age of those dying of the disease has fallen to 60 for women and 58 for men - four years lower for both sexes than 25 years ago.

Liver disease is the only major cause of death that is increasing year-on-year, with the rate doubling in the last decade.

It is already the fifth biggest killer, after cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease and stroke - but it is set to overtake the latter two in as little as two years.

It is also a much bigger threat to people in middle age, compared with heart disease where the average age of death is currently 82 and stroke, where it is 84. (Daily Mail)

The body mass index (BMI) has long been the yardstick in deciding who is at risk because of their weight. BMI is essentially a measure of density, identifying 'under-' and 'over-weight' risk groups. Recent studies however point towards a more sophisticated approach to the issue.

In a recent article for F1000 Biology Reports, Manfred J Müller and colleagues at the University of Kiel in Germany explain how 'functional' body composition analysis (BCA) measures more of the variables that determine whether or not obesity is 'benign'.

Recent studies using similar analysis suggest that up to 30% of obese people do not in fact require medical treatment. Widespread adoption of BCA could significantly improve the targeting of limited healthcare resources in the context of one of modern society's global killers.

Thanks to advances in imaging technology, variables - such as the body's fat proportion, location and distribution and the size of fat cells and fat droplets within these cells – can now be factored into the health risk assessment.

Coupled with a better understanding of the interrelation between genes, environment, hormone levels and metabolism, BCA gives clinicians a clearer picture of the specific health risks to an individual.

In light of the growing evidence in favour of functional BCA, the authors conclude that "the definitions of both 'overweight' and 'malnutrition' should be reconsidered" by clinicians and researchers. Evidently, size does still matter but it's what you do with it that really counts. (EurekAlert)

As my colleague David Rittgers notes below, the announcement by the Department of Justice that it will no longer seek to arrest medical marijuana users is a breakthrough for common sense in federal drug policy.

It is bizarre that it takes a major policy announcement to spell out what a waste of police and court time it is to investigate the ill people who use medical marijuana. Historians will surely look back on this period and ponder how our government could have seriously embraced the opposite policy, in the same way we look back at the strange days of alcohol prohibition.

The Obama administration should be taking much bolder steps to stop the criminalization of drug use more generally. More and more people have come to recognize that the drug war has been given a fair chance to work, but it has proved to be a grand failure. (Tim Lynch, Cato at liberty)

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will celebrate its 40th birthday in 2010, but it may be approaching a mid-life crisis. A group of nationally recognized experts in environmental science, technology, and policy have called for EPA to adopt a more integrated approach to environmental protection that accounts for the complex interrelationships among socioeconomic and environmental systems. In an article to be published in the December issue of Environmental Science and Technology, the authors argue that the 21st century brings a new wave of daunting environmental problems that will require a much greater emphasis on systems thinking. An early release of the article is available online at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es901653f

According to the article, global resilience is being tested by pressures of population and economic growth, which cause increasing greenhouse gas emissions, declining biodiversity, and other threats to such vital natural resources as fresh water, soil, forests, and wetlands. Only by understanding these systemic forces can EPA establish sound policies and decision making processes.

"At its inception in 1970, the EPA inherited a long and daunting list of environmental problems and addressed those with a high degree of success, but the agency is not organized to deal with emerging 21st century challenges," said co-author David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. (EurekAlert)

The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyo., lawyer.

Karen Budd-Falen of Budd-Falen Law Offices said the government between 2003 and 2007 paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms -- and that's just in the lawsuits she tracked.

The actual figure, she said, is far greater.

"I think we only found that the iceberg exists," she said. "I don't think we have any idea how much money is being spent. But I think it's huge."

In some cases, Budd-Falen said, intervening ranchers and farmers are paying for the defense of their farm and ranch practices and -- through their taxes -- paying for the opposing lawyers' attorney fees.

"That money is not going into programs to protect people, wildlife, plants and animals," Budd-Falen said, "but to fund more lawsuits."

Budd-Falen, whose firm regularly represents farms and ranches, for years was aware that nonprofit, tax-exempt environmental law firms were generating sizable revenue from attorney fees paid by the federal government. In June, she submitted a formal request asking the Department of Justice for information on just how much was being spent.

"They said they don't track that information," she said.

After the response, Budd-Falen sat down with a paralegal and started what she said was a time-consuming process of uncovering and compiling the data.

"The numbers were just shocking," she said.

"Somewhere this has to stop, and the government has to be held accountable for the money it's spending," she said. (Capital Press)

Pfiester, Margie; Koehler, Philip G.; Pereira, Roberto M. (2009) Effect of Population Structure and Size on Aggregation Behavior of Cimex lectularius (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) Journal of Medical Entomology 46(5):1015-1020. doi: 10.1603/033.046.0506 (free download available)

A couple of interesting things: the sex ratio in small groups of bed bugs may be dynamic even as the sex ratio in the population remains stable, and the authors point out that this is a new observation not considered in the literature to date, where 1:1 sex ratios in bed bug populations have been observed in field conditions.

As population density increases, the authors found that the percentage of adult females grouped with other females also increases. This may be a newly observed mating resistance strategy. (Renee Corea, New York vs Bed Bugs)

Fourteen principled companies abandoned the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week in protest over climate change. Let’s investigate their principles.

The New York Times coverage of the event, focusing on Exelon, one of America’s largest energy companies, frames the issues well. “Climate Bill Splits Exelon and U.S. Chamber,” its headline read. It then quoted Exelon’s long-time CEO, John W. Rowe, who explained that Exelon objected to the chamber’s “stridency against carbon legislation.” Environmentalists cheered the corporate defections, which confirmed their view that climate change reforms made good economic as well as good environmental sense.

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” stated Rowe. “Breakthroughs on climate change and improving our society’s energy efficiency are within reach.”
John Rowe knows a lot about free lunches. He also is no Johnny-come-lately in coming to the table. Long before most environmental groups discovered the global warming issue, Rowe was warning of the dangers of climate change. In early 1992 — before the UN’s Maurice Strong and a U.S. senator named Al Gore launched the global warming issue at the Rio Earth Summit — Rowe was testifying in Congress about the need for carbon taxes to protect the planet.

Needless to say, carbon taxes were also needed to protect the nuclear industry, which he represented. At the time, Rowe was CEO of New England Electric System, part owner in the Yankee Rowe Nuclear plant that had to be prematurely decommissioned because the cost of making it safe was deemed uneconomic. Rowe had come to New England Electric System from a stint as CEO of Central Main Power, famed for a ruinous investment in the cancelled Seabrook nuclear power plant. Now as CEO of Exelon, he oversees the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the U.S., those at ill-fated Three Mile Island among them. Every single reactor in Exelon’s fleet needed government backing to be built — neither Exelon nor any other company in the private sector has ever been willing to accept the full financial risk of nuclear power.

Exelon plans to build more nuclear plants — but only if taxpayers will overwhelmingly assume the expense. Thanks to subsidies established by the Bush administration in the hopes of kick-starting a nuclear renaissance, the federal government promises to pick up much of the capital costs and much of the operating costs of a future round of nuclear plants. But that isn’t enough to make new nuclear plants competitive. For nuclear to succeed, competing technologies that don’t require subsidies — and especially coal-fired plants, which Exelon lacks — must be brought down by regulation.

This is the forte of Rowe, a lawyer by training. No one has a more stellar record in the realm of regulatory rule-making, no one has more ingeniously struck deals with environmentalists and government regulators alike, no one more keenly appreciates how the law can be used to cripple a competitor, no one has more tirelessly lobbied for climate change legislation, the biggest club ever devised against the fossil fuel industry.

Hence Rowe’s distaste for anything that stands in the way of regulations that eviscerate his competition. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing three million businesses, most of which won’t benefit from higher energy costs, is standing in his way. (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has lost a handful of influential members over its opposition to climate change legislation being considered by Congress.

In recent weeks, Apple and three utilities -- Exelon, PNM Resources and PG&E -- said they will drop their membership in the Chamber, which represents more than 3 million businesses and organizations. Nike, which said it "fundamentally disagrees" with the group on climate change, will remain a member but resign from the Chamber's board.

"Nike believes U.S. businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change legislation," the athletic apparel maker said in a Sept. 30 statement. "We believe that on the issue of climate change, the Chamber has not represented the diversity of perspective held by the board of directors."

Exelon Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe supported the legislation in a speech to industry leaders and regulators last month, saying "the carbon-based free lunch is over."

"The price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible," Mr. Rowe said at an American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy conference.

Another major industry group, the National Association of Manufacturers is losing Duke Energy as a member because of NAM's views on the legislation. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

NEW YORK - Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore left the White House with less than $2 million US in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now, he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships. (Vancouver Province)

This supports my hypothesis, pushed since the early 1990s, that the most active ’villain’ in the show is the technological research lobby, found in WG III of IPCC.

You have all been discussing WG 1! WG III (the solutions/ responses people) are served by WG 1, and is the place where the governments, NGOs and ‘technologists’ meet and propose the solutions..this is now down to one thing at last, a price for carbon above what? At least $40. It is much less at the moment, but please correct if you can find out.

As a political science student pointed out to me, in politics it is not unusual to have solutions searching for, and finding a problem. (OmniClimate)

Poor old Paul Hudson. The inoffensive cheeky chappy, who presents the weather on the BBC in Yorkshire, has found himself a hate object among the fringes of the environmental movement.

Hudson's crime? Well, to borrow a phrase, he told "an inconvenient truth" – that global warming has stopped.

In an article headlined "Whatever happened to global warming?" on the BBC website, Hudson noted that the warmest year of recent times wasn't 2007 or 2008, but 1998, and global temperatures have not increased at all in the intervening 11 years, despite increasing carbon emissions.

Ignore the provocative headline, for Hudson's piece was, in fact, scrupulously fair. In measured terms, he explored the theories of what could be behind the present period of global cooling, including the ideas of so-called "sceptics", who believe the sun's energy or the oceans' currents, and not man's activities, are primarily responsible for periods of cooling and warming.

But he also quoted scientists who reckon the dip in temperatures is just a temporary blip and that man-made global warming will return with a vengeance in the near future.

No one really knows. In climatic terms, a 10-year trend proves nothing –it, as many scientists argue, could be a mere variation on the graph showing an inexorable rise in average temperatures.

But interestingly, Hudson pointed out that none of the climate models beloved by meteorologists forecast the present temperature trend. It is sobering to note that environmentalists are demanding that we damage our economy and make the poor poorer on the back of climate models that have been proved, in the short term at least, to be wrong. (Yorkshire Post)

Cross this place off my tourist list. I don’t care how inviting, it will be now the “island of stupid” in my memory. Watch the video below the “read more” line for today’s dose of silliness. Look for more stunts like this leading to Copenhagen.

Members of the Maldives’ Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals Saturday at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth.

The UK public is now the target of 'public information' advertising on climate change. The reason is that a majority of people remain unconcerned or sceptical, leading the government to conclude that they need to be re-educated. In particular, the emphasis is on the future effect on today's young children. The first television adverts, with images of drowning people and a jagged-toothed 'carbon monster' were screened at peak time last week. (Scientific Alliance)

Television Has Less Effect on Education about Climate Change than Other Forms of Media

FAIRFAX, Va.–Worried about climate change and want to learn more? You probably aren’t watching television then. A new study by George Mason University Communication Professor Xiaoquan Zhao suggests that watching television has no significant impact on viewers’ knowledge about the issue of climate change. Reading newspapers and using the web, however, seem to contribute to people’s knowledge about this issue.

The study, “Media Use and Global Warming Perceptions: A Snapshot of the Reinforcing Spirals”, looked at the relationship between media use and people’s perceptions of global warming. The study asked participants how often they watch TV, surf the Web, and read newspapers. They were also asked about their concern and knowledge of global warming and specifically its impact on the polar regions.

“Unlike many other social issues with which the public may have first-hand experience, global warming is an issue that many come to learn about through the media,” says Zhao. “The primary source of mediated information about global warming is the news.” Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

“Editors at leading medical journals have agreed to adopt a new standard conflict of interest disclosure form that probes deep into the financial and nonfinancial interests of published authors”. That’s the start of a blog titled “Med journals adopt disclosure rules” signed “Bob Grant” at The Scientist, based on a news item on The Wall Street Journal.

The journals involved are “The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The British Medical Journal”.

Alongside what should be by now standard disclosure fare “information regarding financial relationships — such as board membership, consultancy, expert testimony, honoraria and stock options — and potentially conflicting financial relationships among spouses and children under age 18”, authors are going to be asked about “’relevant nonfinancial associations’, such as political, personal, institutional, or religious affiliations that ‘a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work.’” (those disclosures are between author and editors, not necessarily to be made public in full. And still…).

The disclosure form was “drafted by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)” and follows an initiative by the “Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)”, one of whose project is aptly titled “Integrity in Science”.

At the time, the CSPI urged “full disclosure of potentially compromising financial relationships held by authors up to three years prior to submitting a manuscript. Financial conflicts include direct employment or consultancies with private firms, travel grants or speaking fees, paid expert testimony, membership on advisory boards, pending or existing patents, and stock ownership”

On the non-financial side, disclosure should include “membership in NGOs that may have a stake in a particular manuscript’s publication”.

Authors of the CSPI document, “Merrill Goozner (Director of CSPI’s Integrity in Science program), […] University of Pennsylvania bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Jonathan Moreno and the editors of three journals – the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Addiction, and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons”.

Other groups involved were the “Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a consortium of journal editors that seek to address issues of scientific integrity in science publication”. COPE “counts all Elsevier journals as members”.

Will journals in other specialty areas follow? What is the opinion by COPE and CSPI about recent and past scandals in Climate Science? (OmniClimate)

In case you missed it, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently took another major hit, likely to be fatal to its dwindling integrity, authenticity, and credibility. An earlier major hit was the famous Hockeystick chart fiasco, where the last 1000 years of global temperatures as presented by the IPCC were shown to be in error. ( http://tinyurl.com/o3x6zt ).

While the chart indicated a rapid temperature increase since 1900, the chart was created using inappropriate data and inappropriate computer algorithms. Nevertheless it was highly featured in the IPCC documents as well as in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Recent detective work ( http://tinyurl.com/yzevqqs ) shows that some of the tree-ring data used to construct the “hockeystick” curve was “cherry-picked’ from a larger data set. The cherry-picked data indicated warming while the data that was ignored clearly showed cooling temperatures. Such arbitrary selection of data indicates bad science in several areas including the IPCC, and their inability to provide peer review.

Since its inception the IPCC has been pursuing a harmful political agenda, not an agenda of sound science. From the very beginning of the IPCC in July 1986, its agenda has been to justify the control of the emissions of greenhouse gases, and the energy sources which produce them. (See Climate Change Reconsidered, Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) p. iv, ( http://tinyurl.com/ybfedph ). The NIPCC continues “Consequently its (the IPCC) scientific reports have focused solely on evidence that might point to human-induced climate change”.

In the words of the IPCC, 2007 AR4, the role of the IPCC “is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent basis, the latest scientific, technical, and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation”.

A close reading of the above stated role of the IPCC emphasizes the fact that it was not in the pursuit and advancement of science, but one of political advocacy, and the acquisition of political power. To the extent that limiting the IPCC role to the search for “human-induced climate change”, necessarily leads the IPCC to a hugely incomplete understanding of our climate, much of which is driven by natural forces, such as the Sun and the oceans, to name two. (Michael R. Fox, Hawaii Reporter)

Global-warming alarmists are gearing up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December with increasingly threatening tales of pending eco-disaster. The latest of these comes in the form of a Reuters article that predicts "the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the summer within twenty years."

The claim is based on research that compares current sea ice cover at the North Pole to measurements taken in 2007. According to scientists quoted in the article, more sea ice is melting in the summer than should. They claim it will have a snowball effect on global warming by raising temperatures worldwide since the exposed dark ocean water absorbs sunlight rather than reflecting it as ice does. The article quotes Britain's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband as saying, "This further strengthens the case for an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen."

But what about scientific evidence that weakens the case for Secretary Miliband's "global deal?" It is unlikely the Climate Change Convention will provide a forum for valid scientific research pointing to the possibility that arctic ice levels do not pose a threat to global climate. Christopher Monckton's Would CO2 Emission Cuts Save Arctic Ice and Reduce Sea-Level Rise? published in April of this year by the Science and Public Policy Institute deserves a public hearing. Monckton was a policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and his findings are based on research by mainstream sources such as NASA, the University of Illinois, and the University of Colorado. (Rebecca Terrell, New American)

"A short saying oft contains much wisdom." -- Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)

Our growing selection of quotes on man-made global warming theory, from both the good guys and the bad guys. (Association of British Drivers)

Above: Obama’s last visit to Copenhagen didn’t work out so well for the USA.

The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.

A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.

Last night, climate skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton spoke to an audience of over 700 at Bethel University in St. Paul. The event also featured the national premiere of a new documentary from the Cascade Policy Institute titled “Climate Chains.” The event was an enormous success. Thank you for all who came!

Note: For those interested, Monckton’s slide show can be found here. The video above is best viewed while following along with the presentation.

Information on the treaty that Lord Christopher Monckton is referencing can be found here. The actual proposed treaty language can be found here. (Minnesota Free Market Institute)

WASHINGTON — Proponents of capping greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming may have just found an unexpected ally on Capitol Hill: Republican Lindsey Graham.

The two-term senator from South Carolina drew the ire of conservative activists last week after he joined Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in outlining the framework of a bipartisan plan for combating climate change that would tie greenhouse gas reductions with new nuclear power nationwide and expanded offshore drilling.

Environmentalists labeled the move a “game changer” that could propel controversial climate change legislation through the Senate, past dubious Democrats worried about the impact on home-state industries such as mining and manufacturing, and Republicans who consider it a damaging “energy tax.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who worries about the effects of a rising global temperature on the ice pack and permafrost in her home state, said the Graham-Kerry partnership could “mark a shift in the climate debate.”

“It's hard to overstate the significance of this,” said Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It ensures that the Senate bill will be bipartisan” and “demonstrates that there is a pathway to 60 votes to overcome a filibuster” and win Senate passage. (Hearst Newspapers)

Last weekend, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) co-authored an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation).”

Kerry and Graham want to pass a Senate companion bill to H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also known as Waxman-Markey, for its chief sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA). Waxman-Markey narrowly passed in the House by a vote of 219 to 212. Only eight Republicans — under 5% of those voting – supported the bill. (Marlo Lewis, Master Resource)

WASHINGTON — As the Senate prepares to tackle global warming, the nation’s energy producers, once united, are battling one another over policy decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades.

Producers of natural gas are battling their erstwhile allies, the oil companies. Electrical utilities are fighting among themselves over the use of coal versus wind power or other renewable energy. Coal companies are battling natural gas firms over which should be used to produce electricity. And the renewable power industry is elbowing for advantage against all of them.

Some supporters of global warming legislation believe that the division in the once-monolithic oil and gas industry, as well as other splits among energy producers, could improve the prospects for the legislation.

“It’s much harder to pass clean-energy legislation when big oil and other energy interests are united in their opposition,” said Daniel J. Weiss, climate policy director at the liberal Center for American Progress. “The companies that recognize the economic benefits in the bill can help bring along their political supporters.”

The American Petroleum Institute trade group, dominated by major oil companies, opposes the legislation, saying it would discourage domestic exploration and lead to higher oil prices. But some natural gas companies, though longtime members of the institute, have formed a separate lobby and are working actively with the bill’s sponsors to cut a better deal for their product.

The proposal moving through Congress would cap the emissions of greenhouse gases each year and allow companies to buy and sell permits to pollute. That approach, known as cap and trade, is meant to guarantee that emissions will decline, while providing market incentives for companies to invest in low-carbon technologies.

The measure would effectively put a price on carbon, raising the prospect that some energy producers might have to pay more than others. For that reason, billions of dollars could be at stake in some of the most arcane language in the bill. (NYT)

US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern warns that it is "certainly possible that there won't be a deal" at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

Progress towards a climate change deal at Copenhagen has been far too slow, and emerging economies like India, China and Brazil need to do more, warned President Obama's climate change envoy Todd Stern.

He and other negotiators from the leading industrial nations are gathering in London tonight for a meeting tomorrow to make progress ahead of December's summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Its purpose is to find new targets and actions to prevent global temperatures rising any more than two degrees Celsius.

The UK and Europen Union have so far agreed to a 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and an 80 per cent reduction by 2050.

The United States has also agreed to the 2050 reduction plan, but crucially has no commitment for 2020.

Mr Stern told Channel 4 News: "It's certainly possible that there won't be a deal in Copenhagen. This is a tough negotiation. (Channel 4 News)

EU Blames U.S. for Climate Stalemate - As talks stall on a successor to the Kyoto climate change protocol, negotiators point the finger at each other—and Europe says the U.S. could kill a deal

The EU's top climate negotiator, freshly back in Brussels from late-in-the-game talks in Thailand, has warned of a near stalemate in discussions.

"Bangkok is still miles away from Copenhagen," Artur Runger-Metzger, Europe's chief broker at the talks, told reporters in the European capital on Monday.

There was little movement surrounding the key demand of developing countries, that the industrialised north stump up some hefty cash to pay for measures to adapt to the effects of global warming and to mitigate their carbon emissions, he said.

As for the third world, "Advanced developing countries need to make a meaningful commitment" to their own carbon reductions, he added.

This issue of "climate finance"—the quid pro quo of money from the north in return for mitigation for the South—been the main sticking point for much of the last year, but Mr Runger-Metzger said there had still been no movement on the subject in Bangkok. (Business Week)

AMERICA's giant steel-makers could be about to torpedo an international agreement on climate change.

Following lobbying by heavy industries, the US Congress is considering imposing tariffs on imports from China and other developing nations. That could be a deal-breaker for poor nations at December's climate change talks in Copenhagen.

If Congress passes laws imposing a limit on US greenhouse gas emissions, energy-intensive sectors such as steel-making and cement manufacture would almost certainly face increased costs. Competitors in China and other developing nations not subject to similar restrictions - and China has said that it will not set itself an emissions target - might be able to produce steel more cheaply, and take business away from US firms.

That logic has found its way into two climate bills now before Congress. The first, passed by the House of Representatives in June, would effectively impose tariffs on goods from companies in countries that do not have emissions targets. The newly introduced bill in the Senate so far contains only vague language about the need for a "border measure", but senators from states with heavy industry will push for something similar.

That sets the stage for a showdown that could derail progress towards an agreement on climate change. In August, 10 pro-tariff senators, all of them Democrats, told President Barack Obama that it was "essential" that climate change legislation include some form of tariff. Without the support of most or all of these senators, the climate bill appears likely to collapse, and if that happens Obama will have little to offer in Copenhagen. (New Scientist)

Europe’s environment chief has expressed reservations about a so-called carbon border tax – tariffs on imports from countries that do not sign up to a global climate change treaty.

Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, has poured cold water on an initiative gaining ground in some member states and moving to the centre of negotiations ahead of December’s climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Mr Dimas told the Financial Times a carbon border tax should not be used to force developing countries to sign up to a climate deal.

“I don’t think it should be used as a means of pressure,” Mr Dimas said, arguing that instead poor countries should be offered finance to help them to tackle climate change.

He urged European Union states to endorse his proposal to provide up to €15bn (£14bn, $22.34bn) per year in such financing, saying: “We have to put figures on the table so that others will do the same. Why not do it now?” (Joshua Chaffin and Fiona Harvey, Financial Times)

Developing countries have dropped long-standing demands for access to rich countries’ technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, removing a big obstacle to an international deal on climate change, European officials said on Thursday.

Countries such as China and India have pushed for rich countries to give them low-carbon technologies ever since the lead-up to the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The demand has been a sticking point in negotiations before this December’s climate change summit in Copenhagen with rich countries, arguing that any such move could force private sector companies to give away their intellectual property.

The softening of the developing countries’ position comes close to resolving one of the five key elements that the UN said was necessary for a deal on climate change at Copenhagen this December.

The other elements are: binding targets for mid-term emissions reductions from developed countries; a long-term global emissions target; actions by developing countries to curb their emissions; and financing for developing countries to adapt to the effects of global warming. (Fiona Harvey, Financial Times)

World leaders must break the impasse over faltering climate-change negotiations as preparations intensify for the UN meeting in Copenhagen this December, Gordon Brown will urge today.

Copenhagen could change the course of history, but negotiations over a new climate-change agreement have stalled with the risk of catastrophic global warming this century, the Prime Minister will say in an address to the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in London. (The Independent)

LONDON - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will warn representatives of the world's biggest economies Monday that efforts to agree on a new global pact to tackle climate change are a historic test of international co-operation.

Brown planned to address the second day of Major Economies Forum talks in London, and tell delegates that any failure to strike a new deal on reducing the gas emissions causing global warming would be catastrophic.

The British leader plans to personally attend a December meeting in Copenhagen - intended to cap two years of negotiations on a global climate change treaty - and has called on fellow leaders to join him.

"In every era there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history," Brown planned to say, according to excerpts of his speech released in advance. "Copenhagen must be such a time. There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more." (Associated Press)

LONDON -- Representatives of the world's 17 biggest and most polluting nations were holding talks Sunday to search for a breakthrough on financing efforts to contain climate change and reduce gas emissions causing global warming.

Pressure has been mounting for the United States to finalize its position before a decisive December conference in Denmark meant to cap two years of negotiations on a global climate change treaty.

"With only 50 more days to go before the final talks at Copenhagen, we have to up our game. Britain is determined to throw everything at this because the stakes are so high," British Environment Minister Ed Miliband said in a statement released Sunday.

Earlier Miliband had said it was "important that the U.S. makes as much progress as possible" at the two-day meeting of the Major Economies Forum.

The Obama administration said it was tied to action by U.S. Congress, where climate bills were making their slow way toward legislation -- an argument which cut little ice with other negotiators. (Associated Press)

NEW DELHI/BRUSSELS - India softened climate demands on Friday, helping bridge a rich-poor divide, but said a global deal may miss a December deadline by a few months.

In contrast, European Union states struggled to agree a common stance for financing a U.N. climate pact, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen at a December 7-18 meeting.

India wanted generous aid on advanced carbon-cutting technologies but dropped a core demand that industrialized countries cut greenhouse gases by 40 percent by 2020.

"If we say, let's start with 25 percent, that's a beginning. I'm not theological about this. It's a negotiation. We have given a number of 40 but one has to be realistic," environment minister Jairam Ramesh said in a Reuters interview. (Reuters)

THE world must start a complete shift to a low-carbon economy by 2014 – or risk making dangerous climate change almost inevitable, campaigners warned today.

A study for conservation charity WWF showed that waiting until after 2014 to develop fully clean industries needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy, would leave it too late to halt temperature rises of more than 2C.

With low-carbon industry only able to grow at a certain rate, a delay in taking action will make it almost impossible for countries to roll out the technology in time to cut emissions by the amounts needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the research by analysts Climate Risk said.

It also said countries must take action across a range of industries at once, including renewable energy, technology to capture the carbon emissions from fossil fuel power stations, preventing deforestation and improving energy efficiency. (The Scotsman)

Marine organisms take up between three and seven percent of the world’s carbon emissions. Thus, projects to protect this "blue carbon" capacity should rank on a par with forest conservation, UN body suggests. (CoP15)

WASHINGTON — With global warming shrinking Arctic sea ice that polar bears depend upon for survival, the United States is seeking to remove another major threat: international trade in the bears' fur and other parts.

In a proposal filed this week, the Interior Department asked other countries to support a ban on the commercial trade of polar bears and to strictly regulate trophy hunting. The request, if approved, would give the bear the most stringent protection afforded under an international convention to protect endangered species.

It would also upgrade protections for the bear internationally for the first time since 1975, when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, required export permits for the polar bear. (Associated Press)

Canada's a slacker in talks to forge a new deal to fight climate change, has been "singularly unhelpful," and its oil sands are a "political problem" at international climate change negotiations, says Tim Flannery, world-renowned scientist and best-selling author of The Weather Makers who was in Ottawa last week to promote his latest book Now or Never: Why We Need to Act Now to Achieve a Sustainable Future. (Hill Times)

While we have one blog post that shows OHC disappearing due to an adjustment by KNMI, Ocean Heat Content: cooling gone today with new adjustment, global sea surface temperatures are telling another story. That story is that our trend is down since 2002. You wouldn’t know it though to look at this NOAA chart.

Since the global average sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (departures from average) hit a peak a couple of months ago, I thought it would be a good time to see how they are progressing. Here’s a plot of running 11-day SST anomalies for the global oceans (60N to 60S latitude):

A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters was brought to my attention by Dr. Leif Svalgaard.

Tropical origins of North and South Pacific decadal variability by Jeremy D. Shakun and Jeffrey Shaman makes some very interesting findings suggesting that both the northern and southern Pacific Ocean has evidence of the Pacific Decadal Variation PDV being driven by ENSO variations. They produced a model, which when run correlates reasonably well with observations.

The origin of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the leading mode of sea surface temperature variability for the North Pacific, is a matter of considerable debate. One paradigm views the PDO as an independent mode centered in the North Pacific, while another regards it as a largely reddened response to El Nin˜o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forcing from the tropics. We calculate the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the PDO index based on the leading mode of sea surface temperature variability for the South Pacific and find that it adequately explains the spatial structure of the PDO in the North Pacific. A first-order autoregressive model forced by ENSO is used to reproduce the observed PDO indices in the North and South Pacific. These results highlight the strong similarity in Pacific decadal variability on either side of the equator and suggest it may best be viewed as a reddened response to ENSO.

You have to read this chart from right (older time periods) to left (now). In case it's too small for you to read, the thin yellow line is CO2, which you can see has quite often been much higher than today--in fact, we're pretty close to historic lows. The blue line is variation from recent averages--how much higher or lower temperatures were compared to now. Again, for most of the past 600 million years, you can see we're at one of the low cycles, not matched since the Ordovician/Silurian ice ages. The brown fuzzy line is sea levels, which have been 265 meters higher and 120 meters lower than today.

The data is there for you to download and examine, and comes from identified and respected sources--although to be sure, they're not the only sources out there. (Thomas Fuller, Examiner)

In this part, we are just going to go through the various estimates for Temperature, CO2 and Sea Levels in the PaleoClimate. This post is also about making the data available to everyone so that others can use it. All of the data presented in this post is available for download at the end in easy to use Excel spreadsheets which also incorporates direct links to the actual data sources used.

There are various sources we can use for estimates of Temperatures in the PaleoClimate.

We have the ice core dO¹⁸isotope data going back 800,000 years. James Zachos has a high resolution database of dO18 isotopes going back 67.0 million years. Jan Veizer has accumulated an isotope database that goes back 526.5 million years. Dana Royer and Robert Berner applied a ph-correction factor to Veizer’s database and Christopher Scotese has developed Temperature estimates that extend back into the pre-Cambrian.

For the most part, the Temperature estimates are based on dO18 isotopes and these have proven to be reasonably reliable, or more accurately, to be the most reliable temperature estimation method that is available. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Unquestionably, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed to build the scientific case for humanity being the primary cause of global warming. Such a goal is fundamentally unscientific, as it is hostile to alternative hypotheses for the causes of climate change.

The most glaring example of this bias has been the lack of interest on the IPCC’s part in figuring out to what extent climate change is simply the result of natural, internal cycles in the climate system. In Chapter 9 of the latest (4th) IPCC report, entitled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”, you would think the issue of external versus internal forcing would be thoroughly addressed. But you would be wrong.

The IPCC is totally obsessed with external forcing, that is, energy imbalances imposed upon the climate system that are NOT the result of the natural, internal workings of the system. For instance, a search through Chapter 9 for the phrase “external forcing” yields a total of 91 uses of that term. A search for the phrase “internal forcing” yields…(wait for it)…zero uses. Can we really believe that the IPCC has ruled out natural sources of global warming when such a glaring blind spot exists?

Admittedly, we really do not understand internal sources of climate change. Weather AND climate involves chaotic processes, most of which we may never understand, let alone predict. While chaos in weather is exhibited on time scales of days to weeks, chaotic changes in the ocean circulation could have time scales as long as hundreds of years, and we know that cloud formation – providing the Earth’s natural sun shade – is strongly influenced by the ocean.

Thus, small changes in ocean circulation can lead to small changes in the Earth’s albedo (how much sunlight is reflected back to space), which in turn can lead to global warming or cooling. The IPCC’s view (which is never explicitly stated) that such changes in the climate system do not occur is little more than faith on their part.

The IPCC’s pundits like to claim that the published evidence for humanity causing warming greatly outweighs any published evidence against it. This appeal to majority opinion on their part is pretty selective, though. They had no trouble discarding hundreds of research papers supporting evidence for the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age when they so uncritically embraced the infamous “Hockey Stick” reconstructions of past temperature change.

Despite a wide variety of previous temperature proxies gathered from around the world (see figure below) that so clearly showed that centuries with global warming and cooling are the rule, not the exception, the Hockey Stick was mostly based upon some cherry-picked tree rings combined with the assumption that significant warming is a uniquely modern phenomenon.

As such, they rejected the prevailing “scientific consensus” in favor of a minority view that supported their desired outcome. I suspect that they do not even recognize their own hypocrisy.

As I have discussed before, the IPCC’s neglect of natural variability in the climate system ends up leading to circular reasoning on their part. They ignore the effect of natural cloud variations when trying to diagnose feedback, which then leads to overestimates of climate sensitivity. This, in turn, causes them to conclude that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations alone are sufficient to explain global warming, and so no natural forcings of climate change need be found.

But all they have done is reasoned themselves in a circle. By ignoring natural variability, they can end up claiming that natural variability does not exist. Admittedly, their position is internally consistent. But then, so is all circular reasoning.

Our re-submitted paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research entitled “On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing” will hopefully lead to a little more diversity being permitted in the global warming debate.

I don’t think the IPCC scientists are as opposed to this as are their self-appointed spokespersons, like Al Gore and numerous environmental writers in the media who get to over-simplify the climate issue without ever being corrected by the IPCC. Natural climate change continues to be the 800 lb gorilla in the room, and I suspect that some within the IPCC are slowly becoming aware of its existence. (Roy W. Spencer)

There is new support for the rejection of the IPCC focus on CO2 as the primary human climate forcing.

The climate issue, with respect to how humans are influencing the climate system, can be segmented into three distinct hypotheses. These are:

There is a news release by Lauren Morello for the E&E Publishing Service on a paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science [PNAS] that is headlined “Don’t forget the other GHGs, scientists say”.

Extracts from the news article include
“When it comes to climate change, carbon dioxide isn’t the only target……While reducing the world’s carbon dioxide output is important, Molina and his co-authors [of the PNAS study] say other steps are necessary to reduce the risk of tipping points such as the disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice, melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and dieback of the Amazon rainforest. The strategies include using the existing Montreal Protocol — which governs chemicals that deplete the ozone layer — to end use of hydrofluorocarbons. Known as HFCs, the chemical refrigerants harm ozone and trap heat up 100 to 12,000 times more effectively than CO2…… In addition to cutting HFCs, the PNAS analysis suggests slashing emissions of black carbon (sooty particles produced by diesel engines)……..One recent study estimated that black carbon emissions caused half the total warming in the Arctic between 1890 and 2007 …..Other steps the new paper outlines include slowing the rate of deforestation and reducing emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, methane and other volatile organic compounds that react with sunlight to form tropospheric ozone, “a major pollutant and significant GHG.”

“Current emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) have already committed the planet to an increase in average surface temperature by the end of the century that may be above the critical threshold for tipping elements of the climate system into abrupt change with potentially irreversible and unmanageable consequences. This would mean that the climate system is close to entering if not already within the zone of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (DAI). Scientific and policy literature refers to the need for “early,” “urgent,” “rapid,” and “fast-action” mitigation to help avoid DAI and abrupt climate changes. We define “fast-action” to include regulatory measures that can begin within 2–3 years, be substantially implemented in 5–10 years, and produce a climate response within decades. We discuss strategies for short-lived non-CO2 GHGs and particles, where existing agreements can be used to accomplish mitigation objectives. Policy makers can amend the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) with high global warming potential. Other fast-action strategies can reduce emissions of black carbon particles and precursor gases that lead to ozone formation in the lower atmosphere, and increase biosequestration, including through biochar. These and other fast-action strategies may reduce the risk of abrupt climate change in the next few decades by complementing cuts in CO2 emissions.”

While this PNAS article is still perpetuating (incorrectly) the dominance of the human input of CO2 as the primary climate forcing, as well as the flawed climate science concept of a “tipping point”, the news reported is quite perceptive. Reading the excellent news article, the message of the PNAS paper is really quite broader than that presented by the IPCC.

This news story and the associated PNAS article provide further reasons to reject the narrow IPCC viewpoint as represented by the third hypothesis listed above, since a range of other climate forcings are recognized as being first order climate forcings. In terms of positive radiative forcings, I reported on this topic in

Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2006: Regional and Global Climate Forcings. Presented at the Conference on the Earth’s Radiative Energy Budget Related to SORCE, San Juan Islands, Washington, September 20-22, 2006

where I concluded (see slide 10) that instead of the 48% of human caused warming from CO2 as given by the IPCC, only about 26.5% (see slide 12) is due to the human addition of CO2. It is the second hypothesis

“While natural variations are important, the human influence is significant and involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings (including, but not limited to the human input of CO₂)”

Before building new coal power plants, we need more research on capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide in underground geologic formations. Carbon sequestration might turn out to be unsafe or impractical, and it is a good bet that alternative energy sources would be better and cheaper.

Coal is the predominant source of electricity available within the United States today, providing more than half of our electricity. As the world seeks ways to mitigate climate change, it is worthwhile to ask how expensive carbon capture and sequestration will be and if it will reduce emissions to acceptable levels.

Current carbon-capture and storage technologies are not cost-effective. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that before any sequestration, separating carbon dioxide from combustion exhaust using available technologies will cost almost $150 per ton of carbon.

The National Mining Association estimates it will cost $1 trillion to implement carbon capture and storage at all coal plants throughout the United States. Furthermore, we will need to burn an extra 30 percent more coal just to provide the energy to do sequestration. Storing a billion tons of carbon dioxide per year underground will require putting back 2.5 times the volume of oil we handle each year domestically. These estimates do not take into account carbon dioxide that would need to be stored again (after possible leaks) or future demands on coal power plants because of an increasing population. (Robert J. McTaggart, Argus Leader)

A scheduled local council vote this week will be the first step in a review process that will likely take years, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to get out the rhetorical artillery here in the heart of the Petro Belt off the New Jersey Turnpike.

“This plant is a $5 billion environmental Ponzi scheme that not only won’t work but will lead to environmental disaster,” Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said last week.

“This is a recipe for another Exxon Valdez toxic catastrophe,” said Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association.

“The worst polluters continue to put Linden in their cross hairs, but this time the stakes are even higher,” said David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

The occasion was the announced formation of the Arthur Kill Watershed Alliance, whose goal is to fight a proposed 750-megawatt coal power plant in Linden. And the alliance’s target was a technology intended to capture tons of carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere, a technology viewed by other environmentalists as not just promising but essential for combating climate change. (NYT)

Rowdy union workers yesterday upstaged a campaign kick-off by New Jersey environmental groups opposing a unique, coal-fueled electric plant proposed for the city of Linden that will capture its own carbon dioxide output and pipe it under the Atlantic Ocean.

"We need jobs," chanted two dozen union workers who support the "PurGen" project, as leaders of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the New Jersey Environmental Lobby, Environment New Jersey and the Edison Wetlands Association held a news conference near Linden's city hall to lambaste the $5 billion plant as a "dangerous experiment." (Star-Ledger)

RATCLIFFE-ON-SOAR, England, Oct 17 - Police clashed with environmental activists and arrested 21 people during a day of protests at a coal-fired power station in central England on Saturday.

While hundreds joined a largely peaceful demonstration outside the main gates of German utility E.ON's plant in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, scuffles broke out around the perimeter fence when smaller groups tried to break through in an attempt to close the power station.

One policeman was flown to hospital with head injuries after being hurt while trying to keep people from entering the plant. Protest organisers said several demonstrators suffered minor injuries. (Reuters)

“This is an issue where we sometimes do need to break the law, where we do need acts of civil disobedience.”

If this were a quote from Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, almost all of us would nod with approval, admiring the bravery of people who were prepared to go to prison to end the manifest injustices of their time. But these words were spoken by Richard Bernard, of Camp for Climate Action, trying to justify the attempt to shut the coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire.

The protesters, of course, revel in the comparison with abolitionists and suffragettes. But are today’s green guerrillas really the heirs of history’s heroes, or are they just a public nuisance at best, criminals at worst?

According to the political philosopher John Rawls, civil disobedience is justified only when three conditions are met: the cause must be a clear and manifest injustice, legal avenues must have been exhausted, and the action must not be more harmful than allowing the injustice to continue.

Whether or not these conditions are met in the case of Ratcliffe-on-Soar is more of a factual question than a moral one, and the facts tell against the protesters. Despite their self-righteous certainty, the most effective thing to do about climate change at the national level is still a matter of debate. Burning fossil fuels is bad for global warming, but it doesn’t follow that unilaterally shutting Britain’s coal-powered power stations is an urgent moral imperative, especially when you think about the other harms such a disruptive measure would cause. It’s also clear that lawful avenues of protest have not been exhausted. (Julian Baggini, The Times)

Throughout the 20th century, an abundant supply of low-cost energy was the driving force behind the spread of global prosperity and development. Today, satisfying ever-growing energy demand in a sustainable way has become the world’s biggest challenge.

According to BP’s projections, we will need about 45 per cent more energy in 2030 than we consume today. That will require industry to invest some $25 to $30 trillion — more than $1 trillion (£600 billion) a year for 20 years.

We need a more diverse energy mix — involving greater use of nuclear power and of renewable sources as well as fossil fuels — to enhance energy security and tackle climate change. But we also have to face a few facts. First, the transition to a lower-carbon economy is a journey that will take decades. (Tony Hayward, The Times)

Wulf Bernotat looks cold — and sceptical. “Are you sure we are making any money out of this?” the chief executive of E.ON, the world’s largest utility company, asks one of his employees. “This is a business, you know.”

Mr Bernotat is in the gritty Swedish city of Malmö, standing in a windswept former dockyard that E.ON has helped to convert into a “zero-carbon city”.

Hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets and with his collar turned up against the biting air, he is being lectured on the merits of a solar-powered district heating system that pumps hot water to hundreds of local homes. “You tell me later — in private,” he says, one bushy eyebrow raised ever so slightly.

One of Europe’s most powerful energy barons, Mr Bernotat, who presides over a global behemoth with nearly 88,000 employees and revenues of €87 billion (£79 billion) last year, has an equally blunt message for Britain’s politicians.

Through its subsidiary E.ON UK, the Düsseldorf-based group wields huge influence over British energy policy. It was to invest nearly £1 billion a year in wind and nuclear-generated electricity in the UK “for the foreseeable future”, so its decision this month to freeze plans for a new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent for up to three years sent shockwaves through Britain’s energy industry.

Mr Bernotat seems genuinely exasperated by what he regards as fanciful policymaking that bears little relation to the realities of running a business. Above all, he believes that Britain’s target of generating one third of its electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and wave energy, by 2020 is naive and he says that politicians need to do far more to “adjust expectations . . . There is a big mismatch with what is achievable. I think it is even bigger in the UK than in Germany. Politicians need to be more realistic.” (The Times)

In the last six weeks natural gas futures prices have jumped from a modern day low to nearly $5 per thousand cubic foot (Mcf) as commodity traders and investors started to cover their short positions in this fuel as the days moved closer to the beginning of the winter heating season. The jump in the gas price ends what has been an extended price slide that started back in summer of 2008 when prices were in excess of $13 per Mcf and early signs of the developing global recession emerged. (Allen Brooks, Energy Tribune)

New York State’s environmental regulators have proposed rules to govern drilling in the Marcellus Shale — a subterranean layer of rock curving northward from West Virginia through Ohio and Pennsylvania to New York’s southern tier. The shale contains enormous deposits of natural gas that could add to the region’s energy supplies and lift New York’s upstate economy. If done carefully — and in carefully selected places — drilling should cause minimal environmental harm.

But regulators must amend the rules to bar drilling in the New York City watershed: a million acres of forests and farmlands whose streams supply the reservoirs that send drinking water to eight million people. Accidental leaks could threaten public health and require a filtration system the city can ill afford.

Natural gas is vital to the nation’s energy needs and can be an important bridge between dirty coal and renewable alternatives. The process of extracting it, however, is not risk-free. Known as hydraulic fracturing, it involves shooting a mix of water, sand and chemicals — many of them highly toxic — into the ground at very high pressure to break down the rock formations and free the gas.

The technique is used in 90 percent of the oil and gas operations in the United States. And while most drilling occurs without incident, “fracking” has been implicated in hundreds of cases of impaired or polluted drinking water supplies in states from Alabama to Wyoming. (NYT)

It's a tall order: Over the next few decades, the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases. Current technology will take us only so far; major breakthroughs are required. (WSJ)

Big Oil Looks to Biofuels - As low-carbon fuels get pushed, BP, Shell and others invest in alternatives

The biofuels industry, hit hard by the global credit crunch, is getting a shot in the arm from a new source–the oil majors.

Among the oil companies, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have been the most active investors in the sector. But it's even beginning to attract more-conservative companies like Exxon Mobil Corp., whose chief executive, Rex Tillerson, once famously dismissed corn-based ethanol as "moonshine." Exxon announced in July it was investing $600 million in an algae-to-fuel start-up, Synthetic Genomics Inc.

"It was a major signal to the biofuels industry," says Bruce Jamerson, chief executive of Mascoma Corp., a producer of cellulosic ethanol, which is made from inedible plant materials.

Big Oil and biotech may seem an odd combination. Oil companies' profits are driven by traditional, fossil-based gasoline and diesel. Biofuels are alternatives that have a marginal market presence. So why switch to switchgrass?

The answer is the low-carbon policies now being put in place across the developed world. In the U.S., for example, the Renewable Fuels Standard mandates growth in annual sales of biofuels through 2022. The Department of Energy expects U.S. production of biofuels to increase from less than half a million barrels a day in 2007 to 2.3 million barrels a day in 2030. Inevitably, that will erode the oil majors' conventional business. (WSJ)

Ed. Note: Over the last few weeks, Robert Rapier, the writer of the R-Squared Energy Blog, has methodically vivisected all of the arguments behind the corn ethanol scam. In this, the final installment of his analysis, Rapier shows that the entire argument for corn ethanol -- that it reduces oil imports -- is nothing more than hyperbole. Here at Energy Tribune, we have opposed the corn ethanol scam for years and for a variety of reasons. And while all of Rapier's points are exactly on point, we'll add one more: Congress has mandated that US industry burn food to make motor fuel at a time when there's a growing global shortage of food and no shortage of motor fuel. The corn ethanol scam is not an energy program. It is a farm subsidy program.

This is the concluding post in a series looking at the impact of increased ethanol production on petroleum imports. Previous posts concluded that there has been little measurable impact on our petroleum imports as a result of increased ethanol production. In this post, I provide a spreadsheet to all the data and graphics used, and delve a bit deeper into the issue. (Energy Tribune)

Can green chemicals save the ethanol industry?

Ethanol producers, who focused on transforming corn into transportation fuel, got whipsawed by skyrocketing corn prices and collapsing demand as consumers cut back on driving.

Now a group of biotechnology and chemical companies is proposing a different model: using the existing ethanol infrastructure to make higher-margin chemicals.

Worries about global warming and government efforts to make chemicals more environmentally friendly are pushing the industry to find alternatives to the building-block materials they make mostly out of oil and natural gas. Ethanol itself, and other chemicals that can be brewed at ethanol plants, are emerging as viable options.

The trend could give the nascent green-chemicals industry a big boost, and revive business for ailing ethanol producers, some of which are bankrupt and idle. (WSJ)

An unrecognized improvement in U.S. nuclear plant safety shows that the lessons of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident still are being taken seriously. Nuclear power wouldn’t be making a comeback in this country unless that was the case.

Industry-wide data compiled by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), a utility organization that monitors nuclear plant safety and operations, shows a dramatic improvement in nuclear plant performance over the past 30 years. Among the changes is a reduction “to nearly zero” of the average number of significant reactor events, especially unplanned reactor shutdowns.

All safety indices show improvement since post-TMI reforms took hold. For example, in 2008 the industrial accident rate dropped to only 0.13 industrial accidents per 200,000 worker-hours. Efforts to protect workers from radiation exposure and to reduce the amount of low-level nuclear waste produced from plant operations have also been successful.

Not surprisingly, the reliability of nuclear plants has risen along with the industry’s safety and operating record. In 2008, the median capacity factor of the 104 U.S. nuclear plants was 91.1 percent, meaning that plants were operating more than 90 percent of the time. That was the ninth consecutive year that the capacity factor was in the 90-percent range. By contrast, in 1979 the average capacity factor at nuclear plants was 56 percent. (Michael R. Fox, Hawaii Reporter)

Editor’s note: This article is the first of two posts on shale gas production and concerns the U.S. situation. The second will look at the potential impacts of shale gas production in Europe and China. While some have interpreted shale gas in terms of coal displacement in power generation, this new competition has profound (negative) implications for the viability of politically favored renewables in power generation. (Donald Hertzmark, Master Resource)

Editor’s note: This article is the second of two on shale gas production. The first dealt with the U.S. situation; this one looks at the potential impacts of shale gas production in Europe and China. (Donald Hertzmark, Master Resource)

While environmentalists are keen to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions, rank-and-file voters seem more taken by the promise of energy independence. Last year, Republicans energized the conservative base by promising to "drill here, drill now," a rallying cry that promised to exploit domestic energy reserves to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil. Energy experts insisted, however, that because oil is a global commodity, exploiting offshore oil would have a trivial impact on our exposure to geopolitical instability in the biggest oil-producing regions. Chaos in the Persian Gulf and the strife-torn Nigerian delta would continue to impact prices at the pump. In a tightly integrated global economy, energy independence might be impossible to achieve. But by sharply increasing our use of natural gas and nuclear power, we might be able to come close while also reducing the carbon intensity of the American economy.

The last few months have seen a surge in interest in natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel. American engineers and geologists have pioneered new, more effective ways of extracting natural gas from shale formations, and recoverable reserves in the United States have gone up by an extraordinary 40% in just the last four years. (Reihan Salam, Forbes)

LOS ANGELES - U.S.-based First Solar Inc denied it was using aggressive accounting methods to support its earnings growth, despite concerns from some analysts that its cash flows were beginning lag profit levels.

"We report net income and net cash provided by operating activities in accordance with U.S. GAAP," the company said in an email, referring to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

First Solar and other leading solar companies such as China's Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd and California- based SunPower Corp are expected to report their quarterly earnings in the coming weeks.

Those figures are expected to be their brightest earnings in a year since a global glut of solar panels and lack of financing has hurt the industry. (Reuters)

“In an 1878 letter, [John] Ericsson concluded that ‘the fact is . . . that although the heat is obtained for nothing, so extensive, costly, and complex is the concentration apparatus that solar steam is many times more costly than steam produced by burning coal.’” -- - Wilson Clark, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 364.

Renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, are packaged as “new” and “the energy future.” But on close inspection, as the quotations below will show, these technologies are very old and have had many decades of application.

And as sure as the sun shines, solar and wind fail the economics and product-quality tests as dilute, non-stored, intermittent energy sources. And why amid a boom in fossil fuel supplies–a stock of energy from the sun’s work over the ages–would one chose a far more costly and unreliable energy source from the sun’s weak flow?

Unlike wind power, however, solar does have a pro-consumer, free-society niche as an off-the-grid power source. Such ‘micro’ electricity provides electricity that would not otherwise exist. (Robert Bradley, Master Resource)

“The use of wind power is as old as history.” -- Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), p. 62.

“The Federal Power Commission became interested in the Grandpa’s Knob [windpower] experiment during World War II, and commissioned Percy H. Thomas, a senior engineer of the commission, to investigate the potential of wind power production for the entire country. Thomas’ survey, Electric Power from the Wind, was published in March 1945.” -- Wilson Clark, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 545.

Last week I posted on the long history of solar energy to make the point that this technology is not an infant industry. The fact that solar cannot compete against grid electricity (off grid is another matter) today is proof positive that there is an inherent disadvantage with the dilute, intermittent flow of sunlight in the thriving carbon-based energy era. (Robert Bradley, Master Resource)

Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, will consider building its own windfarm to meet a new target of becoming a zero-carbon business by 2050. (Daily Telegraph)

GENEVA - H1N1 pandemic influenza remains a cause for concern because of its unpredictable nature, even though it has killed fewer than 5,000 people so far this year, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

A statement from the United Nations health agency said that more than 4,735 deaths attributable to H1N1, known as swine flu, had been reported, and that influenza activity in the northern hemisphere was much higher than usual.

But WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said it was too soon to draw any conclusions from the death toll as experts needed to monitor a full year of the disease, which the WHO declared a pandemic in June after the strain was first detected in April.

"Although the death rate might not be enormous at the moment we do have to continue to be prepared for developments as we go through the winter in the northern hemisphere," Hartl said.

In particular, health experts need to observe the behaviour of the virus during the traditional January-February peak of the influenza season in the northern hemisphere, he told a briefing.

Most people who catch the H1N1 virus suffer mild symptoms. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - The new H1N1 flu is "strikingly different" from seasonal influenza, killing much younger people than ordinary flu and often killing them very fast, World Health Organization officials said on Friday.

A review of studies done during the seven months the virus has been circulating shows it is usually mild, but can cause unusual and severe symptoms in an unlucky few, according to a WHO-sponsored meeting in Washington this week.

"Participants who have managed such cases agreed that the clinical picture in severe cases is strikingly different from the disease pattern seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza," WHO's Dr. Nikki Shindo told the meeting. (Reuters)

People who do not believe in vaccinating children have never had much sway over Leslie Wygant Arndt. She has studied the vaccine debate, she said, and came out in favor of having her 10-month-old daughter inoculated against childhood diseases. But there is something different about the vaccine for the H1N1 flu, she said.

“I have looked at the people who are against it, and I find myself taking their side,” said Ms. Wygant Arndt, who lives in Portland, Ore. “But then again I go back and forth on this every day. It’s an emotional topic.”

Anti-vaccinators, as they are often referred to by scientists and doctors, have toiled for years on the margins of medicine. But an assemblage of factors around the swine flu vaccine — including confusion over how it was made, widespread speculation about whether it might be more dangerous than the virus itself, and complaints among some health care workers in New York about a requirement that they be vaccinated — is giving the anti-vaccine movement a fresh airing, according to health experts.

“Nationally right now there is a tremendous amount of attention on this vaccine,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the New York City health commissioner. That focus has given vaccine opponents “an opportunity to speak out publicly and get their message amplified that they didn’t have at other times,” he said. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government's $6.4 billion swine flu vaccination program is likely to put the American public health sector under unprecedented strain and expose serious shortcomings, experts say.

As the first mass U.S. immunization program in a generation ramps up to deliver tens of millions of doses each week, public health experts disagree about how well the country's network of state and local health departments might perform.

But many say the sector never received the money it needed for large-scale immunizations despite years of planning for pandemics after the reemergence of bird flu in Hong Kong and South Korea in 2003.

"The worst-case scenario is that there is vaccine in a particular state or locale but that state or locale hasn't sufficiently planned to distribute it," said Leonard Marcus of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Marcus, who studied the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, said the H1N1 immunization program could encounter similar breakdowns in leadership and coordination wherever local public health systems are underfunded or poorly managed.

"Some bureaucrat is going to say he doesn't have authority or needs a signature and it's going to stop the system from moving. That could very well cause panic," he said in a telephone interview. (Reuters)

LONDON - Giving paracetamol to babies to prevent fever after routine vaccinations may reduce the effect of the shots themselves, Czech scientists said on Friday.

While the paracetamol, known as acetaminophen in the United States, generally does limit post-vaccination fever, it also reduces the child's response to some of the vaccine antigens, according to a study in The Lancet journal.

Mothers in developed countries whose babies have a series of routine vaccinations at around the age three months are often told by medical staff to give paracetamol to try to cut the risk of fever or febrile convulsions.

But Roman Prymula of the Czech University of Defence said his study showed that giving so-called anti-pyretic medicines like paracetamol after vaccinations should "no longer be routinely recommended without careful weighing of the expected benefits and risks." (Reuters)

Most heart disease occurs in healthy people without traditional risk factors and who aren’t considered to be at risk. That has led healthy people without symptoms to feel vulnerable to this ‘silent killer’ and seek ways to see if they could be at risk. The biggest growth industry of preventive health screenings are tests for an array of “emerging” cardiac risk factors. While these tests are heavily marketed to the public and millions of people are lining up for them, do they have any credibility?

The results of a massive systematic review of the evidence for these nontraditional heart disease risk factors were released last week by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. This major government review — involving 42 years of published studies and 212 citations — as well as its recommendations for clinical practice, has extensive ramifications in preventive care for all Americans, as well as the clinical practice of medical professionals. These results should have been widely reported, offering information to help everyone make more informed decisions about preventive screenings. But, did you hear anything?

This is another example of mainstream media failing to report science that is politically incorrect. Amidst today’s popular “preventive wellness” movement, how many news stories reported this far-reaching government review last week? (Junkfood Science)

GENEVA - Scientists took a step closer on Friday to banning the pesticide endosulfan, widely used on crops like cocoa and cotton, despite objections from India, which is a major producer and consumer of the toxic chemical.

Endosulfan is under consideration for inclusion on the list of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the 166-member Stockholm Convention -- a treaty to protect human health and the environment from chemicals.

The Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee decided to draw up a risk management evaluation for endosulfan, the penultimate step to putting it on the banned list, the convention secretariat said in a statement.

Once the committee has produced the evaluation it can propose to the next meeting of the convention in May 2011 that endosulfan should be banned.

"Endosulfan is a pesticide that is still widely used on many crops such as soy, cotton, rice, and tea. It is highly toxic to humans and many other animals and has been found in the environment, including the Arctic," the statement said. (Reuters)

Capitalism seems rather out of fashion these days. Whether it’s President Obama’s penchant for taking over private industry, Congress’ uncontrolled spending, or the media’s near-constant attacks on Wall Street, one can safely assume capitalism will be placed in the “out” category on those ubiquitous year-end round-ups of trends that are “in” and “out” of fashion.

Michael Moore’s myth-making on the big screen is the latest the attempt to weaken the American public’s confidence in capitalism. It could prove effective because let’s face it, more Americans go to the movies than read economic theory. Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story is standard Michael Moore buffoonery—light on facts, heavy on juvenile humor. But there’s no doubt, some would also call it convincing—especially to those who don’t know what capitalism actually is--like Michael Moore himself. (Julie Gunlock, Townhall)

According to press reports, the most recent opinion poll shows that 65% of Czechs support President Václav Klaus’ refusal to sign the Lisbon Treaty that would take more power from national parliaments and give it to the unelected bureaucracy in Brussels.

Klaus, who has been at the pinnacle of Czech politics for the last 20 years (as minister of finance, prime minister, speaker of the house and now as president), has an unmatched understanding of the Czech people. Clearly, once again, he was able to discern the public mood better than others. That includes his successor as the leader of the center-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Mirek Topolanek, who once opposed the Lisbon Treaty but now supports it. It seems that the ODS is in a state of revolt against him and may unseat him at the ODS Party Congress in November.

Klaus will be much encouraged by the above poll. As a consequence, it is less likely that he will give way under pressure and sign the Lisbon Treaty anytime soon. If he can hold out until the likely British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty midway through 2010, he will likely be remembered as the man who put an end to the most ambitious attempt to create a centralized European super-state in modern history. (Marian L. Tupy, Cato at liberty)

In the wake of the controversial dismissal of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, another of the President's men has been attracting negative attention.

The President has chosen teacher and GLBT activist Kevin Jennings for advice and guidance on how best to foster a safe and drug-free environment for America's school children. Much has already been written about Jennings's controversial background, his troubling associations, his questionable ethics, and his obvious lack of qualification and suitability for the job of Safe Schools Czar. Given Obama's need to stay in the public's good graces in order to advance the cause of health care reform, it would hardly be surprising to see Kevin Jennings gently shoved off the President's roster of advisors if this criticism continues.

What the American people are beginning to realize—thanks to appointees like Van Jones and Kevin Jennings—is that the President's vision for the country involves far more than making health care accessible to all or reducing our collective carbon footprint. True to his promise to bring about "change," Mr. Obama is aggressively pursuing a comprehensive policy of social engineering designed to do just that.

And he is using America's schools as an instrument to produce that change. (Ken Connor, Townhall)

NEW YORK - Speed bumps, lower speed limits, and other so-called "traffic calming" strategies may help reduce traffic-related injuries and deaths, according to a review of published studies.

But it's still not clear whether such measures will work in the developing world -- where they may be needed the most, Dr. Frances Bunn of the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK and colleagues note.

Car crashes are the ninth-leading cause of years of life lost to disability in the world, and are expected to jump to third place by 2020, Bunn and her team note.

They searched the literature for studies on the value of speed bumps, mini-roundabouts, lower speed limits, one-way streets and other traffic calming measures. They found no randomized controlled trials (the gold standard) that compared traffic calming to no intervention, but they did find 22 before-and-after studies. All were done in Europe, Japan or Australia, and none were done in low or middle-income countries.

The pooled results showed that, after implementation of traffic calming, the risk of fatal traffic accidents fell 21 percent; fatal or non-fatal accidents resulting in injury were cut by 15 percent; and the total number of crashes fell by 11 percent. But there was no significant reduction in the number of car accidents involving pedestrians.

These figures likely underestimate the effect of traffic calming efforts, the researchers say, because the studies they reviewed were so different from one another, making it difficult to pool the results together.

Bunn and colleagues report their findings in The Cochrane Library, which publishes systematic reviews of medical research.

"Traffic calming interventions," the researchers conclude, "need to be properly evaluated using well-designed controlled studies, so that we can more accurately estimate their effects. In addition, researchers need to assess the effect of these interventions in middle and lower-income countries." (Reuters Health)

The 2009 Nobel Prize for economics is a useful reminder of how easy it is for scientists to go wrong, especially when their mistake jibes with popular beliefs or political agendas.

Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University shared the prize for her research into the management of “commons,” which has been a buzzword among ecologists since Garrett Hardin’s 1968 article Science, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His fable about a common pasture that is ruined by overgrazing became one of the most-quoted articles ever published by that journal, and it served as a fundamental rationale for the expansion of national and international regulation of the environment. His fable was a useful illustration of a genuine public-policy problem — how do you manage a resource that doesn’t belong to anyone? — but there were a couple of big problems with the essay and its application.

First, Dr. Hardin himself misapplied the fable. Declaring that “overpopulation” was a tragedy of the commons, he warned that “freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.” He and others advocated a “lifeboat ethic” of denying food aid, even during emergencies, to poor countries with rapidly growing populations. But “overpopulation” was not even a theoretical example of the tragedy of the commons. Parents are not like the cattle owners who profit individually by adding cows to the pasture (while collectively destroying it). Parents, unlike the cattle owners, have to pay to feed and house and educate their children, and the high economic costs of children are one reason that birth rates have declined around the world — without any of the coercion discussed by Dr. Hardin and some other ecologists (like Paul Ehrlich).

The second problem arising from Dr. Hardin’s fable was the presumption that a commons needed to be regulated by national and international agencies. Dr. Hardin didn’t explicitly make that generalization in the essay — he noted that the tragedy could be avoided either by regulating the commons or by converting it to private property — but others in the environmental movement essentially drew that conclusion. Although some greens talked about the virtue of “acting locally,” major environmental groups lobbied in Washington for expanded federal authority, and they urged the rest of the world to follow the American and European example by creating national rules governing commons like forests and fisheries.

But too often those commons ended up in worse shape once they were put under the control of distant bureaucrats who lacked the expertise or the incentives to do the job properly. Dr. Hardin and his disciples had failed to appreciate how often the tragedy of the commons had been averted thanks to ingenious local institutions and customs. Dr. Ostrom won the Nobel for her work analyzing those local institutions. In an interview at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Dr. Ostrom discussed the damage that had been done by those who had supplanted the local institutions:

International donors and nongovernmental organizations, as well as national governments and charities, have often acted, under the banner of environmental conservation, in a way that has unwittingly destroyed the very social capital — shared relationship, norms, knowledge and understanding — that has been used by resource users to sustain the productivity of natural capital over the ages. The effort to preserve biodiversity should not lead to the destruction of institutional diversity. . . . These institutions are most in jeopardy when central government officials assume that they do not exist (or are not effective) simply because the government has not put them in place. (John Tierney, NYT)

TAIT E. JOHANSSON and James F. Nordgren do not hate animals.

In fact, they help run the Bedford Audubon Society, which protects birds and other wildlife in northeastern Westchester and eastern Putnam Counties. Yet, as they gaze across a meadow to a forest behind their headquarters here, their resolve is strengthened to support a measure that the public does not usually associate with conservation groups — deploying bowhunters to kill white-tailed deer.

What the two glimpse beyond the meadow is a four-foot-high void, called a browseline, under the dense stands of hickory, maple and oak trees. The void has been carved out by deer, which have gobbled up all the low-rise shrubs, wildflowers and saplings as efficiently as a hedge trimmer. With no trees younger than 20 years to speak of in those woods, these conservationists worry that in another 50 years there will be no forest left.

“As old trees die and there are no young trees replacing them, we could be looking at a barren landscape,” said Mr. Nordgren, the society’s executive director. (NYT)

My friend Mary wrote the other day to tell me of her grandfather’s dilemma. He’s involved in important litigation aimed at saving his farm, his family business, and hundreds of agricultural jobs in North Carolina. His problems have been produced by a series of unfortunate events. Among them is a radical environmental movement that cares more about trees and fish than it does about human beings.

... So the problem is complex. But the solution begins with a call for the White House to take the lead on reversing federally mandated use of corn to produce ethanol fuel. Imagine how many jobs we could save if we turned away from ethanol mandates and towards drilling in ANWR.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for help from this White House. Out in California, water has been diverted from the San Joaquin Valley in order to save the two-inch hypomesus transpacificus fish – also known as the delta smelt. This has caused a severe drought in the area with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers of 40%.

In August, fifty mayors from the San Joaquin Valley asked President Obama to come see the devastation first-hand. He refused. Obama previously denied a request to designate California as a federal disaster area. To do so would have acknowledged the fact that Obama’s radical environmental policies are, quite literally, scorched earth policies. Just go to the San Joachim Valley and you’ll see plenty of scorched earth.

There’s little chance President Obama will take interest in the unforeseen effects his policies are having on the hog farming industry. In his part of the world there’s an endless supply of pork. And there’s no shortage of pigs feeding at the government trough. (Mike Adams, Townhall)

Washington, DC - This statement was issued today by Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the Free Enterprise Project:

Eliot Spitzer's commentary in Slate ("Chamber of Horrors," http://www.slate.com/id/2232441/) calling for state pension funds to pressure corporations to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reminds us of his past efforts to climb the political ladder on the backs of business executives. Instead of worrying about the Chamber, state officials should be investigating pension funds for potential conflicts of interest and for using their shareholder standing to advance the left-wing agenda. (Press Release)

Every day we have an opportunity to vote with our wallets by letting companies know there is a price to pay for colluding with those who oppose our values. (Tom Borelli, FOXNews.com)

Peter Foster: The weather exploiters - Radical environmentalist Tim Flannery’s new book contains the usual hysterical pseudo-science. Second in an occasional series titled Countdown to Catastrophe: Copenhagen.

Tim Flannery, the radical Australian environmentalist, quoted Adam Smith this week during a CBC Radio interview, thus surely sending the great economist spinning once more in his Edinburgh grave.

Promoting his latest book, Now or Never, on The Current, Mr. Flannery cited the Sage of Kirkcaldy’s warning against attempts by businessmen to influence policy: “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [merchants or manufacturers], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.”

True indeed, which makes it intriguing that Mr. Flannery should regard Al Gore, who has made, and stands to make, hundreds of millions of dollars from promoting government subsidy and regulation, as one of his heroes.

Even more strange, or perhaps just spectacularly hypocritical, that Mr. Flannery — whose previous book, The Weather Makers, was a bestseller — should head something called the Copenhagen Climate Council, which is a morass of the kind of corporatist influence against which Adam Smith was warning. (Financial Post)

Rich countries, including the US, must commit to legally-binding targets to cut carbon emissions as part of any international climate change deal, according to Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary. (Daily Telegraph)

President Obama must intervene personally to rescue a proposed global deal on climate change that is hanging in the balance, the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary has told The Times.

Ed Miliband said that there was a much greater chance of a successful deal being agreed in December if Mr Obama travelled to Copenhagen to lead the US delegation to the UN conference.

Gordon Brown has said that he will attend the conference but Mr Obama and most other world leaders have yet to commit themselves to going. White House officials offered no new assurances yesterday, saying only that the Administration would be represented at the “appropriate level”. (The Times)

Naomi's unhappy? Things must be better than I thought... Obama isn't helping. At least the world argued with Bush - For all the global love-in, the new president has led rich nations to neglect principled action and row back from climate deals

Of all the explanations for Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize, the one that rang truest came from Nicolas Sarkozy. "It sets the seal on America's return to the heart of all the world's peoples." In other words, this was Europe's way of saying to America, "We love you again", like those weird renewal-of-vows ceremonies couples have after a rough patch.

Now Europe and the US are officially reunited, it seems appropriate to consider whether this is necessarily a good thing. The Nobel committee, which awarded the prize for Obama's embrace of "multilateral diplomacy", is evidently convinced that US engagement on the world stage is a triumph for peace and justice. I'm not so sure. After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player. Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom.

Let's start where the stakes are highest: climate change. During the Bush years, European politicians distinguished themselves from the US by expressing their unshakable commitment to the Kyoto protocol. So while the US increased its carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels, European Union countries reduced theirs by 2%. Not stellar, but clearly a case where the EU's break-up with America carried tangible benefits for the planet.

Flash forward to the high-stakes climate negotiations that have just wrapped up in Bangkok. The talks were supposed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen this December that significantly strengthens Kyoto. Instead, the developed countries formed a bloc calling for Kyoto to be replaced. Where Kyoto set clear and binding targets for emission reductions, the US plan would have each country decide how much to cut, then submit its plans to international monitoring – with nothing but wishful thinking to ensure this all keeps the planet's temperature below catastrophic levels. And where Kyoto put the burden of responsibility squarely on the rich countries that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. (Naomi Klein, The Guardian)

Australians are the latest citizenry to turn against climate change catastrophism. For the first time, according to a Lowy poll released this week, a majority of the population turned thumbs down to the proposition that “global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.” This rejection applied to younger segments of the population as well as old, especially disappointing to Australian decision makers, given their efforts to indoctrinate youths through the educational system.

Last year, 60% of the populace bought into global warming fears and in 2006, the figure was 68%. (Financial Post)

WASHINGTON - An international meeting in December to create tough new goals for fighting global warming will fail to produce a deal, but more modest objectives can be achieved, supporters said on Wednesday.

"I think it's impossible to really get to a binding international agreement" by mid-December in Copenhagen, said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. (Reuters)

OSLO - World climate talks may need extra time next year to agree cuts in greenhouse emissions for 2020 since U.S. laws are unlikely to be in place before a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December, experts say. (Reuters)

The climate bill is rapidly moving from a bill that would move money around and do little to reduce emissions, to a bill that will move money around and accommodate a Republican-preferred "all of the above" energy policy that is very carbon intensive. The take over of climate policy by the Republican agenda is the most over-looked aspect of this entire debate. Perhaps those covering the horse race can't see the forest for the trees.

I wonder what will happen if drilling in ANWR were to become an explicit part of the climate bill negotiations? Are left-leaning Democrats willing to give that away in silence as well?

If Republicans want to blow up the bill, they probably just have to press loudly for this provision. However, given how well things are going for them, why would they want to blow it up at all?

Stay tuned. (Roger Pielke Jr)

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct. 14 -- The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will begin 3 days of hearings on Oct. 27 on the global climate-change bill that its chairwoman, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced Sept. 30.

“Members of the committee and their staffs, along with the committee’s staff, have been working day and night since the bill was introduced, and we have made great progress,” she told reporters at a briefing. “Draft provisions of the chairman’s mark have been sent to the Environmental Protection Agency for analysis. We expect that to be completed in time for the hearings.”

Boxer said the hearings will begin with testimony from US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.

Witnesses for the two other hearings will be announced shortly, she said. “We will schedule a full committee markup as soon as possible after the hearings,” she said.

Boxer’s announcement came a day before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s second hearing on potential costs of a carbon cap-and-trade program, a component of both S. 1733, the Boxer-Kerry bill, and HR 2454, the measure cosponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), which the House approved by seven votes on June 26. (OGJ)

THE HIGHLY anticipated Senate climate-change bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer makes noteworthy improvements on the similar bill passed by the House last summer. The Senate bill sets higher goals for reducing carbon emissions. But its two Senate sponsors must now avoid what happened in the House, where contentious negotiations served to water down a bill that started out to be every bit as ambitious as its Senate cousin. (Boston Globe)

As the 821-page Kerry-Boxer climate bill gets fast-tracked in the Senate as a companion to the 1,427-page House bill, it is critical we re-examine the assumptions behind cap-tax-and-trade legislation.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration and other optimistic analysts claim America can limit and tax hydrocarbon use, and switch to "ecologically friendly" renewable energy, with minimal harm to families, businesses and jobs.

Their lowball cost estimates are based on assumptions that can only have come from another planet: (Roy Innes and Paul Driessen, IBD)

Developed and developing countries argue over their respective climate change duties. There is a way out of the deadlock (Prasad Kasibhatla and Bill Chameides, The Guardian)

WASHINGTON - A U.S. cap-and-trade market on greenhouse gases should be designed carefully to avoid unfair economic pain in fossil fuel industries and other parts of the economy, experts told lawmakers on Wednesday.

The aim of a cap-and-trade market on greenhouse gases at the center of the climate bill introduced by Senate leaders this month would transform the economy from being based on fossil fuels to more nuclear and renewable power.

"The shifts will be significant," Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, told a U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing. (Reuters)

BRUSSELS, Oct 15 - Poor nations are not blocking global climate talks but are simply demanding that rich nations meet existing commitments of financial help, a leading negotiator for the 77 poorest countries said.

Bernarditas Muller said a rift that emerged in climate talks in Bangkok last week showed that rich nations want to dodge responsibility for global warming by their industries and to avoid existing commitments to provide climate funding. (Reuters)

Officials from Pacific island countries expected to be among the earliest victims of climate change will meet next week to devise a negotiating strategy for a crucial Copenhagen conference.

The officials will meet in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, a nation where islands average less than one metre (three feet) above sea level and are among the most vulnerable in the world to rising sea levels caused by global warming.

More than a dozen Pacific Island countries will be plotting their strategy for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December in Copenhagen, which will attempt to hammer out an international deal to combat warming.

Espen Ronneberg, the climate change advisor to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), said Thursday that Pacific countries would be gathering new information on the impact of global warming in the region to devise a negotiating strategy. (AFP)

Adaptation fund remains almost empty - The UN fund set up to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change has received only a fraction of the amounts needed.

While the need for climate change adaptation funding is generally agreed to amount to hundreds of billions of US dollars, the UN fund set up for the purpose in 2008 currently holds just 18 million – not billion – US dollars. (CoP15)

That’s why the report by Britain’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is important. It shows how weak policy has been, and suggests ways of strengthening it (see article). Most of their ideas are good, and one of them is bad.

Britain’s headline figures are fairly impressive. Its greenhouse-gas emissions have fallen by 15% since 1990—comfortably inside its target under the Kyoto protocol—compared with a 2% drop in the EU as a whole and a 14% rise in America. Most of the decline in Britain, however, is the result not of a big policy effort but of the “dash for gas”—the move away from coal-fired power stations that followed the end of coal mining. The decline has now almost stopped. Emissions are falling by less than a percentage point a year, and the government has admitted that it will fail to meet a self-imposed target of a 20% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions on 1990 levels by next year, even though the recession has cut economic activity. Policy, in other words, is not driving emissions reductions. (The Economist)

Shoppers explore the new Westfield shopping centre during its opening day in west London. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

As living standards rise, we buy more products and services and that inevitably will impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

What we need to grasp is that consumers are hugely linked to the issue of global warming – in the UK alone, they contribute to 75% of all emissions. But though consumers are surely part of the problem, they are also fundamental to the solution.

Anyone who uses a supermarket for their daily needs has a major role to play. Ordinary shoppers are the key to the widespread behavioural shifts we need to edge back from the brink. As well as reducing emissions in their own activities, families can encourage innovation in businesses by demanding low-carbon products and services, and that can encourage politicians to take radical steps towards a lower carbon world. (The Guardian)

Scientists look seriously at the possibility of warming beyond the 2 °C target. Anna Barnett reports.

Concerned by escalating greenhouse gas emissions, scientists are now looking in earnest at the possibility of global temperatures rising by 4 °C or more. Gathering this month at the University of Oxford, they sketched out a world affected by severe climate change, which they now see as increasingly probable.

The conference, which took place 28–30 September, marks a shift in experts' hopes of keeping average global temperatures to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels — widely considered the threshold for 'dangerous climate change'. "Emissions have not gone down globally, as people had hoped they would do," says Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK, who spoke at the conference. "The rate of increase has actually gone up."

Recent greenhouse gas emissions match the trajectory for most extreme scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this scenario, A1FI, has received little study compared with its more moderate counterparts, says Richard Betts of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, who presented new research in Oxford. "Now we know that emissions are at the upper end of what the IPCC projected a decade ago, it justifies taking the higher-emissions scenario more seriously," he notes. Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, says that until now, "it was almost like the 2 °C target was driving the science". (Nature ~~Reports~~ Distorts Climate Change )

Have you ever had so much time on your hands that you needed something to waste it on? Fighting a problem that doesn’t exist is a good way to waste your time. (Bob Ellis, Dakota Voice)

Google and a couple of other big companies have teamed up and declared October 15th, 2009 to be the annual Blog Action Day.

Bloggers are supposed to register with them and they should receive millions of visitors, i.e. thousands of visits per registered blog. Well, I have certain doubts that these figures are trustworthy so I have tried it.

The video above explains that all the registered bloggers can write about any topic they like. And they can write whatever they think about the topic. And the topic must be climate change and they must write that it is a threat. ;-) Google and others have become employees in this major new post-modern kind of irrational intellectual prostitution and co-culprits of the most intense global brainwashing campaign of the contemporary era.

If you happened to find this blog on the Blog Action Day website, that's great because there are 673 posts about the climate on this blog. Dozens of them include detailed, quantitative, and verifiable explanations why the global warming alarm is a gigantic hoax.

This blog is also read by many readers who have studied the climate science in quite some detail and who can answer your question. Of course, it is conceivable that you - a visitor of the Blog Action Day - hasn't gotten here at all because this website has been censored.

In that case, we don't have to tell you anything because you won't hear it anyway. :-)

Update: After an hour with no hits from them, I think it's safe to say that the non-alarmist blogs are being removed from their server. (The Reference Frame)

The environmental group Greenpeace is attacking the legitimacy of a 13-year effort to produce carbon credits by saving Bolivia's rainforests -- an effort that other advocates defend as a pioneering and vitally necessary model for fighting global warming.

The scene for the dispute is northeast Bolivia's Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. In 1996, the government revoked four logging concessions to double the size of the protected area. The move saved a swath of trees about the size of Connecticut from being cleared by locals to farm or being degraded by timber companies. (ClimateWire)

More than a decade ago in the northeast corner of Bolivia, a group of polluters and environmentalists joined forces in the first large-scale experiment to curb climate change with a strategy that promised to suit their competing interests: compensating for greenhouse gas emissions by preserving forests.

The coalition of U.S. utility companies, two nonprofit groups and the Bolivian government had the common goal of making a dent in the worldwide deforestation that accounts for about 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The outcome of that experiment is fueling debate over a key element in international climate strategy.

While the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project has succeeded in keeping a biologically rich preserve of more than 6,000 square miles free from logging, it has fallen far short of its goal of reducing emissions. The mix of pragmatism and idealism -- providing powerful financial incentives to encourage influential companies and poor countries to work together to slow global warming -- shows the complexity of a much-heralded approach that Democratic lawmakers and international negotiators are trying to write into law. (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post)

Does clean coal really have a future where it’s needed most—in China?

As much as policymakers keep talking about carbon capture and storage, the obstacles facing wide deployment of the technology are pretty steep. There’s the $5 trillion price tag, for starters, and the sheer difficulty of building thousands of carbon-capture plants, and hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines to store emissions underground.

And in China, in particular, there are plenty of concerns that less-efficient clean coal plants would actually strain, not help, the nation’s energy infrastructure.

But one piece of the puzzle, at least, is falling into place. A new study by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory says China is blessed by geology—it has loads of places to stick carbon emissions underground, enough to store a century’s worth of emissions at least. The full study will be released next month; here’s a summary, and here’s more. (WSJ)

First, I loathe having to write another story about Pen Hadow and his Catlin Arctic Ice expedition, which I consider the scientific joke of 2009. But these opportunistic explorers are once again getting some press over the “science” data, and of course it is being used to make the usual alarmist pronouncements such as this badly written story in the BBC:

WUWT followed the entire activist affair disguised as a science expedition from the start. You can see all of the coverage here. It’s not pretty. When I say this expedition was the “scientific joke of 2009″, I mean it.

UPDATE: Bob Tisdale has posted an update based on an error in the data as originally available at the NODC. The new post is NODC’s CORRECTION TO OHC (0-700m) DATA.

The first post in this series “ENSO Dominates NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Data” illustrated the upward El Nino-induced step changes in the Ocean Heat Content (OHC) of the Tropical Pacific, Tropical Atlantic, South Pacific, South Indian, and South Atlantic datasets. The second post “North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Is Governed By Natural Variables” showed the impacts of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and ENSO on North Atlantic OHC. But the post the grabbed the most interest was the third in the series “Update of NODC (Levitus et al 2009) OHC Data Through June 2009”. It showed the drop of Global OHC over the past six months. Refer to Figure 1, which illustrates the monthly NODC Global OHC anomalies (0-700m) from January 1955 through June 2009. (Climate Science)

WUWT readers may recall last week that we had an excellent guest analysis by Bob Tisdale titled:

I was advised today (Thanks, Fred) that the NODC has revised their Ocean Heat Content data. A quick check of the KNMI Climate Explorer News webpage…
http://climexp.knmi.nl/news.cgi?someone@somewhere
…reveals that it was revised on October 15, 2009 at KNMI.

Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh writes, “There was an error in the last 3-month data point of the NODC ocean heat content dataset, as anyone who made a map of the data could see. The problem has been fixed at NODC (thanks Gavin, Tim).”

Apparently the NODC hadn’t bothered to plot the data prior to posting it on September 14, 2009, or hadn’t thought there was a problem until…

Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopy rainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5°C warmer than those seen today - as hot as some of the more dire global-warming projections.

The new fossil evidence comes from the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, previously the location where the remains of the gigantic 40-foot Titanoboa cerrejonensis were discovered. The snake's discoverers attracted flak from global-warming worriers at the time for saying that the cold-blooded creature would only have been able to survive in jungles a good bit hotter than Colombia's now are.

But now, according to further diggings, there is more evidence to support the idea that a proper rainforest similar to those now seen in the tropics existed at the time of the Titanoboa - despite the much hotter temperatures. This could be seen as conflicting with the idea that a rise of more than two or three degrees would kill off today's jungles with devastating consequences for the global ecosystem of which we are all part. (Lewis Page, The Register)

The incoming strictly-orthodox and yet very open minded IPCC message is of an ongoing, complex, fascinating scientific analysis full of uncertainties that need to be investigated. Yet, at the other end of the “broken telephone” all channels are clogged by absurdist, simplistic claims of “the debate is over” (a statement that is, in a sense, the true denial).

Take a look for example at the magnitude of the solar forcing, again according to the IPCC. The “official value” everybody with even a remote interest keeps hearing about, is 0.12 and can be found in AR4-WG1-Chapter2 (*), page 193.

But then if you go to page 212, Table 2.11, it turns out that the “level of scientific understanding” for Solar Irradiance is “Low”, and for the component linked to cosmic UV rays is “Very low”.

And that’s not even remotely enough. All the known unknowns about the role of the Sun in shaping the Earth’s climate are clearly spelled out in Joanna D. Haigh’s “The Sun and the Earth’s climate” (**). True, that article might have been published after the official IPCC deadline. On the other hand, Dr Haig was well known at the time to the IPCC authors and reviewers, and appears four times among the References for that chapter alone.

That means that actual value can be half, or 2.5 times as much, and that’s just considering a confidence interval of 90% (”moderately confident” in statistical jargon) rather than the classic 95% (regarding which the spread between minimum and maximum possible value would have obviously been considerably wider).

And so we find the IPCC “moderately confident” about a forcing whose (1) known known components are “little to very little” understood, (2) known unknown components are not even considered despite being present in the Literature and (3) unknown unknown components… (well, “no comment” about those).

Add to that the fact that a “forcing”, like all “forcings“, is not a measurable quantity in the real world, and therefore exists strictly as an estimate. An estimate about which the IPCC is somewhat ’schizophrenic’ to say the least.

And yet, all that fun is not found anywhere: instead of “low to very low understanding” about an estimate done with “moderate confidence“, what we read is how small the Solar forcing “IS”: 0.12.

(*) Forster, P., V. Ramaswamy, P. Artaxo, T. Berntsen, R. Betts, D.W. Fahey, J. Haywood, J. Lean, D.C. Lowe, G. Myhre, J. Nganga, R. Prinn, G. Raga, M. Schulz and R. Van Dorland, 2007: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

(**) Joanna D. Haigh, “The Sun and the Earth’s Climate”, Living Rev. Solar Phys. 4, (2007), 2. URL (cited on Oct 14, 2009): http://www.livingreviews.org/lrsp-2007-2 (OmniClimate)

NEW ORLEANS - President Barack Obama said on Thursday he is in favor of finding environmentally safe ways to tap U.S. oil and natural gas reserves and would like to see increased use of nuclear-generated electricity.

"What I think we need to do is increase our domestic energy production," Obama said at a public meeting in New Orleans. "I'm in favor of finding environmentally sound ways to tap our oil and our natural gas."

Obama also spoke about the need to rely more heavily on nuclear energy as the United States looks for ways to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON — Although nationwide employment is likely to remain stable under congressional proposals to combat climate change, the initiatives would deal a heavy blow to those working for petroleum refiners and other industries tied to polluting fossil fuels, a government economist said Wednesday.

Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change would “shift production, investment and employment away from industries involved in the production of carbon-based energy and energy-intensive goods and services.”

Instead, he said, capital and jobs would go “toward industries involved in the development and production of alternative energy sources,” such as wind and solar power.

“The shifts will be significant,” Elmendorf added. “There will be reductions in employment in industries that produce fossil fuels, that use fossil fuels intensively or that make products” used by households reliant on a lot of fossil fuel. (Houston Chronicle)

The dramatic reduction in carbon emissions in the US is not only because of the recession. Renewables and energy efficiency have played their part too. From Grist, part of the Guardian Environment Network

PARIS — Canada, despite being among the top western industrialized countries when it comes to advancing energy efficiency measures, still falls short in several areas and lacks a coherent national plan to reduce energy waste, a global agency said here Thursday.

The International Energy Agency said Canada ranks near the top among its 28 member states in promoting or legislating stricter efficiency measures for highways, cars and trucks, household appliances, industrial plans and buildings.

But the IEA, at a meeting of energy ministers in advance of a key United Nations gathering on climate change in Copenhagen in December, said Canada's performance is stellar only because most of the others have fumbled the ball. (Peter O'Neil, Canwest News Service)

An environmental activist planning to take part in the Great Climate Swoop at Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station this weekend has been arrested today on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage, a crime which can carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The action by police follows the recent charging, which I blogged about this week, of 25 other activists with conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. It also comes after the use of antiterrorist legislation to prevent Chris Kitchen from travelling to Copenhagen, where he had planned to work with activist organisation Climate Justice Action, which is planning demonstrations during UN climate talks in December.

The latest arrest will worry environmental activists, who suspect that police are now casting aside heavy-handed techniques such as the "kettling" used during the Kingsnorth and the G20 protests in favour of a more preventative approach. (Bibi van der Zee, The Guardian)

Can liberalised energy markets cut carbon emissions? Britain is starting to doubt it

FOR many left-wingers, the credit crunch was proof that markets do not always know best. The near-collapse of the world’s banking system shows once and for all, they argue, that an industry as important as finance cannot be left to the whims of the invisible hand. Yet despite much speechifying from banker-bashing politicians, such views do not seem to have taken hold. Bonuses are back in many City dealing-rooms, and the old argument against regulation—that it would drive firms away from Britain and impoverish the country—is being heard again.

Away from the spotlight, though, another industry is facing its own crisis of confidence in laissez-faire liberalism. Climate change, a looming shortage of electricity and worries about the risks of relying on imported energy are causing many to doubt whether Britain’s vaunted liberalised energy markets are up to the job. (The Economist)

Yes, you read that right. And I had to do the same sort of double-take when I read David Broder’s op-ed in The Washington Post this morning.

Broder writes, “Obama has steered the enterprise to the point that odds now favor a bill-signing ceremony. But the hardest choices still lie ahead….” Whaa?? How can the odds be better than 50-50 if the biggest fights haven’t even happened yet?

Broder’s optimism continues, “Two things will be needed to reach [a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate]: first, a plausible plan for making affordable and comprehensive health insurance available to millions…. And second, a way of financing the coverage….” But that’s been the whole challenge all along. Is Broder actually acknowledging that Democrats aren’t any closer to a signing ceremony than they were six months ago?

Broder says Democrats can meet the second challenge by taxing high-cost health plans — “a step that would require Obama to face down his labor union allies.” You mean Obama should lean on Democrats to tax a crucial part of their own base? One that’s already activating to block that tax?

Broder also thinks Obama should lean on his fellow Democrats to roll the doctors and hospitals in their states/districts by including more (some? any?) “delivery system reforms” in the legislation.

(Cross-posted, sarcasm and all, at Politico’s Health Care Arena.) (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

When the Senate Finance Committee released CBO scoring of its health care reform proposal last week, we warned that its claim of reducing future budget deficits was achieved only through dishonestly assuming that Congress will implement a 21% reduction in Medicare payments that is scheduled under current law. We pointed out that Congress has been supposed to make those reductions since 2003, and never has. Now—surprise, surprise—Democrats have introduced a bill to eliminate the scheduled cut, at a cost of $247 billion. But Democrats cleverly are putting the new spending in a separate bill, so it won’t change scoring of health care reform. Have they no shame? (Michael D. Tanner, Cato at liberty)

CHICAGO - Older people who have been infected with or vaccinated against seasonal flu may have a type of immunity produced by cells that protects them from the swine flu virus, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They said the pandemic H1N1 virus has parts found in earlier flu strains, and some people past age 60, who may have been exposed to similar viruses in their youth, may have some latent immune cells that protect them.

"These findings indicate that human populations may have some level of existing immunity to the pandemic H1N1 influenza and may explain why the 2009 H1N1-related symptoms have been generally mild," said Carol Cardona of the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Her study appears in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Cardona said cell-based immunity may be serving to weaken the effects of swine flu.

"The meaning clinically is you are going to get sick but it may not be as severe if you had no immunity whatsoever," Cardona said in a telephone interview.

Cardona said much attention is given to antibodies that recognize and destroy foreign invaders.

The body also makes cells, known as cytotoxic T-cells, which secrete antiviral chemicals that kill infected cells and clear the virus from the body. It is these cells that may be offering protection.

"It's part of the primary immune response. It just is not the one that is classically measured," Cardona said. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - The new pandemic H1N1 flu may cause blood clots and other unusual damage in the lungs and doctors need to be on the lookout, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Two studies published in the American Journal of Roentgenology show the need to check X-rays and CT scans for unusual features, and also point out swine flu can be tricky to diagnose in some of the sickest patients.

H1N1 flu is causing a pandemic, and while it is not particularly deadly, it is sickening many younger adults and older children who usually escape the worst effects of seasonal flu. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Indoor smoking bans are effective at lowering the risk of heart attack, even among nonsmokers, by reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, a panel of U.S. health experts confirmed in a report on Thursday.

The report, produced for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides the most definitive evidence to date that laws that ban smoking from workplaces, restaurants and bars can reduce cardiovascular-related health problems where they are imposed.

"Secondhand smoke kills. What this report shows is that smoke-free laws reduce heart attacks in nonsmokers," said CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

"But still, most of the country lives in areas that don't have comprehensive smoke-free laws covering all workplaces, all restaurants and all bars," he said.

The CDC asked the independent Institute of Medicine to review research on smoking bans and secondhand smoke after some studies suggested that banning smoking might significantly reduce heart attacks.

The panel of experts assembled for the task reviewed research including 11 studies of smoking bans in the United States, Canada and Europe showing "remarkable consistency" in the association between bans and reductions in heart attack rates, which in some studies ranged from 6 percent to 47 percent.

"There is a causal relationship," the panel concluded in its report. "Consistency in the direction of change gave the committee confidence that smoking bans decrease the rate of heart attacks."

The 205-page report, titled "Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Events: Making Sense of the Evidence," warned that exposure to secondhand smoke could increase the risk of coronary heart disease by 25 to 30 percent. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - The statin drugs that so effectively lower people's cholesterol levels may be contributing to a social divide in the problem of high cholesterol, a new study suggests.

Using government survey data from 1976 to 2004, researchers found that after statin drugs were introduced, wealthier Americans saw a sharp reduction in their average cholesterol levels -- double the decline among low-income Americans.

The result, the researchers say, has been a flip in the relationship between income and cholesterol. In the late 1970s, higher-income Americans generally had higher cholesterol, whereas now poorer Americans have the highest levels.

"Back in the day, wealthier people had higher cholesterol because they were better able to afford a higher-fat diet -- more red meat, butter, eggs," said lead researcher Dr. Virginia W. Chang, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

But they also had better access to statins once they were introduced in the late 1980s.

Chang and colleague Diane S. Lauderdale found that the higher a person's income in 1988 or beyond, the greater the likelihood of being put on a statin. The wealthiest group of Americans, for example, was 70 percent more likely to be taking one of the drugs than the poorest group.

At the same time, overall cholesterol levels in the general population dropped, but wealthier Americans saw a much greater decline.

The findings do not prove that statin use caused the shift, according to Chang. "But they do support the idea that statins are partly responsible," she said. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids may be good for you, but it seems to offer little protection against heart failure, a new study suggests.

The findings, say researchers, do not change the general recommendation that adults aim to eat fish at least twice a week.

Other studies have shown that fatty fish, such as salmon, trout and mackerel, may lower the risk of death from heart disease.

However, heart failure may be a different matter, explained Dr. J. Marianne Geleijnse, the senior researcher on the study and an assistant professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Heart failure is a chronic condition in which the heart muscle is weakened and cannot pump blood efficiently enough to meet the body's needs -- leading to symptoms like fatigue, breathlessness and fluid build-up.

The current thinking, Geleijnse told Reuters Health, is that fish oils act mainly on the heart's electrical activity -- preventing deaths by cutting the risk of fatal disturbances in heart rhythm.

She added that evidence suggests the fats have little effect on blood pressure, cholesterol and the build-up of plaque in the heart arteries -- important factors in the development of heart failure. (Reuters Health)

About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points.

After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration — excuse me, outreach and understanding — is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.

Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review. (Charles Krauthammer, IBD)

Moreover, nominations for this year’s prize closed just 11 days after Obama took office.

After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has succeeded far beyond any other economic arrangement in human history. If worldwide communism couldn’t destroy capitalism, why are we so quick to believe that some bad fiscal and government policies in real estate will do it?

Unfortunately, some copy editor entitled the otherwise reasonable article, “The Capitalist Manifesto: Greed Is Good (To a point).” This is one of the worst myths about capitalism. It was immortalized by the character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” directed by Oliver Stone. Michael Douglas played ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko, a charismatic villain who insists that “greed is good.” Gekko was Stone’s scathing embodiment of capitalism, seductive and selfish to the core. And now, thanks to the financial crisis, Stone is working on a sequel.

More unfortunately, this “greed myth” (as I have called it) is often perpetuated, as it was on the cover of Newsweek, by the putative defenders of capitalism. From Ivan Boesky to the bestselling tomes of Ayn Rand, champions of capitalism have told us for decades that greed is good since it’s the great engine of capitalist progress. Even Walter Williams and John Stossel, two of my favorite free marketers, have used this argument in recent years. (Jay W. Richards, The American)

Has Industrialization Diminished the Well-Being of Developing Nations and are Industrialized Countries Responsible?

A basic contention of developing countries (DCs) and various UN bureaucracies and multilateral groups during the course of International negotiations on climate change is that industrialized countries (ICs) have a historical responsibility for global warming. This contention underlies much of the justification for insisting not only that industrialized countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions even as developing countries are given a bye on emission reductions, but that they also subsidize clean energy development and adaptation in developing countries. [It is also part of the rationale that industrialized countries should pay reparations for presumed damages from climate change.]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Spotted seals off Alaska's coast do not merit endangered species protection despite losses of Arctic sea ice from global warming, a federal agency announced Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, however, will list as threatened a small population of spotted seals that live off the coasts of Russia and China.

Doug Mecum, acting administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service Alaska region, said spotted seals in two populations closest to Alaska exceed 200,000 animals.

''We do not predict the expected fluctuations in sea ice will affect them enough to warrant listing at this time,'' Mecum said in a prepared statement.

The decision followed an 18-month status review.

A spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity said the decision was disappointing but not surprising. NOAA in December rejected listing ribbon seals, which use sea ice for reproduction and molting.

''We were hoping that NOAA under the Obama administration would actually adopt the precautionary principle that's built into the Endangered Species Act,'' said attorney Brendan Cummings. ''But unfortunately, when it comes to Arctic policy, they're largely indistinguishable from the Bush administration.'' (AP)

Food and security are inextricably linked: all our futures rely on a co-ordinated effort to revitalise the blighted global farming market (Hillary Clinton, The Guardian)

The Prince of Wales has called for "urgent" protection for native plant life after a new report claimed one in five wild flowers are threatened with extinction. (Daily Telegraph)

Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them
By Steven Milloy
Regnery Press, 2009, 294 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1596985858

Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, frequent contributor to Fox News Network, and founder/editor of JunkScience.com, should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom for penning the most accurate and most comprehensive take-no-prisoners description of the demonic green “crisis” that grips society today.

His new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, is a must-read for people seeking to understand the underworld of environmental scaremongering. (Jay Lehr, Environment & Climate News)

The recent corporate resignations from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have played in the media as a case of enlightened corporate stewardship vs. blinkered old businesses. But there's far more to this story—not least the way that Apple and Nike are putting green political correctness above the long-term interests of their own shareholders.

The Chamber needs "a more progressive stance on this issue" of climate change, declared Apple Vice President Catherine Novelli in a letter of resignation from the business lobby on October 5. Added Nike, announcing its resignation on September 30 from the Chamber board though retaining its membership: "US businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change." Both decisions were ostentatiously leaked to the media.

The first point to understand is the role of Al Gore, who is a member of the Apple board and perhaps the leading supporter of President Obama's cap-and-tax anticarbon legislation. Mr. Gore has also invested in renewable energy technologies that could make him even richer than he already is if new climate rules make renewables more competitive with carbon energy.

Meanwhile, Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook happens to sit on the board of . . . Nike. We're told that Nike CEO Mike Parker didn't discuss the Chamber move with his full board of directors before it was announced, and Nike didn't return our phone call asking for comment. In any case, we doubt it's an accident that Nike and Apple acted against the Chamber at the same time—and just when Democrats are trying to build new momentum for cap and trade in the Senate.

Both companies may figure they can afford a U.S. carbon tax because most of their manufacturing is done outside the U.S. Apple has an enormous "carbon footprint" of some 10 million annual tons of emissions to make and use its power-hungry gadgets. But nearly all of those products are made in China and other Asian countries where there are no carbon limits and aren't likely to be any time soon, if ever. According to calculations based on Apple's emissions figures, were the company to manufacture in the U.S., the Boxer-Kerry bill pending in the Senate would hit Apple with carbon taxes between $43 million and $108 million a year.

Nike, meanwhile, makes most of its shoes and apparel in 700 contract factories in countries such as South Korea and Vietnam—which also won't sign up for the Boxer-Kerry energy tax. The larger point is that neither Apple nor Nike would pay as much under a cap-and-trade bill as, say, the maker of Bobcat excavators in Bismarck, N.D., or your average Midwest natural gas utility. Green virtue is easier when someone else is paying for it.

Yet even this self-interested calculation is likely to be short-sighted for both companies. Since climate change is a global issue, green activists won't stop their carbon pursuit at the U.S. border. It wouldn't be long after cap and trade passed in the U.S. that Nike and Apple were pressured to move their manufacturing out of countries that haven't signed Kyoto II. That would threaten their production lines and cost structure, with potential damage to sales and competitiveness.

And if the companies fail to relocate, the next anticarbon lobbying policy step will be a carbon tariff against products made in China or Vietnam and sold in the U.S. A carbon tariff is already part of the House cap-and-trade bill and is gaining currency among Congressional protectionists, most recently Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). As companies that import nearly all of their products, Apple and Nike would be especially vulnerable. We wonder if Messrs. Cook and Parker thought through any of this before committing their employees and investors to this crusade.

The Chamber's great sin, according to Nike and Apple, is that it questioned the Environmental Protection Agency's right to regulate all greenhouse gases without new legislation. The Chamber has said that while it supports Congressional efforts to regulate emissions, it opposes EPA's attempt to grab that power for itself on the basis of an elastic reading of the Clean Air Act. This is a major issue for many Chamber members.

If companies are going to dump the Chamber over a single dispute, then the overall influence of business in Washington is likely to decline. The Chamber's job isn't to favor one company's agenda over another but to stand broadly for free trade, low taxes and limited regulation—principles that help U.S. business as a whole.

Having abandoned their business allies on climate change, Apple and Nike might wake up one day to discover they need those friends on one of their crucial issues. It will serve them right if they find themselves alone in the Beltway square. (The Wall Street Journal)

Arms manufacturers, tobacco companies, mining giants and oil companies. These are not the kind of companies where you would expect an ethically minded saving operation to be investing the hard-earned cash of an ethically minded saver. And yet Toby Webb says that is exactly where his money ended up when he entrusted it to the Virgin Money climate change ISA.

Toby is no naive green investor. He is the founder of a company called the Ethical Corporation that runs conferences and a magazine that explores how companies are greening themselves.

But even he admits to being shocked when he read the small print on the progress of his investment from Virgin Money. He wrote in a blog: "I had expected the fund to be investing in clean tech firms. Exciting new technology companies set to capitalise on the next green revolution."

But Virgin had other plans for his climate-saving cash. It decided that those cutting-edge clean tech companies, which it calls "solution providers", would get "up to 10%" of the ISA's money. Note that phrase "up to". It could be zero.

Likewise the "solution adopters", would get "up to 15%". For the rest, "between 75 and 100%", Virgin simply promises to find companies with a "lighter environmental footprint". Oh, and they must show "outstanding profit growth".

What does a "lighter" footprint mean? The term turns out to be alarmingly elastic.

For a start, it does not exclude any industry. Oil and coal companies may be the villains of climate change, but that does not count them out of Virgin's climate change ISA. This, Virgin tells its customers, is "so you don't miss out on lucrative sectors like oil, gas, electricity and transportation." Hmm. (Fred Pearce, The Guardian)

This is Lindsey Graham we're talking about, best friend and constant companion of the Republican Party's 2008 standard-bearer, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

As Graham has said elsewhere, "I think the planet is heating up. I think CO₂ emissions are damaging the environment and this dependence on foreign oil is a natural disaster in the making."

Maybe what really ticked off the conservatives was when Graham argued that the problem should be addressed as soon as possible -- even if the solution helps the Democrats politically. "I'd like to solve a problem, and if it's on President Obama's watch, it doesn't bother me one bit, if it makes the country better off."

Easily reelected in 2008, Graham has a few years to recover his base. (LA Times)

There is much concern in financial markets about exit strategies. How are central banks and governments going to dig themselves out of their multi-trillion dollar monetary and fiscal stimulus holes? Frankly, it’s too late now to start worrying about that problem, which in any case is easily fixed: tax increases. Far more worthy of attention, before it’s too late, are the new mile-deep spending regimes governments are preparing to cover the cost of new climate change policies. And guess how they will get out of those trenches.

The green jungle drums are already at full volume in preparation for the Copenhagen climate policy extravaganza, even though the two week negotiation marathon isn’t set to open until Dec. 7. From now till mid-December, our days and nights are going to be filled with dark nightmares of global warming and bright utopian visions of the greatest reordering of economic activity since the industrial revolution — except run in reverse. No citizen of the world will be able to escape the run-up to Copenhagen where, one way or another, catastrophe looms.

At Copenhagen, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will attempt to get about 140 nations to approve a new global plan to reduce carbon emissions and, at the same time, engineer a major redistribution of money from developed nations to developing nations. An early draft of the Copenhagen agreement, to replace the collapsing Kyoto Protocol, suggests the focus is as much on redistribution as on carbon reduction, with no guarantee that any of it will have the slightest impact on carbon emissions or the global climate.

In climate policy circles, trillion-dollar transfers and programs proliferate and, in total, easily overtake the paper losses suffered by financial markets through the 2008 crisis. The International Monetary Fund recently set its estimate of the global losses from the financial crisis for 2007-2010 to be US$3.4-billion. The draft Copenhagen document proposes annual “financial flows” to developing nations of somewhere between $70- and $140-billion. At $140-billion, the ten-year tab would run to $1.4-trillion. But forcing carbon-based energy out of the global economy will take a lot more than that.

The International Energy Agency, created decades ago to keep cheap oil flowing, is now dedicated to slowing it down and making it very expensive. In its latest World Energy Outlook report, the IEA estimated that a global attempt to reduce carbon emissions “will increase cumulative energy-related investment over the period 2010-2030 by $10.5-trillion.” On top of that the IEA envisages carbon taxes of between $50 and $110 a tonne; depending on how much of global carbon emissions are subject to carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, the carbon tax burden could easily exceed $1-trillion a year.

This week, in a second report, the IEA unleashed another money spinner, a global estimate of how much it will cost to develop carbon capture and storage. As with all climate reports, this one must levitate itself to new heights of urgency. “There is a growing awareness of the urgent need to turn political statements into concrete action.” Current energy use is “patently unsustainable” and it will “take an energy revolution and low-carbon energy technologies” to save the world from crisis. Plus it will take more trillions of dollars .

Carbon taxes of $100 a tonne will not provide enough financial flow to feed the carbon capture beast. The IEA report calls for OECD governments to increase funding to “an average annual investment of $3.5-billion to $4-billion from 2010 and 2020.” This money is just to provide “demonstration projects” to prove that taking carbon and storing it underground actually works and doesn’t blow up as an environmental horror. Another annual commitment of up to $2.5-billion will be needed to establish “new financing strategies” for non-OECD developing regions. That money would be run through whatever mechanisms and agencies are set up at Copenhagen to redirect, redistribute and recycle rivers of cash.

For North America alone, the IEA estimates carbon capture investments of $1.1-trillion. Globally, the number balloons to as high as $3.4-trillion. Along with other IEA carbon control cost estimates and the Copenhagen effort, plus uncountable and unmeasured other burdens on industry and consumers, the cost of the great anti-carbon revolution will eventually dwarf the costs of the financial crisis to global markets, even including government budget deficits and central bank red ink.

The big difference between the financial meltdown losses and carbon control spending is that the financial market losses are paper losses that, in time, will turn around. The IMF said the financial markets have already recouped 15% of their losses as securities values rebound. The carbon spending, if it were to take place, would be lost money never to be recouped. An expenditure of $3.4-trillion to pump carbon into the ground is $3.4-trillion vapourized into black holes.

The Copenhagen-based platform for these trillion-dollar economic schemes is being drafted at a time when many nations are already reeling — and when there is growing doubt about the validity and credibility of the science. Will the politics follow the dismal and risky economics and science of climate policy at Copenhagen? Whatever happens, catastrophe looms. If Copenhagen adopts extreme targets and objectives, the world economy will face more trillion dollar crises. If Copenhagen fails, the catastrophe will fall on climate change activists and their political proponents. Either way, it won’t be pretty. (National Post)

WASHINGTON -- Congressional legislation aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions would come at "some cost" to the economy, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday, estimating that a House bill would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by about one-quarter percent to three-quarters of a percent by 2020.

In testimony before the Senate Energy Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf also said that the "cap and trade" provisions in a bill passed by the House would cut U.S. GDP by between 1% and 3.5% by 2050.

House and Senate bills both propose the cap and trade system, which sets limits on pollutants and then allows utilities and other emitters to trade pollution permits among themselves.

Elmendorf's testimony was originally released on Sept. 17, for a hearing in the same committee scheduled to take place that day. The hearing was postponed until Wednesday due the involvement of the panel's chairman, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in health-care deliberations. (Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch)

Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."

You wouldn't know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore's movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning.

I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.

The encounter was disappointing but not surprising. I served years of hard time as a liberal journalist in Europe and learned that covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism — no inconvenient questions allowed.

But it is now time for journalists, and the consumers and businesses that will pay the ultimate price, to start questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming and exposing its true cost. If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear. (Phelim McAleer, IBD)

Gorilla dung could conceivably be the salvation of the planet.

A leading UK wildlife expert today said protecting the large primates he called the "gardeners of the forest" could provide the easy fix for global warming envisaged by international reforestation programmes.

America and other industrialised countries are looking to reforestation programmes in Africa, South-east Asia and South America to help contain the effects of climate change.

But Ian Redmond, the UN ambassador for the year of the gorilla, said the industrialised countries would be making a mistake if they did not commit specific funds to protecting the gorillas as part of the discussion on reforestation efforts at the climate change negotiations at Copenhagen next December. (The Guardian)

NEW DELHI/ PARIS - The world may have to wait until the dying seconds of a U.N. climate summit in December for a global deal to channel business dollars into low-carbon energy, industry and analysts said on Wednesday.

Senior executives warned progress so far in U.N.-led climate talks was inadequate to guarantee the future of low-carbon markets which could transform how the world gets its energy.

Political posturing may delay a deal until midnight on the last day of the December 7-18 talks, said the head of the U.N. climate panel Rajendra Pachauri -- who was nevertheless hopeful of a deal to put the world "on the right path." (Reuters)

NEW DELHI, Oct 14 - Despite fears of failure facing global climate change negotiations in December, the U.N. climate panel chief said on Wednesday it was still possible to agree a pact, including levels of emission cuts by rich nations.

Talks for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 37 rich nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, are deadlocked on the question of cuts to be taken by rich and poorer countries.

Developed nations will also have to come up with billions of dollars in climate aid and green technologies for the poor.

"The wiggle room is there even at the stroke of midnight when the conference is ending," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Reuters)

As world leaders struggle to hash out a new global climate deal by December, they face a hurdle perhaps more formidable than getting big polluters like the United States and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: how to pay for the new accord.

The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion. That money is needed to help fast-developing countries like India and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize, as well as to assist the poorest countries in coping with the consequences of climate change, like droughts and rising seas.

This financing is an essential part of any international climate agreement, negotiators and scientists say, because developing nations must curb the growth of their emissions if the world is to limit rising temperatures. Based on calculations by the International Energy Agency for 2005 to 2030, 75 percent of the growth in energy demand will come from the developing world.

Many developing countries have made it clear that they will not sign a treaty unless they get money to help them adapt to a warmer planet. Acknowledging that a new treaty needs unanimity for success, industrialized nations like the United States and those in Europe have agreed in principle to make such payments; they have already been written into the agreed-upon structure of the treaty, to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

But to date there is no concrete strategy to raise such huge sums. There is not even agreement about which nations should pay or in what proportion. (NYT)

A SENSE of panic is setting in among many campaigners for drastic cuts in global carbon emissions. It is becoming obvious that the highly trumpeted meeting set for Copenhagen this December will not deliver a binding international treaty that will make a significant difference to global warming.

After lofty rhetoric and big promises, politicians are starting to play the blame game. Developing countries blame rich countries for the lack of progress. Many blame the US, which will not have cap-and-trade legislation in place before Copenhagen.

The UN Secretary General says, "it may be difficult for President Obama to come with strong authority" to reach agreement in Copenhagen. Others blame developing countries - particularly Brazil, China and India - for a reluctance to sign up to binding carbon cuts. Wherever you turn, somebody is being blamed for Copenhagen's apparent looming failure.

Yet, it has been clear for a considerable time that there is a more fundamental problem: immediate promises of carbon cuts do not work. Seventeen years ago, industrialised nations promised with great fanfare in Rio de Janeiro to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Emissions overshot the target by 12 per cent. In Kyoto, leaders committed to a cut of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. The failure to meet that target will most likely be even more spectacular, with emissions overshooting by about 25 per cent.

The plan was to convene world leaders in Copenhagen and renew vows to cut carbon while committing to even more ambitious targets. But it is obvious that even a last-minute scramble to salvage some form of agreement will fare no better in actually helping the planet. With such a poor track record, there is a need for soul-searching and openness to other approaches.

A realistic "Plan B" does not mean plotting a second meeting after Copenhagen, as some have suggested. It means rethinking our strategy. This year, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre commissioned research from top climate economists examining feasible ways to respond to global warming. Their research looked at how much we could help the planet by setting different levels of carbon taxes, planting more trees, cutting methane, reducing black-soot emissions, adapting to global warming, or focusing on a technological solution to climate change.

The centre convened an expert panel of five of the world's leading economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to consider all of the new research and identify the best - and worst - options.

The panel found that expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option. This finding was based on a groundbreaking research paper that showed that even a highly efficient global CO2 tax aimed at fulfilling the ambitious goal of keeping temperature increases below 2C would reduce annual world GDP by a staggering 12.9per cent, or $US40 trillion ($43.7trillion), in 2100. The total cost would be 50 times that of the avoided climate damage. And if politicians choose less-efficient, less-co-ordinated cap-and-trade policies, the costs could escalate a further 10 to 100 times.

Instead, the panel recommended focusing investment on research into climate engineering as a short-term response, and on non-carbon-based energy as a longer-term response. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Australian)

LONDON, Oct 15 - International law is unfit to deal with the millions of people expected to flee their home countries to escape droughts and floods intensified by climate change, a group of lawyers said on Thursday.

Under existing laws, host countries must protect and care for cross-border refugees, who are defined as those forced to migrate because of violence or political, racial or religious persecution.

There are no such provisions for so-called climate refugees. Yet by 2050, between 200 million and 1 billion people could be forced to leave their homes because of global warming, said the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development, which advises vulnerable countries and communities.

"International refugee law ... was not designed for those who are left homeless by environmental pressures," said the group's director Joy Hyvarinen.

"The international legal framework needs to be adjusted to help climate exiles and deal with statelessness and compensation," she said in a statement. (Reuters)

OTTAWA - Environment Minister Jim Prentice appears to be contradicting his top climate-change envoy, denying that some countries walked out of recent talks in Thailand because of Canada's position.

Prentice insisted Wednesday that no one left the room when Canada proposed replacing the Kyoto Protocol with an entirely new global-warming pact - a view shared by the United States, the European Union and Australia.

But the environment minister's version of events appears at odds with that of Canada's climate-change negotiator, Michael Martin, who acknowledged Tuesday that a handful of countries did walk out. (CP)

At December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will announce an ambitious target for reducing deforestation in the world's largest forest. (CoP15)

CANBERRA - Australia's government will be asked to exempt farmers from carbon trading in order to pass landmark emissions laws through parliament under changes being pushed by opposition lawmakers on Wednesday.

Legislation to set up carbon trading from July 2011, the world's second domestic trading platform after the European Union's scheme, remain locked in parliament's upper house, where the government needs opposition support to pass the package.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could call an early election if the laws are rejected for a second time in November. Agriculture is shaping as a key sticking point.

"You do everything in your power to turn the volume on this ridiculous tax down, so I suppose we'll support an amendment to take agriculture out," said Senator Barnaby Joyce, leader of the junior opposition National Party in the upper house.

The opposition Liberal and National Parties will hold a special meeting on Sunday to endorse changes they want to the carbon-trade laws in return for their support for the scheme, which would cover around 75 percent of Australian emissions.

The opposition also wants a Senate vote delayed until early 2010, but the government wants its laws passed by late November, ahead of global climate talks in Copenhagen in December. (Reuters)

MIAMI - Thanks to El Nino, the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season has been the quietest in more than a decade, offering a reprieve for residents in the danger zone and a chance for insurance firms to refill depleted coffers.

With the peak of the season -- late August to mid-October -- now behind, the Atlantic-Caribbean basin has seen just two hurricanes and a total of eight tropical storms.

El Nino, the Pacific warm-water phenomenon that can produce destructive weather in other parts of the world, played a big role in suppressing Atlantic cyclones this year, experts said.

If the full season, which runs from June through November, ended today, it would be the lowest number of storms since 1997. The last time an Atlantic season produced only two hurricanes was 1982.

After a 2008 season that produced Hurricane Ike, one of the most destructive in U.S. history, the cyclones of 2009 have had virtually no impact on the populous U.S. coasts, the vulnerable islands of the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico oil patch.

"There was for all intents and purposes no hurricane damage in the United States this year," Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters. (Reuters)

Trying to figure out whether Orange County is going to have a wet winter is something of a fool’s game. No one can consistently predict the weather and climate due to the limitations of science. And the issue becomes even tougher when forecasters are unsure whether an emerging El Nino will be weak, moderate or strong, which is what’s happening now.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center formally announced that the periodic climate change was developing in the equatorial Pacific. It initially looked to be a weak event, at best. But CPC later said it could be “moderate to strong.”

Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responded by saying “El Nino would El Fizzle.” And some recent CPC forecasts looked like scientists were back-pedaling a bit.

The latest CPC forecast, issued on Oct. 8, adds to the confusion. The agency says, “A majority of the model forecasts for the Niño … suggest that El Niño will reach at least moderate strength during the Northern Hemisphere fall. Many model forecasts even suggest a strong El Niño during the fall and winter, but in recent months some models, including the NCEP CFS, have over-predicted the degree of warming observed so far in the Niño-3.4 region (Fig. 7).

“Based on the model forecasts, the seasonality of El Niño, and the continuation of westerly wind bursts, El Niño is expected to strengthen and most likely peak at moderate strength.”

In other words, no one has a clue as to what will really happen. (Gary Robbins, Orange County Register)

As can be seen, at least for the time being, temperatures have returned to the long-term average. Of course, this says nothing about what will happen in the future. I have also plotted the linear trend line, which is for entertainment purposes only.

The SSTs come from the AMSR-E instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and are computed and archived at Remote Sensing Systems (Frank Wentz). I believe them to be the most precise record of subtle SST changes available, albeit only since mid-2002. (Roy W. Spencer)

* The Arctic/North Atlantic climate system displays large-amplitude multidecadal variability

* Understanding the key mechanisms influencing the Arctic/North Atlantic multidecadal variability is essential for developing robust climatic forecasts.

Arctic air temperature, fastice thickness, and intermediate Arctic Ocean layer temperature exhibit strong coherent multidecadal variations.

Arctic (blue) and global (red) surface air temperature anomalies (top), fastice thickness (middle), and intermediate Arctic Ocean water temperature (AWCT, bottom) are show. See larger image here.

Arctic Ocean freshwater content exhibits strong multidecedal signal.

6-yr running mean Arctic Ocean freshwater content (FWC, blue line with shades) anomalies (km3). See larger image here.

Normalized North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (0-90oN, 290-30oE, green with red and blue shades), intermediate Arctic Ocean water temperature (AWCT, red), and normalized 6-yr running mean 10m water temperature (WT) anomalies from ocean weather station ``Mike’’ at 66oN, 2oE (Norwegian Sea, blue), are shown.See larger image here.

During the positive phase, there is an increase of transport of warmer air and water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic. The anticyclonic Beaufort Gyre is weakened/ strengthened, and cyclonic circulation in the eastern Arctic is intensified/suppressed during positive/negative phases of multi-decadal variability. Increased cyclonicity under the positive phase of multi-decadal variability causes divergence of ice drift and surface circulation, leading to doming of the Atlantic Water. The well-developed Arctic High, evident during negative phases, results in intensified anticyclonic ice drift and surface circulation, convergence of surface currents and a depression in the Atlantic Water.

Summary
Multidecadal fluctuations in the Arctic/North Atlantic climate system should be taken into account when assessing long-term climate change and variability. Understanding the key mechanisms influencing the Arctic/North Atlantic multidecadal variability is essential for developing robust climatic forecasts.

The less a thing is known, the more fervently it is believed. —Montaigne

In effect a new religion has grown out of secular humanism. Global warming is the central tenet of this new belief system in much the same way that the Resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity. Al Gore has taken a role corresponding to that of St Paul in proselytising the new faith.

There are major differences, however. Whereas it is not possible to call oneself a Christian without entertaining the central belief in the Resurrection, it is certainly possible to be deeply concerned with the order and condition of humanity and so call oneself a humanist without entertaining a corresponding belief in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Belief in a Resurrection which supposedly occurred some 2000 years ago is a matter of personal faith, whereas AGW is a scientific hypothesis which can and should be tested by observation. Imagine the consequences both to science and to secular humanism should this hypothesis turn out to be untrue and the dire predictions of the climate models fail to materialise.

The quasi-religious nature of AGW is evidenced by the rancour which is generated when people like me express scepticism about the theory. Scepticism is an essential part of science which has, until recently, been a “small-l liberal” pursuit in which the opinions of doubters were respected. Now we sceptics are called “deniers” and, by implication, lumped in with neo-Nazis who question the Holocaust. The accusation that we are somehow in the sway of the oil companies and similar big business interests is commonplace and indeed is the chief argument of non-scientist supporters of the AGW theory. This echoes the “work of the Devil” argument of fundamentalist Christians; it is a mental trick by which the faithful avoid facing the real issues.

Why then do a majority of scientists support the theory? I believe it is largely a matter of loyalty. Very few of us physicists know enough genetics to justify our belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection but most of us support it because we believe it to be the outcome of rigorous scientific processes similar to those carried out in our own discipline. Most scientists would support the AGW theory for much the same reason.

By accident of history I find myself in the opposing camp. I was trained as a physicist and was granted a PhD for my postgraduate work in upper atmosphere physics. In the early 1980s I joined the CSIRO’s Division of Oceanography and worked in surface gravity waves (ocean waves) for a time. Much of the theoretical side of oceanography entails fluid dynamics which, because of its heavy mathematical load, is regarded as a sub-discipline of applied mathematics rather than of physics. Because of this, in my view, many practitioners of oceanography and climatology have a cavalier disregard for experimental testing and an unjustified faith in the validity of large-scale computer models.

Later in my career I was involved in running and refining numerical fluid dynamical models, so I gained some insight into how this modelling is done and how rigorously such models need to be tested. Naval architects and aerodynamical engineers do such testing in wave tanks and wind tunnels.

Meteorologists regularly test model “skill”. Climatologists don’t seem to have a concept of testing, and prefer to use the term “verification” instead—that is, they do not seek to invalidate their models; they only seek supporting evidence.

My scepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field. (John Reid, Quadrant)

Climate Fools Day is holding its 1st Year Anniversary Meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Oct 28th, at Imperial College London. Reportedly, Piers Corbyn will make an important announcement concerning his Solar theory. We encourage everyone who can to attend.

For more information and to register by email visit the ClimateFoolsDay.com web site. (The Resilient Earth)

Fall is a good time to be delivering the mail, said Jan Eckman. Walking about five miles a day through Robbinsdale, the former landscaping student also collects seed pods and other decorative natural items and enjoys the colors on her route. But this fall has been "just a little weird," she said. "Something's not quite right."

Indeed, yards and streets across much of southern Minnesota have been suddenly carpeted not with the vivid golds and reds typical of autumn, but with a thick blanket of green.

Foresters say last weekend's cold snap killed the leaves on some species of trees before they could display their fall colors. (Star Tribune)

Findings by the Catlin Arctic Survey team show that most of the ice in the region is first-year ice that is only around 1.8 meters deep and will melt next summer. (CoP15)

Time will tell if there is anything substantial behind such a bold claim…for now, enjoy Romm’s throwing all he could against Levitt and Dubner. And on past experience, if Romm’s upset about something, then there is something substantial behind it all indeed….

It’s been more than 20 years since James Hansen first warned America of impending doom. On a hot summer day in June 1988, Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced before a Senate committee that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.”

The greenhouse effect would have looked obvious enough to anyone watching on television. The senators conducting the hearing, including Al Gore, had turned the committee room into an oven. That day it was a balmy 98 degrees, and as former Colorado Sen. Timothy Wirth later revealed, the committee members “went in the night before and opened all the windows. And so when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and [high ratings], but it was really hot.” (Michael Goldfarb, Environment & Climate News)

Contrarily to what the most argument-challenged readers of this blog might think, I fully agree with Dr Trenberth’s statement. Only, I arrive at his same conclusion starting from a very different point of view (wonder if Morano will ever try to sing a different tune?).

I have read several chapters of the IPCC AR4 (2007) (sadly, I have not read the whole thing in full from start to end and seriously wonder if anybody ever has). Fact is, they are all written in a scientifically very valid way. As the science of climate is still full of uncertainties, then whatever the future, may it be hot, may it be cold, it will be impossible to ever find in the IPCC reports any item that may be actually considered as fundamentally wrong or misleading.

Everything is in there and its opposite, by wise [UPDATE: "wise" means "wise" in a POSITIVE way...do not mix it up with "weasel" or anything else with a bad connotation] use of words like “could”, “might” and “likely”. Even if we meet again in 2050 and global cooling is in full swing, still the IPCC reports will be, in a sense, correct. Take for example AR4-SYR-SPM (Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers)

Since “very likely” stops at 90%, it means that the IPCC experts agree that there is a 10% probability that most of observed temperature increases might not be due to “increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations“. And that there is a 10% probability that the 21st century will not see anything larger than the 20th century has seen.

So if anything like that actually happens, well, the IPCC AR4 has already included that possibility, has it not?

Interestingly, if the IPCC work were to be presented as a scientific article, and the p-value associated to the null hypothesis (that observed temperature increases have nothing to do with increased GHG concentrations) were 0.1 or 10%, most if not all journals would deny publication.

With some surprise, it must be said, I find myself acknowledging that, within The Royal Society, there exists one individual at least who appears to be motivated by scrupulousness and a desire to work in and for the best interests of the scientific endeavour. Naturally, the identification of this honourable man does not lead to your door nor to the paths of those of your immediate predecessors, May and Houghton. King too, if he’s been a President of the RS, but that he has not, I think – well, not yet anyway.

So, who then is this rarest of paragons within the cloistered precincts of Carlton House Terrace? Is it some great and eminent scientific Titan, invested with honours and burdened with doubloons diverted in his direction by Alfred Nobel’s august and wondrous awarding committees? Nay, nay – to be sure, nothing of the sort! Rather, instead, he (or, perhaps, she) is simply an honest functionary, a self-effacing soul who, after an honest day’s labour, unremarked and unsung, returns of an evening to a favourite armchair in the modest but homely comfort of his bungalow in Surbiton – or would it be Penge? But anyway, but anyway – whatever his name, in the annals of authentic science, in a zeitgeist dominated and polluted by a fraudulent, self-serving counterfeit of itself, he stands out as a true blue, heart warming, life affirming paladin, does he not………in the setting of the RS, a pitch perfect, solitary clarion voice of honesty sounding clear and high above a cacophony of knaves and poltroons?

The hero in question is the Editor of the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, of course. And what has he done to merit such an accolade? Well, to be sure, you know as well as I, that he has stood up for, and insisted upon, observance of the time honoured protocols of scientific method – the very precepts that you personally, as well as those who work closest to you, are charged to defend. That you have signally failed to do so is the indelible stain on your own personal honour (theirs too, of course) – an old fashioned concept, but one still with some value, however, as scoundrels on the green benches in the Palace of Westminster are currently discovering to their fully warranted discomfiture.

What this excellent and worthy man has done has been to insist upon publication of the Yamal Peninsular data, hitherto denied for a decade to the wider scientific community – needless to say, contrary to one of the most basic protocols of honest scientific investigation. This has blown apart the much vaunted clutch of “hockey stick” graphs supposedly marshalled by AGW proselytisers such as yourself in support of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes fraud – heavily promoted, of course, by the Yankee snake oil salesman. At the time of writing this, it is even just possible that the RS’s counterpart lapdog at Broadcasting House has finally realised that the entire AGW construct is, scientifically speaking, no more than a monstrous inverted pyramid of dross erected on the crest of a sand dune. Mind you, where the BBC in concerned, it is prudent never to be optimistic!

“Where have you been all this day, my boy Billy?
Where have you been all this day?
Is it here? Is it there?
Pray tell me, is it – - anywhere?”

Cc: Prime Minister Ed Miliband MP David Cameron MP Nick Clegg MP Julia Goldsworthy MP
Lord Lawson Lord Leach Mark Thompson Sir Michael Lyons Editors – national newspapers
As the spirit moves (OmniClimate)

Last Friday, global warming's poster boy, Al Gore, spoke to the Society of Environmental Journalists' convention in Madison, Wisconsin. After his speech to this flock of propagandists, there was a rare Q and A session. Among those asking a question was Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer, director of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a movie critical of the global warming movement.

McAleer queried Gore about a 2007 decision by the British High Court which determined that Gore's global warming flick, An Inconvenient Truth, was so packed with fraud that it required a 56-page disclaimer if it was to continue to be shown to students in the United Kingdom.

McAleer asked, "The judge in the British High Court, after a lengthy hearing, found that there were nine significant errors [in the movie]. This has been shown to children. Do you accept those findings, and have you done anything to correct those errors?

Gore brushed off the question by going straight to the heartstrings of the useful idiots assembled in the room: he talked about the court's criticism of the film's claim that polar bears are an endangered species. "You don't think they're endangered?" Gore demanded of McAleer.

We'll get to the truth about polar bears in a moment, but first some insight into the U.K. court case. (Brian Sussman, American Thinker)

20th-century warming: less than had been thought: SPPI's authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for September 2009 reproduces a research paper by Dr. Joe D'Aleo showing that global temperatures over the past century, corrected for urban bias and other errors in the current datasets, have changed by far less than official sources suggest.

Researchers have reported that the melting Alpine glaciers are letting off harmful pollutants once captured by the ice, which could result in a "dire environmental impact" for the region.

In a study of sediment from an Alpine lake, Swiss researchers found trace amounts of now banned chemicals such as dioxins and pesticides like DDT.

"We can confirm with the help of these layers that, in the 1960s and 1970s, POPs (Persistant Organic Pollutants) were produced in great quantities and were also deposited in this Alpine lake," Christian Bogdal, of the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research, said in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Researchers studied a sediment core from the glacier-fed Lake Oberaar in Switzerland. They analyzed the sample for a variety of “persistent organic pollutants, organochlorine pesticides, and synthetic musk fragrances.”

“Input fluxes of all organochlorines increased in the 1950s, peaked in the 1960s−1970s, and decreased again to low levels in the 1980s−1990s,” researchers wrote. “This observation reflects the emission history of these compounds and technical improvements and regulations leading to reduced emissions some decades ago.”

“This second peak supports the hypothesis that there is a relevant release of persistent organic chemicals from melting Alpine glaciers.”

“Considering ongoing global warming and accelerated massive glacier melting predicted for the future, our study indicates the potential for dire environmental impacts due to pollutants delivered into pristine mountainous areas.”

Peter Schmid, one of the researchers involved with the study, told AFP that the findings coincided with those from other glacial lakes in the Swiss Alps. (RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports)

The head of the Environment Agency warned today of the growing flood risk for towns and cities as a result of climate change.

Chris Smith said the increase in heavy downpours in the future would have serious repercussions for urban centres vulnerable to surface-water flooding.

By paving over large areas of permeable ground in cities such as London, "we've made things worse for ourselves", he said, welcoming the change in the law requiring planning permission for the concreting-over of gardens.

In a speech to the Insurance Institute of London, Smith also said recent floods such as the 2007 disaster, which affected large swaths of the country, showed "that we are now experiencing what can only be described as a "new kind of rain" – deluges in which a lot of rain falls quickly in one place. (The Guardian)

Open drainage ditches may have to be installed in Britain's towns and cities to help cope with future rainstorms. Flood engineers warn that the existing drainage network of underground pipes is unlikely to be able to deal with the intensity of downpours expected as climate change takes hold, and additional measures will have to be put in place.

These may include porous pavements, underground storage reservoirs beneath car parks and open drainage channels, which are used in tropical cities to cope with storms. Engineers accept that making such major infrastructure changes may be difficult in urban environments, but are concerned at the new phenomenon of "surface water flooding", where a town is inundated not when a river bursts its banks – the traditional cause – but when the rainfall is so great that sewers simply cannot cope. (The Independent)

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision to freeze oil-and-gas development on 60 drilling sites in Utah is one more sign that the Obama administration will take a more sensible approach to energy exploration on public lands than its predecessor’s drill-now, drill-everywhere policies. Mr. Salazar faces even tougher calls ahead. (NYT)

To the naked eye, there was nothing to be seen at a natural gas well in eastern Texas but beige pipes and tanks baking in the sun.

But in the viewfinder of Terry Gosney’s infrared camera, three black plumes of gas gushed through leaks that were otherwise invisible.

“Holy smoke, it’s blowing like mad,” said Mr. Gosney, an environmental field coordinator for EnCana, the Canadian gas producer that operates the year-old well near Franklin, Tex. “It does look nasty.”

Within a few days the leaks had been sealed by workers.

Efforts like EnCana’s save energy and money. Yet they are also a cheap, effective way of blunting climate change that could potentially be replicated thousands of times over, from Wyoming to Siberia, energy experts say. Natural gas consists almost entirely of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas that scientists say accounts for as much as a third of the human contribution to global warming. (NYT)

Energy and climate change secretary says viable CCS technologies will be pursued with 'great urgency' (The Guardian)

Proponents of the presently too costly technology urge the UN conference this December to adapt a scheme which can make carbon capture and storage feasible for emerging economies. (CoP15)

Trying to make sense of the regulations coming out of the California Air Resources Board is like trying to figure out why a 2-year-old is upset.

You can't and you shouldn't but you do it anyway and end up scratching your head and wondering what the fuss is all about.

Toddlers, however, are upset about such things as not getting a glass of milk. The California Air Resources Board actually sets policy that affects how Detroit businesses operate.

The latter happened again recently with news that the regulatory board wants advanced window glazing on new cars and trucks to keep them cooler and -- in theory -- help keep the planet from melting any further from dastardly auto exhaust.

The regulatory board has passed regulations that say that by 2014 vehicle windows must prevent 45 percent of the energy from the sun from entering the car or truck, with 60 percent blocked out by 2016. To do that, windows would have to be coated with microscopic specks of metal oxide to reflect sunlight. Unfortunately, say the makers of mobile phones, GPS devices and automakers, this will prohibit transmission of signals from those devices.

Poor solutions

The window glazing regulation is one of many "solutions" the air resource board has proposed as part of the California Global Warming Solutions Act passed in 2006 to bring greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Another doozy they proposed, but later rescinded because it was so widely panned, was legislation to ban black cars from the state because they, too, reportedly require heftier use of the air conditioning to cool down.

The "Solutions Act" may have all the designs of saving the planet but what it's most likely to create in California and in any other state that blindly follows the nonsensical logic is an economy in 2020 that mirrors 1990 without the promised environmental benefits. Increased costs will follow as cars and trucks will get more expensive and older cars will remain on the roads longer because drivers will keep them rather than buy new ones.

"This is a common sense and cost-effective measure that will help cool the cars we drive and fight global warming," Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the resource board said in a statement.

The air resources board says the window glazing regulation will add $250 to the cost of each vehicle and that it will take from five to 12 years for consumers to recoup the costs from reduced gasoline use.

No end in sight

If those figures are accurate, and if such rules would actually put a dent in climate change, they might be justifiable. But those are big ifs.

Clearly, Detroit's automakers have far more to worry about these days than glass glazing, but they'd better pay attention because California officials have shown no restraint when it comes to over-regulating cars and trucks, and they're not likely to stop. (Manny Lopez, Detroit News)

Don't the Brits have terrorism laws to protect essential services that would allow them to just shoot these twits? Whatever happened to "law and order Labour"? Protesters to swoop on power plant

Hundreds and possibly thousands of climate change protesters will attempt to close down one of Britain's biggest coal-fired power stations this weekend.

The activists will converge on the giant 2,000-megawatt plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar near Nottingham on Saturday, in what they are calling The Great Climate Swoop, and attempt to halt operations.

The plant, which is owned by the German energy giant E.ON, emits more than 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year and is one of the largest producers of carbon dioxide in Britain.

The activists, largely drawn from three pressure groups – the Camp for Climate Action, Plane Stupid and Climate Rush – have been planning the demonstration since the end of the Climate Camp held at Blackheath in London in August.

E.ON has taken out an injunction which gives police the power to arrest anyone attempting to enter the site, and has hired extra security guards and put up new fencing. A large police presence is expected on Saturday.

However, the activists have said that they will enter the site "by land, water and air". (The Independent)

SAO PAULO - Use of sugar cane-based ethanol as a substitute for gasoline is among the cheapest and easiest ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Brazilian study published on Wednesday.

Cane ethanol provides about eight times the energy used to produce it and adoption of new cane plant varieties and processes could increase its efficiency further.

The study looked only at the future production of cane over pastures or as a replacement for other crops -- not over native forests.

Most new cars in Brazil can run on ethanol alone and the biofuel's environmental benefits are redoubled by burning its bagasse byproduct in thermoelectric plants powering mills and sometimes even feeding into the grid.

"As ethanol is already competitive with gasoline at current oil prices, the additional cost (in adopting ethanol) is zero," said Isaias Macedo, from the Interdisciplinary Center of Energy Planning at the University of Campinas, one of the study's authors.

"And the possibility of producing ethanol in several countries makes it especially attractive," Macedo added. (Reuters)

Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon are working nonstop to derail government-run health care, but they better figure out how to work more than 24 hours per day, because if they fail, it is very likely that politicians will then look for a new revenue source to finance all the new spending that inevitably will follow. Unfortunately, that means a value-added tax (VAT) will be high on the list. Indeed, the VAT recently has been discussed by powerful political figures and key Obama allies such as the Co-Chairman of his transition team and the Speaker of the House.

The VAT would be great news for the political insiders and beltway elite. A brand new source of revenue would mean more money for them to spend and a new set of loopholes to swap for campaign cash and lobbying fees. But as I explain in this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, the evidence from Europe unambiguously suggests that a VAT will dramatically increase the burden of government. That’s good for Washington, but bad for America.

Even if the politicians are unsuccessful in their campaign to take over the health care system, there will be a VAT fight at some point in the next few years. This will be a Armageddon moment for proponents of limited government. Defeating a VAT is not a sufficient condition for controlling the size of government, but it surely is a necessary condition. (Daniel J. Mitchell, Cato at liberty)

How can Americans be expected to wrestle with the myriad dangers that confront them each day? Insalubrious cereal? Unregulated garage sales? Pools of death? Sometimes it's too much to process.

You know what we desperately are crying out for? An army of crusading federal regulatory agents with unfettered power. Who else has the fortitude and foresight to keep us all safe?

Mercifully, as The Washington Post recently reported, many of President Barack Obama's appointees "have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life ... awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products, and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets."

If there's anything Americans are hankering for in their everyday lives, it's a vast regulatory apparatus. Hey, it's dangerous out there. (David Harsanyi, Townhall)

Death Rates (deaths per 1,000 population), New York City, c. 1800-2007. Source: NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Summary of Vital Statistics (2008). H/T to William Briggs for making me aware of this figure.

Infant Mortality Rate (deaths per 1,000 live births), New York City, 1898-2007. In 1898 IMR was estimated to be 140.9 Because of incomplete reporting of early neonatal deaths, this is almost certainly an underestimate. In 2007 IMR was 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. Source: NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Summary of Vital Statistics (2008) (Indur Goklany, Cato at liberty)

It is always encouraging when we discover more about how cancer works, and I cover some interesting results coming out of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in my latest HND article.

What the researchers discovered here is that certain types of immune cells—specifically Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells (pDCs)—actually turn rogue in myeloma patients. That is, they help the cancer cells to grow and survive. Fortunately, if these traitor cells are exposed to compounds called CpG oligodeoxynucleotides, they can be reformed into well-behaving immune cells once again.

Clinical trials are expected shortly, and that won't be a moment too soon for sufferers of this often incurable disease. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

WASHINGTON - Studies on whether mobile phones can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, researchers reported on Tuesday.

So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies do suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea's National Cancer Center found.

Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 published studies of more than 37,000 people in what is called a meta-analysis.

They found results often depended on who conducted the study and how well they controlled for bias and other errors.

"We found a large discrepancy in the association between mobile phone use and tumor risk by research group, which is confounded with the methodological quality of the research," they wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The use of mobile and cordless phones has exploded in the past 10 years to an estimated 4.6 billion subscribers worldwide, according to the U.N. International Telecommunication Union.

Research has failed to establish any clear link between use of the devices and several kinds of cancer.

The latest study, supported in part by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined cases involving brain tumors and others including tumors of the facial nerves, salivary glands and testicles as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphomas.

It found no significant association between the risk of tumors and overall use of mobile phones, including cellular and cordless phones. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Most of the people who have died from the new pandemic H1N1 flu had underlying conditions such as asthma, but 45 percent seemed healthy, according to the largest study yet of U.S. cases.

Children with sickle cell and other blood diseases have a special risk from the swine flu, just as they do from seasonal influenza, Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

She said injectable versions of the flu vaccine -- suitable for babies, people with asthma and people 50 and older -- will be available this week.

Schuchat said the CDC collected detailed data on 1,400 adults and 500 children hospitalized with swine flu in 10 states. The findings confirm that most serious cases and deaths have been in people under the age of 65.

"The vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are occurring in younger people," Schuchat told reporters in a telephone briefing. Five more children have died, bringing the H1N1 death toll among children in the United States to 81.

She said 55 percent of the adults had a condition known to worsen flu of all kinds. "In adults, the most common underlying conditions were asthma and chronic lung disease, chronic heart disease and immunosuppression," Schuchat said.

Six percent were pregnant. Pregnant women have suppressed immune systems so their bodies do not reject the baby, and may also have pressure on the lungs from the fetus.

"And in children, the most common underlying conditions were asthma and chronic lung disease, neurological or neuromuscular diseases, and sickle cell or other blood disorders."

Schuchat said 5.8 percent of hospitalized children had a blood disease related to red blood cells, such as sickle cell disease.

The CDC had not mentioned sickle cell disease before as a special risk, but such children had been highlighted in influenza guidelines as being at special risk and needing to be vaccinated every year. (Reuters)

LONDON - Children under 10 years of age may need two shots of swine flu vaccine to get optimal protection, French drugmaker and the world's biggest flu vaccine producer Sanofi-Aventis said on Wednesday.

A two-dose regimen for H1N1 swine flu would be in line with recommendations for seasonal influenza immunisation in children of this age.

Sanofi said results of a U.S. clinical trial looking at H1N1 vaccination in children aged 6 months through 9 years suggested a single dose may protect many children but "two doses of vaccine will be required for optimal protection".

Previous results from studies of swine flu vaccines made by Sanofi and other companies have found one dose offers good protection in adults.

In the case of children, however, only 50 percent of those aged 6 to 35 months had adequate protection after a single shot, while 76 percent of children aged 3 to 9 years were protected. That compares with 98 percent of adults who had a good immune response after just one dose.

Sanofi is the only company licensed in the United States to produce a flu vaccine for children as young as 6 months of age.

A total of 474 children were studied in the clinical trial. (Reuters)

LONDON - An animal rights poster promoting vegetarianism was banned by Britain's Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) on Wednesday for wrongly implying that eating meat caused swine flu.

The agency said the poster -- on which the words "meat kills" and "go vegetarian" were transposed over the names of deadly diseases, of which swine flu featured most prominently -- was misleading and could cause undue fear and distress.

So far, 76 people in England have died from the H1N1 swine flu virus, which the World Health Organisation has classified as a pandemic, as well as a further 10 in Scotland, three in Northern Ireland and one in Wales. (Reuters Life!)

NEW YORK - Making sure fish ends up on your dinner plate a couple of times a week may be a good way to cut your risk for developing heart disease, but it may not do the same for diabetes, new study findings hint.

In the study, researchers found no evidence of reduced risk for diabetes among adults who ate more fish, or the essential omega-3 fatty acids obtained primarily from seafood.

Rather, their findings suggest that eating 2 or more servings of fish a week may slightly increase diabetes risk. (Reuters Health)

If you want to know your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, you're better off walking through your neighbourhood than looking inside your fridge.

A study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who live in neighbourhoods that support physical activity and healthy diets were 38 per cent less likely to get the disease than their counterparts who reside in unsupportive environments.

Diabetes, a condition in which your blood glucose (sugar) is higher than it should be, occurs when the body's pancreas doesn't secrete enough insulin – the hormone that clears sugar from the blood – or cells don't use insulin properly.

More than two million Canadians have diabetes, a number that's expected to rise to three million by the end of this decade. (The vast majority of people with diabetes have Type 2.) Despite the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, the disease is largely preventable though physical activity, healthy eating and controlling weight.

Observational studies have linked the increase in diabetes to changes in our environment. We rely on cars to take us – and our kids – everywhere. Many of us live in suburbs so spread out that biking or walking to work, school, or the grocery store isn't an option.

What's more, highly processed and fast foods are more accessible than fresh produce and whole grains. (Globe and Mail)

Amid the health care overhaul debate, one big question has been where to come up with about $1 trillion in funding to change the system. One idea that has been suggested is a junk food tax — and, in particular, a tax on soda.

Public health advocates say drinking soda is directly linked to obesity, which is partly responsible for skyrocketing health care costs. (NPR)

We at Interscan are now involved in the Chinese drywall situation. For those who are unfamiliar with this very big problem, refer here for a quick introduction.

Essentially, a host of issues have been linked to drywall manufactured in China, imported into the US starting around 2005. There is no dispute that the drywall will emit certain toxic and corrosive gases (hydrogen sulfide, carbonyl sulfide, and others), which can corrode wiring and HVAC components, and can be unhealthful—especially to sensitive individuals.

A number of testing and remediation protocols are circulating, but at this point, none has been blessed by some learned institution. Such "blessing" is necessary if banks and insurance companies are ever going to approve a remediation job. That's why I am on an ASTM committee that will be looking into this, and will be having its first meeting on the topic next week.

As in all residential toxic exposures, there will be malingerers and those who overreact. And, of course, there will be lawsuits, but it is unclear as to who should be the defendant—or better put, who would be the defendant most likely to pay off.

A most troubling aspect is that the gases will permeate out of the drywall, and can be absorbed by studs, concrete, and household goods. Sadly, the bulk of this situation is occurring in Florida, already hit with a stunning drop in real estate values, and tainted homes make it even worse.

Some contractors are claiming excellent results with their remediation methods, but these procedures are very expensive, and are not covered by any insurance. More than that, most odor-laden household goods will either have to be separately treated or simply discarded.

The posture of government is frankly not encouraging, since they fear that a huge bailout is in the making. Therefore, they are hyper-analyzing the situation in terms of testing the materials, but have done precious little testing of affected homes. There have been several photo op visits by government officials to affected homes, however.

Where Interscan comes in is that any "clearance" of a house for re-occupancy will involve gas detection.

A solution may be at hand in terms of chlorine dioxide treatment—similar to what was used on anthrax-contaminated buildings. We will keep you informed. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

When both the New York Times and Fox News poke fun at a school district it’s a good guess that district has done something pretty silly. That seems to be the case in Newark, Delaware, where the Christina School District just suspended a 6-year-old boy for 45 days because he brought a dreaded knife-fork-spoon combo tool to school. District officials, in their defense, say they had no choice — the state’s “zero tolerance” law demanded the punishment.

Now, the first thing I’ll say is that I was very fortunate there were no zero-tolerance laws — at least that I knew of — when I was a kid. Like most boys, I took a pocket knife to school from time to time, and like most boys I never hurt a soul with it. (I’m pretty sure, though, that I was stabbed by a pencil at least once.) I also played a lot of games involving tackling, delivered and received countless “dead arm” punches in the shoulder, and brought in Star Wars figures armed with…brace yourself!…laser guns! I can only imagine how many suspension days I’d have received had current disciplinary regimes been in place back then.

Before completely trashing little ol’ Delaware and all the other places without tolerance, however, there is a flip side to this story: Some kids really are immediate threats to their teachers and fellow students. And as the recent stomach-wrenching violence in Chicago has vividly illustrated, there are some schools where no one is safe. In other words, there are cases and situations where zero tolerance is warranted.

So how do you balance these things? How do you have zero-tolerance for those who need it, while letting discretion and reason reign for everyone else? And how do you do that when there is no clear line dividing what is too dangerous to tolerate and what is not?

The answer is educational freedom, as it is with all of the things that diverse people are forced to fight over because they all have to support a single system of government schools! Let parents who are not especially concerned about danger, or who value freedom even if it engenders a little more risk, choose schools with discipline policies that give them what they want. Likewise, let parents who want their kids in a zero-tolerance institution do the same.

Ultimately, let parents and schools make their own decisions, and no child will be subjected to disciplinary codes with which his parents disagree; strictness will be much better correlated with the needs of individual children; and perhaps most importantly, discipline policies will make a lot more sense for everyone involved. (Neal McCluskey, Cato at liberty)

The New York Times tries to spin the work of Nobel laureates Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson as not anti-regulation:

But none of us “anti-regulation” folks are against “rules of behavior that people in business adopt for themselves independently of government.” The world is full of rules, from wearing clothes in the office to customary trade practices to the rules for managing common-pool resources that Ostrom studied. Anyone who opposed such “forms of regulation” wouldn’t be a libertarian or even an anarchist — he’d be a nihilist. (Of course, one could sensibly oppose particular rules; but no one seriously wants a world without rules of behavior.)

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics defines “regulation” this way: “Regulation consists of requirements the government imposes on private firms and individuals to achieve government’s purposes.” That’s the kind of regulation that is controversial among economists and often criticized by libertarians. It is entirely different from “rules of behavior that people in business adopt for themselves independently of government.” Those sorts of rules — often called “governance,” as the New York Times notes — are private and voluntary, made by the voluntary interactions of a few or many people.

The work of Ostrom and Williamson supports the idea of spontaneous order, an order that emerges as result of the voluntary activities of individuals and not through the commands of government. Spontaneous order can be hard to grasp, though it is the background of our entire world — language, common law, money, and the economy are all spontaneous orders (though government has intruded into some of those orders). It’s misleading to say that work of Ostrom and Williamson is somehow supportive of “regulation,” given the way that word is commonly used.

Sheldon Richman made a similar point back in June and wrote a Facebook note on the same paragraph that caught my eye. (David Boaz, Cato at liberty)

Sen. Lindsey Graham spent his summer testing out lines on global warming.

As the Republican hit the town halls in South Carolina, a state with a major military presence and one of the country's highest unemployment rates, Graham would ask people if they thought climate change was a problem.

Few did.

But Graham quickly followed with another question, asking for a show of hands from those concerned about energy security. The response was strong, and Graham wasted little time making the connection.

"You can't look at it in isolation," Graham said in an interview last week. "I'm trying to say, OK, you're skeptical about global warming, you're worried about the compliance costs, and you think maybe there's not much benefit to the environment. I'm not there, but I respect that.

"What if I took something you agree with, that this country had a lot of resources that need to be explored and extracted, and every barrel of oil that we can find off South Carolina with South Carolina's permission, and natural gas deposits, make us more energy independent?" he added. "What if you married those two things up? And took some of the revenue from oil and gas exploration and put it toward reducing our carbon dependency? I think that's a deal that a lot of people would go for. You don't have to be a true believer of drilling offshore or that climate change is real. You've just got to be willing to give and take."

Graham's desire to trade energy provisions for his support on a major climate bill has won him audiences with leading Senate Democrats and the Obama administration. And while few of his fellow Republicans are willing to make such a leap, Graham is.

And that is why he landed Sunday on a very public stage -- The New York Times op-ed page -- publishing an article about possible legislative compromises with Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who has taken his party's lead in negotiations on the climate bill. (ClimateWire)

An Associated Press story last week related "good news" about expected heating costs this winter: namely, it will cost people less to heat their homes this year, according to the Energy Information Administration. To read the story, one would think that the government considers that to be good news, too.

Under a cap-and-trade regime, however, this same news would be considered calamitous. By the government, that is – consumers would, of course, remain consistent in their opinion that higher energy costs are bad news and lower costs, good. Making energy more expensive is what the whole cap-and-trade scheme depends on.

The House legislation known as cap-and-trade, HR 2454 (Waxman-Markey), is intended to limit (cap) greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, including especially carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, starting in 2012. The cap would be set initially at a level 3 percent lower than U.S. emissions in 2005 and would tighten by 2050 to be at 83 percent lower than 2005 emissions.

It is important to understand that emissions are a byproduct of energy production, especially from fossil fuels, and 85 percent of U.S. energy is from fossil fuels. The cap would begin by restricting energy production until it is forced into so-called "green" energy alternatives (which never include emissions-free but maddeningly efficient nuclear power) — alternatives that are far too inefficient to work without government forcing people onto them.

By effectively limiting energy production and forcing new production to come from new, highly inefficient sources, the legislation would greatly increase the cost of electricity on everyone: the working poor, families struggling on the cusp of poverty, college students, elderly on fixed incomes, small businesses, everybody. (Jon Sanders, Townhall)

According to a top UN official only direct involvement from heads of state and other key politicians can make the negotiations move forward as the issues involved concern entire economies. (CoP15)

OSLO - A rising population will make it harder for the United States to make 2050 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions than for Russia and some other rich nations with shrinking populations, a Reuters survey showed.

Leaders of the Group of Eight agreed in July to cut developed nations' emissions by 80 percent on average by 2050 in a costly shift to renewable energies. They said the target could aid a U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in December.

But the goal -- if implemented by each nation -- would allow Russian citizens to emit almost twice as much as Americans in 2050, according to Reuters comparisons of emissions and U.N. Population Division projections.

"The biggest contrast is between the United States and the other industrialized countries. The demographic differences with Russia are stark," Brian O'Neill, a scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, said of the data. (Reuters)

Mount Everest climbers are stunned to see insects in their camps - yet another sign of global warming. (CoP15)

The number of events of extreme rainfall may well triple due to global warming, top scientist estimates. (CoP15)

LONDON - The world needs to build 100 major projects for capturing and burying greenhouse gases by 2020 and thousands more by 2050 to help combat climate change, International Energy Agency chief Nobuo Tanaka said Tuesday.

Energy ministers meeting in London said the world must start building by next year at least 20 commercial-scale pilot projects to test a technology which U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu said could solve "20 percent of the problem" to curb carbon.

The drive, mostly to capture emissions from coal-fired power stations, would cost $56 billion by 2020 alone, said Tanaka. Carbon capture funding could be a key part of a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. (Reuters)

Based on the above contention, the Kyoto Protocol imposes no direct costs on developing countries and holds out the prospect of large amounts of transfer payments from industrialized to developing countries via the Clean Development Mechanism or an Adaptation Fund. Not surprisingly, virtually every developing country has ratified the Protocol and is adamant that these features be retained in any son-of-Kyoto.

For their part, UN and other multilateral agencies favor this approach because lacking any taxing authority or other ready mechanism for raising revenues, they see revenues in helping manage, facilitate or distribute the enormous amounts of money that, in theory, should be available from ICs to fund mitigation and adaptation in the DCs.

LONDON - Extending the trade in sovereign emissions rights into a new global climate pact could deter investment in clean energy projects post-2012, Barclays Capital said on Tuesday, siding with the U.S. view on the matter.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, nations that are comfortably below their greenhouse gas emissions targets can sell excess emissions rights called Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) to countries struggling to meet their own targets.

U.N.-led climate talks in Bangkok last week made little progress in advancing global efforts to secure a successor to Kyoto or determine the AAU market's future, instead exposing wide divides in the expectations of key nations. (Reuters)

LONDON - The market for companies choosing to offset their carbon footprints is not achieving meaningful emissions cuts yet, market players said at a carbon industry conference in London on Tuesday.

Voluntary carbon offsets allow individuals and organizations to elect to compensate for their own greenhouse gas emissions by funding projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, often in developing countries.

The market operates outside mandatory emissions reductions schemes such as under the Kyoto Protocol or the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme. It evolved largely in the United States as a market-based mechanism to address climate change and in Europe as a byproduct of implementing the Kyoto pact. Only 34.69 million tonnes of carbon offset credits have been retired on the voluntary market so far, according to estimates by carbon asset management company First Climate.

Carbon credits totaling 123 million tonnes, valued at $705 million, were transacted in the global voluntary carbon market in 2008, according to New Energy Finance and Ecosystem Marketplace estimates.

"It shows the market hasn't made a big difference. These are tiny amounts of reductions although I still see potential in some products and services," First Climate executive board member Sascha Lafeld told delegates at the GreenPower conference. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - The United States and China could bring the world together on tackling climate change even though U.N. talks have been bogged down, members of a sustainable business group said.

Rich and developing countries remain divided on how to share the burden of slowing global climate change ahead of a December UN meeting in Copenhagen where 190 countries are slated to hash out the extension or replacement of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

"The critical element in bridging that divide is the dialogue between the U.S. and China," Bjorn Stigson, the president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of 200 companies, told reporters on Tuesday. (Reuters)

"What happened to global warming?" read the headline -- on BBC News on Oct. 9, no less. Consider it a cataclysmic event: Mainstream news organizations have begun reporting on scientific research that suggests that global warming may not be caused by man and may not be as dire and eminent as alarmists suggest. (Debra J. Saunders, Townhall)

According to State of the Climate in 2008, a special supplement to the August, 2009, issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, greenhouse warming has been stopped in its tracks for the past 10 years. The HadCRUT3 temperature record shows the world warmed by only 0.07°C (±0.07°C) from 1999-2008. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who have led the global warming disaster circus for the past two decades, had predicted 0.20°C. Just a temporary setback claim the true believers, global warming will be back with a vengeance. Add a mad scientist's cackling laugh and you have a story fit for a comic book villain.

Climate researcher Jeff Knight and eight colleagues at the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre first announced the news that global warming had gone on hiatus. When corrected for the natural temperature effects of El Niño and La Niña events, the decade's temperature trend is a perfectly flat 0.00°C. Yet climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) says “In the end, global warming will prevail!” Ah, the sound of denial in the face of abject failure. The story is written in the figure below taken from “What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit” by Richard A. Kerr in the October 9 issue of Science.

As reported in the Science article: “the Hadley Centre group took the next step, using climate modeling to try to quantify how unusual a 10-year warming pause might be. In 10 modeling runs of 21st century climate totaling 700 years worth of simulation, long-term warming proceeded about as expected: 2.0°C by the end of the century. But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat.” Trouble is, when the cooling decades occur is not accurately predicted, they appear more or less randomly. In other words, we can make our models nearly as unpredictable as the real climate!

Climate modelers are currently in a mad scramble to rescue their tattered playthings from the drubbing they have taken for not predicting the current cooling trend. Judith L. Lean, a slolar physicist at the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David H. Rind, a climate modeler at GISS, have published a paper entitled “How will Earth's surface temperature change in future decades?” in the August 15 Geophysical Research Letters. In it they decomposed recent observed surface temperatures into components associated with ENSO, volcanic and solar activity, and anthropogenic influences, in an attempt to anticipate global and regional changes during the next two decades. Unlike the Hadley Centre's model-based analysis, their assessment attributes an increased amount of climate variability to change in solar activity. Considering recent developments this is a step in the right direction.

Acknowledging that decadal climate forecasts are difficult to make with general circulation climate models due to their many uncertainties, the authors cite two different modeling studies that arrived at vastly different conclusions. By including overturning of the ocean’s meridional circulation (MOC) in a numerical model and using observed distributions of ocean heat content for initialization, Smith et al., (see “Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model”) forecast rapid warming after 2008, with ‘‘at least half of the 5 years after 2009... predicted to exceed (1998) the warmest year currently on record.’’ The other model , from Keenlyside et al., (see “Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector”) also attempts to account for the MOC yet forecasts the opposite: ‘‘that 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 warming.’’ Lean and Rind describe how their approach differs from these two projections:

Even so their results look suspiciously similar to all the other recent, hastily revised forecasts from climate change traditionalists. As can be seen from the figure below, nothing has changed with regard to the assumed linear increase in temperature attributed to CO₂. Despite recent work by Meehl et al. (see “Atmospheric Solar Heat Amplifier Discovered”) that insolation may have three times the impact on climate compared with previous predictions the old, dogmatic 2°C per century is still there.

This derives from a fundamental assumption made by the modelers: “The major assumption associated with our forecasts is that ‘past is prologue’; climate will continue to respond in the future to the same factors that have influenced it in the recent past and the response will continue to be linear over the next several decades.” The thing is, that same argument can be made on other timescales—for instance, on a century long time scale a linear temperature prediction would call for only a 0.7°C increase by 2100. Here is their bottom-line conclusion: “According to our prediction, which is anchored in the reality of observed changes in the recent past, warming from 2009 to 2014 will exceed that due to anthropogenic influences alone but global temperatures will increase only slightly from 2014 to 2019, and some regions may even cool.”

A survey of the many new predictions being generated by the world's climate research groups produces at least one set of prognostications for every imaginable scenario. The whole enterprise is reminiscent of Medieval mystics claiming to predict the future while spouting gibberish. Palm readers and fortune tellers stand as good a chance as any in this game. Lean and Rind are calling for global warming to reassert itself next year, run hot for five years and then go quiescent for another five—add that to the list of predictions. We will see how their prediction fairs, because the future outcome will be decided by the ultimate arbiter in science, nature itself.

What Happened To Global Warming?

So reads the headline of a recent BBC article, which continues:

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.

This isn’t really news, though it will probably come as such to environmentalists and all the people who have bought into their propaganda.

The following is Part 1 of a written debate between Dr. Kevin Trenberth — head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder — and Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. This debate originally appeared in the Fort Collins Forum:

Editor’s note: While the issue of anthropogenic global warming is much more than a local issue, we are fortunate to have two leading authorities on climate science in Northern Colorado. Each has a different view of the issue and agreed to this in-paper debate. The Forum believes this type of direct debate is all too rare on this topic and thank doctors Gray and Trenberth for their efforts. The Forum also wants to thank author Ray Harvey for bringing them together for this debate. (Tea Party of Northern Colorado) Read part 2 here

Houses on stilts, small scale energy generation and recycling our dishwater are just some of the measures that are being proposed to prepare our cities for the effects of global warming.

A three-year project led by Newcastle University for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has outlined how our major cities must respond if they are to continue to grow in the face of climate change.

Using the new UK Climate Predictions ’09 data for weather patterns over the next century, the research looks at the impact of predicted rises in temperature - particularly in urban areas - increased flooding in winter and less water availability in summer.

The report “How can cities grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability” focuses on the particular challenges facing London but can be used as a model for other UK cities on how policy-makers, businesses and the public must work together to prepare for climate change. (PhysOrg.com)

First the good news: the UK has the world's strongest policies for tackling climate change. Now the bad news: the UK has the world's strongest policies for tackling climate change. Although this is the first nation on earth to set legally binding emissions targets, and although the targets here are as tough as anywhere else, if every other nation followed the UK's example, we'd still be likely to hit a catastrophic 4C of global warming. (The Guardian)

They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, shit" moment--an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. Listening to the speeches, groundbreaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered September 22 at the UN Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent "Oh, shit" moment.

It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions are correct--and Schellnhuber ranks among the world's half-dozen most eminent climate scientists--it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.

Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so. (Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation)

Jonah, re your item on Mark Hertsgaard, the "climate correspondent" of The Nation, and the sad tale of his recurring "Oh, sh*t" moments: In a sense, his job depends on an endless procession of OSMs. The "climate correspondent" is by definition the OSM correspondent: that's the basis on which newspapers and magazines created the position. A "climate correspondent" without OSMs is like a ballet critic in a town with no ballet company. (Mark Steyn, Planet Gore)

Cutting non-CO2 pollutants could buy the world a lot more time before global warming hits the critical two degrees celcius threshold, according to Nobel Laureate Dr Mario Molina.

Reducing other climate change agents such as black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), as well as expanding biochar production, could buy the world about 40 years, said the researchers.

The advice comes as the view starts gaining credence in the media that global warming may not be man-made, nor as severe as feared. The BBC's climate correspondent yesterday released a report suggesting that there could actually be 30 years of cooling to come.

Molina's team, whose paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), certainly has no doubts.

"By targeting these short-term climate forcers, we can make a down payment on climate and provide momentum going into the December negotiations in Copenhagen," said co-author Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. "The Obama administration and other key governments need to take up the fast-action climate agenda before it is too late." (Emma Woollacott, TGDaily)

WASHINGTON -- A controversial e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.

The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.

The document specifically cites global warming's effects on air quality, agriculture, forestry, water resources and coastal areas as endangering public welfare.

That finding was rejected by the Bush White House, which strongly opposed using the Clean Air Act to address climate change and stalled on producing a so-called "endangerment finding" that had been ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007.

As a result, the Dec. 5 e-mail sent by the agency to Susan Dudley, who headed the regulatory division at the Office of Management and Budget was never opened, according to Jason Burnett, the former EPA official that wrote it.

The Bush administration, and then EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, also refused to release the document, which is labeled "deliberative, do not distribute" to Democratic lawmakers. The White House instead allowed three senators to review it in July 2008, when excerpts were released. (AP)

Shadowing a strategy used by the Conservative party in the 2008 federal election campaign, a Canadian environmental group is taking aim at the same ethnic communities often targeted by politicians as "swing voters," in a bid to push climate change to the top of the political agenda.

But while Climate Action Network Canada's method is political, its means are decidedly less so.

The group launches a multi-day speaking tour Wednesday — bringing over Bollywood star Rahul Bose, once dubbed the "Sean Penn of Asian cinema" — in a bid to bring South-Asian Canadians into the climate-change discussion. (Amy Husser, Canwest News Service)

Hmm... Marine plant life holds the secret to preventing global warming - Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds, above, cover less than 1 per cent of the world's seabed, but lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor

Life in the ocean has the potential to help to prevent global warming, according to a report published today.

Marine plant life sucks 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but most of the plankton responsible never reaches the seabed to become a permanent carbon store.

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are a different matter. Although together they cover less than 1 per cent of the world’s seabed, they lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor. They are estimated to store 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year — nearly half of global transport emissions — making them one of the most intense carbon sinks on Earth. (The Times)

I am very pleased to be a colleague of this outstanding group of scientists, students and staff! (Climate Science)

I am pleased to serve on this Committee as it focuses on the bottom-up resource-based vulnerability perspective that is a much more appropriate framework for policymakers to deal with social and environmental threats, than is the top-down IPCC worldview (e.g. see). The members of our Committee including short biographers are available at http://www.agu.org/focus_group/NH/index.html.

“The Group promotes fundamental research into the links between extreme natural hazards and dynamic processes on Earth and in space; real-time and long-term monitoring of active processes in the Earth and in space; quantitative natural-hazard modeling that combines geophysical, ecological, societal, and economic aspects of disaster scenarios; studying predictability of natural extreme events, their operational forecasting, and reducing predictive uncertainties; comprehensive interdisciplinary research aimed at reducing vulnerability to both current and future natural hazards; and implementation of effective strategies and designs for hazard mitigation and disaster management worldwide, with particular focus on the most risk-prone areas. The effects of human activities in enhancing geophysical disasters are also of interest of the group.” (Climate Science)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 744 individual scientists from 437 separate research institutions in 41 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Karakorum Mountains, Northern Pakistan. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Drought (Solar-Induced): What is the evidence for believing that many of earth's droughts are caused by variations in solar activity?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Peanut, cv. Pronto (Bannayan et al., 2009), Silver Vase Bromeliad (Croonenborghs et al., 2009), Snow Gum Tree (Atwell et al., 2009), and Soybean (Matsunami et al., 2009).

“American Scientist”, solidly warmist yet likely to be among the first publications to recognize the failure of AGW sometimes in the future, has a topical book review article (Runaway Change by John R. McNeill) of what appears to be a more-reasoned-than-most “tipping point” book, Marten Scheffer’s “Critical Transitions in Nature and Society“:

Scheffer defines “critical transitions” as “sharp shifts in systems driven by runaway change toward a contrasting alternative state once a threshold is exceeded.” His interest includes but also goes beyond doom and gloom, as the aim is to apply system dynamics to nature and of society so that we might in the future have “the possibility of predicting, preventing, or catalyzing big shifts in nature and society.”

However, Sheffer’s ultimate goal (large-scale “predictability” e.g. in lake ecosystems as it is already possible in “petri dishes“) doesn’t appear easy to reconcile with all the examples he describes.

For one thing, transitions (critical or otherwise) do not necessarily include just one beginning state and one final state. And what a “state” actually is, gets less clear the more an example is studied

Among possible example of climate-related critical tranistions, Scheffer lists “the oxidation of 2.4 billion years ago“, “snowball Earth”, “glaciation“, “Milankovitch cycles“, “Younger Dryas” and ENSO. Buf if McNeil is right in stating that “climate history (as currently understood) presents many examples of critical shifts on various timescales“, then doesn’t that also mean there is no such a thing as a stable climate?

Natural history doesn’t clarify much about tipping points either. The underlying theme is that “critical transitions are rare“:

The argument appears to collapse when human sciences are included, where Sheffer is mostly guided by his own preferences (Jared Diamond, “the role of charismatic opinion makers“). That is a pity as obviously the most important aspect of being able to manage tipping points, is to be able to effectively inspire people in..managing tipping points.

The end result can only be that effective action, of the kind that might benefit all but only if everyone participates, would be next to impossible even if everybody suddenly became an AGW believer.

And so at the end of the day for all the efforts activists will ever put in the idea of AGW, the most likely way forward will be, as usual in the history of humanity, “to act blindly in the future, as we have in the past”. (OmniClimate)

The Houston-based Consumer Energy Alliance has a grim message for those who propose to restrict U.S. access to Canada's oil sands production to cut greenhouse gas emissions: If the U.S. doesn't buy the Alberta crude, China will.

As a result, such measures would not advance the global fight against climate change, it says. But the U.S. would be more dependent on Middle East oil, "Communist China" would be siphoning off secure North American crude supplies, and motorists would face higher prices, the alliance warns in a campaign aimed at supporting expansion of imports from the oil sands.

As the U.S. moves to adopt climate change legislation and prepares for negotiations in Copenhagen toward a new global treaty, environmentalists have stepped up their attacks on Canada's oil sands as emblematic of the world's reliance on "dirty" fuels.

With the U.S. Senate set to take up debate on climate change legislation this week, the American oil industry is fighting back, both directly and through proxy groups like the Consumer Energy Alliance. (Globe and Mail)

The world is running out of oil faster than society suspects, and last year's $4.11 gasoline spike was just a bitter hint of the future, according to a "peak oil" theory whose key proponents will gather in Denver this week.

Though peak-oil theorists prompt scorn from many in the petroleum industry, they've attracted an audience in some political and financial circles with their warnings to avert disaster by conserving, diversifying and exploring at an urgent pace.

"Up until now, technology has delivered dazzling results to America and the world economy, in delivering oil from all around the world despite increasingly challenging environments," said Dave Bowden, executive director of the Denver-based Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA, or ASPO. "The harsh reality is, despite the best efforts of amazing technology, they're not finding as many of these big fields anymore."

Peak-oil theorists who group under the ASPO umbrella say world production of the vital liquid is at, or just a couple of years shy, of its absolute high point. Once oil companies begin to squeeze less and less from the ground each year — while demand skyrockets in developing China and India — spot shortages will blow up prices, shock economies and destabilize governments. (Michael Booth, Denver Post)

Ed. Note: This article first appeared on Geoffrey Styles' blog, Energy Outlook.

To whatever degree the oil price spike of 2007-8 was driven by speculation, the latter was riding on a wave of concern about Peak Oil, which anticipates an imminent decline in maximum global oil production. For the moment, the weak global economy has eased such worries, though they have hardly vanished, as I noted two months ago. Lately, however, conventional notions of Peak Oil are increasingly being challenged by a new meme, or contagious idea, called Peak Demand, which suggests that oil consumption is reaching a plateau from which it will soon decline, mitigating the worst consequences of Peak Oil. Neither of these memes would attract much interest if they weren't supported by a welter of statistics, however selective those might seem to their critics. And just as Peak Oil was much less credible and worrisome before we saw super-giant oil fields like Mexico's Cantarell go into precipitous decline, the logic of Peak Demand would have been much less compelling before US oil demand dropped by nearly 6% last year. (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)

Saudi Arabia, the globe's largest crude producer, plans to inject carbon dioxide into the world's bigest oil field by 2013 to trap the climate-warming gas and improve production, the kingdom's assistant petroleum minister said on Tuesday.

"It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Ministry of Petroleum of Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco are working on a demonstration project for CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR)," Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman Al-Saud told energy ministers at a carbon capture and storage summit in London.

"A CO2 EOR demonstration project is planned for implementation by 2013. It is planned to inject 40 million standard cubic feet per day of CO2 in an area already flooded by water in the great reservoir of Ghawar."

He said Saudi Arabia did not need to produce oil through EOR but that it was planning to do it as part of the global push to trap carbon emissions under ground in an effort to limit the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Discovered in 1948 Ghawar is the world's largest oilfield, with an output of around 5 million barrels per day in 2008, about half of Saudi oil production. (Reuters)

LONDON - A technology to bury underground the greenhouse gas emissions produced from burning coal must be ready for global deployment by 2017-2019, U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu said on Monday.

Coal is the world's single biggest source of carbon emissions, at 40 percent. Other sources included burning oil and natural gas, and deforestation and the production of cement.

Chu was optimistic about the prospects for carbon capture and storage (CCS), even though no commercial-scale plant is being built yet anywhere. He said that the United States could have 10 demonstration plants online by 2016.

Most analysts do not expect the technology to be widely available before 2020 at the earliest. (Reuters)

Getting China's coal-plant emissions out of the atmosphere so they don't worsen global warming may be cheaper, easier and longer-lasting than expected, a federal energy lab report finds.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory report, set for release today in London, says there are vast underground reserves in China that can be used for "carbon sequestration," a carbon dioxide-trapping technology considered vital to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. (Dan Vergano, USA TODAY)

CALGARY --Canada could cash in on the battle for climate change should countries around the world spend the trillions of dollars the International Energy Agency contends is necessary to boost carbon capture and storage, it was predicted Tuesday.

Businesses and governments need to pony up between US$2.4-trillion and US$3.4-trillion before 2050 for carbon-capture and storage projects, the IEA said in a 46-page report. While Canada is going to have to invest billions to develop CCS techniques, that could translate into big profits down the road.

“It is a costly technology, but the benefits are tremendous,” Bruce Carson, executive director for the Canada School of Energy and Environment, said in an interview with the Financial Post before addressing a luncheon in Calgary. “If we get it right, we can sell this [technology] around the world.” (Carrie Tait, Financial Post)

OSLO - Norway plans to raise investments in capturing and storing greenhouse gases in 2010 to a record of almost 3.5 billion crowns ($621 million) to help fight climate change, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg once said Norway wanted to lead international efforts to develop carbon capture, likening it to the 1960s U.S.-Soviet race to the Moon. But timetables for Norway's major projects have slipped.

"We propose to spend almost 3.5 billion crowns in 2010 on this area," Halvorsen told parliament in presenting the center-left government's 2010 budget. "This is an increase of almost 1.6 billion crowns compared to the 2009 budget." (Reuters)

MASONTOWN, Pa. — For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.

So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky.

But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north. (NYT)

Since 2006, Allegheny Energy Inc. has spent nearly $900 million on installation of emissions-control equipment at a single power plant — Hatfield's Ferry in Cumberland, Greene County.

As installation of equipment known as scrubbers wraps up at the plant, environmental groups and the federal government are saying the Greensburg-based power company has made progress, but more challenges and costs are ahead.

The scrubbers will remove 150,000 tons of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide from the three-unit, 1,710 megawatt power plant, or about 95 percent of the pollutant it makes annually. In addition, the scrubbers will cleanse about 840 pounds of mercury, or 40 percent to 70 percent of the plant's annual discharge.

Allegheny Energy is one of many power plant owners installing scrubbers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that scrubber additions nationwide are planned for power plants producing 139 million megawatts of electricity at an estimated cost of more than $30 billion. One megawatt of generating capacity powers about 800 homes.

Even so, environmentalists are concerned that the new scrubbers at Hatfield's Ferry are merely transferring emissions from the air to the 1.7 million gallons of water returned daily by the plant to the Monongahela River. About 500,000 gallons of the water is scrubbers-related. (Tribune-Review)

Oct. 14 -- Alstom SA, which makes systems that capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, isn’t threatened by competing technology to gasify coal for electricity, the head of the company’s power unit said.

The company, based in Levallois-Perret, France, is supporting two utility projects in the U.S. to capture CO2 emissions from coal power plants. An alternative method, known as integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC, isn’t applicable for operating plants and wouldn’t be the best choice for those coming on line, Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power, said in an interview yesterday in Washington.

“I don’t think IGCC has a real long-term future for producing electricity,” Joubert said. “The idea that this could be more competitive” isn’t sustainable, he said. (Bloomberg)

Germany may have ambitious targets about cutting its carbon dioxide emissions, but those targets will likely remain just that, targets, as long as the country continues its heavy reliance on lignite.

Every year, Germany mines about 175 million metric tons (Mt) of lignite (brown coal) and that coal provides about 25 percent of the country’s electricity. Similar contributions are provided by hard coal (20 percent) and nuclear power (23 percent), with the remainder covered by renewable sources and natural gas.

In 2002, Germany passed legislation aimed at phasing out the country’s 19 nuclear reactors within two decades. The hope was that lignite and wind power would fill the ensuing gap. An estimated 40 billions of recoverable lignite reserves would be hypothetically adequate to provide half the country’s electricity (twice current lignite generation) for over a century. However, the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) introduced in 2005 has restricted the economic viability of this option. (Jeffrey H. Michel, Energy Tribune)

BRUSSELS - France, Italy and Germany have written to the European Union's executive asking for a delay or softening to planned curbs on carbon dioxide emissions from new vans, EU diplomats say.

The European Commission is mulling proposals this month that would force van makers such as Fiat and Mercedes to cut emissions from new vans by 14 percent to 175 grams per kilometer by July 2013 or face fines.

But the powerful auto makers have pushed hard for the goal to be gradually phased in and for fines to be weakened, just as they argued last year over curbs to CO2 from cars.

Such investment in energy efficiency is not possible in times of economic crisis, they argue. (Reuters)

In a recent article in Energy Tribune, I pointed out that, based on my personal experience, using 10 percent ethanol in our motor fuel (E10) leads to an increase – not a reduction, in the demand for petroleum.

Those conclusions were based on fuel mileage measurements in my personal vehicle. Normally, this might be suspect since mileage is highly dependent on how the vehicle is used. E.g.: Local driving yields worse mileage than highway driving. For that reason, I corrected the observed tank fuel mileage for the average speed between fill ups. Not a perfect solution, but when miles per gallon was plotted against miles per hour for both pure gasoline (E0) and E10, the trend became clear. In the discussion to follow, I will show that not only does ethanol lead to increased oil imports, it also increases emissions of carbon dioxide – the gas that many people believe is causing global warming. (Harry Wertheimer, Energy Tribune)

Over the past few years, China has emerged as the world’s top methanol consumer. By the end of 2008, production capacity reached over 28 million tons. Capacity is expected to reach 30 million tons by next year, more than a four-fold increase since 2005. Consumption has also risen, with usage of about 12 million tons in 2008, double the level achieved in 2005.

But the critical element is the government’s promotion of methanol-blended motor fuel. The government is providing subsidies to motorists who use methanol but along with the government’s push have come a number of problems, including worries about the damage to vehicles, as well as financial problems for China’s methanol producers.

In August, provincial and local governments began providing subsidies of about $370 for any vehicle retrofitted to burn methanol-blended fuel. The price of M85 methanol gasoline (85 percent methanol) is about half that of standard gasoline, giving individuals a big incentive to make the switch. But the changes in methanol prices are hurting producers.

Last year, methanol prices hit $660 per ton at about the same time that oil prices were peaking. And given that oil and gas are the usual feedstocks for methanol production, the methanol market price has long fluctuated along with the crude oil price.

In China, about 70 percent of the feedstock for methanol comes from coal. That results in higher costs, with the average production cost for methanol derived from coal being about $260 per ton. Making methanol from natural gas costs about $150 per ton. Given that foreign producers can provide methanol to the Chinese market more cheaply than domestic producers, large volumes of methanol have been flowing into China from the Middle East, New Zealand and other countries. According to data from China’s customs officials, the country imported 1.4 million tons of methanol in 2008. But in the first six months of 2009, imports totaled some 3.4 million tons. These imports are crushing domestic methanol producers who are cutting operations or going into bankruptcy. In January, about 70 percent of China’s methanol production capacity was idle and the recent increase in crude oil prices have not helped bring methanol prices back to their highs of mid-2008. (Xina Xie and Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)

India’s growing nuclear energy program, is attracting the notice of neighboring countries, most notably, Pakistan. After last year’s signing of an agreement between the US and India on civilian nuclear power, India has announced major nuclear energy generation initiatives backed by countries such as the US, France, Russia , Japan and South Korea.

Given India’s lead, Pakistan and Bangladesh may follow suit, even as the international community grows increasingly concerned that nuclear technology could be pilfered for clandestine nuclear weapons programs. While India’s nuclear energy business could eventually be worth $100 billion, some observers say that Pakistan, Bangladesh and perhaps even Myanmar could account for another $30 billion, if they follow India’s lead.

US companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi, France’s Areva, and Russia’s Rosatom, are among the top players seeking to garner a share of the business.

India is moving ahead with its nuclear energy program after the removal of international impediments to access technology and fuel. (Priyanka Bhardwaj and Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)

The potential wind and marine energy power in the Pentland Firth has led Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond to dub it the "Saudi Arabia of Renewables".

It's an impressive brag.

The basis for it is the fact that Scotland has more than its fair share of renewable energy resources: a quarter of all European wind energy resource, a quarter of Europe's tidal resource and one 10th of its wave resource.

That potential, coupled with the Scottish government's ambitious targets for green energy could make renewables a lucrative industry for Scotland. (BBC Scotland)

The Senate Finance Committee votes today on Senator Max Baucus’ version of the health care bill. Cato health care experts have analyzed the bill thoroughly, and point out three vital components to the cost and reach of the legislation:

Chairman Max Baucus hoodwinked the CBO with a number of clever budgetary gimmicks, most notably by keeping about half of the cost off the federal books. The bill also assumes Congress will make cuts to Medicare payments, which has never once happened before.

The bill imposes a 40 percent excise tax on health insurance plans that offer benefits in excess of $8,000 for an individual plan and $21,000 for a family plan. Insurers would almost certainly pass this tax on to consumers via higher premiums. As inflation pushes insurance premiums higher in coming years, more and more middle-class families will find themselves caught up in the tax — providing the government with more revenue.

Trying to get kids to eat more healthfully is like trying to keep kittens in a box: You make progress in one area -- say, school lunches -- only to find that the kids jump for the junk food first chance they get.

But in too many instances, kids seeking snacks have little to choose from other than junk.

A study published today in Pediatrics shows that urban elementary-school kids in Philadelphia who stop for snacks at corner stores before and after school largely spend their dollars on high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods. Chips topped the list, followed by candy and sweetened beverages. The study found that for just a dollar, a kid could buy an 8-ounce beverage, a single serving bag of chips, an assortment of candy and gum, and a popsicle -- adding up to hundreds of extra calories in their daily diets. More than half the kids bought after-school snacks at corner stores five days per week; nearly a third stopped in the mornings, too.

The study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Healthy Eating Research initiative. The goal was to attach numbers to the well-known phenomenon wherein kids in low-income urban settings get much of their food from tiny corner stores that dot their neighborhoods. Such areas -- known as "food deserts" -- often lack full-sized grocery stores, leaving families to rely on the corner stores, which typically sell little other than packaged foods and pre-made sandwiches, pizza and the like. Knowing the extent of the food-desert problem is the first step toward solving it. (Washington Post)

ATLANTA — The largest U.S. analysis of hospitalized adult swine flu patients has found almost half were healthy people who did not have asthma or any other chronic illnesses before they got sick.

Health officials released the surprising results at a news conference on Tuesday, noting that 46 percent of 1,400 hospitalized adults did not have a chronic underlying condition.

They have said before that the majority of swine flu patients who develop severe illness have some sort of pre-existing condition, but the new data suggest the majority may be slimmer than was previously thought.

A study of 272 hospitalized swine flu patients, released by the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month, concluded that 83 percent of adults and 60 percent of children had underlying conditions.

However, health officials cautioned that the new analysis is preliminary and did not count obesity as an underlying condition. Earlier research has suggested obesity could be a separate risk factor for severe swine flu illness. Further analysis that counts obesity could change the results, said a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (AP)

OUR flu season is now over and the proof is in. Remember the terrifying new swine flu that would kill us by the thousands?

Even tens of thousands?

Remember the swine flu that had the World Health Organisation declaring in April that “all humanity is under threat”?

Remember how Health Minister Nicola Roxon claimed this flu could, untreated, kill 6000 Australians this flu season and put 80,000 in hospital?

Remember how a member of the Government’s influenza advisory group, Prof Raina MacIntyre, predicted a toll even worse?

“If you look at deaths that are directly related to influenza and also to pneumonia, which is the most common complication of influenza,” she said, “we could be looking at anything in the ball park of 10,000 deaths, 10,000 to 20,000 deaths.”

Oh, how we loved that dirty talk. Scare us some more, someone. Please!

And scared we were. Cruise ships were quarantined, sick families locked up, incoming passengers checked for temperatures, schools closed - until we got tired and bored, at least.

Well, pigs to all that. Add swine flu now to a notorious list of other great scare campaigns: bird flu, SARS, acid rain, the Y2K bug, Chernobyl, genetically modified food, impending famines ... Oh, and global warming.

Yesterday the Department of Health and Ageing slipped out a brief update of the latest swine flu statistics. Number of Australians treated in hospital for swine flu: no, not 80,000 but 4830.

Number of people who have died with confirmed pandemic swine flu: no, not 20,000 but 185. (Andrew Bolt)

The true burden of mental ill health is unrecognised since many "physical" problems, like cancer and obesity, are really "mind" problems, say experts.

Most lung cancers are caused by addiction to smoking, and some obesity by a brain-driven compulsion to eat, says UK psychiatrist Dr Peter Jones.

And to tackle such problems experts need to go back to delving the mind.

He and other leading mental health experts are calling for a trebling of funding to £200m a year for research. (BBC News)

Shops will be banned from next month from selling incandescent lights globes, so why isn’t the Rudd Government now running an ad campaign warning consumers of the dangers of switching to low-energy compact fluorescent lamps instead?

Surely it doesn’t want to save the planet by poisoning people?

Tens of thousands of Australians will next month be forced to buy these new greenhouse-friendly CFLs without the Government warning them that, unlike normal light bulbs, they contain mercury and are dangerous when broken. What’s more, they shouldn’t just be thrown out with the rubbish.

How many consumers know this? (Andrew Bolt)

If you look at satellite pictures of Mongolia, you will find evidence of the insights for which Elinor Ostrom, one of this year’s Nobel laureates in economics, won her award.

Mongolia is green with pastureland. The neighbouring parts of Russia and China are not. That’s because Mongolian herders developed an efficient system of collective management. This husbandry of “the commons” — according to the Nobel committee — was not merely superior to Communism. China also tried “privatization,” which failed. Mmm.

While circa 1980s Communist China may not be the champion preferred by most fans of markets, Ms. Ostrom has arguably demonstrated that, in certain circumstances, there is a “third way.” But this is in no way provides a boost — as the media and even the Nobel committee are suggesting — to Gore-onomics.

Economics is one of those fields that has been heavily penetrated both by ideological agendas and abstruse theorizing. However, both this year’s laureates — Ms. Ostrom, who is from the University of Indiana, and Oliver Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley — have produced work that may actually be useful The focus has fallen on Ms. Ostrom both because of her gender (she is the first woman economics laureate) and her speciality. (Peter Foster, National Post)

We've had a bit to say about the Nobel Committee with regard to global warming prizes & this fits under the same theme: The Affirmative Action Nobel

All my life, said Voltaire, I have had but one prayer: "O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous. And God granted it."

In awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the Nobel committee has just made itself look ridiculous.

Consider. Though they had lead roles in ending a Cold War lasting half a century, between a nuclear-armed Soviet Empire and the West, neither Ronald Reagan nor John Paul II ever got a Nobel Prize.

In 1987, Reagan negotiated the greatest arms reduction treaty in modern time, the INF agreement removing all Soviet SS-20s and all U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles from Europe.

Other than hosting the "Beer Summit" between Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, what has Obama done to compare with what these statesmen did to make ours a more peaceful and better world?

What has Obama accomplished to compare with what the other sitting presidents to receive the Nobel Prize accomplished? (Pat Buchanan, Townhall)

CHURCHVILLE, VA—I was still mourning the loss of my friend, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, at age 95, and reminiscing on his magnificent life when the news flashed across the wires that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. What a startling contrast!

Dr. Borlaug literally saved a billion people from starvation, and his high-yield farming systems are still feeding the hungry and saving millions of hectares of wildlife habitat from being plowed for low-yield crops. “Food wars” such as Hitler’s 1941 invasion of Russia for “living room” and Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria for soybean fields were rendered needless and counterproductive. Any of those Borlaug achievements would have been worth the Peace Prize, but his achieving all three together was incredible. (DENNIS T. AVERY, CGFI)

This, originally the most prestigious of Alfred Nobel's prizes, has become little more than a PC hallelujah chorus—with plenty of cash. As it turns out, the award to Obama does not even come close to as truly bad as this thing has gotten.

The worst awardee of all time, bar none, was Le Duc Tho, although Yasser Arafat was a close second. Check out the piece to see why. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

In recent years, a team of researchers has been gathering evidence of an extraterrestrial impact that occurred precisely as the Earth plunged into a cold snap. Now, other researchers have tried to reproduce a key piece of that evidence, and apparently failed. (John Timmer, Ars Technica)

Imagine a particle so small it would take a million of them to stretch across the period at the end of this sentence. Imagine such particles could help catch cancer cells floating in your bloodstream before they could metastasize to the liver, bones, brain or other organs. Or replace the insulin-making cells of your pancreas to cure diabetes. Or, conversely, attack the linings of your lungs with the lethality of asbestos. (Fred Tasker, Miami Herald)

Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies?

Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition.

On Thursday, Steven Chu, President Obama's energy secretary, told attendees at a solar power event on the National Mall that it's "wonderful" to see companies like Exelon, Apple and Pacific Gas & Electric leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber is a pro-capitalism, pro-free-enterprise association of businesses that has fought against climate treaties like Kyoto and legislation such as Waxman-Markey as futile efforts not founded in science that are economically damaging and recipes for global poverty.

"I think it's wonderful," Chu told reporters at the event. He said that companies that left the 3-million-member chamber objected to "foot-dragging" and "denials" and realize that efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases are "part of our economic future in the United States."

Chu divides the business community into climate-change "deniers" and those who have converted to what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion." He hopes to conquer opponents who realize that those who follow the road to the climate conference this December have no economic future.

Said chamber President Tom Donohue at a press conference: "It is pretty clear," said chamber President Tom Donohue, ". . . that a number of environmental groups are trying to apply some pressure on chamber companies to apply pressure on us to change our views" on climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives. (IBD)

CONVENTIONAL wisdom suggests that the prospect of Congress passing a comprehensive climate change bill soon is rapidly approaching zero. The divisions in our country on how to deal with climate change are deep. Many Democrats insist on tough new standards for curtailing the carbon emissions that cause global warming. Many Republicans remain concerned about the cost to Americans relative to the environmental benefit and are adamant about breaking our addiction to foreign sources of oil.

However, we refuse to accept the argument that the United States cannot lead the world in addressing global climate change. We are also convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.

Our partnership represents a fresh attempt to find consensus that adheres to our core principles and leads to both a climate change solution and energy independence. It begins now, not months from now — with a road to 60 votes in the Senate. (NYT)

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders criticized the Kerry-Boxer draft "cap and trade" climate change bill in the US Senate, calling it dangerously inadequate as evidence mounts that global warming is advancing more rapidly than scientists believed a few years ago.

"While Democrats are calling the Kerry-Boxer bill ambitious and far-reaching, the proposed legislation doesn't come close to what we need to do now to halt the destruction of our future," said Wes Rolley, co-chair of the Green Party's EcoAction Committee. "When President Obama goes to the UN Climate Change Summit, he needs to show up with real solutions to cut CO2 emissions and lower energy consumption, not with an armful of Kerry-Boxer retreats and compromises." (Green Party)

For a global gathering ostensibly designed to harness international ingenuity to arrest global warming, the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference at least has a fitting name. The website advertising UNCC seems to fit the bill, too, with the requisite photos of spewing smokestacks, parched landscapes and natural disasters juxtaposed with wind turbines and adorable penguins.

All the more odd, then, that the draft treaty being proposed for the December meeting devotes roughly as much of its text to new foreign aid programs as it does to a plan to reduce greenhouse gases.

The Kyoto Protocol — which expires in 2012, and which Copenhagen is intended to replace — was in some corners accused of being a covert wealth transfer plot, since it required rich nations, unable to reach difficult targets, to buy carbon indulgences from poorer ones: “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations,” was Stephen Harper’s assessment, long before he became Prime Minister.

With Copenhagen, however, there is no hidden agenda: its authors say that transferring wealth is exactly what they aim to do. Though its draft form is a menu of optional language and policies intended to be narrowed in the lead-up to the conference, and at the conference itself, the spirit of the document is unmistakable. It proposes in plain language an arrangement that will see nations like Canada guarantee to send billions of dollars every year for decades to the developing world as payment of a “climate debt” owed for our long history of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There is, of course, some talk of emission reduction targets, maximum CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, limiting global temperature increases, and plans to adapt to inevitable climate shifts, with most of the details remaining to be hammered out. But as much as anything else, the Copenhagen treaty calls for the payment by rich countries of what can probably best described as climate reparations. (Financial Post)

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize partly for dealing with climate change. It wasn’t deserved for that or any other reason. In his public reaction he cited the same climate misinformation used in his September 22 UN speech.

Worse, the misinformation was part of the claim humans are causing climate change, which is among the biggest falsities in history.

A small group of scientists mostly associated with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia have consciously withheld data and methods to place global progress, development, economies and peoples lives in jeopardy. Lord Moncton calls it a global fraud. It is that, but much more and raises the question about accountability. (Tim Ball, CFP)

A day after the European Union (EU) sought to join the US to scupper the paradigm for emission control defined under the Kyoto Protocol, India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh became probably the first politician to signal that a deal in December at Copenhagen was unlikely and that it would require another meeting “next summer”.

It is significant because there are a little over 50 days left before world leaders convene in Copenhagen on 7 December to work out a new climate change deal by 18 December. And there is one more meeting of negotiators due in Barcelona before that. The EU statement that has posed a setback to the climate change negotiations was made at the penultimate meeting of negotiators in Bangkok on Friday.

The Indian environment minister did not mince words when he said that the “negotiations have broken down” and that the reversal had “cast a long shadow” on climate change talks. For further measure, he added that a deal was not possible “if the basic architecture of (the) Kyoto (Protocol) was not preserved”. Ramesh was delivering the keynote address on Saturday at the conference, From Kyoto to Copenhagen, hosted by Project Syndicate in Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement, which the US has not signed, that aims to limit emissions of greenhouse gases to prevent global warming and climate change. (Livemint)

Accusations of cherry-picking—that is, carefully choosing data to support a particular point—are constantly being hurled around by all sides of the climate change debate. Most recently, accusations of cherry-picking have been levied at analyses describing the recent behavior of global average temperature. Primarily, because claims about what the temperature record says run the gamut from accelerating warming to rapid cooling and everything in between—depending on who you ask and what point they are trying to make.

I am often asked as to what is the “right” answer is. What I can say for certain, is that the recent behavior of global temperatures demonstrates that global warming is occurring at a much slower rate than that projected by the ensemble of climate models, and that global warming is most definitely not accelerating. (Chip Knappenberger, Master Resource)

DID you spot James Cameron's mistake in Titanic? Leo DiCaprio is about to drown in the north Atlantic ocean, yet the constellations of the southern hemisphere are aglow in the sky above.

Who cares? Scientists, apparently. The mistake "ruined" the movie for Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, Randy Olson says.

It's the kind of reaction that gets scientists a bad rap, and Olson - himself a scientist and film-maker - suggests it pays to skip the pedantry and concentrate on the bigger picture. While small factual errors can be irksome, they are not life-threatening, he says - especially when the scientist is in control. If you want to get a message across to the public, don't obsess about facts.

Just look at Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Olson says. The film contained more than a few factual errors, but it also had a profound influence on the world's attitude to climate change.

Perhaps compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil. If you want people to know and care about your science, take a leaf out of Hollywood's book: focus on telling great stories; gloss over the inconvenient truths. (New Scientist) [em added]

As the world focused on President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a small group of determined scientists gathered in a Senate office building to present evidence backing their claim that climate change is caused not by man but by nature, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the hope for a greener planet.

John Kwapisz, organizer and moderator at the panel discussion, recalled Obama’s speech at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pa., last month as a way of illustrating the dramatic tone used by those who embrace global warming as a dire and eminent threat. (CNSNews.com)

Great Britain has been the world's biggest booster of man-made climate change since the 1980s, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided climate change would be a convenient club with which to beat back the coal unions while promoting nuclear power. Her Labour Party successors, Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown, have pursued climate change policies with even greater zeal: It was the Treasury Department under Labour that produced the Stern Review, the first official analysis to predict economic Armageddon from climate change.

No country, in fact, has more earnestly turned climate change dreams into deliverables: Climate change taxes have been proudly imbedded in energy rates, climate change education has permeated the British school system, climate change theories have been presented as undeniable truths by the British media.
But now, the country is for turning. Polls show that the public no longer buys the decades of unrelenting warnings of catastrophe, both official and unofficial, that it has grown up with. According to a surprising survey released Friday by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, most Britons do not fear harm from climate change.

Why would the UK government release data showing the ineffectiveness of its climate change policies? The answer comes from Joan Ruddock, the Energy and Climate Change Minister: "The survey results show that people don't realize that climate change is already under way and could have severe consequences," she explained, in justifying an aggressive new climate change campaign designed to turn public opinion around in the lead up to the Copenhagen climate change meetings in December. (Financial Post)

The ACT ON CO2 campaign launches its Bedtime Stories TV advert on 9 October 2009 at 20.45 on ITV1.

Running on television, press, outdoor posters, cinema and online the campaign is designed to raise awareness of climate change, convey the imminence and the need for urgent action. We encourage you to search online for Act On CO2 or visit http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk to find out what you can do.

Problem: what to do when the public won’t buy your nutty scares, wild claims and dodgy science?

A visiting Australian authoritarian and deep-green worshipper of the alarmist faith has advice that’s surprisingly unethical, given his job:

The British Government agrees, and with its plans for huge new green taxes in danger decides besides to launch a new scare campaign that targets the most vulnerable of all its citizens - the children,:and their protective parents.

What consequences they are, too, drawn not from science but propaganda textbooks:

Have these people lost their minds? The real danger is clearly not global warming but an unprincipled, over-mighty government with totalitarian instincts of the kind Hamilton shares:

The wrong answer to climate change - It would be wiser, and cheaper, to adapt to climate change rather than to slash CO2 emissions by 70 per cent.

A report from Britain’s main climate change research institution, the Tyndall Centre, published at the end of last month, argued that the UK government’s current target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 was inadequate. The report’s authors asserted that a cut of 70 per cent in emissions is required, something that can only be achieved, they claim, by shrinking the size of the UK economy in a ‘planned recession’. (Gordon Hughes, sp!ked)

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? (BBC News)

I think the BBC wanted to slip this one out quietly, but a Matt Drudge link put paid to that. The climate change correspondent of BBC News has admitted that global warming stopped in 1998 – and he reports that leading scientists believe that the earth’s cooling-off may last for decades.

“Whatever happened to global warming?” is the title of an article by Paul Hudson that represents a clear departure from the BBC’s fanatical espousal of climate change orthodoxy. The climate change campaigners will go nuts, particularly in the run-up to Copenhagen. So, I suspect, will devout believers inside the BBC. Hudson’s story was not placed very prominently by his colleagues – but a link right at the top of Drudge will have delivered at least a million page views, possibly many more.

Hudson’s piece is a U-turn – not because he has joined the ranks of sceptics who reject the theory of man-made global warming, but because at last he has written a story about the well-established fact that the earth’s temperature has not risen since 1998, and reports seriously the theories of climatologists (themselves not sceptics) who believe that we are in for 30 years of cooling caused by the falling temperatures of the oceans. (Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph)

Sceptics welcome BBC report on 'global cooling' - Climate change sceptics have welcomed a “surprise” BBC decision to give prominence to evidence from leading scientists that there could be 30 years of “global cooling”.

Under the headline `Whatever happened to Global Warming?’, the BBC has reported that the warmest year recorded globally was 1998, and for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed.

The report by the BBC climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, which provoked a strong debate on the Corporation’s website, quotes a climatologist as saying there could be 30 years of cooling due to the falling temperatures of the oceans. (Richard Savill, Daily Telegraph)

The BBC’s change of mind over global warming has upset the journal Nature, whose blog accuses the Beeb of lending credibility to sceptics by admitting that the planet stopped heating up in 1998 and taking seriously the arguments of scientists who believe that cooling will continue for 30 years.

As I reported yesterday, Paul Hudson, BBC News climate change correspondent, published an article entitled “Whatever happened to global warming?” at the end of last week. Hudson hasn’t joined the ranks of sceptics or deniers, but he does say that the planet stopped warming before the turn of the millennium, and reports that some climatologists believe that this is linked to an ocean cooling cycle that will last for decades.

Heresy! Nature’s blog “The Great Beyond” is very cross, accusing Hudson of being “slightly disingenuous” in claiming that the debate over global warming is “hotting up”. But the debate is gathering pace, even if its terms keep shifting as new data become available. So what exactly has Hudson done wrong? (Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph)

COPENHAGEN - Billionaire George Soros said on Saturday that he would invest $1 billion in clean energy technology as part of an effort to combat climate change.

The Hungarian-born U.S. investor also announced he would form and fund a new climate policy initiative with $10 million a year for 10 years.

"Global warming is a political problem," Soros told a meeting of editors in the Danish capital where governments are scheduled to meet in December to try to hammer out a new global climate agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

"The science is clear, what is less clear is whether world leaders will demonstrate the political will necessary to solve the problem," he said, according to a brief email statement. (Reuters)

This is getting quite tiresome, and as time goes on severely diminishes the man involved who says far more about himself with his snide routine than those he broadly and specifically seeks to smear. So let’s get this straight: There is an opinion of the U.K. High Court which thoroughly trashes Al Gore’s movie for “educational” purposes, finding that not one of the eleven money claims from the movie on which it sought evidence could be supported. Gore and his spokesman have ritually held that the Court “affirmed thousands of other statements in the movie” (really? name one), that the court “supported” or “found in favor of” the movie, and so on. (Chris Horner, Planet Gore) | Listen to exchange

Those who were at Al Gore's keynote address to SEJ's 19th annual conference Friday witnessed the brief "town hall" moment during the Q&A, when a questioner sparred with Gore over whether he would acknowledge alleged errors in his Oscar-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

The questioner challenged Gore's characterization of polar bears as endangered and asserted the bears' numbers were on the rise. Gore and the questioner jawed back and forth briefly; then the questioner was asked to yield the microphone to other questioners and sit down.

He refused, clinging to the mic, until the sound was cut off. (SEJ)

It’s an unfortunate truth that “environmental journalism” is an oxymoron. In most cases, the “environment reporter” of a newspaper or television station becomes a cheerleader, an activist, a partisan.

Example: the host of an environmental current affairs show once told me he’d interviewed a global warming activist who wanted us all to cut emissions by riding bikes. The reporter turned up for the interview to find the activist was badly bruised and unable to walk - he’d taken his own advice, only to be cleaned up by a car. But the reporter refused to show the activist suffering the consequences of his impractical advice, and positioned the man so the camera couldn’t see bruises, crutches or mangled bike. What could have been a hilarious, honest and informative piece became just the usual PR stodge. Cause advanced, but viewers betrayed.

Another example is the one we reported yesterday, and which has Mark Tapscott wondering what journalistic values the Society of Environmental Journalists actually stands for:

Global warming hooey - Worries about climate are being manufactured by the international left

It's truly extraordinary how every left-of-centre journalist in the country has managed to become an instant expert on the arcane subjects of global warming and the science of climate change.

Imagine, for example, if some average Canadian hack who had never studied the Middle East suddenly announced that he was an authority on Israel-Palestine, knew which side was right and knew how to solve all of the associated problems.

This, however, is what we are told every day when it comes to the fashion of sounding green. The more sympathy we can exhibit for Al Gore's polar bear or David Suzuki's whining, the more trendy and acceptable we become.

There are, however, an increasing number of peer-reviewed and intensely credible scientific minds who believe conventional thinking on global warming is nonsense. (Michael Coren, Winnipeg Sun)

Predictions are opinions. But scientific predictions are notably different. Based on extrapolations from existing evidence, they are much more reliable than mere guesses. Consequently, vague glimpses into the future of global climate change are becoming more credible as computer processing gets more powerful, as climate models increase in sophistication, as worldwide data amasses, and as precedent from Earth's early history accumulates. This is why the article, "Surviving a Warmer World", in the New Scientist (Feb. 28/09) is particularly startling. (Ray Grigg, Courier-Islander)

For the first time, climate scientists from across the country have successfully incorporated the nitrogen cycle into global simulations for climate change, questioning previous assumptions regarding carbon feedback and potentially helping to refine model forecasts about global warming.

The results of the experiment at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research are published in the current issue of Biogeosciences. They illustrate the complexity of climate modeling by demonstrating how natural processes still have a strong effect on the carbon cycle and climate simulations. In this case, scientists found that the rate of climate change over the next century could be higher than previously anticipated when the requirement of plant nutrients are included in the climate model. (PhysOrg)

In this recent post, we discussed the problems with recent data that showed the argument presented by the EDF’s millionaire lawyer playing clueless environmentalist on Lou Dobbs Tonight that this will be the warmest decade is nonsense. This claim was well refuted and Al Gore’s credibility disassembled by Phelim McAleer, of the new documentary Not Evil, Just Wrong that challenges the lies and exaggerations (totalling 35) in Al Gore scifi horror comedy film, An Inconvenient Truth. 9 were serious enough for a UK judge to require a disclaimer itemizing them be read whenever, the movie was shown in the schools.

The world’s climate data has become increasingly sparse with a big dropoff around 1990. There was also a tenfold increase in missing months around the same time. Stations (90% in the United States which has the Cadillac data system) are poor to very poorly sited and not properly adjusted for urbanization. Numerous peer review papers suggest an exagerration of the warming by 30%, 50% or even more. The station dropout canm be clearly seen in the two maps below with the number of station going from over 6000 to just 1079 from April 1978 to April 2008. (Joseph D’Aleo, Icecap)

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 9 - The prospect of a four-degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures in 50 years is alarming - but not alarmist, climate scientists now believe.

Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable.

"Two degrees C is already gone as a target," said Chris West of the University of Oxford's UK Climate Impacts Programme.

"Four degrees C is definitely possible...This is the biggest challenge in our history," West told participants at the "4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference" at the University of Oxford last week.

A four-degree C overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees warmer in some places, 12 degrees and more in others, making them uninhabitable.

It is a world with a one- to two-metre sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 metres in the coming centuries as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets melt, according to papers presented at the conference in Oxford.

Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060 to 2070. (Stephen Leahy, IPS)

At the risk of stating the obvious, weather is not the same thing as global warming, but it is certainly affected by it. Right now the weather is so wacky where I live that it’s hard to believe. We have an inch of snow on the ground here in Minnesota as of October 11th. Forget the stereotype of Minnesota — it’s very unusual for it to be this cold here this early. Much of the weather around the world right now is abnormally wet and stormy. This may or may not be part of climate change, but it’s amazing to see snow on the ground here with green grass and green trees. Monday’s forecast here in the upper Midwest is an official “winter storm warning” with up to 3″ of snow predicted! In this type of cooler than normal weather, it’s hard to convince people of “global warming” if they are already skeptical. But weather is just weather, and it’s local. Regional and local weather should not be confused with global warming. In parts of the world it’s much hotter than normal. Global warming is based on the average world near-surface air temperature, not the temperature in your neighborhood. The Arctic especially has seen a lot of warming in recent years. Just keep that in mind when people complain about cold weather where they happen to live. (Futurism Now)

Global warming is helping America's sworn enemies al Qaeda as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So claimed ABCNews.com's "World News Webcast" Friday in a segment not only designed to increase America's fear of Al Gore's money-making bogeyman, but also give cover to President Obama as things in Afghanistan continue to spiral out of control.

Talk about your amazingly convenient, two-fisted, win-win situations. (NewsBusters)

This Hans-Joachim (a.k.a. John) Schellnhuber is a very interesting fellow indeed. Among many other items of surprising interest, breadth and depth (including publications in the 80s on solutions to Schrodinger's equation), here's an especially accessible one by Schellnhuber as third author, along with Matthias K. B. Ludeke and Gerhard Petschel-Held entitled "Syndromes of Global Change: The First Panoramic View". It's first a taxonomy of types of unsustainability and secondly a map of the distribution of the various patterns.

It turns out that many areas have more than one form of unsustainability, sometimes mutually reinforcing and sometimes competing. And almost everywhere there is some form of unsustainable activity.

Apparently the German Advisory Council on Global Change has come up with a taxonomy of 16 "syndromes" of global change: (Michael Tobis, Energy Collective)

Britain's ambitious policies to cut carbon dioxide in the fight against global warming are still not enough, the official climate change watchdog warns today in its first annual report.

Even though the Government has created a detailed plan for transition to a low-carbon economy, a "step change" is still needed in the pace of reducing carbon emissions, and in fact the rate should be more than doubled, says the Climate Change Committee.

This will have to involve everything from a comprehensive national home insulation strategy to creating a fleet of 1.7 million electric cars with the infrastructure to support them – otherwise, says the committee, on current rates of progress, the "carbon budgets" to which the Government has committed itself are unlikely to be met. (The Independent)

Motorists should be forced to pay to drive on the busiest roads to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the Government's climate change watchdog says today.

The Climate Change Committee, led by former CBI chief Lord Turner, wants ministers to introduce compulsory road pricing to prevent global warming.

Under the controversial scheme, cars would be fitted with electronic tags and tracked either by satellite or roadside beacon. Charges would rise at times of peak congestion to around £1.50 a mile. (Daily Mail)

UK government group believes punishing drivers with new taxes will stop global warming. (The Newspaper)

AUSTRALIANS are becoming less concerned about the threat of global warming, pushing environmental issues down the list of threats.

Climate change is no longer rated the top foreign policy issue for the Federal Government, a Lowy Institute poll will reveal today.

It was top of the list in 2007 but now is ranked seventh out of 10 policy priorities. Out of 12 possible threats, Australians rated global warming the fourth most critical, the survey found.

However a significant majority of Australians, 76 per cent, still saw climate change as a problem. (Daily Telegraph)

The federal government has brushed off a new poll showing Australians are becoming less concerned about climate change as a foreign policy issue.

The government is demanding the Senate pass its emissions trading scheme so that Australia can influence the outcome of UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

Climate change, though, has slipped to seventh from second in importance, within two years, on a list of Australia's Top 10 foreign policy goals that will be released by the Lowy Institute of International Policy on Tuesday.

"Our policy is not determined by polls," Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio, adding the government would act in the national interest.

"Polls are going to come and go on this issue as on any other issue."

The survey puts economic issues as the prime foreign policy issue.

The opposition says the government will be "slightly shocked" by the survey results on climate change. (AAP)

Does the Rudd Government actually want to bring in its colossal tax on emissions - and jobs?

Why was this information not freely released to the public? Surely we deserve to know what Rudd’s tax will actually do?

Next, let’s see the Government’s best modelling on how much Rudd’s tax will lower world temperatures. My guess: zero.

That’s meant to reassure? Small problem, of course: if power prices go up by “only” 25 per cent, they’ll barely cut our emissions - which is the whole point of this useless sacrifice.

Remember when Family First Senator Steve Fielding finally forced Climate Change Minister Penny Wong to try explain why she still believed in man-made global warming when the planet’s atmostphere had in fact cooled for the past eight years? First the first time Wong and her chief advisers argued that the temperatures of the land surface and troposphere weren’t the true measure, after all:

So Wong will of course be revising her faith in man-made global warming now that she’s got the latest data on ocean heat content, suggesting cooling may now be occurring there, too:

So last year’s great snows were of course just an anomaly - a rare bucking of the apocalyptic warming trend:

As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming?

Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year.

It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to the computer models. The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic last week and reported a substantial expansion of "second-year ice" — ice thick enough to have persisted through two summers of seasonal melting.

According to the NSIDC, second-year ice this summer made up 32% of the total ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, compared with 21% in 2007 and 9% in 2008. Clearly, Arctic sea ice is not following the consensus touted by Gore and the warm-mongers.

This news coincides with a finding published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month by Marco Tedesco, a research scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology. He reported that ice melt on Antarctica was the lowest in three decades during the ice-melt season. (IBD)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that Malcolm Turnbull was wrong to negotiate on the Ration-N-Tax Scheme and the opposition should reject it.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the backbench were right in rejecting Penny Wong’s flawed legislation – they are reflecting the interests of the real Australia outside the urban greens and the Big Business Councils.

“Even if a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing and real leaders will explain that clearly.”

He explains:

“Malcolm Turnbull says that business wants the “certainty” of the Ration-N-Tax Scheme. There can be no certainty on the amount of damage a Ration-N-Tax Scheme will do to jobs and industry. The only certainty is that it will not affect the climate. The only way to get a “certain” outcome is to reject this bill entirely.

“Those calling for “certainty” are mainly the voices of vested interests.

“For example, the “Carbon Market Expo” to be held soon on the Gold Coast boasts that ‘more than 70 businesses will have exhibits’. They include carbon bankers, brokers, accountants, auditors, asset managers, investment managers, consultants, controllers, certifiers, verifiers and registries; emissions trading, carbon offsets and carbon rewards groups; forest service and green fleet firms; recruitment, R&D and PR advisers; infrastructure and engineering contractors; University academics and of course all the well travelled bureaucrats from the federal, state and local “climate smart” departments.

“Similar lobbies service the alternative energy and carbon sequestration “businesses”.

“Despite their totally mercenary aims, these people paint visions of “Carbonia”. This is a mystic land where only green carbon is permitted to exist, where nymphs and gnomes skip through sylvan forests of indigenous vegetation, where gentle breezes and warm showers are never disturbed by snow storms or heat waves, where floods, droughts and bushfires are unknown, and where a planned economic depression has ensured there are no nasty farms, factories, mines or motor engines.

“None of these green “businesses” could exist without taxes on real industries using carbon fuels - food, travel, electricity, steel, cement, chemicals and manufactured goods. Increased costs for consumers of these essentials are certain. Is this the “certainty” the Liberals are promoting?

“Let’s turn a spotlight onto the puppets in Parliament.

“The Labor Party dances to the fiddles and flutes of the green fairies, and their expected pay-off is election preference deals. The Liberals dance to the big bass drums of business who seek “exemptions”.

“Who cares that farmers are leaving the land in droves, fishermen are leaving the sea and factories are migrating to China?

“Senator Wong’s Ration-N-Tax Scheme must be rejected.”

Viv Forbes
www.carbon-sense.com

In an extraordinary development, it’s now publicly known and beyond any doubt that most of our conservative’s in opposition do not want an ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) before Copenhagen.

But our opposition leader wants an ETS, and has put his job on the line to get it. The Government wants to start negotiations in a week, or else they will “dissolve parliament” (which is not quite as scary as it sounds).

It’s not obvious which way this will go. One state conservative branch has called the bluff, and The Nationals (the junior partners in conservative politics) have made it clear they will not vote for the ETS. The main conservative party in Australia is fracturing because intimidation and bullying has suppressed real opinions.

No one is debating the science. Instead, the government bullies the opposition with election threats, and the opposition leader responds by bullying the opposition too. This is not what democracy was supposed to be.

Has it finally become permissible to doubt? How fast the (intellectual) climate is changing. After all, it’s only a year since The Chaser toured a show that mocked me as the last remaining sceptic in Australia. (Andrew Bolt)

It is claimed by the IPCC that there are ‘fingerprints’ associated with global warming which can be tied to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, as if the signatures were somehow unique like real fingerprints.

But I have never been convinced that there is ANY fingerprint of anthropogenic warming. And the reason is that any sufficiently strong radiative warming influence – for instance, a small (even unmeasurable) decrease in cloud cover letting in slightly more sunlight starting back in the late 1970’s or 1980’s– would have had the same effect.

The intent of the following figure from Chapter 9 in the latest (AR4) version IPCC report is to convince the reader that greenhouse gas emissions have been tested against all other sources of warming, and that GHGs are the only agent that can cause substantial warming. (The snarky reference to “proof” is my addition.)

But all the figure demonstrates is that the warming influence of GHGs is stronger than that from a couple of other known external forcing mechanisms, specifically a very small increase in the sun’s output, and a change in ozone. It says absolutely nothing about the possibility that warming might have been simply part of a natural, internal fluctuation (cycle, if you wish) in the climate system.

For instance, the famous “hot spot” seen in the figure has become a hot topic in recent years since at least two satellite temperature datasets (including our UAH dataset), and most radiosonde data analyses suggest the tropical hotspot does not exist. Some have claimed that this somehow invalidates the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming.

But the hotspot is not a unique signature of manmade greenhouse gases. It simply reflects anomalous heating of the troposphere — no matter what its source. Anomalous heating gets spread throughout the depth of the troposphere by convection, and greater temperature rise in the upper troposphere than in the lower troposphere is because of latent heat release (rainfall formation) there.

For instance, a natural decrease in cloud cover would have had the same effect. It would lead to increased solar warming of the ocean, followed by warming and humidifying of the global atmosphere and an acceleration of the hydrologic cycle.

Thus, while possibly significant from the standpoint of indicating problems with feedbacks in climate models, the lack of a hotspot no more disproves manmade global warming than the existence of the hotspot would have proved manmade global warming. At most, it would be evidence that the warming influence of increasing GHGs in the models has been exaggerated, probably due to exaggerated positive feedback from water vapor.

The same is true of the supposed fingerprint of greater warming over land than over the ocean, of which there is some observational evidence. But this would also be caused by a slight decrease in cloud cover…even if that decrease only occurred over the ocean (Compo, G.P., and P. D. Sardeshmukh, 2009).

What you find in the AR4 report is artfully constructed prose about how patterns of warming are “consistent with” that expected from manmade greenhouse gases. But “consistent with” is not “proof of”.

The AR4 authors are careful to refer to “natural external factors” that have been ruled out as potential causes, like those seen in the above figure. I can only assume this is was deliberate attempt to cover themselves just in case most warming eventually gets traced to natural internal changes in the climate system, rather than to that exceedingly scarce atmospheric constituent that is necessary for life of Earth – carbon dioxide. (Roy W. Spencer)

Is 2 US$ Billion Dollars Worth Spending On Improved Multi-Decadal Global Model Predictions?

I have posted on (i) a naive understanding of the difficulty of predicting the Earth’s climate decades from now (e.g. see), and (ii) serious deficiencies in the IPCC models that are presenting their results to policymakers (e.g. see).

Today, I post on a financially wasteful and scientifically flawed argument that there is an “urgent need” to improve multi-decadal climate models and predictions. The article is

An investment over the next 10 years of the order of US$2 billion for developing improved climate models was recommended in a report (http:// wcrp .wmo .int/ documents/ WCRP _ WorldModellingSummit _ Jan2009 .pdf) from the May 2008 World Modelling Summit for Climate Prediction,
held in Reading, United Kingdom, and presented by the World Climate Research Programme. The report indicated that “climate models will, as in the past, play an important, and perhaps central, role in guiding the trillion dollar decisions that the peoples, governments and industries of the world will be making to cope with the consequences of changing climate.”

……..Climate science already supports prediction- based decisions. What if, however, the biases or incompletely represented processes in the current generation of models give a false sense of the most likely outcome, or fail to capture very possible extremes? Many decisions are related to and
prompted by thresholds, and costs to adapt to anticipated future mean climate changes or to react to unanticipated impacts may not be linearly related to the climate. What is most needed, then, is for decision makers to learn how to treat information about future climate as a range of possibilities.

…estimates based on dynamical models that can capture details of the climate system that hold clear societal importance—such as precipitation
extremes, rates of sea level rise, hurricanes, and coastal processes—will better guide effective climate risk management and, incrementally, adaptation efforts.

While I support the need to improve our understanding of the climate system, including the role of humans in altering it, the approach urged in this EOS Forum article is overselling both our ability to obtain skillful probablistic climate forecasts for the coming decades, as well as why the policymakers even need further information from the models than what they already have provided. Policymakers recognize, correctly, based on the IPCC model simulations, that humans are adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and that these are significant positive radiative forcings. Policymakers accept, incorrectly, however, that the multi-decadal climate models can provide skillful predictions of even the changes in the long term global accumulation of heat (in Joules; e.g. see), much less regional predictive skill on this time scale.

The policymakers would be providing a real contribution, therefore, if they reconsidered their focus and diverted it away from a reliance on the IPCC models. For example, society should prepare for drought regardless if the IPCC models claim their frequency in a given location will increase. We already know that droughts such as in the 16th century in the western United States exceed what the IPCC models “predict” for the coming decades (e.g. see).

The US$2 billion dollars could be much more beneficially spent on the reduction in societal and environmental vulnerabilities the important resources of water, food, energy, health and ecosystem function. As I wrote in a post on September 21 2009

Lets spend the 2 billion dollars on this approach rather than waste it on a narrow focus using the multi-decadal global modeling predictions. (Climate Science)

There is a very informative presentation regarding IPCC model skill in a powerpoint presentation by Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University. He is lead scientists on the NASA CloudSat Mission and has new data from this study with which to compare with the ability (actually lack thereof) to accurately simulate the climate system [thanks to Marcel Crok for altering us to this important new information!].

“Disclaimer – while the validity of some of the findings of the IPCC must be seriously questioned on strict scientific grounds, I do think they represent the most reasonable expectation given our qualitative state of understanding of the moist processes of the climate system.”

Despite the caveats he wrote in the disclaimer, his serious questions include the following (with further details in the slides)

“Analysis of climate models together with constraints from observations enables an assessed likely range to be given for climate sensitivity for the first time ……….. It is likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C (IPCC, 2007).”

The climate sensitivity is curiously inversely correlated with aerosol (direct and indirect) forcing (Kiehl, 2007). That is the climate
sensitivity is conditioned to fall in a given ‘comfort’ range. Clearly, better quantification of direct and indirect forcing will provide an important constraint on model projections.

Model low, warm cloud optical and radiative properties are significantly different (biased) compared to those observed – two factors contribute to this extreme (bright) bias ‐ the LWP [liquid water path] is one, particle size is another.

1. Aerosol and aerosol‐cloud effects are a huge lever ‘constraining’ the climate sensitivity to a ‘range of comfort’.

2. Observational inferences on indirect radiative forcing do not support the large values of forcings being applied in models. I would recommend model assessments be done with/without IRF [indirect radiative forcing]

3. Models contain grave biases in low cloud radiative properties that bring into question the fidelity of feedbacks in models.

4. The presence of drizzle in low clouds is ubiquitous and significant enough to influence the radiative properties of these clouds and must play some role in any feedbacks.

Models produce rain 2‐4 times too frequently regardless of resolution…..…. and 2‐3 6mes too light.

While it is expected that ‘ heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent’, our predictive tools (either climate or NWP models) contain major biases that are symptomatic of unrealistic rain physics.

While I believe the changes that are likely to occur are primarily driven by changes in the large scale atmospheric flows, we have to conclude our models have little or no ability to make credible projections about the changing character of rain and cannot conclusively test this hypothesis.

This model bias isn’t merely solved by higher resolution of models – to the contrary, there are fundamental flaws in the way rain is triggered in models on all scales. The consequence to other aspects of the Earth system model is profound.

This presentation by Greame Stephens highlights the inability of the IPCC models to make skillful predictions of climate decades into the future on the global scale, much less the regional spatial scales.

Regional assessments based on the IPCC model results in such reports as the CCSP series (as well as the set of talks moderated by Tom Karl, Director of the National Climate Data Center and current President of the American Meteorological Society (e.g. see) are flawed, scientifically unsupported reports and are misleading policymakers. (Climate Science)

Despite recent attempts to revive the discredited “hockey stick” temperature graph, invented by Michael Mann and promulgated by the IPCC, new research on tropical glaciers has once again shown that supposed temperature history to be bogus. While the role of the tropics in climate change remains an open debate in climatology circles, new data suggests linkages between the tropics and the North Atlantic region. In particular, prominent glacial events and associated climatic shifts in the outer tropics during the early Holocene and late in the “Little Ice Age” period indicate that the LIA was indeed a global event.

Tropical mountain glaciers are highly sensitive to relatively small climate changes, which makes them particularly useful as indicators of past climatic fluctuations. This is one of the reasons that climate alarmists make such a big deal out of the rapid retreat of existing mountain glaciers. Because past variations for these glaciers have not occurred at precisely the same times as the historical fluctuations in Europe those fluctuations have been depreciated by some. Well documented climate events such as the Holocene Climate Maximum and the Little Ice Age have been dismissed as being local variations and not representative of Earth's climate as a whole.

Peru possesses 71% of present-day tropical glaciers, the greatest concentration in the world. In the September 25, 2009, edition of Science Joseph M. Licciardi, Joerg M. Schaefer, Jean R. Taggart, and David C. Lund have presented a new, in-depth study of moraine ages from the Cordillera Vilcabamba (13°20'S) of southern Peru that date prominent glacial events and associated climatic shifts in the outer tropics.

Glacial and climatic conditions of the LIA are most thoroughly documented in northern and western Europe by extensive historical accounts, instrumental data, and proxy climate indicators. This report, entitled “Holocene Glacier Fluctuations in the Peruvian Andes Indicate Northern Climate Linkages,” provides a new glacial chronology that reinforces the notion of the Little Ice Age and other well documented Northern Hemisphere climate fluctuations were global in scope. As stated in the report:

The dating was done by examining stones taken from glacial moraines, large ridges of rock debris plowed up by advancing glaciers. Moraines are left behind when a glacier retreats during periods of warmer climate, thus marking the time of its maximum extent. The site of this investigation was located in the vicinity of Nevado Salcantay (6271 m above sea level; 13°20'S, 72°33'W), the highest peak in the Cordillera Vilcabamba. Glacial troughs emanating from Salcantay and other nearby peaks have exceptionally well-preserved moraines with many large surface boulders. The accumulation of cosmogenic nuclides in minerals at or near Earth's surface provides a basis for a number of geologic measurements, in particular surface exposure dating of landforms, which was used for this study.

Cosmogenic nuclides are isotopes formed by the interaction of “target” atoms with cosmic radiation. One such nuclide is the rare chemical isotope ¹⁰Be, pronounced “Beryllium ten.” The granite surface boulders were exposed to cosmic rays starting when the glaciers that deposited them retreated. By measuring the buildup of ¹⁰Be in glacial rocks, scientists can calculate when the glaciers receded. Samples were collected from 25 boulders from the moraine crests and then dated by testing the amount of ¹⁰Be present. Only the tallest boulders were used as samples to reduce the likelihood of soil and snow cover. Using this cutting edge dating technique has yielded the most accurate timing for Peruvian glacial events to date.

The resulting evidence indicates that climate swings in the northern hemisphere over the past 12,000 years have been tightly linked to changes in the tropics. Significantly, glaciers in both the tropics and North Atlantic region reached their most recent maximum extents during the so-called Little Ice Age, about 1650 AD to 1850 AD. “The results bring us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age,” said lead author Joe Licciardi, a glacial geologist at the University of New Hampshire.

While the LIA maximum occurred across Europe within the past 500 years, records show asynchronous maxima in Scandinavia (~1750AD) and the Swiss Alps (~1860AD). That temperature variations did not even take place uniformly across Europe during times of change shows the simultaneous event argument to be meaningless. Indeed, this report correlates data from a number of different studies to provide a clear image of the LIA period at several different locations around the world.

As can be seen from the figure, climate change from Norway to New Zealand and from the Dry Tortugas to Peru all indicate that the Little Ice Age was not a localized anomaly but a world wide event. But then, this is only the most recent study to affirm this fact. In a 1986 paper, entitiled “The Little Ice Age as Recorded in the Stratigraphy of the Tropical Quelccaya Ice Cap,” L. G. Thompson et al., after analyzing more than 1000 years of ice core data from another tropical glacier, reported similar results. In fact, this study provided the data in sections E and F of the figure above. The authors of this study, performed two decades earlier, concluded: “The fact that the Little Ice Age (about A.D. 1500 to 1900) stands out as a significant climatic event in the oxygen isotope and electrical conductivity records confirms the worldwide character of this event.”

So why do climate alarmists continue to resurrect the infamous hockey stick, which implies that the LIA did not happen on a world wide basis? The story of Michael Mann's hockey stick climate reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. The work of Steve McIntyre in debunking the original graph is also widely known. What is less well known is that there have been several recent attempts to re-establish this bit of statistical flimflam as scientifically valid.

Recently, Steve McIntyre, writing on his Climate Audit blog, reported the discovery of a Wikipedia “hockey Stick” graphic by “Hanno” being used in an official UNEP document. The UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, on page 5, used the graph from Wikipedia as shown above. Evidently the offending graph was expunged from the document and a new version quickly published (see “United Nations Pulls Hockey Stick from Climate Report”). This incident underscores how horribly slipshod the “science” behind the IPCC/UNEP reports truly is. If an undergraduate student dared to use a Wikipedia graph in a paper they would find themselves in deep trouble, yet these UN agencies, and a number of journals that keep publishing papers supporting this sort of tripe, blithely continue to palm scientific trash off on an unsuspecting public.

For years, the IPCC and its supporters have been trying to rewrite Earth's climate history, at least the history of the Holocene. They do this to try and strengthen their claims that Earth's temperature is rising abnormally and that the rise is due to human CO₂ emissions. People who are aware of what has happened to Earth's climate since the end of the last glacial period, ~12,000 years ago, understand that the slight warming trend of the last century (now reduced to only 0.7°C even by global warming cheerleaders) is well within normal variation. There is no crisis, no imminent catastrophe, just the climate changing as it always does.

Licciardi et al. have reinforced what had already been reported by many others—the Little Ice Age and all of the other well documented warm and cold periods that have occurred during the Holocene were real and global in nature. The revived attempts to rewrite Earth's climate history have been shown to be fraudulent and anthropogenic global warming has once again proven to be a theory built on bad data and statistical quicksand.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

My AIG article demonstrating reconstruction of a hockey stick with red noise, neatly illustrated the possibility of circular reasoning in screening trees by their response to temperature. Around 20% of random series (or 40% if you count the inverted ones) correlate significantly with the temperature instrument record of the last 150 years, and when averaged back beyond the present create the straight handle of the stick.

Clearly, degree of selection affects confidence limits, and in order to estimate slectivity, you need good information on the relationship between the ’sample’ of trees used, and the ‘population’ of trees that the sample is drawn from. As far as I have seen, the selection of trees is largely ‘uncontrolled’, making this determination very difficult in the real world, unlike simulation studies where we can generate and sample controllably.

The lack of extensive archives of better controlled studies inhibits progress in this field, and one would presume that Osborne, Briffa, and other scientists concerned with the reliability of their results would be putting effort into addressing the questions that have been raised.

In another article related to this issue, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published in February 2009 a comment, and cited my AIG article, in a criticism of an article by Michael Mann. The response by Michael Mann acknowledged such screening was common, and used in their reconstructions.

The issue of the screening of trees (aka cherry-picking) has emerged again with the release of the Yamal dataset only after a long battle with journals to honour their data policies, (see Fresh Data on Briffa’s Yamal #1) and realisation that a small and possibly non-representative sample has had a big effect on many reconstructions (see YAD06 - the Most Influential Tree in the World and other related posts).

Ross McKitrick recounts the story of defects in research on temperature of the last millennia here editorialising:

I keep a record of my published progress in uncovering discredited AGW here. But like ‘whack-a-mole’ as soon as another speculative excess is uncovered, like the ‘its worse than we thought‘ excesses of Rahmstorf et al, another pops up in its place. While one could argue that there is virtue in being cautious, it takes time away from more productive activities.

Generally underdogs don’t get anywhere, but opportunity arises in times of confusion, when new ideas are not squashed. The reason people exaggerate the reliability of these studies, is because they fully believe they need the answer, and pretend climate scientists hold the key. Many scientists do what they can to maintain the pretence, even if what they want to do is impossible.

Its hard for scientific rigour to make a mark, while people are looking to climate scientists for easy answers. The links I have referenced here show Yamal and related issues are not easy, far from resolved, or even widely recognised. Steve’s ‘hard yards’ in getting the data released were hard won, but the game is far from over. (David Stockwell, Niche Modeling)

To some, the OHC represents a change in alarmist direction that became evident at as a result of due diligence activities of Senator Fielding and the Minister for the Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong. According to Penny Nova,

Surely there is robust statistical evidence and the Climate Minister is not trying to mislead when she states that:

I might start to gather information for a possible note along these lines, so if anyone can point me to a study justifying her claims of accelerating OHC I would appreciate it. My eye doesn’t see unusual rates on the graph at any scale. (David Stockwell, Niche Modeling)

Here’s an example of SciComm Pollution — an article that leaves the world slightly less enlightened than they would have been had it not existed. It’s also proof that the media blackout works so well that even theoretically educated people like, say, an archaeologist, are unaware of basic uncontroversial scientific truths. Here’s Michael Berry, in the Salt Lake Tribune, having trouble reasoning, missing the point, being fully a decade out of date, and acting unwittingly as a public relations agent for a giant bureaucracy.

Here, Berry gets it 100% wrong. Temperature is the forcing factor, and even the IPCC agrees. Senator Hatch is referring to the way carbon rises and falls after temperatures in ice core records. How Hatch can misinterpret two lines that clearly rise and fall with an obvious lag is a construct in selective blindness — surely Berry does not think that carbon controls temperature from 800 years in the future?

Little does Berry realize that the oceans store a vast 38,000 Gt of carbon, fifty times as much as the atmosphere, and that basic laws of solubility mean that when the oceans warm, they release carbon; when oceans cool, they absorb it back. Thus a temperature rise is causal, and it takes hundreds of years to fully unleash or absorb the carbon, probably because it also takes hundreds of years to turn over the deepest darkest corners of the deep blue sea.

If Berry had done ten minutes of research, he would have found out that the data from the Vostok Ice Cores repeatedly and definitively shows that carbon follows temperature, and doesn’t lead it, and that it’s been known for 10 years. It’s been analyzed many different ways, and all of them conclude that the lag is hundreds of years. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands. I’m guessing Berry just read one of the debunkings of the Skeptics Handbook, and hasn’t actually read the Handbook or my rebuttal. As usual, those who like to attack it don’t want to show you the graphs they attack, where it would be obvious that they speak global gibberish.

Berry implies there’s some model I use, but all I’ve done is graph the two lines from the original data. You don’t need tricky maths to figure out that temperature rises first. Naked eyes work just fine when the data is displayed in enough detail.

If the media had bothered reporting the news as it came out, from 1999-2003 — that temperature strongly drives carbon, and not the reverse — this non-controversial, well established, scientific point, would not catch people like Berry completely by surprise. Commentators would have some idea that the IPCC-spun-versions are not as robust as they appear. Instead the vast gap in news coverage can’t be repaired now, six years after the fact. As people find out what they weren’t told, there can be no hiding that the media has censored our news.

The IPCC broadcasts that there is “amplification”, but whether it’s important or significant is unsubstantiated speculation.

Even the IPCC admit that temperature drives carbon in the ice cores. They argue that once the carbon is unleashed, it provides feedback to amplify the temperature rise. At one stage alarmist scientists offered analysis to suggest there really was amplification, but closer examination showed they had a signal analysis error and had mistaken aliasing for an amplification signal. The same analysis, done properly, pretty much rules out any significant amplification.

In the ice cores, temperatures rises first and falls first. If there was strong amplification, Earth would have headed into a runaway boiling heat-ball millions of years ago.

Notice too, there’s the usual sloppy writing: the Handbook is apparently…”aimed at a right-wing audience” (as if that is something bad, and as if there is any way he could know who it’s aimed at, since he is not in my head, and I’ve never said anything like that). The Handbook is aimed at anyone who can read and doesn’t have a religious belief in the enhanced greenhouse effect — about 90% of the population.

Note to Berry: If you know of a single significant flaw or inaccuracy in the Skeptics Handbook, email me here and I’ll issue a correction publicly. The Handbook has been out for 12 months, it’s been read by at least one Professor of Climate Modelling (who would rather I didn’t publish his critiscm, presumably because it’s so inadequate). Desmog and Deltoid tried and failed to find any logical or factual errors, and neither will publish any of the graphs I use. Real Climate has pointedly remained silent. Do you suppose they would have let anyone get away with a mistake if they could find one?

I wish people would write more carefully. Every person that puts up information on the web that is unresearched, not thought through, or out of date, is just issuing more science communication pollution. A bit more mess for the few unpaid people like me to clean up. They pick poor sources to read, then propagate the unreason.

I would have politely emailed him off line, but can’t find any comments box or email address (let me know if anyone finds one, I’m sure the they’ll be keen to get the info right eh, and make that apology to the good Senator?) (Jo Nova)

And now the disruptive twit gets his wish... Legal Cost for Throwing a Monkey Wrench - “Making that decision — that keeping the oil in the ground was worth going to prison — that was the decision I made,” said Tim DeChristopher.

SALT LAKE CITY — Tim DeChristopher became convinced last year that global warming’s potential effects were so urgent and dire that direct action was needed. The niceties of debate and environmental lobbying were not getting the job done, he said.

So in December Mr. DeChristopher went to a federal auction of oil and gas leases — offered in the Bush administration’s closing days and even then the subject of protests and lawsuits — and bid on contracts that he had neither the money nor intent to actually fulfill.

“My intention was to cause as much of a disruption to the auction as I could,” said Mr. DeChristopher, a soft-spoken 27-year-old economics student at the University of Utah. “Making that decision — that keeping the oil in the ground was worth going to prison — that was the decision I made.” (NYT)

Demonstrating how polluted our services have become with greenie antidevelopment mania... Off-shore drilling hazardous: U.S. experts - Stop, baby, stop, NOAA report on ocean oil-drilling is telling Interior Dep't.

The federal government's top ocean scientists are urging the Interior Department to drastically reduce plans to open the coast to offshore oil and gas drilling, citing threats to marine life and potentially devastating effects of oil spills in Arctic waters.

The recommendations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are informal and not binding. But if adopted, they would restrict development in some of the nation's most resource-rich untapped offshore areas and mark a significant departure from the pro-drilling policies of the George W. Bush administration. They also give added -- and official -- weight to environmentalists' concerns.

In a letter sent to Interior officials last month, NOAA recommended excluding large tracts of the Alaska coast, the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico from Interior's draft offshore drilling plan for 2010 to 2015.

NOAA recommends establishing buffer zones around the Southern California Ecological Preserve off Santa Barbara. In addition, it suggests that its broader recommendations, such as taking greater account of drilling's effects on marine life, could affect potential lease sales off California. (The Swamp)

With much of the world still feeling the sting from last year's oil shock, a group of federal scientists is encouraging Washington to limit offshore drilling. Its counsel would best be ignored.

Citing harmful effects on marine life and oil spills in the Arctic, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are asking the Interior Department to "drastically reduce plans to open the coast to offshore oil and gas drilling," the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

Their concerns are justified. Marine life is affected by offshore oil production, and spills do happen. The issue is how and to what degree. If the NOAA scientists would step back, they would notice a couple of points that are germane to the debate.

First, the impact of offshore drilling on marine life has hardly brought on a fish and fowl holocaust. Earlier in this decade, a Florida oceanographer working for the Interior Department studied the impact of relatively new offshore oil drilling in the Arctic off of Alaska. He did not discover what he expected he would.

"We found early in the process that impacts to the environment from offshore drilling were minimal," said John Trefry, a marine and environmental systems professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. "In fact, the entire offshore area was near-pristine."

Follow-up monitoring by Trefry's group found "no evidence of significant impacts."

Other research has found that offshore oil rigs bring not disaster for marine life but health. Four years ago, the Washington Post reported that Paul Sammarco, a marine biologist at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, surveyed abandoned drilling rigs and discovered that they had "spawned lush marine habitats that are home to a profusion of rare corals and 10,000 to 30,000 fish each."

Second, companies work hard to prevent spills. They don't want to see their profits pouring into the sea. Energy firms, not drilling opponents, have the greatest interest in preventing spills.

Even if man were careless in his stewardship and doubled overnight the amount of crude he spilled into the sea through offshore production, his impact would be negligible.

According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, between 1985 and 2001, spills from offshore platforms and pipelines accounted for only 2% of the oil released in U.S. waters.

Major spills, eagerly covered by the media, are actually rare. In 97% of spills, the volume of oil released is one barrel or less.

We won't hear this from the NOAA scientists or environmental groups that declare themselves the guardians of Earth, but offshore drilling is arguably a benefit to the environment.

Nature, not man, is by far the largest contributor of oil into the marine environment. In the Gulf of Mexico, natural oil seeps account for 95% of offshore oil, the National Academy of Sciences reports. In Southern California, they contribute 98% of the crude in the offshore zone. Those same natural seeps are responsible for 60% of the oil found in the North American marine environment.

With these facts in mind, Zonia Pino, writing in August for the Heartland Institute, noted that "drilling would help clean up the coastline" because "removal of oil allows for less natural seepage, hence cleaner beaches and a cleaner marine environment."

The environmental benefits of offshore drilling don't end with the draining of natural seeps. By extracting oil from rich fields off our coasts, we reduce significantly the ecological impact of shipping crude from regions halfway around the world.

While we appreciate the NOAA scientists' concern for the environment, we wish they would broaden their analysis. As professional researchers, they have no excuse not to. With the price of oil now exceeding $70 a barrel, now is not the time for them to be asking Washington to choke offshore drilling. (IBD)

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior has frozen oil and gas development on 60 of 77 contested drilling sites in Utah, saying the process of leasing the land was rushed and badly flawed.

The 77 government-owned parcels, covering some 100,000 acres in eastern and southern Utah, were leased in the last weeks of the Bush administration. But the leases were immediately challenged by conservation groups, and in January a federal judge blocked drilling on the ground that the Interior Department had failed to follow its own procedures for reviewing the appropriateness of lands designated for oil and gas extraction. (NYT)

LONDON - Canadian oil sands are vital to North America's energy security and are being developed in an environmentally responsible way, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said in an interview.

Several U.S. states are considering introducing low carbon fuel standards which would make fuels that emit the highest levels of climate-warming carbon dioxide more expensive.

U.S. President Barack Obama has expressed support for the idea but his administration has not taken a tough stance against carbon-intensive Canadian oil sands.

"Canada's oil sands are an incredibly important part of energy security for the United States," Raitt told Reuters at a carbon capture and storage (CCS) conference in London.

"If you don't purchase from Canada, who are you going to purchase from? It's going to be more reliance on OPEC nations," she said. (Reuters)

A revolution in the support given to Britain's nuclear and renewables industries will be revealed tomorrow, including plans for direct intervention in the energy market to force action on climate change targets. (Daily Telegraph)

America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast.

"There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources," he said.

This is almost unknown to the public, despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at "No Hot Air" who has been arguing for some time that Britain's shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.

Rune Bjornson from Norway's StatoilHydro said exploitable reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations. (Daily Telegraph)

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields.

The global drilling rush is still in its early stages. But energy analysts are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. They said they believed that gas reserves in many countries could increase over the next two decades, comparable with the 40 percent increase in the United States in recent years. (NYT)

Consumers face the prospect of sharp rises in gas and electricity bills to fund infrastructure investments of £200bn needed during the next decade to avoid energy shortages and meet climate change goals, the industry regulator warned yesterday .

Bills could jump by as much as 60 per cent by 2016, bringing them close to £2,000 a year on average, Ofgem said. The stark figure was at the top end of a range of four scenarios the regulator has drawn up in projecting the likely development of Britain's infrastructure during the next 10 to 15 years. Its assessment factored in the effect of the credit crunch, new legislation relating to climate change and the effect of "green" stimulus packages.

In the most optimistic scenario, a slow economic recovery and strong green stimulus would limit consumer price rises to 14 per cent by 2020. Under the most gloomy prognosis, however, a strong recovery and abandonment of environmental targets would lead to a 60 per cent price spike by 2016 before costs eased, Ofgem concluded.

The news comes as politicians announce significant cuts in spending and private investors reduce their capital expenditure because of weak energy prices and depressed demand. (Financial Times)

A German climate change expert Georg Feulner has ruled out the feasibility of liquid biofuel as an alternative to fossil fuels in the transport sector. Dr Fuelner , a climate systems analyst at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said while biofuels could help to reduce climate change and cut down costs of fossil fuels, they were not viable from the energy efficiency point of view.

“From the energy efficiency point of view, liquid biofuel is plain stupid for the transport sector. (International Institute for Journalism)

BERLIN - Germany's conservatives and their Free Democrat allies will reform the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) but cuts for solar power rates will be modest to prevent harming the fast-growing industry, a coalition source said on Sunday.

"We're not going to take an axe to the EEG and we obviously won't agree to any changes that would damage such an important sector," a source told Reuters. "Any cut in feed-in tariffs will be modest -- not anywhere near as high (as) some are suggesting." (Reuters)

Almost one in two Australians believe nuclear power should be considered as an alternative to fossil fuels, a new Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers suggests.

Forty-nine per cent of respondents to the poll said nuclear power should be considered for Australia's future energy needs, while 43 per cent were completely opposed, Fairfax newspapers said.

These figures demonstrate Australian attitudes may have changed as a 2002 Newspoll showed only 38 per cent in favour of nuclear power, with 51 per cent opposed.

The federal government however, is opposed to introducing nuclear power. (AAP)

GENEVA - The world's airlines have agreed to new fuel efficiency and carbon emission targets which go much further than the levels required through regulation, an industry group said on Saturday.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 230 airlines, said that carriers, airports and aerospace firms had pledged to improve fuel efficiency by 1.5 percent a year annually until 2020.

At a meeting in Montreal, they also set a goal of having carbon-neutral growth by 2020 and to record a 50 percent net reduction of carbon emissions in 2050 compared to 2005 levels. (Reuters)

PUBLIC health officials are now battling not only a fast-spreading influenza virus but also unfounded fears about the vaccine that can prevent it.

Since April, more than a million Americans have caught H1N1 flu, more than 10,000 have been hospitalized, and about 1,000 have died, including 76 children. And it’s only the beginning of October. Yet, in a new survey, 41 percent of adults said they will not get vaccinated. (Paul A. Offit, NYT)

NEW YORK - Poor vision is enough a hardship for the elderly. But such vision problems, when they can't be corrected, also appear to be tied to a shorter lifespan, according to a new study.

Previous studies have suggested a link between poor vision and death, but researchers wanted to know what might explain the association.

Dr. Michael J. Karpa, of Westmead Millennium Institute, Sydney, Australia, and colleagues studied more than 3,600 people who were 49 and older in the early 1990s. By 2007, more than a third of them -- 1273 people -- had died.

Those with vision problems that couldn't be corrected were 35 percent more likely to have died during those 13 years, and those with such problems who were younger than 75 were more than twice as likely to have died. (Reuters Health)

A new study in Los Angeles refutes the theory that fast-food chains make the poor overweight. So the city should lift its ban on McDonald's and start letting Wal-Mart sell cheap, healthy groceries.

Ever since public-health data turned up the fact that low-income Americans have a weight problem, politically sensitive types have struggled to come up with explanations that avoid the stern, common-sense answer — that the poor do it to themselves.

It's said that healthy food such as fresh fruit and vegetables is too expensive, that the poor depend too much on fast-food outlets for their meals and that they have fewer local sources of cheap, healthy food.

There's some truth in that last of those arguments, but the inconvenient fact is that better-off people face mostly the same dietary temptations and, as a group, tend to be less obese.

The fast-food bugaboo, for instance, led the Los Angeles City Council last year to ban expansion by chains such as McDonald's in low-income, mostly minority South L.A.

Now comes a study by the Rand Corp., published in the journal Health Affairs, showing that the ban has no rational basis.

Rand researchers looked at the actual locations of fast-food outlets and found that South Los Angeles had relatively few of them, at 19 per 100,000 residents. They were much more highly concentrated, at 29 per 100,000 residents, on the city's affluent west side and, at 30 per 100,000, in Los Angeles County as a whole. (IBD)

NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school. (NYT)

The phrase "publishing sensation" is standard hyperbole from marketing men anxious to push book sales. Sometimes, however, a book comes along which justifies the term. One such is Freakonomics, which since its publication in 2005 has sold well over 3 million copies. This would be a remarkable figure for a popular fiction writer; but the author of this non-fiction work was a university economist called Steven Levitt, aided and abetted by the New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner.

Essentially their book applied basic economic theories of utility-maximisation to social issues which hitherto had been discussed purely in political terms. The essay which caused the most sensation was Levitt's analysis linking falling crime figures to the federal legalisation of abortion via the Roe v Wade constitutional amendment. Levitt claimed that these apparently unconnected statistics in fact represented a significant correlation: unwanted children tended to be neglected and thus turn to crime, so the great increase in abortions from the early 1970s was the main, but unheralded, reason for the drop in US crime rates in the 1990s.

It's fair to say that Levitt's analysis, while rapidly attaining the status of conventional wisdom, remains highly controversial: a number of his fellow economists argue that his "abortion-cut-crime" theory doesn't come close to meeting the burden of proof. It was, however, marvellously mischievous, causing consternation and fury in equal measure among the American religious right, first in downplaying the role of tough penal policies and second in portraying abortion as a socially valuable law-enforcement tool.

Now Levitt and Dubner are launching the follow up to Freakonomics – but this time it is conventional left-liberal thought which will be outraged by their assertions. A clue is given in the work's full title, Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Yes, the authors have this time addressed their dispassionate intellectual blowtorch to the conventional wisdom about climate change, its causes and remedies. (The Independent)

CANTON, Ohio — After taking a class that covered global warming last year, Jill Saylor decided to save energy by drying her laundry on a clothesline at her mobile home. (NYT)

The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics website the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. December 12th, Johannesburg. You read it here first.

For what, exactly, did he win the Nobel? As the president himself put it: “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I have done so far. And that is nothing. Almost one year and nothing to show for it. You don’t believe me? You think I’m making it up? Take a look at this checklist.”

And up popped his record of accomplishment, reassuringly blank.

Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the real President Obama. That was a comedian playing President Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” And, for impressionable types who find it hard to tell the difference, CNN — in a broadcast first that should surely have its own category at the Emmys — performed an in-depth “reality check” of the SNL sketch. (Mark Steyn, IBD)

Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found.

But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up “moral credentials” in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior. (ScienceDaily)

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has praised the way China does business in Africa, criticising the West for basing relations with the continent on aid. Huge Chinese investment in African companies and infrastructure is helping Africa develop, Mr Kagame said. (MercoPress)

On-farm water management could increase global crop production by about one fifth, a modelling study by German and Swedish researchers indicates. However, even intensive water management on present cropland will not be sufficient to accommodate the food demands of a growing population in a warming world, the scientists report in the current edition of 'Environmental Research Letters.'

'Use of water in agriculture is a key problem for the 21st century: without improvements neither the consequences of climate change will be manageable nor the demand of two or three billion additional people for food be met,' says Wolfgang Lucht of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). 'In this study we therefore investigated whether there are realistic opportunities to close the emerging gap in water supply for agriculture at least partially for many world regions. The results are quite encouraging,' adds Lucht. (Science Centric)

The Obama administration took a deliberate step into the row that has engulfed the business world today, gloating at a mini-exodus from the US chamber of commerce because of its climate change policy.

In the administration's first comments on the row, the energy secretary, Steven Chu, did not conceal his delight that high-profile companies like California's PG&E, Exelon and Apple had broken with the chamber because of its opposition to a climate change bill now before the Senate and moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency.

"I think it's wonderful," Chu said.

"I think companies like that - Exelon and others - are saying we have recognised the reality," he said. "They are saying we can't be a party to this denial and foot-dragging."

Not that the chamber is ready to listen. Earlier today, a combative head of the chamber, Thomas Donohue, made it clear he was in no mind to rethink the organisation's policies because of the high profile defections.

"If people want to attack us, bring em on," he told reporters. (The Guardian)

The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday brushed off decisions by a string of high-profile companies to break with the nation's leading business organization over what they considered its backward-looking position on global warming. (Chicago Tribune)

The United States Chamber of Commerce, under fire for its vocal opposition to climate change regulation, says that the vast majority of its members support its position.

“We’re not changing where we are,” Thomas Donohue, the group’s president and chief executive, told a small group of reporters in Washington this morning. “We’ve thought long and hard about what is important here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

He said that the chamber was sorry for the “Scopes monkey trial” analogy raised by a chamber representative this summer in conversations with the media — in which the representative, William Kovacs, vowed to put climate change regulation on trial, similar to the 1920s showdown between creationists and evolutionists.

However, the chamber would still like a full public hearing on the science behind the proposed endangerment finding of the Environmental Protection Agency, by which the agency aims to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as it does other forms of pollution.

“We don’t have regrets about our position, and we’re not going to change it,” Mr. Donohue said. (Green Inc.)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's so-called green team has undergone a growth spurt.

The group of Cabinet secretaries and White House advisers who meet regularly to craft the president's energy and environmental agenda now numbers 13, double what it was during the administration's early days.

It's just one of the signs that the administration is stepping up its push to pass energy and climate legislation this year, as the Senate continues to wrangle with Obama's other top domestic priority, health care reform. The House has already passed a bill.

Since the summer, when everyone else's attention was focused on the heated town hall meetings over health care, Obama administration officials have been meeting with more than half the Senate, made calls to nearly 100 mayors in 17 states, and met with numerous governors, according to White House records. Their goal, according to Carol Browner, the president's assistant for energy and climate change, "is to get the bill moving and keep it moving."

"It's really engaging a wide array of people across the administration to make sure that we're answering the questions that the Senate needs answered and working with individual members as they think about how they can support comprehensive energy legislation," Browner said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's just grown and grown and grown, with more and more Cabinet agencies and secretaries wanting to be involved." (AP)

The US threatened to derail a deal on global climate change today in a public showdown with China by expressing deep opposition to the existing Kyoto protocol. The US team also urged other rich countries to join it in setting up a new legal agreement which would, unlike Kyoto, force all countries to reduce emissions.

In a further development, the EU sided strongly with the US in seeking a new agreement, but said that it hoped the best elements of Kyoto could be kept. China and many developing countries immediately hit back stating that the protocol, the world's only legally binding commitment to get countries to reduce emissions, was "not negotiable".

With only a few days of formal UN negotiations remaining before the crunch Copenhagen meeting in December, and the world's two largest emitters refusing to give ground, a third way may now have to be found to secure a climate change agreement. Last night it emerged that lawyers for the EU are in talks with the US delegation urgently seeking a way out of the impasse that now threatens a strong climate deal. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

As the end of the two-week climate negotiations in Bangkok is approaching, the future of the Kyoto Protocol becomes more and more a red-hot issue. The question is whether to tweak, bolster or bury the Kyoto Protocol, AFP reports. (CoP15)

A European Union official is threatening reprisals if the U.S. doesn't lead on a carbon emissions treaty. It probably doesn't matter to him that the climate change argument is falling apart.

Karl Falkenberg is just director general for environment at the European Union's executive body. But the way he's talking, he sounds more like a mafia don.

"It will be more than an embarrassment" for the U.S. administration, he said Wednesday, if the American contingent arrives at Copenhagen in December for treaty talks and has to admit it's "not ready" to lead other nations toward a deal.

Exactly what Falkenberg means by "more than an embarrassment" is known only to him. But it smells like some kind of backlash is planned if the U.S. doesn't yield to EU demands.

If anyone is embarrassed in Copenhagen, though, it should be global warming alarmists. The framework of their claims is cracking.

As it turns out — and this should be no surprise — the data that have been used to create the global warming bogeyman are flawed. (IBD)

BANGKOK, Oct 8 - Poorer countries are helping shape a broader pact to fight climate change but their efforts are being stymied by rich nations' lack of commitment on finance and tougher emissions cuts, the U.N. said on Thursday.

Funding to help poorer nations is a make-or-break issue in negotiations to seal a broader climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol at a summit in Copenhagen in December.

Poorer nations are demanding cash to help them adapt to the effects of climate change, such as rising seas, and green their economies to slow the rapid rise of their carbon emissions.

But there is still no agreement on the size of climate funds or how to manage them.

"There has to be a quid pro quo, you have to see a significant advance on the finance. Otherwise, what's the point?" Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat told reporters on Thursday in the Thai capital. (Reuters) [em added]

United Nations climate talks among more than 180 nations end today in Bangkok with envoys disputing whether to preserve or replace the Kyoto accord, the only existing global climate-protection agreement.

Developing countries yesterday said the European Union was trying to abandon Kyoto. That was spurred by an EU proposal to borrow elements from the 1997 pact and put them into a new international agreement.

“The EU and others are moving to somehow kill the Kyoto Protocol, something that we could not accept as G77, as developing countries,” Mohammad Al Sabban, Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator, said in an interview yesterday in Bangkok. EU officials discounted the assertion.

Discord between the G-77, a group of 130 developing nations, and industrialized nations in the UN-led talks center on whether the Kyoto agreement should be extended or replaced with a new treaty that may appeal more to the U.S., which refused to ratify Kyoto because it gave no restrictions for developing nations. (Bloomberg)

Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce believes the failure to arrive at a climate change consensus in Bangkok will be repeated at Copenhagen.

After two weeks a gathering of 190 nations in Bangkok failed to arrive at any consensus over climate change. With less than 60 days until the Copenhagen meeting the Bangkok gathering was supposed to be an opportunity to lay the foundations for the Copenhagen summit to be held in December.

Senator Joyce said the failure of the Bangkok meeting is yet another reason why Australia should not rush into any international agreement until there is clear consensus. The inability for an international agreement stems from disagreement between developing and developed nations.

After the Bangkok talks the United States and China are still unable to come to a satisfactory agreement. Developing nations are seeking financial assistance from developed nations to introduce cleaner technologies.

Senator Joyce said Penny Wong’s solution to assist developing nations such as China to reduce emissions is to allow them to increase emissions. Penny Wong is arguing countries like China should be entitled to produce more emissions and set their own targets because they are an emerging economy.

If that is the case, then why can’t parts of rural and regional Australia, with their developing economies, be allowed the same concession?

The recent Bangkok meeting shows that the international community will be unable to come to any meaningful consensus. Therefore, Australia must make its own arrangements. (Australia.to)

The costs of a vigorous, immediate effort to rebuild the world economy around carbon-free technologies are in the range of one to three percent of global GDP per year, a new study says. (CoP15)

Slashing emissions to “save” the planet is expensive. Very expensive, since it not only chokes growth but demands huge new investments in alternative forms of “green” power.

And right now the United States, the world’s second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, cannot afford to spend one more red - or green - cent:

Environmental groups released a report Thursday accusing Saudi Arabia of slowing UN-led climate talks by insisting that the economic woes of oil producers be included in the negotiation text. (CoP15)

LONDON - Less than half of Britons believe climate change will affect them during their lifetime and fewer than a fifth think it will disturb their children, a government survey showed Friday.

In the YouGov poll for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, 69 percent of respondents said flooding would be the most likely consequence in Britain, but only 26 percent believed the country was already feeling the impact of climate change.

"Recent research shows the public are unclear on what causes climate change and what the effects are," the department said. (Reuters)

Climate change sceptics are to be targeted in a hard-hitting government advertising campaign that will be the first to state unequivocally that Man is causing global warming and endangering life on Earth.

The £6 million campaign, which begins tonight in the prime ITV1 slot during Coronation Street, is a direct response to government research showing that more than half the population think that climate change will have no effect on them.

Ministers sanctioned the campaign because of concern that scepticism about climate change was making it harder to introduce carbon-reducing policies such as higher energy bills.

The advertisement attempts to make adults feel guilty about their legacy to their children. It features a father telling his daughter a bedtime story of “a very very strange” world with “horrible consequences” for today’s children. (The Times)

Green activism always struck me as a no-sweat morality, in which you got the moral kudos for demanding that others make the sacrifices. So no surprise here:

Which may help to explain why the global warming faith is the first major religion to be led almost entirely by the worst sinners. For instance:

SIR — The Economist’s article, A bad climate for development (September 17), which also serves as a backgrounder for an online debate on climate change, is not only selective in the information it presents, it is riddled with speculation and unsubstantiated claims.

For example, its chart 3 presents portions of two of three panels in figure 2.1 of the World Development Report 2010. But the panel that it chooses not to display shows that deaths from all climate related disasters have actually declined at least since 1981–85 despite (a) an enormous increase in the population at risk, namely, the world’s population, and (b) the fact that older data has a greater tendency to underestimate the number and casualties of extreme weather events. The original source of the data (Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, CRED) states that the increase in the data until 1995 “is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED and partly due to real increases in certain types of disasters.”[1] They also state that they are unable to say whether the latter increases are due to climate change.

Secondly, the backgrounder cites estimates sponsored by the World Health Organisation and published in Comparative Quantification of Health Risks that attributed 150,000 deaths and a loss of 5.5m disability-adjusted life years — a measure of the global burden of disease — to climate change in the year 2000. But these studies also show that at least twenty other risk factors contributed more to death and disease.[2] That is, there are many more important health problems facing the world than climate change.

Thirdly, the article goes on to claim that the indirect harm to public health from the impact of climate change on water supplies, crop yields and disease is “hugely greater.” But what’s the evidence for this?

In fact, access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields, and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind.[3] This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities such as fertilizer usage, pumping water for irrigation, and use of farm machinery. And crop yields, in particular, are also higher today than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.

Fourthly, the backgrounder claims that global warming is causing both droughts and floods. Regardless of whether this is the case, deaths from droughts have declined by 99.9% since the 1920s, and 99% from floods since the 1930s.[4] In fact, since the 1920s, average annual deaths from all extreme weather events have dropped by 95 percent while annual death rates, which factor in population growth, have been reduced by 99 percent.

One item, however, where I agree with the backgrounder is that projections of the future impacts of climate change are “no more than educated guesses” although, as Alexander Pope might have said, a little education is a dangerous thing.

Indur M. Goklany

Notes
[1] Revkin AC. 2009. Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends. Dot Earth Blog. February 23, 2009. Available at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/gore-pulls-slide-of-disaster-trends/ . Visited September 10, 2009.

[2] Goklany IM. Climate change is not the biggest health threat. Lancet 2009; 374: 973-74.

[3] Goklany IM. The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2007).

[4] Goklany IM. Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events: Global and U.S. Trends, 1900-2006, in The Civil Society Report on Climate Change, November 2007, available at http://goklany.org/library/deaths%20death%20rates%20from%20extreme%20events%202007.pdf . (The Economist)

It may seem curmudgeonly to sprinkle our meagre daily measure of praise upon the negation of something: the fact that a plan is not going ahead. Every so often, however, there are ideas so bad that jubilation is the only response when they are seen off. E.ON's desire to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – which we learned this week will happen no time soon – is surely a case in point. The climate poison that would have belched from its stacks was of course a concern in itself, but the greater anxiety was the dreadful example that would have been set. For Britain to have built its first coal-fired power station in decades without meaningful carbon capture being built into the design would have granted developing countries moral licence to follow suit. The building commercial pressure to develop the all-important sequestration technology would also have been retarded. The recession is E.ON's stated reason for, ahem, pulling the plug on its electric ambitions. The awkward squad of activists who have variously agitated, camped and campaigned over two years will take some persuading that this account represents the whole truth. They have endured sleep deprivation, airport-style searches and, in a few cases, being put under police surveillance. They might reflect that when male MPs finally granted women the vote, their magnanimous speeches did not find the room to thank Emmeline Pankhurst for cutting telegraph cables or to praise Emily Davison for throwing herself under the king's horse. (Editorial, The Guardian)

While the case itself will hinge on particulars of UK law and jurisprudence, the questions for readers here are less technical. What does it mean to say that "belief in climate change" is philosophical or religious or scientific? Should people who change their lifestyles based on their beliefs about climate change be protected under the same laws that protect freedom of religion? Does science tell us what philosophical or religious beliefs are valid?

Paging Ben Hale . . . ;-)

UPDATE: Ben's pager was apparently on this morning (Roger Pielke Jr)

This news should get the left wing chatterers enraged – who are currently pushing with great vigour for the Labor Govts ETS (Emission Trading Scheme) to be passed by the Senate. This news will be heartening to those opposition senators wary of signing Australia on to the wrist slashing expense of the Wong/Rudd ETS when the science is so shonky.

For the full article:
Defence unmoved by climate change data
By Margot O’Neill for Lateline 9 Oct 09 – that's the Australian Broadcasting Corp, publically funded usually left wing in outlook.

The science of climate change is too doubtful to dramatically change Australia’s national defence plans, according to a key adviser on the Australian Defence Force’s recent White Paper.

While the white paper acknowledges for the first time climate change is a potential security risk, it says large-scale strategic consequences of climate change are not likely to be felt before 2030.

A key adviser on the white paper, Professor Ross Babbage, says he is not convinced that climate change exists at all.

“The data on what’s really happening in climate change was looked at pretty closely and the main judgment reached was that it was pretty uncertain – it wasn’t clear exactly what was going on,” he said.

“When you look at that data, it really does suggest that there hasn’t been a major change in the last decade or so and certainly no major increase.

“So the sort of judgments that were required have to be fairly open at this stage.”

However Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has frequently put forward the opposite view, and other security analysts believe Defence should not be debating the basic science of global warming.

Anthony Bergin, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says the ADF’s judgement goes against most scientific conclusions.

“There was no supporting evidence presented in the Defence White Paper for the judgement that there would be no strategic impacts of climate change for 30 years,” he said.

“It seems to run counter to most of the scientific judgements that are now concluding that impact of climate change is indeed faster and more severe than previous estimates.”

In the US and the UK, security agencies and the military are providing resources to prepare for potential new climate conflicts over water, food and refugees as well as increasingly frequent natural disasters.

They are also moving to ensure defence equipment will function in more extreme weather conditions.

Sydney University’s Professor Alan Dupont says the CIA in the US had the right approach.

“They accepted the scientific forecasts of the IPCC as their starting point because they thought they were not qualified to contest the scientific issues. And I would have thought the same applied to our own defence department.”

At the internationally respected Royal United Services Institute in London, Dr Tobias Feakin, the director of national security says the Australian white paper is out of step.

“Climate change is already happening, so to press pause on considering it as a strategic issue, I think, could be a mistake,” he said.

“The time cycles for buying equipment rotate in about 20-year cycles so you need to begin to make the decisions now to purchase the kinds of equipment that you’ll need for climate change world.

“So to not actually acknowledge the kind of changes that we will be seeing then, I think will be quite short-sighted.”

Because of long lead times and high expense, Professor Babbage says Defence moves cautiously when it comes to adopting new planning scenarios.

“At this stage there isn’t really the case to fundamentally change the direction of the Defence Force as a consequence of what we are so far seeing in terms of climate change, given the uncertainties that we still see in the data sets.

Professor Babbage says Defence considered a variety of climate scenarios and judged Australia’s current defence capabilities and force structure would cope.

He points out that Prime Minister Rudd, as chairman of the National Security Council, signed off on the white paper’s conclusions. (Warwick Hughes)

It’s hard to be green when you’re red-faced all the time. It’s easy to be red-faced when your cause is global warming doomsterism. (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post)

NEWPORT, Rhode Island — International piracy and the challenges of new Arctic Ocean corridors opening up as a result of global warming topped the agenda Wednesday at a gathering of world maritime powers.

"The menaces from climate change cause growing concern," warned Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. "There is a global security implication of the climate change."

"The North West passage will be open most part of the year, the new generation of naval students will live in a different world," he said. (AFP)

The southern part of India has experienced unpredictable rainfall, up to 600 percent higher than normal, in river basins that used to be the driest in the country. The flooding is responsible for killing several hundreds and damaging 250.000 homes, The Hindustan Times reports.

“Krishna and Godavari basins are considered to be the safest compared to the Ganga and Brahmaputra basins. This should be studied, whether there is a link between this and climate change,” says Dr. Santosh Kumar of the Ministry of Home Affair’s National Institute of Disaster Management.

The sudden shift from “extreme drought” to “extreme floods” in the region is in consonance with the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), head of the climate center, Madeleen Helmer said on Tuesday according to ThaiIndian News.

If severe weather problems continue in the region, immediate disaster response will impede adaption to climate change.

”The problem is that the system is now being so stretched to provide short-term relief, to respond to all these climate disasters, that there is little planning to build long-term resilience of people to face climate change.” says Richard Rumsey, Director of Disaster Risk Reduction and Community Resilience in the international NGO, World Vision. (CoP15)

Fish populations in the tropics could fall by as much as 40% over the next half century because of global warming, jeopardising a vital food source for the developing world, a new study published today has found.

The waters off Indonesia - which rank among the most plentiful areas for fish today - could see supplies fall by well over 20% by 2055 because of changes in ocean conditions. Fishermen operating in US coastal waters (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) could also face large declines in fish stocks, as would those working off Chile and China.

"Fish are very sensitive to temperatures, and when the temperatures warm because of climate change, the fish will move away. And some of the species - those that can't swim that far - may locally go extinct," said William Cheung, lead author of the study.

The study, conducted by the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia, is the first to look at how climate change will affect food supplies offshore. It is published in the journal, Global Change Biology. (The Guardian)

PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 9 - When organisers of an international conference on climate change and the food crisis first scheduled the event here for late September, little did they realise the event would be sandwiched by two typhoons buffeting the region. Ironically, the first typhoon, ‘Ketsana’, delayed the arrival of conference delegates from the Philippines.

A week after Ketsana struck the Philippines on Sep. 26 and then Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, it was the turn of Typhoon Parma to wreak havoc in the Philippines on Oct. 3. Now downgraded to a tropical storm, ‘Parma’ is still lingering over the region and initially entangled with another Pacific super typhoon, ‘Melor’, which then headed towards Japan.

Ketsana left a devastating trail after it dumped the equivalent of one month's rainfall over Manila within six hours. Although Parma largely spared the country, it flooded large tracts of rice fields in northern Philippines and destroyed crops ready for harvest. (IPS/IFEJ)

One of the indisputable facts in the field of global climate change is that the atmospheric build-up of methane (CH4) has been, over the past few decades, occurring much more slowly than all predictions as to its behavior (Figure 1). Since methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas (thought to have about 25 times the warming power of CO2), emissions scenarios which fail to track methane will struggle to well-replicate the total climate forcing, likely erring on the high side—and feeding too much forcing into climate models leads to too much global warming coming out of them.

Figure 1. Atmospheric methane concentrations, 1985-2008, with the IPCC methane projections overlaid (adapted from: Dlugokencky et al., 2009)

Figure 2 shows the year-over-year change in the methane concentration of the atmosphere, and indicates not only that the growth rate of methane has been declining, but also that on several occasions during the past decade or so, it has dropped to very near zero (or even below) indicating that no increase in the atmospheric methane concentration (or a even a slight decline) occurred from one year to the next.

Figure 2. Year-to-year change in atmospheric methane concentrations, 1985-2008, (source: Dlugokencky et al., 2009)

This behavior is quite perplexing. And while we are not sure what processes are behind it, we do know one thing for certain—the slow growth of methane concentrations is an extremely cold bucket of water dumped on the overheated claims that global warming is leading to a thawing of the Arctic permafrost and the release of untold mega-quantities of methane (which, of course, will lead to more warming, more thawing, more methane, etc., and, of course, to runaway catastrophe).

To some, the blip upwards in methane growth in 2007 (Figure 2) was a sure sign that the methane beast was awakening from its unexpected slumber. Climate disaster was just around the corner (just ask Joe Romm).

But alas, despite the hue and cry, in 2008 the increase in methane, instead of equaling or exceeding the 2007 rise, turned out to be only about half of the 2007 rise. And together with information on from where it seemed to emanate (the tropics rather than the Arctic), it cannot be taken as a sign that the slow methane growth rate during the past decade was coming to an end as a result of an Arctic meltdown.

Here is how NOAA methane-guru Ed Dlugokencky and colleagues put it in their publication last week describing recent methane behavior:

The factual portion of their conclusion remains the same, with or without the inclusion of the final word (but it sure was nice of them to throw it in there as a bone to climate catastrophists the world over).

Dlugokencky, E. J., et al., 2009. Observational constraints on recent increases in the atmospheric CH4 burden. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18803, doi:10.1029/2009GL039780. (WCR)

A new paper just published in the Geophysical Review Letters finds a significant correlation between the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the water temperature of the Barents Sea.

This was made possible by a significant network of hydrographical stations in the Barents Sea which resulted in a 230,000 temperature profiles used in this analysis. The hint in the conclusion (which the authors stop short of defining) is that the pattern of data, seen below, might be linked to the recent pattern of Arctic sea ice melt and some partial recovery seen in the last two years. Their figure 2 below, certainly seems to suggest a strong correlation between water temperature in the Barents Sea and the AMO index.

Levitus, S., G. Matishov, D. Seidov, and I. Smolyar (2009), Barents Sea multidecadal variability, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19604, doi:10.1029/2009GL039847.

We present area-averaged time series of temperature for the 100–150 m depth layer of the Barents Sea from 1900 through 2006. This record is dominated by multidecadal variability on the order of 4C which is correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Index. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Bill Drissel asked me a question in late July regarding the use of the term “oscillation” when referring to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), etc.

“My recent background is radio receivers. When we use the word “oscillation”, we generally know (or suspect) the source. We always refer to a voltage that is periodic in nature with a predominant frequency and more or less prevalent harmonics…..When one speaks of the El Niño Southern Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, do we know enough about them to call them “oscillations” (in the sense that my co-workers use the word)? In particular, do the ENSO and PDO exhibit the same sort of regularity?”

In order to answer this excellent question, I have listed below the definitions of an “oscillation”.

“Oscillation is the repetitive variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states”.

Wikipedia lists the El Niño Southern Oscillation as an example of an oscillation.

Clearly Bill Drissel is correct. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Niño Southern Oscillation and other such atmospheric circulation features are not oscillations as defined above.

Although it has become conventional to refer to these atmospheric circulation as oscillations, in reality they are part of a chaotic system (the climate) which often have periods of time when a signal appears quasi-periodic, when this behavior actually is just part of its nonlinear character (e.g. see). While we will not be able to change their names (they are so entrenched in the climate jargon), it should be recognized that the PDO, ENSO, and other such features do not “repeat….in a regular cycle” nor vary around “about a central value”.

The term “oscillation” implies more knowledge regarding these temporally variable climate features than actually exists. (Climate Science)

The temperature difference between equatorial and polar sea waters was minimal during the extremely warm 'Greenhouse world' 60 to 50 million years ago. This is the main conclusion drawn by a team of scientists from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The team of scientists, headed by Peter Bijl, show that circum-Antarctic sea water exceeded 30ºC at that time. The results were published in Nature this week. (PhysOrg.com)

It’s really rather sad that you can read about Svensmark’s climate research in an Iranian news outlet (FARS) but you won’t see any mention of it in American press, such as in the NYT. A search for Svensmark (and also cosmic rays) yields nothing. Maybe Andy Revkin just hasn’t gotten around to it yet, but if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t enjoy being scooped by Iran. WUWT covered this story, complete with comments direct from Dr. Svensmark, nearly one month ago. See here.

TEHRAN (FNA)- New research by the National Space Institute in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) validated 13 years of discoveries that point to a key role for cosmic rays in climate change.

Billions of tons of water droplets vanish from the atmosphere in events that reveal in detail how the Sun and the stars control our everyday clouds.

DTU Researchers have traced the consequences of eruptions on the Sun that screen the Earth from some of the cosmic rays – the energetic particles raining down on our planet from exploded stars.

“The Sun makes fantastic natural experiments that allow us to test our ideas about its effects on the climate,” lead author of a report newly published in Geophysical Research Letters Prof. Henrik Svensmark said.

When solar explosions interfere with the cosmic rays there is a temporary shortage of small aerosols, chemical specks in the air that normally grow until water vapor can condense on them, so seeding the liquid water droplets of low-level clouds.

Because of the shortage, clouds over the ocean can lose as much as 7 per cent of their liquid water within seven or eight days of the cosmic-ray minimum.

“A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale,” the report concludes. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Oxygen depletion that is killing sea life off Oregon and Washington is probably caused by evolving wind conditions from climate change, rather than pollution, one oceanographer warns. (LA Times) | Oregon Dead Zone Blamed on Climate Change (ENS)

Things get stranger and stranger with the United Nations’ climate change science compendium published two weeks back.

First, it was learned that the graph indicating temperature for the past 1,000 years had been taken from Wikipedia, where it had been deposited by a non-climatologist. Now, it comes to light that the report features a photograph purporting to show Arctic icebergs melting, when the actual image is of Antarctica.

As I looked through the updated report yesterday, in which the Wikipedia graph has been removed, I noticed that an image looked to have been misidentified. Fortunately for me, the UN had purchased the image on Shutterstock.com, where about an hour’s worth of sleuthing revealed that indeed this was not a picture from the top of the world, but rather from the bottom. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

One year ago, Congress responded to the chorus of Americans calling for more American energy by lifting the ban on offshore drilling. For the first time in a quarter-century, it became legal to drill for more oil and natural gas reserves offshore. This anniversary allows us to look back on how far we have come since 2008. The sad reality is we have barely moved. (Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley, IBD)

The world is filled with uncertainties. How can politicians be so certain on the veracity of anthropogenic global warming? There is a large and persuasive body of scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is not the villain assumed in the Global Warming debate. Their naïve warming assumption is then compounded by the claim that man is the cause of the carbon effect. On both counts numerous scientific studies have countered to the opposite. Nevertheless both assumptions are regarded as fact today by the G-20 political leaders. For example, in his recent speech to the United Nations President Obama said:

"The danger posed by climate change cannot be denied, and our responsibility to meet it must not be deferred. If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders. Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources. Development will be devastated by drought and famine. Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear."

With so much evidence to the contrary, President Obama’s statement reflects the politics of fear. It is the modality of change in politics today. If you frighten people with rhetoric enough legislators will vote for a bill that gives government more control. One aspect of the president’s demeanor cannot be denied and that is his ability to speak with authority while ignoring half the world’s scientific community. (Michael Berry, Forbes)

OTTAWA--The Canadian and Alberta governments signed a letter of intent to award Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chevron Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. a total of C$865 million (US$817.6 million) in funding Thursday to help create the first commercial carbon-capture demonstration project in Canada's oil sands industry.

The province of Alberta will provide C$745 million in funding and Canada's federal government will provide C$120 million over 15 years to fund the companies' joint-venture system to capture some of the greenhouse gases emitted by oil production in the Athabasca oil sands region in northern Alberta. The joint-venture project is the first awarded funding from a C$2 billion pool that the Alberta government set aside for carbon-capture technology last year. (Dow Jones)

NEW YORK, Oct 8 - More than 90 percent of carbon dioxide has been captured from a small emissions slipstream at a Wisconsin coal-burning power plant in a pilot project, testers said on Thursday.

We Energies, a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corp, and French multinational Alstom SA said they and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) started testing Alstom's chilled ammonia process on a 1.7-megawatt slipstream at We Energies' 1,208 MW Pleasant Prairie plant in early 2008. The test will end later this year.

"One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is the development of cost effective technology that will allow us to capture carbon from the operation of power plants around the world," We Energies CEO Gale Klappa said in a release. (Reuters)

Picture a climate criminal. What does he look like? Mine is a white bloke, in his twenties, and with dreadlocks. He was in this newspaper yesterday, and on his naked chest were written the words “No New Coal”.

I doubt he’d much like to be called a climate criminal. I suspect, in fact, he might be a bit miffed. But it’s thanks to the likes of him that the energy company E.ON has shelved plans for a new coal power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. Is that, unequivocally, a victory for the environment? I’m not so sure. I’m worried it might be the exact opposite.

You see, Dreadlocks Man, logically, there are two possible scenarios for the future of coal. In one scenario, nobody burns any more coal, ever again. Not E.ON, not anybody. Not even in the developing world, where they’ve got access to vast amounts of cheap coal and a rapidly expanding appetite for power, and an opinion on man-made global warming that is, roughly speaking, analogous to our opinion on the tooth fairy. The other scenario is that people do continue burning coal, but just not here.

Tell me, Mr Dreadlocks, which of these scenarios do you consider to be the more likely? Don’t rush. I’ll go first. Let’s see, I dunno, hmmm, maybe the second? At a push? I mean, the first would be lovely, and I’m obviously particularly attracted by the way that vast swaths of people would probably freeze to death, but, let’s be honest, it’s a bit of a pipe dream, isn’t it? Until the recession, after all, they were building two Kingsnorths a week in China. And all those pesky selfish bastards in Africa are going to want tellies and fridges eventually, too, aren’t they? So, I reckon people probably will keep burning coal, cynic that I am. (Hugo Rifkind, The Times)

ScottishPower last night demanded that Westminster clarify the ground rules in the £1bn competition to develop clean-coal power stations after a rival postponed its decision to build a new coal plant but then insisted it was still in the running for the lucrative funding prize.

The deadline for the government competition, aimed at developing coal-fired power plants that can capture and store carbon dioxide emissions as part of its green energy policy and help fill the country’s looming energy gap, was set at 2014.

However, German giant E.ON yesterday announced it was delaying the construction of a new controversial plant at Kingsnorth, 60 miles south-east of London, for at least three years and that the new plant would not be needed until 2016. It claimed the recession has depressed energy demand.

Nonetheless, Kingsnorth, which had become emblematic of the environmentalist campaign against coal-fired power stations, is also the site of E.on’s competition entry and proposed carbon capture project.

A spokeswoman for E.on, declared: “We are still taking part in the competition. We haven’t withdrawn.” (The Herald)

SYDNEY, Oct. 8 -- Shell plans to build a $5.5 billion floating liquefied natural gas processing plant off the West Australian coast.

Using floating LNG technology, Shell plans to process gas from its Prelude and Concerto fields in the Browse Basin off Australia's undeveloped Kimberley coast, where more than a third of the nation's known offshore gas is located.

"Australia is a critical country for us, especially for growth in the LNG sector," Malcolm Brinded, Shell's executive director of upstream international said, Bloomberg reports.

Brinded said Shell was still assessing the total gas in the two fields, but he was confident that annual production could total 3.5 million tons, in addition to condensate and LPG. Shell would not disclose when it expects the first LNG production to begin. (UPI)

Companies and governments all over the world are racing to find cleaner, greener fuels to end our society’s addiction to oil and cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. But in the rush and tumult of new developments and optimistic predictions, it’s hard to separate the hype from real hope. So a recent series of articles from Nature News feels like a public service, as the articles investigate the scientific and economic state of affairs for four different kinds of biofuels. (Discover)

The Congressional Budget Office released a report this week that revealed that the proposed health care bill would not increase the deficit. But is it that simple? Cato health care policy experts have examined the bill and added up the costs. Here are a few things they have found:

The CBO report that said the health care bill won’t raise deficits makes it clear that the Baucus bill’s reduction in future budget deficits comes not from controlling government spending or reducing health care costs, but because of a rapid escalation in tax revenues.

The bill imposes a 40 percent excise tax on health-insurance plans that offer benefits in excess of $8,000 for an individual plan and $21,000 for a family plan. Insurers would almost certainly pass this tax on to consumers via higher premiums. As inflation pushes insurance premiums higher in coming years, more and more middle-class families would find themselves caught up in the tax.

In fact, overall, the tax increases in the bill are more than double the amount of deficit reduction. This isn’t a health care efficiency bill or a cost containment bill. It is a tax and spend bill, pure and simple. (Michael D. Tanner, Cato at liberty)

Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-MT) health care overhaul would cost more than $2 trillion. It would expand the deficit. But he has carefully and methodically hidden those facts – so well that he has completely hoodwinked nearly all the major media.

The media are reporting that the Baucus bill would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years. Wrong.

The Baucus bill assumes that Congress will allow the “sustainable growth rate” cuts in Medicare’s physician payments to occur beginning in 2012. Yet Congress has routinely and repeatedly blocked those cuts, making Baucus’s assumption preposterous. The CBO handled the issue delicately, but essentially said, “Sure, provided that the sun rises in the west in 2012, then yes, this bill would reduce the deficit.”

That means Baucus will come up at least $200 billion short on the revenue side, making his bill a budget-buster.

The media are reporting that the Baucus bill would cost just $829 billion over 10 years. Wrong.

As Donald Marron observes, that number omits as much as $75 billion in new federal spending. It also omits a $33 billion unfunded mandate on state governments.

But the worst part is that the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost estimate omits the cost of the private sector mandates in the Baucus bill. In Massachusetts, those costs accounted for 60 percent of the total cost of reform. That suggests the actual cost of the Baucus bill – $829 billion plus $75 billion plus $33 billion, times 2.5 – is well over $2 trillion.

Yet the CBO score pretends those costs aren’t even there. It’s like a mystery novel that’s missing the last 50 pages. And the media aren’t even curious.

Cross-posted at Politico’s Health Care Arena. (Michael F. Cannon, Cato at liberty)

How disappointing for catastrophists... 2036 asteroid strike on Earth 'all but ruled out' - After recalculating the figures, JPL scientists downgrade the odds of the asteroid Apophis hitting the planet to four in a million.

Doomsday in 2036 just got a lot less likely.

After recalculating the trajectory of the asteroid Apophis, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge have determined that the odds of it hitting the Earth that year are four in a million.

"We've all but ruled out" a collision in 2036, said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near-Earth Object office at JPL. (LA Times)

WASHINGTON - Researchers reported new evidence of the genetic underpinnings of autism on Wednesday that could help shed light on heredity's role in determining risks for the disorder.

Their study implicated a gene not previously tied to autism and identified two chromosomes where rare genetic variations could influence risk for the disorder.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, offer no immediate hope for a treatment, but add to the understanding of the ties between genetics and autism. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - A virus linked to prostate cancer also appears to play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome, according to research that could lead to the first drug treatments for a mysterious disorder that affects 17 million people worldwide.

Researchers found the virus, known as XMRV, in the blood of 68 out of 101 chronic fatigue syndrome patients. The same virus showed up in only 8 of 218 healthy people, they reported on Thursday in the journal Science. (Reuters)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a self-proclaimed consumer advocacy group, came out with a list of the “The Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated By the U.S. Food And Drug Administration,” and frankly, Caroline Smith DeWaal, who is the Director of Food Safety for the group and who serves on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Produce Safety and thus knows better, should be ashamed of herself.

We served as faculty along with Caroline when Bill Marler did his big Continuing Legal Education course, Who’s Minding the Store: The Current State of Food Safety and How It Can Be Improved, so we know her to be highly intelligent and well informed, which makes her willingness to publish this list, in this form, extremely disappointing. (Jim Prevor's Perishable Pundit)

LONDON--Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Scottish and Southern Energy PLC, Centrica PLC, National Grid PLC, Unilever PLC and Tesco PLC are among U.K. companies leading efforts in both performance and disclosure to tackle climate change, the Carbon Disclosure Project's 2009 report on the FTSE 350 said Thursday.

This year, more of the FTSE 350 companies responded to the CDP survey than in the past. However, only 35% of FTSE 350 companies disclosed emissions reductions targets compared with 51% of the world's largest 500 companies reporting targets to the CDP.

"With regulation such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment and the E.U. Emissions Trading Scheme making climate change an increasingly material issue, a greater number of U.K. companies need to be setting emissions reduction targets," CDP Chief Executive Paul Dickinson said. (Dow Jones)

WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic senators negotiating a possible compromise on climate change legislation insisted Tuesday that the measure must include provisions to boost nuclear power and expand offshore drilling.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has been huddling with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and other moderates on the issue, said linking nuclear power and offshore drilling with a cap-and-trade plan for limiting carbon dioxide emissions is “the winning formula” to pushing the measure through the Senate.

The leading climate change bill in the Senate, sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., gives scant attention to nuclear power and is silent on offshore drilling.

The Kerry-Boxer bill would force owners of oil refineries and power plants and others to comply with progressively tighter limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Polluters could stay within the limits by buying and trading an increasingly smaller pool of permits to release the emissions blamed for climate change. (Houston Chronicle)

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of green-energy company executives, including many from Silicon Valley, descended on Washington this week to urge members of Congress to pass a sweeping climate change bill, which they predicted would spur billions of dollars in clean-energy investments and ease the nation's dependence on foreign oil.

The entrepreneurs got a boost of encouragement from the White House on Wednesday at a forum featuring some of the Obama administration's top environmental officials, whose message was short and direct: We need your help. (Mercury News)

Europe is a great big sieve, leaking carbon, worries the European Commission. It has identified 146 holes that must be filled — heavy industry, businesses that use lots of fuel to make stuff that we need: metal, chemicals, glass and cement. It also includes textiles, aircraft, jewellery and toys.

Carbon leakage is making a nonsense of Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) — the mechanism that enables businesses to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide. Worse still, the ETS is exposing Europe’s corroded underbelly and the rot that is infecting huge tracts of industrial plant as companies shift their spending from an over-regulated Europe to places further east.

In Brussels, the competitive threat is viewed as carbon leakage — the import of goods from countries outside the ETS and from states that have not made a big commitment to reduce CO2 emissions.

The European Commission is missing the point. It is not carbon that is leaking, but investment. Billions of dollars of potential investment in heavy industry, notably refining and petrochemicals, is moving east in search of lower costs — and carbon trading is making the money drain flow faster. (Carl Mortished, The Times)

BRUSSELS - European Union countries are split over plans to introduce an EU-wide carbon tax on fuel, which could be proposed early next year.

The idea, which EU officials say has gained fresh momentum after losing impetus earlier this year, is supported by Sweden, which has its own carbon tax scheme, and France, which will implement a levy next February. But it is opposed by Britain.

The tax would add to the cost of fuel, encouraging fuel-efficient behavior and channeling funds to governments that might be used to ease the impact of climate change.

"We do not support the idea of a mandatory, pan-European carbon tax," a British diplomat said. "There needs to be clear justification for taking fiscal action at an EU, rather than national or local, level." (Reuters)

China, the world’s biggest polluter, said climate change is a challenge that it shares with the world and is a more formidable one than the global recession.

The world’s third-largest economy is committed to helping fight climate change and has taken “responsible” steps, Vice Minister of Science and Technology Liu Yanhua said at a conference in Hong Kong today, reiterating the stance of President Hu Jintao.

Industrialized economies such as the U.S. and developing countries led by China are deadlocked on how much rich nations should help poor ones deal with climate change and how much wealthy countries should cut emissions. President Hu said last month China will cut emissions in proportion to economic growth, without giving specific targets or goals. (Bloomberg)

A US demand that developing countries should set their entire emissions reducing actions under international scrutiny has been rejected as “non-negotiable” by the developing countries in Bangkok. (CoP15)

BANGKOK, Oct 7 - Senior G77 members walked out of a meeting during climate talks in the Thai capital saying they would not discuss a future without the Kyoto Protocol climate pact, delegates said on Wednesday.

South Africa's lead negotiator, China and OPEC countries left the informal session late on Tuesday that was discussing the shape of new climate agreement that would bind all nations in the fight against climate change.

Tensions have been rising during marathon U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that end on Friday over accusations rich nations are trying to kill off Kyoto, which binds 37 industrialised nations to emissions targets during its 2008-12 first commitment period.

The question negotiators are wrestling with is whether to extend Kyoto into a second commitment period from 2013, amend the pact or create a new one, a step many developing nations resist.

"The G77 is extremely concerned with the notion that there is a clear intention being shown that developed countries, who are party to the Kyoto Protocol, of not agreeing to new targets for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol," said Alf Wills, spokesman and lead negotiator for South Africa in the G77 of developing nations. (Reuters)

BANGKOK: The gridlock at Bangkok climate negotiations worsened on Tuesday with key G77 members, including India and China, indicating that the
"murder" of Kyoto Protocol could end up killing prospects of a deal at Copenhagen.

The Kyoto Protocol converts the principles of "common but differentiated responsibilities" from the mother UN convention into quantified emission reduction targets for the industrialised countries.

The EU, which till date had been goading the US to put up targets under Kyoto, instead began to sidestep the issue of its own emission reduction targets for the mid term. The EU spokesperson, speaking to the media, said the EU was still working on the formal offer to be made for Kyoto at the negotiations. EU had earlier made a contingent political offer of 30% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 but had not put it formally within the negotiations.

For the Indian delegation, despite the global hype, the Obama administration's deicion to follow the Bush regime and refuse to sign on to Kyoto did not come as a great surprise. But, then came the U-turn by EU — a grouping that has always sought to gain the "leadership" role at climate talks.

"The end of Kyoto Protocol is not acceptable to us. It is a legal pact with rights and duties for all member countries. A handful of countries wanting to abrogate their duties cannot kill it on their whim," said a senior Indian official at Bangkok.

The US has always demanded a new "instrument" under the treaty or a rewritten treaty which would not force binding and quantified emission reduction actions. They also want India, China, Brazil and South Africa to join the industrialised countries. (Times of India)

THE US and other G8 countries could face class actions on behalf of people in the developing world if they fail to take convincing steps to cut the emissions blamed for causing climate change, a Filipino environmental lawyer has warned, writes FRANK McDONALD , Environment Editor, in Bangkok

Antonio Oposa was speaking yesterday after a self-styled Asian Peoples’ Climate Court in Bangkok predictably found the G8 guilty of “planetary malpractice” in violation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Organised by the Tcktcktck campaign, which has a team of young T-shirted “negotiator trackers” at the climate talks here, the two-hour mock trial heard a case “filed” on behalf of children from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand.

One of the “witnesses”, a sherpa from Nepal, told presiding judge Amara Pongsapich, chairman of Thailand’s human rights commission, that ice in the Himalayas was melting at a much faster rate than 30 years ago, causing flash floods and severe drought. Afterwards, Mr Oposa said it was “only a matter of time” until properly constituted international tribunals began hearing class actions seeking reparation from “over-consuming countries” for damage caused by climate change in developing nations.

“A group of lawyers are actually thinking of it already,” he said, referring to a network called Global Legal Action on Climate Change. (Irish Times)

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network today notified the Department of the Interior of their intent to file suit against the agency for denying necessary protections under the Endangered Species Act for emperor and rockhopper penguins, despite clear scientific evidence that the species are threatened by global warming. The emperor penguin, the most ice-dependent of all penguin species, is threatened by the loss of its sea-ice habitat as well as declining food availability wrought by the warming ocean off Antarctica. Just last month, scientists analyzing NASA data announced that ice melt in western Antarctica has accelerated to profound levels and ice sheets are shrinking much faster than predicted. (Press Release)

A man who claims he was unfairly dismissed from his job because he believes in climate change is attempting to have his environmental views recognised under religious law. (The Guardian)

WASHINGTON--Legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. would make farming more expensive, but the costs pale in comparison to allowing climate change to go unchecked, according to a new study released Wednesday by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. (Dow Jones)

We discussed the ridiculous “planned recession” strategy. Well, without using that term, the Natural Resources Defense Council appears to be embracing the concept.

So we just need to make this recession even worse? And all we have to do is pass cap and trade? That truly would be a Hell of a deal for working (and formerly working) Americans. (Chilling Effect)

The Richard A. Kerr article in the journal Science (2nd October 2009) entitled ‘What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit’ is the latest attempt to explain why computer models and the proponents of AGW didn’t predict 10 years of non-warming. The article summary states: “The blogosphere has been having a field day with global warming’s apparent decade-long stagnation. But climatologists are finding that although global warming has indeed paused, it is likely to return with a vengeance within a few years.”

“Climate researchers are beginning to answer back in their preferred venue, the peer-reviewed literature,” says Kerr. Really? None of these researchers predicted a decade of non-warming, instead they and their computer models predicted more warming, not less. Indeed, it has taken until quite recently for them to concede that the world has actually stopped warming. Now we have non-warming, the ‘feather-light’ researchers are predicting more non-warming, some up to another decade or two, to be followed by yet more warming in order to keep the climate scare alive. And how do you ‘peer review’ an unverifiable prediction?

Kerr continues: “So contrarian bloggers are right: There’s been no increase in greenhouse warming lately. That result came as no surprise to Knight and his colleagues or, for that matter, to most climate scientists.”

Say what!? Can someone point me to a prediction of a decade of non-warming before the temperature ’stagnation’ occurred? Can Kerr?

Kyle Swanson was certainly surprised by the (unexplained) missing 0.2C of warming in the 21st century.

Kerr goes on to point out that warming pauses of up to 15 years occur in climate model simulations, but they are rare. So, if we exceed a period of another 5 years of non-warming, can we assume that the computer modeled global warming scare is over, or will models be tweaked some more in order to play ‘catch up’ with climate reality?

Climate modeler David Rind is quoted in the article as saying, “Our prediction is that if past is prologue, the solar component will turn around and lead to rapid warming in the next 5 years.”

What? Climate models and the global warming scare to be saved by the Sun, not CO2! (CRN)

A noted geologist who coauthored the New York Times bestseller Sugar Busters has turned his attention to convincing Congress that carbon dioxide emissions are good for Earth and don't cause global warming. Leighton Steward is on Capitol Hill this week armed with studies and his book Fire, Ice and Paradise in a bid to show senators working on the energy bill that the carbon dioxide cap-and-trade scheme could actually hurt the environment by reducing CO2 levels.

"I'm trying to kill the whole thing," he says. "We are tilting at windmills." He is meeting with several GOP lawmakers and has plans to meet with some Democrats later this week.

Much of the global warming debate has focused on reducing CO2 emissions because it is thought that the greenhouse gas produced mostly from fossil fuels is warming the planet. But Steward, who once believed CO2 caused global warming, is trying to fight that with a mountain of studies and scientific evidence that suggest CO2 is not the cause for warming. What's more, he says CO2 levels are so low that more, not less, is needed to sustain and expand plant growth.

Trying to debunk theories that higher CO2 levels cause warming, he cites studies that show CO2 levels following temperature spikes, prompting him to back other scientists who say that global warming is caused by solar activity. (Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers)

YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.424 +0.554 +0.295 +0.516

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly in September 2009 rebounded again, from +0.23 deg. C in August to +0.42 deg. C in September. The tropics and Northern Hemisphere continue to dominate the signal.

NOTE: For those who are monitoring the daily progress of global-average temperatures here, we are still working on switching from NOAA-15 to Aqua AMSU, which will provide more accurate tracking on a daily basis. We will be including both our lower troposphere (LT) and mid-tropospheric (MT) pre-processing of the data. We have added the global sea surface temperature anomalies from the AMSR-E instrument on board the NASA Aqua satellite, computed from files at Remote Sensing Systems, although we are still not done adjusting the display range of those data. (Roy W. Spencer)

There is a remarkably naive article in a recent article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The article is

”Predictions of regional climate change for the next few decades are characterized by high uncertainty, but this uncertainty is potentially reducible through investments in climate science.”

“Faced by the realities of a changing climate, decision makers in a wide variety of organizations are increasingly seeking quantitative predictions of regional and local climate. An important issue for these decision makers, and for organizations that fund climate research, is what is the potential for climate science to deliver improvements—especially reductions in uncertainty—in such predictions? Uncertainty in climate predictions arises from three distinct sources: internal variability, model uncertainty, and scenario uncertainty. Using data from a suite of climate models, we separate and quantify these sources. For predictions of changes in surface air temperature on decadal timescales and regional spatial scales, we show that uncertainty for the next few decades is dominated by sources (model uncertainty and internal variability) that are potentially reducible through progress in climate science. Furthermore, we find that model uncertainty is of greater importance than internal variability.

Our findings have implications for managing adaptation to a changing climate. Because the costs of adaptation are very large, and greater uncertainty about future climate is likely to be associated with more expensive adaptation, reducing uncertainty in climate predictions is potentially of enormous economic value. We highlight the need for much more work to compare (a) the cost of various degrees of adaptation, given current levels of uncertainty and (b) the cost of new investments in climate science to reduce current levels of uncertainty. Our study also highlights the importance of targeting climate science investments on the most promising opportunities to reduce prediction uncertainty.”

There is quite a few problems with this paper, including the claim that “decision makers in a wide variety of organizations are increasingly seeking quantitative predictions of regional and local climate.” However, I want to focus on just one fundamental error in the paper, which, unfortunately, permeates this paper as well as much of the presentations of climate in the media and even in the IPCC and CCSP reports. This error is illustrated by the figure below from their paper.

Fig. 3. The relative importance of each source of uncertainty in decadal mean surface air temperature predictions is shown by the fractional uncertainty (the 90% confidence level divided by the mean prediction), for the global mean, relative to the warming since the year 2000 (i.e., a lead of zero years). The dashed lines indicate reductions in internal variability, and hence total uncertainty, that may be possible through proper initialization of the predictions through assimilation of ocean observations (Smith et al. 2007).

The authors are making the scientifically unsupported claim that there is less uncertainty in predicting the global average surface temperature several decades from now, as compared with shorter time forecasts of this metric. That is, unlike weather forecasts which deteriorate in skill with time, they are concluding that after a few years of less accurate skill, climate prediction starts to increase after a couple of decades.

There is no scientific basis for this claim of the improvement in model prediction skill and reduction in internal variability of any climate metric for time periods of several decades into the future.

“The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm.”

For the authors’ claims to improve regional skill decades into the future to be considered credible [which they claim decision makers need] the models must be able to forecast such temporal variations of drought as shown in the Figure below from a July 25 2008 post.

Figure caption from Meko et al 2008: Time series plot of 25-year running mean of reconstructed flows of the Colorado River at Lee Ferry . Flows are plotted as percentage of the 1906–2004 mean of observed naturalflows (18.53 billion cubic meters, or 15.03 million acre-ft). Confidence intervalderived from 0.10 and 0.90 probability points of ensemble of 1000 noise-added reconstructions. Horizontal dashed line is lowest25-year running mean of observed flows (1953–1977). [the Colorado River, of course, is a major source of water for much of the southwest United States].

Until the authors, and others such as the IPCC, can show such skill, the claims of predicitve skill decades into the future that is better than predictive skill in the coming few years [which is currently no better than the climate averages], their work should be treated as wishful thinking. This paper should never have passed peer reviewed. (Climate Science)

HOUSTON -- Cemex Inc. said Wednesday it has been selected by the Department of Energy to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions at one of its U.S. cement plants.

Cemex said it will work with RTI International, a North Carolina-based nonprofit research institute, and others to design a dry sorbent CO2 capture and compression system; a pipeline, if necessary; and an injection station. (Associated Press)

It is increasingly evident that several countries, including India, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, have very recently expressed their intent to promote the generation of nuclear power by saying that is how we can avoid global warming or that it is a "green" generator. Obama has to wait until he has taken care of a few other urgent items that he wants to promote before bringing up this controversial issue, but his administration has already announced that CO2 is "unhealthy" and nuclear power is "green".

The present situation reminds me of the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher tried to promote the development of nuclear power in the UK by talking about a global warming disaster to the public. Without Thatcher's support, it is unlikely that the IPCC would have been established.

It is quite clear now that the science of climate change is being exploited for the promotion of nuclear power. The more serious the suggested disasters and catastrophes of global warming can be made to appear, the better it is for promoting nuclear power. The IPCC is carrying this dubious banner. Eventually, Obama will ask the citizens of the US whether they want to maintain their present standard of living (driving electric cars) or reduce it to the level of 1910 (not being able to drive electric cars) in order to avoid the fictitious global warming disaster. Fictitious or not, we do not have to wait for their answer to know what the response will be.

This is the second time in the history of science that science is being exploited to such a large extent for major political purposes; the first one was the production of nuclear bombs. I hope that the scientists associated with the IPCC will wake up to this fact and that genuine climatology will progress without interference from the IPCC.

Regards, Syun

-- Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Founding Director International Arctic Research Center
P.O. Box 757340 Fairbanks, AK 99775-7340 USA
e-mail: sakasofu@iarc.uaf.edu
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/ (via CCNet)

Nuclear power: low-carbon, secure and proven

When sceptics or agnostics raise questions about the current received wisdom on climate change, one of the more reasonable responses is to suggest that, since the projected consequences could be so catastrophic, precautionary action would surely be a sensible route to take. Even people not convinced by the IPCC arguments might think that some kind of insurance against a possibility of catastrophe would be justified.

The problem is that many of the favoured policy prescriptions are both drastic and unproven. Most plans for reductions in carbon intensity focus on increased use of renewable power, in particular wind, since this requires a lower subsidy than alternatives. But, as has been pointed out many times before, wind power is essentially erratic and output varies in unpredictable ways from day to day, hour to hour and even minute to minute. This can cause problems for the distribution grid, which must be kept balanced at all times, but significant amounts of wind power can be managed.

A bigger problem is that the output is essentially uncontrollable, short of shutting turbines down (as indeed has to be done to prevent damage when the wind speed is too high). Not only does a source of reserve power have to be on standby to meet demand at some times, but at others there can be a danger of the grid being swamped by excess power. An excellent study of this situation in Denmark (Wind Energy – the case of Denmark, written by Hugh Sharman and Henrik Meyer, published by the CEPOS think tank) – which has for many years been one of the leading generators of wind power – illustrates the consequences in quantitative terms. (Scientific Alliance)

Europe risks falling behind the US and Asia unless it persuades the private sector to invest €50bn (£46bn) in researching clean energy technologies over the next decade, say EU regulators. (Daily Telegraph)

The European Commission has proposed investing an additional €50 billion into a new research and development programme for low-carbon energy over the next decade, ramping up annual investments from the current €3 billion to €8 billion annually.

The proposal lays out funding goals in six sectors - wind, solar, nuclear, bio-energy, electricity grids and carbon capture and storage, while creating a new "Smart Cities Initiative" focusing on urban energy efficiency. Solar came out on top with €16 billion, followed by CCS at €13 billion. For a quick summary of investments, check Reuters.

The plan sounds good but is missing one thing: Money. The commission readily acknowledges that it can't foot the entire bill itself, meaning "public and private sectors at national and EU level" will need to step up to make it a reality. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports EU Commissioner Janez Potocnik saying that most of the money will need to come from the private sector.

Response to the plan has generally been positive, despite some questions about priorities. The European Wind Energy Association wonders why CCS and nuclear received more money than wind, which is ready to go. Along similar lines, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association suggests the commission would be wise to put more resources into clean energy deployment.

Policymakers, researchers and business representatives will discuss the proposal later this month at the European Energy Technology Summit in Stockholm. (The Great Bewildered)

The German utility giant was competing with Scottish Power and RWE npower for about £1bn of funding from the Government to fit the plant with the UK’s first carbon capture and storage technology.

Its decision not to go ahead with the investment as planned will fuel speculation that it was not the project chosen by the Government, which has yet to publish its decision.

E.ON refused to comment on the Government funding, claiming that the delay was due to lower demand for electricity because of the recession. “As a group, we remain committed to the development of cleaner coal and carbon capture and storage,” a spokesman said.

Carbon capture and storage technology has not yet been proven to work on a large industrial scale, but power companies hope that it will substantially reduce the emissions of coal stations.

It has drawn criticism from environmental groups, which say that new coal-fired stations should not be built at all. (Daily Telegraph)

The world could start to run out of oil in the next ten years, sparking soaring energy prices and a rush for even more polluting fossil fuels, an influential new study by the UK Energy Research Council has warned. (Daily Telegraph)

The world needs to increase its natural gas production by 70 percent in order to meet future demand. Gas is a climate friendly complementary to renewables, states the International Gas Union (CoP15)

A world-first experiment to try and reduce energy use for the day on the Isles of Scilly was foiled after a turn in the weather caused participants to use more electricity. (Daily Telegraph)

The U.S. sustainability standard currently requires ethanol production to emit at least 20% less CO₂ than the gasoline it is assumed to replace. In a new study, authors Harry de Gorter and David R. Just argue that sustainability standards for ethanol are, by definition, illogical and ineffective. Moreover, say de Gorter and Just, those standards divert attention from the contradictions and inefficiencies of ethanol import tariffs, tax credits, mandates, and subsidies, all of which exist whether ethanol is sustainable or not. (Cato at liberty)

For anyone who missed it, we witnessed in recent weeks one of the broadest misuses of congressional power in recent history.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and his colleague Bart Stupak are openly engaged in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against 52 of America's largest health insurance providers.

They seek nothing less than to silence all voices opposed to their government-run health care proposals.

Just days after AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans), the industry trade group for American health insurers, sent Waxman a letter voicing opposition to many components of his proposed health care overhaul, he responded with his own version of a political shock-and-awe campaign, a frightening example of raw intimidation.

On Aug. 17, 52 insurers received a letter from Waxman and Stupak demanding they provide intricate details on executive and employee compensation, release the names of all members of their boards of directors and hand over detailed lists of expenses for all off-site meetings and retreats over the past five years.

It does not take a member of Congress to notice that this information is irrelevant to the health care debate. The only possible purpose behind these requests is to force private insurers to back down now — lest they be confronted by the full wrath of congressional subpoenas followed by lengthy, expensive and pointless hearings that amount to political witch hunts.

What's next? Perhaps Waxman and Stupak would also like detailed personal information on any employees who are known or suspected communists. It all smacks of the ugly methods employed by Sen. Joe McCarthy more than a half-century ago. (Steve Forbes, IBD)

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to conduct a new study about the potential health risks of atrazine, a widely used weedkiller that recent research suggests may be more dangerous to humans than previously thought. (NYT)

In the 1856 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the idea that Africans and their descendants in the United States could be "entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens." To emphasize how absurd that notion was, Chief Justice Roger Taney noted that, among other things, those "privileges and immunities" would allow members of "the unhappy black race" to "keep and carry arms wherever they went."

The 14th Amendment, approved in the wake of the Civil War, repudiated Taney's view of the Constitution, declaring that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens," who include "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." Just four years after the amendment was ratified, however, the Supreme Court interpreted the Privileges or Immunities Clause so narrowly that a dissenting justice said it had been transformed into a "vain and idle enactment." The Court now has a chance to rectify that mistake -- fittingly enough, in a case involving the right to arms. (Jacob Sullum, Townhall)

Obesity is a complex issue, and addressing it is important for all Americans. We at the Coca-Cola company are committed to working with government and health organizations to implement effective solutions to address this problem.

But a number of public-health advocates have already come up with what they think is the solution: heavy taxes on some routine foods and beverages that they have decided are high in calories. The taxes, the advocates acknowledge, are intended to limit consumption of targeted foods and help you to accept the diet that they have determined is best.

In cities and states across America—and even at the federal level—this idea is getting increased attention despite its regressive nature and inherent illogic.

While it is true that since the 1970s Americans have increased their average caloric intake by 12%, they also have become more sedentary. According to the National Center for Health Statistics 2008 Chartbook, 39% of adults in the U.S. are not engaging in leisure physical activity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that 60% of Americans are not regularly active and 25% of Americans are not active at all. The average American spends the equivalent of 60 days a year in front of a television, according to a 2008 A.C. Nielsen study. This same research data show that the average time spent playing video games in the U.S. went up by 25% during the last four years.

If we're genuinely interested in curbing obesity, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and acknowledge that it's not just about calories in. It's also about calories out. (Muhtar Kent, WSJ)

Today’s Washington Post features a full-page ad urging the Senate to adopt carbon caps this year — ironically, an ad that may signal the demise of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), the coalition of rentseeking big businesses and socialist activist groups lobbying for global warming regulation.

The ad is signed by 22 companies and 6 green groups.

While 15 of the ad’s signatories are USCAP members (Boston Scientific, Dow, Duke, Dupont, Environmental Defense, Exelon, GE, Johnson & Johnson, NRDC, Nature Conservancy, NRG energy, Pew Center, PG&E PNM Resources, Rio Tinto, and Word Resources Institute), 15 other USCAP members didn’t endorse the ad (AES, Alcoa, Alston, BP America, Caterpillar, Chrysler, ConocoPhillips, Deere, Ford, FPL, GM, Pepsico, Shell & Siemens).

It’s hard to believe that the ad wasn’t shopped to all USCAP members — who could have endorsed it at no cost. The ad states,

“Or supported” means that some signatories were not charged to participate.

It’s not surprising that Caterpillar and ConocoPhillips didn’t endorse the ad since they opposed Waxman-Markey, albeit at the last moment. But it is notable, for example, that natural gas producer BP America and free-allowance-seeking FPL didn’t sign on.

While some companies are leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate, the USCAP den of thieves and scoundrels may be experiencing it’s own difficulties. (Green Hell)

WASHINGTON--The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday appeared to take a jab at Apple Inc. and Chief Executive Steve Jobs for defecting from the business organization in a dispute over climate-change policy.

"It is unfortunate that your company didn't take the time to understand the Chamber's position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach to climate change," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Tom Donohue wrote in a letter to the Apple chief executive. He said that the business group is committed to the environment but also to preserving the competitiveness of American business.

The largest U.S. trade association is mounting a public campaign to explain its position following a series of high-profile defections. In recent weeks, Nike Inc., PG&E Corp. and Exelon Corp. are among those who have parted ways with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to climate legislation in the U.S. Congress.

"While we do support legislation to address climate change, we oppose legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill that numerous studies show will cause Americans to lose their jobs and shift greenhouse gas emissions overseas, negating potential climate benefits," Donohue wrote. He said that the business group was focused on innovation and technology to combat climate change.

"It is a shame that Apple will not be part of our efforts," he wrote.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment. (Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones)

You would think that Harvard would lend its name carefully, and especially so when its banner is used to attack groups like the Chamber of Commerce. Alas, no: the school’s business publishing site has produced a book of (putrid) green claptrap and its author, Andrew Winston, is using his blog there to attack the Chamber.

Winston’s argument appears to boil down to this: 1) some companies looking to cash in on global warming fears are angry that the Chamber is opposing efforts like cap and trade and seeking to look at the evidence used by the Environmental Protection Agency to try to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant and 2) “climate legislation will help our nation’s businesses stay competitive on the global stage.”

What a joke. An entire attack on an institution based on a gold rush for rent seeking. Congratulations, Harvard, this is the kind of material running under your banner. (The Chilling Effect)

Democrats’ environmental proposals are an attack on capitalism. That is a fact. But don’t take my word for it. Ask John Kerry.

As often happens when disingenuous people let slip the truth, Kerry admitted in no uncertain terms the other day that he sees economic prosperity as the enemy of the environment, and left no mystery as to which side he takes.

Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) have proposed a new draft for a cap-and-trade bill with exceedingly stringent restrictions on carbon emissions. During a hearing on the bill , Kerry made the astounding statement that the recession has been the environment’s best friend, and he couldn’t be happier about it:

What did Kerry just unwittingly admit? He admitted that cap-and-trade advocates and like-minded global warming believers see economic prosperity as a huge source of the supposed problem. That’s why they’re proposing the perfect solution – from their perspective – in the form of a massive tax increase directly on industry.

Nothing discourages productive economic activity like confiscatory taxes on said activity. The same people who lament the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States now seek to multiply these losses many times over by making it economically impossible for manufacturers to operate. (Dan Calabrese, North Star National)

Man-made greenhouse gas emissions will drop 3% in 2009 largely because of the worldwide financial crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today.

Three-quarters of the reduction has been the result of less industrial activity, with the rest coming from countries turning to renewable energy and nuclear power.

But the world's premier energy analysts calculated that to avoid dangerous climate change, countries around the world will have to spend $400bn a year building more than 350 new nuclear plants and 350,000 wind turbines in the next 20 years. They also estimate that by 2020, three-fifths of cars will need to use alternatives to the traditional internal combustion engine. The findings came in a special extract of the IEA's forthcoming annual world energy outlook report, published at the UN climate talks in Bangkok. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 - Global warming legislation, already facing difficult odds in the U.S. Senate, looks even tougher to achieve because key lawmakers fear taking big steps on the environment when the economy is still shedding jobs.

"I think standing in a deep economic hole is a difficult time to do big policy things that cause uncertainty," said Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan.

Dorgan, who is up for re-election next year, is one of a few dozen undecided senators who will be courted by Democratic leaders seeking support for a bill to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, which are blamed for climate change. (Reuters)

DEZHOU, China -- A guide shows off row after row of gleaming, black, chrome-coated tubes used in the millions of solar thermal water heaters Himin Solar Energy Group produces each year.

The corporate building alone saves 1 million kilowatt-hours by using solar heating, the guide informs his group. But when he is asked how many tons of carbon dioxide emissions the average solar water heater saves, silence fills the hall.

"Normally, in China, we just calculate energy efficiency," the guide offers finally. "There's no calculation of carbon dioxide."

About 1,200 miles to the south, in the economic boomtown of Shenzhen, a similar scenario unfolds. Top officials at the Shenzhen LianChuang Energy Conservation Equipment Co. sit around a conference table, proudly displaying light-emitting diode (LED) lighting that can save 40 to 60 percent of electricity. Across the room, they point to mechanisms that adjust the voltage of factory machine tools and other power equipment, rattling off wattages conserved and dollars saved for their clients.

Yet as the topic turns to the greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere, the businessmen in short-sleeved button-down shirts shift in their swivel chairs and glance at one another.

"There's a shortage of electricity in China. We need to save energy," General Manager Kenny Kong says. Asked specifically about climate change, he says, "Personally, I would like to promote energy efficiency products to every corner. The sky over China will be much more blue in the future."

From shuttering inefficient factories to investing in LED lighting, energy efficiency is serious business throughout China. But in boardroom after boardroom, the work seems almost completely divorced from the business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (ClimateWire)

LONDON -- An investment of $10 trillion in renewable energy and other carbon-abatement technology will be necessary over the next two decades to limit the rise in the Earth's temperature, the International Energy Agency warns in a new report.

The IEA, energy adviser to the world's richest nations, urges more-aggressive reductions in carbon emissions than what many nations are currently planning. In the report, to be released Tuesday, the IEA calls for investment -- in clean-energy initiatives such as solar power, new nuclear plants and other measures -- of $500 billion a year over the next 20 years.

That is 37% more investment than what the IEA estimated was necessary just a year ago. Some analysts put the current level of investment in clean energy at around $100 billion a year.

The additional investment called for could be particularly expensive for consumers in developed nations such as Germany and the U.S., which would likely face higher costs to fill up their vehicles and keep their lights on.

The IEA also says sales of vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine will need to fall from around 95% of the world's total purchases today to 40% in 2030; electric and hybrid vehicles would need to account for the majority of new vehicle sales over the next 20 years.

The IEA's projections, though sometimes seen as overly ambitious, are generally regarded as relevant guideposts for the energy industry. (WSJ)

Are you getting sick of all the argument about an emissions trading scheme? Don't. It's hardly started.

The scheme is not due to begin until 2011. The Government will have targets for reducing emissions by 2020 and 2050, when people will still be arguing about this.

There will be an exchange (like a stock exchange) to buy and sell permits and a derivatives market to allow investors to hedge. There will be a daily carbon price. And price movements in this new commodity will govern electricity prices and reach into daily life much more than oil and petrol rises.

The Government first looked at a scheme in 2003. I know because I took a proposal to cabinet. Rightly, it was referred off for more consideration. Then there was the Shergold scheme of 2007, the Garnaut scheme of last year, a green paper, a white paper, the government model and changes since.

So all of these proposals were to the same effect, right? Not a bit. Some proposals would have a minor effect on jobs and prices, some would have a catastrophic effect.

It's not what you call it that counts (Labor calls it a carbon pollution reduction scheme); in the case of an ETS, "oils ain't oils". What matters is the detail and, I am afraid, that is mind-numbingly boring. (Peter Costello, SMH)

MALCOLM TURNBULL is trying to broker a consensus on climate change before Parliament resumes and will lead extraordinary meetings of the shadow ministry and the party room on the Sunday after next.

As Coalition MPs were alerted yesterday to change their travel plans before the October 19 resumption of Parliament, the Liberal Party leadership was reserving its right to filibuster the Government's emissions trading scheme legislation in November and delay a vote until after Christmas.

Any such tactic would need the support of one of the Senate independents - and yesterday both Nick Xenophon and the Family First senator Steve Fielding supported the idea.

Senator Fielding told the Herald he would endorse a delay to ensure there was no final vote until next year, after the Copenhagen conference in December where other nations would state their intentions. ''I want the vote on the ETS after Copenhagen and I will do whatever I can to make sure that it was after Copenhagen,'' he said. (SMH)

The US has made the first move to bridge the yawning gulf separating rich and developing countries on the money needed to secure a successful climate change deal at crucial UN talks in Copenhagen this December.

Although US negotiators have not made any specific promises on finance at talks currently under way in Bangkok, the US has accepted the principle of a single independent fund to be administered at least in part by the UN.

This is a long way from what developing countries want - firm pledges of large sums of money to allow poor countries to buy technologies to help them develop cleanly and to adapt to climate change. But because talks have been frozen on the issue for months, the movement in the US position is being seen as a positive step.

Until now, America, backed by Britain, has proposed that any money paid should be channelled through existing organisations like the World Bank. In addition it has insisted that contributions by rich countries should be voluntary. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

AUSTRALIA has made its first formal proposal on what will be the world's biggest financing project - helping developing countries pay for climate change programs.

But the Australian submission, which requires poorer nations to list all the programs they want funded, has sparked discontent from developing countries who want to know how much the world is prepared to commit to global financing.

Australia, with most of the developed world, has yet to say how much it is prepared to commit to a financing program, which is crucial to getting a strong international climate change agreement at talks in Copenhagen in December. Last month the World Bank estimated that by 2030 the world would have to spend $550 billion a year on these financing mechanisms.

Australia's submission on climate change financing was made at United Nations climate change negotiations in Bangkok that end this week. In a speech to the UN, the climate change negotiator Jane Wilkinson said Australia wanted a ''matching mechanism'' so money could be matched to climate change programs. (SMH)

India has categorically stated that they will not commit to limit emissions, and in that they have the support of the chairman of the "policy neutral" IPCC:

By and large, even in Oklahoma, the debate over how to tackle climate change boils down to a simple question: How much is this going to cost?

That’s been true of the scrum all year in Congress, which has turned into dueling banjos of competing studies arguing that climate legislation will either cost a “postage stamp a day” or kneecap the entire U.S. economy.

That’s true globally, as well—much of the back and forth ahead of the big Copenhagen summit hinges on how much money poor countries want and how much the West is willing to fork over.

Since it’s all about cost, it’s about time to update the economics of climate change the same way new research has updated the science of climate change. That’s the thinking behind “The Economics of 350,” a new study put out by Economics for Equity and the Environment, a group of climate economists put together by Ecotrust. It aims to put a price tag on the newly-fashionable goal of keeping global carbon-dioxide concentrations at 350 parts per million, a really ambitious target.

The upshot? The world can indeed reach that target at a cost of between 1% and 3% of gross domestic product.

“It’s the cost of doing nothing that’s going up,” says Frank Ackerman, an economist at the Stockholm Environment Institute at Tufts University and lead author of the report. “There are costs [to tackling climate change], but nobody is going to be living in a tent without electricity.” (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

'Prof. Schneider has withdrawn any permission for you to use his name, likeness or interview'

Stanford University has banned a skeptical documentary film from airing a climate change interview with one of its prominent warming activist professors, Stephen Schneider. After legal threats from Stanford University -- apparently on behalf of Prof. Schneider -- the documentary filmmakers were forced to use a blank screen and an actor had to read the transcript of Schneider's already taped but legally banned climate interview. The skeptical global warming documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong”, set for its international premier on October 18, 2009, interviewed Schneider about his flip-flop from a coming ice age proponent in the 1970s to his current advocacy of man-made global warming fears. Schneider is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University.

Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer told Climate Depot: “Lawyers for Stanford University have tried to ban our documentary from reporting on how one of their professors previously predicted an imminent ice-age, but is now a leading global warming advocate.”

To watch the “banned” video excerpt from “Not Evil Just Wrong” of an actor portraying Schneider's interview click here. (Marc Morano, Climate Depot)

Peter Foster: Not ‘Evil’, just ‘Stupid’ - The film Not Evil Just Wrong is far too politically incorrect to be feted in Hollywood or the politicos. This is the last movie they want anybody seeing

Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer pulled a Michael Moore at the recent New York “eco-premiere” of the environmental disaster movie The Age of Stupid. The film suggests that flying is one of the worst things you can do to the planet, so Mr. McAleer, microphone in hand, started asking those coming down the recycled green carpet how they’d travelled to the Big Show. Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, pronounced, “you know sometimes, sometimes people have to fly to make a stand in order to get peoples’ attention for these issues.” The film’s director, Franny Armstrong, evaded the question and claimed that the film had only generated the emissions of four average Americans over a year. Mr. McAleer persisted and soon found himself hustled outside the green velvet rope, insisting “I only want to ask celebrities difficult questions.”

Some hope.

Mr. McAleer was trying to drum up a little publicity for his own, very different, film, Not Evil Just Wrong, which has its world premiere on October 18. Only it won’t be at the World Financial Center. It will take place in homes, on campuses, and at privately-organized screenings across North America. (You can be part of the event by ordering a package complete with DVD, poster, and swatch of red carpet from www.noteviljustwrong.com.

Mr. McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney — who also made Mine Your Own Business, a documentary that fingered anti-development radicals and “the dark side of environmentalism” — have inevitably not attracted the kind of attention lavished on The Age of Stupid, which features a lone archivist looking back from a devastated world in the year 2055 and wondering how we could have allowed it all to go so terribly, terribly wrong.

It is surely worth noting that those who claim that there is “consensus” on global warming science being “settled” seem to imagine that this gives them licence to then compete with each other in producing eco-porn that goes far beyond anything in the very worst scenarios peddled by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Shouldn’t warmists stick to the script before they roll the carbon credits? (Peter Foster, Financial Post)

Global Warming and Uncertainty – What is the appropriate response?

On October 2 the Economic Society, unlike a recent report by the ABC, arranged a two-sided presentation on Global Warming and Uncertainty – What is the appropriate response? The advocates for what turned out to be markedly opposing views were Des Moore, the former Deputy Secretary of the Federal Treasury and Harry Clarke, Professor of Economics at La Trobe University. (Tom Quirk, Quadrant)

There’s been a lot said lately about the national-security implications of climate change, in the form of water shortages, mass migration, and unstable governments.

But in the view of at least one U.S. senator—Republican John Barrasso of Wyoming–those potential impacts don’t justify a “climate change center” like the one that the Central Intelligence Agency recently launched.

Mr. Barrasso–an outspoken opponent of the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases–is trying to amend a huge defense-related spending bill to prohibit the CIA from using any money to fund its Center on Climate Change and National Security, which the agency launched on Sept. 25. Mr. Barrasso says the center risks stretching the CIA too thin and that existing federal agencies charged with monitoring climactic changes can supply the CIA with whatever information it needs.

“Will someone sitting in a dark room watching satellite video of northern Afghanistan now be sitting in a dark room watching polar ice caps?,” Mr. Barrasso said Tuesday in a statement. He added that the agency should be combating terrorists, not spying on sea lions.” (WSJ)

THIS mad global warming scare could at last be over. And all thanks to just 10 trees in Siberia.

Unreported in any newspaper here - and how typical that is - is a startling challenge to the central claim underpinning this greatest scare of our lifetime.

That claim is that not for 1000 years and more has it been this hot - and, of course, it’s all man’s fault.

So unprecedented is this heat said to be, and so dangerous, that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it threatens to destroy the ancient Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu.

Never mind that the world has cooled, not warmed, these past eight years. Never mind that the predictions of doom by professional alarmists such as Al Gore have also gone bung. Total hurricane energy has fallen, not risen. Sea ice has increased, not decreased. Arctic ice has grown these past two years, not shrunk.

In the face of all this counter-evidence, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong responds that even so: “What we do know is that 11 of the hottest years in history have been in the last 12 (years).”

But Wong’s never-hotter claim is based on the “hockey stick” developed by a tight group of about 50 climate scientists, mostly in Britain and the United States. (Andrew Bolt)

High street stores such as Marks & Spencer would offer home energy efficiency packages and more food will be sourced locally as part of Tory plans to help the environment. (Daily Telegraph)

Texas environmentalists sued Tuesday to force the state to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants, which the Obama administration is preparing to do on a national scale.

The lawsuit, filed by Public Citizen in Travis County District Court, cites legal arguments similar to those that prevailed in a lawsuit by 12 states, not including Texas, against the Bush administration. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the federal Clean Air Act required the EPA to consider controlling CO2 as a pollutant.

The Texas lawsuit is believed to be the broadest effort so far to require a state to control CO2 through the permits it grants for power plants, refineries, factories and other industrial facilities. It also comes as Congress considers unprecedented legislation to regulate the United States' human-made greenhouse gases, and as world leaders prepare for a major climate conference in Copenhagen in December. (Dallas Morning News)

SACRAMENTO — If elected governor next year, Republican Meg Whitman vows to suspend California's landmark initiative against global warming on her first day in office.

“As governor, I actually would place a moratorium on AB 32 by executive order until we fully understand the law's impact on our economy,” said Whitman, referring to the state law requiring a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

Carrying out her campaign promise may prove challenging for the former eBay chief executive officer, or for any governor convinced that potentially costly directives to control emissions will prolong the state's economic troubles.

Such a moratorium likely would be taken to court, particularly because a governor would be making a judgment call based on an ambiguous paragraph buried deep in the measure, say critics of her proposal. (Union-Tribune)

The Alliance of Small Island States is losing faith in a climate agreement in Copenhagen that will save 500,000 from moving from their homes. (CoP15)

A recently published (serious) book about future catastrophes appears to confirm that there is nothing special about allegedly upcoming climate change disasters: to the contrary, there are too many uncertainties to put those on equal standing with, for example, the spread of new diseases.

If that is true, the oft-repeated “precautionary principle” argument (by AGW alarmists) will lose any sense it might have ever had.

The following is from the New York Review of Books, Sep 24, 2009. The reviewer is Joel E. Cohen, the book is Global “Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years” by Vaclav Smil, “a versatile geographer at the University of Manitoba” that “provides a broad, factual vision of the “major factors that will shape the global future“:

Smil appears to be an AGW Believer of the Pielke Jr/Lomborg variety: that is, not fundamentalist enough to miss the fact that climate change scenarios are simply “elaborate speculations“. And the possibility of AGW just as one of many other problems. (OmniClimate)

The 'Coastland Map' produced by scientists from Durham University and published in the Journal GSA Today, charts the post Ice-Age tilt of the UK and Ireland and current relative sea-level changes. According to the map, the sinking effect in the south could add between 10 and 33 per cent to the projected sea-level rises caused by global warming over the next century. *

The projections are less than previous estimations for subsidence and could help local authorities to save money on sea and flood defences through the targeting of resources to areas where sea level rises will be greatest. The data and model could also be used in planning for the managed retreat of threatened coastal communities.

Since the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, land and sea-levels around the UK coastline have changed in response to the retreat of the ice sheets. As the ice melted, the release of this enormous weight resulted in the landmass slowly tilting back up in the north or down in the south, a process called isostatic adjustment.

These rises and falls come on top of any changes in sea-level caused by global warming. In Scotland, the rise of much of the coastline will offset some of the predicted rises in sea-level due to climate change. (Science blog)

We have heard the dire predictions from many different sources. Magazine articles have warned that in the coming years the Earth will warm rapidly. Television shows portray dramatic and alarming images of rising sea levels and animal extinctions. Network news programs report the latest scary forecasts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These predictions are said to be undeniable and are believed by most climate scientists. Studies from major colleges and universities say burning of fossil fuels will produce “tipping points” and after reaching these points there will be no turning back the heat. Coastal cities will be flooded. Polar bears will drown or starve and will soon be gone. Deserts will spread and cover vast areas of farm land. Fires will burn out of control and the Amazon rainforest will burn to a crisp. Hurricanes will explode with unheard of devastation. Climate Armageddon will mean the end of our world as we know it.

This all sounds pretty scary. What if you’re in the business of energy? What effects will global warming have on the industry 5, 10, 15 to 20 years from now? The predictions of future climate are made by computer models. A computer model is made of line after line of computer code that is written in a way to attempt to simulate what the real climate of the Earth will be in the future. Information about what the real atmosphere is doing is fed to the model and the model attempts to predict the Earth’s climate. These predictions are saying that the Earth’s average temperature will rise 6 to 12 degrees by the year 2100. If we take an average of an 8 degree rise by 2100 we come up with an increase of 1 degree every 10 years for the next 90 years. But is this actually happening or going to happen? Let’s see how they have done so far. (Art Horn, Energy Tribune)

After an exciting encounter last week with some genuine sunspots that weren’t arguable as specks, pores, or pixels, the sun resumes its quiet state this week.

People send me things. Here’s the latest email from Paul Stanko, who has been following the solar cycle progression in comparison to previous ones.

Here’s the graphs, the current cycle 24 and years of interest are marked with a red arrow: Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Algae and Pollen Grains Provide Evidence of Remarkably Warm Period in Antarctica’s History

For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.

Last year, as Warny was studying samples sent to her from the latest Antarctic Geologic Drilling Program, or ANDRILL AND-2A, a multinational collaboration between the Antarctic Programs of the United States (funded by the National Science Foundation), New Zealand, Italy and Germany, one sample stood out as a complete anomaly. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Global warming could cause the huge Greenland ice sheet to melt past "tipping points" from which it could not fully recover - even if carbon dioxide levels were slashed, a report warned today.

Global warming could cause the huge Greenland ice sheet to melt past "tipping points" from which it could not fully recover - even if carbon dioxide levels were slashed, a report warned today.

Research has shown that the 1.7 million kilometre square ice sheet could melt entirely over several thousand years if temperatures continue to rise unchecked, causing sea level rises of up to seven metres.

Now a study from the Met Office Hadley Centre shows that there could be thresholds in melting which, once crossed, could prevent the ice sheet from re-growing to its former extent even if the carbon dioxide concentrations driving climate change are reduced to pre-industrial levels.

Met Office scientists urged action to cut CO2 emissions now, to prevent the ice melting past the tipping points and causing large sea level rises in the coming centuries.

Climate modelling combined with a 3D simulation of the ice found that if the sheet melted by more than 15%, which could occur within 300 years, it would be locked into further decline from which it could only recover to around 80% of its current size.

Such reductions in the ice cover would lead to "irreversible" sea level rises of 1.3 metres, the research published in the journal Climate Dynamics warned. (Belfast Telegraph)

Global warming could cause the huge Greenland ice sheet to melt past "tipping points" from which it could not fully recover - even if carbon dioxide levels were slashed, a Met Office report has warned. (Daily Telegraph)

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?

The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

Figure 1. Standardized values of the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009 (adapted from Tedesco and Monaghan, 2009).

It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs).

But such is not always the case—or rather, such is not ever the case when ice melt is pushing the other end of the record scale.

For instance, below is a collection of NASA stories highlighting record high amounts of melting (or in most cases, simply higher than normal amounts in some regions) across Greenland in each of the past 3 years, as ascertained by Marco Tedesco (the lead author of the latest report on Antarctica):

And lest you think that perhaps NASA hasn’t had any data on ice melt across Antarctica in past years, we give you this one:

But this time around, nothing, nada, zippo from NASA when their ice melt go-to guy Marco Tedesco reports that Antarctica has set a record for the lack of surface ice melt (even more interestingly coming on the heels of a near-record low ice-melt year last summer).

So, seriously, NASA, what gives? If ice melt is an important enough topic to warrant annual updates of the goings-on across Greenland, it is not important enough to elucidate the history and recent behavior across Antarctica?

Tedesco M., and A. J. Monaghan, 2009. An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186. (WCR)

A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report in the journal Nature that the interaction between aerosols, clouds and precipitation is strongly dependent on factors that have not been adequately researched up to now. They urge the adoption of a research concept that will close this gap in the knowledge. (Nature, October 1st, 2009)

Greenhouse gases that heat up the earth’s atmosphere have their adversaries: dust particles suspended in the atmosphere which are known as aerosols. They arise naturally, for example when wind blows up desert dust, and through human activities. A large proportion of the man-made aerosols arise from sulfur dioxides that are generated, in turn, by the combustion of fossil fuels.

The aerosols are viewed as climate coolers, which compensate in part for the heating up of the earth by greenhouse gases. Climate researchers imagine the workings of this cooling mechanism in very simple terms: when aerosols penetrate clouds, they attract water molecules and therefore act as condensation seeds for drops of water. The more aerosol particles suspended in the cloud, the more drops of water are formed. When man-made dust particles join the natural ones, the number of drops increases. As a result, the average size of the drops decreases. Because smaller drops do not fall to the ground, the aerosols prevent the cloud from raining out and extend its lifetime. Consequently, the cloud cover over the earth’s surface increases. Because clouds reflect the solar radiation and throw it back into space, less heat collects in the atmosphere than when the sky is clear. Climate researchers refer to this mechanism as the “cloud lifetime effect”.

To date, however, it has not been possible to quantify the influence of the cloud lifetime effect on climate. The estimates vary hugely and range from no influence whatsoever to a cooling effect that is sufficient to more than compensate for the heating effect of carbon dioxide. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

I have been very critical of Tom Karl, Director of the National Climate Data Center and currently President of the American Meteorological Society, in his failure to provide a balanced assessment of climate issues despite his leadership roles in climate analyses (e. g. see and see). He (sincerely I believe) assumes he is representing the science without any lack of bias, but the reality is quite different. As I documented, for instance, in

he is judging the merits of the same research results in which he supervises and has published on. There cannot be a clearer conflict of interest.

There is now another new example of his misuse of his leadership position. I have reproduced below (and thanks to Joe D’Aleo for sharing it with us) a media presentation that he is leading. He certainly can chose to be an advocate and lobbyist for a particular perspective on climate, but for him to fail to communicate this bias, as well as prevent the presentation of other viewpoints, should be widely recognized.

From: Kelly G. Savoie
To: ksavoie@ametsoc.org
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 9:06 AM
Subject: AMS Item of Interest
Dear CBM/Sealholder:

Climate Science Briefing for Broadcast Meteorologists:
Extreme Weather and Global Warming in the Southwest U.S.

A teleconference for Southwestern broadcast meteorologists featuring authors of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s latest scientific assessment report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009. The report, which identifies the consensus climate science conducted by academic researchers, U.S. agencies, and international bodies, is the first of its kind to detail the impacts of global warming on extreme weather by region in the United States.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Thomas Karl, president of the American Meteorological Society and co-chair of “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” Speakers will focus on the latest authoritative research about how climate change is affecting weather extremes in the Southwestern U.S. — heat waves, wildfires, drought and other water issues — and in turn the impacts on human health and quality of life.

When: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009, 1 p.m. PDT/2 p.m. MDT
Teleconference number: 1-800-290-9461, Passcode 23821
Panelists:
Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and President of AMS
Dr. Bradley Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, a joint effort of the University of Colorado and NOAA
Mike Nelson, Chief Meteorologist at KMGH-TV, Denver; author of “The Colorado Weather Almanac”

For more information please visit the GCRP’s web site, www.globalchange.gov.

Supplemental materials to the call and a web-based guide to government reports for broadcast meteorologists are available at www.weatherandclimate.net. This site includes links to full scientific reports and regional fact sheet summaries, as well as information about this teleconference and past science briefings. Funding for the briefing and web site is provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. The teleconference and web site are a service of Resource Media, a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization.

Please note: for meteorologists unable to call in to the teleconference, a recording and transcript will be posted at www.weatherandclimate.net shortly after the call.

Follow weather and climate issues on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ClimateChangeUS or on Facebook through the “Global Warming Climate Change Report” Group.

Contact:
Kim Curtis, Resource Media, 415-397-5000 ext. 305
Jillian Ward, Resource Media, 415-397-5000 ext. 309; 415-609-8500 (Climate Science)

The Scientists Speak:
Feel-Good Fantasies of Fighting Global Warming: Misguided minds work overtime to accomplish next to nothing. Featuring Dr. Robert Balling, Arizona State University, USA.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 740 individual scientists from 433 separate research institutions in 41 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Barrow Strait, Canadian Arctic Archipelago. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Bromelaid "Maya" (Croonenborghs et al., 2009), Guzmania Hilda (Croonenborghs et al., 2009), Peanut, cv. Georgia Green (Bannayan et al., 2009), and Snow Gum Tree (Atwell et al., 2009).

Tropospheric Humidity and CO2-Induced Global Warming: How are the two related? ... and how important is the answer to the debate over "cap and trade" in the U.S. Senate and the international climate negotiations scheduled to occur later this year in Copenhagen?

Birds of New York: When the going gets hot, do the hot get going? ... as in polewards in latitude?

Acidic clouds are feeding bioavailable iron to the oceans – a discovery which sheds light on the natural processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Scientists at the University of Leeds have proved that acid in the atmosphere breaks down large particles of iron found in dust into small and extremely soluble iron nanoparticles, which are more readily used by plankton.

This is an important finding because lack of iron can be a limiting factor for plankton growth in the ocean – especially in the southern oceans and parts of the eastern Pacific. Addition of such iron nanoparticles would trigger increased absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

When solar power advocates peddle their product, they emphasize that the panels generate clean energy – in implicit contrast to greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.

In Florida, however, the solar industry is backing offshore oil and gas drilling.

In a release last week, the Florida branch of the Solar Energy Industries Association announced its support for drilling off the state’s coast – in order to create a revenue stream to support solar energy.

If offshore drilling goes forward, “we want to be able to have a seat at the table, to direct those funds or at least a portion of those funds to a clean energy source,” Bruce Kershner, executive director of the group, said in a telephone interview. (NYT)

Stand and fight, ya dopey beggars! Appeasement never works: Shipping and aviation volunteer for worldwide regulations - The international shipping and aviation industries are in their final spurts to try to agree on measures to battle global warming.

Strong players in the shipping and aviation industries want their organizations to agree on worldwide regulations, as an alternative to national rules or a global set of binding regulations imposed by politicians.

Climate negotiators meeting in Bangkok this week in preparation for the Copenhagen climate summit in December seem no closer to an agreement on how best to balance economic growth and protection of the environment.

One obstacle comes from Europe, where an alliance of green NGOs, industry and policymakers has targeted Asia’s palm oil industry as a global villain and is threatening a trade war. These critics are wrong on the economics and the ecology.

In June, the European Council issued guidelines on the Renewable Energy Directive, which was adopted in December 2008. Its purpose is to encourage European consumers to use greener, sustainable sources of energy, such as biofuels. This is a fine idea in principle. But as it turns out, the directive is a trade wolf in green sheep’s clothing.

Europe is one of the world’s leading producers of biofuels, mostly made from rapeseed oil. It accounts for two-thirds of the global market, with Germany as one of the largest producers.

Asian producers are increasingly important players in the global biofuels trade. Asian biofuels are a byproduct of palm oil, a sustainable vegetable oil and food staple for which demand is rapidly growing in Asia. Palm oil biofuel cannot be produced in quantities that will rival oil-based fuels, but it is cheaper than rapeseed.

So, in predictable fashion, Europe’s agricultural industries are defaulting to their traditional practice when a cheaper and better product becomes available to European consumers. They have inserted trade barriers in the Renewable Energy Directive to restrict imports of biofuel. And, as usual, they are pretending that the barriers serve another purpose — in this case preserving forest biodiversity.

This joins the protectionist play to a broader campaign to discredit palm oil. European policy-makers echo arguments made by Western environmental NGOs that biofuels from Asia are environmentally troublesome because palm oil plantations reduce forest biodiversity.

These claims do not withstand scrutiny. ...

There is a historical tendency in Europe to seek to mold others in its image. This was part of what some styled the “white man’s burden” during the colonial era. Has this tendency reasserted itself as the Green man’s burden? (Lim Keng Yaik, NYT)

Ed. note: This item originally ran in Robert Rapier's R-Squared Energy Blog.

The reason I spend time debunking wild claims is that I think they damage the entire bioenergy sector in the long run. People who issue press releases claiming they can produce fuel for $1/gallon - and by the way we can do it next year if you give us the money - may attract some funding, but in the long run if they can't deliver, investors will shy away from the entire sector.

One of the things I have spent time debunking is the notion that we are going to rapidly scale up and produce massive quantities of cellulosic ethanol. I believe - for fundamental reasons of chemistry and physics - that it isn't going to happen. I have said that I think the people who are getting money to build cellulosic ethanol plants will start coming up with a litany of excuses for the cash they burned through, and their failure to deliver. (Robert Rapier, Energy Tribune)

WASHINGTON - Vaccination against the H1N1 swine flu is off to a slow start in the United States, but states have ordered more than 2 million doses of mostly nasal spray for the first patients, a top health official said on Tuesday.

Every state has ordered a share of the pandemic vaccine, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.

"This week, as of yesterday, about 2.4 million doses were available for ordering," Frieden told reporters in a telephone briefing. He said states had ordered 2.2 million of the doses -- a painstaking process because they must specify which vaccine they want and have a plan in place for delivering it.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration must inspect each lot of vaccine as it is packaged. "Each day as more vaccine is cleared, more vaccine becomes available for ordering," Frieden added.

"I think what we are seeing now is the tap beginning to flow. We are seeing a substantial amount of vaccine beginning to get out."

The first batches available are AstraZeneca unit MedImmune's nasal spray vaccine, which is approved for people aged 2 to 49 without asthma or other lung conditions.

Many states are opting to vaccinate healthcare workers first, who have a high risk both of being infected and of passing infections along to vulnerable patients. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Here's an apparent paradox: High levels of artery-clogging cholesterol are a risk factor for heart disease. But such high levels have been linked to improved outcomes after a heart attack and other acute heart "events."

Now, new research suggests that this paradoxical finding may simply stem from not taking other factors into account.

People with heart problems and very high cholesterol levels may fare better because they are more likely to be treated with a cholesterol-lowering "statin" drug, researchers report in the journal Clinical Cardiology. Such drugs lower levels of so-called "bad" cholesterol, otherwise known as LDL cholesterol.

Perhaps, more importantly, a diagnosis of very high cholesterol -- what doctors call hypercholesterolemia -- may simply identify patients who have seen their doctors. The thinking is that such patients are more closely watched by their doctors, so they end up doing better than those with low cholesterol who may still be at some risk. (Reuters Health)

LONDON - Common asthma reliever drugs taken by millions of children around the world may increase the risk of asthma attacks in some patients with a particular genetic make-up, British scientists said on Tuesday.

The researchers found that salbutamol, also known as Ventolin, as well as salmeterol, an ingredient in Advair, are less effective in children with a specific gene variant and may in some cases make their asthma worse.

The scientists said their findings suggest that carrying out genetic tests on children before treatment could be a more cost-effective way of treating them. (Reuters)

A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.

The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.

It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.

But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.

The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country. (NYT)

Two myth-shattering pieces of obesity science hit the academic world this morning, and the usual controlling, finger-wagging party poopers are regrouping. Yes, indeed, victory is sweet. Taken together, the two studies should go a long way toward bursting the activist fantasy that getting between Americans and the foods they enjoy is the road to better health.

Did it work? "We argue that the premises for the ban were questionable," the RAND researchers write. In fact, wealthier areas of town had a higher concentration of fast-food restaurants than the poorer sections of Los Angeles. The actual data, the study says, disagreed with "media reports about an over-concentration of fast-food establishments" in South Los Angeles.

But don’t worry, overzealous regulators. The RAND authors assure us that if fast-food zoning doesn’t make us all stick-thin, labeling menus with calorie counts will do the trick:

“In an ideal world,” researchers wrote, “calorie labeling on menus and menu boards would have an immediate and direct impact on everyone’s food choices.” But this is the real world. And people still have choices that are (thankfully) immune from tinker-happy social engineers. At least for now. NYU study author Brian Elbel tells the Times that the menu tinkering is far from over: “[L]abels are not enough.” (Center for Consumer Freedom)

The Simpsons' obesity drive - The health department thinks Homer and family can promote healthier lifestyles. D'oh! Or should that be DoH?

In what surely must be seen as a triumph of hope over experience, the government's official obesity campaign is turning to cartoon capers in a move to persuade everyone – if they haven't realised already – that we should do more to get the kids to take up healthier eating and exercise.

In these harrowing financial times where almost everything else is being cut back, the Department of Health has decided it's worthwhile forking out £640,000 from its Change4Life kitty to sponsor The Simpsons. Gillian Merron, the public health minister, feels Homer and co provide a "popular and engaging way to get the message to real-life families about simple ways of improving their diet and activity for a healthier lifestyle".

What the Change4Life campaign and its supporters seem to overlook at times is that the complexity of obesity cannot be addressed by delivering media messages that pin the blame on the individual for failing to adopt a "healthy lifestyle", no matter how you try to flip the message into a positive one. (Neville Rigby, The Guardian)

That section empowers the Canadian Human Rights Commission to punish telecommunications that are “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt” owing to their protected minority status. It is, in short, a hate speech law.

Penalties are harsh, and can include large fines as well as a lifetime publication ban. For a supposedly liberal country like Canada, Section 13 is an extraordinarily illiberal law.

Section 13 has also lined the pockets of one Richard Warman, a former employee of the Commission who has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of prosecutions in the last decade. Steyn and Levant show in their testimony how Section 13 has prompted computer hacking, the planting of false hate speech, and other underhanded techniques from Warman and the rest of its enforcers. Levant suggests that Warman, a privileged white male lawyer, has been the single greatest beneficiary of the law.

Business regulation boards commonly get taken over by the friends of big business. This is a huge problem in the study of law and economics, one with its very own name — regulatory capture.

Censorship agencies are a bit different. They don’t usually get taken over by the friends of publishers, who might be lenient. Instead, they attract the most aggressive would-be censors, the ones who would most enjoy the powers that a censorship board can offer. Once these arrive, few others will have the stomach to continue serving. Agencies like the Canadian Human Rights Commission suffer from regulatory capture, not by the businesses they regulate, but by the most censorious people around. That’s one reason why it’s a huge problem to have a censorship board in the first place.

In early September, Section 13 was ruled unconstitutional by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. (Confusingly for this Yankee, the tribunal conceded that it could not actually strike down Section 13 but could only decline to apply it in the case at hand.) An appeal is in the works, and Parliament is now considering whether to modify or even scrap the law.

Canadian newspapers across the political spectrum have lined up to support repeal or at least reform. Meanwhile, it appears that Canada’s Conservative government doesn’t want to be seen as “too conservative” — and thus it has been reluctant to act. Politically, it’s easy to pose as the defender of an outraged minority. It’s much, much harder to be the reluctant-but-principled defender of the right of neo-Nazis to spew hatred.

Much like the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, Section 13 is clearly well-intentioned. No one likes people who say cruel or hurtful things, whether on the Internet or anywhere else. Neo-Nazis are disgusting, and it pains even me to have to defend their rights. But a free society is different from an unfree one precisely in that free societies allow distressing speech to take place. The other option, in which the litigious have undue power over all of us, is more distressing still. (Jason Kuznicki, Cato at liberty)

Recent advances in air pollution monitoring and modeling capabilities have made it possible to show that air pollution can be transported long-distances, and that adverse impacts of emitted pollutants cannot be confined to one country or even one continent. Pollutants from traffic, cooking stoves, and factories emitted half a world away can make the air we inhale today more hazardous for our health. The relative importance of this 'imported' pollution is likely to increase, as emissions in developing countries grow, and air quality standards in industrial countries are tightened.

The National Research Council's Committee on The Significance of International Transport of Air Pollutants was tasked with examining the impact of long-range transport of four key air pollutants (ozone, particulate matter, mercury, and persistent organic pollutants) on air quality and pollutant deposition in the United States. The Committee also explored the environmental impacts of U.S. emissions on other parts of the world and recommended ways to advance our understanding of these issues. They recommend that the United States work with the international community to develop an integrated system for determining pollution sources and impacts, and to design effective response strategies.

Global Sources of Local Pollution: An Assessment of Long-Range Transport of Key Air Pollutants to and from the United States will be useful to international, federal, state and local policymakers responsible for understanding and managing air pollution and its impacts on human health and well-being. (NAP)

The GDP numbers show the vital role that trade has played in countering the nation’s economic ill health.

The revised GDP numbers came out last week and things look a bit brighter, despite persistent unemployment. After the economy shrank at a –5.4 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2008 and then at a –6.4 percent rate in the first quarter of this year, the newly reported second quarter dip of –0.7 percent looks relatively mild.

So what’s behind the numbers? Must be the stimulus, right? Well, no. The actual hero is something of a surprise. It turns out it was… (Philip I. Levy, The American)

The Washington Post has an interesting story on Michigan (referenced recently as America’s failed state) and efforts of Governor Jennifer Granholm to attract green jobs there. It’s an interesting story from many perspectives, but one bit caught our eye:

Note well the tools in a government’s “economic arsenal” — special-interest tax credits, loans from taxpayer funds for private business profit, and payoffs. Perhaps that’s what it takes to save jobs in Michigan — a series of payoffs.

Note also the first item in that list — a reduction in the burden a business must carry to support the bureaucracy. What we need is less government, not more of it. Fewer and lower taxes, not higher taxes. Less regulation, not regulating our every breath (literally!).

But right now America is facing massive tax increases in its energy policy (through cap and tax), with the exception being for less economically viable solutions. We’re paying companies to be less efficient and to make goods more costly.

Click through for many more lessons. That’s just one we thought was worthy of note today. (The Chilling Effect)

Thousands of wheelie bins are being stolen from outside people's homes, councils have reported, as fortnightly rubbish collections spark unprecedented demand for the waste containers. (Daily Telegraph)

Green Revolution in the Balance - A battle is developing over food security and research into bio-engineered crops is in the crosshairs.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, in a joint address with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, put food security at the top of the UN agenda. It follows on the summer G-8 summit when 26 countries and a range of international organizations pledged $20 billion to that effort. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, one in every six people worldwide suffers from hunger, with children and women the most at risk. But a battle is developing over how to fund food security, with research into bio-engineered crops in the crosshairs.

The U.S. Congress is scheduled to debate that issue in discussions over the Global Food Security Act of 2009, which cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year. The bill aims to reform aid programs to focus on longer-term agricultural development and restructure aid agencies to better respond to crises. Critically, it includes a mandate for increased research on genetically modified (GM) crops. This new focus has emerged in part out of hopes for igniting a “new Green Revolution”—a project funded by the Gates Foundation’s multi-billion dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

While much research has already been done on the development of GM seeds, with profound potential benefits for agricultural productivity in developed countries, there remains a dearth of research on its development and applicability in many unique environments of the developing world. The bill advocates strengthening the local capacity of university and research institutions to find local solutions to agricultural productivity and food security—and, in doing so, has provoked a fierce backlash from anti-agricultural biotechnology groups. (Jon Entine, The American)

So when will Apple pressure the Chinese government to adopt the Clean Air Act? Isn’t actual air pollution in China much worse than the invisible, if not debatable/mythical, problem of U.S. CO2 emissions?

We doubt that Apple has any answers to those questions as Al I-need-cap-and-trade-to-become-the-first-carbon-billionaire Gore sits on its board of directors and, no doubt, cheer-led Apple’s resignation from the U.S. Chamber.

Executives from the Dow Chemical Co., Entergy Corp., Nike Inc. and more than 140 other companies and venture capital firms will convene in Washington this week to lobby Senate lawmakers to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill quickly.

"This is a powerful message that U.S. businesses are united on the urgency for tackling climate change," contended Timberland Co. President and CEO Jeff Swartz, whose company helped organize the lobbying blitz with the help of the investor coalition Ceres.

Swartz and other business leaders plan to have lunch tomorrow with the Senate's "Gang of 16," which includes Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and other industrial-state lawmakers whose support is seen as crucial to passing the greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill (pdf) introduced last week by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). (Greenwire)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is putting the federal government on a greenhouse-gas diet.

In an executive order signed Monday, Obama directed all agencies to set the first-ever targets for reducing climate-altering pollution from government buildings, fleets and federal workers' commutes.

The agencies will have 90 days to tell the White House how much they plan to measure and reduce greenhouse gases from buildings and vehicles by 2020. Targets for employees' commutes and travel will be due June 2010. (Associated Press)

THE omens for agreement on a meaningful climate treaty at Copenhagen look increasingly dim, and a sign of the frustration this causes among certain journalists is that they are scrabbling for yet more alarmist terms to convey the apocalypse bearing down on us. "Global warming", complains one, sound far too cosy: shouldn't we be talking instead about "global burning"?

Similarly, some time back they began to replace "CO2", the innocuous-sounding gas we all exhale and which all plants need to live, with "carbon", preferably teaming it up with "pollution". Now it is suggested we should refer instead to "black carbon", implying something altogether nastier, dirtier and more threatening. When "carbon" causes "global burning", the end result can only be lots more "black carbon"… Where will all this silly wordplay end? (Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph)

Most people are aware that the UK Met Office has in recent years become something of a laughing stock. Its much-derided forecast that Britain would enjoy a "barbecue summer" this year was only the latest of a string of predictions that proved wildly off-target. Three years ago it announced that 2007 would be "the warmest year ever", just before global temperatures plunged by 0.7 degrees Celsius, more than the world's entire net warming in the 20th century. Last winter, it forecast, would be "milder and drier than average", just before we enjoyed one of our coldest and snowiest winters for years. And in 2009 it promised us one of the "five warmest years ever", complete with that "barbecue summer", when temperatures have been struggling to reach their average of the past three decades. (Daily Telegraph)

A new climate analysis by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere, which focuses on probability outcomes, finds that even moderate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions now will significantly lower the risks of dramatic, future climate change.

The analysis also indicates that, to avoid a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F.) above preindustrial levels — an oft-discussed goal — these emissions reductions had better come soon. If not, say the researchers, dramatic changes in climate driven by feedback loops will become difficult — and perhaps impossible — to control. (CSM)

The US and other developed countries are attempting to "fundamentally sabotage" the Kyoto protocol and all-important international negotiations over its next phase, according to coordinated statements by China and 130 developing countries at UN climate talks in Bangkok today .

As 180 countries started a second week of talks, the developing countries showed their deep frustration at the slow pace of the negotiations on a global climate deal, which are planned to be concluded in two months' time in Copenhagen.

"The reason why we are not making progress is the lack of political will by Annex 1 [industrialised] countries. There is a concerted effort to fundamentally sabotage the Kyoto protocol," said ambassador Yu Qingtai China's special representative on climate talks. "We now hear statements that would lead to the termination of the protocol. They are introducing new rules, new formats. That's not the way to conduct negotiations," said Yu. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

At the Pan-African Climate Hearings in Cape Town, Robinson, also a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said climate change was the most important justice and human rights issue in the world today.

“The debate has been very scientific, very technical until now. It needs to be people-centred,” she said, after hearing from witnesses from five African countries about the effect on their livelihood of extreme weather patterns associated with global warming.

Tutu compared climate change to apartheid, where rich communities were able to continue to “mess up things” and said international mobilisation and co-operation was needed. “It’s such a clear moral issue. We have to make it a priority concern. If we don’t take it seriously, then there won’t be a world to worry about,” he said.

Constance Okollet, from Uganda, said her village was washed away in 2007. “We had to get out, to the next village, and take refuge there for some time. When we came back, nothing was left. Houses, animals, crops, everything. We started from zero,” she said.

The community at first thought the floods were a sign of God’s displeasure, but there was worse in store. “The droughts came, and the little we put down after the flood dried up … In April this year we had one month of rain and now the houses are gone. Again we went back to zero,” she said, weeping.

Okollet said the floods prevented children from attending school and many people had died from cholera, malaria and diarrhoea as a result of dirty water. But during the dry season, water and food were scarce and malnutrition had increased.

Although the Ugandan government was trying to help its people, she said it was not enough.

As a consequence of global carbon emissions, rich countries were living on poor countries, Okollet said. “They are living on our lives. We are dying for them,” she said. (Business Day)

Vidal thinks he's important: Secrecy prevails at Bangkok climate talks - The EU and rich nations are making themselves inaccessible to the press in Bangkok and the developing countries are furious

You might think the armies of civil servants negotiating the future of Mother Earth would be keen to tell people how the talks are going. No. Here in sweaty Bangkok and the chilly air-conditioned UN centre, it's cool to be secretive. We the people – that is the press, the NGOs, even business - are not allowed to see or hear any of the negotiating sessions. And our EU leaders plan just one short session with the world's media on Friday afternoon when the talks here finish. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing [redacted] for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of [redacted]. (Time)

There may be nothing so dangerous as a policy fantasy. A good one is like the H1N1 virus. It spreads on contact and threatens to infect everyone in its path.

Policy fantasies are dangerous because they cause direct harm, replacing plans that might actually work, and because they spread economic illiteracy that can negatively influence future policies.

If we want to address global warming, we need to adopt a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program to penalize greenhouse-gas emissions. Just about anything else is a distraction.

Right now, one of the most dangerous policy fantasies is the distracting notion that government can create so-called green jobs and should strive to do so enthusiastically. Witness the Renew Through Green Jobs Act of 2009, which is making its way through Congress.

President Barack Obama, of course, has been a veritable Typhoid Mary of the green job virus, promising to deliver 5 million of them. The analysis to back that up is that transferring society's resources to the green sector leads to a net creation of jobs.

A key force driving such calculations is that alternative-energy production or energy conservation are fairly labor intensive relative to, say, the oil industry. But if the alternative-energy sector were really economically more efficient than other forms of energy, it would create jobs all by itself, without the assistance of Uncle Sam.

The notion is that we make ourselves better off by transferring resources from one sector, which is fairly efficient, to another, which isn't. Such an assertion might be correct if we account for the damage done by greenhouse gases. But with regard to job creation, the argument is nonsense. (Kevin Hassett, Pittsburg Tribune)

The Boxer-Kerry climate-change bill introduced in the Senate on Wednesday includes few provisions that are friendly to agriculture and will be strongly opposed by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

"America's farmers and ranchers did not fare that well in the House-passed climate change bill and they fare even worse in the Senate bill," said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. "There are few benefits and even greater costs to agriculture and the American public." (USAgNet)

When President Obama and the Democrats tried to take over health care, millions of American citizens went to town hall meetings to protest. Now the Democrats are working to take over the energy segment of the economy. Citizens should be screaming bloody murder.

We’ve got until December -- when world leaders meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a global warming agreement -- to pound it into the thick heads of our elected officials that we want no part of it. It’s fine to be for clean air and clean water. But we are heading toward a new world order on climate change -- and that’s NOT fine.

Climate change legislation and international agreements are not about the environment; they are about spreading the wealth around among nations -- and about increasing the size and scope of government. Simply put, global warming will do for the United States as a country what nationalized health care will do for your family. Health care legislation is about making people equal. Climate change laws are about making nations equal. (Lynn Woolley, Human Events)

Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.

In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis. CRU’s destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.

In a declaration filed with CEI’s petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU’s revelation “a totally new element” that “violates basic scientific principles, and “throws even more doubt” on the claims of global warming alarmists.
CEI’s petition, filed late Monday with EPA, argues that CRU’s disclosure casts a new cloud of doubt on the science behind EPA’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide. EPA stopped accepting public comments in late June but has not yet issued its final decision. As CEI’s petition argues, court rulings make it clear that agencies must consider new facts when those facts change the underlying issues.

CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU’s suspicious destruction of it original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”

Among CRU’s funders are the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy – U.S. taxpayers.

> Read the CEI petition to the EPA.

> Read more about the data dump: The Dog Ate Global Warming, by Patrick J. Michaels. (Christine Hall, CEI)

Hello.

I am the only climate sceptic in an international climate blogging competition organised by EU before COP 15. I would welcome support in the discussions below the articles. Can you spread the message?

http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/blogger/kremlik

Thank you
Vitezslav Kremlik

Barrel-scraping (and worse: outright unintentional humor): this is what happens when one wants to defend an untenable position.

Trouble is, Rabett ended up (unwittingly) accusing Briffa of dishonesty, and (one suspects, even more unwittingly) threatening single-handledly to destroy much of the AGW edifice.

Alas, and of course, Rabett forgot to ask an even more basic question, that is if Briffa had indeed refused for years to release the data related to his articles published in journals whose stated policy is that all data related to all published articles should be released. What was Briffa thinking when he submitted articles to those journals, one wonders.

Furthermore, as pointed out by another commenter, MrPete, if a data set cannot be shared, that pretty much invalidates all articles based on that data set and published in journals whose policy is for data to be shared. Given the popularity of Briffa’s work, one can only imagine what very public slaughter of AGW articles Rabett’s idea would entail.

How can one read the above but as an (unwitting) accusation by AGW believer Eli Rabett that Briffa’s sharing of the data has been…unethical?

If all other Briffa supporters are like Rabett (and, in some sense, Schmidt), then it’s going to be a long and hard way indeed for the CRU scientist… (OmniClimate)

There is much discussion at the moment about tree rings, including in our Forum. Over the years this is a topic we have addressed frequently. In case there is any doubt about the conclusions Number Watch has drawn, here is a brief summary:

And that’s a great blog name, by the way…finally somebody recognizes how Earth is not made of fragile crystals and china…

(2) For the time being, HSR is a place where AGW believers and skeptics can exchange disagreements rather than outright insults. One suspects, that is because of the absence of the “usual suspects”, the clique of self-appointed AGW True Believers, the Osama bin Climate’s fond of censorship and coprolalia

(3) The HSR comment area is the best place where to see AGW skepticism at work, with plenty of nuances, disagreements, sentences at the opposite ends of some scales on the part of people that only agree that the AGW brouhaha is a wild overstatement. If that doesn’t disprove the cretin label of “Denialists”, I don’t know what will.

That led me to elaborate more on the topic (see here and here and here). I am putting it all together below. (OmniClimate)

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”

Amid the rhetoric of President Obama’s speech to the United Nations September 22 conference on climate change in New York he repeated the same few points. They’re identical to those in Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Trouble is they are wrong. So, what is the President’s culpability? If he doesn’t know they’re wrong he and his advisors are incompetent. If they know, they’re deceiving. (Tim Ball, CFP)

From the New York Review of Books, Sep 24, 2009. The review of is by Joel E. Cohen, the book is Global “Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years” by Vaclav Smil, “a versatile geographer at the University of Manitoba” that “provides a broad, factual vision of the “major factors that will shape the global future”:

About climate change, Smil is equivocal. He acknowledges the potentially far-reaching consequences of global warming, and warns that “continued large-scale combustion of fossil fuels could increase atmospheric CO2 to levels unseen since large herds of horses and camels grazed on grassy plains of America.” He also writes that “no country will be immune to global climate change, and no military capability, economic productivity, or orthodox religiosity can provide protection against its varied consequences.” But he suggests that “this preoccupation with CO2 misses nearly half of the problem,” because other kinds of greenhouse gases, such as methane (which is emitted by livestock, natural gas, and organic decay), have more potent greenhouse effects, even if they are less abundant. And he is critical of predictions about global warming derived from complex models of climate behavior, which he considers “elaborate speculations”:

In order to forecast the additional warming that might take place by the year 2050 we must rely on a set of highly uncertain assumptions. We do not know…the future rates of fossil fuel combustion, land use changes, fertilizer use, and meat production. They will depend on the continuing increases of energy use, the extent of discoveries of new hydrocarbon deposits, the rates of penetration of nonfossil energy conversions, national land use policies, disposable incomes, and the overall vitality of the global economy.

Perhaps as a consequence, Smil sees climate change as one of “many other worrisome large-scale environmental changes,” and does not discuss the possible catastrophes about which some climate scientists have warned. (OmniClimate)

Watch out for a plague of (WT)²during the coming weeks as we approach a new international convention on economic suicide. It is shorthand for Worse Than Was Thought. Today’s (WT)² is that old favourite of alarmists, ocean acidification (see our list). This time it is occurring in the Arctic. Suddenly, it is urgent. We have only ten years to save the shellfish. Strange how such things always become urgent just before one of these international jollies. No doubt infidels will come up with various quibbles, such as the dreaded gas being less soluble in the supposedly warming waters or the negligible proportion of it that is being produced by humans or the relatively smallness of the change in the partial pressure of said terror gas. More to come, no doubt. (Number Watch)

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 8, to preview the agency's largest airborne research effort ever to study Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice.

The flights are part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year airborne campaign to each of Earth's polar regions that will extend and expand NASA's multi-year record of space-based observations of ice conditions. Advancing scientific understanding of the behavior of polar ice is needed to improve predictions of future sea-level rise brought on by global warming. (Press Release)

Kenyan ranch shows how UN scheme could protect forests that absorb CO2 and earn billions of dollars for their owners (John Vidal, The Guardian)

International police, politicians and conservationists warn that the UN's programme to cut carbon emissions by paying poor countries to preserve their forests is 'open to wide abuse' (John Vidal, The Guardian)

Captain James Cook’s weather reports, which he logged meticulously at noon each day on his voyages to unknown lands, are helping scientists to predict changes in the climate.

Ships’ logs from Cook’s Discovery and Resolution, William Bligh’s Bounty and 300 other 18th and 19th-century explorers’ vessels are being transcribed and digitised in a project that will allow climatologists to trace changing weather patterns.

The records, stored in the National Archives at Kew, contain a unique and highly accurate account of temperature, ice formation, air pressure and wind speed and direction in remote locations all over the world.

There are plenty of land-based weather reports from this period, but very little is known about the climate history of the three quarters of the world’s surface covered by sea. (The Times)

The slides from the talks are not visible during this luncheon set of oral presentations but they are still quite informative. A diversity of viewpoints were presented. The format (with scheduled times) was:

OTTAWA — A major player in Canada's oil and gas sector is warning that both the economy and the environment are in danger in the absence of a "robust" federal plan to crack down on heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere.

In an interview with Canwest News Service, a Shell Canada executive says the company has been engaging stakeholders from both environmental and government circles to push for a climate-change plan that has legitimate targets and incentives for new technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

It believes that industries and governments would be forced to "scramble" to respond to climate-change impacts and surging energy demands, if there is no clear blueprint to establish standards, along with a new market system that pays dividends to those who reduce their environmental footprints. (Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service)

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday was named chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission at the group’s annual meeting in Biloxi.

Perry will use his position at the commission to fight the proposed cap-and-trade legislation currently considered in Washington, while at the same time pushing for the further development of alternative energy sources.

The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission was founded in 1935 as a multi-state agency that is designed to protect states’ rights in the regulation of oil and gas resources. The commission acts as an advocate in Washington for states that produce oil and gas, and helps set national energy policy. (San Antonio Business Journal)

he Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a voice against climate change legislation, named Gov. Rick Perry chairman.

Perry, who doubts humans contribute to climate change, has used the issue to campaign for reelection. In a speech to IOGCC members in Biloxi, Miss., he called a climate change bill being considered by Congress "the single largest tax in the history of our nation," and warned the bill would trigger massive job losses and inflation. (Dallas News)

Sweden calls for carbon taxes - The EU's top taxation official, Laszlo Kovacs, is ready to propose an EU-wide energy tax on fuel used for transportation and for household heating.

Sweden urged other European nations on Friday to follow its lead in linking new taxes to greenhouse gas emissions as governments seek additional sources of income in the wake of the financial crisis.

Denmark, Finland and Slovenia already have taxes on household carbon emissions that can add costs to heating and electricity use. France is planning to plug part of its swelling budget gap with a new carbon tax that could bring in an extra 1.5 billion euro next year.

Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, said Sweden's carbon tax "has been a very good source of revenue" since it was introduced in the start of the 1990s.

It's a tax "where you can see a good purpose" because it encourages energy efficiency and renewable power, he told reporters after talks with European Union finance ministers in Gothenburg.

The EU's top taxation official, Laszlo Kovacs, said he is ready to propose an EU-wide energy tax on fuel used for transportation and for household heating. That would add charges to fuel with higher carbon dioxide emissions such as coal.

"It would certainly give renewable energies some tax and price advantage," Kovacs told The Associated Press.

Whenever oil prices go up (or down) news outlets always provide a glib explanation for why the move occurred. Market pundits will blame pick one or more of the following – OPEC’s decision to increase (decrease) production; the falling (rising) value of the US dollar; increasing (decreasing) volumes of oil in storage; rebel attacks in Nigeria (Iraq); increased (decreased) refinery activity; increased (decreased) speculation in the oil market by hedge funds, pension funds, or other investors, who are buying (selling) long (short) positions; increased (decreased) volumes of spare production capacity; and finally, increased (decreased) economic activity.

This rampant speculation about prices has inured listeners to the reality of the modern oil market. And that reality is this: no one – repeat, no one – can explain why the oil market does what it does. The market is so big and complicated that even the smartest market analysts are, when it comes down to it, only guessing about what is driving price changes. In June 2009, Tim Guinness, a mutual fund manager, admitted as much when he wrote “The oil price is never rational.” He went on, “short-term spikes and troughs will continue to surprise us.”

Now, that’s a long list of caveats before getting to the point: over the past few years, there has been a strong correlation between the value of the dollar and the price of oil. As the value of the dollar relative to the Euro has weakened, the price of oil has increased. For instance, the peak in oil prices at more than $140 per barrel in July 2008, coincided with the peak in the value of the Euro against the dollar. In the fall of 2008, as the financial crisis hit and more investors began buying dollars, the price of oil declined. And in recent months, as the Euro has strengthened against the dollar, oil prices have risen. (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Using natural gas instead of coal for power generation is a clear improvement in terms of carbon dioxide emissions: the carbon dioxide output from a gas-fired power station per kilowatt hour is about half that from a coal-fired plant, as is discussed in the FT’s special report on gas, published today.

However, there is a debate brewing about whether gas can really be anything other than a stop-gap, a transition “bridge fuel” on the route to a low-carbon future.

However, there are many who would argue that gas remains part of the problem, not part of the solution. Gas may be better than coal, but it is still not as good as renewable or nuclear power for reducing emissions. Those economies that have ambitions to take the carbon dioxide emissions out of power generation altogether by 2050 will not be able to use conventional gas-fired plants as part of the mix. (Financial Times)

We could wish... Is the Arctic ready to give up its treasures? - Global warming could reveal lucrative reserves of untapped oil, gas and precious metals beneath the ice caps in the near future - but at what environmental cost?

For all the talk among world leaders of the perils of climate change, many are scenting an opportunity. As the Arctic ice retreats, surrounding nations are looking to plunder those natural resources under the surface, estimated by the US Geological Survey to constitute as much as 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of its undiscovered natural gas – as well as precious metals including iron ore, gold, zinc and nickel.

There is the prospect of a dramatic new shortcut between Europe and Asia, slashing journey times by as much as a third. Last month, two German ships completed their journey along the Russian coast from South Korea to Bremen without any icebreaker escort. There are also hopes that Canada’s Northwest Passage could offer a viable alternative to the Suez and Panama canals. (Daily Telegraph)

LONDON, Oct 5 - Burning coal underground could be one of the next breakthroughs to increase the world's energy supply, similar to establishment of Canadian oil sands, executives and academics told a conference in London on Monday.

The world could exploit huge additional coal reserves that are too deep or remote to mine, using a technology that burns the fuel hundreds of metres underground.

But the approach is so far untested on a commercial scale, making the initial expense a concern for governments and investors. "The potential is huge," said Gordon Couch, from the International Energy Agency's Clean Coal Centre.

"It needs a series of successful demonstrations. Despite 50 years of trials no commercial use has been demonstrated. Current pilots could result in commercial opportunities within five to seven years." (Reuters)

Ulf Stumpe is scared of carbon dioxide -- but not the stuff blamed for global warming. What worries him is the CO2 a local energy firm wants to inject into the earth thousands of feet under his village.

Mr. Stumpe is fighting plans by Vattenfall AB, the Swedish energy giant, to store millions of tons of the greenhouse gas in saline aquifers under the rolling fields of eastern Germany as part of an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is seen by many governments and energy companies as a key weapon in the battle against climate change. They say it would allow mankind to continue burning coal while reducing emissions believed to be contributing to global warming.

But as with other new technologies like wind power, local opposition can sometimes thwart global solutions. Germany is in the vanguard of CCS, but grass-roots protests are threatening to derail efforts to deploy the technology -- not just in Mr. Stumpe's Brandenburg home but across the country.

If local backlashes don't slow adoption, high costs might. CCS has never been tested on a commercial scale in a power plant, and experts at the International Energy Agency say installing the technology will require €1 billion ($1.46 billion) per project -- a sum that some environmentalists say would cost more than other forms of renewable energy. (Wall Street Journal)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama gathered doctors from every U.S. state at the White House on Monday to press his case for healthcare reform in a week when the sweeping overhaul could clear a major hurdle in Congress.

The Senate Finance Committee, the last of five panels in Congress to move on healthcare, votes this week on Obama's top domestic policy priority, an effort meant to cut costs, regulate insurers and expand health insurance coverage to the millions of Americans now going without.

"At this point, we've heard all the arguments on both sides of the aisle," Obama told the crowd of white-coated doctors who support the healthcare drive at the White House Rose Garden. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - You may have heard the oft-quoted statistic that autism affects 1 in 150 US children. Turns out it's more like 1 in 91 -- and about 1 in 58 boys, according to new figures released Sunday.

That's an estimated 673,000 US children -- or approximately 1 percent of all U.S. kids, the researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and Harvard Medical School, Boston report in the journal Pediatrics.

Bob Wright, co-founder of the autism advocacy group Autism Speaks, told Reuters Health he's not at all surprised by the new figures. "We've been screaming about the numbers going up; now there is a relatively complete recognition of it."

"The statistical aspect of autism is just staggering," he said, and not enough is being done about it. "If we had 1 in 58 boys getting swine flu, the country would be crazy," Wright said.

Autism is a brain disorder characterized by problems with social interaction, repetitive behavior and other symptoms. People with a mild version called Asperger's syndrome usually function relatively well in society, although they have problems relating to others. People with the most extreme symptoms may be unable to speak and may also suffer severe mental illness and retardation.

No one knows what causes autism -- it's generally thought to have genetic and environmental triggers -- and there is currently no good treatment. (Reuters Health)

Rachel Carson’s magnum opus Silent Spring – described on the back cover as “the cornerstone of modern environmentalism” – made her famous and a darling of the left. Silent Spring, first published in 1962, still sells briskly, currently ranked 1,187 in sales at Amazon – not bad for an almost 50 year-old book. It is, of course, required reading for university students and prospective friends of the environment.

In making her case against DDT Carson constructs not a sturdy cornerstone of scientific truth but rather an elaborate tissue of exaggerations and lies. She could have persuasively argued that DDT’s persistence makes it unsuited to agricultural use. This simple, factually correct argument is not the stuff of which best-selling books are made, however. Better to confect the Silent Spring horror story. (J.F. Beck, Quadrant)

Bread and breakfast cereals contain levels of salt that are high enough to damage health, the Government will warn in an advertising campaign that starts today.

In a poll of shoppers, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) found that 77 per cent of people were unaware that bread and cereals contributed more salt to the diet than other popular foods – including crisps and nuts.

Excess salt raises blood pressure, which in turn can cause heart attacks and strokes. The FSA, the Government's food watchdog, estimates 16,000 lives and billions of pounds could be saved every year if adults ate no more than 6g of salt a day. (The Independent)

Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation Seeks to Encourage Behavior Change and Provide Tools to Help Consumers Achieve Energy Balance in the Marketplace, in the Workplace and in Schools

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 -- An unprecedented coalition of more than 40 retailers, non-governmental organizations and food and beverage manufacturers today announced the launch of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a national, multi-year effort designed to help reduce obesity -- especially childhood obesity -- by 2015. The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will promote ways to help people achieve a healthy weight through energy balance. It focuses on three critical areas -- the marketplace, the workplace and schools. (PRNewswire-USNewswire)

Public health experts are arguing that a tax on sugared soda could help curb obesity; economists aren't so sure.

The momentum for federal taxes on soda is growing. President Obama recently said he thought Congress "should be exploring" the idea of a tax on sugared drinks as a way of tackling the nation’s ever-expanding waistline. Thomas Frieden, the president’s nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, argued in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine last April that "a penny-per-ounce excise tax could reduce consumption of sugared sodas by more than 10%."

And now, in new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Kelly Brownell, Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, and a bevy of public health experts, reiterate the litany of studies correlating our increasing girth to our increased appetite for sugared soda. In “The Public Health and Economic Benefits of Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages,” they argue that the government should intervene in the market because people do not appreciate the health consequences of drinking soda and, in particular, children’s thirst for instant gratification prevents them from appreciating the potential long term harm.

A tax on soda, therefore, seems like a no-brainer. "If it costs more, people will drink it less," as Frieden has said. But is it actually that simple? Those who advocate taxing soda as a way to tackle obesity often point to cigarette taxes as a model for success. The relationship between smoking and cancer is linear: if you smoke, you increase your risk of lung cancer by 1,000 percent; if you smoke two or more packs a day the risk is even greater - 1,500 to 2,500 percent - and you also increase your risk of other cancers too. So, when you impose punitively high taxes on cigarettes, you see both a decline in the number of cigarettes sold and a decline in cancer rates.

The problem is that it's not clear whether there is a similar linear relationship between soda and obesity, or that one can be established without first taxing sugared soda out of existence and then assessing the impact on the nation's waistline. Our consumption of soda may have increased, per capita, by 500 percent over the last 50 years, according to the Department of Agriculture, but that still only represents 7 percent of our collective energy intake. (Trevor Butterworth, STATS)

Like bears to honey or zombies to brains, politicians find something irresistible about soda taxes. President Obama recently told Men's Health magazine that he thinks a "sin tax" on soda is "an idea that we should be exploring." San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom moved to impose a fee on stores for selling sugary drinks, only to admit that his plan was probably illegal. In December, New York Gov. David Paterson proposed an 18 percent tax on full-sugar soda to help cover a budget shortfall. After a public outcry, he claimed he was just raising awareness about childhood obesity. But he was also rehashing the same old myths about how taxing soda will save us all: (Katherine Mangu-Ward, Detroit News)

ATLANTA — A new government report finds that fewer U.S. high schools and middle schools are selling candy and salty snacks to students.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said its report was based on a survey of public schools in 34 states, comparing results from 2006 to 2008.

The study did not report the total number of schools that have changed. Instead, it looked at the proportion of schools in each state.

The CDC found that the median proportion of high schools and middle schools that sell the sugary or salty snacks dropped from 54 percent to 36 percent.

The share of schools that sell soda and artificial fruit drinks dropped from 62 percent to 37 percent.

The report marked a continued effort by health officials to combat childhood obesity. (AP)

OTTAWA - Short-term exposure to air pollution could trigger appendicitis in adults, possibly because pollutants cause inflammatory responses, according to a Canadian study published Monday.

Researchers found that people exposed to nitrogen dioxide for a week during June, July and August -- when levels of the pollutant are at their highest -- were almost twice as likely to come down with the potentially deadly condition as those who had no exposure.

Those over 64 were more than four times more likely to develop appendicitis under the same conditions.

Nitrogen dioxide is most usually produced by traffic and causes most health problems during summer months.

The Canadian team -- led by Dr. Gilaad Kaplan of the University of Calgary -- studied the cases of 5,191 people admitted with appendicitis at three adult hospitals in Calgary, Alberta, over a seven-year period.

Kaplan said 52.5 percent of overall admissions occurred between April and September, the warmest months of the year in Canada, when people are more likely to be outside. (Reuters)

Americans know the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for its wild publicity stunts in the name of protecting cows, chickens, and other eatables.

But a closer look at media-savvy PETA shows it also has become a corporate animal.

Its websites are full of invitations to corporate America to form partnerships, and in the process, cut PETA in on some of the profits. How else has the Washington-based group grown to a $34 million budget and displayed help-wanted ads for more employees in the time of a deep recession?

In one case, PETA castigates a credit card company for backing a circus; yet PETA promotes its competitor who sponsors horse racing and beef eating -- two PETA no-nos it is trying to abolish.

PETA now operates a "Business Friends" program. For $500 (Silver), $1,000 (Gold) and $5,000-plus) Platinum, PETA grants access to its members and their money. (Rowan Scarborough, Human Events)

PUERTO AYORA, Galápagos Islands — The mounds of reeking garbage on the edge of this settlement 600 miles off Ecuador’s Pacific coast are proof that one species is thriving on the fragile archipelago whose unique wildlife inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution: man.

Tiny gray finches, descendants of birds that were crucial to his thesis, flutter around the dump, which serves a growing town of Ecuadoreans who have moved here to work in the islands’ thriving tourism industry.

The burgeoning human population of the Galápagos, which doubled to about 30,000 in the last decade, has unnerved environmentalists. They point to evidence that the growth is already harming the ecosystem that allowed the islands’ more famous inhabitants — among them giant tortoises and boobies with brightly colored webbed feet — to evolve in isolation before mainlanders started colonizing the islands more than a century ago.

The growth has become enough of a threat to the environment that even the government, which still welcomes growth in the tourism industry, has expelled more than 1,000 poor Ecuadoreans in the past year from a province that they feel is rightfully theirs, and it is in the process of expelling many more.

By limiting the population, officials hope to preserve the natural wonders that bolster one of Ecuador’s most profitable sectors: tourism. But the measures are feeding a backlash among unskilled migrants who say they are being punished while the country continues to enjoy the many millions of dollars tourists bring to Ecuador, one of South America’s poorest nations.

“We are being told that a tortoise for a rich foreigner to photograph is worth more than an Ecuadorean citizen,” said María Mariana de Reina Bustos, 54, a migrant from Ambato in Ecuador’s central Andean valley, whose 22-year-old daughter, Olga, was recently rounded up by the police near the slum of La Cascada and put on a plane to the mainland. (NYT)

As the international community focuses on climate change as the great challenge of our era, it is ignoring another looming problem — the global crisis in land use. With agricultural practices already causing massive ecological impact, the world must now find new ways to feed its burgeoning population and launch a "Greener" Revolution. (Jonathan Foley, e360)

Countries around the world need to implement policies to slow desertification. If policies fail, drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet's soil by 2025, warns the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Luc Gnacadja.

"If we cannot find a solution to this problem... in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected," Luc Gnacadja of Benin said at the ninth session of the UNCCD last week in Argentina, according to AFP.

CHURCHVILLE, VA—By 2050, 25 million more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis, says the highly respected International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. IFPRI, however, incorrectly links the prediction and the solutions, to man-made global warming. The food challenge will occur whether the warming is man-made or part of a natural cycle.

By 2050, the world will probably have 8–9 billion people, up from the current 6.5 billion—as the final surge of human population growth ends. Trade and technology will increase per capita incomes and more demand for grain, meat, and milk will follow. Plus, rich people have fewer kids, but millions more companion cats and dogs. Taken together, more than two times as much food will be needed.

The good news is that global warming now doesn’t sound so scary. (Dennis T. Avery, CGFI)

The flurry of companies quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is highlighting how the climate-change issue is straining traditional alliances in Washington, as some businesses seek to profit from overhauling the energy market and others try to cut deals to head off tougher regulation.

Some companies and industry groups that have in the past worked with Republicans to fight efforts to curb the use of fossil fuels -- such as Detroit's auto makers -- are now expressing support for action on climate change. Some support legislation to put a price on the carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, while others support preserving the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate such greenhouse gases.

The Chamber of Commerce says it supports efforts to fight climate change through federal investments and incentives for power that can be produced without emitting carbon dioxide. But the group has opposed proposals to require companies to pay for the right to emit carbon.

The Chamber, which says it represents three million businesses, says its positions are "mainstream, common-sense views" approved by a majority of more than 100 business leaders who sit on its board of directors.

Some companies -- such as Peabody Energy and ConocoPhillips -- have spoken out against climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives. Others -- such as General Electric Co. and Duke Energy Corp. -- have expressed support for it.

Many companies backing action on climate change stand to gain if the U.S. requires corporations to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide. (Wall Street Journal)

NEW YORK — If anyone in the global community was still straining to see where the fault lines lay in the American debate over climate change, last week will have provided some clarity.

The very public departure of several large businesses from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which describes itself as “the world’s largest business federation representing three million businesses of all sizes,“ was punctuated Wednesday with an announcement by the shoe manufacturer Nike that it, too, had found itself at odds with the chamber’s stated positions on global warming and how it ought to be addressed.

“We fundamentally disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change,” the company explained in announcing, through a published statement, that it was resigning its seat on the chamber’s board. (NYT)

President Obama may not have a comprehensive climate change bill in hand when negotiators meet in Copenhagen in December to try to produce a new agreement on global warming. But the message to major emitters of greenhouse gases in this country — from the executive branch, from the courts and we hope soon from Congress — is increasingly clear: One way or another, emissions are coming down.

On Wednesday, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry introduced their long-awaited bill to impose nationwide limits on greenhouse gas emissions. And — as both a backstop and a goad to Congress — Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued proposed rules that would regulate emissions from power plants and other large industrial sources.

Both the Senate bill and the E.P.A. proposal would cover about 14,000 power plants, refineries and other large facilities that, together, produce more than 70 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. (NYT)

<chuckle> US under fire in Thailand - The honeymoon appears to be over for the United States at UN-led climate talks in Bangkok. "The United States is in between a rock and a hard place," says UN climate chief.

After being applauded for re-engaging in negotiations this year, the American delegation at UN-led climate talks in Bangkok finds themselves being tagged like their Bush Administration predecessors — as villains who aren't serious about reaching an ambitious global warming treaty when leaders from 120 countries meet in Copenhagen in December. (CoP15)

Like most members of President Obama's climate team, David Sandalow was one of President Bill Clinton's negotiators in Kyoto. And he carries an indelible lesson from the experience of signing off on the international climate pact there 12 years ago: "Only agree abroad to what you can implement at home."

He had been elated at the deal by more than 180 nations in December 1997. But within months, a television ad appeared, decrying the agreement for not including developing nations such as China and India. "It's not global and it won't work," said the ad, which was sponsored by business groups including the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. It captured the growing discontent in the United States over the Clinton administration's signing off on a package that did not force similar cuts by major developing countries.

That political backlash is one of several reasons why any deal struck two months from now in Copenhagen will at best signal the start of a new global approach to tackling climate change, rather than its successful conclusion. (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post)

President Obama’s top climate and energy official said Friday that there was virtually no chance Congress would have a climate and energy bill ready for him to sign before negotiations on a global climate treaty begin in December in Copenhagen.

The remarks by the official, Carol M. Browner, during an onstage interview in Washington, were the first definitive statement by the administration that it saw little chance of Congressional passage this fall.

Lawmakers and environmental campaigners have cast similar doubts on the prospect in recent weeks, given the high priority put on health care legislation and the array of hearings that would be needed on the energy initiative, to say nothing of the time needed to reconcile competing versions of it. Climate legislation was introduced in the Senate only Wednesday, a full three months after the House passed its version.

“Obviously we’d like to be through the process — that’s not going to happen,” Ms. Browner said at a conference on politics and history organized by The Atlantic magazine. “I think we would all agree the likelihood you would have a bill signed by the president on comprehensive energy by the time we would go in early December is not likely.”

Yet Ms. Browner said it was possible that the Senate could at least complete its hearings on the bill by the time the international climate talks open on Dec. 7. Those hearings, along with the Obama administration’s recent moves toward regulating greenhouse gases, would provide evidence that the nation was serious about cutting emissions, she said.

A show of resolve by the United States about doing its part to combat global warming is considered critical to the outcome of the Copenhagen talks. (NYT)

When you cover the issue of global warming, you often don't know whether to laugh or cry.

One of the simultaneously scary and hilarious things you're going to see leading up to the latest United Nations conflab on the subject in Copenhagen this December, will be an attempt by climate alarmists to re-invent China as the world's leading nation in fighting climate change.

To actually believe this requires a level of doublethink worthy of George Orwell's 1984, which makes it perfect work for the UN.

For example, when Chinese President Hu Jintao recently announced at the UN General Assembly that China is finally ready to entertain reducing the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was so overcome he declared the stalled negotiations to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Accord, which expires in 2012, saved.

But cutting emissions intensity -- as opposed to cutting emissions -- is what environmentalists have been screaming for years won't do any good, whenever Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposes it.

The reason for pretending China, the world's biggest polluter, is now the Jolly Green Giant of environmentalism, has nothing to do with its environmental record, which is a disaster, albeit understandably so given that 80% of its electricity comes from coal and its priorities are economic growth and feeding its 1.3 billion people, not clean air.

Rather, this breathtaking act of revisionism is intended to set up a global dynamic in which, just as the U.S. leads the developed world (including us), China will be designated leader of the developing world.

In their dreams, climate alarmists envision China and the U.S. under Barack Obama short-circuiting Kyoto's impossibly complex international negotiations and setting global emission standards between them, through the size and reach of their respective economies.

The problem with this, like so much emitted by the UN and its acolytes, is that it's ludicrous. (Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun)

If the world fails to deliver a political agreement at the UN climate conference in December, it will be “the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century”, says incoming COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard. (CoP15)

According to Thursday’s New York Times, “the Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it was moving forward on new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.”

In the book that popularized the phrase “the Imperial Presidency,” historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. focused overwhelmingly on the vast growth of presidential power in foreign affairs. But as an inveterate New Dealer, Schlesinger had a blind spot where it came to the Emperor’s burgeoning powers at home.

The Supreme Court’s virtual abandonment of the nondelegation doctrine after 1935 paved the way for the modern administrative state, in which Congress all too eagerly cedes legislative power to the executive branch. As the Obama administration’s latest actions on global warming show, the Imperial Presidency comes in green, too. From my column in the Washington Examiner this week:

The Times article makes clear that Obama won’t push his authority under the Clean Air Act (or the Supreme Court’s interpretation thereof in Mass. v. EPA) as far as he might, yet: “By raising the standard to 25,000 tons, the new rule exempts millions of smaller sources of carbon dioxide emissions like bakeries, soft drink bottlers, dry cleaners and hospitals.” Instead, the administration plans to use its power under the CAA as a hammer to hold over Congress’s head, pushing it to act on cap and trade.

But eventually, Obama could push that authority even further. According to a comprehensive legal analysis issued by NYU Law School’s Center for Policy Integrity, “if Congress fails to act, President Obama has the power under the Clean Air Act to adopt a cap-and-trade system.” (Emphasis mine). (Note in the link above that Matt Yglesias, dedicated opponent of Bush’s war-on-terror executive power grabs, doesn’t seem exactly upset at the prospect of cap-and-trade via executive fiat.)

True, such a move would be litigated to death, and the forests of paperwork it would generate might result in a carbon footprint larger than whatever it abated. Nonetheless, we ought to be disturbed by the notion that in a democratic country the president could make such a move without an up or down vote from Congress. And, as I suggest in the Examiner piece, it ought to make conservatives question their longtime conviction that presidential control over administrative agencies is a reliable method for decreasing the country’s regulatory burden:

"We're not seeing real advances there," said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, after a week of discussions in Bangkok. Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski (above) calls an EU finance proposal "completely unjust". (CoP15)

Less than 10 weeks before the nations of the world are due to meet in Copenhagen to thrash out a successor agreement to the Kyoto -protocol, the differences between poor and rich nations are as wide as ever and becoming more entrenched.

Some 1,500 delegates are half way through a two-week meeting in Bangkok in an attempt to break the deadlock and reduce a 180-page discussion document to a more manageable 30 pages.

Delegates had hoped to build on the momentum gained in New York two weeks ago when China, Japan and India all made climate change pledges that seemed to mark a break with the acrimonious debates that had gone before.

But at a stocktaking meeting yesterday, it rapidly became apparent that the talks were still deadlocked on the big points. (Financial Times)

(BRUSSELS) - Poland on Friday put a giant spoke in European negotiations on financing the fight to tame global warming when it refused to stump up for richer, western partners.

"Quite frankly, from our point of view it's totally unacceptable that the poor countries of Europe should help the rich countries of Europe to help the poor countries in the rest of the world," said Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski.

"We will not agree to a mechanism which would lead to such a completely unjust proposal," he added. (EUbusiness)

The European Union called Friday on the United States to join it in stumping up cash to help poor developing nations cope with climate change.

Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said Europe wanted the U.S. to "also put their weight behind the issue" ahead of global talks in Copenhagen in December on a new pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We must heat up the climate debate," he said after economy talks between EU nations in Goteborg, Sweden. (Associated Press)

The Arctic Ocean is becoming acidic so quickly that it will reach corrosive levels within 10 years, a leading scientist has warned. (Daily Telegraph)

Global warming will threaten London's wildlife habitats by increasing the risk of flooding in the winter and drought in the summer, according to a report published today. (The Independent)

The taxpayers in the world have gained the access to the recent draft of the Climate Treaty in Copenhagen:

Hardcore stuff, indeed. I doubt that there is a sentence on these 181 pages that would be acceptable to me. (The Reference Frame)

Dear Dr. Peiser,

As a mild antidote to the piece on a "planned recession" as an appropriate policy response to climate change, can I suggest that your readers might like to look at the Interim Report on the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change published by the World Bank on September 30th. The web address for the study is:

http://beta.worldbank.org/climatechange/content/economics-adaptation-climate-change-study-homepage

I am a co-author of the report and was responsible, among other things, for the biggest component of costs (infrastructure) and for putting all of the numbers together. All of the headlines prompted by the report focus on large numbers - a cost of $75-100 billion per year for adaptation in developing countries up to 2050. But, let me urge people to look at the report rather than the press reports, because that tells a rather more nuanced story. Expressed as a proportion of GDP, the cost of adaptation is roughly 0.2% of GDP in 2010-19 and falls to about 0.1% of GDP in 2040-49. These are figures for developing countries, but estimates not included in the report are similar for high income countries. Expressed as proportions of baseline spending without climate change in the sectors covered by the study, the costs are typically 1-2% - well within year to year variability and rounding errors.

There is no doubt that the costs of adapting to climate change - expressed relative to GDP - for low income countries will be higher than for middle and high income countries, but even so they are not that high and they fall sharply over time. This is a major issue of how to distribute aid - both over time as well as across countries - but it is not a sensible basis for determining global policies.

I have read some criticisms of our work on the grounds that we have not taken account of, for example, the costs of restoring ecosystem services, etc. Such responses fail to understand the starting point of any proper assessment of the economics of adaptation. The world is not like an insect in amber - petrified at a point in time. Economic development necessarily involves change. Our goal was to estimate the costs of restoring the level of human welfare to what it would have been had no climate change occurred. The evidence shows that the costs of adapting to climate change in agriculture, forests, fisheries, etc are really small and may be negative in some countries - i.e. climate change generates net benefits. Certainly, there will be loss of mangroves, but that is going to happen anyway and the economic value of the services that are lost is minimal.

The suggestion that a planned recession for the next decade is required to address climate change is simply absurd. On reasonable assumptions, the total cost of the recent recession in the world economy is greater than the total cost of adaptation for the next 40 years, even on the basis that we get back to pre-recession growth rates by 2011. In fact the reverse is true: the burden of adaptation can be minimised by faster - rather than slower - economic growth and development, since many of the costs are fixed. All that is required is the adoption of some reasonably sensible and fairly modest policies, rather than ill-conceived and intemperate assertions about how everything has to change.

Climate change does pose a real challenge to the way the world economy operates, but this is considerably different to the kind of policies urged by Professor Anderson and his like. The real problems are:

A. How can/should we address the very uneven burden of adaptation across countries? Few believe that current mechanisms of international assistance are a good way of transferring resources to deal with climate change, but neither are there any good alternatives.

B. How can we address the risks of climate change in a sensible way? The economics of climate change has always been about the insurance premium that we are collectively willing to pay in order either to avoid or to cope with low probability but high cost outcomes. In conceptual terms, it is no different from dealing with the prospect that sooner or later the world will be hit by another large meteorite of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs. There is a small probability that the costs of adapting to climate change will be rather large - say, greater than 5% of GDP - for some (not all) countries. What kind of insurance arrangements should we put in place to deal with such possibilities.

As the column by George Will illustrates, claims that we are all doomed are not helpful, in part because it is not true and in part because they are a distraction from developing some more reasonable but limited policies.

Regards
Gordon Hughes
===================
Professor Gordon Hughes
Department of Economics
University of Edinburgh
E-mail : G.A.Hughes@ed.ac.uk (via CCNet)

In order to limit global warming by reducing carbon emissions, Lord Browne argues that the biggest barriers to a low-carbon economy in the UK are not scientific or technological but political

When it comes to climate change, the gap between the vision of both scientists and engineers and the will of politicians is sometimes very stark. The problems caused by the changing climate are now better understood than ever, yet there is a frustrating sense of inertia when it comes to taking action. (Lord Browne of Madingley, Physics world)

Using the IPCC 2001 data Norm Kalmanovitch (CCNET 152/2009 #15) correctly calculated that the man-made contribution in the 1990s to the total (anthropogenic plus natural) annual CO2 flux into the global atmosphere was only 4.27%. This is in agreement with estimates based on other data, including isotopic mass balance (13C/12C) calculations, which ranged from about 3.6% in the 1980s of (Jaworowski et al., 1992) to 4.7% in the 2000s (Jaworowski, 2009). This anthropogenic contribution added about 0.15% to the natural global greenhouse effect (Jaworowski, 2008).

Jaworowski Z. 2008. Sun Warms and Cools the Earth. In NZCPR Newsletter - Research, pp 1-33. New Zealand Centre for Political Research http://www.nzcpr.com/Research%20papers%20(4).pdf .

Jaworowski Z. 2009. The Sun, not man, still rules our climate. 21st Century Science & Technology 22: 10-19 http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2009/Sun_Climate_sp2009_partial.pdf

Jaworowski Z, Segalstad TV, and Hisdal V. 1992. Atmospheric CO2 and global warming: a critical review. Second revised edition, pp. 1-76. Norsk Polarinstitutt http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/np-m-119.pdf .

Best wishes,
Zbigniew Jaworowski
-- Prof. Dr hab. Zbigniew Jaworowski ul. Sadowa 9, 05-520 Konstancin, Poland (Via CCNet)

The scientific community is failing miserably in communicating the potential catastrophe of climate change. Joseph Romm urges scientists to start engaging with the public – now

The fate of the next 50 generations may well be determined in the next few months and years. Will the US Congress agree to a shrinking cap on greenhouse-gas emissions and legislation to achieve the transformation to clean energy? If not, you can forget about a global climate deal. But even if the bill passes and a global deal is achieved, both will need to be continuously strengthened in coming years, as the increasingly worrisome science continues to inform the policy, just as in the case of the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances. (Joe Romm, Physics World)

Beginning in 2003, I worked with Stephen McIntyre to replicate a famous result in paleoclimatology known as the Hockey Stick graph. Developed by a U.S. climatologist named Michael Mann, it was a statistical compilation of tree ring data supposedly proving that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century. Prior to the publication of the Hockey Stick, scientists had held that the medieval-era was warmer than the present, making the scale of 20th century global warming seem relatively unimportant. The dramatic revision to this view occasioned by the Hockey Stick’s publication made it the poster child of the global warming movement. It was featured prominently in a 2001 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as government websites and countless review reports. (Ross McKitrick, Financial Post)

So, Briffa has responded to McIntyre and there's another riposte up at Real Climate. I'll try to explain what is going on. (Bishop Hill)

Terence Corcoran: Climate data buster - The discovery of more data distortion further undermines the claim of recent temperature records. The IPCC is now on wobbly legs at all four corners

The official United Nation’s global warming agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a four-legged stool that is fast losing its legs. To carry the message of man-made global warming theory to the world, the IPCC has depended on 1) computer models, 2) data collection, 3) long-range temperature forecasting and 4) communication. None of these efforts are sitting on firm ground. (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

For years, claims that UN climate reports represent the consensus of the majority of international scientists have been mindlessly accepted and regurgitated by left-leaning policy makers and the media at large. But in the past week or so, it’s become more apparent than ever that those who’ve accused the international organization of politicizing science and manipulating data have been right all along. (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker)

Non-casual readers already know I do not like to dwell into topics covered in great depth elsewhere. I will make a very short exception to that “policy”, simply because the McIntyre/Briffa story is too big.

Too big, that is, not to warrant some huge dose of skepticism before getting carried away with it.

We have a saying in Italian, “if they’re roses, they’ll bloom”. AKA “time will tell”.

As much as I admire McIntyre’s relentless quest to go always back to the original data, I am sure I am not the first one that has seen apparently-straight forward things turn around all of a sudden. There’s no reason to celebrate… if the Briffa reconstruction will implode, it will implode anyway.

Now we have a blog on the topic, by Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate, and a brief note by Briffa himself.

Gavin is his usual self, the worst enemy of AGW that is, with a blog post choked by its own sarcasm. Through the deep, rather undignified fog, one can get a glimpse of what appears to be a potentially strong riposte to Steve McIntyre (but with Schmidt’s emotions running so raw, I am afraid McIntyre will always have the upper hand).

Briffa is very calm and measured, therefore making his decision not to share the data sooner even more puzzling

Lawrence Solomon: The end is near - The media, polls and even scientists suggest the global warming scare is all over but the shouting

The great global warming scare is over — it is well past its peak, very much a spent force, sputtering in fits and starts to a whimpering end. You may not know this yet. Or rather, you may know it but don’t want to acknowledge it until every one else does, and that won’t happen until the press, much of which also knows it, formally acknowledges it.

I know that the global warming scare is over but for the shouting because that’s what the polls show, at least those in the U.S., where unlike Canada the public is polled extensively on global warming. Most Americans don’t blame humans for climate change — they consider global warming to be a natural phenomenon. Even when the polls showed the public believed man was responsible for global warming, the public didn’t take the scare seriously. When asked to rank global warming’s importance compared to numerous other concerns — unemployment, trade, health care, poverty, crime, and education among them — global warming came in dead last. Fewer than 1% chose global warming as scare-worthy. (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post)

Scraping the bottom of the fruit-loop barrel now -- Clive Hamilton: Most people in denial over climate change, according to psychologists - The majority of people in Britain are in denial about the risk of global warming in our lifetimes, according to a new study into the psychology of climate change.

The Met Office has warned that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate temperatures will rise above four degrees C in the next fifty years.

This will cause sea level rise, droughts, floods and mass collapse of eco-systems.

However Clive Hamilton, Professor of public ethics at the Australian National University, said the majority of the population is still in denial about the risks of climate change.

He compared the situation to the psychology of the British and German populations before the Second World War and said the only way to make people change their behaviour is to "ramp up the fear factor." (Daily Telegraph)

Parakeets may be a foreign pest which only settled in Britain in 1969 but shooting them just because they’re a “nasty alien” is “racist” – a form of “eco-xenophobia.” So claims the director of the Environmental Change Research Unit at Sheffield Hallam University.

Earlier this week, the director of another eco-body – the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research – grabbed the headlines with a similar loopy claim. Britain, said Kevin Anderson, simply isn’t doing enough to combat climate change. What it needs, he argued, is a “planned recession” – with a ban on petrol-driven cars, coal-fired power stations and new airports. Only if Britain reduces its carbon emissions by at least 70 per cent by 2020 can eco-catastrophe be averted.

Gosh I don’t half enjoy news stories like this. They remind us that for all the modern green movement’s claims to sweet reasonableness, scientific integrity, and good, old-fashioned planet-saving commonsense it is in fact stuffed to the gills with activists madder than a giant pantechnicon from Mad Max III with “I’m completely mad” written in ornate golden lettering on the front and on the back “No really I am, madder than you could ever imagine.”

That’s how mad they are. Which would be fine if no one took their ramblings seriously. But unfortunately many people do, and quite a few of those people have control over our lives and our purse strings. President Obama, for example. He believes all this “cut carbon emissions or the world will die tomorrow” drivel. As does our future king. As does pretty much every political administration in Europe, save possibly Poland and the Czech Republic. As does your and my local council. As do most of the teachers filling your kids brains with eco-propaganda at school. As indeed, I’m sorry to say, do lots and lots of your friends, and if you were ever to try to put them right over dinner one night they wouldn’t swing round to your point of view you know, they’d think you were evil and uncaring and very possibly in the pay of Big Oil. (James Delingpole, Daily Telegraph)

I am off to Australia to compete in the World Masters Games and the World Masters Track Cycling Championships in Sydney, so this will likely be my last entry for seven weeks. I expect this might even be my last entry because the cause is gaining so much momentum and the alarmists are unable to respond, so by the time I get back the idiocy could likely have ended. If it comes to an end it will be in a large part due to your CCNet and the world should give you a vote of thanks.

This whole issue is about media manipulation and painting us as lackeys to the energy industry and enemies of the environment. Since the Environmentalists do nothing for the Environment except protest anything to do with energy, and scientists actually do the studies and put in place practices that actually improve the environment, we should be called “Environmental Stewards” and change the debate to a battle between those who improve the environment and those who do nothing except protest and cause harm to the global population.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce through Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, hosted a presentation by Lord Christopher Monckton titled “Apocalypse Cancelled; The Overheated Hype behind Global Warming”.

There were four members of the Alberta Provincial Legislature recognized by the host prior to the presentation. During his presentation, Monckton asked by a show of hands for those who did not support the concept of human caused global warming, and there was a unanimous response; when he asked for the supporters not a single hand went up.

The Alberta Government is spending $2billion in taxpayers’ money for CCS (carbon capture and sequestration). The rational given by the government for this ridiculous wastage is the IPCC, which they use as their sole basis for scientific support to the exclusion of all with contrary evidence. This means that members of the Alberta Legislature believe in human caused global warming, yet none of the four members in attendance raised their hands to show support for the government position.

This presentation puts the Members of the Legislature in the awkward position of being exposed to the hard physical facts that contradict their own government position. The simple question is what will they do when they get back to the Legislature? The government is already so committed to this endeavour with projects that are already underway, that it is a physical impossibility for the government to stop the process through political means without losing power.

This is the dilemma facing all world governments, no informed leadership can be unaware of the fact that the Earth is cooling in spite of the continued increase in global CO2 emissions, but all leaders are committed to doing something about “Climate Change” otherwise they will be put out of office. There is only one possible way out of this conundrum. The IPCC was formed under a “science mandate” and under this mandate science protocol demands that all postulations are backed up with physical facts. Since the physical facts clearly demonstrate that there is no possible connection between CO2 emissions and global warming, the IPCC must declare that it is not in the world’s interest to continue with Kyoto Initiatives to stop global warming because global warming has already stopped. Since the IPCC is the sole reference for all governments on this issue, this retraction will allow governments to put an end to the wastage without losing power. It is up to the IPCC to put an end to this fraud, and the world must force them to do so, or be held accountable for the food crisis, the economic crisis, and all of the other detrimental effects to the world population caused by this misrepresentation of facts.

There is a curious coincidence revealed by Lord Monckton. Monckton points to direct measurements in a new paper by Professor Richard Lindzen that shows the effect of doubling CO2 will produce less than 0.5°C of possible warming, in contrast to the model predictions of over 3°C. This is only one sixth of the catastrophic temperature predicted by the IPCC, and certainly nothing to worry about since at the current rate of 2ppmv/year it will take 193 years for this doubling and 0.5°C temperature increase to occur.

Over 20 years ago the whole global warming issue was started by climate models that used a forcing parameter based on 0.6°C of observed warming from a 100ppmv observed increase in atmospheric CO2. The world has been warming since the Little Ice Age at a rate of about 0.5°C/century, and since the observed warming of 0.6°C took place over a century the 0.5°C must be subtracted to determine the temperature increase attributable to CO2.

Since this is only 0.1°C but the climate models are based on 0.6°C the climate models have a forcing parameter that gives CO2 increases six times the forcing than what the measured values allow. It is this false six fold overstatement of the effect from CO2 that underlies the entire premise of AGW alarmism, and it has taken over two decades to finally develop physical proof that the models overstate global warming by a factor of six.

Since the work by Lindzen has clearly passed rigorous peer review, and unlike the MBH98 Temperature Proxy, there has not been a single piece of evidence, that contradicts the assertions of the Lindzen Paper, The IPCC has no choice because of its scientific mandate to discard the computer model projections and accept the six fold decrease in projected warming from CO2 as the physical basis for all further reports. This will put an end to global warming fallacies, and give world governments the “out” that they need to stop these wasteful policies addressing a problem that does not exist.

Norm Kalmanovitch
Calgary Canada (via CCNet)

It is funny to notice how, bit by bit, excuse-prone scientists are unwittingly destroying climate science.

For example now we know that decade-long temperature trends are irrelevant (if they cannot be used to show a cooling, or a stability in temperatures, obviously they cannot be used to show an increase either).

We also know that the number of strong Atlantic hurricanes is irrelevant (if the fact that there have been very few of late, cannot be used to invalidate AGW, then even if they return in large numbers, that won’t be suitable to demonstrate AGW either).

In other parts of the blogosphere, we are now learning that past reconstructions are irrelevant too (even if they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter to future warming).

And of course, the IPCC itself has declared in 2007 that attribution of a particular weather event to AGW may as well be impossible. Based on that logic, no mention of “global warming” or “global cooling” or pretty much anything else climate-related, makes any sense when talking about weather (trouble is, somehow all that irrelevant weather magically transmogrifies itself into “climate” over 30 years).

At this rate, climatology will soon remain as a bunch of pure “irrelevants”. (OmniClimate)

Many policymakers have traditionally seen climate models as irrelevant, but Gavin Schmidt argues that recent advances are making such models an essential tool in informing policy choices

A quick tour of the Internet reveals some very strong feelings on the subject of climate models. Unsurprisingly, on climate contrarian sites, such models are described in all sorts of unflattering terms and dismissed out of hand as fundamentally useless. However, in more rational forums, and sometimes even among scientists themselves, one occasionally comes across a basic ignorance of whether climate models are any good, and, even more importantly, what they are good for. By the time one gets to policymakers, climate models are seen at best as black boxes, and at worst as simply irrelevant to their detailed concerns. However, climate models – appropriately used – might have a vitally important part to play in breaking through some of the log jams now hampering policymakers. (Physics World)

Such was the message which previous generations would have seen from time to time, usually from a man wearing a 'sandwich board', with the message visible from both front and back. Now the message is still seen, but this time via the mainstream media. And today, the lone eccentric has been replaced by the UK's Met Office. In Oxford this week, their latest findings were unveiled: a possibility of a 4°C temperature rise by 2060, within the lifetime of many of today's young people.

The source of these figures is, of course computer models. Models have their place, but are only good for 'what if' scenarios. The Global Circulation Models run on the super-computers at the Met Office and elsewhere are all based on certain premises, in particular that atmospheric carbon dioxide not only has the expected (modest) warming effect on the Earth's surface, but that this effect is significantly boosted by positive feedback. Specifically, it is assumed that there is a self-reinforcing spiral: as the ocean surface warms, more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, which warms further, promoting further release of carbon dioxide from the oceans, and so on.

In many fields, alternative models may have been used to assess what might happen if assumptions were different. But not so in climate modelling; all use the same basic assumptions. And let us not forget that none of the models has suggested that a halt – temporary or otherwise – in the warming trend could happen, as has been the case since the turn of the century. IPCC scientists may be right that this is merely a blip before the upward trend resumes and intensifies, but the fact that so little is known about other drivers of climate is hardly cause for confidence in the views of a body which could determine the course of future world development. (Scientific Alliance)

In Saturday's National Post, James Cowan writes about Lord Christopher Monckton and Lord Nigel Lawson, two men who consider themselves skeptics about manmade climate change.

This isn't the first time we've covered this topic. Check out our long-running series The Deniers, interviews and profiles of many other climate change skeptics.

The National Post's sensational series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science. Written by Lawrence Solomon, the series profiles the ideas and the scientists who do not share the “consensus” United Nations’ theories on climate change and global warming. Read them all.

In April we drew attention to the UK Met Office long term forecast for the coming summer season just finished. Now why would we do that if there were no reason to doubt it? It was because there is no scientific means to predict such events over such a time-scale. As it turns out, the forecast was as dramatically wrong as it possibly could be. Instead of the “barbeque summer” that had been predicted we had one of the coolest and gloomiest summers in living memory. The same agency is now telling us that it was a warmer summer than usual because of warm nights. That claim is hard to believe for those of us who regularly consult our max/min external thermometers. There was not one night that was uncomfortably warm; a rare year indeed. Perhaps it is time for volunteers to make a survey of Met Office weather stations, as has happened in the USA.

It is left to the lone journalistic voice of Christopher Booker to explain what has happened at the Met Office. Like most major scientific institutions it has been occupied by fanatical greenies, who have seized control. In this particular case it is under the leadership of one of the most rabid of all, a serial alarmist who has his fingers in many pies. If there are any genuine meteorologists left in that organisation, they must find it all very embarrassing. (Number Watch)

The truth is emerging – there is not a scrap of evidence that man-made carbon dioxide causes global warming. The IPCC has been devious and incompetent. Australia should boycott all further meetings and withhold future funding. The most recent Ice Age ended about 20,000 years ago, and there was dramatic natural global warming - ice sheets melted, sea levels rose and the warming seas expelled carbon dioxide. All of these beneficial events encouraged the spread of grasslands, forests and animal and human populations over lands once covered by barren sheets of ice. None of these dramatic changes were caused by emissions from the camp fires of the Cave Men.

Full article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/no-man-made-global-warming.pdf [PDF, 99 KB] (Carbon Sense Coalition)

ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon - Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it's not just here.

Across the tundra 1,500 kilometres to the east, Canada's Beverly herd, numbering more than 200,000 a decade ago, can barely be found today.

Halfway around the world in Siberia, the biggest aggregation of these migratory animals, of the dun-coloured herds whose sweep across the Arctic's white canvas is one of nature's matchless wonders, has shrunk by hundreds of thousands in a few short years.

From wildlife spectacle to wildlife mystery, the decline of the caribou - called reindeer in the Eurasian Arctic - has biologists searching for clues, and finding them.

They believe the insidious impact of climate change, its tipping of natural balances and disruption of feeding habits, is decimating a species that has long numbered in the millions and supported human life in Earth's most inhuman climate.

Many herds have lost more than half their number from the maximums of recent decades, a global survey finds. They "hover on the precipice of a major decline," it says. (Associated Press)

Half a century after Pacific walruses began recovering from industrial-scale hunting, marine biologists are growing worried that they face a mounting threat from global warming.

Masses of lumbering walruses have been crowding on beaches and rocks along the Russian and American sides of the Bering Strait in the absence of the coastal sea ice that normally serves as a late-summer haven and nursery.

While the retreats in sea ice around the Arctic this summer were not as extensive as in 2008 or 2007, the Chukchi Sea, at the heart of the walrus subspecies’ range, was largely open water.

On Thursday, biologists from the United States Geological Survey issued a report concluding that 131 walruses found dead near Icy Cape, Alaska, on Sept. 14 died from being crushed or stampeded. Several thousand walruses had been congregating in the area, a situation that scientists from the agency said was highly unusual.

Last month, a team from the World Wildlife Fund reported seeing 20,000 walruses on the shore at Cape Schmidt, Russa. In that same area, scientists in 2007 reported several thousand crushing deaths after tens of thousands of walruses crowded on the shoreline.

Walruses have endured more than 15 million years of climatic ups and downs, so experts do not foresee the species’ becoming extinct, particularly if hunting remains controlled. (Thousands are legally killed each year by indigenous communities in both countries.) (NYT)

This article has been revised to clarify the year in which several thousand walrus crushing deaths on the shore of Cape Schmidt, Russia. The deaths occurred in 2007.

Singer and Avery have updated their New York Times bestseller by reorganizing the content of the original edition. It is now easier to follow the discoveries showing solar radiation to be the principal influence on global climate, while demonstrating that human-caused carbon dioxide has virtually no measurable effect whatever. It is a very readable book that avoids scientific jargon and does not drown its major points in a flood of data, yet provides 499 references for anyone desiring to find and read the facts found and explained by international researchers.

The authors go through hundreds of papers published since 1962 in peer-reviewed scientific journals that examine physical evidence of global climate variation throughout the world – in the Arctic and Antarctica, China and Europe, the USA and Patagonia, Greenland and New Zealand, and many more locations. In every case, these papers have uncovered a pattern of global warming and cooling that is independent of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. (Roger F. Jones, The Bulletin)

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2009: Concerns On The IPCC Report – The Actual State Of Climate Science.Presented at the Program on Global Warming, The University of Texas Law School, October 2, 2009 [we were requested to have just five powerpoint slides and to prepare a one page summary in response to three issues].

Remarks by Roger A. Pielke Sr. on the State of Climate Science and the IPCC Process

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports (and associated reports by the US Climate Change Research Program (CCRP)) incompletely assessed the role of humans in the climate system, as well as natural variations in global and regional climate. A 2005 NRC report [National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties], for example, wrote:

“Despite all these advantages, the traditional global mean TOA [top of the atmosphere] radiative forcing concept has some important limitations, which have come increasingly to light over the past decade. The concept is inadequate for some forcing agents, such as absorbing aerosols and land-use changes, that may have regional climate impacts much greater than would be predicted from TOA radiative forcing. Also, it diagnoses only one measure of climate change—global mean surface temperature response—while offering little information on regional climate change or precipitation. These limitations can be addressed by expanding the radiative forcing concept and through the introduction of additional forcing metrics. In particular, the concept needs to be extended to account for (1) the vertical structure of radiative forcing, (2) regional variability in radiative forcing, and (3) nonradiative forcing…..”

The 2007 IPCC reports (and associated CCSP reports) selectively chose research papers to present and ignored peer reviewed papers which conflicted with their conclusions [e. g. as documented in the appendix of http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/Testimony-written.pdf]. The IPCC structure has a small group of lead authors who dictate the focus of each chapter, as well as what research to cite. In the November 27, 2005 issue of EOS, the news report “Meeting Updates Progress of U.S. Climate Change Program”there is a quote by Antonio Busalacchi, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland;

“Busalacchi…called for the inclusion of a wider range of scientists, including international scientists, in developing these reports. In addition, he warned that some small scientific communities had become ‘incestuous’ with report authors reviewing their own work.”

This in bred arrangement permeates the climate assessment reports and leadership of climate science professional organizations (e. g see also http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/protecting-the-ipcc-turf/). With respect to the IPCC, it managed by a relatively small group of individuals who are using the IPCC process to control what policymakers and the public learn about climate on multi-decadal time scales.

The IPCC provides a top-down global climate model approach to assess the risk from changes in climate. This approach, however, inappropriately limits the communication to policymakers of the actual threats that we face. A more inclusive approach is a bottom-up, resource-based perspective. With this method of risk assessment there are at least 5 broad areas that should be evaluated in order to define their vulnerability to variability and change: water, food, energy, health and ecosystem function. Each area has societally critical resources. The vulnerability concept requires the determination of the major threats to these resources from climate, but also from other social and environmental issues. After these threats are identified for each resource, then the relative risk from natural- and human-caused climate change (estimated from the GCM projections, but also the historical, paleo-record and worst case sequences of events) can be compared with other risks in order to adopt the optimal mitigation/adaptation strategy.

Program on Climate Change and Law, Marvin Key Collie Lecture
School of Law, University of Texas at Austin (October 2, 2009) (Climate Science)

[This is an update on research progress we have made into determining just how sensitive the climate system is to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.]

While published studies are beginning to suggest that net feedbacks in the climate system could be negative for year-to-year variations (e.g., our 2007 paper, and the new study by Lindzen and Choi, 2009), there remains the question of whether the same can be said of long-term climate sensitivity (and therefore, of the strength of future global warming).

Even if we find observational evidence of an insensitive climate system for year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system, it could be that the system’s long term response to more carbon dioxide is very sensitive. I’m not saying I believe that is the case – I don’t – but it is possible. This question of a potentially large difference in short-term and long-term responses of the climate system has been bothering me for many months.

Significantly, as far as I know, the climate modelers have not yet demonstrated that there is any short-term behavior in their models which is also a good predictor of how much global warming those models project for our future. It needs to be something we can measure, something we can test with real observations. Just because all of the models behave more-or-less like the real climate system does not mean the range of warming they produce encompasses the truth.

For instance, computing feedback parameters (a measure of how much the radiative balance of the Earth changes in response to a temperature change) would be the most obvious test. But I’ve diagnosed feedback parameters from 7- to 10-year subsets of the models’ long-term global warming simulations, and they have virtually no correlation with those models known long-term feedbacks. (I am quite sure I know the reason for this…which is the subject of our JGR paper now being revised…I just don’t know a good way around it).

But I refuse to give up searching. This is because the most important feedbacks in the climate system – clouds and water vapor – have inherently short time scales…minutes for individual clouds, to days or weeks for large regional cloud systems and changes in free-tropospheric water vapor. So, I still believe that there MUST be one or more short term “markers” of long term climate sensitivity.

Well, this past week I think I finally found one. I’m going to be a little evasive about exactly what that marker is because, in this case, the finding is too important to give away to another researcher who will beat me to publishing it (insert smiley here).

What I will say is that the marker ‘index’ is related to how the climate models behave during sudden warming events and the cooling that follows them. In the IPCC climate models, these warming/cooling events typically have time scales of several months, and are self-generated as ‘natural variability’ within the models. (I’m not concerned that I’ve given it away, since the marker is not obvious…as my associate Danny Braswell asked, “What made you think of that?”)

The following plot shows how this ‘mystery index’ is related to the net feedback parameters diagnosed in those 18 climate models by Forster and Taylor (2006). As can be seen, it explains 50% of the variance among the different models. The best I have been able to do up to this point is less than 10% explained variance, which for a sample size of 18 models might as well be zero.

Short-term-marker-of-climate-sensitivity

Also plotted is the range of values of this index from 9 years of CERES satellite measurements computed in the same manner as with the models’ output. As can be seen, the satellite data support lower climate sensitivity (larger feedback parameter) than any of the climate models…but not nearly as low as the 6 Watts per sq. meter per degree found for tropical climate variations by us and others.

For a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the satellite measurements would correspond to about 1.6 to 2.0 deg. C of warming, compared to the 18 IPCC models’ range shown, which corresponds to warming of from about 2.0 to 4.2 deg. C.

The relatively short length of record of our best satellite data (9 years) appears to be the limiting factor in this analysis. The model results shown in the above figure come from 50 years of output from each of the 18 models, while the satellite range of results comes from only 9 years of CERES data (March 2000 through December 2008). The index needs to be computed from as many strong warming events as can be found, because the marker only emerges when a number of them are averaged together.

Despite this drawback, the finding of this short-term marker of long-term climate sensitivity is at least a step in the right direction. I will post progress on this issue as the evidence unfolds. Hopefully, more robust markers can be found that show even a stronger relationship to long-term warming in the models, and which will produce greater confidence when tested with relatively short periods of satellite data. (Roy W. Spencer)

A plane takes off from Bilbao in northern Spain, a popular destination for British holidaymakers. Photograph: Alfredo Aldai/AP

The extent of the public's refusal to fly less often has been revealed by research that suggests attempts to slash greenhouse gas emissions from aviation will struggle to get off the ground.

Fewer than one in five people are trying to reduce the number of flights they take for environmental reasons, warns the study from Loughborough University. The findings come after the aviation industry vowed to halve emissions by 2050 and the government's climate advisers called for a deal at UN climate talks in Copenhagen to cap emissions from flying. (The Guardian)

The search for ways to reduce carbon emissions has led to government grant money for schemes ranging from promising to wacky. Recognizing that there is no currently viable replacement for fossil fuels, with the possible exception of nuclear power, the US and other countries with large coal deposits are desperately looking for ways to continue burning coal without incurring the wrath of nature or the IPCC. Clear evidence of the seriousness of this effort is evident in this week's special edition of Science, dedicated to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology.

If the world's nations have not taken the effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions seriously in the past that has changed. Fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—were once considered national treasures, the keys to a bright and prosperous future. Nowadays they are poisonous pariahs, and the worst among them is coal. There are many who say clean coal is an oxymoron, that the ubiquitous black mineral which has done so much for humankind—powering the Industrial Revolution and providing much of the modern world's energy—should be abandoned as a power source because of the pollution it causes. Yet global coal use is rising and there is new talk of coal as the fuel of the future.

Coal is primarily used as a fuel to produce electricity and heat through combustion. World coal consumption is about 6.2 billion tons annually. China produced 2.38 billion tons in 2006 and India produced about 447.3 million tons in 2006. 68.7% of China's electricity comes from coal. The US consumes about 1.053 billion tons of coal each year, using 90% of it for generation of electricity. Currently, there are 417 coal-fired power plants in the US rated 100 MW and above.

In the US Energy Information Administration's International Energy Outlook 2009 reference case, world coal consumption increases by 49% from 2006 to 2030, and coal’s share of world energy consumption increases from 27% in 2006 to 28% in 2030. Despite the wailing of climate change alarmists coal, responsible for 30% of the humanity's total carbon emissions, is actually increasing it's piece of the energy pie.

Nowhere is this upward trend more evident than in the developing nations. In 2006, non-OECD energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide exceeded OECD emissions by 14%. With China and India leading the way, by 2030 energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries are projected to exceed those from the OECD countries by 77%.

The primary reason coal gets so much attention is because a number of countries, including the US, have abundant reserves of this fossil fuel. The technology to mine, transport and convert coal's energy content to other forms is also well know and widely available. So how can coal be the fuel of the future? This hope all hinges on an experimental and mostly non-existent technology called “carbon sequestration.” To understand what the hoopla is all about we need to know a few things about atmospheric CO₂ levels and the carbon cycle.

As I detailed in my earlier post, “The Grand View: 4 Billion Years Of Climate Change,” the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has varied widely over geologic time. This fluctuation was caused by the effects of ice ages, volcanism, asteroid impacts, and the spread and retreat of vegetation. About 500 million years ago, atmospheric CO₂ density is estimated to have been 20 times as high as it is today. Since the end of the last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, atmospheric CO₂ has remained around 280 parts per million, very low by historical standards. Over the past couple of centuries, increasing use of fossil fuels has increased atmospheric CO₂ levels to about 385 ppm.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 600 million years.

The carbon from the CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere, along with all the other forms of carbon contained in the oceans, rocks and living things, is constantly being exchanged in what scientists call the carbon cycle. Dennis Normile has provided a rather nice diagram describing the main points of the carbon cycle in the aforementioned special issue of Science (see “Round and Round: A Guide to the Carbon Cycle”). Quoting from the text of his diagram:

When carbon is released into the environment the carbon's point of origin is called a source, when carbon is removed from the enviroment and stored for some period of time the storage place is called a sink. Sinks include vegetation, ocean waters, and rock. Sources include rotting vegetable matter, the oceans, and, of course, burning fossil fuels.

Humans currently pump around 7 gigatons of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year, but only about 50% remains there. The rest disappears into what is known in scientific circles as the “missing sink.” We described some of the places this carbon could be going in Chapter 7 of The Resilient Earth, “Changing Atmospheric Gases” (pdf). Among the possibilities are greater-than-expected uptake by northern forests, the oceans, and desert soils. Solving the mystery is more difficult because of uncertainties about how much carbon is going where.

An example of how science is constantly discovering new components of the carbon cycle is seen in the recent discovery of a new carbon sink in the world's oceans. Christened the “Jelly Pump” by its discoverers, it is the result of the actions of jellyfish like creatures called thaliaceans. You can read more about this discovery and how it is causing scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about the carbon cycle in my article “New "Jelly Pump" Rewrites Carbon Cycle.” The amount of carbon released by mankind is small compared with the total amount “in play” in the carbon cycle. But even with the missing sink, carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere keep increasing, which is causing panic in some quarters.

This leads us back to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Those rising CO₂ levels, which are blamed for causing dreaded global warming, must be reigned in. At least that is the official story from the UN and many national governments. To slow the atmospheric buildup of CO₂, the US National Research Council has called for building 15 to 20 coal-fired power plants with CCS before 2020. “The urgency of getting started on these demonstrations to clarify future deployment options cannot be overstated,” the report said. Today, a number of projects are under development. Most aim either to bury CO₂ separated from natural gas reservoirs or to pump it into oil reservoirs to push out more oil. Science has provided a map that shows some of the major CCS projects around the world (unfortunately, you will need an AAAS membership to view it online).

The commercialization of carbon capture presents many technological and political challanges. The technology to actually capture CO₂ must be developed on an industrial scale, as well as transport of liquified carbon dioxide and its storage in exploited oil fields or saline formations. Many hurdles remain to be overcome. According to R. Stuart Haszeldine's review article, “Carbon Capture and Storage: How Green Can Black Be?,” urgent action is required if carbon capture and storage is to play a large role in limiting climate change. Quoting from the review:

Haszeldine estimates that fitting all coal and gas power plants with CCS by 2050 would reduce world CO₂ emissions from energy by 20%. At the same time, at least in the UK, CCS may cost each household an extra 10% per year for electricity. For reasons given below I find that is a very optimistic cost estimate. The type of closed loop system envisioned for CCS is shown in Figure 1 from the review article, shown below.

Among the technical hurdles facing CCS is carbon capture itself. CO₂ separation, if scaled-up, could consume 25 to 40% of the fuel energy of a power plant. Estimates from experts in the power generation industry are that for every three coal-fired plants generating electricity you would effectively need a fourth plant to power the capture operation. All capture technologies face significant challenges to rapid commercial deployment. Haszeldine estimates that at least two “learning cycles” are needed to demonstrate operation and enable commercial guarantees for construction. “This is a technically possible but politically optimistic pathway,” he states.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is injection and geological storage of the captured CO₂. To have an impact on worldwide emissions of fossil fuel–derived CO₂, extremely large volumes of geological storage are needed. According to the review article “efforts to scale-up injection face a fundamental problem: The subsurface contains no empty space. Any injection of CO₂ into a depleted hydrocarbon field or a saline formation has to displace or compress the existing pore fluid by raising the pressure.” In other words, it isn't as simple as just drilling a well and pumping the gas underground.

For various reasons, depleted oil and gas fields cannot provide sufficient storage space for the volumes of captured gas involved in this scheme. The only possible storage areas that promise to be large enough are saline aquifers. In theory, saline aquifer formations could store the equivalent of hundreds of years of present day power plant emissions, but that estimate is probably too optimistic as well. Additionally, CO₂ stored in unconfined formations might migrate tens of kilometers during a 30-year injection period, making leakage monitoring more expensive and more unreliable. If the storage sites do leak then CCS is nothing more than a very expensive fools game.

In the US Energy Information Administration's International Energy Outlook 2009 The idea that clean coal will save the world from global warming has become something of an article of faith among policymakers. CCS features prominently in all the main blueprints for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The Stern Review, a celebrated report on the economics of climate change, considers it “essential”. It provides one of the seven major areas of emissions cuts proposed by Robert Socolow of Princeton University. So important is this effort to the Obama Administration Energy that Secretary Chu wrote the lead editorial for the special edition of Science, in which he stated:

I believe that Dr Chu has effectively captured the enormity of the problem. To make this scheme work we must find a way to permanently store 30,000 km³ of captured carbon dioxide each year. For the metric challenged that's 7,200 cubic miles of CO₂ each and every year, possibly for hundreds of years. Again quoting from the Haszeldine review article: “Worldwide, the original static estimates of storage capacity are now being substantially downgraded to many decades rather than hundreds of years of emissions.”

All told, CCS could require the drilling of 100,000 wells each year and constructing tens of thousands of miles of pipeline to transport the captured CO₂ from power plants to the wells. It could end up costing $1.3 trillion a year for the US alone. This is the equivalent of a Wall Street bail out every year for the foreseeable future. Where would the money to pay for this come from? From the consumers of electricity of course—every last one of us. I have been given estimates from people in the power industry that they expect residential electrical bills in the Midwest, where 85% of electricity comes from coal, to rise by $1,800 a year.

No one really knows the how pumping 7,200 cubic miles of CO₂ underground each year will affect Earth's ecology. But that is probably not an immediate concern. Though some predict efficiencies of 90-95% capture a more realistic level is 70%. It is also probably that only a few pilot plants will be up and running by 2020. If they are successful, these initial demonstrations are only the first step toward building a new CCS based coal industry. Low-cost reliable capture at clusters of CCS power plants must emerge, and national pipe networks must be developed, delivering to aquifer storage capacity that must have been validated. Even on a 20 year time schedule only a small percentage of coal-fired plants will be using CCS two decades from now. CO₂ from coal account for around 30% of total human carbon emissions. By 2030, even if an optimistic 20% of the worlds coal-fired power plants are converted, CCS may save 70% of 20% of 30% of total human carbon dioxide emissions, a paltry 4.2% total.

Given the punishing cost, plus the fact that this technology has yet to be proven on an industrial scale, are there no alternatives? Steven Chu, when asked what he would do if faced with a choice of living next to a coal-fired energy plant or a nuclear facility, answered “me personally, I'd rather be living near a nuclear power plant.” In an interview on National Public Radio's Morning Edition show, the Secretary went on to explain that a nuclear plant produces less pollution and US nuke plants have good safety records. Chu also noted that advances in technology will make storage of nuclear waste less of an issue in coming years. Maybe clean coal isn't the answer after all.

Can clean coal become a reality? There are those who claim clean coal is an oxymoron, an impossible dream, while others say it is America's “God given right to burn coal.” While clean coal sounds like a great idea, as engineers we must deal with what is available now, not what might work sometime in the future. But we are also realists—king coal is not about to be put out of business anytime soon, even if the greens can overcome their atavistic attitudes toward nuclear power.

Supposedly our world is afflicted by the malady of global warming. If this is the recommended treatment it may well be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. Little wonder that many skeptical governments are willing to take the chance that global warning's impact will not be as devastating as the climate change alarmists claim.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world's people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot from diesel fumes and wood fires, according to scientists in India and China.

The results, to be announced this month in Kashmir, show for the first time that clouds of soot – made up of tiny particles of "black carbon" emitted from old diesel engines and from cooking with wood, crop waste or cow dung – are "unequivocally having an impact on glacial melting" in the Himalayas.

Scientists say that, while the threat of carbon dioxide to global warming has been accepted, soot from developing countries is a largely unappreciated cause of rising temperatures. Once the black carbon lands on glaciers, it absorbs sunlight that would otherwise be reflected by the snow, leading to melting. "This is a huge problem which we are ignoring," said Professor Syed Hasnain of the Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in Delhi. "We are finding concentrations of black carbon in the Himalayas in what are supposed to be pristine, untouched environments." (The Observer)

Carbon Capture Remains Elusive - Despite subsidies and new projects, carbon dioxide sequestration is still a long way off.

On October 1, a coal-fired plant in West Virginia operated by American Electric Power (AEP) became the first power station in the U.S. to pump a portion of its carbon dioxide emissions underground. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy is funneling billions of stimulus dollars into carbon capture and sequestration. And FutureGen, a government-backed project to build the first zero-emissions coal-fueled plant, looks set to rise from the ashes.

At first blush, it seems carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is on its way to making clean coal a reality. However, no commercial-scale CCS operation is near completion in the U.S., and until a market price is set on carbon dioxide, experts say things aren't likely to change.

"Until there is a market, the technology won't take off," says Howard Herzog, principal research engineer with the MIT Energy Initiative. "It's amazing that there are as many projects going on that there are today; they are all research and development projects that are funded with subsidies." (Technology Review)

Sequestration of CO2 would cost many billions of dollars, but it alone might not save climate. (Edmonton Journal)

THE government’s chief scientific adviser on climate change has proposed a quadrupling of Britain’s nuclear power generation to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Professor David MacKay believes nuclear power could be the only way Britain can meet its soaring demand for electricity while keeping emissions under control.

He has calculated that renewable energy sources such as wind and tidal power will never provide more than a fraction of Britain’s electricity needs. (Sunday Times)

Adding 10p per kilowatt hour (kwh) to the 36 pence proposed for 'clean energy cashback' scheme would create 30,000 jobs (The Guardian)

"Sustainability" is the hottest topic in energy research today, but what does it actually mean? George Crabtree and John Sarrao describe what makes a technology sustainable, and outline the materials-science challenges standing between us and clean, long-lasting energy (George Crabtree and John Sarrao, Physics World)

Swine flu is now widespread across the entire country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday as federal health officials released Tamiflu for children from the national stockpile and began taking orders from the states for the new swine flu vaccine.

Also, as anecdotal reports and at least one poll showed that many Americans are nervous about the vaccine, officials emphasized that the new shots were nearly identical to seasonal ones, and said they were doing what they could to debunk myths about the vaccine.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, the disease control center’s director of immunization and respiratory disease, said there was “significant flu activity in virtually all states,” which, she added, was “quite unusual for this time of year.”

Dr. Schuchat expressed particular worry about pregnant women. As of late August, 100 had been hospitalized in intensive care, and 28 had died since the beginning of the outbreak in April.

“These are really upsetting numbers,” she said, urging obstetricians and midwives to advise patients to get swine flu shots as soon as they become available. (NYT)

LONDON - More than half of babies born in rich nations today will live to be 100 years old if current life expectancy trends continue, according to Danish researchers.

Increasing numbers of very old people could pose major challenges for health and social systems, but the research showed that may be mitigated by people not only living longer, but also staying healthier in their latter years.

"Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations -- very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries," Kaare Christensen of the Danish Ageing Research Centre wrote on Friday in a study in the Lancet medical journal.

The study used Germany as a case study and showed that by 2050, its population will be substantially older and smaller than now -- a situation it said was now typical of rich nations. (Reuters)

Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee approved a healthcare reform amendment that would penalize employees who are not following “healthy lifestyles” and participating in wellness programs. Employers will be allowed to raise healthcare premiums by as much as 50 percent for workers who are fat, smoke, don’t exercise, are noncompliant with preventive care, and not meeting certain health measures, such as lower cholesterol levels.

Blaming “skyrocketed healthcare costs” on weight gain and unhealthy lifestyles, he told media that weight loss programs, smoking cessation and preventive care could lower costs. Employees who are trim and living “healthy lifestyles” should be rewarded for their good behavior, said Senator John Ensign, and those who are not should pay. The Senate committee passed the bipartisan amendment by a vote of 19 to four.

This is why sound science matters.

People talk of personal responsibility, but it never seems to apply to taking responsibility to make sure that the popular claims and judgments they repeat, and act upon, are really supported by sound research evidence.

Personal accountability never seems to apply to hurting people and discrimination, especially against those who are politically incorrect.

Control over the personal behavior of others is the new public health ethic. It is not to be confused with medical ethics. (Junkfood Science)

NEW YORK - Weight loss surgery can help you lose weight, but it's also likely to leave you unable to absorb iron, a new study suggests: Iron deficiency is a common problem after stomach bypass surgery to treat severe obesity -- and standard iron supplements may not be enough to prevent it in some patients. (Reuters Health)

The Department of Health is to sponsor episodes of hit TV show The Simpsons in a bid to tackle obesity, it was revealed.

Fans of the long-running American cartoon series will see clips of specially-designed characters tucking into fast food and unhealthy snacks before the junk food disappears and is replaced with more nutritious fare such as fruit and vegetables.

Designed by Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman Animations, the characters will recreate the familiar images of Homer, Bart, Marge and the rest of the Simpson family sitting on the sofa at the beginning of each episode.

The £640,000 adverts for the Government's Change4Life health campaign on Channel 4 will run until Christmas Day. (UKPA)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest believes that many states might be able to close gaps in their budgets by placing a tax on soda and other sugary drinks.

The health advocacy group released a study this week that estimates budget-strapped states -- including California -- could generate a combined $10 billion a year by levying a tax of 7 cents per 12-ounce can of Coke or other beverage. Currently, 25 states impose special taxes on sugary drinks.

The group, which is lobbying for such taxes and has suggested a national excise tax on sugared drinks, said raising the price of the beverages would reduce consumption. It believes that would lower the incidence of obesity, diabetes and other costly chronic diseases.

But others see such taxes as government intrusion on personal choice. (LA Times)

NEW YORK - Important news for seniors: A daily dose of vitamin D cuts your risk of falling substantially, researchers reported today.

But not just any dose will do. "It takes 700 to 1000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day and nothing less will work," Dr. Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, who directs the Centre on Aging and Mobility at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, noted in an email to Reuters Health.

Those recommendations - which are higher than those by the U.S. Institute of Medicine -- are based on the results of eight studies that looked at vitamin D supplements for fall prevention among more than 2,400 adults aged 65 and older. Falls were not notably reduced with daily doses of vitamin D lower than 700 IU.

An analysis of all eight studies, posted online today in the British Medical Journal, add weight to several others which have shown that vitamin D improves strength and balance, and bone health in the elderly, the researchers note. (Reuters Health)

Livermore, CA - Most Americans couldn’t pass a basic scientific literacy test says the California Academy of Sciences. Some findings:

- Just 53% of adults knew how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.

- Just 59% knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

- Only 47% of adults could provide a rough estimate of the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water (between 65% and 75%).

- A mere 21% were able to answer these three questions correctly. (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave?

In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The court ruled that the Second Amendment indeed protected an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. But it left unclear whether the ruling applied outside the nation's capital.

The joy of Second Amendment defenders was short-lived. A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected subsequent suits brought by the National Rifle Association against the city of Chicago and suburb Oak Park that similarly believe the Constitution prevents citizens from defending themselves.

That decision was written by Judge Frank Easterbrook, and his reasoning was fascinating. According to Easterbrook, the Revolution was fought and independence won so that the Founding Fathers could write a U.S. Constitution with a Bill of Rights that applied only to the District of Columbia. (IBD)

The announcement that four dams on the Klamath River will be removed to restore imperiled salmon runs is a victory for fish, farmers, Indian tribes and the much-maligned Endangered Species Act.

The dams in Oregon and California will not come down until 2020. In the meantime, PacifiCorp, the Portland utility that owns them, has promised to improve water quality and salmon habitat. The cost could run as high as $200 million, which is roughly what the company would have been obliged to pay anyway to construct fish passage around the dams to increase the salmon’s chances of survival.

All sides will also benefit from a separate agreement that will divvy up scarce water flows in the Klamath. Taken together, the two agreements mean that we can finally see the end of a dispute that grabbed national headlines in 2001, when federal water managers cut irrigation deliveries to farmers to preserve water flows for two threatened or endangered fish species — coho salmon and a less majestic critter known as the suckerfish.

Cries that farmers were being sacrificed to the lowly suckerfish drew Karl Rove and other Bush politicos into the fray. More water was released to the farmers, at which point 33,000 fish died downstream. At which point, too, wiser heads began to see that what was needed was a water-sharing plan that — coupled with federal aid to farmers who agreed to let their land go fallow in dry seasons — would guarantee everyone enough to survive.

Neither the restoration plan nor the plan to remove the dams would have been possible without the Endangered Species Act. The act requires the federal government to identify species at severe risk and then devise ways to shape human behavior to give these species a chance to survive. In this case it has worked brilliantly. (NYT)

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — The Station fire, which in over a month has burned away nearly a quarter of this vast, mountainous backdrop to the Los Angeles skyline, is finally just about out, sending all but a handful of firefighters home. Now, the scientists swoop in.

Adam Backlin and Liz Gallegos, federal biologists, stood thigh-deep in a stream last week, sweeping a large net over and over like frustrated anglers to collect Santa Ana speckled dace fish as part of research on the damaging effects of fire on fragile wildlife.

Earlier, another biologist, Diana Papoulias, hauled out centrifuges, dry ice, syringes and other equipment to perform autopsies on fish, delving deeper into the role that heat, fire retardant and debris in the water may have played in their demise.

And Todd M. Hoefen, a geophysicist, scooped up white and black ash as part of research to analyze “the impact of it, what blows out of these fires and what are people breathing.”

Fire, typically touched off by lightning strikes, has always been part of the life cycle of the wilderness here and elsewhere, to a large degree crucial to regenerating it. Most wildlife and landscape eventually come back.

But with the increasing frequency and size of fires — 7 of the state’s 10 largest wildfires have occurred in the last six years, and most were caused by people — scientists are intensifying study of the environmental aftermath of the changing burn pattern.

“Fire dynamics have changed a lot, and urbanization has fragmented the landscape,” said Robert N. Fisher, a biologist with the United States Geological Survey, which has coordinated a team to take a closer look at this fire and other recent ones. “We have to figure out a way to give animals a way to persist in a way they did before in a landscape that is burning too fast and too much.” (NYT)

General Electric is the beneficiary of a provision on green jet engines in the Senate climate bill, according to author and activist investor Steve Milloy. Milloy writes:

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s climate bill set to be released today contains a provision that will compensate General Electric quite nicely for its lobbying and media efforts promoting climate legislation.

Section 821(c) requires that, by December 12, 2012, the EPA set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from “new aircraft and new engines used in new aircraft.”

General Electric is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines, a business worth about $12 billion in annual revenues.

So the Boxer bill would compel airlines and the military, when purchasing new aircraft and new aircraft engines, to purchase more expensive “green” engines made by GE, according to standards set by the current and GE-lobbied Obama administration.

GE announced today that utility giant American Electric Power (AEP) will purchase 110,000 smart meters from GE. And just how is AEP managing to buy all these smart meters? President Obama and Congress are making us pay for them.

On Sep. 1, AEP applied to the Department of Energy for $75 million in federal stimulus money for the smart meter purchase. (Timothy P. Carney, Examiner)

The science on manmade climate change may be settled as far as some are concerned, but the debate continues to rage on not only in the scientific community but also within industry groups and professional organizations. This week some members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce left the group due to its opposition to cap and trade legislation. At the other side, some scientific organizations have members objecting to the organizations’ alarmist statements. (Tony Hake, Examiner)

With President Obama and his allies in Congress pushing for a cap-and-trade regulatory policy to reduce greenhouse gases, the future of American energy is at a crossroads — and the creation of an economic “Green Bubble” may be in the works.

It’s not surprising that liberal politicians embrace the cap-and-trade cause, but to many it is shocking and surprising to see corporate CEOs joining the crusade. The 21st century business model of these CEOs seems to be: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

But their capitulation is likely to lead to history repeating itself, and not in a good way.

If there’s one lesson we all can take from the housing bubble, it’s this: the pursuit of liberal policy goals is not a sustainable business strategy. (Tom Borelli, National Center)

WASHINGTON -- As a pair of senators introduced their long-awaited climate-change legislation yesterday to a cheering crowd on the front lawn of the Capitol, Pennsylvania's senatorial delegation said it is not yet on board with the effort.

Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, both Democrats, yesterday said the bill doesn't address their concerns about coal and other Pennsylvania industries that could be harmed by cap-and-trade legislation. Combined with a stiff Republican front, any Democratic defections would be enough to kill legislation in a chamber where 60 votes are needed to avoid a filibuster. (Post-Gazette)

When is global warming not global warming or climate change not climate change? The unveiling of the United States Senate’s cap and trade legislation yesterday shows a concerted effort to appeal to the public through the use of terms that might be considered more appealing, even if not accurate. (Tony Hake, Examiner)

Environmentalists like to paint a picture that tells us their interest in robbing us of our money and freedom is altruistic, while the motives of anyone opposing them is all greed and avarice.

That has sold well over the years, but as the dominance of the “mainstream” media wanes, we are beginning to see the truth. We are see that environmentalists are like the pigs in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm;” while they want us to think they believe everyone is equal, they actually consider themselves “more equal” (and entitled to a bigger share of things) than everyone else.

So it comes as no surprise that while average Americans are going to take a huge hit from the cap and trade global warming tax in the form of lost jobs, higher energy costs, and government mandates, some folks are going to make out like bandits on the deal. (Bob Ellis, Dakota Voice)

QUEBEC – Environment Minister Line Beauchamp announced Thursday that the National Assembly will hold public consultations before setting Quebec’s 2020 target for greenhouse-gas reduction.

Beauchamp said she wants an “ambitious” target, sketching scenarios for a reduction of as much as 20 per cent.

To get there, Beauchamp wants to use cap and trade, a system setting limits on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, that will require industries to buy credits on the Montreal Carbon Exchange.

But she also wants to raise the carbon tax, now charged Quebecers using hydrocarbons - gasoline, diesel and natural gas.

And if industrial emitters can’t buy the carbon credits they need through carbon capture and storage or other means at home, they would have the option of buying carbon credits in other countries. (Montreal Gazette)

Canada should be doing much more to tackle climate change, and consider closing down the controversial oilsands projects in northern Alberta, the head of an international scientific panel on climate change said yesterday.

Canada should follow the European Union, which has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In contrast, Canada's plan is to only cut emissions by 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020, a target that many scientific and environmental observers say is far too low. Canada's greenhouse gas emissions climbed 26 per cent between 1990 and 2006.

"In the last couple of years, I'm afraid, Canada has not been seen as sitting at the table," Pachauri said in an interview in Montreal yesterday. "I think Canada should be doing much more." (The Gazette)

UK's true energy footprint is twice as big as on paper, according to Professor David MacKay (The Guardian)

MALCOLM Turnbull is on a collision course with his own back bench after staking his leadership on a demand that they back his climate change strategy. Several MPs immediately refused to do so. (The Australian)

A THREAT by Malcolm Turnbull to walk away should the backbench defy him over climate change has further entrenched divisions within the Coalition and raised doubts about whether he will be leader beyond Christmas. (SMH)

'I could not possibly lead a party that was on a do-nothing-on-climate-change platform;

To do nothing, to literally be a party with nothing to say, which is what some people are suggesting we should be; a party with no ideas, which is what some people are suggesting we should be, is not the party I am prepared to lead.

No-one is suggesting doing nothing about climate change. Calamitous natural climatic events such as this year’s bushfires and floods have properly convinced the general public that a national policy to deal with real climate events and change is clearly needed. And surely this week’s tragic news from Indonesia and Samoa underlines the reality that government’s responsibilities lie with dealing better with real natural hazards, not worrying about Playstation-4-created imaginary ones.

A proper hazard reduction and adaptation policy to deal with known future climatic threats is a very different matter to the political question implicit in today’s headlines - which is whether introducing an emissions trading system will do anything to prevent hypothetical, dangerous, human-caused global warming. (Answer: an ETS will have no measurable effect on future climate but will have a hugely damaging effect on the livelihoods and standard of living of all Australians).

Mr Turnbull, and all politicians, need to take careful note of the deadly accurate letter published in today’s Australian by Peter Kelly, to whit:

Congratulations to Peter van Onselen for surveying the Liberal Party backbenchers on their attitude to amending the government’s emissions trading scheme before Copenhagen’s climate change conference. We now know that two-thirds of them are against it.

If the Coalition wants to win the next election, the partyroom should first of all establish for itself that man-causing climate change is an unscientific myth (in fact, it’s a religion). It should then find some political courage and start campaigning against the government’s dangerous and unemployment-gaining ETS. It can be proved easily that the ETS is a tax by another name.

Of course, it’s not just political courage that the Liberals need to take the issue head-on. They initially would have to confront their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who clearly believes he will lose his seat of Wentworth unless he follows the government line, as he is now doing. So be it.

By campaigning on the truth the Coalition would distinguish itself from the Labor government and give the electorate a choice. As it is, the Coalition is only a slightly more moderate branch of Labor on climate change. Of course, if it found the courage to do this, it would not only give itself some heart but would eventually destabilise the government.

Alongside insisting on an independent judicial enquiry into the science of global warming, the Coalition needs to fashion a cost-effective and real policy to deal with known natural climatic hazards, along the lines suggested in the article “A New Policy Direction for Climate Change”, published in Quadrant in April this year.

A national climate (as opposed to global warming) policy - at the same time as it covers known natural hazards - will also provide for dealing with hypothetical human-caused change, should it emerge in the future.

If Mr Turnbull is not up to the task of providing leadership for such an important national and environmentally significant task as belling the global warming scam, and fashioning a realistic climate hazard policy, then he should indeed be replaced as leader of the Coalition by someone who is. (Bob Carter, Quadrant Magazine)

The Government has been accused of 'greenwash' for issuing new advice to companies that suggests carbon offsetting can be used to improve environmental credentials. (Daily Telegraph)

Yamal, the northern Russian territory I discussed in yesterday's article means 'The End of the World.' There's deep symbolism here for those on both sides of the global warming mud-slinging match. For AGW believers, Yamal buttresses their claims of speedily advancing global warming. For skeptics, it signifies the end of the scientific techniques used to create what they believe is an illusion--the global warming that never was. (Thomas Fuller, Examiner)

Climate Audit is getting hit with traffic again, so this is a mirror post for interested parties. – Anthony

Obviously there’s been a lot of discussion in the last few days about the difference between the CRU 12 and the Schweingruber 34. In making such comparisons, it’s always a good idea to look at the data in detail – something that obviously should have been done by Briffa and the Team before the widespread use of the Yamal proxy in so many reconstructions, rather than this late date, over 9 years since its original use in Briffa 2000.

In a previous thread, I showed a plot of the actual ring widths of the 10 CRU trees ending in 1990. Today I’m going to show a similar plot of the “dimensionless index” for the same 10 trees. It is the “dimensionless index” that is averaged to make the “chronology”.

Recall that in RCS, a “standard” is established for the decline in ring width with age – the decline is assumed to be a negative exponential curve plus a constant (”generalized negative exponential”) and the index is the observed ring width divided by the “age standard” ring width for the age of the given tree in that year.

For comparison, I’m going to do a similar plot for 18 Schweingruber trees (17 sampled in 1990 plus one). The plots are shown on a uniform vertical scale (0,9) and a uniform horizontal scale (1850,2000). I’ve marked 1990 with a vertical red line and a horizontal line at 1 (the overall mean ratio.)

First, here is the plot for the 18 Schweingruber trees. Probably your first reaction is: why did he choose such a squished vertical scale for this graphic – we can’t see this as clearly as we’d like. Your second reaction is probably – well, if there’s a stick in there, it would take something like Mannian principal components to dig it out. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Steve McIntyre must be on to something, judging by the nasty and vituperative comments coming from Real Climate, where Gavin Schmidt levels a serious allegation:

However the substance of the issue turns out, by lying about what McIntyre said in order to cast aspersions on him, Gavin Schmidt has given his field another self-imposed black eye. (Roger Pielke, Jr.)

First here is Dr. Keith Briffa’s response in entirety direct from his CRU web page:

My attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.

This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.

These authors state that their data (derived mainly from measurements of relic wood dating back over more than 2,000 years) included 17 ring-width series derived from living trees that were between 200-400 years old. These recent data included measurements from at least 3 different locations in the Yamal region. In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

What’s so good about it? Well, for once everybody should join in the celebration of a climate model that is presented for what it is (a policymaking tool for “negotiators to assess their national greenhouse-gas commitments ahead of December’s climate summit in Copenhagen“) rather than for what it is not (a scientific tool “used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate“, as rather naively claimed on Wikipedia).

GALAPAGOS, Ecuador - Climate change could endanger the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands, and scientists are trying to figure out how to protect vulnerable species such as blue-footed boobies and Galapagos Penguins.

Some 175 years after the wildlife of the Galapagos helped inspire Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution, scientists are measuring the impact of global warming on the rich but fragile biodiversity of the islands.

The volcanic archipelago, about 600 miles west of the Ecuadorean coast, is home to scores of endemic species that closely depend on one another for survival.

Scientists say abrupt and frequent changes in sea temperatures and the death of coral reefs near the islands show that global warming is taking its toll on local sea life. (Reuters)

VARGINHA, Brazil, Oct 2 - A freak tornado and floods last month may be a harbinger of a troubled future for Brazilian farmers, who worry that climate change could severely disrupt production in one of the world's breadbaskets.

Rising temperatures, a shift in seasons, and extreme weather in coming decades are likely to cut output in some areas and wipe out crops entirely in others, experts say.

"Brazil is vulnerable. If we don't do anything, food production is at risk," says Eduardo Assad, an agronomist at the government's agriculture research institute, Embrapa.

At stake is a $250 billion farm industry, food for millions of poor and supplies to world markets of Brazil's major export crops such as soybeans and coffee. (Reuters)

If sea level rise is unstoppable, as argued by Stefan Rahmstorf in news article excerpt below (emphasis added), then what does that imply for justifying mitigation policies based on modulating, even stopping, sea level rise in the next century?

Japanese maples, which provide one of the most spectacular autumn colour displays, could be under threat from climate change, conservationists have warned. (Daily Telegraph)

NATO should do more to prepare for the challenges of climate change, including promoting fuel efficiency for military vehicles, the alliance's secretary-general said Thursday.(CoP15)

Former UN Secretary-General on Thursday launched a song and video aimed at spreading awareness of the damage wrought by global warming and encouraging world leaders to come to an agreement. (CoP15)

The United Nations Environmental Programme just released a major report in advance of the Climate Change Summit to take place in Copenhagen this December. The report is intended to “show how the science has been evolving” since the publication of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in the spring of 2007.

Although we suppose we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we are having a lot of difficulty bringing ourselves to think that the contents provide a fair representation of the recent state climate change science.

The title says “Climate Change 2009: Science Compendium” but the cover illustration screams “Political Propaganda!”

It shows the earth, slipping through an hourglass and coming out not as just a pile of sand, but as a desert, replete with sand dunes.

I guess the symbolism is supposed to be that time is running out on our ability to save the earth from this fate. Apparently climate change is going to turn the earth from predominantly a blue and green vibrant planet (in the top half of the hourglass) to a brown lifeless one (in the bottom of the hourglass).

Whoever dreamt up this symbolism demonstrates a remarkable failure to grasp even the most basic premise of the science and projections of climate change.

By adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels to produce the energy that we all rely on to power our way of life and in doing so improve our general health and welfare, we are enhancing the earth’s greenhouse effect.

(Note to UNEP art department: when you think of the contents of a greenhouse, you don’t think of a desert.)

Our enhancement of the greenhouse effect is expected, on a global average, to lead to higher temperatures (like inside a greenhouse), higher humidity (like inside a greenhouse), more precipitation (like inside a greenhouse), longer growing seasons (like inside a greenhouse), and enhance the fertilization effect of airborne carbon dioxide (just like commercial greenhouses which pump CO2 inside them to increase plant growth and productivity). Taken together, this brings up images of lush tropical foliage, not a dry, lifeless, desert.

Our guess is, a lush green world this isn’t the image that they wanted to conjure up about climate change and UNEP’s art department couldn’t come up with a way to make this seem bad (hint: next time, check with Al Gore).

If the UNEP wanted to advertise right from the get go that its report was filled with nonsense, the selection of its cover illustration made that loud and clear.

Although we have thus far not been able to bring ourselves to look past the cover to see what lurks inside, others apparently have, and what they have reported back is that the contents are as scientifically soft as the cover. (WCR)

A sweeping drought across East Africa takes its toll on both people and wildlife. (CoP15)

WASHINGTON -- President Obama will soon be off to Copenhagen, but will it be for the right event?

The president, who was initially content to farm out Olympic lobbying responsibilities to his wife, made the last minute decision to join her in the fight for Chicago to host the 2016 summer games. On the other hand, the U.N Climate Change Conference -- also set for Copenhagen (in December) -- has yet to make the president’s priority list.

Despite his remarks that the administration is “deeply committed” to passing a new cap-and-trade bill by Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, the fact that Obama can’t commit to attend the most important conference on climate change since Kyoto does not speak well to America’s ability to make the radical changes necessary to cut emissions (20 percent, in the case of the newly proposed bill).

Not surprisingly, this has raised a few eyebrows abroad. In a meeting held Wednesday at the New America Foundation, European Parliament members Claude Turmes and Reinhard Bütikofer discussed, from the perspective of the German Green Party, the expectations that Europe has of America when it comes to combating climate change. (Salon)

BANGKOK, Oct 1 - Developing countries are standing their ground against demands by rich nations to add steps to curb carbon emissions into a formal registry or appendix as part a broader pact to fight climate change. (Reuters)

Shermer’s point is so incredibly obvious, I am sure very few people will be able to “get it”:

Will the above earn him (again?) the label of Denialist? Who knows? For well-known reasons, his mention of Bjorn Lomborg seems to have caused a stir (even if they both are firmly in the AGW camp…I presume that’s what happens when one agrees with people all too ready to label as “denialist” anybody that doesn’t fully agree with them).

Shermer suggests also five questions to help establish if one is “a global warming skeptic, or [...] skeptical of the global warming skeptics“:

Shermer’s answers: (1) yes, (2) “primarily“, (3) “moderate warming with moderate changes” (following the IPCC, no less), (4) “consequences must be weighed in the balance” (that is, positive consequences should be considered too), (5) much less than the “Brobdingnagian“ proposals being talked about, and not even as much as recommended by the IPCC (with references to Lomborg and Nordhaus).

Interestingly, Shermer shows his skepticism increasing from nil (questions 1 and 2) to almost 100% (question 5)

How do you score on Shermer’s questions? I can answer also on the basis of my About page: (1) yes, (2) slightly, (3) between almost nothing and half of what Shermer expects, (4) overall, consequences will be positive and (5) zero. (OmniClimate)

Knut of Berlin, born on December 5th, like any cute bear ;-), no longer looks innocent and you don't want to meet him on the street.

Bob Ferguson sent me links to a new SPPI article by Joanne Nova:

BANGKOK -- A deadly typhoon that scythed through Southeast Asia has underscored the area's vulnerability to climate change — but it may have also finally given regional nations a voice at crucial environment talks.

Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Bangkok until October 9 in a desperate bid to thrash out the draft text of a global warming treaty that world leaders aim to sign in Copenhagen in December.

Small nations most likely to suffer the effects of global warming have in the past been overshadowed in climate talks, with major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States, Europe, China and India taking center-stage.

But after Typhoon Ketsana killed more than 300 people in the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this week, Southeast Asian nations suddenly found themselves with a podium from which to call on richer nations to do more. (AFP)

Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."

"We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age." (NASA)

(Oct. 1, 2009) — Climate change wreaked havoc on the Earth’s first rainforests but they quickly bounced back, scientists reveal. The findings of the research team, led by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang from Royal Holloway, University of London, are based on spectacular discoveries of 300-million-year-old rainforests in coal mines in Illinois, USA.

Preserved over vast areas, these fossilized rainforests in Illinois are the largest of their kind in the world. The rocks at this site - in which the rainforests occur - contain evidence for climate fluctuations. During cold ‘ice ages’, fossils show that the tropics dried out and rainforests were pushed to the brink of extinction. However, rainforests managed to recover and return to their former glory.

Dr Falcon-Lang, from the Department of Earth Sciences, worked with colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution and Illinois Geological Survey. In their paper published in the journal Geology, they show that rainforest species all but vanished at the height of the ice ages. Yet they also reveal that the coal beds that formed shortly after, as the climate warmed, contain abundant rainforest species.

Falcon-Lang said, ‘These discoveries radically change our understanding of the Earth’s first rainforests. We used to think these were stable ecosystems, unchanged for tens of millions of years. Now we know they were incredibly dynamic, constantly buffeted by climate change’. (ScienceDaily)

How do scientists know when nature’s disasters are caused by global warming — a fire, a flood and, in Australia last week, dust storms?

A number of prominent scientists around the world said that Australia’s recent travails — prolonged drought, devastating fires and now dust storms, which blanketed Sydney last week — are linked to climate change, which is making an arid continent’s environment far more disaster prone. Some Australian researchers emphasized historical weather patterns. Conservationists, while calling for global action on climate change, also said that Australia needs to do more in its own backyard to protect land and water resources from agricultural, development and industrial interests.

What is the relationship of climate change to Australia’s problems? What is the lesson for the rest of the world?

* Andy Pitman, University of New South Wales
* Peter H. Gleick, Pacific Institute
* Gregory E. Webb, Queensland University of Technology
* Penny Whetton and Kevin Hennessy, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (NYT)

A new paper has been released by Richard Seager, of Columbia University, and colleagues in the Journal of Climate that discusses the significance of the recent drought in the U.S. southeast. Some science deniers (a term I just coined;-) have asserted that the drought and its impacts were caused by greenhouse gas-driven climate change. Seager et al. tell a different story, one that will be familiar to readers of this blog. The droughts impacts were in fact driven by societal change, specifically increasing demand for water. Here is what the Columbia University press release says:

In that post, I documented the failure of the American meteorological Society Council (AMS) to properly AMS proceedure on our draft AMS Policy Statement on Inadvertent Weather Modification, which is given in its entirety in my August 10th post.

Today, Thursday October 1, the Chair of the committee which completed our draft statement on inadvertent weather modification will be available by teleconference at a discussion and Council vote on our draft, along with the Chair of the committee drafting the AMS Policy Statement on Planned Weather Modification. The AMS procedure, which was e-mailed to our committee, is the following

“The Council could approve one or both Precis as early as Thursday….. Or, in an unlikely case, request a revision that would require an e-ballot (a 14-day process). We’ll try to refrain from that course and take an “as amended” vote, meaning if any amendments are agreed to during the call, they’ll vote on those and I’ll resubmit the final version afterwards.

The “Statement Clock” begins when Council Finally approves the Precis. This can happen as early as Thursday, or they can discuss then but take
it to an electronic vote and have 14-days to decide. When approved, the committee begins immediately and has 2 months to write and finalize a draft of ~750 words (per statement). EACH Committee should hold a conference call to have a group discussion. The finalized draft is submitted to an AMS editor, who reviews it for 7 days (with modification as needed) and sends to AMS Council If Council approves, then the document(s) is (are) sent electronically to AMS Community for comment (posting lasts: 30 days).

Writing committee must respond to each comment (or groupings of comments if they are thematic in subject) and send back to Council. Council has 2 months to review comments. If Council agrees with your comments, then statement is instantly approved. If Council does not agree, then Council may hold a conference call to rectify looming issues.

In the rare event that disputes remain open, then the committee is dissolved and the process begins anew with a new committee.”

I will update as soon as I can on my weblog, when I have information as to what decision was reached. (Climate Science)

Oct. 1 -- BP Plc and Valero Energy Corp. are among the U.S. oil refiners caught in the crosshairs of proposed new greenhouse gas regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, an industry representative said.

“Any time you increase capacity, or if you want to upgrade your refinery to use a wider range of crude oils, you could trigger these new regulations,” Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said.

The EPA announced yesterday that newly built industrial facilities, or existing ones that undergo “major modification,” must use “best available control technology” to reduce their emissions if they are responsible for more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year.

This requirement threatens to halt U.S. refinery upgrades and expansions, which could boost gasoline imports, Drevna said today in a phone interview. (Bloomberg)

COAL companies are paying an extra $500 million every year in charges incurred while waiting for ships to load at the troubled North Queensland port of Dalrymple Bay.

The port's capacity has recently expanded from 68 million tonnes annually to 85 million tonnes, but yesterday The Australian counted 78 ships waiting to load, higher than the queues of 60 ships recorded in 2006. A blame game broke out yesterday between Queensland Rail, the main hauler of coal to the port, the port operators and the coal companies over who was responsible for the situation.

The operators said yesterday there had been a record tonnage of coal through the port in recent months, while QR claimed it had exceeded its contractual obligations in carting coal, and suggested the present system encouraged coal companies to over-order ships to come to the port.

Dalrymple Bay is the main export port for coal in North Queensland, but while orders from Japan and China in particular have rebounded strongly in recent months, the other main port that ships coal, Gladstone, had a queue of 15 ships waiting to be loaded yesterday.

There has been some work done in recent weeks on the line running inland from Dalrymple Bay to the coalfields, which has caused some delays, while QR still has to finish upgrading railway yards at Jilanan, just inland from the port. When both these situations change, the throughput on the line should improve.

But coal companies claimed they were paying for the infrastructure bottlenecks, with Macarthur Coal chairman and former Queensland government treasurer Keith De Lacy saying the industry had rebounded rapidly from the doldrums of the global financial crisis. "Probably we were the first into the crisis and the first out," Mr De Lacy said.

"Sales of coal now are as strong as they have ever been. (The Australian)

ALBUQUERQUE - Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. is seeking a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that would help pay for equipment designed to capture carbon emissions from a proposed coal-fired power plant on tribal land.

Environmentalists, the state of New Mexico and some Navajos have voiced concerns about the $3 billion Desert Rock Energy Project, saying a third coal-fired plant in the region would compromise air quality, human health and the environment.

The tribe and Houston-based Sithe Global LLC have partnered to build the 1,500-megawatt plant. They say it will be one of the cleanest coal-burning plants in the nation.

Shirley said Wednesday that getting a grant to install carbon capture and storage technology at the plant would make the tribe a leader in clean coal power generation. (Associated Press)

We knew this was coming. Carbon Financial Instruments are now trading for 10 cents per metric tonne on the Chicago Climate Exchange. I wonder if the investors are reacting to the Hockey Stick Implosion news? As reported on WUWT, less than one month ago it was 25 cents a tonne, and a year ago it was over 1 dollar. The all time high was May 2008 at over 7 dollars a tonne. Today: poof.

Looks like there was a big sell-off today. Carbon Investor confidence must be “unprecedented”.

Capturing carbon directly from the air to help prevent dangerous climate change offers several advantages and warrants more government research funding, an internationally prominent University of Calgary scientist says.

Technologies to capture the trace amount of carbon dioxide present in ambient air at any place on the planet could efficiently reduce CO2 emissions from small and hard-to-control sources such as airplanes and home furnaces, David Keith says in a new paper published in Science, a top-ranked science journal.

These mobile and “diffuse” sources represent more than half of the greenhouse gases emitted on Earth. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. (New Technology)

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 - As the world wrestles with how to cut greenhouse gas emissions, new technologies are gearing up to grab climate-warming carbon right out of the air.

This is different from trapping carbon dioxide as it comes out of pollution sources like factories and power plants. This so-called air capture technology could be set up anywhere and suck carbon directly from the atmosphere.

The devices to do this are varied in appearance. Some look a bit like telescopes, others involve vast, thin wall-like structures to capture the carbon. But all aim for a net reduction in atmospheric carbon, instead of just slowing down the increase of greenhouse emissions. (Reuters)

Here’s a nice follow up to my blog post on Tuesday: firms importing solar panels to the United States face a $70 million bill because of unpaid duties.

It seems to me that a government truly concerned about global warming–putting aside the merits of that position–would want to encourage the adoption of solar panels, including by keeping them as cheap as possible. Nor, I would have thought, is this the time to add more fuel to the fire that is starting to characterize the U.S. trade relationship with China. There’s plenty enough fuel for that already. (Sallie James, Cato at liberty)

So, despite knowing there is no climatic benefit to be derived from carbon capture and storage (CCS), that it will involve an additional 30% energy cost and significantly increase the environmental footprint of baseload energy supply, politicians have decided to do it anyway. We already know the cost of retrofitting existing power plants is onerous, as is the cost of making new plants CCS capable. What other costs do we need to take into account?

Fortunately Xina Xie, senior research engineer at the University of Wyoming, and energy analyst Michael J. Economides have crunched some of the numbers for us:

The roughly 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide dealt with in their calculations is slightly less than the emission from U.S. coal-fired electrical generation but quite adequate for our purpose. It is also roughly the amount required to meet the earlier Kyoto Protocol targets but nowhere near sufficient to achieve the activist-desired Kyoto II requirements.

According to Donn Dears (Carbon Folly), some 11,000 miles of pipelines will also be required (see map). Anyone think these are likely to be free or without contention?

Throw in all the costs of easements (transmission right of ways), regulation and monitoring and it seems likely the costs will easily exceed $1.5 trillion per year.

Remember we calculated the potential temperature "saving" over 90 years here? That was based on Hansen's rather ambitious claims for climate sensitivity:

We also looked at Hansen's claims here and found them ridiculously large but that's another matter, workings are laid out below for all who may be interested.

Let's just assume for the moment that these are legitimate estimates of possible "savings", what are we getting for $135 trillion?

That means it would only cost 900 trillion dollars to avoid 1 °C -- a bargain, no?

A mere 18% of global GDP for 90 years could save 1 °C of purely hypothetical warming. Aren't you excited?

Of course we couldn't really avoid that much warming since Hansen's numbers simply don't add up. In fact, trying to manipulate global mean temperature by this means would cost us the whole $900 trillion for an insignificant 0.3 °C at most since Earth is not really very sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels above a few tens of parts per million (100 ppmv yields roughly three-fourths of all the warming CO₂ can practically deliver):

Assuming the 1.34 billion of us currently living on $10/day or more get to pay for this wondrous exercise, that's a mere $671,640 each to possibly avoid at most 0.3 °C hypothetical warming. Anyone think they can come up with a better use for $670K? I'm pretty sure I can.

Think maybe you'd like to suggest to your elected representatives that you'd like them to rethink this whole carbon pogrom thing?

Sidebar -- for the mathematically minded:

Calculating greenhouse effect using the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant:

If we use Stefan's Constant to derive greenhouse in Wm^-2 as in the following:

G = σ(T_s⁴ - T_e⁴) = σT_s⁴ - OLR = 390.11 - 239.76 = 150.35 Wm^-2

where G is the global average greenhouse effect, σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant, T_s = 288 K, T_e = 255 K and OLR signifies Outgoing Longwave Radiation, we have a figure of 150.35 Wm^-2 and net warming of 33 °C, thus as a linear relationship a ΔF of 1 Wm^-2 ≈ 0.22 °C. Implied then is an increase of 0.81 °C from ΔF 3.7 Wm^-2, the value estimated by the IPCC for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Alternatively, working back from our calculated 390.1 Wm^-2 above (from net temperature) + ΔF 3.7 Wm^-2 (the value estimated for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide), we get (393.8/σ)^1/4, yielding 288.68 K for a net warming of 0.68 °C, so ΔF of 1 Wm^-2 ≈ 0.18 °C.

Both our figures derived so far are much smaller than frequently cited estimates for warming from a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Checking Hansen against the IPCC figures:

According to the IPCC, global mean temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °C from the late 19^th Century through 2000. From the same source ΔF from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is calculated as +1.4 Wm^-2, while the increase from all greenhouse gases combined is supposed to be 2.4 Wm^-2. Ignoring the much-argued about solar influence over the period and using the "Hansen Factor" of 0.75 °C per Wm^-2, the world should have warmed ≈ 1.8 °C from enhanced greenhouse forcing alone -- 2.4 °C if we use the model's 1:1 ratio. Obviously a simplistic "greenhouse gas increase = n degrees warming" will not do since the real world has only delivered between one-sixth and one-third that value with the greatest confidence being one-quarter (0.6 ± 0.2 or 0.4 to 0.8 °C). Definitely marked as dubious.

Checking Hansen with Stefan's constant:

Looking at the problem another way -- maxing out Hansen's reduced ice age forcing of 6.6 ± 1.5 Wm^-2 we get 8.1 Wm^-2 for an observed ΔT of ≈ 5 °C. Presumably then 390.11 (from Stefan's constant, above) - 8.1 = 382 Wm^-2 and this, according to Hansen, should resolve to 288 - 5 = 283 K. However, (382/σ)^1/4 yields 286.49 K, giving us a cooling not of 5 K but 1.5 K -- less than one-third the expected value.

Working from temperature to derive the change in Wm^-2, σ283⁴ = 363.71 Wm^-2, which subtracted from 390.11 leaves us 26.4 Wm^-2 rather than at most 8.1 as per Hansen. Why the shortfall? Perhaps there being no negative listing for solar in Hansen's ice age forcings should have tipped us off.

CHICAGO - Fifteen states could run out of hospital beds and 12 more could fill 75 percent of their beds with swine flu sufferers if 35 percent of Americans catch the virus in coming weeks, a report released Thursday said.

The study, based on estimates from a computer model developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows the strain hospitals and health departments could face as a second wave of swine flu surges.

"Our point in doing this is not to cry Chicken Little but really to point out the potential even a mild pandemic can have and how readily that can overwhelm the healthcare delivery system," Jeffrey Levi, director of Trust for America's Health, which sponsored the report, said in a telephone briefing.

According to the report, the number of people hospitalized could range from 168,025 in California to 2,485 in Wyoming, and many states may face shortages of beds.

Some may need to cut back on hospitalizations for elective procedures. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Nearly two-thirds of U.S. parents say they will hold off having their children vaccinated against the H1N1 swine flu or will not get them immunized at all, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

The findings, published by Consumer Reports, underscore one of the main challenges facing the Obama administration as it readies a massive swine flu vaccination roll-out -- how to persuade the most vulnerable people to protect themselves against the new virus. (Reuters)

LONDON - The teenage girl who died shortly after being immunized against cervical cancer was killed by a malignant chest tumor and not by a reaction to the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, an inquest heard on Thursday.

Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunization program against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital.

"The pathologist has confirmed today at the opening of the inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a large malignant tumor of unknown origin in the heart and lungs," said Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for the Coventry area where Natalie died.

"There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to the death, which could have arisen at any point," Grainger said in a statement. (Reuters)

LONDON - Mothers who smoke during pregnancy put their children at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms as teenagers, British scientists said on Thursday.

Researchers from four British universities studied 6,356 12-year-olds and interviewed them for psychotic-like symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions. Around 19 percent had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

Just over 11 percent, or 734 of the total group, had suspected or definite symptoms of psychosis. (Reuters)

BRUSSELS - The European Union's food safety watchdog delivered a long-awaited opinion on Thursday to the EU executive arm that will help determine whether food producers' health claims about their products are backed up by science.

The European Food Safety Authority said it had studied more than 500 claims made by companies about the nutritional value or healthiness of products, such as labelling them "low fat", "high fibre" or able to reinforce the body's natural defences.

It said it had approved one third of the claims, but gave few details. It did not mention any of the brands concerned and did not say which had been rejected. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT - A U.S. advocacy group filed a lawsuit against German drugmaker Bayer AG saying the company made false claims about a vitamin supplement it makes.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest said on Thursday it believed Bayer falsely claimed that the selenium in Men's One-A-Day multivitamins might reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

The group filed the suit in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco.

A spokesman for Bayer said the company had not yet been notified of the filing. He said the company had based its advertising for the vitamin supplement on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's claim that selenium could help reduce the risk of certain types of cancer.

The FDA earlier this year changed its stance on selenium and Bayer has been working on altering its packaging and advertising to remove any connection between selenium and a reduced risk of certain types of cancer. (Reuters)

Analysis of a near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia changes scientists' thinking about the appearance and behavior of our distant forebears. (LA Times)

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Worldwide, thousands of workers die every year from mining accidents, and instantaneous coal outbursts in underground mines are among the major killers. But although scientists have been investigating coal outbursts for more than 150 years, the precise mechanism is still unknown.

New research by scientists at the University of Michigan and Peking University in Beijing, China, suggests that the outbursts occur through a process very similar to what happens during explosive volcanic eruptions. The research is described in a paper in the October issue of the journal Geology.

"Just as magma can fragment when pressure on it is reduced, triggering an explosive eruption, gas-rich coal can also erupt when suddenly decompressed, as happens when excavation exposes a new layer of coal," said Youxue Zhang, professor of geology, whose previous work on volcanic eruptions, Africa's "exploding lakes" and theorized methane-driven ocean eruptions set the stage for the current research. (University of Michigan)

(Oct. 1, 2009) — Dr. Erez Allouche, assistant professor of civil engineering at Louisiana Tech University and associate director of the Trenchless Technology Center, is conducting innovative research on geopolymer concrete and providing ways to use a waste byproduct from coal fired power plants and help curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Inorganic polymer concrete (geopolymer) is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize "fly ash", one of the most abundant industrial by-products on earth, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth. (ScienceDaily)

It has been more than 30 years since a groundbreaking book predicted that if growth continued unchecked, the Earth’s ecological systems would be overwhelmed within a century. The latest study from an international team of scientists should serve as an eleventh-hour warning that cannot be ignored. (Bill McKibben, Yale e360)

Imminent doom has been declared again. But don’t worry, neo-Malthusian predictions of overpopulation are wrong.

Every so often, the overpopulation meme erupts into public discourse and imminent doom is declared again. A particularly overwrought example of the overpopulation meme and its alleged problems appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch in a piece by regular financial columnist Paul B. Farrell.

Farrell asserts that overpopulation is “the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world.” Bigger than global warming, poverty, or peak oil. Overpopulation will end capitalism and maybe even destroy modern civilization. As evidence, Farrell cites what he calls neo-Malthusian biologist Jared Diamond's 12-factor equation of population doom.

It turns out that Farrell is wrong or misleading about the environmental and human effects of all 12 factors he cites. Let’s take them one by one. (Ronald Bailey, The American)

Last month's tariffs on Chinese tires were explained away as just upholding U.S. law, not the first shot in a trade war. So why are special interests now flooding the president with demands for more tariffs?

When the White House slipped in an order to slap 35% optional tariffs on Chinese tire exports late on a Friday night last month, an anonymous official quickly justified it to the Los Angeles Times.

"This is certainly not an action directed against globalization . .. . The president is very committed to open and free trade," the official said. "Part of that is being committed to enforcing trade laws and trade agreements."

In fact, that tariff opened a floodgate for new demands for protective tariffs on steel pipes, solar panels, chemicals, glossy paper, truck tires and more. Big Labor and industry groups heard the starting gun, and are now barreling forward with protectionist wish lists.

It's not surprising: They have a friendly White House that has let trade technicalities be used to impose tariffs. (IBD)

SAN FRANCISCO — A draft plan to remove four aging dams along the Klamath River in Oregon and California was released Wednesday, a long-awaited step toward ending a protracted dispute over the waterway.

The Klamath dams, built from 1918 to 1961 along an upstream stretch of the river, are owned by PacifiCorp, which uses them to generate electricity. But they have angered Indian tribes along the river, as well as fishermen and environmentalists, who blamed them for a decline in salmon populations and subsequent economic hardships.

Last year, federal and other officials announced a nonbinding agreement to remove the dams, and Wednesday’s draft plan added a specific, nuts-and-bolts dimension to that agreement. In releasing the draft plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the Klamath “one of the most challenging water issues of our time.”

Competing interests have long debated how to manage the Klamath, a river whose salmon populations once rivaled any in the world. Environmentalists argue that the fish populations have declined because of the dams preventing upstream spawning, while farmers have pleaded for more water for irrigation and others for more electric power.

The federal government has often played the unhappy role of referee. In 2002, environmentalists asserted that a significant die-off of fish had resulted from a diversion of water to farmers that was ordered by the Interior Department. Four years later, fishermen complained when low levels of salmon in the river led to government restrictions on commercial fishing.

The draft plan, which was developed by representatives from about two dozen federal, state and tribal agencies, environmental groups and irrigators in discussions with officials from PacifiCorp, will go to stakeholders and the public for review. (NYT)

It's a question that has baffled the worlds of agriculture and science – what is it that has caused the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five years? A new film may have the answer.

Vanishing of the Bees, which will be released in Britain next month, claims the cause is the use of a new generation of pesticides that weakens the bees and makes them more susceptible to other diseases.

Narrated by the British actress Emilia Fox, the 90-minute film tells the story of what has become known as colony collapse disorder. (The Independent)

The United States Chamber of Commerce’s Web site says the group supports “a comprehensive legislative solution” to global warming. Yet no organization in this country has done more to undermine such legislation.

In the last Congress, the chamber attacked the rather modest Lieberman-Warner bill, with a Harry-and-Louise-style commercial. This year, it testified against the House-passed bill limiting greenhouse gases, and it is almost sure to oppose a similar measure that will be introduced this week in the Senate.

The chamber has now declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to use regulatory means to control emissions — beginning with one official’s ill-advised (and since apologized-for) demand for a “Scopes monkey trial” questioning the science behind the agency’s preliminary finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's drive to fight global warming got a boost on Wednesday as Democrats in the U.S. Senate unveiled a bill aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions in the next four decades.

The plan aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next decades by encouraging broader use of solar, wind and other renewable fuels in place of more polluting ones such as oil.

It also would invest U.S. funds in finding cleaner ways to burn coal and other polluting fuels.

Obama applauded the bill, saying "we are one step closer to putting America in control of our energy future and making America more energy independent."

He said his administration was "deeply committed" to passing a measure.

But the hard political road ahead was evident on Capitol Hill, where senators leading the battle against global warming held a rally to promote the legislation written by liberal Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry -- not a single Republican joined them on the stage.

"This is our time. Global warming is our challenge," Boxer said at the rally, where activists held placards touting the 2 million new jobs they said would be created by the bill to develop green energy.

As she spoke, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell gave no indication his party would cooperate on climate change any more than it has helped Democrats with healthcare reform.

"The last thing American families need right now is to be hit with a new energy tax every time they flip on a light switch, or fill up their car -- but that's exactly what this bill would do," McConnell said.

Instead of mandating reductions in carbon emissions, many Republicans want legislation that would encourage more U.S. oil and gas production and foster more alternative energy use, especially nuclear power.

Expanding oil and gas production would make the country more energy independent, but it would do nothing to combat global warming. (Reuters)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia's two U.S. senators offered mixed reactions Wednesday to a new Senate bill that would for the first time place binding limits on the emissions of global warming pollution.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va, praised the bill for attempting to deal with coal industry concerns, but said the legislation faces a "tough road ahead."

Sen. Jay Rockfeller, D-W.Va., was more hostile, saying the new legislation was a "disappointing step in the wrong direction" from a climate change bill that already passed the House of Representatives.

Specifically, Rockefeller blasted the new bill's move to require a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared to the 17 percent cut negotiated in the House in part to aid the coal industry by allowing more time to deploy carbon dioxide capture equipment on power plants.

"Requiring 20 percent emissions reductions by 2020 is unrealistic and harmful -- it is simply not enough time to deploy the carbon capture and storage and energy efficiency technologies we need. Period," Rockefeller said. "Our nation cannot survive without energy from coal and any viable climate policy must solidify our future by focusing on technology to make coal cleaner faster." (The Gazette)

The Senate has finally rolled out its long-awaited cap-and-trade bill to slash carbon dioxide. Looking at its draconian restrictions on the U.S. economy, it's hard to believe its supporters are serious.

The Boxer-Kerry bill isn't a whole lot different from the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed by the House of Representatives in June. And that's the problem.

Both bills provide for a "cap-and-trade" system to slash the use of fossil fuels and replace them with solar, wind and other "alternative" energy sources. The idea is to impose strict limits on the output of CO2, a supposed cause of global warming.

If this sounds like a good idea, it isn't. It'll lead to massive new taxes, the demise of entire industries, the elimination of millions of jobs and lost income for all. As the Heritage Foundation found when it ran the numbers on Waxman-Markey, the economic losses entailed in imposing cap-and-trade are enormous.

Over 23 years, a cap-and-trade plan would slash $9.4 trillion from GDP and kill 2.5 million jobs. It would hike gasoline prices by 58%, or $1.40 a gallon. Home electricity rates would soar 90%.

All told, cap-and-trade could cost families an added $1,761 a year in taxes. And no, that's not an estimate cooked up by anti-cap-and-trade activists. That's the White House's own estimate for the costs, which it tried to hush up. Taxpayers will have to pony up as much as $200 billion a year in new taxes, the equivalent of raising everyone's taxes by roughly 15%. (IBD)

In his September 24, 2009 column in the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman stated that, in the year 2020, the Waxman-Markey greenhouse gas legislation would cost the average family $160 per year, or as he put it, “roughly the cost of a postage stamp per day.” Golly. Save the planet, the polar bears, and all of God’s other little furry creatures for just pennies per day. Who, except for climate change-denying loons, could be against that?

At best, Krugman’s argument is disingenuous. At worst, it is dishonest. First, he uses a well-known advertising device under which one justifies a costly item by breaking down the cost into lots of small time periods. Under this sort of logic, you can go buy that new BMW for less than the price of a cup of coffee … every hour. Such “pennies per day” nonsense is better suited to late night television advertisements than to an economics column. Costs are costs. Slicing and dicing them into Ginzu knife-sized bits does not change the total cost.

Second, the $160 per year figure is simply wrong. According to the March 12, 2009 testimony of Congressional Budget Office Senior Advisor Terry Dinan,

Thus, Krugman’s cost figure is off by an order of magnitude. So, Waxman-Markey’s cost has increased to the cost of a grande latte every day. Isn’t that still a tiny price to pay for climate salvation? But wait, there’s more. (Jonathan A. Lesser, Energy Tribune)

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule Wednesday to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of power plants and large industrial facilities.

The proposal, long anticipated and highly controversial, marks the first government move toward controlling the emissions blamed for the warming of the planet from stationary sources. The E.P.A. has already proposed an ambitious program to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, expected to take effect early next year.

The proposal would require construction and operating permits for facilities emitting at least 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide and five other climate-altering pollutants per year. The threshold is 100 times higher than that required for other types of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide that have more acute health and environmental effects.

Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said that while the rule would affect about 14,000 large CO2 sources, most of them are already subject to clean air permitting requirements because they emit other pollutants. (NYT)

Obama's Plan B On Greenhouse Gases - With the odds worsening on Congress passing a cap-and-trade bill, the EPA gets set to regulate carbon emissions.

WASHINGTON -- Washington was aflutter with energy and environmental news Wednesday. On Capitol Hill, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., unveiled the Senate's version of a cap-and-trade bill. At the EPA, administrator Lisa Jackson announced a proposed rule to put greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest polluters under agency regulation.

Coincidence? Don't count on it. Think of the two actions as a carrot-and-stick exercise. The House has already passed a cap-and-trade bill, but many people in Washington--even a lot of Democrats--think there's no way such a bill will pass before 2011. Why? The costs involved, concern about government intervention and fear over taking a controversial vote ahead of elections next year.

That's where the EPA comes in. The Obama administration prefers that Congress establish rules to curb carbon emissions. But just in case lawmakers don't act, the agency is readying plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The act, however, applies to entities that emit more than 250 tons of air pollution a year. EPA's proposed rule would modify this to 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide so that millions of facilities don't get snared by the rule.

"Normally, it takes an act of Congress to change the words of a statute enacted by Congress, and many of us are very curious to see EPA's legal justification for today's proposal," says former EPA air administrator Jeff Holmstead, in a note sent to energy insiders in Washington on Wednesday. "Let's hope it stands up in court, or anyone who wants to build anything in the U.S. will be facing more litigation and delay."

There's also a political element to the exercise. The administration would like to see the U.S. sign on to a new international climate agreement in Copenhagen this December. Chances are, however, that the U.S. isn't going to have any new climate laws in place so that it can adhere to such a standard. (Brian Wingfield, Forbes)

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency proposed requiring new power plants, factories and oil refiners to obtain permits to emit so-called greenhouse gases, ratcheting up pressure on Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation.

The EPA's proposal would effectively require new, large industrial facilities and existing ones undergoing modification to use the most up-to-date technology to curb carbon-dioxide emissions. The announcement came as environmentally minded Senate Democrats vowed to bring a newly unveiled climate bill to a vote before a major international summit on climate change in December.

Other Democratic lawmakers from states dependent on coal and manufacturing jobs said they couldn't support the draft proposal, which calls for cutting U.S. emissions somewhat faster than a similar proposal narrowly approved by the House in June.

"The EPA's ready to work with Congress," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in announcing the proposal. "But we're not going to continue with business as usual while we wait for Congress to act." (WSJ)

Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules on Wednesday that would limit greenhouse gas regulations to large polluters, exempting smaller businesses and farms, as my colleague John Broder reported.

“This is a common sense rule that is carefully tailored to apply to only the largest sources – those from sectors responsible for nearly 70 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions sources,” said Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, in a statement.

However, the E.P.A.’s proposal came under immediate fire from the large emitters that it would regulate. The National Petrochemical Refiners Association said that the E.P.A., if it moves forward with greenhouse gas regulation, would be required by the Clean Air Act to enforce its rules even for the small emitters — those that, like many mom-and-pop operations, emit as few as 250 tons of greenhouse gases a year.

(The E.P.A. today proposed to regulate only emitters of more than 25,000 tons annually.)

“You can’t pick and choose which industry and which emitter E.P.A. is going to regulate,” said Charles T. Drevna, the group’s president, in a telephone interview. The E.P.A.’s proposal today, he added, showed a “patent disregard of the Clean Air Act.”

The group’s stance is almost certainly part of a larger political strategy.

The E.P.A. is presumably going after the large emitters not just because that’s where most of pollution is, but also to avoid stirring up every small business in the country that would have to comply with a new regulation.

Opponents of the E.P.A. regulation may want to force the agency to stick to the letter of the Clean Air Act — a tack that would rile up every doughnut shop and dry cleaner in the land, and force a reconsideration of the rule.

“There are going to be legal challenges from people who don’t want the agency to do anything,” said Tony Kreindler of Environmental Defense Fund, who added that it did not make a lot of obvious sense that industry groups would want the E.P.A. to “regulate barbecues.”

The Environmental Defense Fund says that the E.P.A. has sufficient discretion under the law to decide the practical level at which to regulate industry.

Asked about the possibility of a legal challenge, Mr. Drevna said, “I would anticipate that we would look at every and all options.” (NYT)

It's back to school-the time of year when the cool autumn air rolls in, crisp apples fall from the trees and my 5-year-old daughter comes home from school asking, "Mommy, what corporation started the sun on fire and made global warming?"

Turns out there are all sorts of scary green monsters, from cow eaters to forest destroyers to villainous corporations discussed in schools and children's books. When asked what global warming means, many kids have absolutely no idea, but they know it�s caused by humans and they can quickly recite the mantra "stop global warming." (Laura E. Huggins, Buffalo News)

However, the claim in the header of the article that the government can design a program for “climate control” is absurd.

Bill Cotton and I presented the history of how weather modification was oversold to policymakers and funding agencies. With the claims that the government is going to control climate, the excesses that occurred with respect to weather modification are being taken to an even higher level. (Climate Science)

A commenter here asks me to discuss recent goings on over at Climate Audit, where Steve McIntyre thinks he is on to something rather important. I've followed Steve's work for years, and I think I have a pretty good sense of what he is up to and why it might matter for climate science and the nexus of science and political debate. And if you don't know what this is about, good luck catching up to speed (but if you want to try, there will be no better place than Bishop Hill's recounting). Such is the complexity of the issue and its history.

But let me say this: If Steve has indeed come across new information that forces a significant re-evaluation of a major branch of climate science, then there is no excuse for this not to appear in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I think that Steve can easily separate out the quantitative implications of his work from the messy science-politics part. If Steve has discovered a smoking gun, then I'd expect Nature and Science to both be candidate publications. And I would really hope that some of those members of the relevant expert community who (I know) frequent his blog would join with him, perhaps as co-authors, to help bring the new analysis into the mainstream scientific discussion. That is how science moves forward.

Meantime, all we have is some interesting analyses and speculation on a well-read and thoughtful blog. I'm happy to wait and see what develops, and to let Steve get on with his work in progress. (Roger Pielke, Jr.)

I will open a discussion thread about this development, too. Steve McIntyre has broken another hockey stick:

Today while looking for something else I came across an interesting web page on the National Climatic Data Center Server that showed a study from 2002

That study was tremendously well done, with over 2000 cores, seemed pretty germane to the issues of paleodendroclimatology we’ve been discussing as of late. Jeff Id touched on it breifly at the Air Vent in Circling Yamal – delinquent treering records?

A WUWT readers know, the Briffa tree ring data that purports to show a “hockey stick” of warming in the late 20th century has now become highly suspect, and appears to have been the result of hand selected trees as opposed to using the larger data set available for the region.

OK, first the obligatory Briffa (Hadley Climate Research Unit) tree ring data versus Steve McIntyre’s plot of the recently available Schweingruber data from the same region.

The Hantemirov- Shiyatov (HS) tree ring data that I downloaded from the NCDC is available from their FTP server here. I simply downloaded it and plotted it from the present back to the year 0AD (even though it extends much further back to the year 2067 BC) so that it would have a similar x scale to the Briffa data plot above for easy comparison. I also plotted a polynomial curve fit to the data to illustrate trend slope, plus a 30 year running average since 30 years is our currently accepted period for climate analysis.

If you are just joining us, the story is this. After 10 years of data being withheld that would allow true scientific replication, and after dozens of requests for that data, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit finally was given access to the data from Yamal Peninsula, Russia. He discovered that only 12 trees had been used out of a much larger dataset of tree ring data. When the larger data set was plotted, there is no “hockey stick” of temperature, in fact it goes in the opposite direction. Get your primer here.

Now there’s independent confirmation from a study presented at the American Geophysical Union Conference in 2008 that there is no “hockey stick of warming” at Yamal.

In the hallway poster for their AGU presentation, they have this graph, with the caption saying a “nearly flat temperature trend” for Yamal, especially for the late 20th century period where the “hockey stick” from those 12 trees emerges:

WUWT readers may remember when Bishop Hill wrote Caspar and the Jesus paper. It was a wonderful narrative of the complex subject of tree rings and Steve McIntyre’s quest with debunking the Mann MBH98 paper, which created the original hockey stick. Now Bishop Hill has done it again with another great narrative. – Anthony

There is a great deal of excitement among climate sceptics over Steve McIntyre’s recent posting on Yamal. Several people have asked me to do a layman’s guide to the story in the manner of Caspar and the Jesus paper. Here it is.

The story of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. McIntyre’s research into the other reconstructions has received less publicity, however. The story of the Yamal chronology may change that. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.blisstree.com/files/232/2008/11/magnifying-glass.jpg

For those that don’t read a lot of the WUWT comments closely, there has been a scholarly argument going on between Tom P of the UK and several WUWT commentators over the methodology Steve McIntyre used to illustrate the “breathtaking difference” between the plot of the hand picked set of 12 Yamal trees and the larger Schweingruber tree ring data set also from Yamal. Tom P. reworked Steve’s R-code script (which he posted on WUWT) to include both the 12 excluded and the Schweingruber and thought he found “insensitivity to additional data”, saying “There is no broken hockeystick”.

Jeff Id audited the auditor of an auditor and found that Steve’s work still holds up “robustly”. – Anthony

Just a short post tonight I hope. Tom P, an apparent believer in the hockey stick methods posted an entertaining reply to Steve McIntyre’s recent discoveries on Yamal. He used R code to demonstrate a flaw in SteveM’s method. His post was on WUWT, brought to my attention by Charles the moderator and is copied here where he declares victory over Steve.

Tom P writes on WUWT:

===========

Steve McIntryre’s [sic] reconstructions above are based on adding an established dataset, the Schweingruber Yamal sample instead of the “12 trees used in the CRU archive”. Steve has given no justification for removing these 12 trees. In fact they probably predate Briffa’s CRU analysis, being in the original Russian dataset established by Hantemirov and Shiyatov in 2002.

One of Steve’s major complaint about the CRU dataset was that it used few recent trees, hence the need to add the Schweingruber series. It was therefore rather strange that towards the end of the reconstruction the 12 living trees were excluded only to be replaced by 9 trees with earlier end dates.

I asked Steve what the chronology would look like if these twelve trees were merged back in, but no plot was forthcoming. So I downloaded R, his favoured statistical package, and tweaked Steve’s published code to include the twelve trees back in myself. Below is the chronology I posted on ClimateAudit a few hours ago. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are just joining us, first you should read about what started it all here.

While Realclimate.org continues deleting the ongoing river of comments posted on their threads ( Note: Any of you who find that your posts to those sites are being rejected {as usual without any explanation} can keep a copy of the post, and post it at http://rcrejects.wordpress.com if you want. Keep those screencaps going folks) asking about the McIntyre Yamal data development, Jennifer Marohasy of Australia is drawing a bit of a line in the sand. Given the churlishness of the Team and the blockades put up by Hadley, I can’t say that I blame her stance. – Anthony

MOST scientific sceptics have been dismissive of the various reconstructions of temperature which suggest 1998 is the warmest year of the past millennium. Our case has been significantly bolstered over the last week with statistician Steve McIntyre finally getting access to data used by Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn and Phil Jones to support the idea that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last hundred years – the infamous hockey stick graph.

Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the United Kingdom’s Bureau of Meteorology have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium. When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]

Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’. But scientists at the Climate Research Centre, in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre. However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data. Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it eases the boredom of dealing with institutional inanity to take a satirical approach. For example, confronted with the effrontery of the posturing at the CRU, Number Watch founded the PRU and has featured its pronouncements from time to time. In this demented age, however, the danger of satire is that it can be quickly overtaken by reality. So we have the story of the moment about how The Dog Ate Global Warming. The squirming of the CRU over requests for access to its primary data is one of the most remarkable chapters in the tortured history of the global warming fable (perhaps almost matched by the contortions of the editor of Nature in trying to avoid printing a just confutation of the Hockey Stick).

They have lived in the comfort of knowing that they have protection in high places, but the theory they espouse now has a political life of its own, so “The Science” is no longer so important. More to come?

Their is a sentence that deserves a place of honour in the Dictionary of Quotations:

It is not only astonishingly puerile, but it demonstrates that the writer, Phil Jones, does not have the slightest idea of how science works. (Number Watch)

The new administration continues to grapple with trillion dollar buy-outs, nationalizing auto companies, banks, insurance companies, health care, health insurance reform, and even nationalizing student loans. The administration keeps digging its hole and Americans are angry.

While promising transparency, the administration continues to discredit itself by further withholding crucial information the public needs for informed discussions. The citizens need this information since neither the administration nor the main stream media are keeping the Americans informed on these huge and damaging issues. This is frightening.

While the health care reform, bailouts, and the exploding national debt dominate the news, other debates such as the costly Cap and Trade measures will be appearing soon in Congress.

Before discussing Cap and Trade legislation and many administration problems with it, we must recognize that the entire global warming issue that the Cap and Trade legislation is intended to remedy, is premised on a routinely falsified hypothesis. The hypothesis can be stated as a declarative sentence “Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) causes global warming”. Briefly, there are many times in our past where temperatures declined when CO2 was increasing. There are many locations where that is occurring today. When a hypothesis predicts warming with increasing CO2, and instead we observe cooling, or no warming, then the hypothesis is false. A new hypothesis is needed.

30 years of national research and an estimated $79 billion dollars of research funding have yet to provide evidence to prove the hypothesis (http://tinyurl.com/mj67fk). Thus, the Cap and Trade legislation, while promising to spend an estimated $200 billion dollars to mitigate CO2, to ration energy, to cripple our economy, and put us on the road to economic suicide, will actually do little to mitigate temperatures. Neither controlling man-made CO2 emissions, nor even controlling the 30 times greater amounts of naturally occurring CO2, will do anything to significantly mitigate global temperatures. The current period of global cooling we’ve entered is a strong indication of that. (Michael R. Fox, Hawaii Reporter)

MALCOLM Turnbull has laid his leadership on the line over climate change, declaring today: "I can't lead a do-nothing party on climate change."
The Liberal leader has warned voters will mark the Coalition down as a party with “no ideas” if it doesn't play a role in the shape of an emissions trading scheme.

His tough talk follows weeks of internal sniping over Coalition climate chance policy and claims by conservative MPs that they never agreed to an emissions trading scheme in the partyroom during the Howard years.

In his strongest comments to date, Mr Turnbull warned wavering MPs they must support negotiations with Labor on a carbon trading plan.

“If the partyroom were to reject my recommendation to them that would obviously be a leadership issue. That's perfectly plain, perfectly clear,” he told ABC Radio in Adelaide.

“And I am asserting my leadership and my authority as the leader of the party.

“But to do nothing, to literally be a party with nothing to say, which is what some people are suggesting we should be, a party with no ideas is not the party I am prepared to lead.” (The Australian)

ANGRY Coalition MPs have accused Malcolm Turnbull of threatening the partyroom after he staked his leadership today on climate change negotiations with Labor.
Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce told The Australian Online today the bottom line was that Mr Turnbull “is not the leader of my party”.

And rebel Liberal MP Mr Tuckey has fired back on calls he fall into line, warning Mr Turnbull that the last leader who staked his leadership on climate change, Brendan Nelson, ended up losing it.

Mr Turnbull warned rebel Liberal MPs, including Mr Tuckey and Cory Bernardi, today that those who continue to talk publicly were “undermining the electoral prospects of their colleagues, particularly in marginal seats”.

Suggesting he might quit if he cannot reach consensus in the partyroom, he warned he cannot lead a Liberal Party that is determined to “do nothing” about climate change.

“I understand the right of Malcolm as leader of the Liberal Party to guide it as he thinks is right but Malcolm is not leader of my party,” Senator Joyce said.

“The leader of my party is Warren Truss and the Nationals have been consistent and we do not believe an emissions trading scheme is a good idea. It's a massive tax that will have no effect.”

Mr Tuckey said the Coalition could not save Australian jobs by amending the Rudd Government's ETS as, at the best, such protection was on borrowed time.

“If the leader wants to threaten the party room with, “Follow me, `I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and we've all got to follow', that's a matter for him,” he told The Australian Online. (The Australian)

I wonder what ambassadorship he’ll be offered. More from outgoing Opposition leader Warmbull:

He’s misrepresenting the debate, which probably shows how genuine is his greeniness. It isn’t a matter of having “no ideas”; it’s that opposing an ETS is a better idea.

As the misanthropists come out to play... 'Planned recession' could avoid catastrophic climate change - Britain will have to stop building airports, switch to electric cars and shut down coal-fired power stations as part of a 'planned recession' to avoid dangerous climate change.

At the moment the UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by a third by 2020.

However a new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said these targets are inadequate to keep global warming below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.

This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a "planned recession".

Kevin Anderson, director of the research body, said the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the UK until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels. (Louise Gray, Daily Telegraph)

Wait a moment…so now a non-weak El Niño is good? Is this the first time anybody has said anything positive about El Niño?

No, it isn’t. Still, the ENSO has often been described as some kind of scourge. For example, here’s an article from The Independent on Jan 1, 2007:

We have a new paper accepted for publication which documents the important role of urbanization on precipitation. It is

“Using a long-term daily rainfall dataset and high resolution gridded analysis of human population, this study showed a significantly increasing trend in the frequency of heavy rainfall climatology over urban regions of India during the monsoon season. Urban regions experience less occurrences of light rainfall and significantly higher occurrences of intense precipitation compared to non-urban regions. Very heavy and extreme rainfall events showed increased trends over both urban and rural areas, but the trends over urban areas were larger and statistically more significant.”

Our analysis suggests that there is adequate statistical basis to conclude that the observed increasing trend in the frequency of heavy rainfall events over Indian monsoon region is more likely to be over regions where the pace of urbanization is faster. Moreover, rainfall measurements from satellites also indicate that urban areas are more (less) likely to experience heavier (lighter) precipitation rates compared to non-urban areas. While the mechanisms causing this enhancement in rainfall remain to be studied, the results provide the evidence that the increase in the heavy rainfall climatology over Indian monsoon region is a signature of urban induced rainfall anomaly.”

“In the present study, we have tried to establish a link between the trends of urbanization as detected by the remote sensing data and the patterns of precipitation over the Indian summer monsoon region. Our analysis suggests that there is adequate statistical basis to conclude that the observed increasing trend in the frequency of heavy rainfall events over the Indian monsoon region is more likely to be over the regions where the pace of land use/land cover change through urbanization is faster. Moreover, rainfall measurements from satellites also indicate that urban areas are more (less) likely to experience heavier (lighter) precipitation rates compared to non-urban areas. How exactly the UHI and the concentration of different species of urban aerosols impact the cloud microphysics in a humid and convectively unstable environment of monsoon, is still an active area of research.”

This study illustrates yet again why a focus on the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases as the dominate human climate forcing is not an accurate characterization of the real world climate system. (Climate Science)

In this headline on a New York Times story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word "plateau." It dismisses the unpleasant - to some people - fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.

The "difficulty" - the "intricate challenge," the Times says - is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years." That was in the Times' first paragraph.

In the fifth paragraph, a "few years" became "the next decade or so," according to Mojib Latif, a German "prize-winning climate and ocean scientist" who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating global warming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates "maybe even two" decades in which temperatures cool. But stay with the Times' "decade or so." By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

The Times reported that "scientists" - all of them? - say the 11 years of temperature stability has "no bearing," none, on long-term warming. Some scientists say "cool stretches are inevitable." Others say there may be growth of Arctic sea ice, but the growth will be "temporary." According to the Times, however, "scientists" say that "trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public - and to policymakers - can be frustrating." (George Will, Washington Post Writers Group)

It is silly season for climate policy debate. UN FCCC Chief Yvo de Boer points to flooding in the Philippines from Tropical Storm Ketsana and says that an agreement in December can reduce such disasters. Apparently no one has told him that global tropical cyclones are at a 30-year low.

Stefan Rahmstorf in full fantasy flight: Rise in sea levels can't be reversed - Even if carbon emissions were cut to zero immediately, sea levels would continue to rise through the coming centuries, scientists say. A likely projection is an increase of up to five meters over 300 years.

In the most optimistic scenario, sea levels will rise by two meters, while a five meter increase over the next 300 years is the most likely option, according to scientists gathered at a conference at Oxford University. (CoP15)

China and a few other nations will see better conditions for growing wheat, but on a global scale production will shrink dramatically as temperatures increase, new study shows. Rice and corn also affected. (CoP15)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon eyes a consensus among major economies' leaders to provide 100 billion US dollars annually for developing nations affected by climate change. (CoP15)

The $100bn from rich countries proposed by Gordon Brown to compensate developing countries and help them adapt to climate change is a first offering in the world climate negotiations, international development secretary Douglas Alexander told a meeting at the Labour party conference in Brighton today. The final offer could be greater, he said.

But he admitted that other rich countries had so far not backed Britain and many needed convincing that a settlement on the funding was necessary to secure a global deal at UN talks in Copenhagen in December. "We are working to get other world leaders to get close to that figure," he said. Brown proposed $100bn a year by 2020. (John Vidal and David Adam, The Guardian)

Green roofs are sprouting up on building tops across the U.S., a growth some MSU researchers say could combat the rising amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

Horticulture professor Brad Rowe and doctoral horticulture research assistant Kristin Getter led a two-year study measuring the amount of carbon that various green roofs could sequester, or remove from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

Traditionally, Rowe said people decide to transform their rooftops into green roofs to cut their summer energy bills.

According to the study, which was published Aug. 25 online in the science journal Environmental Science & Technology green roofs could capture more than 55,000 tons of carbon in an urban area with a population of about one million people. No numerical data on green roofs’ ability to sequester carbon existed prior to Rowe and Getter’s study, Rowe said. (State News)

On Thursday, Americans will mark the first anniversary of perhaps the most historic change in our nation's energy policy — a change supported by the vast majority of the American people — that came in the form of the Oct. 1, 2008, retirement of the congressional embargo on offshore energy exploration and production.

This oil embargo, first imposed by Congress in 1981 as a rider on the Interior Department appropriations bill, was the official policy of the United States for nearly three decades, even as oil imports soared.

Many Americans will never forget the summer of 2008: $4 gasoline, crude oil trading at $150 per barrel and an economy that was in the midst of a recession. This made Americans angry enough to rise up and demand action from their elected leaders in Washington.

Crude Is Waiting

Unfortunately, a full year after that moratorium was retired, American consumers find themselves no closer to accessing these abundant, homegrown energy resources than they were last summer. And they have no one but their government to thank.

Not only have the American people not seen those events translate into real, forward-leaning progress on this critical issue, they've actually witnessed new obstacles erected over the past year that have even further separated themselves and their families from the energy that rightfully belongs to them.

Take, for example, the actions of the Department of the Interior — the federal agency tasked with managing energy resources on federal lands and waters.

Shortly after taking office, Secretary Ken Salazar announced that a new offshore energy plan — written in the months after Congress allowed the offshore ban to expire — would have to wait an additional six months before the Interior Department would even consider it.

Those six months ended last week, and Secretary Salazar has since told reporters that he may not advance any new plan until 2012, effectively turning his six-month delay into a three-year de facto.

Which begs the question: Was the decision to lift the decades-old ban on offshore exploration truly a response to the will of American people? Or was it merely an election-year gesture?

While the answer to that question remains unanswered, we do know that the federal government in 2008 generated over $10 billion in bonus bids from energy leasing. In comparison, since Salazar has taken office, the Interior Department has collected $875 million — or 8.6% of what was collected in 2008. (Thomas J. Pyle, IBD)

THE State Government is pressing ahead with plans for two giant power stations that could could raise Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 million tonnes a year, the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on the state's roads.

Documents released yesterday by the Planning Department show the Government is prepared to back the new coal- or gas-fired plants at Mount Piper near Lithgow and Bayswater near Muswellbrook.

Coal or gas are the only fuels available to keep pace with electricity demand, according to the environmental assessments for the new power stations. (SMH)

At the G20 Pittsburgh summit, Canada endorsed a commitment to end subsidies to fossil fuel industries and step up subsidies to renewable energy sources. “We commit to...stimulate investment in clean energy, renewables, and energy efficiency,” said the leaders. If anybody wonders what stimulating clean and green energy programs might mean to economic policy, a working model comes into effect today in Ontario.

Billed as a North American first, the new Ontario green energy plan involves imposing hidden taxes on electricity consumers to fund an industrial strategy based on government directives, subsidies and trade protectionism — all for the benefit of a select collection of rent-seeking corporate interests. Today’s the first day those corporate interests and local community activists can apply to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) for new “Feed-in Tariffs” on new wind, solar, biomass and other renewable generating facilities.

While the going price of electricity at the wholesale level in Ontario is currently around 4 or 5 cents a kilowatt hour, the OPA is offering feed-in tariff contracts at between 45 and 80 cents to companies building new solar power generating facilities, 13.5 cents on land-based wind farms, 19 cents on off-shore wind farms, and between 10.4 and 19.5 cents on biogas projects.

OPA calls these feed-in subsidies “the first comprehensive guaranteed pricing structure for renewable electricity production.” Being first doesn’t make new taxes any more appealing. The added cost of these subsidies will be borne by electricity consumers, who will see their electricity prices rise to fund the operations. (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

Sudden snow flurries near power stations could be caused by industrial smoke, a study claimed. (Daily Telegraph)

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. — In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.

But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water.

Now Solar Millennium finds itself in the midst of a new-age version of a Western water war. The public is divided, pitting some people who hope to make money selling water rights to the company against others concerned about the project’s impact on the community and the environment.

“I’m worried about my well and the wells of my neighbors,” George Tucker, a retired chemical engineer, said on a blazing afternoon.

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year. (NYT)

Windmills: Bigger waste than eHealth - Wind reduces CO2 emissions at a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne — one of the most expensive plans in the world

Ontarians take note. A detailed new Danish study shatters most of the myths that the Danish-based wind turbine industry has been propagating in Canada and around the world as to the virtues of wind power. The study, Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark by the Centre for Policy Studies in Copenhagen, strongly reinforces reservations that I have noted in previous op-eds in this newspaper.

While proponents of wind power like to claim that almost 20% of Danish electricity is generated by wind power, in fact over the last five years wind power has accounted for only about 9% of domestic electricity consumption. The other 11% or so — generated when the wind was blowing in the middle of the night or at other times that power was unneeded in Denmark — was exported to Norway and Sweden at spot prices that were substantially lower (often zero) than the subsidized prices guaranteed to Danish wind turbine operators. Meanwhile, when the wind wasn’t blowing in conformity with Danish needs, Denmark needed to import balancing power from Norway and Sweden, typically at substantially higher costs.

The main attraction in wind is the elimination of CO2 emissions. To the extent that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in Denmark, this comes as a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne of CO2 — one of the most expensive CO2 reduction strategies in the world. (Michael Trebilcock, Financial Post)

CALGARY -- Environmental groups, usually the harshest critics of oil-sands developers, welcomed Wednesday the appointment of the new head of Total E&P Canada Ltd., applauding his green credentials.

Jean-Michel Gires comes to Canada after serving most recently as Total SA's executive vice-president for sustainable development and the environment. During his six-year tenure in that role, he was instrumental in pushing the Paris-based energy giant to develop a pilot project in the south of France using carbon capture and storage, which many believe can play a major role in solving the problem of man-made climate change. (Carrie Tait, Financial Post)

The leader of the country's largest Indian reservation threw his support behind the neighboring Hopi Tribe, whose lawmakers declared environmental groups unwelcome on the reservation.

Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. and Hopi lawmakers say environmentalists' efforts could hurt the tribes' struggling economies by slowing or stopping coal mining.

Shirley said Wednesday that he will stand in solidarity with the Hopi Tribe, and joined Hopi lawmakers in encouraging other tribes to re-evaluate their relationships with environmentalists.

"Environmentalists are good at identifying problems but poor at identifying feasible solutions," Shirley said in a news release. "Most often they don't try to work with us but against us, giving aid and comfort to those opposed to the sovereign decision-making of tribes." (Associated Press)

Senior executives in the carbon market predict China will announce plans for a national emissions trading scheme at Copenhagen. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network (The Guardian)

Project in Iceland aimed at removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it beneath the earth’s surface shows promising results. 9Public Radio International)

With its decision today to hear the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court should settle the question of whether states must recognize the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In June of 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court found, for the first time, that the federal government must recognize the Second Amendment right of individuals, quite apart from their belonging to a militia, to have an operational firearm in their home. But the decision left open the question whether states were similarly bound.

Thus, the so-called incorporation doctrine will be at issue in this case – the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporates” the guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the states. The Bill of Rights applied originally only against the federal government. But the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, left open the question of which rights states were bound to recognize. The modern Court has incorporated most of the rights found in the Bill of Rights, but the Second Amendment’s guarantees have yet to be incorporated.

Moreover, a question that will arise in this case is whether the Court, if it does decide that the states are bound by the Second Amendment, will reach that conclusion under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause or under its Privileges or Immunities Clause, which has been moribund since the infamous Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873. In its brief urging the Court to hear the McDonald petition, the Cato Institute urged the Court to revive the Privileges or Immunities Clause. (Roger Pilon, Cato at liberty)

WASHINGTON - Many people who have died of swine flu infections in the United States have also had bacterial infections, health officials reported on Wednesday.

A study of 77 patients who died of the new pandemic H1N1 virus showed 29 percent of them had so-called bacterial co-infections, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

About half of these had Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can be prevented with a vaccine, the CDC said.

The CDC has already reported that H1N1, declared a pandemic in June, has become more active as weather cools and schools return from summer breaks. Cases are reported in all 50 states. (Reuters)

Women, want to enjoy good health in your golden years?

Lose weight. Now.

A study published online last night in the British Medical Journal shows that women who are overweight in midlife are at increased risk of various health problems, from chronic diseases to cognitive impairment, once they pass age 70.

Conversely, the study found, women who were lean at midlife were most likely to be healthy after 70. (WaPo)

Declines in breast cancer death rates in the U.S. may be threatened by a trend among women toward obesity, a risk factor for the disease, according to a report by the Atlanta-based American Cancer Society.

The mortality rate in the U.S. continued to drop 2 percent annually from 1996 to 2006, the most recent year with data available, according to the report released today. (Bloomberg)

NEW YORK - Consequences of obesity in women may extend years into their daughters' lives, study findings hint.

The researchers found that daughters of obese mothers, versus normal- or under-weight mothers, were about three times more likely to start menstruating before their 12th birthday. Previous studies have shown overweight girls tend to enter puberty at an earlier age and children of obese women tend to be overweight themselves, Dr. Sarah A. Keim, of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues note in the journal Epidemiology.

In the current study, daughters of obese mothers were more likely to begin menstruation at a young age, "even if they themselves were not overweight," Keim told Reuters Health in an email correspondence. (Reuters Health)