Ethanol’s Grocery Bill

Two federal studies add up the corn fuel’s exorbitant cost.

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The Obama Administration is pushing a big expansion in ethanol, including a mandate to increase the share of the corn-based fuel required in gasoline to 15% from 10%. Apparently no one in the Administration has read a pair of new studies, one from its own EPA, that expose ethanol as a bad deal for consumers with little environmental benefit.

The biofuels industry already receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced, or about $3 billion a year. Meanwhile, import tariffs of 54 cents a gallon and an ad valorem tariff of four to seven cents a gallon keep out sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and the Caribbean. The federal 10% blending requirement insures a market for ethanol whether consumers want it or not — a market Congress has mandated will double to 20.5 billion gallons in 2015.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last month that Americans pay another surcharge for ethanol in higher food prices. CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008 “the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices.” Ethanol raises food prices because millions of acres of farmland and three billion bushels of corn were diverted to ethanol from food production. Americans spend about $1.1 trillion a year on food, so in 2007 the ethanol subsidy cost families between $5.5 billion and $8.8 billion in higher grocery bills.

A second study — by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality — explains that the reduction in CO2 emissions from burning ethanol are minimal and maybe negative. Making ethanol requires new land from clearing forest and grasslands that would otherwise sequester carbon emissions. “As with petroleum based fuels,” the report concludes: “GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are associated with the conversion and combustion of bio-fuels and every year they are produced GHG emissions could be released through time if new acres are needed to produce corn or other crops for biofuels.”

The EPA study also explores a series of alternative scenarios over 30 to 100 years. In some cases ethanol leads to a net reduction in carbon relative to using gasoline. But many other long-term scenarios observe a net increase in CO2 relative to burning fossil fuels. Ethanol produced in a “basic natural gas fired dry mill” will over a 30-year horizon produce “a 5% increase in GHG emissions compared to petroleum gasoline.” When ethanol is produced with coal burning mills, the process “significantly worsens the lifecycle GHG impact of ethanol” creating 34% more greenhouse gases than gasoline does over 30 years.

Both CBO and EPA find that in theory cellulosic ethanol — from wood chips, grasses and biowaste — would reduce carbon emissions. However, as CBO emphasizes, “current technologies for producing cellulosic ethanol are not commercially viable.” The ethanol lobby is attempting a giant bait-and-switch: Keep claiming that cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, even as it knows the only current technology to meet federal mandates is corn ethanol (or sugar, if it didn’t face an import tariff).

As public policy, ethanol is like the joke about the baseball prospect who is a poor hitter but a bad fielder. It doesn’t reduce CO2 but it does cost more. Imagine how many subsidies the Beltway would throw at ethanol if the fuel actually had any benefits.

Sunspots, a Crucial Climate Indicator

Posted on April 12, 2009 by chillguy33

Commenters on this blog (Julia LeVan on Human CO2 Snuffs Out Sun’s 10.7cm Band) have noted that anthropogenic carbon dioxide may be unlikely to affect conditions on the sun. This is an important insight which may have a lot of truth in it, notwithstanding the likely resistance of climate scientist and global warming pundit and businessman Al Gore. Particularly since conditions on the sun are seemingly of primary, if not dominant, significance in Earthly climate.

Dr. Willie Soon, a senior Harvard astrophysicist, has observed that “when sunspots are present, the temperature goes up; and when sunspots are absent, the temperature goes down.” It may be disputable I suppose, but I think Dr. Soon is referring to temperatures on Earth, actually.

Dr. Soon goes on to further ignore (or perhaps minimimize is fair) the importance of carbon dioxide in controlling Earth’s climate, in this most interesting article, Harvard astrophysicist: Sunspot activity correlates to global climate change

H/T: ICECAP ‘Curious’ Why the Sun Has Been So Dim Lately, under category Blogosphere

Further quoting Dr. Soon, and his explanation of three rather direct ways in which solar output could have dominant influence on terrestrial climate:

“When the energy input to the Earth from the sun is lower, you can easily imagine then what the first effect would be — heating less of the ocean’s surface. This promotes less evaporation of water vapor from the ocean, reducing what we all know to be the major green house gas, water vapor, in contrast to atmospheric carbon dioxide. Then, you would say that if the sun provides less energy to warm the ocean’s surface, and there is less of this water vapor and less of the water vapor greenhouse effect, then the Earth begins warming less so than you would normally have during the normal sunspot activity maximum when the sun gives off more light-energy to the planetary system.

“The second way to think about this is if the sun is giving less light to the ocean’s surface, then you will also give less energy to transfer the heat, or even the material itself, from the surface to the upper atmosphere. The connection between the surface and the upper atmosphere is less than it would be, including the circulation patterns of the weather and the oceans.

“And then one can think about it another way, if you give less energy to transfer energy from the surface to higher up in the atmosphere, as high as 5 or 8 kilometers, then the chance for the system to produce these so-called thin high-cirrus clouds is less. These are the clouds that are very, very effective as a greenhouse blocker, these thin high-cirrus clouds. This is the idea that Professor Dickenson from MIT has suggested, that the Earth system may act like an iris. If it’s too warm, then the iris opens, if it’s too cold it closes, so that this fixture can trap heat, providing a very efficient way to warm or cool the Earth system.

“During a solar activity minimum, imagine that you produce less of these high-cirrus clouds, then the ability of the Earth to shed heat itself is a lot easier, therefore the system cools. And then continuing, when you don’t have enough energy to bring all of this water vapor and the currents more than a few kilometers up, then it all accumulates at the bottom of the system, producing more of the low clouds. And on low clouds we know that they are very effective at reflecting sunlight. So again, it’s another way that the Earth system can cool.

“And even another way to think about it is less energy intercepted in the tropical region, from say 20 or 30 degrees north and south latitudes, then you are able to transfer less heat energy to the polar regions, resulting in the arctic regions getting slightly cooler in that sense as well.

“So these are some of the possible scenarios that we’ve reached which in sort of a low-sunlight scenario would affect the Earth’s weather.”

Dr. Soon does not give much notice to carbon dioxide of any kind. He is also not a strong advocate of the “chilling stars” theory of Dr. Henrik Svensmark and others apparently; but his thoughtful explanation of three distinct and very reasonable mechanisms by which solar conditions strongly influence Earth’s climate is very noteworthy.

“If this deep solar minimum continues and our planet cools while CO2 levels continue to rise, thinking needs to change.”

Or even if the deep solar minimum does not continue (but our planet continues to  cool while CO2 levels continue to rise).

Interesting WBZ-TV video here:  ‘Curious’ Why The Sun Has Been So Dim Lately.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• 2006 Hottest Year on Record – So what? Part 2
• Anthropogenic Climate Change: Critical Evaluation, Part I
• Eco systems independent of the sun
• The Sun Is Acting Up Again

Filed under: Willie Soon | Tagged: Willie Soon

« Years Of Solar Inactivity Arctic Ice Threatens Northern Hemisphere »

AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering

AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering Apr 8 11:55 AM US/Eastern By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer WASHINGTON (AP) – The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort. “It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.” Holdren outlined several “tipping points” involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of “really intolerable consequences,” he said. Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.” At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions. Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea. The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says “it is prudent to consider geoengineering’s potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.” Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically. But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air—making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested—could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said. Still, “we might get desperate enough to want to use it,” he added. Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide—the chief human-caused greenhouse gas—out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

Friday , March 27, 2009

By George Russell

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A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations “information note” on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an “effective framework” for dealing with global warming.

The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.

In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the “Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol.” Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.

Getting that deal done has become the United Nations’ highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the path to what the U.N. calls an “ambitious and effective international response to climate change,” which is intended to culminate at the later gathering in Copenhagen.

Just how ambitious the U.N.’s goals are can be seen, but only dimly, in the note obtained by FOX News, which offers in sparse detail both positive and negative consequences of the tools that industrial nations will most likely use to enforce the greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The paper makes no effort to calculate the magnitude of the costs and disruption involved, but despite the discreet presentation, makes clear that they will reverberate across the entire global economic system.

• Click here for the information note.

Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; “carbon taxes” on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered “environmentally sound.”

Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including “energy policy reform,” which the report indicates could affect “large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports.” When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have “positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels.”

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes “may induce some industrial relocation” to “less regulated host countries.” Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.

The note adds only that industrial relocation “would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment.” But at the same time it “would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries.”

There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as “border carbon adjustment”— which, the note says, can impose “a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically” under more strict environmental regimes.

Another form of “adjustment” would require exporters to “buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically.”

The impact of both schemes, the note says, “would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers.” (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is “foreign.”) The note adds that “If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged.” Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved.

Indeed, only rarely does the “information note” attempt to inform readers in dollar terms of the impact of “spillover effects” from the potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 billion a year in developing economies.”

But calculations of the impact of tariffs, offsets, or other subsidies is rare. In a reference to the impact of declining oil exports, the report says that Saudi Arabia has determined the loss to its economy at between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2030, but said nothing about other oil exporters.

One reason for the lack of detail, the note indicates, is that impact would vary widely depending on the nature and scope of the policies adopted (and, although the note does not mention it, on the severity of the greenhouse reduction targets).

But even when it does hazard a guess at specific impacts, the report seems curiously hazy. A “climate change levy on aviation” for example, is described as having undetermined “negative impacts on exporters of goods that rely on air transport, such as cut flowers and premium perishable produce,” as well as “tourism services.” But no mention is made in the note of the impact on the aerospace industry, an industry that had revenues in 2008 of $208 billion in the U.S. alone, or the losses the levy would impose on airlines for ordinary passenger transportation. (Global commercial airline revenues in 2008 were about $530 billion, and were already forecast to drop to an estimated $467 billion this year.)

In other cases, as when discussing the “increased costs of traditional exports” under a new environmental regime, the report confines itself to terse description. Changes in standards and labeling for exported goods, for example, “may demand costly changes to the production process.” If subsidies and tariffs affect exports, the note says, the “economic and social consequences of dampening their viability may, for some countries and sectors, be significant.”

Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic policies for their achievement.

And, precisely because the Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more bureaucratic work is needed “to deepen the understanding of the full nature and scale of such impacts.”

But outside the Bonn process, other experts have been much more blunt about the draconian nature of the measures they deem necessary to make “effective” greenhouse gas reductions.

In an influential but highly controversial paper called “Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change,” British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by “at least 80% by 2050,” while the biggest economies, like the U.S.’s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.

Stern also calls for “immediate and binding” reduction targets for developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.

To meet Stern’s 2050 goals, he says, among other things, “most of the world’s electricity production will need to have been decarbonized.”

Click here for Stern’s paper.

By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and “other” sources. And even then, those “other” non-fossil sources included wood and biomass — which, when burned, are major emitters of carbon.

Click here to see the Department of Energy report.

George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.

More Global Warming Scare Mongering From Obama

Marc Sheppard

Barack Obama sat with a group of reporters yesterday and attempted to exploit the suffering of North Dakota’s Red River Valley flood victims to help sell his bogus energy plan.  Apparently taking a cue from Al Gore while heeding Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste,” the president deflected a question challenging his proposed cap-and-trade system’s devastating impact on the economy by blaming the flooding on global warming – sort of. 

 

Asked about North Dakotans’ concerns that his carbon trading scheme might harm the state’s vital coal and power-generating industries, Mr. Obama quickly changed the subject:  

OBAMA :       I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating.  The flooding in North Dakota which could result if you start seeing severely changing weather patterns …

REPORTER:  Which is going on right now …

OBAMA:        Which is going on right now.  Now I can’t ascribe that in particular to climate change.  If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?’ that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.

The president then proceeded to pitch the consequent necessity of his disastrous cap-and-trade program to the group.  Of course, there were no challenges to the wildly conjectural assertion that such a plan would actually lower atmospheric CO2 or, for that matter, temperatures – that’s sadly become a given.  But not one reporter questioned the complete lack of either conviction or logic in connecting not this yet perhaps future flooding to temperature increases and subsequently to why “we have to take this seriously.”   

Yes, potentially severe Spring flooding has hit the valley and it may or may not prove to be the worst since the devastating benchmark flood of 1997.  But as local news channel KSFY pointed out yesterday:  “Every Spring, the weather warms up, the snow melts and our rivers and streams fill up.”  Now follow my logic here, if, that is, the president’s hasn’t managed to short-circuit that capacity:  More snow in winter equals more melted snow in spring equals more water. 

 

And ironically enough, just days before Obama’s climate non sequitur, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had denied North Dakota Governor John Hoeven’s request for a presidential disaster declaration to help deal with “the heavy and sometimes record snowfall in North Dakota this winter.”  More snow.  More water.  Any questions?

 

And speaking of FEMA, here’s an agency Powerpoint training presentation (PPT) that lists 10 major floods in the valley between 1510 and 1762 and 18 since.  One flood in 1826 was 10 feet higher than 1997 and another in 1950 peaked at 11 feet higher. 

 

Given the absence of selfish SUV-driving carbon-spewing capitalists motoring about at the time, to what do you suppose John Quincy Adams and Harry Truman attributed the Red River Valley flooding of their days?  Perhaps something as mundane as unstable melt output from normal seasonal snowfall variations?

 

But our current occupant of 1600 Penn is now leading the Liberal policy charge.  So when the appropriate crisis to help make his case eludes him, it appears he’ll simply craft one – no matter how unconvincingly.   

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/more_global_warming_scare_mong.html at March 25, 2009 – 12:47:39 AM EDT

Obama’s Cap-And-Trade Rip-Off

Obama’s Cap-And-Trade Rip-Off

By Steven Milloy
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/5/2009

President Obama wants to pay you to support global warming regulation. What he isn’t saying, however, is that his enticement won’t come close to covering what the regulations will cost you.

In his 10-year budget released last week, the President proposed a so-called “cap-and-trade” scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the proposal, 100 percent of the permits to emit greenhouse gases would be auctioned to coal and natural gas-burning electric utilities, industrial plants and other emitters still to be designated. The proceeds from the auctions would then be distributed to individual Americans “to help the transition to a clean energy economy,” according to his budget proposal.

But what does this proposal mean for the average person in terms of actual dollars and cents? It’s difficult to work out the precise financial impacts, but you can get an idea by doing some back-of-the-envelop calculations with some of the facts and figures that have recently been bandied about.

Based on past global warming legislation, like the Lieberman-Warner bill that failed in the Senate last June, a cap-and-trade plan would probably cover about 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — about 5.8 billion tons based on a total of 7.3 billion tons emitted during 2007.

Assuming that permits are auctioned at a price of $12 per ton – a safety valve price included in past climate bills — the Obama plan would raise about $70 billion in its first year. Given that President Obama has proposed to spend about $15 billion per year of the auction proceeds on “clean energy” projects, about $55 billion would be leftover for distribution to individuals – that is, every American with a social security number. Dividing the $55 billion among more than 300 million Americans, then, works out to about $180 per person and $720 per family of four per year. It’s not like winning the lottery, but it’s better than nothing — or is it?

The liberal think tank Center on Budget Priorities and Policy estimated last week that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would cost the poorest families in America $750 per year as higher energy prices ripple through the economy affecting all goods and services. So if the poorest families, who use far less energy than the rest of America, are in a financial hole under the President’s plan, one can easily imagine how the rest of us will end up. Consider the potential consequences on just your electric bill.

The Lieberman-Warner bill would have auctioned only 25 percent of the permits — not 100 percent as President Obama is proposing. The remaining 75 percent of the credits would have been distributed for free to electric utilities and other designated greenhouse gas emitters. But even under that scheme, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers told the New York Times last summer that electricity rates would rise by 40 percent in the first year to cover his utility’s $2 billion outlay for credits. So a 100 percent auction could increase electricity bills for Duke’s 4 million customers by 160 percent — meaning a $100 monthly electric bill becomes, perhaps, a $260 monthly bill. Based on these calculations, a family of four that pays more than $40 per month for electricity — that is, every family — is a net loser under President Obama’s plan.

And those are the potential increases for just your electric bill. Not included are other likely price hikes for goods and services — gasoline, food, travel, etc. — that will necessarily be passed along to consumers. As you can readily see, your share of President Obama’s auction proceeds does not need come close to breaking even on greenhouse gas regulation.

Maybe you’re thinking that these extra costs are worth it, as they will be dwarfed by the environmental benefits of tackling the much-dreaded global warming. Think again. There will be no detectable or tangible benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions. First, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas targeted by regulation is invisible, colorless and odorless. Since it exists in the atmosphere at levels measured in the parts per million, unless you’re plant that needs CO2 to live, you’re not going to notice it.

Next, there is no evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing detectable changes, much less any harm, to the climate. (Check out this popular YouTube video I made on this issue.) This means, of course, that there is no evidence that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have any detectable changes on climate.

Even assuming for the sake of argument that manmade carbon dioxide emissions were changing climate, President Obama’s cap-and-trade bill will still have no detectable impact. First, EPA projects that a maximum clamp down on future U.S. emissions would reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by about 5 percent or less — a trivial change no matter what you believe about carbon dioxide. Moreover, China and India have vowed not to harm their economies because of global warming — so their emissions can be expected to soar as they develop and more than make-up for our reductions.

If the economics of Obama’s cap-and-trade rip-off don’t bother you, the fact that the rip-off will also accomplish nothing should give you pause.

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Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of the forthcoming book, “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

The Farce of Global Warming

By Janet Levy

With the Obama administration calling for curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and the nation in the grip of the most severe economic downturn since 1929, it would seem prudent to re-examine the debate on the causes of global warming before tossing aside entire industries and technologies in favor of untried, and possibly infeasible and unprofitable, “green” technologies.

Wholesale acceptance of human-caused global warming does not, in fact, exist. Indeed, many scientists believe that the highly politicized global warming scare is one of the greatest scams inflicted on the planet. They hold it responsible for enforced political restrictions on legitimate scientific inquiry and dissent and feel that a deliberate attempt has been made to silence prominent atmospheric and climate scientists who offer legitimate criticism.

The Politicization of Global Warming

The politicization of global warming was at play in February 2007, when in response to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) citing human activity as the primary cause of global warming, syndicated columnist, Ellen Goodman, proclaimed global warming an unequivocal, alarming fact. Ms. Goodman, who holds no scientific credentials, exclaimed that global warming deniers were on par with Holocaust deniers.

A meteorologist with the Weather Channel, Heidi Cullen, subsequently recommended that the Meteorologist Seal of Approval be revoked for any meteorologists skeptical of the human causation of global warming. And although scientists are far from unanimous in their opinions of human responsibility for climate change, Oregon governor, Tel Kulongoski, went so far as to consider firing the state’s climatologist for disagreeing with the U.N. conclusions.

Dr. James Hanson, a NASA climate scientist who pioneered the research on global warming and politicized the issue with Al Gore’s widely debunked Academy Award-winning movie The Inconvenient Truth, has referred to skeptics as being guilty of “high crimes against humanity and nature.” He has called for mass civil disobedience at the coal-fired capital power plant in Washington, D.C.

Voices of Dissent

Yet, much doubt exists over the IPPC climate change theory. Hanson’s own supervisor at NASA claims that Hanson has “gone off the deep end” with insufficient evidence and has violated NASA policies by arguing against the agency’s official position on climate.

Recently, a group of Japanese scientists from a government advisory panel publicly announced their disagreement with the IPCC report and declared that climate change is driven by natural cycles related to solar activity and has nothing to do with CO₂ emissions. The climate modeling used to support claims of man-made global warming was dubbed “ancient astrology” by a program director for the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology.

Skepticism over human-caused global warming was also raised as recently as February 25^th at a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing hosted by Senators Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe. There, Dr. William Harper, Princeton University professor and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (1990-1993), presented some of his key findings on climate change. One of just four scientists invited to address the forum, Dr. Harper, who supervised all DOE work on climate change, is a climate crisis skeptic. In his presentation, he noted that 650 prominent international scientists, including both former and current IPCC participants, have challenged the claims made by the 52 scientists who authorized the U.N. panel’s report. He also called CO₂, a compound singled out by the IPCC as a major contributor to global warming, as, in fact, a beneficial compound essential for life on earth.

CO₂ Levels

In his analysis of CO₂ as a factor in climate change, Dr. Harper affirmed that CO₂ is not a cause for alarm, as it is neither a pollutant nor a poison. Indeed, Harper argued that CO₂ limitations, such as the 450 ppm (parts per million) standard recommended by the IPCC to “stabilize” CO² in the atmosphere, will actually damage the environment.

According to Dr. Harper, the current warming period (which actually ended 10 years ago) began in 1800 following the close of the little ice age (1300-1650 AD), which was preceded by a Medieval Warm Period (800-1300 AD). Harper noted that the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were curiously omitted from the IPCC report and that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer than today. Clearly at that point in time, global warming had nothing to do with the burning of fossils fuels. Also, Dr. Harper explained that several warmings have existed over the last 10,000 years since the last ice age, thus confirming that climate change has occurred multiple times absent mankind’s actions.

Furthermore, plants and our primitive ancestors evolved when atmospheric CO₂ was 1000 ppm. This compares to our current level of 380 ppm. Dr. Harper reported that higher levels of CO₂ benefit the environment because they result in higher crop yield and more drought-tolerant plants. He cited a modern day example: greenhouse operations that are typically maintained at 1000 ppm. In truth, Harper said we are actually in a CO₂ famine as most of the earth’s CO₂ levels throughout the planet’s history have been at least 1000 ppm or higher. At these points in time, “the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started,” he said.

Dr. Harper also cited examinations of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets as further evidence of his claims. From that data, past temperatures and concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere can be determined. The findings indicate that first temperatures rose and about 800 years later, CO₂ levels rose from the CO₂ released from warmer oceans. This finding is in direct contradiction to the beliefs of global warming advocates who believe that higher levels of CO₂ cause warmer temperatures.

The Fallacy of Scientific Consensus

Dr. Harper, who ironically was fired by Al Gore for disagreeing with his views on climate issues, cautioned the Senate committee members about the dangers of creating a crisis mentality and of demanding or aiming for consensus among scientists on climate theory. He observed that scientific breakthroughs and discoveries have never been determined by consensus, quite the contrary. As an example, he cited the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia when the majority of physicians wrongly believed in a bleeding cure for the disease. A few contrarians noticed that yellow fever victims were more likely to survive by foregoing these ministrations but were summarily ignored. Today, global warming proponents point to the rise in the incidence of malaria and yellow fever as evidence of the ill effects of rising temperatures. However, according to Dr. Harper and other scientists, this phenomenon has more to do with controlling mosquitoes than controlling temperatures.

The late Michael Crichton had this to say about scientific consensus, “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels. It is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. The great scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with consensus.”

Dr. Harper maintains that the current climate crisis is a political creation that does not enjoy consensus but has the backing of the media, influential politicians, certain scientific societies and well-funded non-profit organizations. He cautions that climate warming dogma, absent critical analysis and the presentation of contrary data, is being taught in our schools along with the widespread viewing of the seriously flawed film The Inconvenient Truth.

Impact on Our Energy Supplies

Contrary to what the media and U.N. have portrayed, no evidence exists that today’s climate changes differ qualitatively from in the past. In fact, not global warming but a slight cooling has taken place over the past 10 years which clearly negates the predictions of the IPCC models. As Harper concludes, climate alarmism is unrealistic and more a function of politics than scientific truths. His belief that climate change is driven by natural cycles rather than human activity is gaining currency against the hysteria of global warming doomsayers who want to institute ill-advised energy use and taxation programs that will alter our way of life and harm our economy unnecessarily.

Climate change alarmists continue to rail against our use of the conventional sources of energy that have contributed to our economy prosperity. They have amassed significant support in Washington for “cap and trade” taxation schemes and prohibitions on drilling and energy exploration. The United States should not yield to political pressure and penalize energy use in an effort to garner new taxes. Common sense and good science should rule the day and politicians should not let more than 2,340 global warming lobbyists in Washington, clamoring for “cap and trade” regulation, allow us to seriously drag down our already flailing economy. Our economic health and growth should not be sacrificed for an unproven theory that is fast loosing support from the scientific community.

Given the present administration’s call for legislation to curb greenhouse gas emission allegedly in the service of climate control, the testimony of scientists like Dr. Harper warrants serious consideration.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_farce_of_global_warming.html at March 02, 2009 – 10:09:25 AM EST

AAA$ $ELL$ GLOBAL $IZZLE $CIENCE!

James Lewis
Famed physicist Freeman Dyson had it exactly right when he said that the global warming hype is driven by $$$. Our new Federal $timulus Gift Package has ju$t given 400 million greenback$ to that merry gang of global warming modeler$.

Merry Xma$ Global Warmer$!!!

 

But some of them have been getting $cared that the world might be $potting the $cam. $urvey$ here and in Europe $how that mo$t people ju$t don’t buy the hype any more. Even the Briti$h Met Office, which has gobbled up it$ share of … well, £££ … after year$ and year$  of $care $torie$, warned ye$terday, in the Guardian of all place$, that endle$$ warming hype was triggering a backla$h.

 

‘Apocalyptic climate predictions’ mislead the public, say experts.”

“Met Office scientists fear distorted climate change claims could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions.” 

 

But that wa$ $ooo ye$terday….

 

Gue$$ what?

 

Today the new pre$ident of the American A$$ociation for the Advancement of $cience ju$t dumped another piece of $cary hype in the new$. Gue$$ what? We only have four year$ left, or the planet will explode!!!

 

(Note: AAA$ i$ the Big $cience lobby in America. And ye$, it doe$ run ad$ in $CIENCE magazine $pelling it$ name AAA$ —   I’m not kidding…)

 

$aid Profe$$or Jame$ McCarthy, a$ quoted by tru$ty old BBC New$,

 

“Obama ‘mu$t act now’ on climate.”

“The planet will be in “huge trouble” unle$$ Barack Obama make$ $tride$ in tackling climate change, $ay$ a leading $cienti$t.

Prof Jame$ McCarthy $poke on the eve of the annual meeting of the American A$$ociation for the Advancement of $cience (AAA$), which he head$.

The U$ pre$ident ha$ ju$t four year$ to $ave the planet, $aid Prof McCarthy.

If major policy change$ do not happen within Mr Obama’$ term of office, they will not happen at all, he warned.

“We have a moment right now of extraordinary opportunity, with a new pre$ident, po$itioned with $cientific leader$hip that ha$ known no equal in recent time$,” the AAA$ pre$ident told BBC New$.

“The calibre of $cientific advice that i$ clo$e to thi$ man i$ truly exceptional.

“If in hi$ fir$t term, in the next four year$, we don’t make $ignificant progre$$ in the$e area$, then I think the planet i$ in huge trouble.

“Without U$ leader$hip, which ha$ been $orely lacking, we will not get to where we need to be.”

 

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Obama climate czar has socialist ties

Stephen Dinan (Contact)

Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties such as Britain’s Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.

The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Obama, who has said action on climate change would be a priority in his administration, tapped Mrs. Browner last month to fill a new position as White House coordinator of climate and energy policies. The appointment does not need Senate confirmation.

Mr. Obama’s transition team said Mrs. Browner’s membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in U.S. policymaking to her new role.

“The Commission for a Sustainable World Society includes world leaders from a variety of political parties, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair, in serving as vice president of the convening organization,” Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

“Carol Browner was chosen to help the president-elect coordinate energy and climate policy because she understands that our efforts to create jobs, achieve energy security and combat climate change demand integration among different agencies; cooperation between federal, state and local governments; and partnership with the private sector,” Mr. Shapiro said in an e-mail.

Mrs. Browner ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton. Until she was tapped for the Obama administration, she was on the board of directors for the National Audubon Society, the League of Conservation Voters, the Center for American Progress and former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.

Her name has been removed from the Gore organization’s Web site list of directors, and the Audubon Society issued a press release about her departure from that organization.

Republicans said Mrs. Browner’s work with Socialist International raises questions.

“Does she agree with the group’s positions on global governance – that the United States should abdicate its international leadership to international organizations? Does she support its position that the international community should be the ultimate arbiter of climate change policy?” said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

“These are questions that merit answers – especially when you consider this group’s deep skepticism about America’s ability to be a force for positive change in the world,” she said.

An aide on the Obama team said its information shows that Mrs. Browner resigned from the organization in June 2008. The aide, who asked not to be named because he was discussing internal matters, said the transition team was aware she had been a member of the group when she was vetted.

The Socialist International Web site didn’t have a copy of her June 30 speech, but the agenda for the meeting had her scheduled to speak as part of a panel on “How do we strengthen the multilateral architecture for a sustainable future?”

Other panel participants were Sergey Mironov, speaker of the Russian legislature’s upper chamber and a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; Zhang Zhijun, vice minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee; and Jesus Caldera, a former Minister of Employment and Social Affairs of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.

A woman answering the phone at Socialist International’s headquarters in London said all officers were traveling.

Nobody from the organization returned a message left Friday.

Socialist International bills itself as the world body of democratic socialist movements. It includes members ranging from Israel’s Labor Party and France’s Socialist Party to Angola’s MPLA, which won the 1970s Angolan civil war with the aid of Soviet arms and Cuban troops.

The organization distinguishes itself from violent or revolutionary communist parties. However, some such groups, including the Chinese Communist Party, have been invited to its events as guest organizations.

The Democratic Socialists of America, not the Democratic Party, is listed as the group’s U.S. representative. But Mrs. Browner was listed as an individual member of Socialist International, but not a member of the DSA.

While agreeing with Mr. Obama on the need for action to address climate change, the organization wants more draconian policies than the president-elect’s preferred solution.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called for a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions. He argued that such a system is efficient and lets the free market determine where it’s easiest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Socialist International says such “flexible mechanisms” do not clamp down hard enough on polluters.

The organization often takes a decidedly critical view of the U.S.

At this summer’s meeting, the group issued a statement on economics that blasted the “neo-liberal market ideology and the unilateralist, U.S.-dominated approach in the global economic system,” and attacked the U.S. for dominating international financial institutions.

At its meeting earlier in 2008 in Santiago, Chile, Socialist International endorsed “global governance” as the solution to the world’s problems of peace and climate change.

At a July meeting in St. Petersburg, the commission said developed countries “should think of decreasing current consumption levels” – which would mean shrinking their economies – in order to help the environment.

Socialist International regularly blasts the construction of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The fence was approved by both houses of Congress, including with Mr. Obama’s vote in the Senate.

Socialist International was congratulatory when Mr. Obama won the election, issuing a statement noting that “the sky may seem a bit brighter today” but warning still that “there are enormous global challenges that must be addressed effectively and without delay

Hell Freezes Over

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, December 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Sin City gets hit with almost 4 inches of snow as the white stuff even dusts Malibu, Calif. We don’t know what computer model global warmongers are using. A slot machine with three ice cubes, perhaps?

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Read More: Global Warming

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What happens in Vegas, they say, stays in Vegas. But as more evidence of the decade-long cooling trend is shoveled off the Strip, we hope that doesn’t apply to the truth about global warming.

On Friday, the Las Vegas Sun reported that eight inches of snow had hit the Las Vegas Valley. The 3.6 inches that had already fallen as of late Wednesday near McCarran Airport added up to the most snow recorded for the area in December since they began keeping records 70 years ago.

The white powder even dusted Malibu as a winter storm hit parts of California.

We commented recently on an Associated Press story claiming that, rather than being “evidence of some kind of cooling trend,” such events “actually illustrate how fast the world is warming.” But not everybody is convinced.

“If the issues weren’t so serious and the ramifications so profound, I would have to laugh at it,” said David Deming, a geology professor at the University of Oklahoma.

“The mean global temperature, at least measured by satellite, is the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years, sea level has stopped rising, hurricane and cyclone activity in the Northern Hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980.”

Speaking of rising sea levels, is Al Gore smarter than a fourth-grader? James O’Brien, emeritus professor at Florida State University who studies climate variability and the oceans, thinks not. “When the Arctic Ocean ice melts, it never raises sea level because floating ice is floating ice, because it’s displacing water,” he points out.

“When the ice melts, sea level actually goes down. I call it a fourth-grade science experiment: Take a glass, put some ice in it, put water in it, mark level where water is. . . . After the ice melts, the sea level didn’t go up in your glass of water. It’s called the Archimedes principle.”

Global temperatures stopped rising after 1998 and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-08 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. It was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000 and by a cyclical ocean-current phenomenon known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

On CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” recently, Jay Lehr, a senior fellow and science director at the Heartland Institute, was asked by the host what he considered the dominant influence on Earth’s climate.

“Well, clearly, Lou, it is the sun,” Lehr answered, adding that “if we go back in really recorded human history; in the 13th century, we were probably seven degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now.”

Lehr considers global cooling to be the real threat, part of a natural pattern as we continue coming out of a period known as the Little Ice Age. “If we go back to the Revolutionary War, 300 years ago,” he said, “it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period. And now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

The Associated Press claims that the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since Bill Clinton’s second inaugural. But after it was discovered that NASA’s James Hansen, Gore’s chief scientific ally, had been fudging the numbers, the agency was forced to correct its data. The 10 warmest years turn out to be, in descending order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939.

If there’s a trend there, we don’t see it. So is global warming man-made and an imminent danger? As the snow falls in Vegas, don’t bet on it.