Global Warming: Mostly Hot Air

Global Warming: Mostly Hot Air

May 14, 2008 - by Mike McNally

The past few months have not been good to the still-infant discipline of climate change alarmism — that strange amalgam of pseudo-science, crystal ball gazing, and mass hysteria that was formerly known as global warming alarmism until it became apparent a few years back that the globe had in fact stopped warming, and the alarmists decided that the term “climate change” was a more effective way of describing what the rest of us call “weather.”

For around a decade now — since around the time, coincidentally, that the warming stopped — the alarmists have had things pretty much their own way, dominating the debate with ever more dramatic predictions of impending doom as man-made CO2 emissions heat up the planet, and managing for the best part to keep a lid on dissent, thanks to an unlikely, and decidedly unholy, alliance of organizations and individuals with a vested interest in upping the fear factor.

This alliance includes politicians who see climate change as a new way of persuading citizens to give them more power; corporations who play on our concern and guilt to sell us anything from eco-friendly washing powder to flex-fuel SUVs; scientists keen to get their hands on a share of the $5 billion handed out by governments and NGOs each year for climate change research; and the legions of bureaucrats employed to draw up regulations and run the globe-trotting climate conference circus.

Then there’s the lavishly funded environmental lobby; socialists who see climate change as their last, best hope of undermining free-market democracies and cutting the United States down to size; and a media which understands that “World Ends Tomorrow” stories get more viewers than “Everything Likely to Be Just Fine” stories, and whose members tend to side with the leftist, anti-American crowd.

Given such an array of talents and interests it’s a wonder any of us are still allowed to drive a car, fly in a plane, or light a barbecue. And indeed the alarmist movement has come worryingly close to achieving critical mass. Its apotheosis probably came around a couple of years ago, when Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was doing the rounds, and you couldn’t open a magazine or turn on the TV without seeing photos of polar bears “stranded” on ice flows, CG renderings of famous landmarks under 30 feet of water, or interviews in which Al’s celebrity eco-buddies promised to take a long, hard look at their Learjet usage.

Not that there weren’t dissenting voices. A sizable minority of scientists has for years been disputing the basic science behind climate change alarmism (you can find a list of 400 leading “skeptics” [1] here), arguing that the relatively small amount of warming (less than a degree Celsius) observed in the 20th century was well within the natural range of variation in the Earth’s temperature, and questioning the assumption that human activity was to blame. Climate is always changing, they pointed out, and there’s no such thing as an “ideal” temperature for the planet.

They also noted that other planets in our solar system had been experiencing similar warming, notably [2] Mars — despite the fact that, while NASA has succeeded in sending a couple of robot probes to the red planet, they have yet to land an SUV there. Back on Earth, they presented evidence that temperature drove CO2 emissions, and not the other way round. They suggested that natural factors, such as solar activity or the oceans, might play a role in regulating the climate, and that a couple of degrees of warming would anyway have net benefits for most countries.

And even if the warming was man-made, the skeptics argued, the measures the alarmists claimed were necessary to stop the warming would have greater economic and social costs than those that would be incurred by simply adapting to changes in climate — a particularly sensible course of action in the event that the warming did turn out to be natural — while waiting for market forces to make low-carbon technologies viable. Most significantly, the skeptics pointed out that the increase in global temperatures appeared to have stopped around 1998, despite the fact that CO2 output had continued rising.

But despite persuasive evidence that the Earth’s climate was not following the alarmist script, and that proposals to “combat” the hypothetical problems were ill thought out to say the least, the skeptics have struggled to make their voices heard outside the skeptic blogs, websites, and think tanks. They’ve had their reputations rubbished, funding withheld, and been likened to Holocaust deniers. A writer for an environmentalist website famously [3] suggested that “we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”

A recent [4] survey exposed the extent of bias among news programs on the three main U.S. networks: just one-fifth of stories about climate change featured opinions that dissented from the alarmist orthodoxy. However, CNN has probably outdone them all in terms of melodramatic reporting — hardly surprising given that founder Ted Turner thinks global warming will have turned those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be dead into [5] cannibals within 40 years. Meanwhile, in the UK the BBC has effectively seconded dozens of its journalists to the alarmist PR machine, unquestioningly reporting new findings that support the alarmist narrative, while largely ignoring research that questions the “consensus,” [6] other than to debunk it. Reputable science journals haven’t been much kinder to the skeptics, who often find it difficult to get research published as editors take an increasingly [7] pro-alarmist stance.

But the skeptics have refused to be silenced, and in the past year or so there have been signs the momentum is beginning to shift away from the alarmists and towards the realm of common sense. Most significantly, it’s becoming abundantly clear that the Earth is not warming in the way the alarmists have claimed it should be. In February of this year a [8] raft of data from the leading monitoring centers showed that average global temperatures had fallen by around 0.65º C, effectively canceling out the recent 30-year warming trend and leaving the Earth’s temperature close to what the alarmists would consider “normal.” And a few weeks later the World Meteorological Association [9] reported that global temperatures would fall again this year.

Two years of cooling do not a new ice age make, but they do raise serious doubts about the predictions made by the alarmists, and undermine the fundamental tenet of climate change theory: that global temperatures will continue to increase in line with CO2 emissions. Predictably, the alarmists have simply discounted the cooling, claiming that the long-term temperature trend is still upwards, and explaining away the fall by pointing to the cooling effects of the La Nina weather system — despite refusing to credit the warming El Nino system with contributing to 1998 being the warmest year since records began.

The alarmists also said we’d see an increase in hurricanes and other storms as the planet warmed, but this hasn’t proved to be the case, and several studies have shown no link between global temperatures and hurricane activity. Similarly, there has been no significant rise in sea levels, despite the alarmists’ predictions to the contrary. So much for the science, which, contrary to the alarmist mantra, is far from settled.

Another fact that’s become clear is that there’s next to no agreement between those national governments and NGOs that have signed up to climate change alarmism about what to do to reduce CO2 emissions. The latest talks on how to replace the failed Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 [10] broke up just last week, with negotiators agreeing on nothing except the need to have more meetings.

For all their fine words, politicians are understandably reluctant to sign up to policies that will drive jobs overseas, further inflate already high energy prices, and generally wreck their countries’ economies. Australia’s eco-friendly Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose election last year was hailed as a major victory by the alarmists, started [11] backtracking on his commitments as soon as someone showed him the projected bill. Europe, however, is pressing ahead with [12] emissions trading, or “cap and trade” schemes, despite warnings that they will result in vast windfall profits for energy companies and higher prices for consumers, while doing little to curb emissions.

In the U.S., President Bush’s [13] latest plan for tackling climate change, while criticized by some conservatives, is a model of responsibility in comparison to polices being proposed elsewhere, combining energy efficiency regulations with greater investment in nuclear power, “clean coal,” and new energy technologies. And it’s telling that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have been critical of the current administration’s lack of action on climate change, have had little to say on the subject as they campaign in coal-producing Pennsylvania, other than to talk about creating five million “clean” and “high-tech” energy jobs. It may come as news to Senators Clinton and Obama, but if America embraces renewable energy there won’t be much call for armies of laborers to toil amid the acres of wind turbines and solar panels.

There’s also no prospect of agreement on who should pay for policies designed to reduce global CO2 emissions. China — which has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s leading emitter — along with India and leading African nations, argue that they shouldn’t have to pay for measures to mitigate environmental problems caused by the developed nations. The developed nations, in turn, argue that they shouldn’t be penalized just because free-market policies enabled their economies to grow more rapidly than those of countries that persevered with various forms of socialism.

Yet another problem is the rush to biofuels, which was seen as a “magic bullet” by politicians for reducing CO2 emissions and achieving energy independence — not least in the U.S. — but is rapidly turning into a disaster worthy of an Al Gore movie all of its own. Dozens of studies have shown that the production of most biofuels [14] causes more harm to the environment than the fuels themselves save, while the turning over of agricultural land from food production to growing crops for fuel is [15] driving up food prices around the world.

Against the backdrop of these scientific and political developments, the public is becoming increasingly mistrustful of alarmist rhetoric. Al Gore’s massively hyped Live Earth event last summer was a flop of suitably global proportions — the only headlines it generated were for the air miles racked up by Gore’s troupe of platitude-spewing stars, the negligible viewing figures, and the mountains of rubbish left behind at the concert venues. More bad news for Gore followed when a British judge ruled that An Inconvenient Truth contained nine factual errors — the court case focused attention on Gore’s mendacity even as he was collecting his richly undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore is back peddling his patented brand of misinformation and fear-mongering with a [16] $300 million advertising campaign — an awful lot of money, given that he’s been telling us for years that “the debate is over.” But the old magic seems to have gone, and these days he looks like nothing so much as the little boy who cried wolf. Short of appearing on stage with Elvis, and announcing that far from being dead the King has, in fact, been in self-imposed exile on a Pacific atoll studying the threat of rising sea levels, Al has played all his cards. A recent ABC News/Washington Post [17] poll found that precisely zero per cent of Americans — yes, zero, that’s not a typo — rated global warming as the most important issue in the upcoming presidential election.

The alarmists are in no mood to give up. Earlier this month the BBC [18] altered its report on those falling global temperatures after a green activist emailed the reporter who wrote the story, threatening to launch a campaign to discredit him. But far from this being a victory for the climate change camp, it backfired spectacularly — the story was picked up by bloggers and news media around the world, shining a light on the increasingly nasty tactics used by the lunatic fringe of the alarmist movement, and further damaging the BBC’s already battered reputation as an impartial news source.

Around the world people are beginning to see the disconnect between what politicians, environmentalists, and the media tell them, and what they see with their own eyes. Many countries have experienced record cold temperatures and snowfall over the past few months, and a person who’s just dug their car out of the snow doesn’t appreciate being told that their power bills are going up because of regulations to combat “global warming.” They’re not going to stand for job losses, higher living costs, and other hardships in the cause of shaving a hypothetical degree or two of warming a hundred years from now.

And as the disquiet grows even elements of the previously supine media may begin to change their tune. While some journalists are ideologically invested in attacking the Bush administration and promoting the role of the UN, or genuinely think they’re saving the planet, others are just chasing the next big story, and if the story becomes that politicians and corporations have been misleading and exploiting the public, they’re likely to jump off one bandwagon and on to another one heading in the opposite direction.

Maybe the current cooling will continue, maybe it won’t — unlike the alarmists, skeptics don’t claim to be able to see 100 years into the future. If the planet does continue to warm slightly, the billions that the alarmists want to spend in a futile bid to prevent it would be better spent tackling the real problems facing the world right now, as [19] Bjorn Lomborg has so eloquently argued. (Imagine how many vaccination and water treatment programs Gore’s $300 million vanity fund would pay for in Africa.) And if the cooling continues, our descendants could find themselves heading for another ice age — and, ironically, desperately searching for ways to warm the planet.

Too many interested parties have too much invested in climate change alarmism to admit that the game is up just yet, but sooner or later their position is going to become untenable. And when it does, while acknowledging that many people embraced climate change alarmism for genuine reasons, we’ll have to decide what to do with those who knew or suspected their claims had no substance, but pressed on out of a desire to get rich or impose their ideologies on others.

Nuremberg-style trials anyone?

Mike McNally blogs at [20] The Monkey Tennis Centre.

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Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/global-warming-mostly-hot-air/

URLs in this post:
[1] here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport
[2] Mars: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
[3] suggested: http://www.reason.com/news/show/36962.html
[4] survey: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8621
[5] cannibals: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/04/02/turner-iraqi-insurgents-patriots-inaction-warmin
g-cannibalism

[6] other than to debunk it: http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2008/04/bbc-and-climate-change.html
[7] pro-alarmist stance: http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Editorial-bias.htm
[8] raft of data: http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
[9] reported: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1326764/la_nina_slows_global_warming/index.html
[10] broke up: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/19/europe/EU-GEN-France-Climate-Talks.php
[11] backtracking: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22883548-662,00.html
[12] emissions trading: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/04/07/the-100-billion-windfall-why-utilities-love-cap
-and-trade/?mod=WSJBlog

[13] latest plan: http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDk3MmFlZGFkNGVjMDY1YWI5ODJ
[14] causes more harm to the environment: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1713431,00.html
[15] driving up food prices around the world: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/007jlljc.asp?pg=2
[16] $300 million advertising campaign: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/31/algore.uselections08.climate
[17] poll: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/abc-poll-gw-rates-a-big-fat-zero/
[18] altered its report: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002906.html
[19] Bjorn Lomborg: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/16/eabjorn116.xml
[20] The Monkey Tennis Centre: http://monkeytenniscentre.blogspot.com/

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Protecting Not Polar Bears But Warmist Power

Marc Sheppard
In a move climate realists have dreaded for months, the polar bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act yesterday.  Despite increasing numbers in recent decades, Ursus maritimus now distinguishes itself as the first creature ever officially endangered due to global warming.  Bureaucratic actions this preposterous invariably mask ulterior motives, and this little doozy is certainly no exception.

Under what is perhaps the nation’s strictest environmental law, the bear’s critical habitat must now be protected and a strategy formulated to assist its population’s recovery.

 

But unlike species whose dwindling numbers actually can be attributed primarily to the actions of man, such as their grizzly bear cousins (trains and cars), the gray whale or the sea otter (both from over-hunting), the polar bears’ plight is purely model-based theory.  And while you can fence off tracks and roads in national parks, and even regulate harpooning and trapping, how do you protect an animal from a warming planet?

 

Any guesses?

 

Detractors of the action argued that it would force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to regulate the cause of the danger — which greenies have convinced the masses to be CO₂ emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks. As this would clearly be outside the Service’s jurisdiction, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne reassured us that he’d personally make sure it didn’t happen.  Adding:

 

“Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears, but it should not open the door to use the E.S.A. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

 

What nonsense — the slippery secretary is well aware that — thanks to last year’s absurd Supreme Court declaration of CO₂ as an air pollutant — it won’t need to.

 

Kempthorne knows full well that the greenie groups that demanded the ESA listing are mostly the same that are pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency to declare CO₂ a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.  And that they have the lawsuits of 17 states and Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works chair Barbara Boxer behind their ridiculous demands. 

 

Should they prevail, the EPA would, indeed, be in control of airborne carbon.  And beyond inevitably materializing the green dream of cap-and-trade by regulatory decree, it would - in confluence with yesterday’s dreadful decision — empower unelected bureaucrats to levy huge ESA violation penalties against “polluters.”

 

And that’s just for starters.

 

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council said that, while she was glad that the Bush administration was finally acknowledging “the threat posed by global warming,” the polar bear listing [my emphasis] “does not go nearly far enough.” One thing the media, policy makers, and presidential candidates of all flavors never seem to savvy is that attempts to placate the enviro-mental cases never do go nearly far enough.  It’s never more than “a good start.”

 

Now consider this — taken but a miniscule regulatory step further, a family motoring about in an SUV in Texas could be cited not only for polluting under the Clean Air Act, but as their “pollution” has been regulated as a global warming contributor, they could be further fined under the Endangered Species Act for harming the protected polar bear.

 

Did I mention that penalties for such ESA transgressions can be a maximum fine of up to $50,000 or imprisonment for one year, or both — per violation?

 

Such - not solar or wind — represents the true power sought by warmists.

Posted at 09:47 AM | Email | Permalink

Are Global Warmists Pulling a Cool Fast One?

By Marc Sheppard

Mounting evidence of lower temperature trends despite rising atmospheric CO² levels is becoming a real problem for the greenhouse gas crowd.  And reports that the cooling appears to follow a period of dormant solar activity aren’t likely to ease their anxieties.

 

Indeed, without an immediate alarmist course correction, years of “the science is settled” campaigning could prove for naught, as prolonged temperature dips decimate the primary anthropogenic argument.  After all, Lord Gore has shouted the IPCC’s proclamation of a 0.3°C warming over the next decade from virtually every rooftop.  Given new data projecting the contrary, he and his green hordes will need to find a way to not only explain the error, but keep the AGW dream alive.

 

And perhaps they have.

 

On April 21^st, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that an impending phase shift in a natural climate event would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, noting that:

 

“The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns.”

 

Well aware of the impact the news might have on the green-deity IPCC’s warming predictions, the JPL was quick to add that “Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.”  JPL oceanographer and climate scientist Josh Willis explained:

 

“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate. In fact, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

 

Just 10 days later, the results of a model study on another phenomenon, this time affecting the North Atlantic, were published in the journal Nature [PDF]. Dr Noel Keenlyside et al, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, reported that the “conveyor belt” of southern warm water known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation is entering a weak cycle.  As weak MOC cycles — which can last as many as 80 years — are associated with cooler North Atlantic temperatures, particularly around Europe and North America, the team expects global surface temperatures to decrease over the next decade.  Oddly, a similar pattern between the 1940s and 1970s may explain the cooling of global average temperatures during that period, so assuming only the “next decade” seems an arbitrary call.

 

Nonetheless, the German scientists felt compelled to explain their evident heresy against the church of the IPCC:

 

“Our results suggest 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.”

 

In case “temporarily offset” proved too vague to the green brigade, Keenlyside clarified when explaining to Bloomberg News:

 

“If we don’t experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn’t mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us. There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.”

 

And for the benefit of those still concerned, his associate Mojib Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute, spelled it out in no uncertain terms:

 

“Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won’t be as bad as previously thought.”

 

It certainly appeared to be merely a typical cover your green ass move

 

The Very Model of a Modern Solar Minimum

 

According to UK’s Telegraph the report stemmed from “initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades,” and readers were reminded that:

 

“The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.”

 

Of course, solar activity is also essentially ignored by IPCC models, and it too saw an apex in 1998.  Isn’t it interesting how, not unlike insects scampering from light exposed by a stone overturned, greenies struggle desperately to avoid directly confronting the power of the Sun?

 

Last year, Britain’s Hadley Centre, whose decadal models actually do incorporate sea surface temperatures as well as projected changes in the Sun’s output and the effects of previous volcanic eruptions, predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.” Still, they stood solidly behind the IPCC by predicting that “Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 deg C warmer than 2004.”

 

Then, this past January, the Centre predicted 2008 would be the coolest since 2000, this time based upon the “strong La Niña in the tropical Pacific Ocean” exclusively.  Mysteriously, they completely ignored recent news at the time that solar activity had all but come to a stop — a factor supposedly included in their modeling.

 

But last week, rather than disputing the Leibniz Institute oceans-behavior-only model that suggests not only Hadley, but the IPCC itself erred, the Centre’s Richard Wood stated:

 

“We’ve always known that the climate varies naturally from year to year and decade to decade.  We expect man-made global warming to be superimposed on those natural variations; and this kind of research is important to make sure we don’t get distracted from the longer term changes that will happen in the climate (as a result of greenhouse gas emissions).”

 

Seemingly taking a bullet for the green team, Wood ‘fessed up to last year’s bad prediction when he told reporters that “natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period.”

 

Pretty slick — by jumping aboard the new model’s bandwagon, Wood managed to again ignore the Solar factor (Cycle 24 is delayed) while extending the bogus it’s-part-nature-but-mostly-mankind safety-net his group’s models had strung by almost 10 years. 

 

On the other hand, in addition to casting great doubt upon his own group’s models, Wood’s admission bolstered the doubt that Leibniz’s would already cast upon those of the IPCC.  And Wood notwithstanding, as Dr. Roger Pelke Jr. pointed out in his April 30^th Prometheus post after reviewing the Nature piece:

 

“If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun. This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy.”

 

Obviously, capitulating now meant accepting the risk of jeopardizing whatever credibility all previous and future climate models may hold.  Bad move — or chess move?

 

Does Anybody Really Know What Climate Is?

 

Prior to its official release, Keenlyside expressed concerns that his report might be taken the “wrong way.”  The good doctor even attempted to trivialize dissenters by invoking the name of a favorite eco-boogieman when he lamely lamented “I hope it doesn’t become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.”  And just in case his and his colleagues’ tepid reaffirmations of their AGW pledges fell short of the green mark, reinforcements were immediately dispatched.

 

Not surprisingly, the alarmist shills at the BBC wrote that the up and down projections “did not come as a surprise to climate scientists.”  No, according to these insufferables, only the ill-informed public ever believed that “the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.”  

 

The New York Times rolled out Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, CO. Tremberth told them that “the global climate will continue to be influenced in any particular decade by a mix of natural variability and the building greenhouse effect” and that “a cool phase does not mean the overall theory of dangerous human-driven warming is flawed.”

 

And then added what appears to be the latest greenie talking point:

 

“Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way.”

 

Is anyone else noticing a trend developing here, beyond the “we never said that warming patterns would be steady” shuffle?  Each explanation, whether by Willis, Keenlyside and Latif, Wood, or Trenberth implies that some climate forces natural are more formidable than those anthropogenic. This is yet another precarious admission, indeed - one unlikely to be made were the alternative not somehow more damaging to their cause.

 

Now consider this –  it remains an alarmist imperative to disassociate falling global temperatures and speculation of a possible impending “little ice age” with the yellow dwarf star we orbit in general and the late start of Solar Cycle 24 specifically.  For indeed, if we are moving into another solar minimum cycle and global temperatures continue to plummet while atmospheric CO₂ levels continue to rise, attendance at Al Gore’s Scare-Story-Slide-Shows would quickly drop to close friends and family only.  And with boat loads of very bad wealth-redistribution “climate change” legislation to pass in coming the years, a sympathetically alarmed press and populace remain essential during that time.

 

So what better way to buy time than to cloud the obvious solar connection by sacrificing their argument against a less threatening naturally occurring force?  And then attributing that force to occasional periods of cooling by collectively admitting to its mitigating impact upon AGW forces?   Especially when this little gambit allows them to continue reaping the benefits - for years to come - of the lie that an unchecked anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect threatens to literally destroy us all.

 

Just not quite as fast as they originally thought.

 

So then, are the greenies simply playing defense, as they have led many to believe - or is it we who are being played?

 

Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.

More on biofuels

reader response

I have to respond to the article from Mr Meyer regarding his support of biofuels. Mr Meyer neglects to mention a few things about biofuels. I will make myself perfectly clear and say that I am no fan of biofuels, especially ethanol, as I consider alcohols, except for maybe nitromethanol (which is only really useful in drag racing) to be perfectly horrid motor fuels. The reasons follow:

 

1. There is less energy in a gallon of ethanol than in a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol has 76,000 btu’s per gallon and gasoline has 144,000 btu’s per gallon. This means you get much less fuel mileage using alcohol.

 

2. Transportation. While gasoline can be transported using pipelines, ethanol cannot and must be trucked using special tankers. This is much more inefficient than using our network of pipelines.

 

3. Alcohol based fuels are a net energy negative. It takes more energy to distill alcohol than the energy it provides. So in producing it, you save nothing and in fact cost the world market energy.

 

4. Lastly, despite Mr Meyer’s protestations aside, diverting what would normally grown as feed corn and human food WILL have an effect on overall prices. If world wide demand is rising and there is less of a product, the price rises. he is correct in saying it is not the ONLY factor, but it is still a factor.

 

5. Alcohol based fuels are hygroscopic. They will absorb water and therefore have a very short shelf life vs gasoline, While this not so much a problem with a daily driver, you won’t be too happy storing your lawnmower or classic car with a tank full of alcohol. In fact, race engine that are designed to burn alcohols are stored “pickled” (run for a short time with gasoline to coat the parts) in order to avoid corrosion and water.

 

6. Volatility. Ethanol is more volatile than gasoline, which means it will evaporate at a much lower temperature than gasoline. This means more of it will get sent into the atmosphere than will gasoline under the same conditions. This means that ethanol can pollute MORE than will gasoline.

 

7. Here is another point about alcohol based fuels noone has considered. Being grown, Our fuel “independence” would then be subject to the whims of mother nature. Floods, drought, disease would all play a factor in the price and supply of our newest fuel source.

 

Despite the protestations of the environmental whackos, and those with a financial stake in the industry, using alcohol based fuels is a bad deal for all of us.

 

Jim Caron

 

Posted at 06:15 AM | Email | Permalink

 

Commendation, Not Condemnation

Commendation, Not Condemnation

By Paul M. Weyrich
FrontPageMagazine.com | 5/9/2008

Last week President George W. Bush held a press conference on the current state of the economy and the high cost of energy.  In it he made several important points.  First, he noted that one reason gas prices are increasing is that global supply has not kept pace with the growing demand worldwide.  Members of Congress, he noted, “have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home. They repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR. The Department of Energy estimates that ANWR could allow America to produce about a million additional barrels of oil every day, which translates to about 27 millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. That would be about a 20% increase of oil…and it would likely mean lower gas prices.” 

Senator Charles E. Schumer’s (D-NY) response: “Unless the [Bush] Administration gets [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] OPEC to increase oil supply, American consumers are going to be in for a scorching summer of $4 gasoline with no relief in sight.”  Apparently Senator Schumer expects President Bush to bully other countries into relieving our economic problems.  This is wise foreign policy advice if ever there was some.  And if foreign governments do not want to help us we should not expect Congress to do anything about it.  After all, why alleviate needless financial hardship when some Senators can use it as a political weapon?

Another factor contributing to the high cost of energy is that America’s refining capacity has been stagnant for 30 years, the last time a new refinery was built.  Like ANWR exploration, Congress repeatedly has blocked efforts to build more refineries and expand capacity.  It has done the same with the use of nuclear energy.  Congress also is “considering bills to raise taxes on domestic energy production, impose new and costly mandates on producers, and demand dramatic emissions cuts that would shut down coal plants, and increase reliance on expensive natural gas,” as President Bush stated.

Finally, there is no end in sight for Federal subsidies to multi-millionaire farmers.  These subsidies, as this column has noted before, cost American taxpayers millions of dollars a year, are wasteful, and generally hinder the development of more productive farmland and the planting of market-driven crops.  Yet Congress shows no inclination to cut subsidies from the current Farm Bill.  By paying farms to plant specific crops regardless of the demand for those crops or allowing their fields to lie fallow, these subsidies unintentionally raise the price of other commodities that could be planted instead.  President Bush was correct to note that Congressional support for farm subsidies will do little other than contribute to the rising prices of food.

President Bush should be commended for giving this speech.  He was correct to remind Americans that if we want to lower the cost of energy we must be willing to use our own resources, whether they are natural or those we can build, rather than rely upon others to provide for our needs.  After all, isn’t self-reliance part of the American spirit.  We should not rely on foreign governments, many of which are volatile, to supply our energy needs, nor should our large farmers rely on Federal Government handouts to prop up their financially lucrative businesses.

Throughout this economic downturn it has seemed as if Congress, the Federal Reserve and other government agencies have reacted to the crisis rather than thought of productive ways in which they could lead on the issue.  It is wise for the President to begin to exert some leadership on this issue.  Hopefully he will maintain a spotlight on this issue and pressure Congress to initiate some constructive change, not implement more regulation and taxes.

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Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

The Biofuel Dilemma

The Biofuel Dilemma

By Ben Lieberman
The Heritage Foundation | 5/8/2008

There are risks to global warming policy as well as risks to global warming, and although the former could be costlier than the latter, they are often neglected in climate change debate. While it may seem far-fetched to some that responding to the “climate crisis” could do more harm than good, it is in fact already happening. Consider the biofuels mandate, which is contributing to the very global warming problems it was designed to prevent.

Global Warming and Hunger

Among the litany of scary predictions associated with global warming is the adverse impact on future food supplies. For example, the 2007 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states that by 2020, “agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.”[1] A frequently cited global warming study conducted for the Pentagon went one step further, outlining potential hunger-related political unrest and national security concerns and stating that “aggressive wars are likely to be fought over food, water, and energy.”[2] Environmental activists warn of crop failures adding to the waves of “climate refugees” fleeing areas that can no longer sustain them.

As with all global warming-related gloom-and-doom predictions, there are reasons for doubt. For example, the temperature increases during the 1980s and 1990s, on which current global warming concerns are largely based, were accompanied by increases in food production.[3]

Thus, the predicted link between warming and reduced food supplies is not based on past experience. And, even assuming that the planet warms as much as these scenarios predict, it may result in the agricultural sector finding methods to adapt to changing conditions in order that yields are not significantly reduced. Further, the link between global warming and increased drought, the main cause of the hypothesized decline in food supplies, is challenged by several researchers.[4]

Nevertheless, as global warming activists continue to predict alarming food shortages occurring at some point in the future, many look around and see a tightening food supply today. Only it was not caused by global warming: It was caused in part by global warming policy, specifically the move toward using food as fuel.

Biofuels Mandates and Hunger

America’s first mandatory policy to reduce global warming emissions is its biofuels mandate. Along with the national security and other perceived benefits, these agriculturally-based alternative fuels were purported to have lower global warming emissions than the petroleum-derived gasoline or diesel fuel they displace. At the beginning of the decade, Al Gore said that “by tripling U.S. use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010, we can keep millions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the air….”[5]

Thanks to the 2007 energy bill signed into law by President Bush last December, it is occurring even faster than Gore imagined. The U.S. is now required to mix 9 billion gallons of such fuels into the gasoline supply in 2008, up from less than 3 billion gallons in 2000. The mandate is mostly met by corn-based ethanol. Europe has also set similar targets for biofuels, mostly bio-diesel made from palm oil, rapeseed, or soybeans.

Not surprisingly, diverting crops from food to fuel use has raised food prices. At a little over $2 per bushel when the mandate was first effective, the price of corn has recently surged well above $5, due in large part to nearly a quarter of the crop’s now being needed for fuel use. A host of corn-related foods, such as corn-fed meat and dairy, have seen sharp price increases. Wheat and soybeans are also up, partly as a result of fewer acres now being planted in favor of corn. European biodiesel mandates have had a similar impact.

A Purdue University study places the annual food cost increases for 2007 at $22 billion and estimates that “$15 billion of this increase is related to the recent surge in demand to use crops as fuel.”[6] That $15 billion calculates to an additional $130 per household in 2007, and food prices are considerably higher thus far in 2008.

Other factors–high energy costs, below-average yields in some regions, growing world population, a weak dollar–have also impinged on food supplies and prices. However, most experts see the biofuels mandates as a substantial contributor, and one that exacerbates any other pressures on food costs.

With 800 million people at risk for hunger and malnutrition, the consequences are far more severe in developing nations than they are in developed nations. “When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s finance minister.[7] World Bank President Robert Zoellick has acknowledged that “biofuels is no doubt a significant contributor” to high food costs, adding that “it is clearly the case that programs in Europe and the United States that have increased biofuel production have contributed to the added demand for food.”[8]

Even some of the political unrest described in the Pentagon study is starting to emerge. Rising prices have led to food-related rioting in several developing nations.[9] While it is not possible to demonstrate conclusively that, this rioting would not have occurred if not for the biofuels mandates, it is far from speculative to assume that the increased pressures of the mandates on food prices were contributors. In any event, the rioters are clearly not responding to global warming, as there has been no additional warming in 2007 and thus far in 2008.

Moreover, all of this is occurring from biofuels usage that is only a fraction of what will be required in the years ahead. America is only one-quarter of the way toward the 36 billion gallon requirement by 2022 included in last December’s big energy bill. The European Union also has plans to increase its biodiesel use, though it is now reconsidering this policy.

To add insult to injury, the global warming benefits of biofuels have been called into question. Two recent studies published in the journal Science conclude that, rather than reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels actually increase them.[10] One study finds that clearing lands for energy crops creates a so-called carbon debt by “releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels,”[11] while the other projects “GHG emissions from corn ethanol nearly double those from gasoline for each km driven.”[12]

Last year, a study conducted for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, presciently entitled “Biofuels: Is The Cure Worse Than the Disease?” stated that “the rush to energy crops threatens to cause food shortages and damage to biodiversity with limited benefits.”[13] The authors were right. Oxfam, an international aid organization that has been very vocal about the threat of global warming, now concedes that “large-scale growth in biofuels demand has pushed up food prices and so far there is little evidence that it is reducing overall carbon emissions.”[14]

Conclusion

The very food-related problems that we see today are much like the hypothesized future ones that were supposed to be caused by global warming. That global warming policy is more likely a contributor than global warming itself is a strong enough reason to rethink this policy.

For this reason, Congress should repeal its current biofuels mandate. In addition, as the Senate soon takes up debate on S. 2191, the major global warming bill, it should heed the biofuels lesson and avoid any measures that may also prove to be more trouble than they are worth.

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[1] U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, November 2007, p. 11, at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf.

[2] Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, October 2003, p. 15, at http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?
aid=26231&url=/UploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?id=28566.

[3] Ronald Bailey, The True State of the Planet (Washington, D.C.: The Free Press, 1995), pp. 49-82.

[4] See M. Hoerling, J. Hurrell, J. Eischeid, and A. Phillips, “Detection and Attribution of Twentieth-Century Northern and Southern African Rainfall Change,” Journal of Climate, Vol.19 (2006), pp. 3989-4008.

[5] Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Plume, 2000), pp. xviii.

[6] Corinne Alexander and Chris Hurt, Purdue University, “Biofuels and Their Impact on Food Prices,” September 2007, at http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-346-W.pdf.

[7] Quoted in Bob Davis and Douglas Belkin, “Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders,” The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2008, at http://online.wsj.com/
article/SB120813134819111573.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

[8] NPR, “Biofuels Boosting Food Prices,” April 11, 2008, at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89545855.

[9] Davis and Belkin, “Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders.”

[10] Joseph Fargione et al., “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” Science, Vol. 319 (February 29, 2008), pp. 1235-1238; Timothy Searchinger et al., “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change,” Science, Vol. 319 (February 29, 2008), pp. 1238-1240.

[11] Fargione et al., “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” p. 1235.

[12] Searchinger et al., “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change,” p. 1239.

[13] Richard Doornbosch and Ronald Steenblik, “Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?” Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, September 2007, p. 4, at http://media.ft.com/cms/fb8b5078-5fdb-11dc-b0fe-0000779fd2ac.pdf.

[14] Press release, “Oxfam and Care call for fundamental changes in tackling global hunger and food price hikes,” April 18, 2008, at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/2008/04
/oxfam_and_care_call_for_fundam.html.

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Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Gore’s Myanmar Words as Inopportune as they were Repulsive

Marc Sheppard

Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate history again - this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the alarmist-embarrassing  downward trend since 1998 — Al Gore shamelessly portrayed Saturday’s Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence’ of global warming. 

 

A mere 16 days after NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation’s cool phase shift would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR that the “trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures.”  This just 6 days after a German study also predicted cooler ocean temperatures due to the Meridional Overturning Circulation entering a weak cycle, and in spite of there being absolutely no empirical evidence of a global warming / storm strength link. 

 

Gore’s monotonous and baseless account of AGW forced violent cyclones and hurricanes came just two days after McIntyre reported that 4 of the past 5 months were “‘all-time’ records for Southern Hemisphere sea ice” levels.

 

In fact, it was the very day after Anthony Watts reported another false start to the distinctly overdue Solar Cycle 24, a likely contributory factor to falling global temperatures, that the Nobel Peace Prize winner exploited the deaths of over 22,000 (reported and still rising) human beings to egoistically advance his threatened AGW political agenda while callously protecting his personal financial interest.

 

And with 41,000 reported missing since Cyclone Nargis devastated the former Burma, the death figures are sure to rise to unthinkable numbers.  Meanwhile, the nation’s corrupt military rulers are making aid delivery to ease survivor misery nearly impossible.

 

And while these poor souls will undoubtedly see years of unimaginable suffering and the arduous rebuilding of over a million destroyed homes, this man — who professes his desire to save the planet - saw another opportunity.  That it arrived at the end of a one month period in which another wheel fell off the greenhouse gas disinformation bus almost daily only adds to the morass.

This was an astonishingly nauseating display — even for the likes of Gore.  

Posted at 12:00 AM | Email | Permalink

Undoing America’s Ethanol Mistake

By SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON | Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 4:20 PM PT The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” When Congress passed legislation to greatly expand America’s commitment to biofuels, it intended to create energy independence and protect the environment. But the results have been quite different. America remains equally dependent on foreign sources of energy, and new evidence suggests that ethanol is causing great harm to the environment. In recent weeks, the correlation between government biofuel mandates and rapidly rising food prices has become undeniable. At a time when the U.S. economy is facing recession, Congress needs to reform its “food-to-fuel” policies and look at alternatives to strengthen energy security. On Dec. 19, 2007, President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. This legislation had several positive features, including higher fuel standards for cars and greater investment in renewable energies such as solar power. However, the bill required a huge spike in the biofuel production requirement, from 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 to 36 billion in 2022. This was a well-intentioned measure, but it was also impractical. Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food. We are already seeing the ill effects of this measure. Last year, 25% of America’s corn crop was diverted to produce ethanol. In 2008, that number will grow to 30%-35%, and it will soar even higher in the years to come. Furthermore, the trend of farmers supplanting other grains with corn is decreasing the supply of numerous agricultural products. When the supply of those products goes down, the price inevitably goes up. Subsequently, the cost of feeding farm and ranch animals increases and the cost is passed to consumers of beef, poultry and pork products. Since February 2006, the price of corn, wheat and soybeans has increased by more than 240%. Rising food prices are hitting the pockets of lower-income Americans and people who live on fixed incomes. While the blame for higher costs shouldn’t rest exclusively with biofuels — drought and rising oil costs are contributing factors — the expansion of biofuels has been a major source of the problem. The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that biofuel production accounts for between one-quarter and one-third of the recent spike in global commodity prices. For the first time in 30 years, food riots are breaking out in many parts of the globe, including major countries such as Mexico, Pakistan and Indonesia. The fact that America’s energy policies are creating global instability should concern the leaders of both political parties. Restraining the dangerous effects of artificially inflated demand for ethanol should be an issue that unites both conservatives and progressives. As a recent Time cover story pointed out, biofuel mandates increase greenhouse gasses and create incentives for global deforestation. In the Amazon basin, huge swaths of forest are being cleared to meet the growing hunger for biofuels. In addition, relief organizations are facing gaping shortfalls as the cost of food outpaces their ability to provide aid for the 800 million people who lack food security. The recent food crisis does not mean we should entirely abandon biofuels. The best way to lower energy prices, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, is to accelerate production of all forms of domestic energy. Expanding biofuels while refusing to take other measures, such as lifting the ban on oil and natural gas production in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf, is counterproductive. We should be tapping into a broad portfolio of energy options, including clean coal, nuclear power and wave energy. The key is increasing energy supply. By taking these measures, we can enable biofuels to be part of the energy solution, instead of contributing to the energy problem. Congress must take action. I am introducing legislation that will freeze the biofuel mandate at current levels, instead of steadily increasing it through 2022. This is a common-sense measure that will reduce pressure on global food prices and restore balance to America’s energy policy. As the Senate debates this issue, we must remain focused on the facts. At one point, expanding biofuels made sense for America’s energy security. But the recent surge in food prices has forced us to adapt. The global demand for energy and food is expected to rise about 50% in the next 20 years, and the U.S. is well-positioned to be a leader in both areas. That will require a careful, finely tuned approach to America’s farm products. By freezing the biofuel mandate at current levels, we will go a long way to achieving that goal. Hutchison is a member of the Senate Republican leadership and the senior senator from Texas.

Senators call for EPA to reconsider ethanol output mandate

By MATTHEW PERRONE – 33 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans on Monday asked environmental regulators to use their power to halt the country’s ethanol output expansion plans amid rising food prices.

Twenty-four Republican senators, including presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona, sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency suggesting it waive, or restructure, rules that require a five-fold increase in ethanol production over the next 15 years.

Congress passed a law last year mandating a ramp-up to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015 and 36 billion by 2022. But McCain and other Republicans said those rules should be waived to put more corn back into the food supply for livestock, and to encourage farmers to plant other crops.

“This subsidized (ethanol) program — paid for by taxpayer dollars — has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world,” said McCain, in a statement.

Despite tough rhetoric from lawmakers, analysts say Congress is unlikely to roll back such a popular program during an election year.

Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Kevin Book argued in a recent note to clients that Congress will not “turn on the corn belt” because of the significant number of votes held by ethanol-producing states. Ethanol subsidies could face greater risks, however, in 2009 and going forward, according to Book.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said Monday “ethanol is unfairly taking the brunt of the criticism” for escalating food prices. Grassley’s home state is expected to produce a quarter of all U.S. ethanol this year.

Farmers have responded to federal ethanol incentives by planting the largest crop of corn in 60 years, leaving fewer acres for soybeans, oats and other agricultural staples.

Tighter crop supplies means higher production costs for food processors of all types. In one recent example Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., the nation’s largest chicken producer, said costs rose $200 million in the quarter on higher corn and soybean feed.

And Americans are paying those higher costs at the grocery store, where egg prices have jumped 40 percent in the last year and flour prices have risen 50 percent since January, raising the price of bread and other baked goods.

The EPA has the power to waive or restructure the requirements if they cause unintended harm to consumers or the environment.

“We don’t think it’s the right move to make,” said Liz Friedlander, a spokeswoman for the National Farmers Union.

The group has defended corn-based production of the alternative fuel, saying its impact on the rising food prices has been relatively small. Instead, it says food price inflation is mainly due to higher fuel prices, poor weather conditions and dwindling stockpiles of wheat and other crops.

The ethanol industry said Monday altering the biofuels mandate “would drive the price of oil and gasoline through the roof,” according to Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association.

Ethanol is “one of the only solutions for holding down the price of oil in the long-term,” according to Jeff Broin, president and chief executive of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Poet, the nation’s largest ethanol producer.

While nearly all experts agree increased biofuel production by companies such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Pacific Ethanol Inc. has contributed to the run-up in food prices, there is little consensus on the scope of its role.

The ethanol industry says ethanol and other biofuels account for just 4 percent of the price surge, while the Department of Agriculture says the figure is closer to 20 percent.

Last week a group of international scientists recommended halting use of crops for biofuel, saying it would cut corn prices 20 percent.

Shares of VeraSun Energy Corp. fell 41 cents, or 5.9 percent, Monday to $6.50 in morning trading. Shares of Archer Daniels Midland Co. rose 34 cents to $44.32. Pacific Ethanol shares rose 7 cents, or 2 percent, to $3.55.

AP Business Writer Dan Caterinicchia contributed to this report.