Heavy snow is blanketing parts of the north island of New Zealand which have not seen falls for years.
t’s utterly unbelievable that the Rudd Government should be contemplating making bankrupt the stations that provide more than 90 per cent of Victoria’s power...
Noble: Building a risky and old-fashioned coal plant like Big Stone II in today's economic and policy climate is folly. This proposed plant will produce more global-warming pollutants than all the cars in South Dakota. If the carbon market that Sens. [John] McCain and [Barack] Obama both support opens at $20 per ton, Big Stone's commercial customers have an unexpected $100 million annual liability. These carbon liabilities will hugely escalate as economy-wide emissions are ratcheted down, and the truth is that there is no plan to offset these costs.
Guerrero: It is easy to be a critic. All credible reports show our region nose-diving into a regional power pool where electric demand far outstrips supply. These are the industry's gusset-plate inspection reports. The region hasn't built baseload generation -- i.e., the stuff that runs 24/7 and powers our economy -- in more than 20 years.
And while $140-a-barrel oil gets the front page, America uses just 15 percent more of it today than in the energy crisis from the early 1970s. Electricity consumption, on the other hand, is up 115 percent. Just wait until we plug in all of our cars, a goal we all support. The reality is that the region's options for baseload generation are limited. Wind, while a superb renewable resource, is intermittent. New nuclear power is illegal in Minnesota. There is no more hydro, and biomass for power production will remain a niche. That leaves natural gas. If the Big Stone owners are forced to build a natural gas plant instead of coal, at today's natural gas prices, the annual penalty to consumers would be more than $300 million.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, the mid to upper levels of the troposphere should be warming faster then the surface. This is because this is where the CO2 is supposed to be trapped. Co2 absorbs more heat then it reflects. Since it retains its heat, the area in which it is “trapped” has to be warming faster then an area where it is not “trapped.”
This has not happened. According to the data available from NOAA (The National Weather Service) the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere have not seen a dramatic warming.
Back in the hippy days I personally took no stand on the Vietnam War because I knew I didn't have any of the relevant facts. No one ever questioned me on the subject because it was assumed that everyone, no exceptions, was opposed to the Vietnam War.
Last night I was at a 4th of July Party where everyone made their living from Green tech and other business premised on Global Warming. Everyone assumed that everyone else, no exceptions, took the global warming hysteria very seriously.
"People say to me: How can we afford to transform our whole economy in order to prevent climate change when climate change could turn out to be a hoax?
"To which I say: If climate change is a hoax it is the most wonderful hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of America because transforming our economy to clean power and energy efficiency to mitigate global warming is the equivalent in training for the Olympic triathlon. If you make it to the Olympics you have a much better chance of winning because you have developed every muscle. If you don't make it to the Olympics you're still healthy or stronger, fitter and more likely to live longer and win any other race in life. And like the triathlon you don't just improve one muscle or one skill but many which become mutually reinforcing and improve the health of the whole system."
Reality check time. For several years the states have set their own renewable energy targets and spent hundreds of millions to boost wind and solar energy use. Despite all this, renewable energy makes up just 7.6 per cent of Australia’s power generation.
Sound a good basis to move to 20 per cent? Actually, hydro power alone produces 6.4 per cent - and do you think it’s remotely likely that Rudd will build more dams? No, moving to 20 per cent renewable energy will mean vastly increasing power from solar, wind, bio-mass and geo-thermal - a sector so tiny, expensive and unpromising that it produces just 1.2 per cent of our power. What chance do you think that it can be cranked up to produce 10 times that much in just 12 years?
Rudd’s promise is so utterly unlikely to be made good that it is little better than a lie. Which you must pay for.
Age cartoonist John Spooner on July 5:In 2008 a computer modelled Garnaut report
recommends a further unilateral sacrifice of the economy despite there
being no increase in average global warming since 1998.
Spooner is the first Age staff member - and only - to
mention this highly pertinent, if inconvenient, truth. Remarkably, not
one of the more than a dozen Age writers who collectively
filed more than 10,000 words on the Garnaut report and global warming
yesterday saw fit to do the same.
The research raises the question of whether future attempts to control aircraft emissions should consider extra penalties for flights in tropical countries where air travel is booming. India, for instance, has the fastest growing airline fleet in the world.
It wasn’t George W Bush who banned drilling offshore, it was the Democrats.
It wasn’t George W Bush who banned drilling in ANWR, it was the Democrats.
It wasn’t George W Bush who cancelled the breeder reactor program which would have dealt with most of the high energy radioactive nuclear waste, it was the Democrats (specifically President Carter).
It wasn’t George W Bush who blocked the construction of nuclear power plants, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists.
It wasn’t George W Bush who blocked the construction of gasoline refineries, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists.
It wasn’t George W Bush who restricted oil and gas leases in many areas of the country, Congress controls the number of leases via legislation, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists who determined where and how much was to be made available.
It wasn’t George W Bush who restricted using the oil shale reserves, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists.
It wasn’t George W Bush who restricted the use coal to oil conversion, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists.
It wasn’t George W Bush who cancelled coal powered electric power plants recently, it was the Democrats and their allies, the environmental extremists.
The track record is clear, it was the DEMOCRATS and their environmental extremist allies all the way restricting the supply of oil creating an artificial shortage.
Environmental advocates have endorsed carbon neutrality; they purchase carbon offsets to neutralize their impact on fossil fuel consumption and therefore global warming. But why the half-step? Why not try for a negative carbon footprint? Don't use any hydrocarbons and buy the offsets.
...
Even the godfather of global warming is financially involved in a cable TV network. A network is a global warming contributor any way you look at it. If the network is successful, millions of people will have their TVs on for hours watching its shows, which means some gas-belching power plant somewhere will have railroad cars full of coal shoveled into it like an engineer shoveling coal into a steaming locomotive. He, of all people, didn't even choose a carbon neutral occupation, yet we're supposed to give up drive-thru windows to reduce fuel consumption? Please.
There are no contradictions. There are only two possible reasons for this behavior: either they don't really believe in global warming and this is all window dressing, or they think that they are above having to sacrifice to stop it, but we should be forced to. Either way, they are slap-in-the-face hypocrites.
London, July 5 (Xinhua) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Saturday called on the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised countries to boost their efforts to fight climate change issues for the sake of their economies.
“The world is suffering a triple challenge: of higher fuel prices, higher food prices and a credit crunch,” said Brown in an interview with The Guardian.
“My message to the G-8 will be that instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts we have got to accelerate them.”
“This agenda is not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty, but the key to our economic future as well,” he said.
Recognizing the potential menace of the current situation and how liberals are exploiting it, Klaus has boldly challenged Gore to an open debate on the entire topic of “climate change.” Knowing that the tenets of his “green religion” cannot withstand intense scrutiny, it is a challenge that Gore cannot afford to accept.
As the title of Klaus’s book underscores, the question is not one of dangers to the climate, but of threats to the freedoms and well-being of average citizens. And though the theories of “global warming” are merely open-ended speculation, with time tables continually rolled back since the looming atmospheric upheavals never seem to keep pace with those dire forecasts, the encroachment on basic freedom and liberty is indeed progressing on schedule.
With unassailable insight, Klaus properly characterizes the moral arrogance of the global warming advocacy, again likening it to the ravages of communism with which he was so painfully familiar. At a national press club gathering last week, he compared the two sinister ideologies, sternly warning that “Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the Marxists or the proletariat. This time, in the name of the planet.”
To the degree that the major media and liberal political machine take notice of President Klaus and his effort, it will undoubtedly be only to demean and undermine him. Yet as someone who understands the consequences of allowing a monster of this nature to grow unchecked he continues his fight, grimly confident in the knowledge of what awaits western civilization if the “global warming” apostles ever gain the power which they crave.
CALGARY — Federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion rode into the heart of cowboy country Friday to lasso support for his green plan in a province that snorts at any whiff of the old national energy program.
The policy brought in by the Trudeau Liberals in the early 1980s is still despised by many in Alberta who felt it siphoned oil revenue from the province and sent it to Central Canada. It's a spectre that has been raised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Mr. Dion travels the country selling a green plan that includes a carbon tax.
“The carbon tax in Alberta is right up there with the NEP. On the mantelpiece you put them side by side,” warned Peter McCormick, a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge.
“It's going to be a hard sell in Alberta because Alberta feels it's being made the target again.”
Mr. Dion's arrival coincided with the start of the Calgary Stampede — the annual 10-day celebration of cowboy culture in the heart of Canada's oil country. His visit raised some eyebrows even before he arrived. One political cartoon in a newspaper showed him on a spit roasting over a fire. “If Westerners are so upset, why have I been invited to so many of their barbecues?” read the caption.
Nearby, on the corner by Seoul Finance Center, another group was protesting against global warming and advocating green living and vegetarianism, but again nobody was even listening.
...
I left after a few minutes and spoke with the anti-global warming people once again. They had a large-screen TV showing how cows produce methane gas which in turn increases global warming.
TAXPAYERS should ask Professor Ross Garnaut for their money back: his report is little more than a fearmongering document designed to bolster the age-old socialist agenda of wealth redistribution.
It fails from the basis of science and it fails from the basis of economics but it will, however, warm the hearts of the anti-capitalist doom merchants of Europe and inner-urban branches of the Labor Party with its prognostications.
Nostradamus would be proud.
Like all who have signed on to the view that humans are responsible for global warming, Professor Garnaut cites the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) projections on the rate of climate change as coming from a scientifically based consensus.
This is complete rubbish.
The only consensus was between bureaucrats who wanted to agree to a number, the energy-rich Saudis wanted a low number, the energy-deficient Europeans wanted a low number, and they struck a deal which is the basis of Professor Garnaut’s consensus.
To wit:
“No
firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and
warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.”That reads ambiguously, possibly stating that, yes, man is warming the planet but we can’t pin (other) climate changes on him.
But reading further, which the media rarely does, makes clear that the
climate changes that cannot be attributed to AGW include surface
temperature, rainfall, extreme weather events, rise in sea level,
impacts on Himalayan glaciers.
Good for you, India.
So deduct 20 per cent for government handouts to researchers, snake-oil salesmen and Toyotas. Deduct also the costs of administering and enforcing the scheme. Deduct the cost of developing and switching to alternative technologies - like buying a $20,000 solar hot water system, a $35,000 hybrid car or a $1 billion carbon capture facility. Deduct the cost of working out compensation and sending out the money. Deduct legal expenses for all the inevitable court challenges. And the remaining pennies are yours. Don’t spend them all at once.
Oops. But I forgot one very big cost indeed...
...On last night’s show, Horner characterized alternative energy (which the other guest, Michael Shellenberger, advocated) as “miracle fuels and Jetsons mobiles and pixie dust.”
Alan Colmes said to Horner, “The Center for Disease Control agrees with Harry Reid.” He quoted from their website: “Transportation pollutants are one of the largest contributors to unhealthy air quality. Many of these common air pollutants are respiratory irritants that can aggravate asthma. In addition, recent research findings are beginning to point to a potential link between some air pollutants and the initial onset of certain respiratory conditions.”
Colmes asked, “Is there any question that Harry Reid was accurate when he said that?”
“Let’s just deal with what he said sensibly here,” Horner said. “We know, OK, that pollution has continued to drop steadily for four decades. Asthma has continued to rise. We know that air pollution is not causing the asthma incidences... Fossil fuels don’t make us sick. Fossil fuels make us wealthy. And wealthier is healthier. Wealthier is cleaner.”
Colmes was incredulous. “Coal is good for the environment?”
“In the extent that it creates wealth, yes,” Horner answered. He continued, “The wealthier countries do not despoil the environment. It is the poor countries. You can look that up. What would Nevada be without 90% of its electricity which is by fossil fuels?”
“Are you telling me, Chris, that coal is good for the air and good for the environment? Oil is good for the environment?” Colmes asked.
Yes, he was. “Actually, we are burning things cleaner than ever before. Our air pollutants continue to drop four decades in a row. Bill Clinton’s EPA head trumpeted this when she left office. Did everything suddenly reverse? No, not at all. Wealthier is healthier. Wealthier is cleaner,” Horner said.
ENERGIZING INDIANAPOLIS RACE WITH GREEN POWER
Another annual U.S. sports spectacular is the Indianapolis 500-mile (805 kilometer) auto race, where the 33 cars that qualify for the event now are powered completely by ethanol.
Terry Angstadt, president of commercial activities for the IndyCar series, said the race is in its second full season of using 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol, made from corn grown in the American Midwest. Ethanol advocates say the fuel-grade ethanol (used as a substitute for gasoline) is completely renewable and an environmentally friendly source of energy. The Indianapolis 500 is the premier event of the IndyCar racing circuit, which consists of 17 auto races held from March through September in various sites around the United States.
Angstadt told America.gov that ethanol, with a higher octane rating than the traditional gasoline used previously at the Indianapolis 500, results in better fuel mileage for the high-powered race cars that exceed speeds of 320 kilometers per hour.
Working with the Nebraska-based Ethanol Promotion and Information Counsel, IndyCar seeks to spread the word to consumers that a 650-horsepower racing vehicle can be powered on the Indianapolis speedway “efficiently and effectively” by ethanol while also providing environmental benefits, said Angstadt.
“If racing cars can be powered by ethanol,” he said, “your [200-horsepower] passenger car certainly” can be powered the same way.
Two years of Forestry at NAIT taught me a lot of things. One is the fire history of Western Canada. The reason fires are getting more common is because Lodgepole/Jack Pine forests (what most of the Boreal Forest is made up of) only last 80-120 years. Then they either fall down and die from bugs (like the Mountain Pine Beetle), get succeeded by Spruce trees, or they burn. If I recall the numbers correctly, in the 20 years between 1880 and 1900 something like 60% of the forest in Western Canada burned. Was that global warming?
No. It was a natural cycle of a healthy forest.
Only one-third of agents and tour operators feel travel has a role to play in limiting global warming, according to a survey by the Institute of Travel and Tourism. A majority oppose government regulation and seven out of 10 admit to not understanding the implications.
In an article published in the journal Science, a group of former senior federal officials call for the establishment of an independent Earth Systems Science Agency (ESSA) to meet the unprecedented environmental and economic challenges facing the nation. They propose forming the new agency by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
People on the left claim global warming is real, a threat to the continued existence of mankind, and the debate as to its cause is over! Although none of this is true, it nevertheless is what four of my grandchildren were taught in high school. Most politicians on the left have little respect for truth and no regard for clarity, and apparently many high school teachers reflect their views. My oldest granddaughter just graduated from MITwhere she was spared the political rhetoric of the left on global warming. However Caltech’s Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry, in an article titled “Powering the Planet"states “The carbon dioxide we produce over the next 40 years, and its associated effects will last for a timescale comparable to modern human history. This is why, within the next 20 years we either solve this problem or the world will never be the same.” This is nonsense. It ignores the more than 200 billion tons of carbon that is sequestered yearly through photosynthesis from carbon dioxide In the atmosphere. Since this has been known for 40 years, I can only assume he is politically motivated to make such a statement. Hopefully man made global warming will come to be recognized for the hoax It truly is.
JOHN HOLDREN: I think that most people, even most scientists, continue to underestimate how far down the path to climate catastrophe we’ve already traveled. We are committed, the United States and 190 other countries are committed, under the Framework Convention on Climate Change to avoid dangerous human interference in the climate system. And the fact is, it’s already too late to do that. We’re already experiencing dangerous interference. Floods, major floods, are up all over the world. Wildfires are up in almost every region of the world where wildfires have been a problem. Wildfires erupt fourfold in the last thirty years in the western United States.
AMY GOODMAN: What causes wildfires?
JOHN HOLDREN: Wildfires are a result of temperature conditions, of soil moisture conditions, and of course something has to start it. It may be lightning. It may be a stray match or a cigarette. But the point is, when it is drier and hotter, you get more wildfires, and that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing more heat waves. We’re seeing more droughts. We’re seeing impacts on food production in China and India as a result of changes in the monsoons.
The World Health Organization estimated that climate change was already causing more than 150,000 deaths per year in 2000. The World Health Organization is engaged in an update of that work. We’ll soon have a new estimate, a more recent estimate, and it will be larger, in terms of how many people are already being killed by climate change, by floods, by heat waves, by droughts, by expanded range of malaria, and much more.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Susman is referring to this global warming denying movement. In fact, it’s one of the core theories in the lawsuit, conspiracy to defraud the American people, to mislead the American people and people around the world. How does it affect the scientific community? What do you see? I mean, you call it “global climate disruption.” What is this denial movement?
JOHN HOLDREN: Well, the denial movement has flourished, in part, because of the preoccupation of the media with balance and with controversy. And so, if you have 3,000 scientists working for years and producing a report that says our considered opinion is the climate is changing by this much, it’s changing this fast, it’s having these effects, and you have two or three so-called denialists or a few small think tanks, some of which were certainly funded by Exxon, saying the opposite, they get equal time. The deniers get equal time in the newspapers, on the television.
Another problem is that a denier can tell a lie in a single sentence that takes a scientist three paragraphs to rebut, but the scientist never gets the three paragraphs in the sound bite culture that our media represent. And so, the denialists, even though they are small in number, they have no credible arguments, very few of them have any scientific credentials, get attention out of all proportion to their credentials, the merit of their arguments, and that delays the generation of public understanding and political will to do the things we need to do to address this challenge. There are a lot of things we can do, but we have been delaying doing them, in part because the so-called skeptics, or more accurately deniers or denialists, have basically obscured reality for much of the public and indeed for many of our policymakers.
...
STEPHEN SUSMAN: Let me just add that if China and India won’t follow our leadership in exercising self-restraint, our country is not powerless to deal with them. We’re talking—Congress is talking now about passing laws that make it unlawful for members of OPEC to conspire to fix the price of oil and gas, claiming this conspiracy is not occurring in the United States, it’s occurring offshore, but Congress is going to pass a law that probably gives American courts jurisdiction over activity abroad that hurts Americans here.
Why is global warming any different? They could pass a law that gives courts in the United States jurisdiction over Chinese or Indian companies that are building these dirty coal plants. Now, India and China, they have to pay any judgments that are entered by our courts, because they sell millions of dollars of products to the United States. They all have big bank accounts that can be attached. So they are going to have to pay any judgments that are rendered. All we have to have is Congress give jurisdiction.
LONDON, July 4 (UPI) -- A British consultancy group has concluded Canada is the safest place to survive global climate change, while the Comoros Islands is least equipped.
Want to slash emissions? Simple: do more to stop bushfires. Forest and bushfire expert Professor Mark Adams explains:
Unfortunately again, all the trees planted or likely
to be planted in Victoria in the name of cleaning the atmosphere will
not replace the carbon lost in recent fires… Efforts to encourage
individuals to conserve energy and carbon - ‘we will save 40,000 tonnes
of greenhouse gas emissions’ (The Age January 9, 2007) - must be viewed
in the context that 2003 and 2006/7 fires have sent back to the
atmosphere of the order of a 100,000,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas
emissions...
It's a long weekend for US readers, so here is your slightly early weekly round up of all things global hoaxy, plus your weekly Global Warming Hottie.
David Suzuki is (in)famous for telling the world that the 'debate is over' and that 'the science is settled'. He even wants to jail politicians that ignore the 'facts' about global warming. So it's surprising to see him pen a column that says in the first line:
"I admit: we aren’t 100 per cent sure that human activity is causing global warming."
He goes on to spoil the schadenfreude by reverting to type, but just seeing the scruffy hippy admit that there is doubt about AGW is enough to make it the lead in this week's round up. Every time Suzuki/Gore speak, another skeptic gets their wings.
Specifically, last year’s hype was constructed around Arctic melt as of September, which also coincidentally is when it maxes out. The ice recovered, and actually rose to above-normal levels (what, no cooling panic?). The alarmists stayed stuck, shrieking about the September figure throughout the winter despite the rank dishonesty of it all.
If the findings in this study prove accurate, one of the cornerstones of the global warming myth will have been completely debunked.
As such, I'm sure this will be headline and front-page news all weekend long once this paper is officially published. And, I imagine climate alarmists like Nobel Laureate Al Gore and NASA's James Hansen will not only be asked to comment about these new revelations, but will also be available for interviews with curious media members in the days ahead.
As this will likely not be the case, readers should keep an eye on NewsBusters for more details as they come available.
Commission member Ewen Whaddarmie said that this ordinance was a first step in requiring all vehicles operated inside city limits to be designed so that engines would automatically shut down after 10 seconds of idling, and auto-restart when the accelerator pedal was pressed. "EZ-GO has been using the auto-off/auto-on system for its golf carts for many years," Whaddarmie said. "It's time Detroit and Tokyo got with the program."
Toronto's Board of Health has passed a proposal from the city's medical officer of health that aims to limit the time vehicles can idle to just 10 seconds.
...
"It's a lot easier for an enforcement officer to tell when you've been idling the vehicle for 10 seconds than to wait around to see if you've idled for three minutes," McKeown said.
The Board of Health is also asking the provincial and federal governments to look into making it mandatory to put devices in vehicles that would automatically shut off the engines if idled too long.
Biofuels have caused a 75 per cent increase in world food prices, a new report suggests.
The rise is far greater than previous estimates including a US Government claim that plant-derived fuels contribute less than three per cent to food price hikes.
According to reports last night, a confidential World Bank document indicates the true extent of the effect of biofuels on prices at a crucial time in the world's negotiations on biofuel policy.
Rising food prices have been blamed for pushing 100 million people beneath the poverty line. The confidential report, based on a detailed economic analysis of the effect of biofuels, will put pressure on the American and European governments, which have turned to biofuels in attempts to reduce the greenhouse gases associated with fossil fuels and to reduce their reliance on oil imports.
The report says: "Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate."
But back to the NOAA. We first stopped at the security station outside. A security officer came onto the bus and said that we were all going to have to get off and go through a metal detector, so anything we didn't want to take through the metal detector we should leave on the bus. Being the good Americans we are, we didn't question this, but did as we were told. We were all given temporary name badges, and went through the metal detector, then got back on the bus which took us on to the main building.
Now... since we could leave whatever we wanted on the bus and were given an opportunity to retrieve it before going into the main building, can someone please explain to me what the hell the purpose of the metal detector was? These people need training on how to design a security checkpoint system, because this ain't it.
I think we can agree “the acidification story provides a model of how to get science on the congressional agenda.”
A fuller account of this fascinating and inspirational story may be found here.
One of the major worries put forward by ‘global warmers’ is that melting water will lubricate the base of Greenland’s ice sheet, thus accelerating its slide into the oceans. This new Dutch study, led by Roderik S. W. van de Wal of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, the University of Utrecht, and founded on detailed observations over 17 years, places a fast freeze on such fears, and shows that, far from speeding up, the western edge of Greenland’s ice sheet has actually slowed down by some 10% since 1991.
Although carbon dioxide is capable of raising the Earth's overall temperature, the IPCC's predictions of catastrophic temperature increases produced by carbon dioxide have been challenged by many scientists. In particular, the importance of water vapor is frequently overlooked by environmental activists and by the media. The above discussion shows that the large temperature increases predicted by many computer models are unphysical and inconsistent with results obtained by basic measurements. Skepticism is warranted when considering computer-generated projections of global warming that cannot even predict existing observations.
Historical Trivia: Back in 1971, James Hansen was creating computer models demonstrating that Earth was heading for a new ice age. Back then, his models apparently showed that CO2 would have negligible effect on climate. Now all Hansen has to do is to create models that predict no change in climate, and he will have all his bases covered.
The main feature of the programme was an interview with P. M. Rudd. The subject of the interview was Climate Change and the dangers of CO2.
I am flabbergasted beyond belief that we have as Prime Minister, a man so dedicated to abolishing the industry, not to mention the living standards of this entire Nation.
What he proposes is a vast social experiment with the entire nation. An experiment every bit as potentially disastrous as the Russian experiment in Communism in the last century.
Environmentalists demand an impossibly high standard. Nothing the human race has ever done to improve its conditions has been 'sustainable'. As technologies have changed our lives, and created new problems, so too have new politics arisen out of these changing conditions. If this process had been stalled during any era on the basis that it was unsustainable, we would still be living in stone-age conditions, with stone-age politics - at least, that is, until we really did run out of stones.
So workers are to get not a wage but a handout, and private operaters of power plants are to be left to go broke, their assets suddenly stripped of tens of millions in value...
One of the most vivid symbols of global warming used by scientists and campaigners to spur society to curb climate-warming emissions is photography of gushing rivers of meltwater plunging from the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet into the depths.
Recent studies have shown these natural drainpipes, called moulins, can speed up the slow seaward march of the grinding ice by lubricating the interface with bedrock below. The faster that ice flows, the faster seas rise. Now, though, a new Dutch study of 17 years of satellite measurements of ice movement in western Greenland concludes that the speedup of the ice is a transient summertime phenomenon, with the overall yearly movement of the grinding glaciers not changing, and actually dropping slightly in some places, when measured over longer time spans.
Global warming has been linked to increased fires, stronger storms, rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers and increased melting of polar ice caps. Scientists have said global warming could cause Lake Michigan's water level to drop five feet over the next century.
[Steven "earth-honoring prayers and snowdances"] Schneider was among 2,000 scientists and policy experts from 120 nations who documented global warming as part of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
The IPCC concluded that a preponderance of scientific evidence showed the planet is warming and the burning of fossil fuels -- coal and petroleum products -- is one of the causes. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore.
"You can't deny the existence of global warming or the fact that humans are responsible for some of it," Schneider said.
He said global warming skeptics such as Rush Limbaugh, author Michael Crichton and a minority of scientists "don't know what they're talking about."
Byers said he has decided to run because he wants to be able to look at his children in 20 or 30 years and be able to say that he took action to try to address important challenges facing humanity. He cited climate change as a “huge” concern, noting that this was driven home during a trip he took to the Arctic three weeks ago.Unfortunately, Byers provides no temperature or ice data for that location for any of the past few billion Junes.
“The thing that was most striking was how the speed of climate change is accelerating—how it’s much worse than anyone really wants to believe,” Byers said. “To give you a sense of this, we flew over Cumberland Sound, which is a very large bay on the east coast of Baffin Island. This was three weeks ago; there was no ice.”
But the lifestyle of today's Mongolian horseman - and other nomadic herdsmen - is under threat. A succession of climactic disasters in the last 10 years has forced 500,000 of them abandon a nomadic lifestyle that has remained almost unchanged for centuries and to look instead for a new life in the cities.
...
Mongolia is one of the toughest places on earth to live and can boast the coldest capital - Ulaanbaatar - on the planet. Temperatures drop to at least -30C in winter. The country is frozen from November to March.
But four climactic disasters, known as 'dzuds', since 1999 have made life almost impossible for even the toughest of Mongolia's nomadic people who roam over a country three times the size of France. Three particularly harsh winters since 2000 have killed a third of the nation's livestock.
In 2001, the temperature dropped to a record-breaking -57C. Some 15,000 herders lost all of their animals through starvation and cold, and with them, their money and food. More than a quarter of the 2.6m population has left the vast rural areas, where herdsmen have lived since before Ghengis Khan's empire was established in the 13th century, and have fled in desperation to the cities.
Among them is Byambaa Nurdev (22) a former herder in the Gobi Desert. She and her husband Tumenbayar (31) had some 600-700 sheep and goats, making them relatively wealthy. But between 2002-5 they lost every single animal.
They ought to be encouraged to look about the world with dash and optimism, not apologetic guilt for the footprint they’re leaving behind.
There’s something horribly cringing in the fashion of minimizing one’s effect on the world. By all means, we can conserve energy, but must we inflict our eco-alarmism on children quite so wantonly? Suicide is the quickest way to reduce your effect on the environment, as someone said. That’s hardly a helpful message for the kiddies.
We have friends in Canada who are so intent upon leaving only mouselike traces behind that they have confined themselves voluntarily to a single square mile.
This might sound charming: Two people sacrificing whatever swagger and swashbuckle they might have enjoyed, so as to compensate the cosmos for the rest of us stinking parasites.
Yet isn’t it awful, that centuries of human achievement should produce such guilt? The square-milers make me think of a cartoon vacuum cleaner that eventually sucks itself up its own tube and vanishes with a little “pop.”
Power will be provided through a series of renewable energy sources including solar, thermal, wind energy, hydraulic and a tidal power station.
The city will actually produce much more energy than it consumes and be entirely 'zero-emission' as all the carbon-dioxide and the waste will be recycled.
The lunacy of the left never stops! This is what happens when you watch too much TV and don’t study math and science enough - you become fools running a fools’ errand. Think about it. If the far right claimed the end of the world was nigh and it was time to build an ark to save mankind from a pending world wide flood the liberals and media would have a field day. And rightfully so!
I cannot recommend too highly the following Panel Discussion [11.15 am - 12.45 pm, Tuesday, July 1; link below] on ‘Climate Changes and Energy Challenges’, streamed directly from the 58th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Physics, which is being held between June 29 and July 4 at the island town of Lindau on Lake Constance. The Nobel Laureates involved in this Panel are the following seven Professors: Johann Deisenhofer (Germany: Chemistry, 1988); Ivar Giaever (Norway: Physics, 1973); Hartmut Michel (Germany: Chemistry, 1988); Douglas Osheroff (USA: Physics, 1996); Carlo Rubbia (Italy: Physics, 1984); Jack Steinberger (Germany: Physics, 1988); and Klaus von Klitzing (Germany: Physics, 1985). The Chair of the Panel is Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The absence of any women members is a tad concerning.
Holman Jenkins argues that despite the fact that GM's all-electric car the Volt will likely lose money on every sale, GM knows exactly what it is doing with this program. The main customer, apparently, is not the end consumer, but the government. GM is betting that an Obama, beholden in his new presidency to unions and environmentalists, will be open to a massive government subsidy of the US auto industry. The Volt program may be part of a plan to buff up GM's attractiveness at the government trough...
For some reason, Michael Tobis seems to think that the Team is busy cranking out responses to an endless stream of my data requests. Nothing could be further from the truth. For me, getting data from the Team is no easier than posting at realclimate. At this point, it seems to be Team policy to simply not provide any data to me. So it doesn’t take them any time at all.
I racked my brains trying to think of whether I got any data from the Team last year (and by Team here, I mean the core Hockey Team, not the IPCC). The only thing that I could think of was the list of stations used in Jones et al 1990, which was eventually provided under a UK FOI request. I encountered an interesting little back story about this request today...
Actually, Hamilton's retreat is part of a pattern.
Al Gore, the Great Profit of Doom himself, now bans journalists from his lectures. The ABC's chief science presenter, warming believer Robyn Williams, refuses to have on the former head of the National Climate Centre, William Kininmonth, because this sceptic allegedly can't understand climate.
And Greenpeace says "we no longer debate people who don't accept the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change".
Better, Wellington Shire Council is dropping a plan to halt development on a part of Ninety Mile Beach it claims could be drowned by rising seas unleashed by global warming.
Residents had said its scaremongering was driving down property prices and they might sue if it didn't stop.
What a shame the council dodged that debate, too, given what happens when courts start checking evidence.
The front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, (AJC or “Al Jazeera Constitution” as locals call it) led with a piece about off-shore drilling by saying, “Opponents contend that developing new oil sources would take too long to have much effect on current fuel prices.”
Like all the major monopoly papers that are leftist echo chambers, the AJC takes its talking points from “Nanny” Pelosi, who said that any new drilling will take three years to help us. You know the same thing that she said three years ago.
Just how short-term has our thinking become in this ADD country?
Our energy solution procrastination reminds me of a story about an old farmer who had a leak in his barn. One day, when someone asked the farmer why he had never gotten up there to fix the roof, he said, “Well, when it rains it leaks, and I cannot get up there to fix it. And when it ain’t raining, it don’t leak and it don’t need fixing.”
MADRID (Thomson Financial) - The UN's top climate change official said Thursday that record oil prices, which have surged to $146 a barrel, were positive for the environment.
'I think they are a net positive. First of all you see that through decreasing demand in Europe and North America where people are becoming much more conscious of petrol prices,' Yvo de Boer told Agence France-Presse.
'High oil prices also improve the competitiveness of renewable sources of energy and make it more interesting to focus on energy efficiency,' he added.
Berlin - Long-standing German opposition to nuclear power is crumbling, although opponents of nuclear power remain in the majority, according to a new poll published Thursday. The poll, commissioned by national public broadcaster ARD, found that 51 per cent of those surveyed wanted Germany to stick by its commitment to phase out nuclear power by 2021.
But 44 per cent of the 1,000 people polled by Infratest dimap said they now believed the decision to abandon nuclear power was wrong. The figures was up 8 percentage points from December 2007.
While guest hosting Wednesday’s "Morning Joe", former General Electric CEO Jack Welsh condemned global warming, the very theory MSNBC has been peddling for years. GE, of course, owns MSNBC; the rebuke of MSNBC’s favorite alarmist hypothesis came in a segment where hosts share noteworthy editorials. Welsh decided to share an opinion piece from Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal aptly titled "Global Warming As Mass Neurosis." Welsh informed the audience that the article has "a lot of technical numbers here to show you that NASA overstated what's happening." Welsh summarized the article by saying "And they got an argument that states that global warming is the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn't bring"
After Jack’s synopsis, co- host Pat Buchanan interjects his belief that global warming is "a neo-Marxist idea for the transfer of wealth and power." Jack Welsh jumps in to agree saying "Right" Pat Buchanan then decides to carry his rebuke even further by saying "And At the end global elites, and they’re, you know they’re gonna to dictate to all of us because of this phony idea that we're all in some eminent danger. I agree with that 100 %." Welsh, the former GE CEO enthusiastically jumped in to agree saying "Absolutely!"
Imagine that, the worlds leading climate scientists creating temperature data from surrounding stations which are biased by barbecues, bodies of water, wind blocks, jet engines, pavement, roof tops, air conditioner exhausts, inversion layers, non-standard equipment, urban heat islands, automobiles and chimneys.
They didn’t create climate data from thin air; they created it from junk.
We describe a patient with climate change delusion, a previously unreported phenomenon. A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an 8 month history of depressed mood… He also ...had visions of apocalyptic events…
If I were as manipulative (or stupid) as Al Gore, I would also build on the fact that three of the four months in this century with a negative temperature anomaly occurred in 2008 (July 2004; January, May, June 2008).
But this statement is not so surprising for sensible people because the temperature is a continuous function of time and nearby months should be expected to have similar temperatures. Once we know that May 2008 was the coldest month, it shouldn't shock you that there you will find nearby months in the hitparade, too.
Schmidt had been a regular on the road with McCain until recently, when he quietly returned to headquarters to help fix what insiders admit are severe structural problems that caused a series of missteps:
...
# The campaign also paid for a TV ad to distance McCain from President Bush. The ad's script read, "John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming ... five years ago." McCain later reversed his position and stood with Bush on the controversial idea of offshore oil drilling.
One week from Friday, Gov. Charlie Crist leaves for London, Paris, Normandy and St. Petersburg, Russia, on a 12-day trip described as a "business development mission for Florida's aviation, defense and climate change sectors." It will be the third foreign trip of Crist's administration, following journeys to Israel and Brazil in 2007.This list of participants includes no less than 20 "Climate Change Delegates".
[Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks]: I recall a seminar at AARI (St.-Petersburg, Russia) which happened many years ago (around 1995) , when an AARI scientist reported a peculiarity in central-basin ice cover which he associated with volcano activity. Similar to what you are talking. I remember that during the seminar people were skeptical but maybe this gentleman was right?
Every household in Britain is facing a £4,000 bill for something that they don't want, that won't work and that will scar the landscape.
But there is little outcry. Why? Because it is dressed up in green clothing. The Government is planning a massive expansion in the number of wind turbines in Britain, now in vogue with policy-makers seeking to fill Britain's energy gap.
But is wind the right option? A new report out today by the Centre for Policy Studies (Wind Chill: why wind will not fill the UK's energy gap) argues that this reliance on wind power is a mistake. The report's author Tony Lodge shows that far from filling the energy gap, wind power is unreliable, expensive and impractical.
Everyone must now consider whether climate science really is sufficiently settled to provide adequate justification for allowing authoritarianism to spread. Are the threats placed before us realistic or are they alarmist? Is there any current evidence that the degree or timing of the alleged threats have been misjudged ?
Just compare the plans on the Socialist Party Of America website To Barack Obama.
Lets take a look at what the Socialists say about the environment...
Lewis Ziska, a lanky, sandy-haired weed ecologist with the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, matches a dry sense of humor with tired eyes. The humor is essential to Ziska’s exploration of what global climate change could do to mankind’s relationship with weeds; there are many days, he confesses, when his goal becomes nothing more than not ending up in a fetal position beneath his battleship gray, government-issue desk. Yet he speaks of weeds with admiration as well as apprehension, and even with hope.
WASHINGTON - During the European heat wave of 2003 that killed tens of thousands, the temperature in parts of France hit 104 degrees. Nearly 15,000 people died in that country alone. During the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the mercury spiked at 106 and about 600 people died.
In a few decades, people will look back at those heat waves "and we will laugh," said Andreas Sterl, author of a new study. "We will find (those temperatures) lovely and cool."
America's future prosperity may hinge on who wins an internal fight within the Bush administration.
On the one side are the bureaucrats of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the name of combating global warming, they are gearing up to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. It's not just the carbon dioxide from auto tailpipes. It's emissions from all sources: factories, schools, restaurant kitchens, heating and cooling systems, power plants, farm equipment and businesses of all types. In a nutshell: everything. Because almost everything that uses energy produces CO2.
But media reports reveal EPA is in conflict with the White House Office of Management and Budget, which answers more directly to the president. Their job is to ride herd on other bureaucrats so our economy isn't stifled by excessive red tape.
The immediate fight is over an unreleased (but leaked to the press) 250-page proposal from the EPA, announcing its intent to adopt rules that expand the 1970 Clean Air Act by designating carbon dioxide as a pollutant that endangers us.
...
The EPA suggests it would create a "cap-and-trade" rationing system to limit carbon dioxide emissions – the very proposal that sank in the U.S. Senate recently when it was exposed as a major new tax on energy. The Heritage Foundation projected such a Rube Goldberg approach would cost America almost a million jobs a year, raise average home utility costs by $50 to $100 per month and send gasoline prices soaring even higher. Furthermore, these extreme limits on energy use would cause a new job exodus from the U.S. to overseas.
Former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. This is an outrageous injustice and reeks of favoritism. Irena Sendlerowa was notably more deserving of the award, and her deeds of courage and heroism greatly outshine the fraudulent claims of Gore and the U. N. Panel. Unfortunately, her time to receive the accolade she richly deserved ended with her passing on May 12, 2008.
...
Well, Mr. Gore there seems to be a great deal of evidence to prove that your claim that carbon dioxide is destroying the climate of Earth is nothing more than an elaborate fraud. Carbon dioxide is a natural component of Earth’s atmosphere, and has been since the beginning of time. Every living plant uses carbon dioxide to impel photosynthesis. You remember photosynthesis from your school science class, don’t you? Well, let me refresh your memory. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria, and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce sugar, which cellular respiration converts into the fuel used by all living things. The conversion of unusable sunlight energy into usable chemical energy is associated with the actions of the green pigment chlorophyll. Most of the time, the photosynthetic process uses water and releases the oxygen that we absolutely must have to stay alive. And, every human being expels carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they exhale.
With the price of corn soaring, it's clear that the ethanol mandate is bad economic policy and bad energy policy.
The direct temperature measurements that proponents have been using in the last 20 years have also come under criticism. Many of these temperature stations are located next to asphalt parking lots, air conditioner compressors and other heat sources that will artificially elevate the temperature. In June 2007, NOAA removed the surface station location information from its Web site. Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure.
I encourage you to read books and look at Web sites for scientifically accurate information. One of the books I strongly recommend is "Unstoppable Global Warming every 1,500 Years" by F. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. Several excellent Web sites include: www.icecap.us and www.climate-skeptic.com. A PDF file on the second site titled A Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming is well documented with numerous links to other sites.
Next week, I will moderate a panel titled "Beyond the Phony 'Debate': Government Science and the Climate Crisis" in Washington, DC. In case I needed any proof that the climate is important, last month's flooding in the Midwest gave me a personal look at what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was talking about last year when it warned of "an increased chance of intense precipitation and flooding due to the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere."
Sweet corn purists who demand the Iowa-grown variety at their cookouts will be disappointed this Fourth of July weekend.
A double punch of a cold spring and then wet fields has delayed the locally grown sweet corn that is one of Iowa's most visible symbols. Those who want the treat for holiday cookouts will have to settle for corn grown mostly in Georgia and Florida.
"I didn't think it would be this bad, but this will be the first time in years we won't have our own sweet corn for the Fourth of July," said Boone sweet corn grower Wilbur Scott.
“We’re facing an ecological crisis, a crisis far, far worse than Pearl Harbour,” Suzuki said.
...
“Germany has more than 240,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector,” said Hermann Scheer, general chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy, an industry association based in Bonn.
“The two biggest problems the world faces — energy and climate change — can only be solved by renewable energy,” Scheer told IPS.
...
“It’s entirely possible that a country like Germany have 100 percent renewable energy,” he added. “We have done the studies to prove it.”
The law requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, applauded as being highly progressive but placing high demand on the state to deliver the goals.
One of the first steps toward the strict goals required the state Department of Environmental Protection by June 30 to produce a report detailing how the state would meet the 2020 goal and designate an independent panel to review these recommendations.
Neither of these have been produced thus far but are expected to be delivered in late summer or early fall, said DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura.
The belief in human-induced global warming, combined with a growing population, has led some environmentalists to question the morality of having children. The suggestion is, more children mean more rapid planetary overheating, as humans engage in the selfish processes of working, playing, eating, using electricity and operating a car. Other people disagree with what they regard as an environmental attack on the human race.
But what about the children who are already here? Do those who believe in human-induced global warming think children should be told that the planet would be better off if they had never been born – that they are planet slayers, so to speak? In fact, the Australian government believes just that, and encourages teachers to tell children when they will have created their fair share of greenhouse gasses according to their current living habits and those of their families – and at what age, therefore, they should die.
The Stockholm Network's Carbon Scenarios report (which I helped draft) reaches a similar conclusion, projecting a warming of nearly 5°C if global policy on climate continues to fail. Against this terrifying backdrop, the denial lobby flourishes, its success almost calling into question the capacity of mankind for reasoned thought.Also from Lynas here:
Nigel Lawson's dreadful book, laughably entitled An Appeal to Reason, has been riding high in the sales charts and is only one of several denialist tomes on global warming. The last time I looked, four out of five of Amazon's top sellers on climate were penned by deniers. And these are not just views from the fringe. A MORI poll reported by the Observer last month found six out of ten people think, wrongly, that "many scientific experts" disagree on whether human beings are causing climate change. Four out of ten people asked believed that the impact had been exaggerated.
Many climate-change sceptics like to think they are proudly independent people, refusing to be cowed by UN-sponsored orthodoxy from the IPCC. In fact, the arguments of climate sceptics have largely been moulded by a far more sinister force - the US-based conservative think tanks.
That vast majority of those who dismiss the reality of global warming are simply ignorant - and arrogant, to boot. Now that's a statement that no scientist would probably make. But it's true nonetheless, and it's my job to tell you that.
As it happened, wind patterns and ocean currents over the last few months moved that newly formed ice smack over the North Pole, setting up the situation where at least a temporarily ice-free North Pole could form.
"It's this symbolic thing, I think," Serreze told LiveScience. "This is where Santa Claus lives ... it kind of hits you in the stomach."
NEW ZEALAND - The North Island ski fields of Whakapapa and Turoa on Mt. Ruapehu is celebrating a much needed mammoth dump of snow. The mountain received a week of heavy snowfalls resulting in a record snow base, after a week of rain that washed away the active volcano's minimal snow cover revealing rocks and grass.
ST. MARY, Mont. — With diesel smoke and white powder flying, heavy equipment operators worked furiously to remove enough snow to open the Going-to-the-Sun road, which connects the two sides of Glacier National Park and is usually open by the first week of June.
But huge amounts of snow still blanket the Northern Rockies high country, in part because of record snowfalls in Montana this year, so the opening will not take place until Wednesday, the latest on record by a day, except for World War II when the road was not plowed at all.
The delayed opening has been a blow to this town, at the east entrance to the park, and to West Glacier, the opposite gateway. Both depend on gasoline sales, restaurant checks and other income from tourists who drive Going-to-the-Sun, the 52-mile scenic road that winds through the heart of these glacier-etched mountains.
“A day’s worth of work for us is a million dollars worth of commerce for the gateway communities,” said Jim Foster, deputy facilities manager at the park, as a bighorn sheep scampered across the road. “We’re aware of that.”
Up here in Alaska the plants have not been growing very well because of cold weather. We still have brier roses out there, those are always completely bloomed out by mid June. ::shakes head::...Hopefully things will start warming up more as we go into July and August, because by September the temperature is dropping again.
Wishing doesn't make things so, and nowhere is that more true than in the alternative energy fantasies of ecoentranced politicians. Someday, no doubt, energy forms that are currently considered "alternative" -- wind, solar, biofuel, nuclear, hydrogen cell, etc. -- will be mainstays of the world economy. But which ones, for what purposes and at what cost?
For all the bluster of green-seduced leaders about how they are going to transition the industrialized world to a post-carbon future through banning, capping, taxing, regulating, legislating or subsidizing, the switch from fossil fuels to alternatives will be market-driven, when it comes. If politicians and governments were capable of planning, or even just prompting, such massive economic evolution, then centrally controlled economies would have been history's most successful.
More than likely, government intervention will delay the alternative energy future, since politicians and bureaucrats are typically lousy at picking winners and losers.
...Senator Obama will be forced to make changes in his position if Senator McCain starts being seen as the real agent of change when it comes to reducing Americas dependence on foreign oil while at the same time lowering high gas prices. In 2008, just like in other presidential elections, there will be one issue that overrides all the others when November rolls around. In my opinion, that one issue this year will be which candidate has the best ideas to reduce high gas prices.
Toplines: Coal Makes Us Sick?
Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
July 1, 2008
1* Some people say that relying on coal for energy makes us sick. Do you agree or disagree?
22% Agree
52% Disagree
26% Not sure
2* Okay… some people say that relying on oil for energy makes us sick. Do you agree or disagree?
31% Agree
50% Disagree
20% Not sure
· The basis for legislation requiring the burial of carbon dioxide (CO2) rests wholly on
one proposition – that increasing emissions of CO2 from man’s activities will cause
dangerous global warming. This proposition is false.
This, after a decade or more, of clear warnings about the impacts of climate change is gloomy stuff. Because the clear implication is that while on a rhetorical level there is ’support’ for actions to mitigate the effects or attempts to reverse the processes of climate change on a practical level there is insufficient public support for the sort of measures that most of us concerned about these issues see as necessary.
...It is a sign of just how useless our political leaders are that they have done nothing to avoid this danger, being obsessed instead with the questionable problems of allegedly man-made global warming.
A request here : those who want to argue about man-made warming should go and do so with Lord (Nigel) Lawson, who has written much that is excellent and level-headed about this pseudo-religious mass panic. I claim no special knowledge on the subject, only the freedom to doubt what cannot actually be proved, to acknowledge that 'science' is not an infallible oracle and that scientists disagree on this subject; also the freedom to doubt the point of preparing expensively for something that may well not happen.
But what is not in doubt is that this country faces a real, measurable problem with generating electricity. Several of our most important coal-fired power stations will soon have to close because they no longer meet European Union regulations on emissions, itself a reflection on what it means to lose your independence, and control of your own laws. Many of our nuclear stations are already worn out and must close before long for more serious reasons. Much of the rest of our capacity depends on increasingly expensive natural gas, which will in coming years be subject to erratic supply and steeply rising costs, as demand increases and as Russia becomes Europe's main producer.
On Line Opinion claims it is just pursuing "balance" in the space it gives to climate change scepticism. But, as a number of journalists and authors have pointed out, "balance" means bias in the case of the climate change debate because by giving a "balance" of views On Line Opinion is communicating to its readers that there is a legitimate debate among scientists about the weight of scientific evidence on global warming. This is false and misleading.
...Geothermal energy is not considered. Heat entering the atmosphere directly from volcanic eruptions is minor compared to the annual solar energy. However, heat injected into the oceans from active volcanoes and the vast ocean ridges is continuous, unmeasured and circulated for long periods.
While Lauzon believes going carbon neutral is a good idea, he isn't totally convinced that climate change is a result of human impacts. Some believe it's a result of human activity, while others say it's a natural occurrence, Lauzon noted.
"I don't think I've seen compelling proof it is definitely being (caused) one way or the other," said the MP.
Regardless of the debate over climate change, Lauzon said he felt the Tree Canada program would be a positive step forward.
Hansen further claimed that federal laws to mandate restrictions on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have been “blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits.”
Um, no.
Eleven Congresses -- five Democrat, six Republican -- have declined to limit greenhouse gas emissions since Hansen’s much-celebrated testimony before Colorado Democrat Tim Wirth’s Senate Committee in June 1988.
As in, they don’t want to.
As in, they really, really don’t want to.
* 50% now support drilling in ANWR, up from 42%.
* 47% rate energy exploration as more important that conservation, up from 35%.
Change was also noted among young people, liberals, Democrats and women--groups that have consistently opposed increasing fossil fuel exploration.
51% of people ages 18-29 now support expanding exploration, up from 26% in February. The gender gap has disappeared on the issue, too, as well as the gap between Democrats and Republicans.
In other bad news, the Energy Information Administration said that participation in green pricing/marketing programs has decreased among electricity customers, further supporting the notion that Americans are unwilling to pay a price for protecting the planet.
After three years of gains from 2003-2005 in the number of participants in programs that allow customers to pay a fee to support the generation of clean, renewably based power, participation dropped in 2006. (Numbers are not yet available for 2007.)
The number of programs available to customers increased slightly in 2006, from 442 to 484. But nationwide, participation decreased 32% from 942,772 to 645,167.
Without strong leadership on this issue, or a reversal in the tide of public opinion, dark days lie ahead.
He reiterated that the U.S. position is that China and India must be a part of any international agreement to limit GHG emissions.
He also noted that he will tell the G-8 that you can't develop the energy technologies that will help us be better stewards of the environment if we don't have strong economies. Hear, hear.
In response to a question on oil prices, the president said roughly (and in an animated fashion — with ready command of the facts, I might add): One thing is for certain. We can effect the supply of crude oil, and the so the price of gasoline, by drilling for oil and gas in our own country — which we can do in environmentally friendly ways. But Democrats in Congress are not acting. Eventually, we'll transition away from fossil fuels. But we're in that transition period now. So write your Congressman: drill in ANWR, open up the continental shelf, and expand oil-shale efforts.
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