March 29, 2013
Quote of the Day
The problem for the climateers is increasingly dire. As The Economist shows in its first chart (Figure 1 here), the recent temperature record is now falling distinctly to the very low end of its predicted range and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, that there's something going on that supposedly "settled" science hasn't been able to settle. -- Steven Hayward
March 8, 2013
CNN: Global Warming is Totally for Real!
A new study makes an interesting point: a very long term study concludes that the temperature swing from 1910 - 2010 is unprecedented. Perhaps it has been colder, perhaps warmer, but it has never shifted so much in only a century. Pretty interesting point.
Furthermore, the study authors feel that we should be in a cold period and that the last, very warm decade would be catastrophic if the same amount of DAWG were present at a warm part of the cycle.
Interesting. But I must -- its being CNN -- excerpt another part of the story. Deirdre McClosky, call your office! We have figured out why prosperity happened -- it was a predictable climate!
Humanity in the last 11,500 years
The scientists chose the period of time known as the "Holocene" for their research, because it is the most recent natural warm phase in Earth's history. It began at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,500 years ago, and we are still in it.
The Holocene has also been the epoch of human achievement, the beginning of civilization. Stable weather patterns helped people do more of everything they wanted to, partly because they no longer had to fight the cold of an ice age.
They began farming, which extended their own life spans and increased population on Earth. They built cities and roads, made art, developed languages and laws. They formed empires and nations.
Eventually, they invented machines, landing themselves in the industrialized age, driven by engines and turbines, which are powered by combustible fuel.
Thus began man-made greenhouse gases.
No mention of the Enlightenment. Stopped fighting an ice age; became prosperous and wealthy -- then ruined the climate. Oh irony, thy name is Man!
Stable weather patterns or warmer weather patterns? Check your premise, new studiers.
Posted by: johngalt at March 8, 2013 7:39 PMMarch 6, 2013
Quote of the Day
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee announced early Wednesday that it's postponing its environmental subcommittee's scheduled 10 a.m. hearing on the state of the science behind climate change. As a reason, it cited "weather."Of course, that doesn't mean anything. Climate isn't weather -- unless it is very hot.
Hat-tip: Insty
February 27, 2013
Pollution-Free Coal Power
Detractors like to say "Clean Coal doesn't exist" but Dr. Liang-Shih Fan is one of many scientists laboring, and succeeding, in accomplishing it.
Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and director of the Clean Coal Lab, has just completed a 203 hour test of a radical new way of obtaining energy from coal. Typical coal-fired power plants burn coal to boil water, and run the resultant steam through turbines to produce electricity. Fan's process, a new technology called "coal-direct chemical looping," does not burn the coal. Instead, it chemically converts coal to heat in a sealed reactor chamber. Tiny iron oxide beads help to deliver oxygen to the coal particles, which are then cycled through an airflow chamber for re-oxygenation, then run back through the reaction chamber. This is the "looping" in the technology's name. The process gives off no air pollution, and the captured carbon dioxide is ninety-nine percent pure, enough to make it a valuable commodity.The test, which was run on a lab-sized reactor, produced a continuous twenty-five kilowatts of power.
25 KW! That could power a house! Or a car! Oh wait - carbon dioxide? Hasn't the EPA decided that carbon dioxide, necessary for plant growth, is a pollutant? Never mind. Back to windmills and bicycles.
I was pleased to see that there is a NASCAR stock car sponsored by "Clean Coal"
This is good news.
Posted by: Alexc at February 28, 2013 2:56 PMI thought so too brother, but when I saw it wrecked last weekend I couldn't help wondering what kind of smear ad the Church of Human Sacrifice might make from it.
Posted by: johngalt at March 1, 2013 11:59 AMJanuary 24, 2013
Two Important Pieces on Climate Change
Quite a week from two non-deniers.
Walter Russell Mead points out that The Economist magazine has given up on global climate treaties: "Once a believer in the global approach, it appears to have given up"
The good folks at The Economist suggest "[V]oters appear more willing to accept domestic environmental laws than international ones. If true, that is an indictment of years of green activism that has pushed for a global treaty first."
Just tactics, so far, although one appreciates the nod to reason -- especially remembering President Bush's being blamed for every weather incident for not signing Kyoto (after the Senate opposed it 0 - 95, but whatever...)
More important were a couple of, dare I say, scientific concessions:
The Economist also brings us big news on the "settled science" of climate change. A new study has found soot to be twice as bad for climate as was previously thought, making it the second most damaging greenhouse agent after CO2. This is actually good news for two reasons.
To oppose CO2 is to oppose modernity. The dedicated warmie settles for nothing less than "back to the caves." Keystone Pipeline? Fracking? Mai Non! We've a planet to protect! I think even some grouchy old ThreeSourcers could get behind reasonable action on soot. I might be wrong, perhaps there is a pro-soot faction. But reducing soot seems a natural by-product of efficiency. Cleaner fuels, complete combustion should move toward CO2 + H2O as exhaust. Plants' two best friends. As more change is attributable to soot, this reduces the impact of CO2.
If that doesn't melt your cold, cold heart mosey on over to the WSJ Ed Page. "Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg has a guest editorial. True to his designs, Lomborg -- like Professor Mead and the editorial staff at The Economist -- believes completely in Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe. But he wants it addressed scientifically and economically.
This makes his criticism of the hype credible:
Unfortunately, when the president described the urgent nature of the threat--the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms"--the scary examples suggested that he is contemplating poor policies that don't point to any real, let alone smart, solutions. Global warming is a problem that needs fixing, but exaggeration doesn't help, and it often distracts us from simple, cheaper and smarter solutions.
Lomborg knows the plural of anecdote isn't data. Wildfires have been reduced, droughts are holdin' steady and the damage from hurricanes is set to halve as a % of GDP by 2100.
This does not mean that climate change isn't an issue. It means that exaggerating the threat concentrates resources in the wrong areas. Consider hurricanes (though similar points hold for wildfire and drought). If the aim is to reduce storm damage, then first focus on resilience--better building codes and better enforcement of those codes. Ending subsidies for hurricane insurance to discourage building in vulnerable zones would also help, as would investing in better infrastructure (from stronger levees to higher-capacity sewers).
That's the news on the science front. Now, from Facebook:
Pretty much captures the important discussion points, does it not?
UPDATE: Insty provides this link to the Lomborg piece, might be free.
So, we're supposed to conclude that "experts" are full of crap? Isn't that mostly who is cited to "prove" the climate change threat: experts?
Beside that, this handy chart of four different natural disasters includes three that have killed millions of people (and remain capable of doing so again) and one, climate change, that has killed no one. Sort of reminds me of that old Sesame Street bit - "One of these things is not like the other, three of these things are kind of the same."
And still further, I might choose a far different collection of "experts" to compare to those discussing "the whole climate change thing." Jim Jones... Marshall Applewhite... Chicken Little.
Posted by: johngalt at January 25, 2013 1:44 AMLies, damned lies and statistics: my warmie friends throw out numbers in the 20,000-30,000 range for "people killed by global warming." I forget if that is annual or not -- not sure they know or care but there is a UN document they quote. To segue to the hated cartoon, it basically represents every death by nature.
Posted by: jk at January 25, 2013 9:03 AMJanuary 9, 2013
On consensus in science
A Facebook friend (not one of the Facebook friends) links to a nice piece on scientific consensus. He says all the things I try to say, but the author, Jonathan DuHammel does not quote Karl Popper or use the word "epistemology." Probably the better for both points!
[Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology] goes on the write: "With genuinely well-established scientific theories, 'consensus' is not discussed and the concept of consensus is arguably irrelevant... While a consensus may arise surrounding a specific scientific hypothesis or theory, the existence of a consensus is not itself the evidence." And she notes: "If the objective of scientific research is to obtain truth and avoid error, how might a consensus seeking process introduce bias into the science and increase the chances for error? 'Confirmation bias' is a well-known psychological principle that connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or an existing hypothesis. Confirmation bias usually refers to unwitting selectivity in the acquisition and interpretation of evidence."
There are some famous failures of consensus in history. The pre-eminent one was the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. That was the prevailing consensus 500 years ago. That consensus was shown to be in error, first by Nicolaus Copernicus and later by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
"...I by and by found out that a consensus examines a new thing with its feelings rather oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that this is so. Do those people examine with feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don't. It is the other way about. They do the examining by the light of their prejudices - now isn't that true?
"With curious results, yes. So curious that you wonder the consensuses do not go out of the business. Do you know of a case where a consensus won a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and profit: Whatever new thing a consensus coppers (colloquial for "bets against"), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid."
Mark Twain from Dr. Loeb's Incredible Discovery first published in Europe and Elsewhere in 1923, reprinted in On the Damned Human Race. Of course, every good leftist knows he's a racist, so they can safely ignore what he had to say. Anybody seriously interested in social commentary should own a copy of the book though.
Posted by: AndyN at January 10, 2013 9:42 AMCool quote and literary tip Andy.
"Whatever new thing a consensus [bets against] bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid."
Oil
Nuclear
Coal
October 31, 2012
Obama's Solar Panel Cronyism: Move On, Nothing to See Here
"You better let him know that the WH wants to move Abound forward."
- Executive Director DOE Loan Programs, June 25, 2010
Composite video below from RevealingPolitics. Story based on DOE emails obtained by CompleteColorado.
Nice -- and further supported:
The new emails contradict claims by Obama and others in his administration that all decisions on the $20 billion DOE clean energy loans were made by career executives in the department.Posted by: jk at October 31, 2012 5:35 PM
Most recently, Obama told a Denver television news interviewer on Oct. 26, 2012, that the loan decisions are "decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics."
September 4, 2012
Idiot Quote of the Day
"The reason the economics fail in the US is not a failure of Wind, its a failure of greedy corporations to allocate costs in a manner that is for the common good. Energy is like air - it comes from God and should not be for-profit. COOPs are the most cost efficient way to deliver electricity. Remove the corporate overhead with multi-million dollar salaries for CEO's and the economics of wind are obvious."
Posted 3 hours ago as a comment on a blog post at one of my engineering trade magazines. The post itself is noteworthy, for it represents the first I can remember where the realities of alternative energy sources are given as much weight as the pollyanna political correctness.
And then there is the cost of wind per MW hr with the subsidy included. Without the subsidy - fuggedaboutit. And it looks like the forgetting will be happening soon. The tax credits for "alternative" (read unreliable) energy have not been renewed. What was that again? Renewables have not been renewed? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? There is a simple explanation.Wind power does not succeed by capturing wind. It succeeds by capturing government.
"... the economics of wind are obvious..."
I've got your "obvious" right here...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at September 4, 2012 3:43 PMAugust 17, 2012
Cleaned by Capitalism
Now, a tune for the choir! I almost get sick of saying it, but private enterprise is cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gasses.
Thanks to natural gas, market forces, technology, and private sector activity, C02 emissions drop to a 20-year lowIn a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.
Mark J Perry closes: "Another great example of how society is 'cleaned by capitalism.'"
August 9, 2012
Otequay of the Ayday
NY Times - What Cornfields Show, Data Now Confirm: July Set Mark as U.S.’s Hottest Month
In the United States, the only hope for substantial relief from higher-than-average temperatures in the coming weeks and months would be a striking atmospheric change, like the development this autumn of the weather pattern known as El Niño or a tropical cyclone that moves into the central part of the country from the Gulf of Mexico, scientists said on Wednesday.
But, wasn't electing Barack Obama in 2008 supposed to accomplish this?
To deny the connection would be to thumb one's nose at science.
Posted by: jk at August 9, 2012 4:48 PMJuly 30, 2012
Half of US "Global Warming" Due to Poor Thermometer Siting
...and "post measurement adjustments."
Question Authority, baby! Speak Truth to Power!
From the rational thinkers at Watts Up With That:
PRESS RELEASE -- U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.
Chico, CA July 29th, 2012 -- 12 PM PDT -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A comparison and summary of trends is shown from the paper. Acceptably placed thermometers away from common urban influences read much cooler nationwide:
A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France's Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.
The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.
______
Since this is SCIENCE I'm sure Mikey Mann and the rest will immediately back it up with fulsome praise for the authors and a nomination for some prizes.
I need guidance.
This was one of my "go-to" challenges for DAWG advocates and still seems credible. And yet, the BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature) study was said to have compensated for that and still shown similar amounts of temperature increase.
I don't wish to make the leap from skeptic to denier but I've grown to not trust any of them.
It happens that BEST is back in the news today.
"I'm personally very worried" and "I personally suspect that it will be bad" are not very persuasive unless you already believe what he supposedly now concludes in support of "the global warming cause."
The peer-reviewed science in this field has proven to be highly suspect, and this study doesn't even rise to that low bar.
But my ultimate answer is that measuring "global" temperature of both land and atmospheric masses is about as practical as measuring "the" level of all the world's oceans. There can never be enough data points to give an accurate and reliable reading. It's just too big and too complex to measure, much less to "simulate" on a supercomputer.
Posted by: johngalt at July 31, 2012 2:25 PMPut differently: Those who believe the earth's overall temperature and the oceans' mean levels can be precisely measured are also capable of believing that government bureaucrats can effectively manage supply, demand and price for whatever they choose. The scientific name for such people is "Democrat."
Posted by: johngalt at July 31, 2012 2:39 PMWell said. My earthier response was always: "Even though I can swear my band has played there a few times, the Earth does not have a rectum where one can take its temperature."
But a brief perusal of the BEST study seemed somewhat convincing.
It may reasonably show that the average temperature of the sites measured increased but extending that to the entire planet is questionable.
But beyond that, how does BEST "prove" that the rise is "manmade?"
Posted by: johngalt at August 1, 2012 3:02 PMNo way it does. I started out accepting the G and W in DAWG but neither the A nor D. After Climategate, I started to question the W as well (G is cool, the planet is basically round).
The BEST study when it came out put me back toward accepting the W.
Posted by: jk at August 1, 2012 4:06 PMJuly 5, 2012
"Colorado Burning" because "Climate Changed?"
Anyone who has read many stories on the Colorado forest fires has surely seen at least one account that links the events with "climate change." Stories like Huffpo's "Stunning NASA Map Shows Severe Heat Wave Fueling Wildfires" are an extreme example. But Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken has a much different explanation:
While it’s true that this June was the hottest June on record, averaging 75 degrees, or 7.6 degrees above normal, he said extreme heat was just one of the ingredients–and maybe not even the most important one–involved in this year’s perfect wildfire storm.Mr. Doesken noted that July is inevitably hotter than June, but there are fewer wildfires in July because it’s also wetter. May and June are typically drier and windier than July and August, which are hotter but more humid.
He said the key to this year’s wildfire season was the lack of snow in March, which left trees more stressed than usual going into the dry spring. Was that caused by manmade climate change? His answer: a definite maybe.
"It’s tempting to say, ‘Ah-ha, this is the face of climate change,’ but it might not be. Or it might be one of several things," said Mr. Doesken. "The forests burn when the meteorological conditions are right, and when that’s the case, it’s going to happen with or without anything we call climate change."
The story continues, exploring more likely factors:
Forest-health advocates say there’s one thing missing from the climate-change-causes-wildfires theory: The forests are so poorly managed that it doesn’t take much for them to go up in flames. Twenty years of reductions in timber sales and environmental lawsuits have gutted logging on public lands, resulting in densely packed, tinder-dry trees that are practically designed for crown fires.Bill Gherardi, president of the Colorado Forestry Association, said the state has historically seen 20 to 80 tree stems per acre in its national forests. Today, he said, the density has increased to 400-1,200 stems per acre.
The problems associated with the lack of forest management are well-documented. A 2011 report by the Forest Service found that the bark-beetle outbreak was partly the result of a drastic reduction in timber sales driven by appeals and litigation by environmental groups, as well as an inability to reach some areas due to inadequate roads.
In Region 2, which includes Colorado, the timber industry declined 63% from 1986 to 2005. “Consequently, few industrial resources were or are available to help the Forest Service in applying management practices in response to the bark beetle outbreak,” said the report, which was requested by Democratic Sen. Mark Udall.
So one explanation is 7.6 degrees warmer temperatures for a month and the other explanation includes 15 to 20 times higher density of trees that are diseased and dead, at least partially due to that very overcrowding. Given that tens of thousands of wildfires occur each year in the United States, Colorado's fire disasters are unprecedented for their severity rather than frequency. And that severity is driven more by wind and fuel density than by a dubious, anti-scientific theory called climate change.
I cannot believe you are letting gun owners off the hook so easily.
Posted by: jk at July 5, 2012 4:29 PMGlad you provided that link to the good ol' days when the Climatgate emails came out. I've been reading some archives but there are seven years of stuff here and I doubt I'll get to it all. I read some from around the 2008 election to get a flavor, and it was Good. Classy, If BHO wins a second term I don't think I'll be able to keep as cool as you guys.
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at July 5, 2012 5:06 PMHeh. If this president wins a second term I don't think I will either!
Posted by: johngalt at July 5, 2012 5:27 PM"Sometime people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. - Frantz Fanon
Posted by: JC at August 2, 2012 9:45 PM"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. - Frantz Fanon
Posted by: JC at August 2, 2012 9:46 PMJune 30, 2012
Innovation 2, Malthusian Environmentalism 0
I know I just posted about this -- but the story is getting better. Walter Russell Mead:
In any case, the United States of America is living proof that there are more ways to address environmental concerns than the green movement as a whole is willing to admit.
And if the United States can achieve this while blowing off the panicky greens and their tiresome Malthusian agendas, so can China and India. That is a very good thing, because those countries have zero repeat zero interest in adopting any green measures that slow their growth.
The truth is that if CO2 emissions are going to come down, it's going to happen the American way rather than the Greenpeace way. Instead of flinging muck and howling curses at the most successful carbon cutting large economy in the world, maybe a few more greens here and there will start thinking about how to spread the magic around.
I did post the last one to Facebook -- about how Fracking was saving the world and all the cute fuzzy critters which inhabit it. Not a peep in reply. I'd like to think I won them over with reason, but I fear they've just completely given up on me. (NO PORKY! BREATHE FROM THE DIAPHRAGM!)
Hat-tip: Instapundit, who nails it with "The problem is, the way we did it provided insufficient opportuinites for graft."
To the contrary, I presume Facebook silence to indicate complete agreement. Congratulations!
Posted by: johngalt at July 1, 2012 11:06 AMNo, I don't think "opportunities for graft - NOT" is it at all. I think the populist urge is "opportunities to be perceived as an elevated being by pursuing things that show how *I* am above greed." Which is of course, shorthand for wanting to vote for whatever really can't work.
Posted by: nanobrewer at July 2, 2012 1:30 AMYour point is well taken on the individuials, nb. But where the UN is involved, I would be slower to rule out "graft."
Posted by: jk at July 2, 2012 10:35 AMJune 26, 2012
Weather is not climate!
'Bout ready to sign up with VP Gore. . . This is our fourth or fifth day of 100+ which is very rare. It hasn't rained since last Thanksgiving or so, and the entire state is on fire. But -- as I am always reminded when I comment on cool weather -- "weather is not climate." Except, of course when it works for the other guys -- then it is a "dangerous portent of climate change."
So let's all cool down. It seems the Antarctic shelf is not melting (as predicted) and the temperatures around it are cooler than predicted. Huh? #COMPUTERMODELFAIL ?
It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.The team's results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted ...
Aaaah, Antarctic ice. . . I feel better. The quote is from the American Geophysical Union via The (UK) Register, via Lord Glenn of Knoxville.
UPDATE: 88° at 8:51 AM!
Indeed. Come home, Al, we need you!!!!!
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2012 12:48 PMFriends--any idea if the historic Heinlein house at 1776 Mesa Ave in Colorado Springs is in danger of being burned down? The Heinlein community is asking. Thought one of you might have access to details that I don't.
Posted by: Robert at June 27, 2012 12:53 PMThe short answer is no. That address is on the mountains side of I-25 so it is at risk from forest fire but the fire now burning is all north of Manitou Springs, according to Wundermap. (Search for the address then click the "FIRE" option box. Turn off smoke. Zoom out.)
The Heinlein home is just a quarter mile west of the Broadmoor Hotel and Resort. If it's ever in danger that is the landmark that will be mentioned.
Posted by: johngalt at June 27, 2012 2:09 PMThanks. I did track down a map from the Denver Post a little while ago that was reassuring on this point--if not for thousands of other people and their homes.
I only read the 1952 Scientific American article about the house for the first time a couple of months ago and am hoping it's still there when I visit. Colorado is my Dad's adopted home state and I am a big fan.
If you can take me by Galt's Gulch when I visit that would be a bonus!
Posted by: Robert at June 27, 2012 5:05 PMCORRECTION: The article was in Popular Mechanics. I don't know what I was thinking but I was way off. You can see it here: http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/pm652-art-hi.html
Posted by: Robert at June 27, 2012 5:34 PMNo, I think it was Vougue® . . .
Very, very cool. Anybody who fails to click will forever regret it.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2012 6:15 PMJune 21, 2012
Too Much Benefit of Doubt
Poor Bjorn Lombourg. He's gay, european, environmentalist, and a fulsome believer in Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe. He respects NGOs and clearly sees a significant role for the United Nations in environmental and economic.
And yet, because he is capable of reason, all his friends are right-wingers -- like me. He is persona non-grata in the rest of the environmentalist community.
But his unfortunate habit of truth telling concerns cost vs. benefit -- where is the best place to put scarce resources? His guest editorial in the WSJ today concerns that, but he takes a sharper than usual look at why people still pursue climate change more than other projects that would be more cost effective.
Why then, do U.N. elites focus all their efforts on a feeble attempt to assist one person before successfully preventing 210 deaths? Because global warming feels more important--more hip. The majority of people in wealthy countries have lived their entire lives with clean air, clean water and electricity supplied through a grid. Air and water pollution is just old hat.But surely "helping the world" isn't about making us feel good. It's about actually helping poor nations.
Nowhere are these misplaced priorities more apparent than in U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's favorite program, "sustainable energy for all," which has emerged as a key goal of this year's summit. The program aims to ensure that all people have access to energy, but it places an inordinate emphasis on "green" technologies.
Almost as if the UN was more interested in control and power than people and the environment...
June 16, 2012
Freeman Dyson on Climate Change
And how did I miss this? Freeman Dyson from 2007 on the need for heretics in Science.
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Perfect weekend reading length. Hat-tip: Ed Kreyewski in Reason.
June 10, 2012
Denver Post Scolds Sierra Club
Last week I noted that Sierra Club is preparing a "Beyond Natural Gas" advocacy effort as part of its "none of the above" energy strategy. Today the reactionary big-oil shills at the Denver Post editorial board joined my disapprobation.
The executive director of the influential environmental group recently wrote: "It's time to stop thinking of natural gas as a 'kinder, gentler' energy source."To be blunt, no, it is not time.
We are dismayed that this group is repositioning itself as an anti-gas group, going as far as to proclaim that it will lobby to stop all new gas-fueled power plants.
It seems to us that as market conditions and technological advances have led to a boom in availibility of cheap natural gas, the backtracking is born of fear — fear that this nation will come to rely on this "transitional fuel" as a long-term solution.
Disapprobation of environmental extremism deserves approbation. I don't say this every day but ... bravo, Denver Post, bravo.
Bravo, indeed!
Posted by: jk at June 10, 2012 1:38 PMJune 7, 2012
Beyond Magical Unicorn Farts
That is where the American environmental extremist group Sierra Club must intend to take American energy consumers.
On Monday I wrote about the use of natural gas as a political alternative to more prevalent and less costly coal as a source of electric power. That effort is supported by Sierra Club in their "Beyond Coal" campaign. But they aren't waiting for Phase I of Operation Nineteenth Century to be completed before launching Phase II: "Beyond Natural Gas." (Not "natural" enough?) Sierra's strategic coordination leaves much room for improvement.
Natural gas drillers exploit government loopholes, ignore decades-old environmental protections, and disregard the health of entire communities. "Fracking," a violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes. If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas. [Emphasis mine.]
After the requisite "what do you mean 'we' Kemosabe" the next thing I notice is how this message is designed to appeal to the feeler-perceiver contingent of the public but offers no evidence for the thinker-judgers among us. Fear, uncertainty and doubt anyone? Showing a glass of drinking water doctored with contaminants so expertly as to make Don Draper proud, the campaign against the hydraulic fracturing process seems to revolve mostly around the shorthand name for the method containing letters "F" and "K".
Blogger Jay F. Marks explains that Sierra Club took millions in donations from natural gas corporations for the purpose of bashing coal, but new Sierra Club director Michael Brune opened a new chapter in the war on reliable and affordable energy.
The Sierra Club once had a cozy relationship with the natural gas industry, taking more than $25 million in contributions from Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its subsidiaries to fund the fight against coal.Brune ended that relationship when he took over as the environmental group’s director in March 2010. He said the club originally worked with Chesapeake because staff and volunteers concluded natural gas might be a viable alternative to coal in electricity generation, but some local chapters developed increasing concerns about gas production.
Let's fast forward, shall we?
Incoming Sierra Club executive director Barnaby Owleton said today that building and maintaining thousands of acres of monstrously large industrial machines to convert wind to electricity is a thorougly discredited process and a clear danger to migratory birds across the nation. "Extinction of multiple species is not just a possibility, but a certainty, if we don't act immediately to move Beyond Wind."One or two election cycles later...
Woody Weederstein, in his first official statement as new Sierra Club director, slammed the solar electric energy industry for the consequences imposed upon the areas of our planet that are permanently and unavoidably shaded by solar power conversion panels. "In the name of all that is green" he said, "we as Americans have no moral choice but to move Beyond Solar."
And after they succeed in eliminating energy produced by magical unicorn farts the only remaining strategy to "save the planet" will be energy efficiency, which is just another name for rationing. I have a better idea: Hey Sierra Club - Frack off.
June 4, 2012
President Obama's War on Heat and Light
Last week I wrote about the Denver Post's utter bewilderment that presidential candidate Mitt Romney would give a stump speech in rural Craig, Colorado (after all, there haven't been any layoffs there ... yet) and countered with the news coverage of the event by Routt County's Steamboat Today.
Today that much more objective publication runs an editorial by Rob Douglas that delves deeper into the contrast that Governor Romney is offering.
Agree or disagree with Obama’s goal, one fact is undeniable. When Obama’s intent became public, every man and woman working in coal-related jobs realized that Obama had placed a bulls-eye on their livelihood. Many of those men and women call the Yampa Valley home.So when Romney sought the perfect venue to confront Obama’s claim of an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, Northwest Colorado was a natural choice. Romney is calculating that he can increase his odds in November by siding with folks employed in fossil fuel industries in states like Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania — all battleground states this year.
After all, Romney has a point when he argues that Obama has continued his war against coal.
This spring, having watched his cap-and-trade legislation die in the U.S. Senate when Democrats abandoned the bill in 2010, Obama bypassed Congress and used the Environmental Protection Agency to start implementing mercury emission, cross-state pollution and greenhouse gas regulations that will kill the coal industry.
But Douglas articulates a much more important message - one I have recognized but as yet not really written about: Coal is not the target. Pragmatic politicians cannot merely "sacrifice" the coal industry conifident in the fact that lost jobs will be replaced by growth in the natural gas industry. If coal is ever defeated the next environmental villain will be natural gas.
Coincidentally, on the same day Romney was speaking to the crowd gathered at Alice Pleasant Park in Craig, the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to the International Energy Agency, “global exploitation of shale gas reserves could transform the world’s energy supply by lowering prices, improving security and curbing carbon dioxide emissions, but the industry might be stopped in its tracks if it doesn’t work harder to resolve environmental concerns.”Of course, everything after the “but” in that last sentence is where the battle lies. Because as can be witnessed even here in the Yampa Valley, there are some who will never accept fossil fuels as part of America’s energy policy. And just as coal is under attack, these individuals and organizations are mounting battles to prohibit the use of fracking to extract oil and gas — the same oil and gas that Americans have been led to believe could replace coal as an energy source.
And hydraulic fracturing is only the first battlefront in the coming War on Natural Gas. That little "feature" of natural gas called "curbing carbon dioxide emissions" will be its undoing for natural gas is not without CO2 emissions, and once its use has been predicated on reducing that "pollutant" it can hardly remain a viable energy source since it can also be shown to be a "dirty" fuel.
"First they came for the coal, and I said nothing."
Not me. I *heart* coal.
May 31, 2012
Move along, nothing to see here
Mitt Romney made a whistlestop visit to Craig, Colorado on Tuesday after seeing this video, which was sent to him by Frank and Kerrie Moe, the hotel-owning couple who star in it. The event was covered by the Denver Post and Steamboat Today, and one is left wondering if the Post's Sara Burnett was at the same rally as was Steamboat Today's Scott Franz.
In 'Routt County Republicans meet Mitt Romney' Franz opens, "Nancy Buchner said the sour economy motivated her to drive to Craig on Tuesday morning to see Mitt Romney." But in 'Mitt Romney in Colorado calls for government as "ally of business" Ms. Burnett implies that everything's just peachy.
Unemployment in Moffat County was about 8.3 percent in April — higher than the state average, which increased slightly to 7.8 percent last month. But local miners and the mayor of Craig said the local coal industry has been stable, with no layoffs or reduced hours at the local mines or the power plant.
According to Franz, however, local resident Buchner sees life differently in the remote coal-mining and power generating town:
"We really believe Romney has the tools and the knowledge to get the economy going," Buchner said, adding that she only recently became politically active because of the economy. "When I talked to different people (at the rally), they were worried about money. People cannot get jobs. This is not an election to sit out." She said she doesn’t think President Barack Obama can turn the economy around.
Not to worry though, Burnett says:
The Obama campaign counters that the president's "all of the above" energy approach includes clean coal, as well as wind, solar, natural gas and other sources renewable energy sources. They also note the president made one of the most significant investments in development of clean coal technologies with $3.4 billion in stimulus funding.
Now, one has to wonder if Burnett and "the Obama campaign" agree with Al Gore who says "clean" coal "doesn't exist." Clearly this administration will spend billions of taxpayer dollars on something while at the very same time regulating it out of legal existence.
Merciful freaking Zeus! FOX31 did this story -- together with the "Amercia" typo -- as a "The Wheels are coming off the Romney Campaign" story. It seems production is up and unemployment is less than surrounding areas. Ergo, yes, everything is fine and Governor Romney is insane to suggest there are any problems. They were astonished that the campaign would not retract this obvious "lie."
I weep.
May 27, 2012
Eschew Sanguinity
On last week's post criticizing the City of Boulder's "Climate Change Preparedness Plan" brother JK glibly (sarcastically?) quipped that "if things get too warm here [in Weld County] I can drive right over the line [into Boulder County]" where presumably he'll be "saved" from the "deleterious" effects of global, or regional, umm county-wide climate change. Not so fast, dear friend. There's big trouble in little Nirvana.
Seems the CCPP is part of a larger Climate Action Plan (CAP) that is enabled by a voter-approved tax that expires next March. The tax collects $1.8 million annually for the City of Boulder's pet enviro projects. Apparently Boulder County thinks the city is on to something and they are contemplating a "sustainability tax" of their own. Boulder Daily Camera:
"I'm very concerned that if the county goes ahead, our CAP tax will stand a very good chance of losing," Mayor Matt Appelbaum said. "And that will just kill us. That will set us way back. It would be a huge loss for us if we lost the momentum. There are many programs that are just getting going."Councilwoman Suzy Ageton said the programs will "crash" if the tax is not renewed.
"We're going to go off a cliff if this doesn't pass," she said.
One wonders if Boulder County's "sustainability tax" will be more sustainable than Boulder City's CAP tax.
April 30, 2012
The Science is Settled!
Can't argue with satellite data:
New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.
Hat-tip: Instapundit.
April 29, 2012
We're Laughing At You...
In his commencement speech at Hamilton College on Sunday, former Vice President Al Gore told the graduates that global warming is "the most serious challenge our civilization has ever faced." But as an undergraduate at Harvard University in the late 1960s, Gore--one of the most prominent spokesmen on climate change today--earned a "D" in Natural Sciences.
Funny, Is it real? Do I care?
April 25, 2012
If I wanted America to Fail
Here we see that Francisco d'Anconia now has a contemporary counterpart with his own YouTube channel.
The 110,000 Million-Dollar Plan
A favorite TV show growing up was Lee Majors starring as the "Six-Million Dollar Man." After crashing the test flight of an experimental aircraft, Steve Austin was fitted with "bionics" that made him "better, stronger, faster." President Obama has been trying the same thing in America's energy market, with less success. Investors Ed Page says Obama Fought Oil and Lost; Now it's Back to Reality.
In other words, even a fast-forward to 23 years from now doesn't reveal an energy economy substantially different from today's. Obama has run up quite a price tag trying to deny this reality.By one recent estimate from analysts sympathetic to the green-economy agenda, the government spent $110.3 billion in tax credits, loans and grants to promote the green economy from 2009 to 2011.
The Obama administration also has leaned against oil and toward the environmental lobby whenever the two were in conflict -- most notably in his decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline. What do we have as a result? High gasoline prices, a bigger federal deficit and not-ready-for-prime-time electric cars.
Energy is bound to be one of the key issues in this year's presidential election, and for once the question won't be about managing scarcity. It will be about how to take advantage of the abundant resources under our feet. Barack Obama fought oil and lost, and the next president can learn from his mistake.
"So I'm supposed to be more upset by what Romney does with his own money than with what Obama is doing with mine."
That comment was one of two shared with me this morning in the aftermath of the GOP primary results from last night. It's a comment that probably ought to resonate with all of us here...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at April 25, 2012 5:03 PMApril 24, 2012
Nevermind!
Six years ago, James Lovelock, "the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his 'Gaia' theory of the Earth as a single organism" had some somewhat dark predictions:
He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.'s Independent newspaper, he wrote that "before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."
In my best Mr. Mackey voice, I'd say "That's bad, mmkay?"
But a big man can admit when he is wrong, and Lovelock has a new book coming out called "Nevermind." (Actually, that is my suggestion, it is not clear from the article if a title has been chosen.)
The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, "Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity," and "The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can."
Turns out, it was climate's old tricks. Who would have thought that a scientist of Lovelock's stature would fall for those?
"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books -- mine included -- because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said."The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said.
Come to think of it, if "Bull's-eye Jim" is not worried now, I am starting to be concerned...
UPDATE: I meant to do this as a segue. Bjorn Lomborg has a WSJ Editorial the same day on the importance of using economic data to steer environmental policy.
But in tackling humanity's biggest challenges--climate change, malaria, natural disasters, education--we need more economic science, not less. Cost-benefit analysis, in particular, is a far more effective and moral approach than basing decisions on the media's roving gaze or the loudness of competing interest groups.
Mea freaking culpa!
Posted by: johngalt at April 24, 2012 11:51 AMMarch 13, 2012
It's the price of gas, stupid
Keep it up Mister President. IBD's Andrew Malcolm:
Showing his keen grasp of free market forces, Obama has ordered Justice officials to investigate oil speculation. Of course, there's oil speculation. It's called the futures market. And watching Obama's policies instead of his words, those experts see higher prices coming ahead, as do most Americans in the poll.When taking office, Energy Secy. Stephen Chu expressed a desire to drive U.S. gas prices to the European levels of $8-$9 a gallon, much like taxation on cigarettes to discourage their use. This administration has achieved more than half that European goal already.
And voters are taking note:
A new Washington Post-ABC News Poll this week finds about two-out-of-three Americans now disapprove of the Chicago Democrat's job on gas prices, whatever that's been.
Maybe if he started reminding them he "killed bin Laden..."
The official Democratic talking point on this is "No Silver Bullet." The President said it in his speech and I heard two DNC representatives echo it.
Perhaps there's no single thing that would easily and immediately bring fuel prices down, but I can't help but feel if the administration stopped shooting them at every person or company that tries to produce energy, it would be a start.
And never underestimate the timeless electoral appeal of "The Republicans are coming for your ladyparts!"
Posted by: jk at March 13, 2012 4:25 PMMarch 8, 2012
Otequay of the Ayday
"And since 1979, an entire climate industry has grown up that has spent millions of human-hours applying that constantly increasing computer horsepower to studying the climate.And after the millions of hours of human effort, after the millions and millions of dollars gone into research, after all of those million-fold increases in computer speed and size, and after the phenomenal increase in model sophistication and detail ... the guesstimated range of climate sensitivity hasn't narrowed in any significant fashion. It's still right around 3 ± 1.5°C per double of CO2, just like it was in 1979." --Willis Eschenbach
In the linked article Eschenbach, a self-described amateur scientist and generalist, gives an overview of climate science since its beginnings circa 1979. Click continue reading for the discussion of computing power that preceeds this quote, and click on the first link to find in his conclusion the real reason for lack of progress. Hint: Check your premises.
So there you have it, folks. The climate sensitivity is 3°C per doubling of CO2, with an error of about ± 1.5°C. Net feedback is positive, although we don’t understand the clouds. The models are not yet able to simulate regional climates. No surprises in any of that. It’s just what you’d expect a NAS panel to say.Now, before going forwards, since the NAS report is based on computer models, let me take a slight diversion to list a few facts about computers, which are a long-time fascination of mine. As long as I can remember, I wanted a computer of my own. When I was a little kid I dreamed about having one. I speak a half dozen computer languages reasonably well, and there are more that I’ve forgotten. I wrote my first computer program in 1963.
Watching the changes in computer power has been astounding. In 1979, the fastest computer in the world was the Cray-1 supercomputer. In 1979, a Cray-1 supercomputer, a machine far beyond anything that most scientists might have dreamed of having, had 8 Mb of memory, 10 Gb of hard disk space, and ran at 100 MFLOPS (million floating point operations per second). The computer I’m writing this on has a thousand times the memory, fifty times the disk space, and two hundred times the speed of the Cray-1.
And that’s just my desktop computer. The new NASA climate supercomputer “Gaea” shown in Figure 1 runs two and a half million times as fast as a Cray-1. This means that a one-day run on “Gaea” would take a Cray-1 about seven thousand years to complete …
Now, why is the speed of a Cray-1 computer relevant to the NAS report I quoted from above?
It is relevant because as some of you may have realized, the NAS report I quoted from above is called the “Charney Report“. As far as I know, it was the first official National Academy of Science statement on the CO2 question. And when I said it was a “recent report”, I was thinking about it in historical terms. It was published in 1979.
Here’s the bizarre part, the elephant in the climate science room. The Charney Report could have been written yesterday. AGW supporters are still making exactly the same claims, as if no time had passed at all. For example, AGW supporters are still saying the same thing about the clouds now as they were back in 1979—they admit they don’t understand them, that it’s the biggest problem in the models, but all the same but they’re sure the net feedback is positive. I’m not sure clear that works, but it’s been that way since 1979.
That’s the oddity to me—when you read the Charney Report, it is obvious that almost nothing of significance has changed in the field since 1979. There have been no scientific breakthroughs, no new deep understandings. People are still making the same claims about climate sensitivity, with almost no change in the huge error limits. The range still varies by a factor of three, from about 1.5 to about 4.5°C per doubling of CO2.
Meanwhile, the computer horsepower has increased beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. The size of the climate models has done the same. The climate models of 1979 were thousands of lines of code. The modern models are more like millions of lines of code. Back then it was atmosphere only models with a few layers and large gridcells. Now we have fully coupled ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere-biosphere-lithosphere models, with much smaller gridcells and dozens of both oceanic and atmospheric layers.
Totally awesome analysis!
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at March 9, 2012 12:53 AMFebruary 22, 2012
"FakeGate"
That's the name given by Chicago's Heartland Institute to the attempted smear through forgery by global warming activist Peter Gleick. Heartland's official response, in part:
"An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with."A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.
"In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a "rational debate" from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.
Thanks for breaking ground on this. This is either a huge story or a huge story as to why it is not.
Megan McArdle was the first I saw to expose the faked docs, and she is still on fire. Here, Insty links to her and several other good posts/articles.
February 17, 2012
Not Taxed Enough, Yet
dagny shares a financial "article of the day" via email. "The interesting thing about this is the comments" she writes. "The majority of commenters seem to think that reducing business taxes (i.e. letting business keep the money they made) is a, 'handout,' or, 'corporate welfare.' Betcha they don't think that about refundable tax credits like the EIC."
And why wouldn't commenters such as Chicago's own "gsdfhdgjhfdhjjjjjkgkjgjks" believe that accelerated depreciation and an R&D tax credit are handouts to corporations. President Obama and groups like Clean Energy Works are turning the entire English language upside down:
A memo circulating from Clean Energy Works, an alliance of about 60 groups, outlines a strategy of framing tax benefits the industry receives as corporate welfare. The memo calls the messaging plan a "line of attack" to counteract the description of climate legislation as a national energy tax.(...)
"What they don't want anyone to know is that the American people already have a national energy tax -- The Big Oil Welfare Tax -- in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies to the wildly profitable big oil companies," the memo adds.
So first, "subsidies" to specific corporations equate to a "tax" on individuals. Well, I can see the logic here if the effects of economic growth spurred by a larger (and cheaper) energy supply and continued government spending on unrelated programs are ignored. But this misses the real point that taxing something less than it might be taxed can not in any sense be considered a subsidy. The government is taking wealth from wealth-producing companies. In English this is known as "taxation."
But even if one believes, as I do, that "Big Oil" should be taxed just as much as any other industry it is erroneous to examine a few specific tax categories where rates may differ and proclaim preferential treatment.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the industry's effective federal income tax rate is more than two-thirds higher than the average for all manufacturing industries.
Furthermore, those throwing stones at the oil industry over corporate welfare would do well to first look in the mirror, for the vast majority of them are vocal proponents of so-called "renewable" energy.
Another EIA study shows renewable energy industries enjoy double the incentives of those for oil and natural gas."
But punitive taxation is nothing new in America or anywhere else where wealth is produced and standards of living have been raised. And despite taking one-quarter or more of the freely created wealth of for-profit corporations and individuals, they still manage to keep working and producing and, getting the shaft. Our commenter from Chicago put it succinctly in the comments to the original article. In reply to a previous sarcastic comment which read:
"Nice. kick businesses in the teeth--the ones who hire the most-- and increase gov spending and deficits. Now THAT'S the way to make jobs!"
gsdfhdgjhfdhjjjjjkgkjgjks wrote:
Still works so far
Well, as long as our government is kicking job-producing business in the teeth:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/not-from-atlas-shrugged.html
The text from the bill now in Congress (or is that, "incongruous"?) includes the following text. Where have I read something like this again?
"(4) REASONABLE PROFIT.—The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale."
And people think Rand wrote fiction...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at February 17, 2012 4:34 PMKeep in mind, you'd be grouchy too if your parents had named you "gsdfhdgjhfdhjjjjjkgkjgjks"
Posted by: jk at February 17, 2012 5:32 PMFebruary 3, 2012
Quote of the Day
A reader emails Jay Nordlinger:
A while back we had some friends to dinner and got to talking about global warming. My friend -- a pediatrician -- is a down-the-line green believer convinced that Al Gore has it right and the rest of us are in denial. I -- with graduate degrees in physics and fluid mechanics / heat transfer -- am still somewhat skeptical, to say the least. His comment: "Well, I probably just have a different perspective on this because I have a technical background."
January 29, 2012
SKEPTICS: our (Chilly) Day has Come!
Yawn. Another bit of news contravening DAWG. But the source is noteworthy. Take it away, überskeptic Don Surber:
From Climategate Central: The skeptics were right
Forget global warming -- it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.
The supposed 'consensus' on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
East Anglia Climatic Research Unit...now where have I heard that name...
TIME Magazine: Gets it right half of the time.
Posted by: johngalt at January 30, 2012 2:51 PMYup -- just hang on to them for 40 years.
Posted by: jk at January 30, 2012 6:17 PMJanuary 27, 2012
Can't We All Get Along?
Two weeks from the Colorado Caucuses (just got my location: Coal Ridge Middle School in Firestone!) it is unlikely that ThreeSourcers will agree on a candidate.
Some have grown fond of LBJ's Press Secretary and GHWB's Economic Architect.
Don't get us started on immigration, drug legalization, or prostitution...
But I think everybody will like "Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic about Global Warming." It seems, mirabile dictu, that the science may actually not be settled after all:
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before--for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
Measured and professional -- yet pointed at the same time. You're all going to love it. I'm certain!
See ya at Coal Ridge. Lemme know if you need a ride.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at January 27, 2012 1:09 PMSounds interesting. I'm just worried we wouldn't have anything to talk about and the truck would be full of awkward silence...
Posted by: jk at January 27, 2012 2:22 PMR O F L M A O !
Posted by: johngalt at January 27, 2012 2:43 PMI second JG's sentiment!
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at January 27, 2012 2:55 PMY'all sure you've got the correct precinct numbers? 70 some-odd precinct boundaries (of 100 some-odd) were redrawn because of redistricting.
Verify your precinct here:
https://www.sos.state.co.us/Voter/secuVoterSearch.do
Determine your Weld GOP "District" here. You'll have to read through every precinct number for each district until you find yours.
http://www.weldgop.com/
Caucus locations are listed for each District.
And if you want to see the geographical outline of your precinct, it is here:
http://www.co.weld.co.us/Departments/ClerkRecorder/ElectionInformation/PrecinctMap.html
January 25, 2012
Jobs vs. Environment
Thousands of loggers lost their jobs in the American Northwest because of dubious claims about wiping out the last of the spotted owls. This is just one example of environmental extremists' non-linear cost benefit analysis doing irreparable harm to the livelihoods of American workers.
The latest glaring example of this is TransCanada Corporation's Keystone XL Pipeline project. Despite the safety record showing pipelines to be the "safest, most efficient and economical way" to move the natural resource called crude oil, environmental activists have chosen spill hazards as the primary reason to oppose private construction of the new pipeline. But America is already criss-crossed by 55,000 miles of oil pipelines, many of which are small, old and in disrepair. And the spill rate [pg. 9] for those lines is 0.00109 incidents (spill of 50 bbl or more) per mile per year. That calculates to 60 spills every year. The estimated spill rate for the modern new Keystone XL [pg. 10] is 0.186 spills per year, anywhere over its entire 1371 mile length. (.000136 incidents per mile per year)
So the question every American voter should ask himself is, would I quit my job and ask 19,999 of my neighbors to quit theirs in order to avoid increasing the pipeline spill incident rate by 0.3 percent? (And have you even noticed any of the sixty-odd spills that already happen each year?)
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. - Frantz Fanon
Three Sources should consider re-branding to "Three Sources of Cognitive Dissonance" ;-) Rationalize, ignore and deny anything that does not fit within your core beliefs. Spotted owls, fracking, deforestation, pollution, environmental degradation and job loss included. Cheers! ;-)
Posted by: J at August 8, 2012 5:22 PMJanuary 24, 2012
Keystone XL Pipeline Economic Impact is "Settled"
As luck would have it, President Obama actually saved US and Canadian energy companies billions of wasted dollars by using the power of the regulatory state to stop construction of their "disastrous" tar sands pipeline. How do I know this? Al Gore says so.
"The analysis from the final EIS, noted above, indicates that denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term." Source: Climate ProgressThis is an important win not only for the thousands of activists who risked arrest—and for the hundreds who went to jail--but for all of us who want to try and role [sic] back the effects of the climate crisis, not magnify them.
And who could doubt the objective fiscal evaluations of Climate Progress?
January 15, 2012
DAWG Update
Thought all that arctic ice was gone, didn't you?
The people of Nome, Alaska, know well what it takes to survive the long, cold winter in an isolated town. But a confluence of bad weather and other circumstances has left them lacking the fuel needed to heat homes and power vehicles. Now, America's lone Arctic icebreaker is carving a path to Nome that will bring relief to the city--but it also highlights the critical state of U.S. ice-breaking capabilities.
Hat-tip Instapundit
Never fear, DAWG "lives" on: Hail Could Vanish from Colorado's Front Range, Scientists Say
Future storms along the Front Range may become more intense and produce more hail inside clouds, the team found. However, because those relatively small hailstones fall through a warmer atmosphere, they melt quickly, falling as rain at the surface or evaporating back into the atmosphere.
Riiiight. Assumption upon assumption upon assumption leads to "findings." Science, I hardly knew ye.
Posted by: johngalt at January 15, 2012 6:28 PMNo hail? What will insurance adjusters do?
The humanity...
Posted by: jk at January 16, 2012 8:54 AMInsurance adjusters? Think of the roofing contractors. They'll go the way of a Bain Capital investment!
Posted by: johngalt at January 16, 2012 12:24 PMNovember 28, 2011
Smoking Gun Climategate 2.0 Quote of the Day
In a fair and honest world, my blog brother would be correct and the world would begin a serious reassessment of "Climate Science." I do not expect a multi-billion dollar international industry to fold up shop and go home. Yet I do wish there were a more honest news dissemination apparatus. True, none of the numerous emails in Climategate 1.0 or Climategate 2.0 explicitly say
Mike,Gosh! This is all a big hoax. Sure hope nobody ever finds out.
Love,
Phil
Therefore, everybody seems pretty convinced there is nothing to see there. One would have to use and understand the word epistemology.
If one of our dear ThreeSourcers would like to share something, they could do worse than this Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones
So when my FOI request came along, you were caught. You were legally required to produce data you couldn't locate. Rather than tell the truth and say "I can’t find it", you chose to lie. Hey, it was only a small lie, and it was for the Noble Cause of saving the world from Thermageddon. So you had David tell me the data was available on the web. You knew that was a lie. David, apparently, didn't realize it was a lie, at least at first. You hoped your Noble Lie would satisfy me, that I would get discouraged, and you could move on.
The entire letter is very good. Your lefty friends will not appreciate the site that hosts it nor its tone. But if the science is to be settled, the other guys will have to play like scientists.
Devastating. The tone? Polite, objective, reserved, and still a totally and completely devastating expose of "climate 'science' realpolitik."
In the realm of reality ours is a fair and honest world. "One may not cheat reality," Ayn Rand said. Celebrities may be cheated. Newsmen may be cheated. Even scientists can be cheated, for a time. Eventually, however, the peer review process will attract enough attention from enough serious challengers that the soundstage for their make-believe science shall come tumbling down upon the directors' heads.
Perhaps the NYTimes will report Dr. Jones' retirement.
Posted by: johngalt at November 28, 2011 3:11 PMFoolish me ... d'ya think I might have been more than a bit naive back then about climate "science" realpolitik?If that is "reserved," you have perhaps been reading ThreeSources too long :)
But I agree on the devastating part.
Posted by: jk at November 28, 2011 3:51 PMToo long? ThreeSources? Is that even possible?
Posted by: johngalt at November 28, 2011 5:03 PMSlightly less elegant but just as devastating, from Climategate 1.0:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/15/polar-bear-phil-jones/
November 27, 2011
Otequay of the Ayday
Happily, the left's pernicious, economy-destroying and false global warming ideology is collapsing under a growing body of evidence that the CO2 scare is a fraud.Who says we have nothing to be thankful for? -Investors Ed Page
Now if we can just get everybody to read IBD.
Posted by: jk at November 27, 2011 4:54 PMIt may not be on the weekday morning news shows or in cartoons for the kiddies, but the "dead DAWG" message is getting out to the public somehow.
Just 51 percent of Americans -- or one percentage point more than in 1998 -- said they worry a great deal or fair amount about climate change, Gallup's annual environment poll says.Posted by: johngalt at November 27, 2011 8:34 PM
Woohoo! Up to 49% are we? Break out the champagne!
I should save my swarmy sarcasm for Facebook lefties, but this is not a dead DAWG, it is more a wounded bear (polar? that would be cute -- little fuzzy white thing mauling everything in sight...)
...and drinkin' a Coke®...
Posted by: jk at November 28, 2011 1:05 PMClearly the link I shared above would have been more appropriate here. Still makes me laugh, two years later.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/15/polar-bear-phil-jones/
Posted by: Lisa M at November 28, 2011 7:31 PMNovember 22, 2011
QOTD II
I am afraid that Mike [Mann] is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead. -- Chris HornerSome call it ClimateGate2. A new batch of emails at FOIA.org
Noteworthy is that the quote is not of ["denier"] Chris Horner, but of a Mr. "Cook" who was corresponding with Mike Mann and other colleagues in the leaked emails. Even a pro-DAWG colleague thought Mann was "not letting the science move ahead!"
Posted by: johngalt at November 23, 2011 2:35 PMOctober 27, 2011
Solar Panels Don't Work
That's not my headline. It was written by solar industry CEO Ray Burgess.
If you listen to the mostly-Chinese manufacturers, solar panels work great. They can be expected to degrade about 0.5% a year. So that is how we build the economic models to finance, insure and subsidize the larger solar systems.In the real world, we are just starting to find out how bogus many of those predictions are. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that panels can degrade as much as 4.5% a year. Or more. Put that in your pro forma and see what your banker and insurance agent -- or Congressman -- say about that.
The author sells PV monitoring equipment and doesn't cite an actual NREL study; he cites an AOL page that points back to his own article.
I think the jury is still out on this one....
Posted by: nanobrewer at November 2, 2011 12:29 AMOctober 25, 2011
Quote of the Day
"If there was a completely unlimited resource then we may have been able to surmount the technical problems," [U.K.] Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne told the BBC. -- WSJ Ed PageIt seems global warming is really, really dead this time...but nobody has told my Boulder friends.
True 'nuff. Boulder [government's] latest bout of wishful thinking: Government takeover the electric utility will lead to "more renewables in the mix and energy innovation."
Posted by: johngalt at October 25, 2011 3:37 PMOh yes, and this exactly fifty-three weeks after I proclaimed the jig was up.
Posted by: johngalt at October 25, 2011 3:44 PMOctober 10, 2011
eppur si muove
The WSJ Ed Page goes grasping for a present day parallel to this tale
Mr. [Dan] Shechtman, who last week won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is credited with the discovery in 1982 of quasicrystals, patterned but nonrepeating atomic structures that resemble the mosaics found in medieval Islamic art. For observing under an electron microscope what the scientific community held to be a physical impossibility, Mr. Shechtman was accused of "bringing disgrace" on his lab. Linus Pauling, the chemistry (and peace) Nobelist, called the discovery "nonsense" and denounced Mr. Shechtman as a "quasi-scientist." It took two years before a scientific journal would deign to publish his findings..Today, Mr. Shechtman's observations have been fully validated and quasicrystals are beginning to have commercial applications. But his story is a reminder that a consensus of scientists is no substitute for, and often a bar to, great science. That's especially so when the consensus hardens into a dogmatic and self-satisfied enterprise
Those in the engineering field are familiar with the term Not Invented Here, describing the contempt heaped upon ideas that come from some department other than that of the favored bureaucrat. This story is the research science equivalent: Not Discovered Here.
Posted by: johngalt at October 10, 2011 3:10 PMOctober 6, 2011
Tele Spotting!
Robert Bryce offers Five Facts about Climate Change to match his WSJ Editorial. Alert viewers will note a handsome sunburst telecaster in the bookshelf behind him.
Do I get a free sandwich?
September 30, 2011
Quote of the Day
So, in recent days, I've been arguing over whether, as the political Left claims, the political Right is anti-science. Needless to say, commentators of the Left disagree with me. Responses ranged from name-calling and indignation (which are fairly common), to the Left's new answer to charges of hypocrisy, which is to declare all criticism to be "false equivalencies." Apparently, false equivalencies are like Hebrew writing, traveling only from Right to Left. -- Kenneth P. Green
September 19, 2011
BURN THE HERETIC!
It seems that 1973 physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever has fallen from the fold. The WSJ Ed Page reports that he "resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest over the group's insistence that evidence of man-made global warming is 'incontrovertible.'"
In an email to the society, Mr. Giaever--who works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute--wrote that "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . . . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."Mr. Giaever was an American Physical Society fellow, an honor bestowed on "only half of one percent" of the members, according to a spokesman. He follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."
I am in the middle of another pop science book, the fun but überchallenging "The Shape of Inner Space -- String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" by Shing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis. And once again I am amazed that more real scientists do not object to the lack of rigor and political hijacking allowed in "climate science." The suppression of disagreement alone would be unthinkable in any other discipline.
August 22, 2011
Hank Reardon, Call Your Office
Ken Salazar's Interior Department moves to prevent Exxon from developing a billion-barrel oil field it discovered in deep water Gulf of Mexico in 2007. Because of feared oil spills? No. Because it might impair the mating habits of the Gorite-dwelling shoestring eel? No.
Employing an extreme technicality, these regulators claimed that Exxon's request in 2008 for a short suspension of activity to upgrade and make safer its drilling operation amounted to an abandonment of three of its five permits, simply because Exxon hadn't signed a contract with another partner, Chevron, by the time the suspension was completed.In the past, such glitches were no problem — after all, it's obvious Exxon, which spent $300 million on exploratory wells, hasn't abandoned the operation.
But in the Obama era, which demonizes oil production in American waters by American companies, the bureaucrats came up with this permit technicality to effectively expropriate the entire operation.
I would say "unbelievable!!" but sadly nothing is anymore when it comes to this bullpucky.
Posted by: Terri at August 22, 2011 3:47 PMThis was a day in the WSJ Ed Page's Week in the life of the Obama Recovery
Consider the headlines only from last week, a slow week by Washington standards, with Congress out of session and President Obama campaigning for three days before going on vacation. Even in the dog days of August, your government was hard at work undermining economic confidence.
Holler if you would like it mailed over the pay wall, it is devastating. Posted by: jk at August 22, 2011 3:54 PM
Nope, I got it, and had read it first thinking you missed a ht to the WSJ, but then compared the quotes. Same song. Same, sad, sad, song.
Posted by: Terri at August 22, 2011 7:21 PMGOP Answer to Climate Change
Climate Change is fraught with peril for the GOP. The best news about this country's complete economic meltdown is that many of the small potatoes issues have been tabled.
But Climate Change will be back. My Man, Jon Huntsman, thinks it's real and I confess I cannot get very excited when a Republican talks it up. OTOH, as texting economists say, I realize that any answer I would like will enrage the press and turn off huge swaths of moderates.
Kenneth P. Green at The American suggests a non-dogmatic answer and provides it free of charge to any of the candidates. They could do much worse, and as Speaker Thomas B Reed would quip, they probably will:
Since Jefferson's time, we've known that people can change the climate locally, regionally, and maybe even globally. Heck, any farmer knows we change the local climate! But activists have so muddied the issue by jiggering the data, suppressing dissent, predicting armageddon, and blaming every pooped-out polar bear on climate change it's hard to know what's real and what's hype.
They want to centrally plan the economy, but won't be honest about what they don't know. When pushed, leading climate scientists admitted they "lost" a bunch of their original data -- that's right, the dog ate it! Now they tell us aliens might wipe us out because of our greenhouse gas emissions!
Aliens!
Well, I don't believe that. What I do believe is that centrally planning our economy would be a disaster that would harm people and the planet. If the climate changes, we'll deal with that, but it will be by moving forward, not back to the caves
Megan McArdle gives a more balanced than you'll see most places look at the dangers of rigid belief.
What these Republicans are doing to people like Chris Christie is no better than what Harvard did to Larry Summers when he suggested that it was possible that women had a different IQ distribution than men. Facts are not good or bad; they are correct or incorrect. And a policy based on hysterical refusal to consider all possible facts is neither good, nor correct.
If someone is wrong about the facts, you should explain to them, calmly and concisely, why they are wrong. If it's really that obvious, it shouldn't be hard to convince them.
When people start trying to expel heretics because of disagreements over facts, it suggests that they suspect--even know--that the facts are not on their side. Which is, frankly, what I tend to think is happening here. If open argument is going to force your ideology to confront uncomfortable facts, you create a closed circle that the facts can't penetrate. If the circle is big enough, the geocentric universe gets a few hundred more years before the defensive perimeter cracks.
Fraught with peril. Even with the momentum shifting towards the DAWG deniers, I cannot imagine that one will be elected in 2012.
UPDATE:
Mr. Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to Beijing, began his candidacy stressing his resume and his attractive family. With that getting him nowhere in a year when issues trump biography, he's now attacking fellow Republicans for, among other things, not embracing the science of global warming. "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," Mr. Huntsman said on Twitter, a criticism of recent remarks by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Mr. Huntsman followed that up on Sunday on ABC, telling Jake Tapper that the GOP has a "serious problem" when it becomes "anti-science." -- Paul Gigot
The bandwagon might suddenly feel 250 lbs. lighter...
Thou art nothing if not fair and objective, dear brother. A germane update if there ever was one.
To the historical footnote we know as Jon Huntsman I reply, "Global Warming is anti-science, not the GOP. If you knew anything about science you would know this, and would also know better than to believe that everything said by a scientist is supported by science."
Posted by: johngalt at August 23, 2011 2:58 PMJuly 28, 2011
In Other News, Global Warming is B******t!
Predicted readings of the computer models do not seem to match the experimental data:
In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.
When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.
As a dear Facebook friend will say "we can't be wasting our time with predictions -- we should be out fixing the planet!"
Hat-tip: Instapundit Sharp Insty readers have already noticed that the idiot who started the "global warming is killing all the polar bears" meme is under investigation.
Well it made Fox News.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at July 29, 2011 2:07 PMAnd Taranto's BOTW.
Posted by: jk at July 30, 2011 8:55 AMJuly 6, 2011
"Go Green" for World Government
Colorado's GOP candidate for governor last year was ridiculed for suggesting that the UN had designs on World Government. Now a new UN report admits it.
The press release for the report [calling for a "technological overhaul" "on the scale of the first industrial revolution" to reach a "goal of full decarbonization of the global energy system by 2050"] discusses the need "to achieve a decent living standard for people in developing countries, especially the 1.4 billion still living in extreme poverty, and the additional 2 billion people expected worldwide by 2050." That sounds more like global redistribution of wealth than worrying about the earth’s thermostat.
The entire article is a series of jaw-dropping objectives from Turtle Bay. It's worth a click.
If the Obama Administration is liberty's Imperial Cruiser, the United Nations is its Death Star.
Dude, Where's my Warming?
As a guy with a medical reason to hate hot weather, I should be a little less flippant. The headline in the NYTimes will read: "Globe warms, MS patients hardest hit."
But that warming -- the very 'W' in DAWG -- remains elusive. While real scientists would be forced to rethink their theory, model, or measurements, "climate scientists" are allowed to look backwards and engage in a bit of ass-covering that is not available to other disciplines.
Or, as Kenneth P. Green puts it "Just another example of the endlessly shape-shifting, non-falsifiable world of politicized climate science."
Comes now the National Academy of Sciences, which yesterday published a new paper that sets out to explain "why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008." Apparently the NAS didn’t get the memo from the Center for American Progress that we're not supposed to acknowledge that global warming has not happened over the last decade.
But not to worry. The NAS has it covered. As the rest of the abstract explains:
Yet to question them is to expose yourself as ign'nt...
June 20, 2011
Intolerant, Monolithic, Science Deniers!
Some ThreeSourcers, myself included, may have to stare long and hard into the mirror after reading this Kenneth P. Green piece in the American.
Playing into my original DAWG strategy, Green, who claims he knows 99% or the deniers, calls them rainbow-climatists. Do you question D, A, W, or G?
Some disputed scientific claims about the exact level of climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases. Others disputed this or that climate feedback assumption. Others accepted that climate change was real, but probably not too bad. Some were simply skeptics in the old-fashioned sense of rejecting soothsayers and doom prophets, computerized or not. Still others might have bought most of the green-climatist orthodoxy, and held that climate change was real, partly human-caused, and likely harmful, but they differed regarding policy prescriptions.
Against these diverse skeptics was always a coordinated, monolithic front of doom. Bjorn Lomborg questioned the amplitude of D and was excommunicated without inquest or trial.
But Green sees that growing on the right as elections near.
Over at climatedepot.com, and, apparently in the Rushbo zone, there is a new tone of intolerance when it comes to diversity of climate opinion: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Chris Christie (hail the redeemer of fat guys from New Jersey!) have all been slammed recently for being taken in by the great climate con, and are basically being written off as viable candidates on the right. The Right has refined their tolerance equation to match that of the Left: "you're either with us or against us."
A little skepticism of skepticism might be correct -- and far more palatable to a moderate electorate.
Here I am, hat in hand, asking for permission to declare that keeping slaves is "intolerable." So this makes me morally equivalent to those who claim it is compulsory?
OK, perhaps he's not claiming a moral equivalence... only an electoral equivalence. Politics sucks.
Posted by: johngalt at June 21, 2011 12:13 AMIt does on occasion, but I read Green's piece differently.
Green, despite his unfortunate eponymy, is a denier par excellence and I think the warning is philosophical. While gaping holes have been blown in the theory, it is too far to claim that it has been disproven in all forms. There is a chance that CO2 is harming the planet, even if not in the means, intensity, or time scale that its proponents predict.
Forgetting politics, I think it is a philosophical mistake to dismiss anyone because they believe at some level. Remembering politics again, I'd sure want to hear exactly what they thought we should do. But it should not be a dealbreaker, philosophically or politically -- I think Green is right on that.
Trying to jump straight to the point: I'll never dismiss anyone's scientific theory any further than I can disprove it, i.e. "That doesn't make sense to me, I'd like to run some tests" or "This experimental outcome proves that your theory is full of male bovine excrement." What I, and I'd think you, object to vehemently is a top-down centrally controlled "Apollo mission to save humanity" which, wouldn't you know, requires scads of taxes and prohibitions to bring about. No. If there really were a "consensus" on this or that end-of-the-world scenario there would be no shortage of voluntary cooperation. When people are truly convinced that the end is near unless they pay 5 bucks for gas they'll do it without complaint.
Posted by: johngalt at June 21, 2011 2:32 PMJune 18, 2011
The Epistemological Case Against DAWG
These very pages have called the death knell of anthropogenic warming several times. "That's it," says we, "how can they continue after such-and-such?" But Freddy Krueger's got nothing on environmental science. It never goes away.
Were Milton Friedman around, he'd point out that they have seized the commanding heights. Academia, government, media and entertainment are captive to climate science. But climate science (resist the scare quotes...fight it) has no conclusive proof. To the contrary, most of the empirical evidence contravenes their predictions.
Yet, as leaked somewhat in the Climategate emails, the entire peer-review process is captive to a single side of the discussion. The only thing they can claim is consensus -- the bulk of peer reviewed science agrees with their position. Patrick Michaels takes to the pages of his Forbes blog to show just how unscientific the peer review process has become. "Publishing in the scientific literature is supposed to be tough." But not for climate science:
In order to limit any bias caused by personal or philosophical animosity, the editor should remove your name from the paper and send it to other experts who have no apparent conflict of interest in reviewing your work. You and the reviewers should not know who each other are. This is called a "double blind" peer review.Well, this is "the way it is supposed to be." But in the intellectually inbred, filthy-rich world of climate science, where billions of dollars of government research money support trillions of dollars of government policy, peer review has become anything but that.
There is simply no "double blindness." For reasons that remain mysterious, all the major climate journals leave the authors' names on the manuscripts sent out for review.
For instance, you can just add 0.3 mm a year to the measured sea levels. OMG We're all going to drown!
This began as the sort of erudition one least expects to find at a place called NASCARretards.com. Then you cited Faux News and restored our cred.
So we're supposed to believe that global sea levels can be measured with such precision that 0.3 mm (the thickness of a fingernail) makes any difference?
What's lost in the 2nd story is the impending mortal crisis that is - Global Land-Mass Rebound.
Posted by: johngalt at June 18, 2011 5:06 PMHeh. I have several domain names set to expire and I was thinking I would let nascarretards.com go. If anybody likes it, I could easily be talked into renewing (it really does have some sizzle to it), but I shop at GoDaddy like Imelda Marcos at a Jimmy Choo sale and I am "thinning the heard" this year.
Posted by: jk at June 19, 2011 11:03 AMI've started giving it out instead of threesources on the logic that it is more memorable.
(The funny thing is it took me a long time to realize it was actual rather than just a joke.)
Posted by: johngalt at June 19, 2011 12:16 PMJune 13, 2011
Mo DAWG Denyin'
Brother jg posted this awesome James Taylor piece both on ThreeSources and on Facebook. The Facebook post spawned a lengthy back and forth between me and a two-letter-sobriqued fellow several of us know. JG had the wisdom to avoid porcine singing instruction but I did not. "No. breathe from the diaphragm, Porky!"
Ed Morrissey tees it up with a segue to a superb piece in the Financial Post:
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, '80s and '90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.
This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
At this point, official "climate science" stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory -- that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.
This was the heart of my futile argument. I'm reading Quantum Man, a story of the superbly interesting Richard Feynman by Lawrence M. Krauss. This is the third pop-science cosmology book I've cracked since the first Facebook thread, and it is comical to compare real science with climate science. In Quantum Man, the frequency of a tertiary line in the hydrogen spectrum is off by one part in ten million, and the theory is scrapped until it can be fixed.
In climate science, they are not quite so circumspect. They predict ten years without snow; when they get the two most snow-filled winters in the UK, they say "see, that proves it!"
From the bridge, Porky. Enunciate!
June 3, 2011
Germany *HEART* Coal!
As a wild-eyed capitalist I've bragged before about how I love coal as an energy source. Now, we can add PhD physicist and Prime Minster of Germany, Angela Merkel to my club. NY Times: Germany, in Reversal, Will Close Nuclear Plants by 2022
"If the government goes ahead with what it said it would do, then Germany will be a kind of laboratory for efforts worldwide to end nuclear power in an advanced economy," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "No other country in the world is taking those steps."
I would call it a laboratory for something else - economic self-destruction.
The powerful Federal Association for German Industry, known as B.D.I., sent a letter on Monday morning to the chancellery, warning her about the consequences for German business."How will the international competitiveness of German industry be guaranteed?" Hans-Peter Keitel, B.D.I.’s president, wrote. "Industry last year accounted for two-thirds of Germany’s economic upswing."
What could possibly go wrong?
Hat Tip: Wikipedia's "in the news" section. (I sure didn't read it first in the Times.)
UPDATE: The reader may wonder at my connecting this Times story to coal, since it never mentions that fuel which provides half of Germany's electricity. It was, however, mentioned in a reference cited in the Wiki entry. There's also a picture of the very down-to-earth Environment Minister who dismisses more cautious and practical energy strategies. Minister Tritten:
"Ten years ago people told us that there would never be enough capacity to have a relevant share produced by wind - now the same people tell me we have too much wind, and have to export electricity because we have such a huge share of wind energy," he stated."So I can't take these arguments seriously."
He stressed he was "convinced" Germany would reach its target.
And he dismissed Dr Pfaffenberger's concerns about cost out of hand.
"He is wrong - simple," he said.
"To hear such arguments from people who haven't learned anything in the last half century - I am very calm on that."
May 26, 2011
Climate Rapture
To piggyback on the well-known "end of the world" story in the news last week I wanted to write something that showed the formulaic identity between doomsday preachers in Christianity and in science, and how both groups of fortune tellers want to empty the wallets of the gullible. Better yet, I decided to wait and watch for someone more eloquent to take up the assignment. Heartland Institute's James Taylor obliges.
Much like Camping is now claiming his May 21 Christian rapture prediction was essentially accurate, but that he was merely a few months off regarding the timetable (news alert: beware October 21, 2011!), the alarmists are now claiming their failed North Pole predictions were essentially accurate, but merely a few years off regarding the timetable. They now claim the Arctic Ocean will be essentially ice free by the year 2020 or 2030. Don't bet on it.
Taylor closes with an important, sad difference that even I had failed to consciously notice.
The list of failed predictions regarding global warming raptures is no less extensive than the list of failed predictions regarding Christian church raptures. There is one important difference, however. The Harold Campings of the world reside outside the Christian mainstream. Among global warming alarmists, the serially wrong rapturists define the mainstream.
How sweet is this for a Facebook headline: "James Taylor says that global warming alarmists have egg on their faces!"
"Global Warming Prognosticators: 'I've Seen Fire, and I've Seen Rain, and I've Seen Melting Icecaps'"
Posted by: Keith Arnold at May 26, 2011 3:08 PMSomebody did a great and similar riff: how [the author] wished that the failed predictions of the Stimulus were given as much media attention. I'll link if memory returns.
James Taylor looks somehow a lot younger and un-hipper than I recall. I'm going to suggest a stern "read the whole thing" that jg was too polite to include.
Posted by: jk at May 26, 2011 3:08 PMMay 15, 2011
Again? Still? Really?
Yesterday: Climate Change Activists Rally In Denver
The goal is to have the atmosphere declared for the first time as a "public trust" deserving special protection. That's a concept previously used to clean up polluted rivers and coastlines, although legal experts aren't sure if it can be successfully applied to climate change.Congressman Jared Polis attended. Actresses Daryl Hannah and Sheryl Lee were also there.
"I think it's really inspiring that kids are leading the fight against the climate crisis, but I also think it's very heartbreaking," Hannah said.
Well if somebody as famous as Daryl Hannah... Oh, wait.
Former "alarmist" scientist says Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) based in false science
Blogger Bruce McQuain writes on HotAir about climate scientist David Evans who said, "I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic."
McQuain: "And with that he begins a demolition of the theories, premises and methods by which the AGW scare has been foisted on the public." It is a well written compilation of devastating excerpts. Further editing would be deleterious.
In addition to Ms. Hannah and my esteemed Congressional Representative, the video shows tens -- dozens maybe -- of students and climate activists. For our non-Colorado readers, I must point out that it was more than 20 degrees below normal temps yesterday.
Weather isn't climate, but the Gore Effect is the one empirically repeatable manifestation of the crisis.
May 4, 2011
Wind Power Blows
Scotland's John Muir Trust (yes, that John Muir) has supported a study which concludes that wind turbines "cannot be relied upon" to produce significant levels of power generation.
Statements made by the wind industry and government agencies commonly assert that wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year, it said.But the research found wind generation was below 20% of capacity more than half the time and below 10% of capacity over one third of the time.
But industry [damn, it sure feels good to call these environmentalist loons "industry"] spokesmanperson Jenny Hogan, director of policy for Scottish Renewables, was quick to defend the shortcomings of wind power saying, "No form of electricity worked at 100% capacity, 100% of the time."
"It could be argued the trust is acting irresponsibly given their expertise lies in protecting our wild lands and yet they seem to be going to great lengths to undermine renewable energy which is widely recognised as one of the biggest solutions to tackling climate change - the single biggest threat to our natural heritage."We have yet to hear the trust bring forward a viable alternative to lower emissions and meet our growing demand for safe, secure energy."
Climate WHAT? Oh yeah, that.
Hat Tip: A side link from JK's UPDATE.
You're just one of those troglodytes that has yet to accept that The days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end, the head of the power network said yesterday.
Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available, rather than constantly, said Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid. Mr Holliday was challenged over how the country would "keep the lights on" when it relied more on wind turbines as supplies of gas dwindled. Electricity provided by wind farms will increase six-fold by 2020 but critics complain they only generate on windy days.
Mr Holliday told Radio 4's Today programme that people would have to "change their behaviour". "The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030," he said. "We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It is going to be much smarter than that.Posted by: jk at May 4, 2011 3:23 PM
Britons in this "smarter" world will no doubt have to learn to eat when there is food, drink when there is water and be warm when the sun is out.
Posted by: jk at May 4, 2011 3:28 PMStop. Yer killin' me! I'm not supposed to laugh this hard.
Posted by: johngalt at May 4, 2011 5:14 PMOn a more serious tangent, Britons will also soon learn to vote for politicians who promise power "all the time" over "smart" power that goes away when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
Posted by: johngalt at May 4, 2011 8:17 PMApril 23, 2011
Romantic Comedy
It's been written a few times already. But I want to buy the film rights to "DealBreaker!" A tender tale of a DAWG-denyin' race car driver and his earth muffin girlfriend:
[...]one day, I logged on and saw that he had weighed in on a virtual debate and assumed a staunch position."Global warming isn't scientifically proven," he wrote.
WHAT??? Does he think the world is flat, too? I thought in horror. I'm from California. I've been recycling and saving dolphins since I was in the womb. Suddenly, memories came rushing back to me like a horrible movie montage: The arguments we had about hybrid cars--he contended that it didn't make a damn difference, since car companies still pollute in other ways. I thought he was just defensive about his decidedly not-green race car. And the way he would constantly rib on Al Gore, even after "An Inconvenient Truth" won the Academy Award... He was always so skeptical about the merits of organic food, too. And, hey, did he even have a recycling bin?!
Ergo, the ex will remain an ex, but in my story...
Hat-Tip: Instapundit, of course.
"Even after 'An Incovenient Truth' won the Academy Award."
Reminds me of the 'House' episode when, on clinic duty, House tells the vegan hippie chick her boyfriend has been "cheating on her" with *gasp* BEEF!
Posted by: johngalt at April 23, 2011 10:05 AMApril 20, 2011
Hybrid and Electric Cars Suck
My dad recently emailed us a column from an engineering trade rag that bore the same title as this post.
So I am not going green with a hybrid/electric. No offense to Prius owners who are doing their part. It is just not for me. I am sticking with a regular gasoline car that gets good mileage but also has good performance. My other car, a 2010 VW GTI is one of those. It is a blast to drive. The 0 to 60 time is sub-6 seconds and it gets 31/32 mpg on the highway. Cost only $25K too. A real winner.
My dear Hawaiian auntie asked, "Does anyone know how much it costs to "fill one of these cars up with electricity"? I've never seen a quote,only how far you can drive & how long it takes to charge them. I realize it depends on how much your electrictricy costs are,but I've never even seen any estimates. Also how many windmills is it going to take to make all this extra electricity. Just wondering."
She's right. The only time the "fill-up" cost is ever talked about they just say "a few dollars." So I did some calculating from data I found at Wikipedia for the Nissan LEAF. [Yes, I know it's a bit long winded but I think you'll enjoy this.]
The Nissan LEAF has a 24 kwh (kilowatt hour) battery. At 10 cents per kwh and assuming perfect conversion of line current to DC and then battery charge the cost to charge the battery from empty would be $2.40.But it isn't just the cost of the charge that needs to be evaluated. There's also the TIME to recharge.
On 240VAC 30 amp circuit the charge time is 8 hours. On 115VAC 15 amp household outlet the charge time would be about 4 times as long, or 32 hours. They provide this type of charging for "convenience use when making stops or for emergency charging." They tell you to count on about 5 miles of range per HOUR of charge time by this method. Nissan has developed a fast charger that can fully refuel 80% of the 100-mile range of a LEAF in ... 30 minutes. You can buy one for $16,800. (Be careful though, because "Nissan warns that if fast charging is the primary way of recharging, then the normal and gradual battery capacity loss is about 10% more than regular 220-volt charging over a 10-year period.")
IT'S JUST ALL SO COMPLICATED!!!
Enviros and 'Lectric car apologists will try to tell you that all of these limitations are just because the technology is "new" and it will improve rapidly as more people buy the things and by becoming mainstream the car companies will compete with each other and solve all the problems. But electric cars are NOT new. I rode in one in Denver that dad took from the University to Cinderella City to show off to normal people. That was about 40 years ago. FORTY!
Why can gasoline engines get the same range on a couple gallons of gasoline that 'Lectrics get on 32 hours worth of power into the biggest electric heater you can plug into your wall socket? Even though gasoline engines are less than a quarter as efficient as electric motors? Because gasoline has a TREMENDOUS energy content.
I'll quote from a blog post I wrote in July 2008:
"A single gallon of gasoline contains 131.76 megajoules of energy, compared to 2.1 megajoules in a stick of dynamite. 1 gallon of gas therefore equals 63 sticks of dynamite.
An average lightning bolt releases 500 megajoules, or 3.8 gallons of gasoline energy."Now, going full circle back to the Nissan LEAF ... that 24 kwh battery pack it carries can hold 86 megajoules. That's 0.65 gallons of gasoline. (86 MEGAjoules sounded like a lot for a second there, didn't it!) Cost to fill up: $3.69 per gallon equivalent. Well, at least it's got that in common with gasoline powered cars.
I been thinkin' 'bout this...
1) You left Chevy Volt Catches Fire, Again out of an otherwise comprehensive post.
2) I just bought a battery for the mister2. Fossil that I am, I winced when AutoZone® said $102. Hybrid buyers are warned that they will have to replace the batteries in five-seven years. I don't think many internalize that and I suspect fewer consider that prices for replacement and disposal might escalate in that time.
I picture seven year old Prii being worth as much as my old HP inkjet printer with empty ink cartridges. A clever person might innovate a better third party replacement by then. But it is a Beta none include in calculations.
Part of my original email to auntie that was left on the 3Srcs cutting room floor was this from the Wiki page:
"It is estimated that each battery pack costs Nissan US$18,000 (as of May 2010[update]), and this cost is expected to be halved by mass production."Posted by: johngalt at April 21, 2011 12:13 PM
I think it will be halved -- but by Schumpeterian gales, not "mass production." Batteries? They don't mass-produce those?
I wonder if the new packs will retrofit, how much people will pay for scheduled maintenance on a five year old car, and whether disposal of the old packs might become pricey. (We're reaching a point where you pay as much to dispose of your old flat-screen TV than to buy the new one.)
These are the Bic® lighters of cars, are they not?
April 4, 2011
Budget Cuts with a Purpose
Not only does this recommendation by forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania hold promise for reducing the federal budget deficit, it could also reduce energy costs across the board nation wide.
The three researchers audited the forecasting procedures used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose "procedures violated 81% of the 89 relevant forecasting principles," Armstrong noted.Armstrong and his colleagues recommend Congress end government funding for climate change research as well as other research, government programs, and regulations that assume the planet is warming. They also recommend Congress cease funding organizations that lobby or campaign for global warming.
"Based on our analyses, especially with respect to the violations of the principles regarding objectivity and full disclosure," Armstrong told members of Congress, "we conclude that the manmade global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement."
New Energy's Failure to Launch
Some may know that Colorado's latest ex-governor has golden-parachuted into academia in Colorado State University's "Center for the New Energy Economy." Today I learned that ex-guv Ritter's salary as the director there is $300,000 per year. (No word on the pension details.) But the news here is not his ridiculous salary. Rather, it is his apparently complete lack of knowledge on the subject of his office. He recently attended an organized debate at NYU where he and a "new energy" partner attempted to persuade some of the 33 percent undecideds in the audience of the premise: "Clean energy can drive America's economic recovery." From Vince Carroll in the Denver Post:
Before the Oxford Union-style debate, 46 percent of the audience registered support for the proposition, 21 percent were opposed and 33 percent were undecided. Afterward, opinion had made a dramatic shift, to 43 percent in favor, 47 percent against and 10 percent undecided.And no wonder. Ritter and his colleague, Kassia Yanosek of the U.S. Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance, relied upon anecdote, personal experience and hopeful thinking more than hard data — and seemed frustrated the other side kept rattling off facts.
So Ritter was so "persuasive" that over two-thirds of the undecideds left the debate agreeing with his opponents. He even managed to scare off one in twelve of those who came in already agreeing with him. I think Carroll closed this story best: "The New Energy Economy is a catchy slogan for a political campaign. But it leaves something to be desired as a substitute for substance."
April 3, 2011
Tentativeness in Science and Public Policy
My involvement in several DAWG debates on Facebook prompted me to look up examples of historic scientific errors. I found the 2004 article Error and the Nature of Science by University of Minnesota historian and philosopher of biology, Dr. Douglas Allchin.
Allchin, who appears to have been an adherent to the climate change "consensus" at the time, gives what appears to be a thorough list of possible sources of error in science. He calls it a "spectrum of error types." Among them are perceptual bias, reasoning error, overgeneralization, and "fraud, faulty peer review, and other mistaken judgements of credibility." Okay, so I'm very intrigued by this point. Here is a science historian looking for ways to protect and defend the reputation and validity of the scientific method, not just from those with an anti-science agenda (religionists) but from the errors of incompetent or unethical scientists.
But what is the intent of this analysis? It seems a clue can be found in the summary statement of the "spectrum of error types" where he writes,
The remedy for tentativeness in science is active analysis of potential errors, guided by an awareness of error types. Analysis may qualify the scope or certainty of conclusions and guide policy accordingly.
Earlier the author uses tentativeness as a euphemism for the inherent uncertainty in science. So in his summary he wants a "remedy" for the absense of the power of science to "guide policy" through greater "certainty of conclusions."
So what began as, in my estimation, a rejection of the influence of democratic principles (consensus) in science evolved into a suggestion of absolutism in science instead. Katie bar the door!
In the case of global warming mankind has been fortunate in that, since 2004, evidence of one of Allchin's most egregious error types has come to public light through Climategate. It is frightening to contemplate how much greater the political consensus could have been by now without that revelation.
Good science is not the subject of a majority vote. Ask Galileo. And that applies even more today, when the votes of so many members of the so-called "consensus" have been bought with grants, manufactured through the bias of doctrinaire political agenda, or produced by peer browbeating.
Global warming - or climate change, or whatever this month's current euphemism is - either is happening or is not, and no amount of tracts, broadsides, and soundbites is going to change that; Mother Nature reads neither Newsweek nor the polls. I assert it's not, and that anyone saying otherwise is a fraud.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at April 4, 2011 11:43 AMEppur si muove: the only answer to those who claim "consensus."
Posted by: jk at April 4, 2011 12:55 PMKeith, there is no question that climate change is occurring. There's also no question that it's been occurring since the planet first manifested 4 billion or so years ago.
The real issue is whether or not climate change is man-caused. One can perhaps argue that man does indeed impact and change the climate, but he would then have to acknowledge that so do the trees, oceans and other flora/fauna. To imply that man should, or even could, exist with no impact whatsoever is preposterous. The ultimate question is whether or not our use of technological devices pose an existential threat to the planet. I find that to be equally preposterous.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at April 4, 2011 3:42 PMiPhones. I'm not so quick to exonerate the existential threat to the planet from iPhones.
Posted by: johngalt at April 4, 2011 6:01 PMMarch 30, 2011
Seriously?
The geek-police may be around to reposess my propeller beanie for so gleefully posting this 'toon but it is clearly true more often than not. From the first link in JK's post above:
In addition to political obstacles, Obama faces technical ones. Legislation signed by President George W. Bush in 2007 called on oil refiners to use minimum amounts of biofuels, including 16 billion gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol by 2022. Though substantial amounts of venture capital — and government subsidies — have gone into pilot plants, commercial viability has remained elusive.Posted by: johngalt at March 30, 2011 2:54 PM
March 23, 2011
CO2 = Gas of Life
Yesterday I made a bald assertion that "CO2 is not a pollutant." [4th comment] Today I'll give evidence.
Good News Earth and it's inhabitants need more, not less, CO2. More CO2 means:- More Plant Growth
- Plants need less water
- More food per acre
- More robust habitats and ecosystemsCO2 is Earth's greatest airborne fertilizer. Without it - No Life On Earth!
** For additional peer-reviewed scientific references and an in-depth discussion of the science supporting our position, please visit Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental Planel on Climate Change (www.climatechangereconsidered.org), or CO2 Science (www.co2science.org).
The site also presents this nifty graph of observed vs. UN IPCC predicted global temperatures since 2001.
100% agree on CO2. I actually believe I have been making that particular bold assertion as well for some time.
Your bolder and even more thought provoking assertion was that by joining too enthusiastically into the desire for next-generation energy, I was giving aid and comfort to those who say "Oil is evil."
The futurist in me gets agog with the idea of a Bussard reactor in a container crate. Just drop it off in Lafayette or Timbuktu and get years of inexpensive power. You reminded me that it is also important to defend the technology that brought billions of people out of poverty. I need to defend current producers as staunchly as I defend John Rockefeller.
Aye. Before we can make it to the future we have to keep living in the present. Enviros like to say, "Live simply, so that others may simply live." What is more simple than gasoline and SOVs? Ever tried harnessing a horse to a buggy?
Posted by: johngalt at March 23, 2011 5:02 PMMarch 21, 2011
Not That Much Change
Forbes' Patrick Michaels called General Motors a liar for the claim that their Volt hybrid is an "all-electric vehicle" and the onboard generator is only to extend its range. That's a serious charge, considering the huge federal subsidy to buyers of the car is based on that dubious premise.
Motor Trend dishes the tech: [Last October, I should note]
"It's not a hybrid! It's an electric car with a range-extending, gas-powered generator onboard." That was the party line during most of the masterfully orchestrated press rollout of what we've been promised will be the most thoroughly new car since, what, the Chrysler Turbine? The Lunar Rover? Well, the cat is now out of the bag, and guess what? It is a hybrid, after all. Yes, Virginia, the Chevy Volt’s gas engine does turn the wheels. Sometimes.
The salient difference between the Volt and the Prius is that the Prius' gas engine turns on at 60 mph and the Volt's at 100 mph. Motor Trend explains this as a second electric motor giving the Volt its top-end boost but glosses over the fact that the second motor, called a motor-generator, doesn't appear to recharge the battery through regenerative braking as the Prius does. In their diagram they show only "power in" from the engine and motor-generator of the Volt.
So is the Volt better or worse than the Prius? Or even really that much different?
Here's some change for you and your FFF brothers:
http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/03/22/three-key-technologies-for-energy-independence/
Posted by: jc at March 22, 2011 5:13 PMYou permanently misunderstand. Other than perhaps AlexC who works in Oil extraction, none of us has a great love of fossil fuels.
Ganos (in your link) suggests that "venture capitalists should have their checkbooks handy." I'm all for it and have annoyed a couple of my friends to no end with my belief in biomass -- specifically engineering microbes to consume dog poop and excrete biodiesel.
But Mister Ganos and I are content to wait for some bright kids to develop the ultracapacitor or superconnective cable, or lightning capture (or dogpooppower!) There's no shortcut. Throwing billions at ethanol or synfuels just delays and defunds what will be the real successor.
For those not familiar with the acronym, FFF stands for "fossil-fuel freedom." It's a bit of an anachronism though since the discovery that geological hydrocarbon fuels don't come from dead dinosaurs. Nonetheless, I'm proud to be a proponent of FFF.
And you can count me with brother AC for our great love of conventional geologic fuels. Repeat after me: "CO2 is not a pollutant." Poof - filtered combustion of hydrocarbons is no longer a threat to earth-kind.
Of the three proposed energy dreams you may be surprised that I put the most faith in the harnessing of lightning. Super capacitors have an inherent problem with spontaneous instantaneous self-discharge (explosion) and even if and when room-temperature superconductors are developed we can waste loads of cheap energy before spending as much as those new materials will cost to replace aluminum conductors.
And by the way - I'm suspicious of the 70% loss claim. Let's see the data on that one. It's probably closer to 7%.
Posted by: johngalt at March 22, 2011 7:18 PMBussard fusion holds no special place in brother jg's oily heart?
I would like something that is cheaper and would not support Hugo Chavez. And if it is dog poop, my condo complex is the Saudi Arabia of dog poop...
Posted by: jk at March 22, 2011 7:54 PMDoes it require a government subsidy? If so, its gotta go. Seriously.
Want something that is cheaper than oil or natural gas? Dream on. They're regulated and taxed to death and still can't be beat in the free market without subsidies to their competitors.
"Saudi Arabia of dog poop." Awesome line, but I think you had some competition in the Wisconsin state capitol rotunda for a few weeks last month.
Posted by: johngalt at March 23, 2011 1:26 AMLest readers think I have no imagination, nor faith in technology, I must explain that I put great personal value on finding new ways to cheaply and safely power our abundantly prosperous lives. BUT - the incessant drumbeat of "oil is evil" must be opposed. Now. It is a column of communist tanks. I welcome any lover of liberty to stand with me in its path. With you or without you, I'll be here with my hand up.
Posted by: johngalt at March 23, 2011 1:32 AMMarch 17, 2011
That's Not Allowed in Science
Berkeley Professor Richard Muller: "The justification would not have survived peer review in any journal I am willing to publish in."
One of those crazed right wing lunatics at UCal Berkeley, spreading lies about Gaia...
Hat-tip: Nick Schultz
3:45"And what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a list of people whose papers I won't read anymore."
Science is not a fuzzy subject. I am heartened every time I hear another actual scientist call out these charlatans. It reassures me that science has a future after all.
Posted by: johngalt at March 17, 2011 4:02 PMMarch 11, 2011
WTF?
The repercussions of the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history are just being understood but there's still time to take a shot at the happiest city in America and one of her sacred cows - windpow .. pow .. poof.
Whilst driving my one-ton diesel pickup (by myself) to pick up a lunch burrito I happened to pass Boulder's swank new "multi-use" development that occupies the old Crossroads Mall site. It's called Twenty-Nineth Street. (No, not 29th Street, "Twenty-Nineth Street.") On the most prominent corner of the property, 28th and Arapahoe, they've installed one a them newfangled "wind turbines." "Free energy from the earf" I think they call it. And on a day when wind had whipped a "controlled burn" out of control in the mountains, the weather reports warn of "60 mile per hour gusts" and the average wind speed at Atlantis Farm has been 15 mph or higher all morning the wind turbine is - not spinning. It twists in the wind alright, and the blades aren't completely frozen but if it completes a full revolution in a minute I'd be surprised.
Could it be that these things require, not just subsidized installation but subsidized maintenance? Stop. Stop! You're killing me!
More of them green jobs, man! Somebody's gotta fix those things!
I wonder if they lock in high winds. The one in front of the Lafayette library never spins when it's really whippin', yet I frequently see it spinning in a lighter breeze. Safety issue?
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2011 3:58 PMIt won't be long now
We've now had two horrific earthquakes in as many weeks and we can be sure that the Lefties will not allow two tragedies to go to waste. Thus, it is just a matter of time before they blame global warming for these catastrophies. The Refugee would like to offer the bounty of a Starbucks to the first Three Sourcer who posts such a news item from the lame-stream media.
I'm in!
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2011 1:16 PMGrande Cappuccino, dry, please: Today's tsunami: This is what climate change looks like
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2011 1:50 PMMONDO HEH!! I'll make it a venti. You name the time.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at March 11, 2011 3:36 PMStarbucks causes climate change.
Posted by: johngalt at March 11, 2011 9:33 PMActually, I was going to suggest we tie this up with nanobrewer's suggestion of an actual corporeal meeting at The Cannon Mine in Lafayette. While I feel safer with our opinions on our own side of the Boulder County Line, we must -- on occasion -- be brave.
Played properly, we could meet nb and perhaps TerriG.
Posted by: jk at March 12, 2011 11:33 AMFebruary 27, 2011
Silly Governor, Laws Don't Create Jobs
Yesterday I wrote about thousands of "clean energy" jobs that could be eliminated if Colorado's largest power company cuts its solar power subsidy in half (per installation). I suggested that those jobs probably wouldn't have existed without the subsidy, which distorted market signals to create economic activity for an economically unviable product.
Today our former Governor explains how these unsustainable jobs were created and still has the gall to suggest we do even more of it.
Building this new economy starts with understanding how clean energy legislation can create jobs. During my four-year term in Colorado, I signed 57 pieces of clean energy legislation. In 2007, for example, we doubled the proportion of energy in the state that is required to come from renewable sources to 20 percent by 2020. In 2010, we increased that to 30 percent for our biggest utility. As a result, Colorado now ranks fourth among the 50 states in its number of clean energy workers per capita, and 1,500 clean energy companies call our state home — an 18 percent increase since 2004. Wind- and solar-energy companies that have built factories and opened offices in Colorado have brought in thousands of new jobs.
But governor, have you not heard that the American economy is no longer robust enough to support elective boutique energy "just in case" environmental scientists might be partially correct? It's about as popular with voters right now as free pensions and sweetheart health insurance for unionized Wisconsin teachers. Feel-good energy layoffs are happening now in the U.S. European plants are closing now. Why not just wait until the science and technology is sufficient for sustainable energy to be sustainable? It will save a lot of wasted money and effort building new plants and then closing them.
The answer to your most excellent yet rhetorical question is a review corner.
I'm a crazy mad fan of Virginia Postrel. I bought her "Substance and Style" for everyone who has ever worked for me since it came out. Yet, somehow I had missed her "The Future and its Enemies." With the title props to Dr. Popper, and my appreciation for the author, I cannot believe I let 12 years go by.
I got a hardcover as a freebie for a Reason donation (yes, and the T-shirt in the coffeehouse vid). I had left the Kindle® in the car yesterday and decided to read a real book.
Merciful Zeus! Just a couple chapters in, but she resurrects the famed "Baptists and Bootleggers" theory to bifurcate stasists and dynamists. The enviros want us living in caves so we don't spill a drop of oil, the Buchananite conservative wing wants us living in a tiny village so nobody can be divorced or gay, and the VP Gores of the world want to control every facet of life for everybody.
What Hayek calls the "Party of Life" and she "Dynamists" are thusly badly outnumbered.
She wrote it in 1998 with the full promise of the Internet in front of us. But if she had waited for the "Green Energy Economy," she would have a perfect example. With apologies to Swift and Toole, the dunces are truly arrayed in confederacy against us.
February 26, 2011
"Sustainable" Energy Unsustainable
Live by the subsidy - die by the subsidy.
More than 200 supporters of solar energy rallied on the west steps of the state Capitol this afternoon to protest Xcel Energy's decision to cut incentives for solar system installations.
Had this been a "Teabaggers" rally the narrative would have been "Nearly 200 opponents of the Obama Administration rallied ..." But I digress.
"It has created a lot of fear in the industry. My job is on the line," said Gary Gantzer, a Boulder resident and installer for Namaste Solar who was at the rally with his two young children.About 5,300 people work in the solar installation industry, and insiders estimate half those jobs could be at risk if the Public Utilities Commission lets the proposal stand.
So what you're saying is, those jobs might never have existed in the first place had those subsidies not been given. Given by whom, you may ask. Ratepayers.
A 2 percent charge on utility bills supports the program and other efforts to promote renewable energy development.
How much subsidy, you may ask.
Since 2006, the program has provided $274 million in incentives for 9,346 installations on homes and small businesses.
9,346 incentives over a 5-year period is about 1,870 subsidies per year. And the average cost of each subsidy: $29,317.
Just for fun - Number of years the average solar subsidy could pay the electric bill of an average American home? 306 (and 5 months.)
Mike Rosen took on this subject in his third hour today. His first impression was the same as mine - Subsidies created those jobs in the first place!
He also did a good job exposing how this is average rate payers helping solar proponents put expensive power systems on their homes at little or no cost to themselves.
And many callers defended the program on the basis that "fossil fuels have huge subsidies too." Yet not a single one of them could give an example of said subsidies. To paraphrase multiple callers - "I just read that they're there, and they're numerous, and they're huge." (No word whether it was from an authoritaritive source, like the internets.)
Posted by: johngalt at February 28, 2011 3:00 PMHere is an example of subsidies.
Please comment to let me know if this resource is acceptable to you.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf
Posted by: JC at March 4, 2011 1:35 PM"Just for fun - Number of years the average solar subsidy could pay the electric bill of an average American home? ...306 [years] (and 5 months.)"
Just for MORE fun:
Estimated number of people on the planet = 6.9 billion
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
Estimated global subsidies for oil in 2008 = 312 billion
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/11/23/global-fossil-fuel-and-renewable-subsidies/
Estimated U.S. Energy Subsidies (tax expenditures (TE)) = 6.74 billion (subtracting TE subsidies for ALL renewables)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf
Hold that thought - this is for U.S. subsidies alone
How many years could these U.S. subsidies power a single, average American home if every person on the planet had an average American home? Well? How many?
Thought experiment: What kind of impact would there be on global energy markets if every person on the planet had an "average American home"? (frightening)
Subsidizing Big Oil:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicle_impacts/cars_pickups_and_suvs/subsidizing-big-oil.html
You asked if the DOE site was an acceptable source. To be fair, I was still thinking about it -- I place moderate faith in gub'mint statistics and the DOE is toward the bottom.
Then you link to far more partisan sources.
We don't agree on much around here, but I suspect all ThreeSourcers would agree that neither oil, ethanol, nor unicorn farts should be subsidized. Let them all compete in the free market.
However, what many opponents call subsidies are simply standard features in the tax code. I'd love to clean up the tax code, but in the meantime, the only way a large company can exist in the US is to take advantage of all the loopholes.
GE and Whirlpool use these to pay pretty much zero taxes, but because they're making Energy Star appliances -- and grease the right palms -- they get less flack than the big bad oil companies.
Real subsidies need to go bye-bye, no arguments 'round here. But do you think they just happened last week? You want to subsidize "green" energy? In decades, that will be what's keeping us from transitioning to something better.
Thank you for bringing the debate here from Facebook JC. When my online time is limited it will go to this page before any other.
If you have a point to make other than villification of American prosperity then you'll have to spell it out for me. That's a lot of info there.
But I think you may have mistaken the fun I poked at callers having no clue how government subsidizes oil for my personal approval of said subsidies, or denial that they exist. I want them ALL killed. All corporate welfare, whether for conventional, productive energy or for alternative, wishful energy companies - zeroed. We can argue about research later but I think we should agree on the corporate subsidy point. (Caveat: Namaste Solar and other small, local businesses fall under the heading of "corporation.")
It took until recently for me to realize it but when a Republican politician says he is for "all of the above" on energy policy he isn't just saying he is pro-drilling. Unless he says otherwise you must assume he is "pro-subsidy" for "all of the above." And if this can be verified, OFF WITH HIS HEAD! (Electorally, of course.)
Posted by: johngalt at March 5, 2011 11:23 AMJanuary 31, 2011
Quote of the Day
We are now in the season when the media tells us over and over again that "weather is not climate" and that the natural variations in the temperature do not, repeat not, affect the credibility of climate change. I actually believe this, although in just a few months the fiddlehead ferns will be poking up through the forest floor and the media will be back to reporting each and every hot spell as conclusive proof that climate change is already here.My totally unscientific conclusion based on close study of the media: weather isn't climate in the months which have "r" in them. The rest of the year, it is. -- Walter Russell Mead
January 17, 2011
The F-Word
I think ThreeSourcers would enjoy Ed Driscoll's "Left Wing Creationism." He links and excerpts a NY Observer review:
Mr. Mnookin was discussing pediatric health with a new parent in his early 40s who explained that he and his wife had decided to delay their child's vaccines. On what sources had he based this weighty decision? Questions along these lines were met with murk. "I don't know what to say," the man replied. "It just feels like a lot for a developing immune system to deal with."It was this F-word--feels--that left Mr. Mnookin justifiably gobsmacked, and it serves as the departure point for The Panic Virus, an attempt to explain how thousands of otherwise sophisticated Americans could make a fatuous decision to opt out of what is arguably modernity's greatest medical achievement. Most children "exempted" from vaccines (a fittingly ridiculous term, as if the kids place out via AP exam) are not low-information progeny.
Driscoll goes on to suggest that some on the left take an anti-scientific position on climate, including a photo that's worth a click.
I'm glad to read that others are saying it too: "Science" is destroying the credibility of the scientific method.
He doesn't offer a motive (other than "to advance an agenda.") I will - to advance a philosophy of Relativism in the public sphere. This is a necessary component of the mysticism known as "societal good."
Posted by: johngalt at January 17, 2011 2:14 PMJanuary 4, 2011
TS Eliot AND Global Warming
In one post! Kind of a segue unto itself, Steven Hayward sees the shifting anti-determinism of DAWG advocates in T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton:"
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past
UPDATE: Taranto mocks:
December 29, 2010
Quote of the Day II
So laugh away at the global warmists. And don't even feel bad that they're right about the weather-climate distinction. After all, they forget about it every summer. -- James Taranto
Walkin' The DAWG
Think this might go over...
December 28, 2010
DAWGON Good
If there's one thing that unites ThreeSourcers, its whipping the DAWG. Larry Bell, writing for Forbes.com, presents some excellent facts and uses them to expose the media's DAWG training. The Refugee has no insightful opinion to add, but if you want some more facts for the next time you get into a debate with a DAWG lover, read the whole thing.
Awesome. Of course, now I'll be up all night worrying about falling sea levels!
The part I dug was "if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there 'must' be a focus on global warming. ... That is really bad, because you start asking for the answer you want to get." It vexes me that a scientist who gets any funding from an oil company is tainted -- yet a researcher who would be working at Taco Bell if his global warming grant evaporated is considered pure as the driven snow that they used to have in Britain and Philadelphia.
Posted by: jk at December 28, 2010 12:43 PMOh -- and props for the headline -- nicely played!
Posted by: jk at December 28, 2010 12:48 PMDecember 21, 2010
Quote of the Day
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had it right when she scorned consensus as "the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?"Steven F. Hayward in a very worthwhile piece on the difference between bipartisan progress and consensus,
Sounds like she's describing the EU.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at December 21, 2010 12:23 PM'Course, the Iron Lady gets Quote of Forever for: "The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Posted by: jk at December 21, 2010 5:02 PMDecember 20, 2010
Dr. Popper, Call your Office!
John Hinderaker at PowerLine reprises a ten year old article in The Independent suggesting the end of snowfall in Britain: "Children just aren't going to know what snow is."
Then, PowerLine helpfully posts several pictures of road closures, digging out, and even some sweet little British urchins enjoying snow.
It's fun to ridicule the warmists because they are so often wrong, but their errors are in fact significant: a scientific theory that implies predictions that turn out to be wrong, is false. A principal feature of climate hysteria is its proponents' unwillingness to be judged by the standards that govern real science.
Predictive power, babies, predictive power.
UPDATE: Don Surber piles on with an xtraNormal vid.
UPDATE II: Supporting the "parting shot:"
LONDON – The Christmas travel season turned angry and chaotic Monday as British officials struggled to clear snow and ice that paralyzed rail and air links and spawned cancellations and delays stranding thousands around the world.More than 48 hours after Britain's last snowfall, some furious passengers with boarding passes for Monday flights were not even allowed into London's Heathrow Airport. Inside, piles of garbage grew and some people slept on terminal floors.
That's weather, not climate you trogs!
On the parting shot in the Xtranormal vid: Snap!
Posted by: johngalt at December 20, 2010 2:42 PMDecember 14, 2010
Lush Wheaty Goodness!
I like to suggest, in a discussion on deleterious anthropogenic warming of the globe, usually after a beer, that we should let plants vote on carbon-dioxide reduction. "How would we," slurs I, "react if the plants floated oxygen-reduction legislation?"
Tim Blair takes the cause in the Daily Telegraph. Being Australian, I'm going to go out on the limb and suggest that he might have downed a Foster's or two before typing (I have no empirical proof of this scurrilous smear).
Climate change alarmists hate it when we refer to carbon dioxide as "plant food", even though the description is accurate. And what a food it is! Earlier this year, the ABC's Landline program reported on an experiment conducted by the Victorian Department of Primary Industry, which blasted a patch of wheat with higher CO2 levels:
The wheat liked it! Hey Mikey!
Hat-tip: Instapundit
December 8, 2010
New NASA DAWG Models
...suggest that doubling the amount of CO2 could raise temps by 1.64 degrees Celsius.
According to Lahouari Bounoua of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), existing models fail to accurately include the effects of rising CO2 levels on green plants. As green plants breathe in CO2 in the process of photosynthesis -- they also release oxygen, the only reason that there is any in the air for us to breathe -- more carbon dioxide has important effects on them.In particular, green plants can be expected to grow as they find it easier to harvest carbon from the air around them using energy from the sun: thus introducing a negative feedback into the warming/carbon process. Most current climate models don't account for this at all, according to Bounoua. Some do, but they fail to accurately simulate the effects -- they don't allow for the fact that plants in a high-CO2 atmosphere will "down-regulate" and so use water more efficiently.
Jeez, brother. I know you're the master of understatement but this is a prize winner of the genre.
Let's try, "doubled CO2 could raise temps by JUST 1.64 degrees Celsius."
And let's add this teensy little excerpt written by the UK Register's Lewis Page:
It now appears, however, that the previous/current state of climate science may simply have been wrong and that there's really no need to get in an immediate flap.
QOTD?
Quantitatively, the new study shows that the current annual increase of 2ppm per year would take centuries to double from 390 to 780 ppm, at which point the theoretical global temperature would still be less warm than the UN IPCC target of 2 degrees Celsius or less - with NO CARBON CONTROLS WHATSOEVER.
Posted by: johngalt at December 8, 2010 2:51 PMMondo heh.
Agreed on the gobsmackedness of the assertions, but unclear on the standing of the study and source. I'd like to read about it in an article that didn't use the term "NASA and NOAA boffins" several times.
Posted by: jk at December 8, 2010 3:37 PMNovember 21, 2010
I *heart* Coal
I've been desirous of an "I love Coal" T-shirt for quite a while now, probably since Climategate hit the news - possibly in response to Colorado's legislature voting to subsidize coal's competition. I've been a denier since before it was cool, but now it's cool! I thought I would have to design and print my own. False.
Anyone who wants to join me can use this refer-a-friend link and reward me with a $10 Cafe Press credit (because you're so thoughtful.)
October 19, 2010
More fallout from the Dr. Hal Lewis Resignation
One of the Update links at the linked article in the Dr. Hal Lewis resignation story was a copy of the APS's public response with rebuttal by Dr. Lewis and two others interspersed in context. While the resignation letter itself is scathing evidence of Global Warming as hoax, it doesn't directly address the issue of "well-funded people believing" and thus, it "not going away." This does: [First the APS' statement, then Lewis' rebuttal.]
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding.The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank http://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html The bank has a $60+ billion Green portfolio, which it wishes to assure investors is safe…not to mention their income from carbon trading. Other members of this board include current IPCC chief Pachauri and Lord Oxburgh, of Climategate exoneration fame. The viability of these banks activities depends on continued concern over CO2 emissions. Then there is the member of the Kleppner Committee (that reviewed the APS 2007 Statement prior to POPA) who served on that committee while under consideration for the position of Chief Scientist at BP. The position had been vacated when Steve Koonin left to take a post in the administration at DOE. Soon after the Kleppner Committee report in late 2009, this committee member took the BP job. BP had previously funded the new Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, which was headed by current Energy Secretary Steve Chu.
UPDATE: Reformatted for clarity and bolded text for emphasis.
October 18, 2010
Global Warming takes another body blow -
- This time from a renowned nuclear scientist.
Last November 20 I posted this first news of Climategate, which included James Delingpole's headline: Climategate: The final nail in the coffin of 'antropogenic global warming?'
JK was more circumspect but by December 1 admitted that the scandal was a "game changer." Yet, he still hedged: "But it does not expose a hoax as some have claimed. The believers truly believe. As long as well funded people believe, it is not going away."
Today, or rather October 8, the hoax is exposed.
Harold Lewis - Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board - resigned from the American Physical Society over events that have transpired since Climategate.
In discussing the publicly released resignation letter Anthony Watts says,
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
From the letter:
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
He then goes on to expose the calculated lengths that APS management went to defeat his efforts to establish a Topic Group on Climate Change within the APS. Sharp, smart and irretrievably damaging to APS and the Climate Change movement.
Put me down as still hedging, brother. The letter you link says "What I would really like to see though, is this public resignation letter given the same editorial space as Michael Mann in today’s Washington Post." I fear this sermon will be heard only by the choir.
It's "Green Week!" at work. Thankfully, as a remote worker, I am impervious to all but eye rolling. Onsite workers went without lights for some time today and were told to shut off and unplug computers overnight for baseline current measurements.
This is from a private company, headed by a CEO who doesn't generally buy in to such nonsense. I guess they are buying off the earnest young employees. Whatever the case, we ain't won yet.
Posted by: jk at October 18, 2010 6:36 PMI included your complete original "hedge" on purpose, to show it's a step-by-step process.
The believers do still believe, and as long as well funded people believe it is not going to go away. BUT, this does expose a hoax.
Posted by: johngalt at October 19, 2010 2:44 PMNo hoaxes here just a bunch of horses blowing hot air out their tail pipes! I have been studying this issue for several years. Based on the recent increase in reputable scientific organizations that accept "antropogenic global warming" as fact, Harold Lewis' single resignation letter fails to provide "an important moment in science history". The one and only effect of his resignation letter is that of providing fuel for the bloggers and non-believers.
Posted by: JC at April 1, 2011 9:47 PMSeptember 20, 2010
But, the science was settled!
I know I beat my Popperian Dead Horse too much. But until I get word that light bulbs will be legal, you'll have to read...
Doctor Barry Marshall resorted to Frankensteinian ("frahnk -in-STEEN-ee-an") theatrics to overcome the conventional wisdom.
"I was met with constant criticism that my conclusions were premature," Marshall later wrote. "My results were disputed and disbelieved, not on the basis of science but because they simply could not be true."It is often claimed that doctors were wedded to the idea that ulcers were caused by excess stomach acid, or that they didn't believe that bacteria could grow in the stomach. In fact, the main reason for the scepticism, says Richard Harvey of the Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, UK, was that four-fifths of ulcers were not in the stomach but further down the digestive tract.
Yet we now know that Marshall was right. After downing his bacterial concoction, he soon became far more ill than he had expected, vomiting and developing stomach inflammation. Later studies confirmed the theory. His discovery made it possible for millions of people to be cured of their ulcers with antibiotics, instead of having to take acid-reducing drugs every day.
Science, baby! You want consensus, go into market research.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
September 17, 2010
Black Helicopters Appear in Broad Daylight...
...embarking from the White House.
Republican candidate for CO governor Dan Maes took some heat in early August for suggesting that statist influences at the United Nations are inserting themselves into state and municipal governments through an organization called ICLEI. I'll admit that if you've never heard of these self-important busybodies the whole idea can sound a bit conspiratorial. Even our own jk joked "See the bikes all come in black helicopters..."
Yet today, from the "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get me" department, we have the White House's Ocean Policy Initiative.
What the administration in effect is putting in place is an alternative power structure that circumvents existing state and local decision-making bodies and replaces them with made-in-Washington zoning. All of this is taking place without the consent of Congress, without the consent of the governors, and, most important of all, without the consent of the governed.
Suddenly the idea that similar efforts to influence local decision-making by the U.N. might "threaten our personal freedoms" doesn't seem like such a crackpot remark. JK commented "Let's pick smarter fights than this, boys." I'll counter with, "Someone has to start connecting the dots for voters sooner or later. Let's hope that when they do it isn't too late to get our liberty back using the ballot box."
August 30, 2010
"The Greening of Godzilla"
This is the title from a piece written by Walter Russell Mead for The American Interest Online that could not be improved upon. Mead dismantles the "green" movement not so much from a scientific standpoint but to illustrate that it has become the enemy that it abhors: The Establishment.
The case environmentalists used to make was that modern science was too crude and too incomplete to take into account the myriad features that could turn a giant hydroelectric dam from a blessing into a curse. Yes, the dam would generate power — for a while. But green critics would note that the dam had side effects: silt would back up in the reservoir, soil downstream would be impoverished, parasites and malaria bearing mosquitoes would flourish in the still waters and so on and so forth. Meanwhile the destruction of wetlands and river bottoms imposed enormous costs to wildlife diversity and the productivity of river systems. Salmon runs would disappear. Often, the development associated with hydroelectric dams led to deforestation, offsetting gains in flood control.
Mead goes on to point out that greenies have morphed to espousing a simple solution (cap and trade) for a very complex problem (the environment). They now hide behind the "expert" label to hush critics. That's interesting but perhaps not all that groundbreaking.
What is more interesting is how Mead parallels liberal enviro regulation to their handling of the economy. We're told that financial reform will smooth all of the economic cycles and eliminate future "bubbles." Of course, that's nonsense because the economy, like the environment, is too complex for central planning.
Essentially, the core environmentalist argument against big projects and big development is the same argument that libertarians use against economic regulations and state planning. The ‘economic ecology’ of a healthy free market system is so complex, libertarians argue, that bureaucratic interventions, however well intentioned and however thoroughly supported by peer reviewed science of various kinds, will produce unintended consequences — and in any case the interventions and regulations are too crude and too simple to provide an adequate substitute for the marvelously complex economic order that develops from free competition.
This piece seems to meander between subjects, but the common thread is "experts" trying to solve problems that cannot be solved with grandiose solutions. The result is stifling regulation that creates as many new problems as it solves.
Worth the whole read.
Professor Mead is generally worth the read.
Great link, I loved it, but I think Mead joins our beloved brother jg in oversanguininityness. Epic fail yes, but while Mead was learning history and politics, I was watching horror movies. And the monster is usually not dead when it appears so.
No cap and trade -- but Colorado just passed a law to send our utility bills through the roof. We'll tell our grandchildren about incandescent bulbs like Uncle Benny told us about soda fountains. Weatherization, hybrids...
Steven Hayward at The American piles on:
First, with the complete collapse of cap-and-trade in the Senate, the greens should face the ironic fact that if Senator John McCain had been elected president in 2008, we’d almost certainly have some form of cap-and-trade in place right now. Recall that McCain cosponsored two previous cap-and-trade proposals in the Senate and would have made cap-and-trade a higher priority than healthcare reform. He could also have brought some Republicans along for the ride. Yet despite his green sentiments, McCain received a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters in 2007 and 2008, while President Obama received perfect marks (when he showed up to vote, that is). So, environmentalists threw in their lot with Obama.
Hayward's point is that the enviros are battered spouses mishandling their own interests. What drops out is that he is right. I'd rather have Cap'n Tax® than ObamaCare®, but I don't feel so bad anymore.
Posted by: jk at August 30, 2010 3:38 PM
July 29, 2010
Ding Dong the DAWG is Dead
I've read a dozen of these and generally find them too optimistic. But Shikha Dalmia says
Future historians will pinpoint Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's energy legislation, released Tuesday, as the moment that the political movement of global warming entered an irreversible death spiral. It is kaput! Finito! Done!
Unlike predecessors, Dalmia admits the back-to-the-cavers will not give up soon and will cause a bit more havoc before they do. Another big private-jetfest is in the works, and they will try to use Executive power and state initiatives. But dead is dead.
The global warming warriors will likely have to go through the five stages of grief before accepting that their moment has passed and the movement is dead. Thinkers more sophisticated than Krugman will no doubt point to many proximate causes for its demise beyond evil Republicans such as lack of engagement by President Obama, bad economic timing, filibuster rules, what have you.The reality is, however, that the crusade was doomed from the start because of its own inherent weaknesses. RIP
June 1, 2010
Oh no, not another "large tragedy"
(Filed under DAWG 'cause really, what else does Algore do?)
Al and Tipper (explicit lyrics advisory) Gore are splitsville.
There is oil gushing into the ocean and people are killing humanitarian aid workers and the earth is still warming. (...) I didn't know I had any room at all to care about the Gores' relationship, but maybe because it's something so much smaller, so much more personal, a headline so much easier to absorb than the other larger tragedies playing out around the globe...
It made sad but perfect sense. "What else does Algore do?"
Well, the Vice President makes movies (at least singular). He just bought a seacoast mansion outside of Beverly Hills. He has an Oscar. VP Gore is an official "Hollywood guy" and is now bound by the ethos of tinseltown.
So that face-eating kiss at the 2000 convention was all theater, and splitsville is - forgive me, I've got to say it - the inconvenient truth.
At least, for Tipper's sake, they didn't end the way their archetypes did in Love Story.
Yeah, these jokes write themselves...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at June 1, 2010 5:46 PMOn the other hand, did Bush really just save America from the embarassment of its first divorced ex-president? We could'a been France!
Posted by: johngalt at June 2, 2010 3:01 PMMay 28, 2010
King Barack the Verbose
On the heels of Charles Krauthammer's King Canute reference, [third comment] Mark Steyn fills us in on the background.
In the age of kings, we were taught that kings were human, with human failings. Now, in the age of citizen-presidents, we are taught that government has unlimited powers over "heaven, earth and sea." Unlike Canute and Alfred, the vanity of Big Government knows no bounds.
You won't be sorry if you read it all. He even takes a whack at the Euro.
May 19, 2010
Deleterious Anthroprogenic Global... Cooling?
Those of us who lived through the '70s and actually remember them (refer to the discussion of recreational drug use below) recall the dire predictions. Pollution was causing artificial cloud cover that would shade the earth, thus causing global cooling. The next Ice Age was just around the corner. Then came along Al Gore and the doomsday scenario du jour (no pun intended) became global warming.
Well, we've apparently come full circle. Dr. Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University now believes that we are in for a period of global cooling.
“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. This, he says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell from 2060 to 2090.
It is important to note that Dr. Easterbrook indicates that this is part of the normal pattern. But don't tell Congress - they've got important Cap'n Tax legislation to pass while the time is still ripe.
Hat tip: 20th Century Fox, the owner of this picture, from "The Day After Tomorrow."
Note: Speaking of recreational drug use, while he has no personal knowledge, The Refugee suspects that the above picture is best viewed while on acid.
What a kook! It just gets hotter and cooler irrespective of SUVs? Like witches run it or something?
For a little more scientific view, catch the most depressing commencement address ever. A few clips of a former vice president might make The Refugeee reach for the meth...
Posted by: jk at May 19, 2010 11:51 AMWhere's my pipe?!?
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at May 19, 2010 12:54 PMApril 20, 2010
Truth in Media (no, REALLY)
Just when you thought it wasn't safe to consume any establishment media news product comes this in US News and World Report: Global Warming, Ethanol, DDT and Environmentalism’s Dark Side
Those who question global warming alarmists’ claims and policy prescriptions have been compared to holocaust deniers. Yet what are we to call environmentalists whose policies have resulted in the deaths of millions and could exacerbate poverty and hunger? The movie title Not Evil, Just Wrong may be too charitable.
Snap! Now that's what I call 'Hope and Change' in the news business. How did this happen? The story was written by Carrie Lukas, VP of Policy and Economics at the Independent Women's Forum (because "All issues are women's issues.") Their mission:
The Independent Women's Forum is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and educational institution. Founded in 1992, IWF focuses on issues of concern to women, men, and families. Our mission is to rebuild civil society by advancing economic liberty, personal responsibility, and political freedom. IWF builds support for a greater respect for limited government, equality under the law, property rights, free markets, strong families, and a powerful and effective national defense and foreign policy. IWF is home to some of the nation's most influential scholars—women who are committed to promoting and defending economic opportunity and political freedom.
OK, sounds good so far. They may have been founded in 1992 but it's hard to believe this has been their mission all along. I think JK'd have linked 'em by now! ;) Better late than never though.
UPDATE: Here's the link to the entire US N&WR entry and not just the excerpt on balanced-ed.org. It's an editorial. Oh well, the flicker of hope felt really good for those few minutes. Still check out iwf.org though.
In my defense, I have linked to the filmmakers several times.
Posted by: jk at April 20, 2010 4:07 PMI don't think iwf.org is affiliated with 'Not Evil, Just Wrong' but I could be wrong, not evil too.
Posted by: johngalt at April 20, 2010 5:23 PMMarch 30, 2010
Huh? Science Not Settled?
Meteorologists Against Global Warming? Mai Non!
Joe Bastardi, for example, a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.“There is a great deal of consternation among a lot of us over the readjustment of data that is going on and some of the portrayals that we are seeing,” Mr. Bastardi said in a video segment posted recently on AccuWeather’s Web site.
I'm linking 'cause I like the guy's name. Wonder if any of the DAWG-promoters have a nickname for Mister Bastardi...
Hat-tip: Instapundit (I thought I should throw a link back).
Go Joe! I've liked Joe B. for a long time, even before he "came out" on DAWG. O'Reilly (cough, cough) recently hosted a Climate Change debate between Joe the Meterologist (my name) and Bill Nye "The Science Guy." Joe took Nye apart, complete with maps and graphs. Nye was admirable in not revealing the sweat building under his stupid little bow-tie.
As for Joe's tease-worthy surname, I'll just say that the Bill Nye's rhyming word is "guy" not science. We could call him whatever kind of guy we want.
Posted by: johngalt at March 30, 2010 3:56 PMNice Clip -- list me among the Bastardis as well!
Joe gets extra points for a Popperian methodology: thepredictive power of his theory.
Posted by: jk at March 30, 2010 4:19 PMIt's Okay, Scientists are in Charge
C/O The Guardian:
"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said [Really Smart Human James] Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
Non-James-Lovelock humans are " too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades." Thank Zeus that the 90-year-old super genius is willing to step into the breach and run the world for awhile.
H-T: My buddy Glenn at Instapundit, who just can't stop linking to me...
WTF?
Paragraph 1 - He doesn't think we're clever enough to handle "as complex a situation as climate change."
Paragraph 2 - "It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while" ostensibly so that we can "handle" the complex situation.
Obvious point number 1: Does suspension of democracy make humans more clever?
Obvious point number 2: Is the interaction of economic market forces any less complex? Is there any less human inertia in the realm of commerce?
Posted by: johngalt at March 30, 2010 3:14 PMMarch 5, 2010
Got Jobs?
The House of Representatives recently passed its own version of the largely symbolic, but very expensive, 15 ba-billion dollar jobs bill. What frustrates me most of all about this is how they ignore a simple and inexpensive way to create real, private-sector jobs, increase tax revenue, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. EnergyTomorrow.org sez:
Increasing access to oil and natural gas resources could generate nearly 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state and local governments and greater energy security. And according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study, the U.S. oil and natural gas industry already supports 9.2 million American jobs and contributes more than $1 trillion to the national economy, or 7.5 percent GDP.Our nation has vast on-and-offshore oil and natural gas resources that could be produced safely to put this country's economy back on its feet.
But it's not just domestic oil and gas that will provide the jobs and energy our nation needs. Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north and top supplier of oil, will continue to play a vital role as we seek greater energy and economic security.
According to a recent CERI study, the economic impact of Canadian oil sands development is expected to lead to 342,000 U.S. jobs between 2011 and 2015, and an estimated $34 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015 and $42.2 billion in 2025.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Many answers to our economic woes are easy to find; if government hacks really intended to fix the economy they would do it.
February 24, 2010
Maybe Obama's not a Socialist after all
On yesterday's program Bill O'Reilly posed the question, "Is the president [Obama] a socialist?" His answer was that while Obama has pursued socialistic policies he isn't an actual socialist because "Mr. Obama doesn't want to seize your house." I would counter that straw man with, "No, but he want's to seize your income to give a house to thems what ain't gots 'em."
Unfortunately I think it gives Obama too much credit to call him a socialist. That would imply that he knows what he's doing. I tend to agree with Randall Hoven at American Thinker who wrote Obama "is the cargo cult president."
At least the real Cargo Cult followers built real things that looked like landing strips to get airplanes loaded with food and supplies to land on them. Obama thinks you get factories to produce things and hospitals to fix people by making speeches -- speeches that are reasonably good imitations of speeches given by real leaders.
If you're not familiar with the cargo cult tribes of the South Pacific you'll want to read the article to see what he means. If you are familiar then you'll want to read the article to see just how eerily similar the Obama Administration (and the alternative energy movement) is to those primitive peoples.
Remember what he said to Joe the Plumber? "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." I have no issue with calling Obama a socialist, even if he doesn't understand it. One can be a socialist and not openly espouse the philosophy of collectivism, or even realize himself what he espouses.
I was not familiar with the cargo cults, and it is the perfect term for the Obama presidency. His cabinet members, his czars, all his pretenses: even now there's never been a bit of substance. Like the actual cargo cults, underneath the manufactured façade is something incapable of producing something real. It's the ability to produce real things that distinguishes capitalist systems from collectivist ones.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at February 24, 2010 4:39 PMGreat post, JG. I heard that same comment from O'Reilly and flipped as well. One must suppose that he really doesn't understand that socialism is not an absolute state, it is a continuum. One could argue that the US is on the right of that continuum (exhibiting some socialistic tendancies, [e.g., progressive tax rates, Medicare]) whereas France, Sweden, Greece, etc., are on the left side of the continuum support a wide range of socialistic programs. He certainly does "the folks" no favors when he vastly oversimplifies reality.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at February 25, 2010 10:48 AMBill O'Reilly oversimplifying? Mai Non!
Mister O caused me to truly accept Ayn Rand's call for a clear, consistent and empirical philosophy. He is such a perfect example of the obverse.
Sure, I agree with him 79.4% of the time. But he believes -- fervently -- in himself 100% of the time. And he is always following his gut, never his head.
Posted by: jk at February 25, 2010 1:29 PMFebruary 19, 2010
Sea Level is Falling!
What will become of the poor endangered snails if we don't stop these falling seas?
Clearly, Thomas Friedman is right, things are getting wierd!
February 16, 2010
Victory Lap!
I fear some good people -- even some around ThreeSources -- are too optimistic too soon about the collapse of the global warming debate. What's the Star Wars line? Nice shooting, kid, don't get cocky!
But I'll confess we're having a realty really really really good few weeks here.
Three Major Firms Pull Out of Climate Change Alliance
ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar pulled out of a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups pushing for climate change legislation on Tuesday, citing complaints that the bills under consideration are unfair to American industry.The sudden pullout of three corporate giants from a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups could be the death knell for climate change legislation languishing on Capitol Hill.
UPDATE: The WSJ Ed Page agrees.
The departing are BP America, Conoco Phillips and Caterpillar, which were among the original members of USCAP, a coalition of green pressure groups and Fortune 500 businesses that tried to drive a cap-and-trade program into law. Some corporate members concluded that climate legislation was inevitable and hoped to tip it in a more business-friendly direction. Others—ahem, General Electric—are in our view engaged in little more than old-fashioned rent-seeking. Through regulatory gaming, Congress would choose business winners and losers, dispensing billions of dollars in carbon permits to the politically connected.The climate bills the House passed in August and Senate liberals are contemplating have stripped away that illusion. Carbon tariffs and other regulations would have damaged heavy manufacturing against global competitors, which explains Caterpillar's exit, while oil companies would suffer as transportation, refining and power generation via natural gas were punished. Then there's the harm to long-run growth, which would slow under the economy-wide drag of new taxes and federal mandates.
Vancouver Olympic "Legacy"
In the wake of Climategate and the Hoaxer Admission some politicians are trying to put the brakes on DAWG related wealth transfer schemes. Not the Canadians.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Feb. 16, 2010) - Today, Canada's Environment Minister, the Honourable Jim Prentice, announced the Government of Canada's commitment to offset federal greenhouse gas emissions for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games."Canada is proud to be the first host country in history to help offset the greenhouse gas emissions of its Olympic Games," said Minister Prentice.
The London summer games are a mere two and a half years away. Any chance that Canada will be not just the first, but the last? Probably not.
RELATED: Winter Olympics 2010: London 2012 will not be bailed out, says IOC chief Jacques Rogge
Jacques Rogge says the financial position of the London 2012 Olympic Games is so healthy that, unlike the Vancouver Winter Olympics, no guarantees will be needed to cover any potential shortfall.
Maybe if BC had skipped the new airport train and "hydrogen highway" ...
UPDATE: The race is on to abandon the sinking Climate Change fraud. Investors.com: "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, seeing which way the snow is blowing, has issued an executive order saying her state will suspend its participation in the emission-control plan or any program that could raise costs for businesses and consumers." Interestingly, despite succeeding Democrat Janet Napolitano, Brewer is a Republican.
February 14, 2010
No Statistically Significant Warming
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
Of special note, Professor Jones' data is critical in backing up the famous hockey stick graph created by Penn State's Michael Mann.
We're waiting.
The first I heard of this stunning admission about the MWP was from Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday. The liberal members of the panel tried bravely to suggest that DAWG was still a scientifically sound theory but it was clear their heart wasn't in it.
I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of this admission. Despite the contradictory remarks he also made this is tantamount to saying the "skeptics" position is at least as scientifically valid as the IPCC's.
Not even Pons and Fleishman ever admitted that their theory of cold fusion might be wrong!
Posted by: johngalt at February 14, 2010 6:43 PMAnn Althouse hit this outta the park this weekend:
Everyone should perceive flaws! To talk about "sceptics" as the ones who will "seize" upon "evidence" of flaws is unwittingly to make global warming into a matter of religion and not science. It's not the skeptics who look bad. "Seize" sounds willful, but science should motivate us to grab at evidence. It's the nonskeptics who look bad. It's not science to be a true believer who wants to ignore new evidence. It's not science to support a man who has the job of being a scientist but doesn't adhere to the methods of science.Posted by: jk at February 15, 2010 10:19 AM
EXACTLY right. Yesterday I wondered if this was the tipping point to rename we "skeptics" something more suitable. (At least they no longer call us "deniers.") But I was looking in the wrong place. This is the tipping point to stop referring to Global Warmists as "scientists." A better word would be hoaxer. Or felons. [first comment]
Posted by: johngalt at February 15, 2010 3:12 PMThe best comment I saw in these various posts implied that Scientist and Skeptic are synonymous, to which I heartily agree.
Who's your Denier now? :-)
That's a good T_shirt, nb: "Who's your denier now?" I'll take an LT if you have it, if not an XL.
Posted by: jk at February 18, 2010 12:12 PMDunno, I think I like
"I denied Global Warming before it was cool."
Posted by: nanobrewer at February 19, 2010 12:57 AMFebruary 11, 2010
Not an AARP card Among Them
A little fun from our friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming. I'd like to send this out to the brothers and sisters in Philly:
Hat-tip: Instapundit
Aha! Another clue about our friend LM: She lives in Pennsylvania (or northern Florida.)
Posted by: johngalt at February 12, 2010 3:06 PMI don't want to out anybody, but everybody should be reading LM's fine work at PAH2Ods/dt>0
Posted by: jk at February 12, 2010 3:12 PMYou clearly get out more than I do.
Found a nice "Pro-Business Obama" post over there and left a comment.
Posted by: johngalt at February 12, 2010 3:40 PMjg--I live in the town next door to AlexC
Posted by: Lisa M at February 12, 2010 9:41 PMjg--and your point was well taken!
Posted by: Lisa M at February 12, 2010 10:00 PMYou all seem to be taking the multi-foot, week after week blizzards in stride. We went through that four years ago and I'm relieved that it's hitting someone else this time. It builds character but it's damned hard work!
Posted by: johngalt at February 14, 2010 2:11 AMJanuary 4, 2010
My New Favorite CEO?
I hesitate to post this. I don't want to get they guy in trouble and I don't want to see the Boulder store close down.
But Whole Foods chief John Mackey has gone from criticizing ObamaCare (high crime or misdemeanor enough that he had to step down) to suggesting -- in The New Yorker -- that he is reading a book which is skeptical of Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe.
As Mackey warns, the higher energy prices, compliance costs of new regulations, and the litigation nightmares will lower our standard of living. One thing he forgot to mention is that these new energy taxes and regulations won’t do anything to reduce the earth’s temperature and reducing our economic prosperity cripples our ability to tackle real environmental problems.
Yeah, he is still no Friedmanite, his company has a duty to help the poor and save the planet &c. But damn, you have got to salute us candor and dedication to principles.
Hat-tip: @Heritage
Yep, I like him. Pretty close to how I feel about things actually.
Posted by: T. Greer at January 5, 2010 1:41 AMHundreds Protest Global Warming!
Hat-tip: my (biological) brother via email. It is pretty germane as we have had very few hours above freezing for the last couple of weeks.
Heh. Check out "The Blue Peninsula" (1/4/10) and WeatherMapGate (1/3/10) over on http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/
December 25, 2009
AGW as Farce
A linkety-good Christmas present from a good friend of this blog. Alexander Cockburn's piece in Real World Politics.
This admission edges close to acknowledgment of a huge core problem: that "greenhouse" theory violates the second law of thermodynamics, which says that a cooler body cannot warm a hotter body without compensation. Greenhouse gases in the cold upper atmosphere cannot possibly transfer heat to the warmer earth, and in fact radiate their absorbed heat into outer space. (Readers interested in the science can read Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner's "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics," updated in January 2009.)Recent data from many monitors including the CRU, available on climate4you.com, show that the average temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans near the surface of the earth has decreased significantly across the past eight years or so. CO2 is a benign gas essential to life, occurring in past eras at five times present levels. Changes in atmospheric CO2 do not correlate with human emissions of CO2, the latter being entirely trivial in the global balance.
December 23, 2009
Getting tired of asking for permission
Get yours here.
Questioning the D
It has been such a fine year for DAWG Denyin' -- really 2k9 was one for the books.
I went from skepticism that man was causing global warming to skepticism that the globe is warming at all. Good times. If things get better, I may start doubting that the Earth is round...
But don't let's forget the D: Is Global Warming, Anthropogenic or not, actually Deleterious? Insty links to a "Copenhagen Coda:" 100 Europeans dead -- just by being on the same continent as VP Gore:
More than 100 people have been killed in the cold snap across Europe, with temperatures plummeting and snowfall causing chaos from Moscow to Milan.In Poland, where temperatures have dropped to as low as -20C in some areas, police appealed for tip-offs about people spotted lying around outside. At least 42 people, most of them homeless, died over the weekend.
In Ukraine 27 people have frozen to death since the thermometer dropped last week. Authorities in Romania said 11 people had succumbed to the chill, and in the Czech Republic the toll was 12. In Germany, where temperatures have fallen to -33C in certain parts, at least seven people are known to have lost their lives in the freezing weather.
Rough weather in the US lately has lead to dozens of deaths -- at the risk of jingoism -- in a developed, industrial society.
Just sayin'
Maybe developed, industrial society is the problem? Here at rural Atlantis Farm it reached -29 C and nobody died, man nor beast.
Posted by: johngalt at December 23, 2009 1:07 PMDecember 18, 2009
Quote of the Day
What really bothered Roger Simon about the Copenhagen conference:
I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340.
December 17, 2009
Evolution to Extinction
Sanctimonious progressives ridicule social conservatives for refusing to acknowledge the validity of the theory of evolution. Too bad they are too dense to see the obvious parallel with their refusal to acknowledge the lessons of history. But IBD's Michael Ramirez sees it.
I thought they all died in the Ice Age. These dinosaurs oughta stay away from the Gore Effect:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/03/gore-effect-strikes-again-giant-dc.html
Quote of the Day
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appearsI will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil [Jones in a Climategate email to Michael Mann]
That is indeed an interesting quote, but it's just more evidence that they rigged the scientific process. In the same article you linked is the real bombshell - evidence that they actually covered up facts.
From the Russian Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) based in Moscow, as reported by RIA Novosti:
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.(...)
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
Here's how it works:
IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.Posted by: johngalt at December 17, 2009 1:15 PM
I think they are part-and-parcel (whatever the hell that means).
Agreed that the Russian cherry-picking/data hiding is a bombshell. Without Petey and Mikey's ability to spike competing thought, it would have been found.
December 15, 2009
Quote of the Day
I spent the day waiting with thousands of others in subfreezing cold to try to get into the proper building to obtain our credentials for the official United Nations Climate Change Conference -- Ronald Bailey, wondering "how anyone expects the U.N. to run the world's climate if it can't manage a queue?"
December 13, 2009
Baby You Can Drive My Car
A good friend of ThreeSources sends this:
Awesome.
December 10, 2009
Ain't Rocket Science, Baby!
NYTimes (1920):
That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
Chicago Boys' David Foster (day before yesterday):
What is noteworthy about the original editorial is not just the ignorance, but the arrogance and the outright nastiness. As the AstronauticsNow post points out, “The enlightened newspaper not only ridiculed the idea that rocket propulsion would work in vacuum but it questioned the integrity and professionalism of Goddard.” The post goes on to say that “The sensationalism and merciless attack by the New York Times and other newspapers left a profound impression on Robert Goddard who became secretive about his work (to detriment of development of rocketry in the United States)…”It appears that some of the attributes of the NYT which make it so untrustworthy and unlovable today are actually cultural characteristics of long standing.
Worth keeping in mind when reading NYT analyses of Climategate.
A-damn-men.
Nothing makes you smarter than everyone else quite like a diploma from Journalism school..
It's why they hate bloggers so much. Because bloggers have blown the lid off of their scam.
December 7, 2009
Quote of the Day
"It's too cold to walk from the hotel to the convention on global warming. Let's take a limo!" -- Simon Scowl
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
December 3, 2009
How Much for Two Light Snacks?
Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nation's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.As described in The Washington TImes' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multi-media public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book "Our Choice" included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."
Some possibly exogenous event has caused the Vice President to cancel, but I bet the snack is still on.
December 2, 2009
"Does it disprove global warming? No, of course not!"
In a comment jk predicted that despite Climategate, the DAWG religion "is not going away." As counter argument I give you the ultimate shaper of public opinion - Jon Stewart.
Hat tip: Minnesotans for Global Warming
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Scientists Hide Global Warming Data | ||||
| ||||
Except for the title quote Stewart hammers the hapless climate changers pretty hard. What do you think the kiddies will remember?
And he did a good job on the Acorn videos as well.
Posted by: jk at December 2, 2009 8:13 PMDecember 1, 2009
Quote of the Day Deux
The people who made those adjustments are, we now know, desperately invested in proving the truth of man-made global warming. And they lost the data. That’s more damning than anything else in the emails. If you’re doing important work that you know will be controversial, you don’t lose the data. You document everything you did to the data. You make the data available to others. If you don’t do all of those things, people are right to ignore anything you have published about the data. And that’s what we should do with everything these men have published about man-made global warming. -- Charles Murray
But saving the data for independent scientists to repeat your work and corroborate your results is a requirement of science. We're not talking about science here, we're talking about climate change Scientheism.
Posted by: johngalt at December 2, 2009 8:59 AMJG 1, JK 0
I withheld judgment that ClimateGate was a game changer until it got a little more mainstream coverage. Blog Brother Johngalt more approached the "It's Christmas Day and I got a pony!" view.
Well, he has the setup for a pony, and -- while it's still just a blog post -- this <heavenly music>New York Times</heavenly music> blog post by Science Editor John Tierney is a big deal.
I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it. But when they look at evidence of the threat, they may be subject to the confirmation bias — seeing trends that accord with their preconceptions and desires. Given the huge stakes in this debate — the trillions of dollars that might be spent to reduce greenhouse emissions — it’s important to keep taking skeptical looks at the data. How open do you think climate scientists are to skeptical views, and to letting outsiders double-check their data and calculations?
It was just obvious to me that this was a game changer. Politics certainly isn't pure but hard science is. A scientist's career is defined by his record of publication. Anyone who dares attempt to explain away what has been exposed here runs a serious risk of ruining his scientific credibility, tainting the entirity of his published work, and putting himself clearly in the bin labeled "politicians" and removing himself from the one labeled "scientists."
Climategate represents sort of a "Gore Doctrine" for the climate change cabal. Every one of them is in effect being asked, "Are you with us, or are you with the scientists?"
Posted by: johngalt at December 2, 2009 9:10 AMIt reinforces the complaints that I have made (rhymes with Snarl Copper) about the unscientificness of the movement.
But it does not expose a hoax as some have claimed. The believers truly believe. As long as well funded people believe, it is not going away.
November 29, 2009
Cleaning up the debate
No, not my bad language...but a few items today augur well for the ClimateGate controversy's improving the quality of debate on climate change. That's all I ask. If DAWG's real, let's study it and plan around it, based on realistic scenarios.
The Telegraph (I know a lot of Telegraph readers whom I am sure are uncomfortable with the paper's thoroughness on this story) brings us the story of David Holland, an Electrical Engineer from Northampton who makes the most serious and level statement I have heard on DAWG in many years:
Mr Holland, who graduated with an external degree in electrical engineering from London University in 1966 before going on to run his own businesses, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's like David versus Goliath. Thanks to these leaked emails a lot of little people can begin to make some impact on this monolithic entity that is the climate change lobby."He added: "These guys called climate scientists have not done any more physics or chemistry than I did. A lifetime in engineering gives you a very good antenna. It also cures people of any self belief they cannot be wrong. You clear up a lot of messes during a lifetime in engineering. I could be wrong on global warming – I know that – but the guys on the other side don't believe they can ever be wrong."
Nailed it. I could be wrong, but I need to see that the other side understands that they could be wrong as well. Brilliant.
Hat-tip: Volkh, via Instapundit
November 27, 2009
Quote of the Day
You know, when you consider that "We're Saving The Planet" is the biggest power/money grabbing scam since "We're Saving Your Souls," whoever leaked/released those e-mails and such is kind of like the modern scientific equivalent of Martin Luther. This person/persons may well have broken the backs of the Global Warming Priests who did everything in their power to make sure that the common man, and those who would oppose them, had no direct access to the Spoken Word of God. -- Col. Douglas Mortimer, writing to Instapundit
The obvious irony being that science was the first true alternative to the "Spoken Word." These Science-Theists in the climate change cabal [I'd call them Scientologists if it weren't already taken] were willing, able, and compelled to resort to Belief as their method of persuasion, making them no more enlightened than the "bitter" Christian rednecks they so denigrate.
Posted by: johngalt at November 27, 2009 3:42 PMNovember 26, 2009
Hide the Decline
Happy Thanksgiving from Michael Mann-
(And the jokesters at Minnesotans for Global Warming)
November 22, 2009
"2009 is also the first year of global governance"
Hope and Change for the entire planet.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to the new President of the European Union, Herman van Rompuy.
Here is my transcription, complete with relevant emphasis:
It is my firm intention to ensure that our work develops, over a long-term period, a perspective that goes beyond six months and will allow us to be better organized where the major multi-annual dossiers are concerned, such as the financial perspectives in the Lisbon strategy. I also think that going back to our roots in the European Council could help us to discuss from time to time in an informal and open way the big questions of the European project. I'm thinking more specifically of the economic and social agenda and this is a particularly urgent matter because of the environmental and energy challenges we face and aspirations we have for greater security and justice for all our fellow citizens. We're living through exceptionally difficult times. The financial crisis and its dramatic impact on employment and budgets. The climate crisis which threatens our very survival. A period of anxiety, uncertainty and lack of confidence. Yet these problems can be overcome by a joint effort in and between our countries. Two-thousand-and-nine is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet. Our mission, our presidency, is one of hope supported by acts and by deeds.
Brother tg assures us that the climatologists in the climate cabal "are not evil environmentalists bent on hatching a secret plan to rule the world -- they are scientists, no better or worse than the rest of us." That may be true but it doesn't mean their work is not being used by others to "hatch a secret plan to rule the world."
Al Gore Wishes he Never Invented the Internet
This whole post at Minnesotans for Global Warming is hilarious and biting, but here is the part I find most relevant to prior posts of my own:
The Global Warming Extremists controlled the argument for years by saying, it's only legitimate science if it's published in certain journals and peer reviewed, and if you control the Journals you control the science. But sadly with Al Gore's invention, the anointed few are losing control, much like the medieval church did with the invention of the printing press.
Climategate
Intapundit notes that Climategate makes the WaPo "In a big way."
November 21, 2009
The "Prestige Press"
Sarah Palin calls them the "Lamestream Media."
Mike Rosen calls them the "Dominant Liberal Establishment Media."
Brother jk calls them <heavenly music>The New York Times.</heavenly music>
Climate change conspirast Michael Mann, of "hockey stick" fame, calls them the "Prestige Press." This excerpt from one of the email thread archives that comprise Climategate definitely is one of the "things that make you go HMMMM."
Andrew Revkin to Michael Mann, Sep 29, 2009, 4:30 pm:
needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements about Yamal data-set selectivity. Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?
Michael Mann replies, Sep 29, 2009, 5:08 pm:
Hi Andy,I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.
It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.
So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data. It will take folks a few days to get to the bottom of this, in Keith's absence.
if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our '98 article in Nature), his comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won't submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism "published" it will be in the discredited contrarian home journal "Energy and Environment". I'm sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections with the energy industry, and who hasn't submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer review.
Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?
mike
Revkin again, Sep 29, 2009, 5:18 pm:
thanks heaps.tom crowley has sent me a direct challenge to mcintyre to start contributing to the reviewed lit or shut up. i'm going to post that soon. just want to be sure that what is spliced below is from YOU ... a little unclear . ?
I'm copying this to Tim, in hopes that he can shed light on the specific data assertions made over at climateaudit.org.....
I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks. peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?
One can almost see the "wink, wink" between the lines when Mann says, "...the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, RIGHT?"
The two of them certainly appear to be defending the standing of their sycophantic collection of science journals against any dissent - even from other peer-reviewed journals which may happen to be "discredited."
Well played, lads.
I think the "bombshell" of the "Climategate" emails is to underscore what I have bored y'all with for years: the pro-AWG side may not be evil, but they are not participating in the scientific process. You don't have to get a paper published to contradict a paper. Science moves along as gruesomely as the NFL playoffs. If you publish, your work will be attacked fairly and unfairly and you are expected to defend it.
I posted a link last September about this mentality:
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that +/- came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones's response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to "try and find something wrong." The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
The leaked emails highlight this contempt for Popperian discovery. At the end of the day, whether in the sainted NYT or lowly Australian Sun, I don't think they'll change anybody's mind. They'll feed the deniers' case but the process is too abstract and arcane to dissuade believers.
Posted by: jk at November 22, 2009 11:47 AM
TG has a point: there is no smoking gun here of Dr. Hockey Stick or the NYT reporter trying to extort or directly kneecap a critic. However, I only see a trace of scientific curiosity. I see two professionals spending most of their time spinning, packaging and smearing by association.
This upholds my main criticism of the 'science' arm of the AGW movement from nearly the very beginning. They long ago shucked science for politics, notoriety, and ideology. I feel vindicated in this at the Royal Danish Society's response to the attempt at - in effect - defenestrating Dr. Lomborg by several hundred Danish scientists, whose terse judgment upholding Dr. Lomborg's status and ideas, essentially said "you all say you have degrees?"
I've spent years in academic review settings, and never seen anything quite like this, nor any scientist so worried about what the press may or may not "fall for." If Dr. Mann were truly confident in his findings, surely he'd have the confidence that that the truth would out, yes?
I'm also quite shocked that Dr. Hockey Stick is still listened to by any institution that regards itself reputable in a scientific sense, as much as if I saw some institute still giving prominence to Drs. Pons or Fleischmann.
Posted by: nanobrewer at November 22, 2009 5:53 PMFor what it's worth, "Lamestream media" was coined by Bernie Goldberg.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at November 23, 2009 1:04 PMThanks for that br. I knew Palin wasn't the first but I couldn't remember who was.
My favorite is still "Drive-By Media." It's such a perfect description of how they race in to shoot up a story however they like and leave it for others to come in later with the ambulance full of facts. Trouble is, the patient - in this case, objective reporting of the news - often dies anyway.
Posted by: johngalt at November 23, 2009 3:05 PMAny Bernie fans around here? To be fair, I think of him as "our Andrew Sullivan." His two books "Bias" and "Arrogance" were incredible for their seriousness, quality, and explosiveness. Game changing admissions from an inside whistleblower.
Like Sullivan, it probably hurts to lose all your friends. His hyper-partisan screeds that have followed tarnish the reputation and seriousness of the two masterpieces.
Too harsh me?
Climategate Foretold...
“• What is the current scientific consensus on the conclusions reached by Drs. Mann, Bradley and Hughes? [Referring to the hockey stick propagated in UN IPCC 2001 by Michael Mann.]
Ans: Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching consensus on MBH98/99. As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.â€
AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION, also known as The Wegman report was authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University with the contributions of John T. Rigsby, III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Denise M. Reeves, MITRE Corporation.
I guess that's why they're called "lamestream"
Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reports on environmental issues, "in print and on his blog, Dot Earth." At least, that's what his NYT bio page says. The day after Climategate exploded on the internet, Revkin wrote about it today.
The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.
As one of the leading lamestream media voices, Revkin's seems to be spinning: Yeah, these guys were doing bad science but we're only talking about a handful of scientists. Well we're also only talking about a handful of reporters who tell us that the science is settled, and Revkin is one of them.
It turns out his name appears in the FOIA data dump emails. According to Dr. Tim Ball in the story linked as UPDATE 2 on yesterday's post,
They also had a left wing conduit to the New York Times. The emails between Andy Revkin and the community are very revealing and must place his journalistic integrity in serious jeopardy.
Paul Chesser at American Spectator wasn't so delicate:
Revkin has authored two global warming books and so has a lot to lose himself from this controversy, as his reputation is just as much at stake as the scientists.' Therefore his defense mechanisms are fully engaged. In his blog post yesterday about the revelations, he states that repercussions "continue to unfold" and "there’s much more to explore," but do you really think he can be counted on for follow-up stories about it this week?
For my part I have to ask, is Revkin a reporter, a blogger, or a co-conspirator?
I did chuckle at the 'graph you excerpted -- but that was pretty far down the post and I thought what came before it was pretty damning. Most significant was the jump from anti-DAWG organs and blogs to <heavenly music>The New York Times</heavenly musc>.
Not on the cover of The Nation yet, but it took a couple steps up with this admission.
Really JK,
do you need to ask I have to ask, is Revkin a reporter, a blogger, or a co-conspirator
His comment that "evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted" clearly points to him being a reporter (such as it is these days)!!
I think I'm right in stating that the majority Vox Populi is now against what Revkin has bought into, and the scientific community will continue to defy quantification.
Point of order: actually nb, this post is jg and not jk. I'm the attractive one, he's the good spellor.
Posted by: jk at November 23, 2009 10:46 AMNovember 20, 2009
Woodward and Bernstein, call your office!
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.
That's the lede of today's Daily Telegraph posting by James Delingpole [author of 'Welcome to Obamaland'] entitled, Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? Delingpole continues:
The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)
His cited source is our friend Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That.
Somewhere in the afterlife, Michael Crighton is enjoying a belly laugh.
UPDATE (11/20): From Climate Depot-
'CRU director admits emails seem to be genuine'
UPDATE 2 (11/21): Canadian Dr. Tim Ball, former climatology professor at University of Winnipeg writes "The Death Blow to Climate Science."
CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. As I expected now it is all exposed I find there is no pleasure in “I told you so.”
UPDATE 3 (11/22): WSJ (in the Politics section)
One email from 1999, titled "CENSORED!!!!!" showed one U.S.-based scientist uncomfortable with such tactics. "As for thinking that it is 'Better that nothing appear, than something unacceptable to us' … as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward whether we agree with individual articles or not," the email said.
Somebody twittered this an hour ago and I wasn't sure when/whether to pull the trigger. I am giddy with excitement but this had the feel of one of those Druge stories that never really "develops."
Here's hoping -- it would be an awesome blow for freedom!
Posted by: jk at November 20, 2009 6:55 PMMy brother emailed it at 1:27 this afternoon. Not sure how he got it so quickly. Didja check out the update? Didja? Didja?
Posted by: johngalt at November 20, 2009 7:50 PMI did and thank you for it. The Austrailian Sun has been as tough on the warmies as anybody -- I'm waiting for The Nation to certify it.
Posted by: jk at November 20, 2009 8:02 PM...coming the day after Al Gore appears on "30 Rock" as part of NBC's "Green Week" indoctrination programming....it just CAN'T be a coincidence!
Posted by: Lisa M at November 20, 2009 9:06 PMWHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE??? THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!
Posted by: jk at November 21, 2009 3:26 PMNovember 18, 2009
Sure that's not Billions of degrees?
The Oracle of Carthage speaks:
Conan [O'Brien, talk show host]: … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?Al [bert A. Gore, Jr, 45th Vice President of the United States and Nobel Laureate]: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …
John Derbyshire points out that there is debate (the science, apparently being not settled) whether the Earth's core is 5000 C or 9000C, but it ain't millions Mister Vice President.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
The Vice President also translates the IPCC esimation of an 18 inch rise in sea level (dubious) to 18 feet. Don't hire him as a lifeguard.
Posted by: jk at November 18, 2009 11:41 AMBut the complete ignoramus DOES have a point. Ground source geothermal heat pumps can deliver 5 or 6 times as much heating or cooling energy to your home than the amount of electrical energy that it takes to pump it. And it doesn't take "millions" or even thousands of degrees. A reliable source of 60 F ground will do the trick.
Posted by: johngalt at November 18, 2009 2:42 PMMaking fun of a former Vice President, jg, not impugning Gaia's core...
Seriously, the real issue -- and I know we all tire of asking -- is to imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush or Sarah Palin said this?
Posted by: jk at November 18, 2009 2:50 PMJust a PSA brother.
As for Gore ... at least he can spell potato. (Come to think of it, are we sure?)
Posted by: johngalt at November 19, 2009 2:22 AM
I did some research on this as well. Turns out that the thermal gradient for _extremely favorable_ sites (e.g., Calpine's Geyers) is as much as 120C/km. The Goracle's assertion that "most places" have 'incredibly hot' rocks just a couple of Km down is as true as .... well, just about anything he's said in the public sphere!
I'd no idea Derbyshire was as well versed in this as he appears to be, but I'm not surprised to find more light than heat at NRO. Being in Power & Energy for as many years as I have has made me despairing of anyone that CNN declares an "energy expert" long before reading the first post on TS.
I once interviewed with a company trying to make a go of GT energy: it's pretty much all west of the Miss. R, but well-cited to take advantage of ever-increasing costs in the Golden State (if they ever get free choice again).
Derbyshire's good for a lot of heat and light. He's a serious Amateur Mathematician and I am the proud owner of his book, "Prime Obsession" on the Riemann Hypothesis. He signed it for me at the Boulder Bookstore and I teased him that one of his columns pasted on the wall and he'd be run out of town on a rail.
He used to post a Math problem of the month and it was fun to try those and try to keep sharp (I majored in Math but left school early to pursue a music career).
I lost touch with Derb and a lot of the NRO folk after Lowry took over and they took a populist swing on immigration and social issues. I still have a lot of respect for Derbyshire, Jay Nordlinger, Jonah Goldberg, and a lot of staff. But I dropped my subscription a few years ago and read the online content only when linked. Breaking up is hard to do.
November 5, 2009
Third Bush Term
Here's another rousing cheer for the Obama Administration: American Magazine says that he will be continuing "the failed policies of the Bush Administration" for Four More Years!
Reading the climate-change news in recent weeks, one might wonder who won the last election.The Obama administration has rejected the Kyoto Protocol (ensuring it will expire), adopted some of former President George W. Bush’s key positions in international climate negotiations, and demurred when asked about reports that the president has decided to skip the December climate summit in Copenhagen. United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer has concluded that it is “unrealistic” to expect the conference to produce a new, comprehensive climate treaty—which also describes the once-fond hopes for passage of domestic climate legislation this year—or even in Obama’s first term.
November 2, 2009
Quote of the Day
Malaria is only weakly related to temperature; it is strongly related to poverty. It has risen in sub-Saharan Africa over the past 20 years not because of global warming, but because of failing medical response. The mainstay treatment, chloroquine, is becoming less and less effective. The malaria parasite is becoming resistant, and there is a need for new, effective combination treatments based on artemisinin, which is unfortunately about 10 times more expensive.Mr. Samson is right to ask what spending money on global warming could do for him and his family. The truthful answer? Very little. For a lot less, we could achieve a lot more. -- Bjorn Lomborg
Well, hell. All this time I've been thinking that the rise in sub-Saharan Africa of malaria was the result of the refusal to kill the mosquitos with DDT - an inexpensive and highly effective mosquito slayer, far more so than the highly entertaining Bug-Zapperâ„¢ on my back porch. By all means, if malaria is strongly related to poverty, then by all means, we must transfer untold boatloads of American wealth to Africa to rid the continent of the scourge of malaria.
Somebody had to say it. May as well be me.
Posted by: Keith at November 2, 2009 5:13 PMComplete agreement on malaria and DDT. But that is one of the things that makes Lomborg so significant: he believes in global warming, he is not against a bit of wealth redistribution, he's a gay European environmentalist!
This underscores his belief that there are far better things to focus on than global warming. I enjoyed his personification of Samson -- environmentalists love to care for mythic aggregations at the expense of real individual people. I never mind reminding people of that.
October 30, 2009
Stop It! You're Making the Mountains Too Tall!
Blog Friend sc will surely turn in his SUV keys when he sees this: Taller Mountains Blamed on Global Warming
The mountains in Europe are growing taller and melting glaciers are partly responsible, scientists say.Heavy glaciers cause the Earth's crust to flex inward slightly. When glaciers disappear, the crust springs back and the overlaying mountains are thrust skyward, albeit slowly.
The European Alps have been growing since the end of the last little Ice Age in 1850 when glaciers began shrinking as temperatures warmed, but the rate of uplift has accelerated in recent decades because global warming has sped up the rate of glacier melt, the researchers say.
Hat-tip: Scrivener
Now I know where to go when the sea level rises.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at October 31, 2009 12:15 AMGosh, if I'd known this "scientific fact" before then I'd never have objected to a 20 percent surtax on all American energy use and government
"bankrupting" of the coal and oil industries. By all means, reduce American productivity to that of Madagascar to keep the Alps down to size!
New theory - Earth warms, glaciers melt, sea level rises, lack of weight of glaciers causes mountains to rise, heating expands earth's crust and everything just balances out. I am still convinced that scientists will someday discover that cancer is genetic in rats and a whole bunch of research will get thrown out.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at November 1, 2009 9:41 AMOctober 24, 2009
Quote of the Day
No, no, no, no — you have committed apostasy; heresy! You are not allowed to speak of warming except in the most emotional, alarmist tones!You are not allowed to follow an objective, skeptical line of reasoning in this matter. You are not allowed to consider whether or not it is cost-efficient or even possible to cease all carbon emissions; you simply must do it.
This is from a commenter on the Freakonomics blog, requoted in an elegant attempt by a very sharp (scary) scientist to insert actual reason and scientific principles into the debate. Like Freakonomist Steven Levitt, Nathan Myhrvold is not a DAWG-denier I can claim backs me. But, like Levitt, I think he was surprised at the vitriol of the anti-scientific opposition that emerged to question their supposed heterodoxy.
September 28, 2009
Brrrrrrrr
Hey bitter clingers, don't forget that weather does not equal climate, or something.
The U.S. Northeast may have the coldest winter in a decade because of a weak El Nino, a warming current in the Pacific Ocean, according to Matt Rogers, a forecaster at Commodity Weather Group.“Weak El Ninos are notorious for cold and snowy weather on the Eastern seaboard,” Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. “About 70 percent to 75 percent of the time a weak El Nino will deliver the goods in terms of above-normal heating demand and cold weather. It’s pretty good odds.”
Warming in the Pacific often means fewer Atlantic hurricanes and higher temperatures in the U.S. Northeast during January, February and March, according to the National Weather Service. El Nino occurs every two to five years, on average, and lasts about 12 months, according to the service.
Of course if it's warmer than the coldest winter in the past decade, that's proof for global warming. So there.
New York state's last winter was already brutal enough. January had only seven days who high temperatures hit or exceeded 32 F.
But you know what global warming alarmists say? Global warming will produce hotter summers and...colder winters. You just can't win against their junk science.
But to poke a hole in their nonsense, this summer was unusually cold. The August average was four degrees below normal, which in meteorology is huge. We never hit 100 in the city, and only several days broke 90 (in contrast to the two week-long heatwaves that NYC consistently has).
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 28, 2009 10:41 PMDing, Dong The Stick is Dead!
Funny, when other people get the data, global warming always looks a little less dire.
The graph above shows what happens to the “Hockey Stick” after additional tree ring data, recently released (after a long and protracted fight over data access) is added to the analysis of Hadley’s archived tree ring data in Yamal, Russia.All of the sudden, it isn’t the “hottest period in 2000 years” anymore.
September 25, 2009
The Science is Settled! It's just that we lost it.
Read a little Karl Popper. His clarity of thought, reason, and prose is intensely satisfying. I'd read him beating up on Hegel or dictating scientific epistemology with equal glee. The man is awesome.
Then, when you have a basic feel for Popperian epistemology, read this tale about the surface data that "proved" global warming: Patrick Michaels's The Dog Ate Global Warming.
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
It seems other scientists would like to access the data set (Popper would approve). But they have been told a changing sequence of storylines for almost as long as the planet has been cooling. Now, it seems the data do not exist.
One word. Fraud.
"He who controls the past controls the present."
In my teens, I was trained to be a scientist -- not in economics or social sciences, but in "hard" sciences, mainly chemistry. I can completely affirm that "Why should I make the data available to you" is the most bogus excuse I have ever heard of. What is this junk scientist afraid of? Is he afraid history will record him as the Pons & Fleischmann of man-driven global warming hysteria?
That excuse means that a paper could never get published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, at least not one of any worth. But I suppose these junk scientists are more interested in getting on nationally televised nightly news as the next "authority" on global warming.
In my first and only college chemistry class, I received top marks for my laboratory log book, something like 110/114. I not only got almost everything correct, but I also showed my work precisely. I was quite proud when mentioning this to my high school chemistry teacher, but she expected nothing less of a good scientist-to-be. Now, in the real world, that less-than-perfect score wouldn't have been the end. A team member, colleague, even a competing peer would have noticed my mistake or questioned my procedure, allowing me to refine my explanation or redo the experiment until it passed all scrunity.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 25, 2009 4:25 PMSeptember 17, 2009
Audi Preaches JG's Gospel of Petroleum
You may have seen the new Audi commercial with barrels of oil rolling through the streets and back onto the tankers that brought them here from overseas producers. "If 1/3 of us drove a TDI clean diesel vehicle, we could send back 1.5 million barrels of foreign oil every day."
Well, since I love oil, I went to Audi's website looking for a copy of the commercial and found their "Diesel - it's no longer a dirty word" flash presentation.
Some highlights:
A TDI engine is revved several times while a white hanky is held near the exhaust pipe. Spotless."One drop of diesel fuel has 12% more power than one drop of gasoline."
I'm ready to do my part to reduce global warming-
"If 1/3 of Americans switched from gasoline to diesel, it would be the equivalent of planting 2.2 billion trees.""so if you take the combination of phenomenal performance with reduced emissions and the positive impact that has on the environment there can truly be no compelling argument against the adoption of clean diesel technology for use on the roads in the United States."
Well, except for the fact that it would obliterate all of the "crises" that environmentalists have concocted to take us back to the caves.
Hey Obama, stimulate THIS!
[UPDATED to add video of the commercial from YouTube.]
Also of interest, a history of diesel cars in America since 1979. Via AudiofAmerica on YouTube. They call it Audi TDI: TRUTH IN DIESEL
By the way, did I mention that I love oil?
Our German bruderin who expected that? I would add the VW Commercial: How does your hybrid sound? Makes me laugh every time.
Posted by: jk at September 17, 2009 12:58 PMWhat time is it? It's time to unpimp your Prius...
Posted by: Keith at September 17, 2009 2:23 PMOkay, now I'm really, really, ROFLMAO.
Posted by: johngalt at September 17, 2009 3:44 PMSeptember 15, 2009
Why Linus Drives a Hummer
No global warming, no great pumpkins.
CHICAGO — A chilly, damp summer in the Midwest and New England might make it difficult for people in those regions to find the perfect Halloween pumpkin.
Growers in some states say harvests are down significantly from last year's yield, which could mean shortages or higher prices for pumpkins shipped in from California, Texas and other areas with better crops.
Hat-tip: Don Surber
September 13, 2009
'When the Ice Age Ended, How Did the Polar Bears Feel?'
Clever and insightful commentary from Rupert Wright in Arab Emirates 'The National' newspaper.
I can’t recall exactly when it became unfashionable to be sceptical about climate change. However, I can vividly remember where I was when just as I was giving my trenchant views that it’s all a lot of tosh, I looked around the table and realised that I had gone too far. “Still,” I said. “It’s clear that we must do something for the polar bears. Absolutely imperative.”Secretly I remain a heretic: but if I hadn’t mentioned the bears the Climate Change Inquisition would have been round to the house quicker than you can say “ice cube” and started pulling out my fingernails until I recanted.
(...)
Cutting greenhouse emissions is of course a good idea. The sooner everybody agrees that using the sun as a power source is the way forward, rather than burning dirty coal, the better. What I dislike is the unhealthy alliance of non-governmental organisations, the European Union, the United Nations and others all running around telling us what to do. Wasting taxpayer money seems to be their main priority. And I particularly dislike Trudie Styler, the wife of Sting, a pop star, who pitches up here and there telling us not to burn wood, then flies off in her private jet to one of her 20 homes.
Having said that, as somebody who has spent most of his life in the northern hemisphere, I’m all in favour of climate change. I’ll be sorry to see the end of Bangladesh of course, and I’ll probably never get a chance to see the Maldives unless I go deep-sea diving. But think how good Scotland and Sweden will become.
That is the thing about man: endlessly adaptable. It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who wrote: “You can never step in the same river twice.” Change happens and we learn to live with it, even embrace it. Think of all that virgin tundra! Even Canada might become habitable.
He's all wrong about solar power of course but it's good to see these other refreshing points of view in print. But then, it shares pages with the story 'Omanis Frown on 'half-naked' expats.'
Great, great post -- though I was must admit that the photos for the "half-naked expats" were really disappointing.
I have thought from early on that geoengineering might be the answer. Bjorn Lomborg is now on board. Now it strikes me that we would be giving the UN control of the weather -- is that a good idea?
Well, jk, using the rhetorical trick we're so fond of, why not? After all, the UN has that impeccable track record. It successfully kept out communists bent on destroying liberty -- from the very first conference -- and look at its successes toppling the USSR and Saddam's Iraq, and preventing Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear technology. What could go wrong?
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 13, 2009 8:29 PMA friend saw a particularly beautiful sunset the other night, and I replied that it's such a wonderful experience that Obama should mandate them throughout the United States. Like with health care, it's patently unfair that anyone should experience more of a great sunset than anyone else. But unfortunately atmospheric conditions are not equal everywhere, so we'll all have to be content with only smidgens of good sunsets.
Finally getting to the article about the ex-pats. For shame! Good heavens! "His wife was wearing a blue skirt showing off most of her suntanned legs."
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 13, 2009 8:34 PMGeoengineering makes me nervous. Man is great, but he is not all conquering. Not yet. The cost of messing up there could far exceed the cost of other climate change -- natural or man made.
Posted by: T. Greer at September 14, 2009 5:20 AMLet's put it to a vote
AC's news blog on cold summer temperatures inspired me to Google "coming ice age." Turns out there's a new study that shows, well, I'll let a couple of others tell you:
Study co-author Jonathan Overpeck quoted by Andrew Revkin in the NY Times: 'Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age'
The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.(...)
But Jonathan T. Overpeck, a study author and climate specialist at the University of Arizona, said the rising concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases guaranteed warming at a pace that could stress ecosystems and cause rapid melting of Greenland’s great ice sheet.
“The fast rate of recent warming is the scary part,” Dr. Overpeck said. “It means that major impacts on Arctic ecosystems and global sea level might not be that far off unless we act fast to slow global warming.”
Ethel Fenig in the American Thinker: 'Good News About the Coming Ice Age'
The situation seems like a win, win one for everyone. Everyone that is except Al Gore, Michael Moore and all the other unscientific minds who invented the non crisis in the first place.
And then there are the real scaremongers, like The Independent's Johann Hari - 'Our Heat is Turning the Arctic into an Alien Landscape' and Earthweek - 'Study Documents How Global Warming is "Manmade."
So there's clearly plenty of room for interested parties to spin this new "synthesis of decadally resolved proxy temperature records from poleward of 60°N covering the past 2000 years" into "proof" of whatever they want the public to believe (or fear.) But even if we take the findings at face value, who could argue that it is imperative or even desireable to prevent future warming?
On the one hand we are destined for "ecosystem stress" and "rapid melting of Greenland's great ice sheet." On the other hand, as the Times story points out, "much of the northern hemisphere" could once again be buried "under a mile or more of ice."
Which is a greater threat to all life on earth?
September 12, 2009
Weather is not Climate
Keep repeating that as you curl up in a fetal position.
The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The analysis is based on records dating back to 1895.
"Climate is what you expect - weather is what you get."
I'd give attribution if I could remember who I heard say that.
Posted by: johngalt at September 13, 2009 9:54 AMJuly 21, 2009
Wait a Cotton-Pickin' Minute
The Sun is what makes the Earth hot? Who knew?
I love the patronizing NYTimes "some global warming skeptics..." locution. Apparently, the skeptics are busy predicting sunspot activity. This one skeptic is more interested in correlating climate change to sunspot activity so that non skeptics do not take us back to the caves.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
July 8, 2009
The End of Liberty
It's been a great run, and you have to think that the ideas of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison will capture another generation somewhere, someday. But it is over.
Why so blue? Sunspots.
A new group of sunspots developed, and while not dramatic by historic standards, the spots were the most significant in many months."This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years," observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif., said on Spaceweather.com.
The lack of sunspots has allowed the Earth to cool, demonstrating dispositive linkage between CO2 output and global temperature. Now that there are sunspots, the earth will again heat up. The UN will attribute this to affluence and we will all march back to the caves on their Malthusian nonsense.
It's been a gas.
Perhaps the bigger concern is the diminishing solar winds. The solar winds are charged particles that create the heliosphere, a sphere that protects the solar system from dangerous cosmic rays emitted from things like novas and supernovas. Without the heliosphere, gamma rays from outerspace can destroy life on earth.
NASA estimates that the solar winds are the weakest they've been in 50 years and that the heliosphere has decreased as much as 20%.
Obviously, there is a correlation between man-made greenhouse gasses and the decline of the heliosphere. Life as we know it hangs in the balance. Quick, somebody call Al Gore!
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at July 8, 2009 1:58 PMJuly 3, 2009
GHG/CO2/AGW Hypothesis Fails "Ultimate Scientific Test"
More than one person on these pages has declared that there is a "consensus amongst the majority of serious scientists that man made global warming is a real phenomenon." The obvious implication is that anyone who disputes this is either an un-serious scientist or a crackpot. I now ask any of you who may still hold that belief, which label would you apply to Dr. Alan Carlin, the EPA's own Senior Operations Research Analyst? Previous ThreeSources blog posts here, here and here have referenced the internal dissent by Dr. Carlin against the hasty and apparently premeditated regulation of CO2 as an atmospheric "pollutant." In Carlin's own words, here is what he has to say about the state of the GHG/CO2/AGW "science."
I have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, and EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decisions on endangerment, it appears likely that it is EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Restricting the source of inputs into the process to these these two sources may make EPA’s current task easier but it may come with enormous costs later if they should result in policies that may not be scientifically supportable.
This is profound enough in its own right. But there is more:
It is of great importance that the Agency recognize the difference between an effort that has consumed tens of billions of dollars by the IPCC, the CCSP, and some additional European, particularly British, funding over a period of at least 15 years with what I have been able to pull together in less than a week. (...) What is actually noteworthy about this effort is not the relative apparent scientific shine of the two sides but rather the relative ease with which major holes have been found in the GHG/CO2/AGW argument. In many cases the most important arguments are based not on multi-million dollar research efforts but by simple observation of available data which has surprisingly received so little scrutiny. The best example of this is the MSU satellite data on global temperatures. Simple scrutiny of this data yields what to me are stunning observations. Yet this has received surprisingly little study or at least publicity. In the end it must be emphasized that the issue is not which side has spent the most money or published the most peer-reviewed papers, or been supported by more scientific organizations. The issue is rather whether the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test—conformance with real world data. What these comments show is that it is this ultimate test that the hypothesis fails; this is why EPA needs to carefully reexamine the science behind global warming before proposing an endangerment finding. This will take more than four days but is the most important thing I can do right now and in the coming weeks and months and possibly even years.
Emphasis mine. In Dr. Carlin's 85 page review report, composed in about 4 of the 5 days he was given to review the Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act he made 19 specific recomended revisions to the TSD. In the Executive Summary section he pretty much sums up his opinion with this:
These inconsistencies between the TSD analysis and scientific observations are so important and sufficiently abstruse that in my view EPA needs to make an independent analysis of the science of global warming rather than adopting the conclusions of the IPCC and CCSP without much more careful and independent EPA staff review than is evidenced by the Draft TSP. Adopting the scientific conclusions of an outside group such as the IPCC or CCSP without thorough review by EPA is not in the EPA tradition anyway, and there seems to be little reason to change the tradition in this case. If their conclusions should be incorrect and EPA acts on them, it is EPA that will be blamed for inadequate research and understanding and reaching a possibly inaccurate determination of endangerment. Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until about 2030 given the 60 year cycle described in Section 2) there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain much of the available data.
Like the folks at Americans for Limited Government, I'll label Dr. Carlin an American hero.
Posted by: jk at July 3, 2009 6:45 PMYes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is an excellent idea.
When I think of Dr. Alan Carlin and what he's done, one image comes to mind. Tank Man.
Posted by: johngalt at July 4, 2009 12:21 PM
"Serious scientist": one who agrees with liberals.
Any other scientist isn't even called "unserious," but labeled a crackpot or Flat-Earthist.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 5, 2009 9:09 AMJuly 1, 2009
That Damn Balance of Powers Thingy Again!
Even Glenn Greenwald (not a frequent linkee 'round these parts) finds the following quote "creepy."
It's "stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country," said an administration official.
This directed at a Democratic Congressman from Texas who had the temerity to vote against Cap'n Trade. Greewald:
This has become an emerging theme among both the White House and House leadership: that progressive membe ers of Congress have an obligation to carry out "the wishes of the President" even when they disagree (now, apparently, it's "stunning" when they defy his dictates).
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) was not opposing the bill to protect Texas families from a 300% tax on electricity, mind you -- he felt that the bill was too lenient on polluters.It remains a story without a hero -- but with a couple more villains.
June 27, 2009
Clean Energy "misinformation"
I'd barely finished yelling at my television during C-SPAN coverage of the H.R. 2454 vote before the president started in on the senate:
"My call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this," he said. "We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don't believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth."
Misinformation? I think John Boehner said it best during his "fillibuster" yesterday (via DVR):
6:04 PM EDT [Reading from the 300 page back-door amendment.] "Now let me get to page 83. Consumer Behavior Research. The Secretary of Energy is authorized to establish a research program to identify the factors affecting consumer actions to conserve energy and to make improvements in energy efficiency. Through the program the Secretary will make grants to public and private institutions of higher education to study the effects of consumer behavior on total energy use.""Do we really need to spend government money to do a study on why people don't want to pay twice the cost and get half the quality?"
Then there's this:
Obama said the bill would create jobs, make renewable energy profitable and decrease America's dependence on foreign oil.
Does nobody recognize this tacit admission that renewable energy is NOT profitable?
Obama practices true faith-based politics. You have to believe he has some kind of magic, otherwise this whole planet is so screwed.
Of course, I'm just being logical when I point out that whatever profitable "renewable" energy there is, by definition entrepreneurs look at it without any need for government. Government action can only direct us away from what is genuinely profitable.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at June 28, 2009 7:04 PM"Obama, practices faith-based politics." So true. So do the people who voted for him; they were true believers in that magic.
When I was in the Philippines during the run-up to the 2004 Presidential election there, I read an article in one of their newspapers in which a number of ordinary people were asked who they were voting for and why. I laughed as I read about one older woman who answered "I am voting for Fernando Poe Jr. because he has magic, and he will use that magic to fix the economy!" (One of Poe's best-known movie roles was as the character Flavio, a blacksmith who forges a magical sword to right wrongs in "Ang Panday.")
Yeah, I laughed because it's funny when stupid happens to someone else's country. It's not so funny now. Thank you, 52%, for all that magical thinking.
Posted by: Keith at June 29, 2009 11:53 AMWhich is worse, voters who ascribe supernatural powers to the politicians they support, or people who support politicians with full knowledge of how "democracy" will give them by taking from others?
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at June 29, 2009 4:14 PMWell said, Perry, I think I'll take the witch doctors.
Posted by: jk at June 29, 2009 4:22 PMPerry: I think you've just given us what may be the perfect description of the difference between stupid and evil.
As for your question, I'm with jk, and I'll go with the former: the unsmart are so much easier to live among without being harmed than the ungood.
Posted by: Keith at June 29, 2009 4:56 PMScience and politics at EPA
JK asked for proof. Here's a start. Anthony Watts has more on the CEI charge that EPA ignored science disproving the absurd notion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Watts also has one of the internal EPA email messages and a conversation back and forth between a San Francisco journalist and an anonymous EPA employee. Fascinating.
UPDATE: Investor's Business Daily is now reporting the story above, citing them as sources. This could be a stepping-stone to the MSM next week. Maybe not Diane Sawyer, but there's got to be one journalist and editor out there who are willing to risk administration blacklisting to get props for "breaking" the story.
Quod erat Demonstratum, jg. Nice sleuthing.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 11:56 AMAnd, while we're on the CEI, don't miss The Silence of the Regulated (HT Insty)
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 1:10 PMEmissions scheme passes Australia's House - stalls in Senate
In 2007 Australian PM John Howard became Global Warming's "first major political victim." His successor, Kevin Rudd, pledged to sign the Kyoto Protocol. This year Rudd sought passage of a government mandated emissions reduction plan.
The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.
This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.
The preceding account by Kim Strassel uses this and many more instances to show that the US is out of step with the international community on climate change.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.
Nancy Pelosi's House clearly didn't care about any of this in today's vote for global economic suicide. It's hard to imagine that the Senate will ignore it too.
Awesome post (My Kim Strassel quota was exceeded or I'd've linked). Her editorial is a great compilation of serous grounds for skepticism -- just in case anybody needs an article to forward to a fence-sitting friend or relative or Senator.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 12:00 PMJune 26, 2009
"Balanced" and "sensible" climate change bill passes House
That's the spin thrown on the bill by President Obama yesterday. Surely it was far from either of those qualities at the time, but prior to passage another 300 pages were shoe-horned in ... at 3 am this morning! [What in the hell is the fixation that Washington politicians have with that time of day?] Minority Leader Boehner said the obvious:
And here are a few floor quotes:
Rep. Geoff Davis, a Republican from Kentucky, said the cap-and-trade bill represented the "economic colonization of the heartland" by New York and California.Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) called the bill a “scam” that would do nothing but satisfy “the twisted desires of radical environmentalists.”
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) called it a “massive transfer of wealth” from the United States to foreign countries.Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that, without the bill, the United States would remain energy-dependent on people who want to “fly planes into our buildings.”
I'd hoped to insert a bulleted list of ways that this bill is a colonoscopy for America but then I realized, Who the hell knows what it does... it jumped from 1200 pages to 1500 overnight!
But it's far from law yet. Next stop: the Senate.
(Note that as the lions share of H.R. 2454 was written by the environmental lobby this post qualifies for the coveted "dirty hippies" category.)
And kudos to JK for naming the 8 RINOs who voted for this treasonous piece of crap. Just four of them switching sides would have spiked it.
That jagoff Kirk wants to run for Obama's former Senate seat.
Good luck with that.
Posted by: AlexC at June 26, 2009 11:33 PMOf the 44 Democrats voting no, one is from Colorado and four are from PA. I'll tell you what - my respect for John Salazar (CO-3) just grew three sizes larger.
Posted by: johngalt at June 27, 2009 10:06 AMWell done, Mister Leader!
I tend to give up before trying on my representation, but Colorado's two freshman Democrat Senators could well feel a little heat on this issue.
To take up an Instapundit riff, having the next Tea Party outside of Senator Udall's or Bennett's office might be a better blow for freedom than a photo-op outside the Capitol.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 11:50 AMIf Mark Udall might face heat on this issue in 2010 he doesn't seem to feel it at the moment. One of the stories I read yesterday said a few senators were working the halls of congress twisting arms for a yes vote. Mark Udall (D-CO) was the one mentioned by name.
I'm in for a TEA (Taking Energy Away) party at one of Markey's offices. Instead of pitchforks we'll carry empty gas cans. (Shall we try to organize something for next week?)
Posted by: johngalt at June 27, 2009 3:27 PMI'm thinking we'd have better luck with Bennett, but that it would be a good exercise to scare Senator Udall. He is used to catering to CO-2 collectivists and a reminder that Boulder is not the whole state, dude, might be a good lesson.
They're pushing on Twitter for GOP defectors (great Twitter tag #capandtr8tors) to change their vote as you suggest with Markey. Is that realistic? I cannot imagine that the same effort would not be better directed at the Senate, but I am open to discussion.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 6:29 PMBest quote:
“I look forward to spending the next 100 years trying to fix this legislation,†said California Republican Brian Bilbray.
Posted by: HB at June 27, 2009 10:15 PMCap'n Trade
I was stuck at the hospital all day (drug trials, I'm fine!) but blog friend SugarChuck reports that some Congressional Republicans put up a good fight today. But, as you've no doubt heard, 219 house members thought that the Federal government should control energy use and only 212 did not.
I have no consoling words, but at least we get a good Quote of the day:
Never have so few stolen so much from so many to achieve so little -- @VodkaPundit
Stephen Green (VodkaPundit) also retweets the GOP defectors: "GOP votes for #capandtrade McHugh(NY) Reichert(WA) Smith(NJ) Lance(NJ) LoBiondo(NJ) Bono Mack(CA) Castle(DE) Kirk(IL)"
June 25, 2009
Our Administration Will Be About Science!
-- unless, of course, it interferes with our politics!
Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.
"This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”
This is from the CEI which I consider a reputable group. I have no proof beyond their assertion and do not expect many media outlets to dig too hard on this. But this would be huge if proven true.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
Let's talk about "if proven true" for a moment: If a tree falls in the forest and Diane Sawyer is not there to hear it, did it even make a noise?
It could be as plain as the nose on either of our faces but if Diane Sawyer says "[There were] more than 50 deaths resulting from mass shootings in the past month alone" then the 208,333 times a gun was used to deter a crime each month may just as well have never happened.
As an aside - My personal favorite version of the old relativism joke I paraphrased above is: "If a man speaks in the forest and there isn't a woman there to hear him is he still wrong?" Perhaps this now needs to be updated to "white man" and "wise latina woman."
I think we would need something more than the partisan but wonderful CEI. If they are able to get teh actual report or if Congress could investigate, it could certainly happen without Diane Sawyer.
I'm just careful not to get too excited too soon.
Posted by: jk at June 25, 2009 1:07 PMJune 19, 2009
StoptheEPA.com
Do you need more than the url? The Heritage Foundation has set up a website that allows you to send comments to the EPA.
Also don't miss their blog post on Crony-enviro-capitalism.
But don't worry, says Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. She told the New York Times earlier this year, "We are poised to be specific on what we regulate and on what schedule." In other words, just as the Obama Treasury Department played political favorites when bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, rewarding big labor allies while punishing average investors and secured creditors, the Obama EPA is poised to play the exact same games while enforcing the Clean Air Act.
June 13, 2009
Climate Change
Good Friend of this blog, T Greer, has an excellent post on "Death by Climate." An NGO headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asserts that climate change currently is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year. Our friend disagrees.
From here it is easy to see the fallacy inherit in any attempt to label a death (or even a group of deaths) as "caused" by climate change. There does not exist a single causality attributed to climate change whose death cannot be sourced more directly to factor of the socio-economic sort. In cases where the deaths are indirectly attributed to climate change** (such as the cholera epidemics or crop failures that often follow flooding in underdeveloped areas) the link between death and weather is even more tenuous; each degree of separation between climatic trends and causality trends simply multiplies the number of factor leading to the end result that are more important than climate change.
TG is a lot more generous with Annan and the Global Humanitarian Forum than I am (as I mention in a lenghy, black-helicopterish comment) but there is much I agree with in his thoughtful post.
Don't be surprised at the claim. It has the same unscientific basis by which Obama says "___ jobs saved or created."
On the other hand, the ban on DDT has led to hundreds of thousands of African deaths each year. This is directly provable, because they died from disease x (malaria) that could have been prevented by action y (spraying pesticides).
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at June 15, 2009 2:19 AMJk-
Thanks for the link. I have responded to your comment, and agree with you to a large extent. It is a sad reflection of our society that claims such as this are accepted and supported by the eletes who really should know better.
Posted by: T. Greer at June 15, 2009 4:33 PMMay 22, 2009
What if global-warming fears are overblown?
Gee, is that even possible? I thought the "evidence is in" and "the science is settled?"
Lest anyone think my prior post is nothing but mere invective, read this interview by Fortune magazine's Jon Birger of veteran climatologist and IPCC contributor John Christy (who has no ties to "Big Oil"). Birger learned that...
...the surface temperature readings upon which global warming theory is built have been distorted by urbanization. Due to the solar heat captured by bricks and pavement and due to the changing wind patterns caused by large buildings, a weather station placed in a rural village in 1900 will inevitably show higher temperature readings if that village has, over time, been transformed into small city or a suburban shopping district, Christy says.The only way to control for such surface distortions is by measuring atmospheric temperatures. And when Christy and his co-researcher Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist now teaching at UA-Huntsville, began analyzing temperature readings from NOAA and NASA satellites, they found much slighter increases in atmospheric temperatures than what was being recorded on the surface. Christy and Spencer also found that nearly all the increases in average surface temperatures are related to nighttime readings - which makes sense if bricks and pavement are in fact retaining heat that would otherwise be dispersed.
Birger concludes by asking Christy,
What about the better-safe-than-sorry argument? Even if there's a chance Gore and Hansen are wrong, shouldn't we still take action in order to protect ourselves from catastrophe, just in case they're right?Christy: The problem is that the solutions being offered don't provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. That's basically the equivalent of building 1,000 new nuclear power plants all operating by 2020. Now I'm all in favor of nuclear energy, but that would affect the global temperature by only seven-hundredths of a degree by 2050 and fifteen hundredths by 2100. We wouldn't even notice it.
Hat Tip: A colleague of jg's college-professor dad who emailed the link to him with a note, "Maybe you were right all along." Click 'Continue reading' to see what dad said to him in reply.
(Is Fortune Magazine considered an MSM outlet?)
Richard,
Of course I am right, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever. The computer models used to predict climate change and the computers used to run them are not sufficient to model what is already known and mitigating factors that we would call negative feedback, that makes the climate systems stable, are not well understood and are almost completely neglected. Whenever one of these “climate researchers” want to publish a paper all they have to do is alter a parameter in their computer program and speculate about the results. The government funds practically no research to on climate research other than to prove man is causing it; which he isn’t. Anyone in this research community including John Christy who says anything counter to the “accepted facts” is all but ignored. John Christy is too high profile to have his funds cut-off; he is the Government’s token critic. The present administration has much it wants to do and uses climate crises to cry wolf. Hopefully, the inmates will ultimately be put back into their cages and sanity will reign. Maybe it will happen before they bankrupt the country, but I am not at all hopeful.
This last point cannot be stressed enough. If we listen to the numbers coming from the IEA, we will need to build 32 nuclear plants, 17,000 wind turbines, and 215 million square meters of solar panels every year in order to hit a 50% decrease in emissions by 2050.
Hansen, et. al. say we need to reduce emissions by 80% to make a difference.
Yes, quite. To put this in a perspective we can understand, if the proposed carbonless energy sources were "invested" for the next 50 years instead of only 40 they would produce the same amount of energy as is contained in just under 3.5 CMO (cubic miles of oil.) Remember that 1 CMO is approximately the annual world oil consumption. So this 40-50 year investment could be replaced by increasing world oil production by 7 to 9 percent over the same time period.
All of that extra "investment" for just 0.07 degrees of cooling?
Posted by: johngalt at May 25, 2009 12:48 PMUpon reflection, my conclusion should be stated from a different perspective. The 40-50 year "investment" in carbonless energy doesn't need to be "replaced" as I said by 7 to 9 percent increase in oil production. Instead this is the amount of current oil production that the massive proposed expenditure would replace.
In other words, after untold trillions of dollars of other people's money is spent by government bureaucrats for 40 years we'll still consume at least 91% of the oil we now use (and the earth might be 0.07 degrees cooler than it would otherwise have been.
Posted by: johngalt at May 28, 2009 12:07 PMOrwell predicted Albert Gore Jr.
For your Friday enjoyment, here's a great new Global Warming video from Competitive Enterprise Institute.
There are some good fact/fiction counterpoints if you follow the original link.
Hat Tip again to www.globalwarming.org. This is an excellent blog with many current stories on the topic. Highly recommended. Blogroll candidate.
WARNING: The recommended site is dot ORG. The easily confused site at dot COM is a kool-aid site. For example, they warn:
The prevailing counter opinion is that all that is presently perceived to be global warming is simply the result of a normal climactic swing in the direction of increased temperature. Most proponents of this global warming ideology have definitive social and financial interests in these claims.
HA! Pot calls kettle black! (I wonder if they recognize the irony that their site carries the dot COM, i.e. commercial, URL extension? Probably not.) At any rate, the first defense they offer is an ad hominem. Sad.
May 15, 2009
For Sale: The Golden State
I really wanted to include a little graphic showing the state of California with a FOR SALE sign planted in it right about at Sacramento. Well, just use your imagination.
California's Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed selling a number of state landmarks (state ownership of which is in some doubt) to raise cash and balance the state budget. One-time proceeds are estimated at $1 billion. The budget shortfall is $15.4 billion, just for the next fiscal year. Obviously state officials need more stuff to put in their garage sale. Hmm, I wonder what California has that someone might be willing to pay cash for (other than federal bailout dollars, that is.) Gee, that's a tough one!
According to this handy interactive graphic the total government lease royalty revenue that would result from lifting current oil and gas production moratoria is $1695 billion and of that amount, $1386 billion of it comes from the outer continental shelf (Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf regions combined.) A summary report here provides numerous tables showing the breakdown by area but none were clear enough for me to cite specifically. Let it suffice to say the California budget shortfall, at $15.4 billion, is a bit over 1 percent of the possible OCS government windfall. If the Governator would simply work toward responsible development of his state's natural resources he could balance its budget overnight, and for decades to come.
As an added bonus, the productive half of America might even throw in legalization of pot!
I'm just happy the Governator is listening to Reason TV as they point out some of the goodies that are available.
Great point on the revenues from energy production. If we could duct tape Senators Boxer and Feinstein in a box* for a couple of days and override the bans, would the Golden State's production be viable at current prices?
*ThreeSources does not recommend or condone violent behavior directed at legitimately elected officials. This was merely a dramatic device to suggest possible passage of legislation that the current Senatorial representation of California has long opposed.
Posted by: jk at May 15, 2009 11:42 AMCalifornia going bankrupt while refusing to pump all that nice, shiny, revenue-producing oil isn't far removed from half a billion people starving in India while porterhouses and top sirloins on four legs walk around unmolested and uneaten on their city streets.
THERE'S a worthy run-on sentence to make a well-deserved point. The picturesque tone of voice is just a fringe benefit.
All that being said, I must once again apologize to the whole nation for my state. Let's just face it: we're heap plenty stupid. We gave you Feinstein, Boxer, Schwarzenegger, Waters, and come next Tuesday, we'll see whether we're still stupid.
I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry.
Posted by: Keith at May 15, 2009 4:32 PMA feller in the 2nd Congressional Colorado district is not going to cast any stones (not without a permit, Kieth).
The Reason video reminded me the hope I had for Ahnold. All humor of the video aside, it underscores just how bankrupt (philosophically) the system is. Watch those union folk -- those teachers "Ain't got none attention of giving nothing up!"
Schwarzenegger was a rare chance: he had the star power to get elected as an individualist in a collectivist-leaning state and he had toughness to stand up to the opposition. The California Public Union Sector trained him like a puppy. Is there another one left, Yoda?
Posted by: jk at May 15, 2009 5:02 PMI see today evidence that the "sell Cahl-ee-fohrn-ya's state landmarks" proposal was little more than a campaign stunt. It was aimed at bolstering support for tomorrow's tax increase ballot measures (which Keith alluded to in his comment.) The half-dozen or so initiatives would raise taxes to collect, as I understand it, an additional $6 billion per year for 3 years from CA taxpayers (read: those "white people" who gathered on Capitol steps nationwide last month). If they fail, as the polls suggest most will, the supposed result will be "deep spending cuts."
Good NED, can we get some of those ballot measures in OUR state too??
Posted by: johngalt at May 18, 2009 1:36 PMjohngalt: for more on tomorrow's wacky ballot measures in California, see here:
I did an update yesterday pointing my readers back here, and we have a lively conversation going among my readers in which you're always welcome to participate. Heaven knows a good lesson in free-market economics and the proper role of government is sorely needed by Californians, especially our elected overlords...
Posted by: Keith at May 18, 2009 1:55 PMMay 13, 2009
Now That''s Inconvenient!
Hat-tip: Scrivener.net
May 11, 2009
Fuel Economy Buffoonery
It was bound to happen: The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid - "The most fuel efficient mid-sized sedan in America." EPA rated 41 mpg city/36 mpg highway.
You read that right, brother. It is supposedly MORE fuel efficient in town than on the open road. ("Smart" drivers will doubtless pull over and stop every mile or so to improve their highway mileage.)
I'm assuming - more efficient in town than on the four-lane because in town, the carbon-based engine shares duty with the electric motor, while freeway speeds on the four-lane require full-time use of the gasoline burner, because battery power can't push you along at a speed needed for freeway driving?
Alternative cynical theory: getting out and pushing can be done on city streets only.
Posted by: Keith at May 11, 2009 4:36 PMYes, more or less. And the salient point is this: What is the battery's state of charge at the beginning and end of the test?
Posted by: johngalt at May 11, 2009 5:17 PMApril 29, 2009
Climate Change "Final Solution"
Brother BR's George Carlin post may have been a re-run but I'm pretty sure this one isn't. Satirist Progressivista says turning off our lights for one hour every year isn't going to get the job done in the cause against global climate change. It's time for the "final solution."
So, next year when Earth Hour comes around again — instead of having everyone turn off their lights for one hour — we should have them drink green-colored Kool-Aid laced with potassium chloride, which just happens to be not only the poison Jim Jones gave to his followers, but also the one many abortionists use to terminate those dreaded unbabies.If the billion people who participated in this previous Earth Hour participate in our new and improved version, we will eliminate more than 7 trillion pounds of carbon emissions per year. And that’s assuming an even distribution of participants around the world. As participation would likely be higher in the nations that emit the most, the actual number of savings may be two or even three times as much.
And if we could get a billion people to participate each year, the planet would be saved in a very short amount of time indeed.
Sounds like a rather modest proposal.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at April 29, 2009 9:53 PMObama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid and all their state-worshipping followers can be first. What a vastly improved world we'd have!
And I'm not joking here.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at April 30, 2009 12:45 PMNot only is it "modest" it is also guaranteed to "work."
Posted by: johngalt at May 1, 2009 12:38 PMGeorge Carlin Saves the Planet
This video has probably been around awhile given that George Carlin hasn't, but it calls out the hubris of the Green Movement in a way that only George Carlin can.
Hat tip: John E, The Refugee's B-i-L
You New folks. Actually, HB posted this last June when we lost Mr. Carlin. My comment from then, however, stands:
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Carlin has brought me great joy in his career and this clip is entertaining and thought provoking. I'll agree it is vintage Carlin.
"I have had a transcription of this emailed to me many times, and I was always a bit put off by his conclusion. I love the idea that Earth is tough; I am less enamored of the idea that human life is insignificant. We have free will, we wrote Kubla Khan, An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations, the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence.
"Funny and enjoyable skit, but we are not fleas.
"Me be too grouchy?"
In that case, The Refugee must invoke another old comedian, Steve Martin: "Well, excuuuuse me!"
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at April 29, 2009 2:17 PMAs the kiddies say, LOL. I just thought I recognized this. I have received this from many folks "of my stripe" on DAWG (dogs have stripes?) yet I am so far the only one offended by his estimation of human potential.
Posted by: jk at April 29, 2009 2:46 PMI guess I neglected to comment in round one, so here's what I should have said.
I disagree with your summarization that Carlin called humanity insignificant, or said "we are fleas." What he said was that compared to the magnitude of earth and its ecosystem the impact of the presence of humans is like "a bad case of fleas."
The earth changes, he said, with natural disasters of every stripe. The key word here is "natural." The only life forms that survive are the ones that can adapt to those natural changes. Our rational mind makes us one of the most adaptable of all species, but the crap that some humans impose on the rest of us in the name of "saving the planet" only makes this adaptation more difficult.
Individuals among us did, as you say, create many great works. But whether literature, architecture, sculpture or scientific understanding, what difference does it make to the earth? Without humans here to preserve those things they'll vanish in our wake.
No, in super slow-mo instant replay I say Carlin got the call right.
Posted by: johngalt at April 29, 2009 4:09 PMApril 22, 2009
It's Not Easy Being Green
Heritage updates Kermit's Lyrics:
It’s so expensive being green,
Having to pay for all the things big government needs,
When I think it could be nicer not being taxed,
for energy, or my car, or my home’s heating, things like that.It’s so expensive being green,
It seems the taxes blend in with so many ordinary policies these days,
And people tend to pass them over, because they’re not standing out like flashy payroll taxes or spending that’s skyyy high.But, green is the color of taxes,
and green can seem cool and friendly-like,
And green taxes will be big, like a mountain, or seem important like a river of debt,
or sacrifice jobs for a tree.When green is all your allowed to be,
It can make you wonder why,
But why wonder, why wonder,
Your green, and business won’t do fine, but you better get used to it.
It’s who you have to be.
Follow the link to a video of the original.
March 26, 2009
Back to the Caves
A good friend of this blog sends a link to The New Yorker (and yes, the page has a cartoon in it). David Owen makes one of the more intelligent and compelling cases that energy consumption is required to advance human comfort and prosperity. Owen flatly states that "the world’s principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity."
The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk.
Where Owen diverges from your average right wing, DAWG-denyin', knuckle-draggin' whacko is that he thinks it is great. He only worries that efforts to revitalize the world economy might succeed -- and concomitantly raise carbon footprints.
The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again—through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-investment projects to build new roads and airports (ditto). Our best intentions regarding conservation and carbon reduction inevitably run up against the realities of foreclosure and bankruptcy and unemployment. How do we persuade people to drive less—an environmental necessity—while also encouraging them to revive our staggering economy by buying new cars?
Those bastards!
My e-mailer suggests (so pointedly I wish had share permission) that these people have no plans to join us in the caves when we are driven back. They'll spin off a check for carbon offsets before they climb aboard he Gulfstream. But I do appreciate Owen's honesty.
And where Owen diverges from your average tofu-munching, prosperity hating, disaster du jour statist is in having even the slightest concern for "putting people back to work."
Kenneth Green, a self-proclaimed carbon taxer, writes in The American about the practical difficulties of reducing "greenhouse gas" emissions either through regulation or by a cap and trade plan.
With such a huge swath of the economy's productivity based on energy production and consumption, the government will be creating a new financial instrument of massive proportion. Did the current economic turmoil not teach us the importance of deliberation in creating new kinds of poorly understood financial instruments?Posted by: johngalt at March 26, 2009 4:40 PM
March 23, 2009
Cut Down All The Damn Trees!
CO2 is a threat to Public Health
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a proposal to the White House finding that carbon dioxide is danger to public health, in a step that could trigger the enforcement of stringent emissions rules under the Clean Air Act.If approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the endangerment finding could make regulations of greenhouse gases across the economy tougher than those prepared but not approved by the Bush administration. The EPA submitted the proposed rule to the White House on Friday, according to federal records published Monday.
The executive branch can control every aspect of the economy that uses energy. "Stroke of the pen, law of the land." It's back to the caves, friends -- game over.
Where do I go for a permit to use PCBs to control dust on my driveways or DDT to kill the mosquitoes so prevalent in the Old Dry Creek corridor passing in and near my farm?
If mammal breath is such a "hazard to human health" then how can emission of ANY of it be justified? Just shut the fracking gas/oil/coal plants DOWN. None of this pantywaist "right to pollute in a socially acceptable way" bullshit.
I call this a win-win proposition: It would make environmentalists happy, because modern society would basically cease to exist. And it would make me happy because voters would then use their stone tablet ballots to vote each and every environmentalist maggot out of public office across the land. (Even if it's so they can watch American Idol again, I'll take it.)
Posted by: johngalt at March 24, 2009 5:16 PMMarch 11, 2009
DAWG Denyin'
I wish to clarify my position on climate change. If you've heard it, skip to the link and enjoy John Fund's brutal takedown of VP Gore.
If you're new 'round here, please accept my argument with the proponents: they do not use accepted scientific methods to evaluate their theories and resolve differences. One of my heroes is Dr. Karl Popper. His writings on philosophy and politics are superb, but he is best known for his scientific epistemology. Popper is - among many things -- the codifier of what we know as the scientific method.
To be accepted by the scientific community, a theory must display predictive power. Most famously, Albert Einstein's Special and General Relativity both predicted complex phenomena that could not be verified by the instruments of their day. Yet, as atomic clocks, and rocket ships, and radio telescopes were invented, underpaid graduate students used those devices to test Einstein's assertions. So far, they have all come true, and Einstein's theories are well accepted.
But it's worth noting that Einstein's theories are still not completely accepted and that a scientist who questions them is not shunned as "A Relativity Denier." He better have something to back up his claims, but his claims can be heard.
Not so to one with the temerity to suggest that Global Warming is not Anthropogenic and Deleterious. Nope, then you're a denier. Segue to John Fund (which must be read in full). VP Gore will not debate Vaclav Klaus, who doubts the W; Bjorn Lomborg, who questions the D; or Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard who asks what VP Gore hopes to accomplish.
At the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California, Mr. Gore was initially scheduled to appear with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a noted skeptic on global warming. Mr. Gore changed his schedule so he could appear the previous day. President Klaus told me this week that the major reason he agreed to travel from Europe was the chance to interact with Mr. Gore. "I don't understand all of this reluctance to engage with others," he told me.
Back to Popper, and real science: the heroes are the iconoclasts who buck "consensus" and say the Earth is not flat, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, and a four pound stone does not fall four times as fast as a one pound stone. "Eppur Si Muove."
Glad to be a denier, and not just because you're one, JK. I'm a bit proud, even, to have converted my brother from being a proponent to a doubter.
And, surely, don't any liberals read this:
http://tinyurl.com/3b6zje Asher's blog at Daily Tech is a fount of new-ledge (give THAT one to your spelling test!).
No, they don't read that nb, "The Science is Settled&tm;" and they are on to saving the world, not reading every little meaningless fluctuation of data.
Lastly, be careful with the deference -- nobody treats me that nicely around here.
Posted by: jk at March 16, 2009 12:30 PMMarch 9, 2009
Why politicized economic development is dangerous
I recently wrote on the danger of politics driving scientific research. The obvious case of this now is all of the government "investments" being proposed in the name of "saving the planet from irreversible damage due to climate change."
But even if man-made climate change was real (sorry tg, is real) and even if "renewable" energy sources were beneficial to counter it, the least effective entity to make them a reality is - wait for it - government.
Consider the following essay on "One Reason Governments Spend So Much" from the 'Uncle Eric' book: Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
Industries generally develop in three stages. First is scientific feasibility, second is engineering feasibility, and third is economic feasibility.Using the airline industry as an example, the question in the 1800s was: "Is long-distance air travel possible?"
In the 1800s, balloons were already in use but were not practical. The problem to solve was the heavier-than-air machine.
The Wright Brothers in 1903 proved scientific feasibility. They risked their time, money and lives to show that a heavier-than-air machine could fly.
Lindbergh, in 1927, proved engineering feasibility. He risked time, money and his life to show that long-distance air travel was possible.
This gave investors enough confidence to risk their money in the aircraft industry. In 1935 the Douglas Company came out with the DC-3, which was the beginning of economic feasibility.
The modern airline industry resulted from all this risk-taking. Today, a middle-class American can go anywhere in the world much faster, and in much greater comfort, than a Roman emperor could. Travelers fly because the benefits are greater than the costs. This is economic feasibility.
This three-step model explains why governments are terrible at economic development. The "experts" who comprise the government gamble with other people's money, so they tend to confuse scientific and engineering feasibility with economic feasibility.
Once science and engineering prove something can be done, those who comprise the government will do it - even if the costs are greater than the benefits. [emphasis mine]
This economic development of the economically unfeasible is precisely the modern story of:
Wind power
Solar photovoltaic power
Ethanol (both glucosic AND celluosic)
Biodiesel
Hydrogen fuel cells
Dual-mode hybrid cars
The list goes on...
Just to add to the entertainment value: "But even if man-made climate change were real..." is the grammatically accurate construction. Heh.
JohnGalt: great post, and the model of three-stage development makes plain, even to a poor, dumb country boy like me, why government-run economic development doesn't work. And to boot, it's much more elegant than me just saying "a government that can't even balance its own checkbook has no business fiddling with the economy."
I'd only propose one small change to the quote rfrom the essay. Where the author wrote "Once science and engineering prove something can be done, those who comprise the government will do it - even if the costs are greater than the benefits" in the last paragraph, it seems to me that the last phrase should omit the word "even" and the hyphen, thusly: "... those who comprise the government will do it if the costs are greater than the benefits." If the benefits are greater than the costs, entrepreneurs and private industry will do it, without the necessity of government meddling. Profit motive being what it is, and all that.
Ergo, government will ONLY do it if its benefits do not justify its costs, and that applies to every item in your list. QED, yes?
Posted by: Keith at March 9, 2009 3:18 PMAhh, the punchline from a great old gag can be trotted out:
I congratulate Keith on his use of the subjunctive.Posted by: jk at March 9, 2009 4:32 PM
Thanks, jk...
Say, on the subject of government and the economy, I've been reading in the news today that Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying the U.S. economy "fell off a cliff." I've read that three times today, and every time, all that comes to mind is...
"It was pushed."
Posted by: Keith at March 9, 2009 5:11 PMWellll, I was trying to have some fun with TG, saying "was" as in "past tense" ... before it was largely discredited, then replacing it with "is" as a sop to him since he's not yet comfortable with the "denier" badge of courage.
I admit - sometimes my jokes trip over their shoelaces.
Oh, and yes, I do fully agree with your improvement of the closing paragraph. Well done!
Posted by: johngalt at March 10, 2009 12:25 AMTough room, jg, you know that as well as anyone.
Posted by: jk at March 10, 2009 1:34 PMEh, I though the post was funny. I also think you have highlighted one of the biggest problems with the Eco-stimulus crowd. What they call progress is in actuality a retardation (word?) of Western civilization.
Posted by: T. Greer at March 11, 2009 12:19 PMMarch 7, 2009
Politicization of Science Deux
A bit of comment persiflage last week about how DAWG has become a left-vs-right issue. Randall Parker lays out the problem and even a few solutions:
Why has the debate over global warming become so partisan with most on the Left and Right taking opposing positions? Some on the Left argue that people on the political Left are more willing to consider the evidence of science. But I see a more likely reason: People on the Right do not like high taxes and suspect the argument for restrictions on carbon dixoide emissions is just a convenient opportunity to increase tax revenues and the size of government. The Obama Administration demonstrates the truth of these suspicions. A half trillion dollars a year is a lot of money.
I'll let you click though to see the solutions, but it is basically Mankiw's point of making carbon taxes neutral. I've made my voice heard enough on that, but compared to a huge revenue windfall for government, I'd like it just fine.
Hat-Tip: Instapundit
March 6, 2009
Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
Yesterday I commented that there's "another important dragon to be slain before" the next elections for congress and for president. That dragon is the myth of man-made global warming caused by our use of economical, safe and abundant energy sources. Many of us have long contended that the idea is founded upon pseudo-science. The late Michael Crighton agreed and in an appendix to his wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking novel 'State of Fear' he wrote "Why politicized science is dangerous."
Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high-school classrooms.
I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.
Read on below-
Careful, jg, TR has some strong followers around here. Sure he wanted to control capitalism from Washington, lock up his enemies and kill the enfeebled, but he displayed prodigious intellectual powers, looked good in casual clothes, and said "bully!" a lot.
Posted by: jk at March 6, 2009 2:36 PMOne of Crighton's points is how, after the horrors perpetrated in the name of the theory became widely known, "nobody was a eugenicist and nobody had ever been a eugenicist."
You'll recall I suggested not long ago that we start a permanent record of Global Warmists today, for the historical record.
My favorite thing about TR was "speak softly, and carry a big stick."
Posted by: johngalt at March 6, 2009 3:47 PM@Jg: I read that book and thought it sucked. (Tidal waves=result of climate change?) On the other hand, I thought the appendix you link to was quite insightful. It is rather sad to me that one's views on AGW are determined by your political affiliation. These days it seems that if you believe in "protecting the environment" then AGW is a self-evident fact not worth examining, while if you are of the free-market crowd, there is no way the climate could ever be linked to man's activities on the Earth.
This is a false dichotomy. It is perfectly acceptable to hold that warming may be influenced bu man and that free markets should not be interfered with for the environment's sake. Indeed, this is the exact position I hold.
@Jk: Hahahha. Enough already! I think we have covered this before- Roosevelt's views on eugenics never led to anything more than a desire to make immigration laws stricter. Vilifying him for politicizing science makes no sense. Everything else you have listed is irrelevant to the subject of this post and has been discussed already.
Posted by: T. Greer at March 6, 2009 5:32 PMOkay, I'll leave TR alone.
I enjoyed the Lomborg clip. He inspired the D in DAWG and I think his position is reasonable and defensible.
I hold that the debate was politicized by the left: those who Popper said would have us go back to the caves. Suddenly, the inefficacy of their ideas was meaningless: we had to take on the whole Nader-Kucinich platform or all of our children will die!
The DAWG advocates then claimed that "the science was settled" because a poll was taken. Popper, again, pointed out that science is not really done that way.
Yes, it is too bad that something important has devolved into childish bickering -- but, Mommy, they started it!!
Posted by: jk at March 6, 2009 7:04 PMBut it isn't called global warming anymore tg, it's "climate change." That way the charade can be continued whether the trend is warmer or cooler. Which is fortunate for them since now, it's cooling.
The market interference you allude to is the setting of arbitrary limits on emission of mammal breath. "First they came for the dioxins, then the beneficial pesticides, then the fluorocarbons, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur compounds, and when they came for carbon dioxide there were no pollutants left to say - you can't regulate non-pollutants!"
Posted by: johngalt at March 7, 2009 8:11 PMFebruary 27, 2009
Cap'n Trade
Maybe they need a salty-dog cartoon character to promote Cap'n Trade. After all I ate many boxes of truly disgusting cereal as a kid to get the toy surprise that Cap'n Crunch promised me. It could work.
So far, they are not fooling the WSJ Ed Page. "Don't call it a t--" is the subtitle of An Inconvenient Tax
That didn't take long. The same week that President Obama promised (again) that "95% of working families" would not see their taxes rise by "a single dime," his own budget reveals that taxes will rise for 100% of everyone for the sake of global warming. Ahem.You don't even have to burrow into yesterday's budget fine print to discover the "climate revenues" section, where the White House discloses that it expects $78.7 billion in new tax revenue in 2012 from its cap-and-trade program. The pot of cash grows to $237 billion through 2014, and at least $646 billion through 2019. If this isn't tax revenue, what is it? Manna from heaven? The offset from Al Gore's carbon footprint?
I'll credit the administration one thing. It is worse than a tax because it has such a strong regulatory component. Cue Cap'n Trade: "It's a tax" "No, it's regulation," replies the Power-Vampire Count Wastefula...
It'd be cute.
February 2, 2009
VP Gore visiting the UK?
Some London Facebook friends were talking about snowballs, and I get this weather report from Samizdat Jonathan Pearce:
It is on days like these that I am glad that I work for a web-based business and that I work from home for part of the day anyway. Judging by how severe weather has hit the UK overnight, rendering the UK public transport network immobile, that is just as well. The London Underground - with the exception of the Victoria line - is down. Buses and other transport like trains are severely affected.
January 26, 2009
Mild January in Philly
Blog Brother AlexC finds some interesting weather news for his area:
The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning but a hot sun soon dispersed them and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade at mid day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.
That's January 1790. Computed from detailed records kept by Charles Pierce.
From Charles Pierce's records, the average January temperature in Philadelphia from 1790-1819 was 31.2F. According to USHCN records from 2000-2006 (the last year available from USHCN) and Weather Underground records from 2007-2009, the average January temperature in Philadelphia for the last ten years has been 29.8 degrees, or 1.4 degrees cooler than the period 1790-1819. January, 2009 has been colder than any January during the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Monroe. January 2003 and 2004 were both considerably colder than any January during the terms of the first five presidents of the US.
In other local weather news, our Minnesota contingent will be pleased to hear that it was unpleasantly cold in Erie, CO for today's dog walk and it should dip below zero tonight.
In my neck of the woods (upper Westchester, New York), we've had only seven days this month whose high exceeded freezing. I can't remember it ever being this cold. At this rate I need to wear thermal underwear beneath my suit pants.
Al Gore, go screw yourself.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 26, 2009 3:35 PMJanuary 25, 2009
Saving the World Through World Government
I had a very fun IM conversation with a good friend and former employee of mine in Ireland last week. He can be counted on to take the stock, European, BBC view on things. He is well informed in that he watches documentaries instead of "Dancing with the Stars" but, like an American NPR or PBS devotee, he gets inculcated in a single view.
He knows I supported President Bush. In fact I was quite the celebrity in my day. Britons and Irish were assured that all of Bush's supporters were buckteethed, Southern evangelicals who were married to their sisters. I had many enjoyable pub yells where respectful folks were truly amazed to hear any argument for President Bush that wasn't "Jesus told me to vote for him."
Anyways, after casual hellos, my friend asked what I thought of our new President. I gave him the "cautiously optimistic but concerned" line you've heard from me around here. He concedes that President Obama is "just a politician" who won't change much, but he is on board for all the promises. "What would you like to see him change?" asks me.
First was to sign Kyoto, second was some amorphous "fix foreign policy" and third was to close Gitmo. This guy is a devout Muslim and has a PhD. He saw some documentary that the residents of Trinidad and Tobago are all relocating off the islands because of global warming. He says parts of Ireland are submerged and that large numbers of people have already lost their homes to climate change. Perhaps a few episodes of "Dancing with the Stars" would be better for my friend. He firmly believes that the residents of Caribbean islands are losing their homes so that Americans can drive SUVs. And nobody cares because the unfortunate are not white and the fortunate are.
I disputed every element of his story and said if did believe it, that the Kyoto treaty would be worthless in stopping it. I said that the US had lowered CO2 emissions through technology and efficiency and complained that most signatories had not been able to meet their modest goals. He disputed that but finally conceded that it was all irrelevant because of India and China.
It's Sunday, there's no football, so I provided that long personal intro. This post is actually about Kyoto. Like VP Gore who flies in private jets and rides in limousines and lives in a mansion, the good people of Germany have coal plants to produce their electricity. And like the VP, they buy indulgences -- er "carbon credits" -- to compensate. The Germans "buy" a hydroelectric dam in China. What does the good, grün, Deutscher Mann get for his Euros? Displaced families, dubious environmental controls and no real reduction of emissions:
But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland."Nobody asked if we wanted to move," said a 38-year-old man whose family lost a small brick house. "The government just posted a notice that said, 'Your home will be demolished.'"
The dam will shortchange German consumers, Chinese villagers and the climate itself, if critics are right. And Xiaoxi is not alone.
My friend -- again a nice guy and very bright -- just can't wait for America to sign up for this global boondoggle.
Does anybody else think that carbon-trading schemes are not unlike the indulgences of the Middle Ages? If we take the environmentalists on their word, and assume that emitting CO2 is evil and reckless, simply paying others to remove their CO2 emissions seems a rather amoral thing to do, methinks.
Never mind that it is the entire basis for the failed 20% EU emissions cut scheme- environmentalism has to look like it is succeeding somewhere!
~T. Greer, no fan of carbon caps.
Completely unfair, tg. Some of the indulgences were put to good use, buying gold and finery for the Church. I cannot believe you would denigrate the good name of indulgences for cheap political gain.
Posted by: jk at January 25, 2009 6:15 PMJanuary 15, 2009
Hyde Park Weather Report
I heartily recommend the Facebook group "Not Evil Just Wrong." A new documentary from the makers of "Mine Your Own Business."
Ann McElhinney posts a link to Chicago Weather and sez: "Nation Freezes as Global Warming President Prepares For Office"
A new record was set Wednesday when Chicago had its ninth consecutive day of measurable snowfall, according to the National Weather Service.The previous record was eight consecutive days set from Dec. 13 to 20, 1973.
Snowfall records in Chicago date back to 1884.
A wind chill warning has been issued as temperatures as tsmperartures will not reach single digits until Friday.
The forecast for Thursday is: Sunny and cold, with a high near -3. Wind chill values as low as -33. West northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph.
Thursday Night: Clear, with a low around -16. Wind chill values as low as -34. West wind around 10 mph.
Friday: Mostly sunny and cold, with a high near 6. Wind chill values as low as -32. Southwest wind between 5 and 10 mph.
Friday Night: Snow likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 5. South southwest wind between 10 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Of course, this is not proof of DAWG-fraud. But, were it unseasonably warm, I'm sure we'd be hearing about it.
UPDATE: David Harsanyi confers:
The carbon footprint of Barack Obama's inauguration could exceed 575 million pounds of CO2. According to the Institute for Liberty, it would take the average U.S. household nearly 60,000 years of naughty ecological behavior to produce a carbon footprint equal to the largest self-congratulatory event in the history of humankind.The same congressfolk who are now handing out thousands of tickets to this ecological disaster only last year mandated the phased elimination of the incandescent light bulb — a mere carbon tiptoe, if you will.
2:35 Pacific here, and it's 83 degrees outside in Pasadena, CA. It's supposed to be January outside. As in winter.
Come on by and join me for margaritas. Or, failing that, someone ship Al Gore out here to make a speech and lower the temperature.
Posted by: Keith at January 15, 2009 5:39 PMIt is, in fact, January at Atlantis Farm. Sunny and clear, we've made it up to the mid-forties today (45.6F as I type this, evidenced by the weather banner in the side bar). While winter in Colorado typically means pack up the garden hoses for the season, I actually watered the sand footing in our indoor arena today. Hey Greer - imagine what an impulse sprinkler would look like if it were operating in your yard today! And yes Keith, I was drinking margaritas the last two evenings. (OK, only because I was out of beer.)
To be fair, we did our time in Al Gore's "warming" barrel last month when the overnight low hit 22 below on the morning of the 15th.
Posted by: johngalt at January 15, 2009 5:59 PMWill you guys stop it? Please? Do you really need to rub it in?
~T. Greer, jealous.
Posted by: T. Greer at January 15, 2009 7:50 PMI will stop, but nonetheless, my offer of libation stands; and if I could teleport you thirty Fahrenheit degrees, I would.
Posted by: Keith at January 16, 2009 1:35 AMI was gonna be nice, but since you guys have started -- I just took my beloved dog, Skylark, for a walk. I wore a golf shirt, no coat, no hat, no gloves.
You should take Keith up on his offer of 30, tg. Then it'd be a balmy -17; you could play a round of golf or something.
Posted by: jk at January 16, 2009 11:29 AMI just now realized why it's so cold.
Obama got elected, and hell is freezing over. It's finally spreading to us.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 16, 2009 11:50 AMJanuary 4, 2009
HuffPo DAWG Denyer
You can't believe everything you read from the partisan hacks at Huffington Post. In their mad dash to discredit President Bush and accelerate the acceptance of collectivism, they'll say just about... Oh. Wait a minute.
Harold Ambler claims that a certain ex-VPOTUS owes us an apology;
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind [emphasis in original].
Ambler, who has a book coming out "Apology Accepted," presents -- to the Huffington faithful -- a serious and comprehensive refutation of the conventional wisdom on climate change.
Brother AC is right: this might be a very good year after all.
UPDATE Link fixed, should've hat-tipped Insty
And yet, when I suggested that every American politician be put on record as a champion or a "denier" of "the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind" I was called over confident.
(I look forward to reading the linked Ambler post - shortly after the broken link is fixed.)
And yet I must still quibble with this characterization of the Global Warming swindle: A bigger whopper is that Social Security will forever provide a dependable retirement "safety net" for every American.
Posted by: johngalt at January 4, 2009 1:03 PMDecember 26, 2008
Top Ten Failed Climate Predictions
From the (Australia) Herald Sun:
GLOBAL warming preachers have had a shocking 2008. So many of their predictions this year went splat.Here's their problem: they've been scaring us for so long that it's now possible to check if things are turning out as hot as they warned.
Linked from a James Lewis post in Pajamas Media that makes my favorite comparison. Lewis describes a heated exchange between Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, whom he describes as a "former anarchist street fighter during the infamous ‘68 riots — who is now a big Green honcho in European politics. Said Danny the Red to Vaclav Klaus: 'You can believe what you want, I don’t believe, I know that global warming is a reality.'"
And there you have it, folks, the voice of skeptical reason assaulted by militant dogma, ready to burn as many witches as may be needed to defend the One True Faith. If this sounds familiar, just think of Galileo and Pope Innocent III, who did not want to peer through Galileo’s telescope at the night sky, having a rock-hard faith that made evidence unnecessary. Danny the Red, shake hands with the Renaissance Pope. Two peas in pod.
But it does not matter whether their science collapses -- they've won the election.
They've won THIS election.
It's now time to establish an Official DAWG Record for every American politician: Where do they stand now, as the evidence continues to mount that the whole thing was at best a monumental misjudgement or, possibly even an epic swindle. Those who still insist that "global warming is a reality" may well have exposure on legal fraud charges. At the least, they should never again receive serious consideration for elective office.
Posted by: johngalt at December 28, 2008 8:15 PMWow. You're a lot more confident than me. I'd love to celebrate swift retribution and look forward to the televised trials. But, ahem, we're still considered the kooks, not they.
Popperian epistemology has not been employed to engender skepticism, but it will be employed to keep this theory afloat. We will never be able to disprove DAWG. I expect it will hang around, like recycling plastic milk bottles, long after it is shown not to have merit.
Even less sanguine after reading this list of scientific illiteracy among the bright and beautiful. Demi Moore recommends "highly trained medical leeches" to detoxify your body. What was that about bad ideas sticking around?
Posted by: jk at December 29, 2008 1:31 PMDecember 9, 2008
Ecoflation
Don Luskin links to this Reuters story, saying "Here's a new crisis for you, Paul." I'm trying to keep my humor as well, but this is a real article from a "real" wire service. I'll give you a taste, but you should swallow a couple TUMS® and read the whole, nightmarish thing:
WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Add another economic worry to inflation and deflation: ecoflation, the rising cost of doing business in a world with a changing climate.Ecoflation could hit consumer goods hard in the next five to 10 years, according to a report by World Resources Institute and A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm.
Companies that make fast-moving consumer goods, everything from cereal to shampoo, could see earnings drop by 13 percent to 31 percent by 2013 and 19 percent to 47 percent by 2018 if they do not adopt sustainable environmental practices, the report said.
The costs of global warming are showing up now in the form of worse heat waves, droughts, wildfires and possibly more severe tropical storms but they are not yet reflected in consumer prices, said the institute's Andrew Aulisi after the report's Dec. 2 release.
This does not make a whit of economic sense. Consider this paragraph:
"Companies that make fast-moving consumer goods, everything from cereal to shampoo, could see earnings drop by 13 percent to 31 percent by 2013 and 19 percent to 47 percent by 2018 if they do not adopt sustainable environmental practices, the report said."
This simply does not work. Lets go ahead and assume that a changing climate will create an uptick in storms, damage ports, and generally hurt international infrastructure.
Sustainable environmental practices will not stop that.
According to the IPCC Working Group 1, we could cut the electricity to every factory and power plant, ground every boat abd plane, and kill every methane-releasing mammal on the planet and still have all of those same problems. Cutting emissions does not have an affect on global tempurature until at least 2045- by which time all these businesses will have failed due to the horrible problems of global warming anyway, right?
~T. Greer, incentive seeker
Posted by: T. Greer at December 9, 2008 5:26 PMWhat you say has some verisimilitude, tg, but this is a scientific paper and a Reuters story. Therefore, I am going to demand a salary increase effective immediately, to counteract the ravages of ecoflation.
Posted by: jk at December 9, 2008 5:37 PMThat wasn't the definition of "ecoflation" I expected to read. I do believe the phenomenon is real but it is actually a situation where costs for real goods and services rise due to taxes and regulations intended to "protect" the ecology of the earth, the latter being a mostly "virtual" reality.
Of course, I really shouldn't have expected to read this "real" definition on a "real" news wire, since "everyone knows" that global warming "science" is "settled." (I'm on page 313 of Chrichton's 'State of Fear.' Great story!)
Posted by: johngalt at December 9, 2008 7:46 PMNovember 23, 2008
Congressional Hearings
Frank Beckmann suggests that the auto execs should have asked Congress some questions:
Why did members of Congress -- such as House Banking Chairman Barney Frank, Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd and others -- raise fuel economy standards, adding more than $85 billion in costs as the industry was restructuring itself?If the reason was forcing automakers to deal with higher gasoline prices, perhaps the politicians could explain why they have made fuel more scarce by blocking domestic drilling for oil and preventing new refineries from being built during the past three decades.
If global warming was the reason, perhaps the politicians could explain why some scientists now point to cooling temperatures while carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.
Our politicians like to claim the automakers have been slow to react to changing consumer demand. Perhaps they'd care to explain U.S. Energy Department figures that show flex-fuel vehicles, many made by the Detroit Three, accounted for a mere 6 percent of sales in 2007, while hybrid vehicle sales accounted for 2.6 percent of the market.
Politicians who insist on claiming that foreign manufacturers emphasize "green" technology over muscle might explain why sales last year of Toyota Tacoma and Tundra trucks were 30 percent higher than its hybrid vehicle sales.
Good questions. HT: Insty
Beckmann continues: "We wouldn't expect the lawmakers to apologize for their lengthy list of mistakes. We wouldn't expect them to admit their role in creating the trouble. They never do."
They never HAVE because the lame-stream media haven't held them to account. Now that "change" has come to the White House might there be "hope" for a different approach in news coverage?
Since they can't beat up on the executive branch any more, and since the judicial branch makes news far too infrequently to fuel the 24/7 news business, the lever pullers in the legislative branch may be in for some close scrutiny. It is long overdue.
Posted by: johngalt at November 23, 2008 3:20 PMI'm less hopeful. Most of the media deeply believe that government should be legislating fuel economy standards and "breaking our addiction to oil." Even with extra time on their hands, I don't see their pushing government failures and inefficiencies.
Posted by: jk at November 23, 2008 3:40 PMLest anyone believe I've become pollyanish I'll call attention to the terms "might" "hope" and "may" in my original comment. Whether the close scrutiny actually materializes or not, it IS long overdue.
Posted by: johngalt at November 23, 2008 7:28 PMClose scrutiny will never happen. I'm of a mind to say that Congress' actions are perfectly consistent - that is, with the basic operating principle of Congress: "We Congressmen need for America to need us. If they don't need us, we won't get re-elected." Ergo, if there isn't a present crisis in which they can intervene so the voters will see how essential Congress is, they will invent one (climate change) or worse, cause one (sub-prime mortgages).
After all, if Congress announced tomorrow "you know, our meddling in the free market and other things about which we actually know nothing about isn't helping. We're going to trust market forces to balance themselves without our help, and take the next two weeks off," pretty soon the voters (the well-informed and intelligent ones, I mean) might wake up and realize how unneeded they really are. We might eventually wind up with limited government and a part-time Congress.
Part of the problem is that we have an electorate which would rather have a government that fiddles with the levers, instead of a goverment that is willing to trust the free market to correct itself. We want them to "Do Something!" and we have 435 amateurs who know nothing about how the system works but feels the need to "Do Something!" becaused they're terrified of being seen by the voters as doing nothing.
Couple that with a legacy media that, like Congress, has to have a constant flow of disasters to justify its existence - and if you don't believe that, imagine your local talking head on I'm-Witless News tonight saying "Congress today met for twelve minutes and realized everything will fix itself without their help. It's 6:04, but since there's no other news for us to report, we're going to fill the rest of the hour with a re-run of 'Bewitched,' and we'll be back at 6:50 to tell you about sports, weather, and what Madonna wore to her divorce hearing." Imagine your local newpaper having to move the grocery coupons to the front section in order to justify the paper and ink.
Did anyone notice how "24" last night was a two-hour public service announcement about the ills of child soldiers? Let's be honest, civilized nations don't use child soldiers - tin-horn dictators, rogue leaders, rebels and terrorists do, and they don't feel a need to respect outside strictures on their behavior. Nonetheless, I fully expect Congress to hold hearings and enact some meaningless laws on the subject. Now that we're wising up to climate change, they're going to need a new crisis about which they can sound important and effectual. I'll bet a nickel none of you gave much thought to the subject of child soldiers in the last two months. Soon, people will need to decide what color ribbon to wear in order to Raise Awareness about it.
What, cynical? Me?
Posted by: Keith at November 24, 2008 12:13 PMNovember 21, 2008
DAWG-Denyin' Links of the Day
I may have a new favorite Senator. The Inhofe EFW Blog reports:
‘Planet Has Cooled Since Bush Took Office’ – Scientists Continue Dissenting – Gore Admits 'I've failed badly' - Global Sea Ice GROWS!
Global Warming Theory has ‘failed consistently and dramatically’
That's just the headline. Hat-tip: Instapundit
Even if I grew to like him, he'd be my ONLY favorite Senator. Similarly, I have a "favorite" in the House, and he's the only one in there who I like.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at November 21, 2008 3:49 PMWhichever state any of you are from, I'll trade you mine for Inhofe. In fact, I'm having a two-for-one sale: you can have both of mine for just one. Call within the next ten minutes, and I'll throw in free shipping and handling, and you can have San Fran Nan in the House as well.
Operators are standing by.
Posted by: Keith at November 21, 2008 5:22 PMHa. You'd have to throw in a few ShamWows, Keith. Though my illustrious awful backbencher Congressman (Rep Mark Udall) will be my Senator in a few weeks, so I won't talk. (Salazar may be the least worst Democrat -- point of pride?)
I like Jon Kyl from Arizona, and I will always hold Leader McConnell in high esteem for McConnell v FEC and opposition to a flag burning amendment.
Keith, I live in New York, so mine rival yours. Not only is Hillary my junior senator, but her official residence of Chappaqua is a neighboring village.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at November 23, 2008 6:13 PMNovember 20, 2008
Putting the 'Al' in "Causality'
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monsters:
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
The science is settled. Hat-tip: Samizdata, where Samizdat Michael Jennings points out "the clear increase in the number of pirates indicates that global warming is receding as a problem. This is good to see."
Do these figures include privateers? And if so, could the case be made that privateering was an early attempt by government to control global warming through the use of state-sponsored restocking of the pirate population?
My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of possibilities that the recent spate of Somali piracy is actually orchestrated by Al Gore to combat rising temperatures. Is this a part of the Kyoto protocols?
Posted by: Keith at November 20, 2008 7:09 PMI dunno, but somebody had better go back and get a sh*t-load of dimes.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at November 20, 2008 7:34 PMSilver Linings...
And you guys thought this global depression thingy was going to be bad.
Climate change is fading as a priority in the Pacific Rim as the gloomy state of the global economy takes precedence, a survey of opinion leaders showed Wednesday.
And you guys thought this global depression thingy was going to be bad.
Wow, flawless timing on the part of Governator Schwarzenegger and his "international climate change summit" being held this week. There's a deliciously ironic feeling I get from that.
So, the governator holds this conference, at which Obama shares a taped message promising to "engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change" and further wreck America's economy, just as the world is losing interest in the issue of climate change and turning their attention to the economy. Brilliant! I wonder how much jet fuel was burned to ferry the 800-or-so attendees to the conference.
And Schwarzenegger promises to spend - er, invest - more taxpayer money that California's economy doesn't have to combat global warmer (or cooling, or whatever the manufactured flavor of the week it), while California's unionized teachers and a bevy of elected officials go hysterical that we're not pouring enough money into the bottomless black hole of our useless public education system.
We're trading a phony crisis invented by liberals (anthropogenic climate change) for a real crisis manufactured by liberals (the tanking economy), and the liberals swear they're the only ones that can fix it.
The inmates are running the asylum...
Posted by: Keith at November 20, 2008 2:59 PMBy the way, forgive the typos, such as "warmer" for "warming," "it" for "is," and the like. I'm caffeine-challenged today.
And thank you for the reciprocal blogroll posting! Y'all are awesome -
Posted by: Keith at November 20, 2008 3:05 PMKeith! I love your comments! And coming from a Pastor? This is almost enough to get me believing in God again!
Ah, well... I'm sure we'll cross swords on a morality issue now and then.
Posted by: johngalt at November 20, 2008 10:15 PMjohngalt: even Robin Hood and his Merry Men had Friar Tuck in their company, and Shepherd Book had his place on Serenity.
Besides, where else are you going to find a pastor who thinks Objectivism is well-suited to Christianity... well, except for that inconvenient atheism thing? I'm a huge fan of that namesake of yours, and Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for anyone holding public office.
Crossing swords? "As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another." You and I will certainly keep each other sharp...
Posted by: Keith at November 21, 2008 2:39 AMAnd a "Firefly" reference? Welcome home.
Posted by: jk at November 21, 2008 11:00 AMYes, that was my point exactly: A pastor who cites Rand. Quite a rare gem indeed. Welcome! By all means, welcome.
I look forward to our discussions about why gay marriage should never be condoned by the state - and why abortion should never be banned by it.
Now, as a reader of Atlas Shrugged you should know better than to cite Robin Hood as a symbol of virtue! Mal Reynolds, yes.
Posted by: johngalt at November 21, 2008 11:03 AMNovember 19, 2008
Not Evil Just Wrong
I hyped Phelim McAleer's Documentary Mine Your Own Business to an almost annoying level last year. McAleer uses the documentary format to show Bastiat's "unseen:" the jobs and development that do not happen in developing nations when mining projects are stopped by environmentalists.
I get email today of a new one from McAleer and Ann McElhinney:
We have very good news about our latest film Not Evil Just Wrong. The documentary has been selected to premiere at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the largest and most prestigious documentary film festival in the world. The world premiere will be on Friday 21st November at 10.30 am. It would be amazing if you could come and join with us in celebrating the launch of the film and hopefully the beginning of a real debate about Global Warming.
Not Evil Just Wrong features a very evil looking photo of VP Al Gore and seeks to discuss "The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria."
November 7, 2008
RIP Quote of the Day
Let's be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. . . .
I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. -- the late Michael Crichton, discounting global warming in a 2003 speech.
Great post JK, though a better title would be your well known, "Giants have walked the earth."
Crichton's closing paragraph has a familiar ring:
"Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?"
This is reminiscent of dagny's plea, not on these pages but in an email to my liberal friends, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SOME OF YOU PEOPLE?"
There was another place, in another time, when thoughtful people wondered how a population could be so misled. An excellent analysis of how it happened, and may well happen again, can be read in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels.
Posted by: johngalt at November 8, 2008 11:48 AMOctober 21, 2008
Last Word on Global Warming
There's some question about the accuracy of some anti-DAWG information posted by blog brother jg. I have not looked enough to wade in, but got this in my email as soon as I saw tg's comment. I think we can all agree that PBS's Frontline will provide a fair and balanced look at climate change:
HeatFor years, big business – from oil and coal companies to electric utilities to car manufacturers – have resisted change to environmental policy and stifled the debate over climate change in America and around the globe. Now, facing rising pressure from governments, green groups and investors alike, big business is reshaping its approach to the environment, fundamentally transforming the politics of the debate. Producer Martin Smith travels the globe to size up the climate problem firsthand and to test what big business is really doing to solve one of the most urgent issues of our time.
A great lefty friend of mine recently emailed to tell me that he had looked at both sides of the election by watching a Frontline special and reading one of Senator Obama's autobiographies, and has decided to vote for Senator Obama (without even waiting for The Nation endorsement).
I'll quit my job to campaign full time for the first candidate who runs on a platform to abolish PBS.
What if abolishing PBS is only part of my 2012 platform? :)
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 21, 2008 10:12 PMIf selected as your running mate, Perry, you'll be guaranteed my complete support.
Posted by: jk at October 22, 2008 11:22 AMQUIT your job - I can trump that: I was just laid off from my job. The plus side is I now have more time to campaign for McPalin. (If not for that tiny little problem of the mortgage.)
Posted by: johngalt at October 22, 2008 8:12 PMMeanwhile, back on the warming globe...
Judging from this graph of "Lower Troposphere Global Temperature: 1979-2008" it'll soon be much harder to propogate that "proven" "gasoline [and the industrial economy] is destroying the Earth, and humanity along with it" narrative. (Story here.)
Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."
And there's this for those who believe the world's best science comes from the IPCC:
But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP [medieval warm period] had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.
So let go of my wallet. I've gotta go buy a new "snow machine" suit.
Hat tip: Real Clear Politics
Y'know, it's finally starting to look like a hockey stick. But it matters not. "The science is settled," we're now dividing up the pie.
Posted by: jk at October 21, 2008 10:58 AMEh, I think I am going to have to take the dissenting view here. That article is a piece of journalistic garbage.
Now, don't take me wrong- I am not an environmentalist or anything of the sort. However, I think this article plays with the facts a little too much for my liking.
Lets start with the first half of Gunter's claim. Gunter states that the number of skeptics has been going up because global temperature has been going down. Yet not once does Gunter provide evidence that the number of skeptics have increased. While I am sure a quick Google search could bring up such evidence (and I am sure it wouldn't be hard to find the opposite as well), Gunter doesn't provide anything to back up his claim- a mark of journalistic integrity, I am sure.
The second half of his claim -and the bulk of the article - states that the world is cooling. Again, we find that Gunter's is lacking in credible evidence.
Gunter cites several scientists in order to form a counter-consensus to the established IPCC view. However, he never gives us a reason why we should trust the six scientists cited in the article over those who claim that climate change is anthropogenic other than the simple fact that the UN likes the latter group quite a bit more.
The individual statistics and scientific claims cited by Gunter also have their own problems. The commentary surrounding the MWP is a good example of this- no scientist in his right mind ever pretended that the MWP didn't happen. Rather, it is readily recognized that the MWP existed, and that it was a regional uptick in temperatures that affected only the North Atlantic. Pretending that the majority of climate scientists are ignoring the MWP is simply dissentious. (There is also no small amount of evidence pointing towards the conclusion that Europe is hotter now than it was during the MWP.)
The bit about the solar spots also seems off. While it is usually the feature of the climate skeptic to decry falling for science dogma, Gunter doesn't seem to have this problem when talking about sunspots. But even if we assume that the scientists can tell what the sunspot activity was a thousand years ago despite the fact that we have only been recording sunspot activity since the 1700's, we find another problem: correlation is not causation. Again, we have one scientist's word that sunspots cause temperature rises... and nothing else.
And finally, we get to the graph. Now I like Joh Kristy, and I think he has more than a couple of good points when it comes to the policy side of things. However, I will once again point out that he has one study, conducted by him (long after he made his mind up on the subject), on his side, and the other side has quite a few more graphs on theirs.
Furthermore, that graph is crap. The "global trend line" doesn't make any sense at all. If it were a two/four/five year average line, we would see a consistent raise in temperature. If it was a least-squares regression line, it would also end quite a bit higher up. Heck, if the graph cut off at 2006 instead of 2008, the hockey stick would be pointing straight up!
In conclusion, Mr. Gunter cherry-picks his facts and scientists in order prove a political point. That is bad, even if the point is being made for our side.
~T. Greer
Again, in a scientific climate where what the science "proves" depends highly upon the personal beliefs of the scientist, it is a necessity to "cherry pick" scientists and their "facts."
And no, the graph isn't "crap" it's just still evolving. The cooling trend of 2 years (until 2006 the trend line was level or slightly upwards) is only a beginning when compared to the random warming trend over the preceding 20 years. But it is clearly distinctive enough to conclude a likely cooling period.
Posted by: johngalt at October 22, 2008 8:06 PMJG, I dunno if I can support your position.
Facts are facts. It is WRONG to require a scientist to pass your political test in order for their research to be valid. After all, isn't that that the environmentalists job? Is it not hypocrisy to fault them for attacking scientists on ideological grounds when we do the exact same thing?
As for the graph:
Look, if you were to cut the graph off in the middle of 1992, your graph would display two years of decreasing temperatures not unlike the two years of decreasing temperatures seen at the end of this one. However, one only needs to look at the skyrocketing temperature of the next few years to realize that anybody who concluded a likely cooling period back in '92 was dead wrong.
The fact of the matter is, NO 2 year trend, be it hot or cold, is large enough to predict how the next five, ten, or thirty years are going to be.
(To see how much a graph's appearance can change, particularly when the graph-makers use bogus terms like "global trend line," I suggest you look at the graph cut off in 2006: (http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m143/Tgreernm/fake_christy1.jpg))
Furthermore, the graph shows a clear warming trend when more accurate statistic tool to display the data. For example, when I estimated* the 2-year average of all the data points and created a regression line (http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m143/Tgreernm/fake_christy2.jpg), it is easy to see the raise in temperature.
Granted, the raise in temperature in this graph is much lower than in the GISS graphs most scientists are using, but a consistent warming can still be found in Christy's data.
~T. Greer, hoping the spam blocker will let my link filled post get through.
*If my estimation makes you uneasy, I suggest you see the actual graph produced by Christy and Douglass for their study: (http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m143/Tgreernm/Christy-graphone.jpg)
NOTE: I drew in the regression line on this graph. If you want to see the study itself, here is the link: (http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf)
October 7, 2008
First freeze...
... at Atlantis Farm.
This morning, from 0540 to 0750, the air temperature at Atlantis Farm north of Denver was at or below 32 F.
Since we're outside of Denver's Urban Heat Island, our temperature is always lower than it is downtown.
(If more universities were located far from urban areas the Global Warming theories wouldn't have a chance!)
During which time, I was five miles away, with very little urban island heat, walking Skylark. I was wearing shorts and a golf shirt and even though I like the cool weather, I was pretty anxious to get home.
Posted by: jk at October 7, 2008 5:24 PMAugust 27, 2008
Sanguininity
Brother Johngalt and I had mournfully decided that skeptical opposition to DAWG was a lost cause. Both Presidential candidates and a huge majority in Congress either subscribe to the theory or feel they have to play along to mollify their constituents.
It seemed sad that we lost the battle as the science was crumbling. If I were a lefty, I'd call it ironic. C'est le guerre (le guerre, la Guerra, al gore there's a joke in there somewhere).
Samizdat Brian Micklethwait not only sees the battle as won, he thinks the battle itself signals capitulation in a larger war:
One of the things that irritates me about propagandists on my side is that they are often reluctant to spot a great victory, even when they have just won one. Wilkinson's point is not just that climate chaos-ism is nonsense, a claim that I increasingly find myself agreeing with completely, not least because the now undependable notion of "global warming" has been replaced by the idiotic phrase "climate chaos", or, even more idiotically, "climate change". When was there ever a time when the climate did not change? What Wilkinson is also noting is that the hysteria whipped up around the changeability of the climate was whipped up because these lunatics came to realise that they had no other arguments against a more-or-less capitalist, more-or-less-free-market world economy. They have now conceded - not in so many words, rather by changing the subject - that capitalism works, and the only nasty thing they have left to say about it is that it works so well that it ruins the planet.
Perhaps he's right, but the enemies of free markets don't admit defeat very easily. Last night on Kudlow & Co., Secretary Robert Reich suggested that Kudlow and Stephen Moore were "the last two people on Earth who still believe in supply-side economics." I don't see anybody being more generous with climate science.
Similar to my comment one minute ago, Reich has *always* been a fool, without fail.
The incredible (and I use that in the original sense of "unbelievable") thing about liberal economists is how they completely deny facts, particularly history.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at August 28, 2008 9:22 AMI find Mister Secretary to be pretty tiring. Jonah Goldberg really beat him up in his book as a dishonest interlocutor in the past and I see it on his Kudlow appearances. He filibusters, distorts, and presents the view of the UC Berkeley faculty lounge as gospel.
Posted by: jk at August 28, 2008 10:33 AMJuly 28, 2008
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Warming
Professor Reynolds links to a Popsci.com story Global Warming: Not So Bad. The piece questions the D in DAWG, showing that many people and species are helped by warmer temperatures.
A 47-year study of one population of great tits—garden birds about the size of sparrows—is providing hope that some animals can adjust quickly to environmental change. University of Oxford zoologists have found that the birds are laying their eggs earlier in the spring to time the hatching of their chicks to the earlier emergence of caterpillars.
Talk about burying the lede! I'd've headlined the article:
"Great Tits Love Global Warming!"
UPDATE: An emailer is moderately offended and I'm moderately pleased that somebody expected better of me. Sincere apologies all 'round.
Wanna talk about moderately offensive?
And there's not even any double entendre there!
Posted by: johngalt at July 28, 2008 3:29 PMGood thing I didn't click that at work. Not that offensive, really, but some people are way too uptight.
That's definitely a link for one of my fans, Lord Boner, who hasn't left a comment on my blog in some time. He kept asking me to stop posting about economics and politics, and talk about tatas...jugs...melons...
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 29, 2008 11:33 PMJuly 22, 2008
Yet Another DAWG "Denier"
As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" If your name is Albert Gore Junior, you ignore those facts.
Dr. David Evans, self-described "rocket scientist" and "important and useful" government funded scientist "working to save the planet" chooses not to ignore facts. (Well, whuddaya know... a scientist who actually practices... science!) Dr. Evans now writes, "When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it."
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Read it all. Particularly the other three "most basic salient facts" of which the above is number four.
Finally, this:
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
Duh!
Hat tip: johngalt's dad, who also emailed it to Bill O'Reilly today. We'll see if he picks it up.
Of course, for even printing this you are going to hell as because you are worse than a Nazi pedophile and all. Problem is that with the recent spate of global cooling, the lower planes of damnation are much like a balmy day on the Outer Banks in SC. I hear that the damned souls of insects are a bit of a pain though.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at July 22, 2008 3:10 PMWow. That's a good, short, and serious whack at the "the science is settled" crowd. I don't know how you kept from excerpting the whole thing. I liked:
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
Yup, where real data fail to back up computer modeling, let's enhance the data with a little computer modeling.
Let me know if Mister O'Reilly can fit it in tonight between Mexican terrorists pouring across the border, speculators driving up oil prices and follow ups on some pretty white woman who is missing somewhere.
Frankly I blame Matt Drudge for global warming. Before he started calling every swirling cloud a major monumental run for you lives disaster storms were just storms and changes in average temperature just meant averages change.
Posted by: Terri at July 22, 2008 4:58 PMJuly 11, 2008
Cinema News!
It's just like E! Network around here (I'm typing this in some very short shorts).
Seriously, I hawked Phelim McAleer's documentary "Mine Your Own Business" several times. You should buy the DVD. Today, I get news that he has a new film in the works and it sounds like it's right up the street of your average ThreeSourcer: "Not Evil Just Wrong - The true cost of Global Warming hysteria." Browse around the website a little to see a trailer, a creepy picture of a former VPOTUS, and how you can help bring the film to a cinema near you.
Thanks for tuning in -- after the commercial we're talking Counter Insurgency (COIN) tactics with General David Petraeus and Jewell. Jewell's new CD will hit the stores next Thursday...
June 23, 2008
Smokestack Al
Brian Carney takes a well deserved whack at Vice President Gore in today's Political Diary:
Smokestack Al
Environmentalists are constantly telling us that major reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be made fairly painlessly, so the case of one former Vice President is instructive.Al Gore made headlines last year when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research disclosed just how much energy the "Inconvenient Truth" auteur consumes in his giant new palace in the Nashville suburbs. Mr. Gore responded at the time by assuring the public that he was purchasing "offsets" to make up for his energy-guzzling ways.
Well, this week the Tennessee Center's Drew Johnson checked in on Mr. Gore again. And despite an alleged program of greenification – including geothermal systems, solar panels and lots and lots of nifty compact fluorescent bulbs – Mr. Gore's electricity use from the grid was up 10% in 2007 compared to the year before. At this rate, he'll never hit his Kyoto targets. His Tennessee home currently eats up 17,768 kilowatt-hours of electricity every month – about 50% more electricity than the average household consumes in an entire year. That's one inconvenient carbon footprint.
June 10, 2008
The Science is Settled.
June 5, 2008
Question the W!
I coined the tendentious acronym DAWG because I used to concede that the (G)lobe was indeed (W)arming, and I was staking my ability to generate doubt on whether it was (A)nthropogenic and/or (D)eleterious.
Since that time, I have to renege on the W. It seems that the G hasn't really W'd in the last ten years. It's a pretty chilly June 'round these parts, and the University of Alabama at Huntsville said that Global Temperatures Dives in May.
Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting in many parts of the northern hemisphere, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.
The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C
I'm still pretty convinced of G, though. The round-Earth thing has been proven to Popperian standards.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
But since the "science" is already "settled" the climate change true-believers will tell you we have to have over a hundred years of cooling to indicate a believable trend. That's if they even feel a need to make any argument at all. Carefully reasoned facts weren't required to get them where they are in the first place - why change tactics now?
P.S. I'm sitting at my desk with an electric heater warming my feet - on June 5th.
Posted by: johngalt at June 5, 2008 3:08 PMThe Earth is warming, it is flat, frogs are spontaneously generated out of mud, and the five elements are earth, water, air, fire (or ash) and life.
Posted by: AtTheWaterCooler at June 6, 2008 9:43 PMMay 27, 2008
Wi-Fi Allergy
Stop the earth - I want off.
Seriously, didn't most people have that same reaction to the 1970's nutjobs who wanted to outlaw drilling for oil in this country because it was "dirty?" Leave the idiots alone and look what it gets you - politicians who say things like "gasoline prices are not based on supply and demand, they're being driven up by reckless speculators and obscene oil company profits" and "we can't drill our way out of this problem" when, in fact, that is the ONLY way to bring gasoline prices down. And it makes us "less dependent on foreign oil" at the same time.
April 27, 2008
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
JK recently wrote "There is no serious opposition to global warming left in the free world." This is sad and defeatist, but true.
Now the intelligent, thoughtful and once-principled Speaker of the "Contract with America" House has teamed up with the current 3rd-in-line for the presidency to film a "We can solve it.org" propaganda ad.
The ad paints them in complete agreement, though this liberal blog laments that Gingrich's heart isn't really in it for the good:
Despite sitting side-by-side on the couch, Pelosi and Gingrich don't share identical views on climate change. Pelosi is backing a mandatory cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions, while Gingrich would rather use tax credits and other incentives to get industry to switch to low-carbon technologies.
But Newt has surrendered the point of the DAWG spear nonetheless. As JK said, no serious opposition left anywhere in the free world.
Et tu, Newto?
Posted by: jk at April 27, 2008 5:12 PMApril 23, 2008
Bring It On
I refer, of course, to CATT: Cooling Abiotic Terrestrial Temperatures.
Phil Chapman loses the trademark Australian calmness under pressure.
THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.
[...]
This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.
He is actually scared. And he is probably right. Cold kills.
As a freedom lover, I have to say "bring it on!" There is no serious opposition to global warming left in the free world. The EU nations have completely bought in, and all three current Presidential contenders are DAWG disciples. Nobody is predicting less than Democratic pickups in the house and Senate. PM Rudd in Australia is in (maybe Berlusconi in Italy is not? I don't know).
I think HUGE disruptions to freedom and economic growth are a fait accompli -- if not a Fiat X-9. A dramatic continuation of cooling trends might be the only way to shut some of the worst ideas down. And with growth and innovation, we will be best able to deal with cold. Or heat of course, but try to tell "them" that.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
April 18, 2008
Doubting The W in DAWG
A guest Editorial in the WSJ today questions the accuracy of temperature data showing global warming. It's a pretty comprehensive look at the means of collecting data and revisions that have been made to the dataset. Reading it makes a thinking person question the accuracy of historical temperature data. All the shifts in temperature seem like they may be within the margin of error.
I enjoyed this look at "Warming Island" in Greenland. Like Love Canal, it turns out Vice President Gore may not have discovered it:
The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of "Warming Island," a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn't been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.But every climatologist must know that Greenland's last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland's ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.
Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, "Arctic Riviera," published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There's a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.
The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth," there's a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating "These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there."
Really? There's a photograph in the journal "Arctic," published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned "River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge," on Greenland's Adolf Hoels Glacier. It's all there in the open literature, but apparently that's too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn't shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.
April 8, 2008
Broken Windiow Fallacy
Fred Krupp, "president of Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of 'Earth: The Sequel – The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming' (W.W. Norton, 2008)" has a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal today. Goody-goody, lawd almighty, we all gonna get rich solving global warming!
Global warming skeptics notwithstanding, fixing global warming won't be a drain on the economy. On the contrary, it will unleash one of the greatest floods of new wealth in history. When Congress finally acts, America's entrepreneurs and inventors will find the capital they need to solve global warming – and a lot of people will make a killing.
Senator Obama preaches a similar message: "millions of green-collar jobs."
And I agree, up to a point. I think innovation is headed toward us in energy and that some investors will get very rich and many will find good employment. Where I differ with Krupp and Obama, is that I want to reward innovators and they want to reward rent-seekers. Krupp's article (and I pulled the worst quote out) says that the market is just waiting for government to "set the rules." When cap-and-trade is introduced, everything will take off.
I'd suggest the rules have been set already. Petroleum products provide a certain number of KCalories per Mole, and the cost to extract, refine, and transport it is pretty well known. I think Einstein laid down "the rules" for mass and energy -- no need to wait to implement Broussard fusion. Develop away!
Sadly, the rules people are waiting for will come from Senator Grassley "how many dollars of subsidies do I get for developing?" and these rules will stifle real innovation and real wealth creation.
UPDATE: Even Paul Krugman has come out against Ethanol, but Michael Goldfarb catches him misrepresenting Senator McCain, who has it right:
Yes, I oppose subsidies. Not just ethanol subsidies. Subsidies. And not just in Iowa either. I oppose them in my own state of Arizona. ... [I]t also means no rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil. It means no line items for hydrogen, no mandates for other renewable fuels, and no big-government debacles like the Dakotas Synfuels plant. It means ethanol entrepreneurs get a level playing field to make their case -- and earn their profits.
An advanced copy of this book has been sitting on my desk for months, but I just cannot seem to find the drive to delve in. After reading the op-ed, I am glad that the book is collecting dust.
Posted by: Everyday Economist at April 9, 2008 11:21 PMMcCain is a better man than I. I could not have resisted including "... or not" at the end of that final sentence.
If "alternative" energy economies made sense economically there'd be no reason to "wait for government." This, by the way, reminds me of the old quip, "If you're waiting for me you're backing up!"
Posted by: johngalt at April 12, 2008 12:32 PMApril 4, 2008
Brrrr
Gateway Pundit has a wrapup of weather/climate news. If you go to this post, all the following are links
Brrrr... Antarctica Records Record High Ice Cap Growth
Brrrr... South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years
Brrrr... Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in a Decade in China Cause Rioting
Brrrr... Jerusalem Grinds to a Halt As Rare Snowstorm Blasts City
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in 50 Years Continue to Cripple China
Brrrr... China Suffers Coldest Winter in 100 Years
Brrrr... Pakistan Suffers Lowest Temps in 70 Years-- 260 Dead
Brrrr... Record Cold Hits Central Asia-- 654 Dead in Afghanistan
Brrrr... Severe Weather Kills Dozens in Kashmir
Brrrr... Tajikistan Crisis!! Coldest Winter in 25 Years!
Brrrr... Record Cold Wave Blasts Mumbai, India
Brrrr... Snow and Ice in San Diego?
Brrrr... Wisconsin Snowfall Record Shattered
Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back And It's Thick
Brrrr... Turkey's snowiest winter continues.
Brrrr... Record Cold & Snow Blankets Acropolis in Greece (Video)
Brrrr... Longest Ever Cold Spell Kills Cattle & Rice in Vietnam
Brrrr... Most Snow Cover Over North America Since 1966
Brrrr... Australia Suffers Through Coldest Summer in 50 Years
Brrrr... Record Snowfall Slams Ohio River Valley
Brrrr... New Data Gives Global Warming the Cold Shoulder
The post discusses "snow rage:"
A record snowfall in eastern Canada this winter has inspired some, crushed others, led to a rash of snow-blower thefts and incited at least two armed clashes, authorities said Wednesday.
[and]
An elderly Quebec City man pulled a 12-gauge shotgun on a female snowplow operator on Sunday for blowing snow onto his property, after warning her.
Cranky, cold, Quebecois -- it's not a pretty sight.
We could prevent this 'Global Cooling' disaster if we put AlGore on a no-fly list.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at April 7, 2008 11:03 AMApril 3, 2008
That's One Unscientific American
Don Luskin links to a Scientific American story that, well, let me steal Luskin's summation:
"Economics as a whole is invalid because, as I define economics, it doesn't yield the politically correct alarmist interpretation of global warming."
As Dave Berry might say, he is not making this up.
Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.
I'm starting to understand how Galileo felt. Our scientific community has been replaced by a ruling class of religious wackos who care more about Orthodoxy than truth.
Eppur si muove, Dr, Nadeau, Eppur si muove.
1. Doesn't he have to be an economist to make such statements? Such seems to be the policy with respect to critiques of the 'science' of global warming.
2. The Austrian school of economics rejects neoclassical theory on similar grounds and yet most, if not all, Austrians view intervention with respect to global warming as unwarranted as well. In fact, many Austrian justify opposition to intervention through the failure of the neoclassical theory of intervention.
Posted by: HB at April 4, 2008 9:31 PMA mention of Crichton's 'State of Fear' is appropriate here.
I'm just starting to read it so I can't cite any analogies.
But let me get this straight: The man (Robert Nadeau) who says there is a worldwide "environmental crisis" - a view principally supported by extensive mathematical modeling - claims that neoclassical economic theory is "outdated" because its mathematical theories are predicated on certain "unscientific assumptions." Can this guy pull rabbits from hats or what!
Posted by: johngalt at April 6, 2008 3:40 PMMarch 30, 2008
Back to the Caves!
Samizdat Thaddeus Tremayne posts the "Earth Lights" pic that we use for the ThreeSources banner and says:
I never get tired of looking at this photograph. It never fails to fill me with wonder and awe at the ingenuity of my species who, against all the odds, have carved these glorious man-made islands of light out of the primordial blackness. Whenever I am heavy of heart, I open up this photograph and stare at it to remind me that, somewhere, there is light and life.
Then he tells the sad tale of "Earth Hour" where cities are turning off the light for an hour to fight global warming. Tremayne continues:
With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.
Heat and light are unalloyed goods to me. Both in moderation of course, but that people are turning off the lights to prevent warming seems a potent presentation of those who would, in Karl Popper's words, "send us back to the caves."
John Rockefeller brought heat and light to poor people; he is considered a robber baron. One thinks of the old bumper sticker: "Ban Mining. Let the bastards freeze in the dark." That's what these people want.
March 23, 2008
"that's what sceptics have been saying"
"Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide."There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
That is just one of many stunning admissions in a transcript of a radio interview between Australian Journalist Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, "a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs." Christopher Pearson publishes it in The Australian and suggests "Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril."
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
It gets worse from there for the warmies. No doubt Ms. Marohasy will be outed as a corporate shill for the petro industry.
Pearson closes with some overly optimistic suggestions that the fall of global warming hysteria will usher in a new era of reason and freedom:
With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.
I'm not so sanguine. I think recycling has been substantially discredited, yet my city council last year voted to force it onto all municipal residents.
This won't go away, but with a little luck maybe we could get a Republican Presidential candidate to disavow it.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
March 19, 2008
Headline Of The Day Year
The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
The right-wing, corporate shills at NPR wonder why the oceans aren't heating.
I read that article. It was so amusing that the "scientist" never considered that global warming was wrong, he only refered to it as a "period of less rapid warming".
Posted by: pquist at March 19, 2008 10:30 PMI love that they admit that there are many parameters and processes they do not understand -- yet this never leads to them to question their basic premise.
Posted by: jk at March 19, 2008 10:39 PM"yet this never leads to them to question their basic premise."
What they are doing should not be called science, science requires one to be a skeptic. What they appear to be trying to do is prove what they believe (their faith) is true; They are not seeking truth, they are seeking evidence to argue that the use of energy is bad.
They being those who are engaged and hired to find evidence of environmental damage cause by the use of energy; who use quasi science and buzz words and try to pass it off as science.
Their clients are environmentalist, socialist (who want the US economy to match the economy of other countries), and those who realize they could profit selling an alternative -- to name a few.
Posted by: AtTheWaterCooler at March 20, 2008 9:22 PMMarch 10, 2008
Back to the Caves!
What's the appropriate output for CO2, considering the delicate balance of economic growth, human comfort, and environmental concerns? Zero! WaPo:
Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
I was concerned at first that it might be environmental alarmism. But no, this is science. They have proved this through computer modeling. Just because none of the models predicted the coldest winter in 100 years or record snowfall across North America does not mean that computer modeling is not legitimate science.
Why has no one created computer models to predict the accuracy of computer modeling? That could "settle" the "science" once and for all!
Just askin'.
Posted by: johngalt at March 11, 2008 11:40 AMFebruary 27, 2008
Brrrrrrrr!
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Obviously, we're all going to die. I love the two assertions that it is "anecdotal," obviously it is. I'm just struck that a tornado, hurricane, or the meteorological phenomenon known as "a really hot day" are never caveated as anecdotal.
Hat-tip: Instapundit. And I must point out it is beautiful on the Colorado front range today.
February 14, 2008
I'm A Chevy Man Now!
ThreeSourcers have tended toward being Mopar-heads. AlexC has his Hemi, JohnGalt his 'Cuda, and I have fond memories or ripping out the "tiny" 318-cubic inch V8 in my 1968 Sport Satellite in favor of a 440. You could pretty much pin global warming on me.
But now, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz tells a few journalists that Global Warming is a "Total Crock of S**t"
I am stupefied! Next thing you know, BP will stop apologizing for selling us fuel. It could happen.
Anyhow, this doesn’t mean that GM isn’t serious about building the Volt, of course—just that global warming isn’t the reason. And that’s fine. GM doesn’t have to have noble intentions as long as it delivers the fuel-efficient cars it’s been promising. According to D, Lutz says he’s excited about the Volt because “it’s the last thing anybody expected from GM.” But you have to wonder how statements like this affect public perception of the Volt project. Because right now, if you ask a car geek about the Chevy Volt you’ll get one of two responses. The most predictable: “Total vaporware, it’ll never happen.” A cautiously optimistic few, however, will admit that General Motors really does seem serious about building the Volt. After all, they’ve staked the reputation of the company (which lost $38.7 billion dollars last year) on their ability to start producing this extended-range electric car by the end of 2010.
Amen, Bob. Build a car because people might want to buy it. Let Hollywood save the world.
Hat-tip: Insty
In defense of the Pentastar, Chrysler Corp. HAS moved back to private ownership now and appears poised for fisticuffs with the unions. And the good Mr. Lutz didn't actually step up to a podium with his bold pronouncement, like John Coleman did. It's still refreshingly candid, however.
Oh, and did you read the comments to the linked article? There's the real meat of this story. For example, "everyone no's that global warming is real. co2 levels have dramatically increased since the industrial revolution. we know that co2 increases temperature: just look at venus. how can you say that global warming isn't real?"
Venus - you mean, the SECOND rock from the sun?
How much different would our nation be if the public schools taught spelling, grammar, history, math and physics instead of self-esteem and urban legends? Nobody no's.
Posted by: johngalt at February 14, 2008 3:23 PMTrue. But I give Lutz points for language.
Posted by: jk at February 14, 2008 3:30 PMFebruary 8, 2008
Global Warming Authoritarianism
According to one academic, the problem with the response to global warming lies at the feet of those of us who believe in democracy and freedom:
We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.
"...chosen liberty rather than life"? This is the evil that we as advocates of a free and prosperous society face. Environmentalist whackos are starting to reveal themselves for what they truly are: authoritarians who believe that their knowledge and opinions trump all. Of course, they are advocating this for your own good. Just read this excerpt from the description of his new book:
Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.
Of course those who are authoritarians are by definition those who seek power.
I am reminded of a great quote by Frank Knight (via The Road to Serfdom, p. 152):
Posted by: HB at February 10, 2008 10:15 AM
The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.
No, HB does NOT worry too much. While collectivism is discredited in countless places around the world it is being pressed forward in this country, liberty's shining city on a hill, for its adherents know if they can conquer the American Spirit in America the rest of the world will be defenseless.
While American attention is focused on Islamic terrorism there is evidence that totalitarian elements in other countries, notably Putin's Russia, work actively within our borders to subvert individualism in society and in government. For example, on January 28 of this year NPR interviewed former Soviet agent Sergei Tretyakov, whose story of defection to the US as an act of Russian nationalist pride is documented in the book 'Comrade J - The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War.' Sergei tells us:
"Russia is doing everything it can today to undermine and embarrass the U.S. The SVR rezidenturas in the U.S. are not less, but in some aspects even more active today than during the Cold War. What should that tell you?"
I highly recommend listening to the 8 minute interview (click Listen Now at the top of the linked page.)
And on the 'Global Warming' side, we have this from the mouths of unwitting child accomplices:
"Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Massive heat waves,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Severe droughts,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Devastaing hurricanes,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Our future - is up - to you.
Go to fight global warming dot com,
While there's still time."
Well if the Ad Council says it it MUST be true, right? That's what they call "consensus science."
Posted by: johngalt at February 10, 2008 1:26 PMAnd aren't those "tick,tick" kids the same ones who play ring-around-the-rosey while the AMA tells us we have to support Socialized medicine?
Posted by: jk at February 11, 2008 10:55 AMThe 16 latest pieces of evidence of global warming are the 16 degrees currently outside my door.
It's damn cold enough here, and it's still 50 degrees warmer than International Falls!
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at February 11, 2008 11:59 PMWith all respect to my friends in New York and Minnesota: haha.
I have driven my covertible top-down at least once every calandar month since I bought it (Oct 2004). And I got my February in today!
Posted by: jk at February 12, 2008 6:44 PMJanuary 31, 2008
President Clinton Tells Truth!
Hold the presses! Don Luskin says honesty in politics is rare So savor this morsel of truth from an unlikely source, Bill Clinton:
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
Karl Popper talks about those who would have us go back to the caves. Instapundit links to the threat of a new ice age.
Bill's stumping was working for Hillary, until he started putting on the "mad" face too. It just didn't resonate with voters when Obama would speak with charm and optimism. Now Bill really put his foot in his wife's mouth.
A "Law & Order: CI" rerun last night was about an intelligent, ambitious woman whose political campaigns always seemed to be sabotaged by her husband. Not that I'm in any way saying or implying Hillary will have Bill done in -- the ep was loosely (and unfairly) based on my former county DA, Jeannine Pirro, not Hillary. But I couldn't help but think, wow, Hillary will soon enough be praying that Bubba has a heart attack so he'll shut up.
Just sayin'.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 31, 2008 2:23 PMI still think he's a net gain in the primaries -- I think she might be encouraging him to have that third cheeseburger when she's in the general.
Posted by: jk at January 31, 2008 3:13 PMAwesome.
Three points.
How arrogant do you have to be to think you can regulate our economy to some "slower" number by saying so.
... and what is that number?
If the "economy stupid" is the new resurgent issue, and Bushco's GOP economic policies are too blame for the pending depression (Obama save us), why is a slow economy a bad thing?
Posted by: AlexC at January 31, 2008 3:24 PM
AC, I think the trouble is that Bush is slowing down the wrong parts of the economy. President Hillary Clinton would slow down the right parts. Government knows best!
Posted by: jk at January 31, 2008 5:59 PMJanuary 28, 2008
Would We Complain about Too Much O2?
One thing I've never heard addressed by the DAWG crowd: Isn't the added CO2 good for plants?
Terri at I Think ^(Link)... links to an item on treehugger.com that says the additional carbon dioxide provides a longer and more productive season for trees.
Scientists have been at a loss to account for why the traditional autumnal spectacle of disheveled trees and changing colors has gotten gradually pushed back over the last few years. Some have attributed the delayed autumnal senescence to increasing global temperatures; others have attributed it to the length of day.David F. Karnosky, a professor at Michigan Technological University, believes rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide may be to blame — and, perhaps surprisingly, to thank. Karnosky explains that delaying senescence may in fact be good news for forestry industries since it prolongs the trees' growing season. The extra carbon dioxide taken up in the autumn, in addition to that taken up during the growing season, would also boost their productivity.
December 27, 2007
Dave Lindorff is Crazy
Dave Lindorff can not only predict the future, but he also has the ability to relish the potential plight of others:
So the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.
The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
He has even reduced the century time-frame that most global warming prognosticators rely upon, saying that,
The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
This piece is nothing but hyperbole. He wants to punish those who do not believe that he and others like him can predict the future. What kind of man gets pleasure from the plight of others who merely disagree with him?
I would be willing to bet a substantial sum that these areas will not be inundated in the lifetime of his cats -- and I would even give them nine lives!
Ahh, yes, from the people who care...
I'm thinking his political geography is worse than his meteorology. The coastal areas are deep azure blue, are they not? You're going to submerge Alabama but New York and San Francisco will be okay?
Okay, so Florida loses some electoral votes, but I used to cross Texas in my musician days -- trust me, it's pretty big. Sheila Jackson Lee's district is in trouble, but there will be many dry Republican seats left. Some well placed tides in California might even make California Republican -- surf Bakersfield!
Lindorff is not crazy, he is retarded. His idea of science is to take an average of science related news stories and draw conclusions based upon the "preponderance of opinion." And he calls himself a Progressive? Only in the sense of making progress *back* in time.
The major instrument that makes people like him possible in large numbers is America's public education system and its growing abandonment of objective knowledge in every subject of study. If *that* trend is not reversed then the red states will be overflown by blue hoardes who believe government can make things so (cars getting more energy from the same gallon of gas is a timely example) simply by enacting a law.
Lindorff's closing appeal for the right to say, "Shut up - we told you this would happen," is equally applicable to my prediction as to his.
And as for this Libtard's predictions, HB, I don't just bet against them - I *guarantee* them to be complete nonsense.
The most alarming observation about Dave "The Case for Impeachment" Lindorff's fantasy prognostication is his willingness to completely abandon democracy in order to "gerrymander" the fairy tale ending he so craves. "They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but *we* need to keep a *firm grip* on *our* political systems..." If that's not tacit admission that the blue, mostly urban, areas of *our* country are soviet-style socialist *utopias* I don't know what is.
Posted by: johngalt at December 27, 2007 2:59 PMDon Luskin links as well, attracting this comment:
The twisted fantasy of Dave Lindorff is a great example of the real silver lining within the global warming scam. Lefty moonbats are revealed for what they really are: hate-filled, anti-progress, anti-business, anti-human lunatics. They might not come to an understanding of the Laffer curve in several cat lifetimes but we’ll all know soon enough that this whole movement is just a big alarmist myth. I had great fun making handshake bets at holiday parties that by next Christmas the press, (yes even the mainstream media will capitulate), will be telling a different tale as more scientists come to the forefront and proclaim their disagreement and even disgust with the whole deal. Certainly in my dog’s lifetime this scam will be revealed for what it is and those who truly do care about the environment will realize that the greater cause suffered a setback in credibility from Gore and his ilk.Posted by: jk at December 27, 2007 5:08 PM
The goddamn idiot thinks that the liberal cities can keep the Atlantic at bay by dike systems?
Let me personally assure you all, when one is driving along Manhattan's West Side Highway for the first time when it rains hard, one can get frightened with the waves looking ready to come onto the pavement. There's no way in hell that a system of "Dutch-style dikes" will protect New York any more than New Orleans was protected.
Oh, and with the Midwest dried up and all its staunch conservatives dead, agricultural exports will drop. Because the U.S. is the *world's* breadbasket, he rest of the world won't be able to feed itself, so there will be famine across the world. Their economies will shrink, and they in turn won't be buying other American exports either. But a loss of jobs will be the least of the surviving liberals' worries. I hope they like cannibalism, because there sure as hell won't be enough food to go around for Americans alone.
Hmm, that new world sounds like "Resident Evil." Since liberalism IS evil, it fits.
"It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, 'Shut up. We told you this would happen.'"
I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, in a different way. That's what the rest of us will say to liberals when we take back our rights by *force*.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at December 28, 2007 10:36 AMHeh. Bill Quick suggests the response to "Shut Up" might be Bang! in Be Careful What You Wish For, Unarmed Pussies
Posted by: jk at December 28, 2007 12:17 PMDecember 25, 2007
Global Schwarming!
For the second Christmas in a row, I am snowed in and cannot attend the family functions. Last year, I missed my family's, my wife's family's, and a rescheduled event.
To be honest, there is not a lot of snow up here. But I heard that there was 6-8" at my destination and it is still coming down. It does not help that I have the world's worst snow car, with bald tires.
I'm not complaining, mind you -- we have food, wine, and broadband. It will be a while before we have to eat some of the weaker ones...
Merry Christmas!
Being an odd numbered year we're Christmasing in Sunny Seattle (several of us have corroborating stories of a five to ten minute period of unmitigated direct sunlight this morning) but we're even seeing some snowfall here. Nothing that will have to be shoveled, mind you. Clearly the Globe is Warming Deleteriously and the cause is obviously Anthropogenic.
If it makes you feel better JK, our Lafayette based horse sitter called us to say the roads are too icy for her to safely trek to Atlantis Farm and nourish our equines. We had to call on an intrepid and irreplaceable neighbor to pinch hit for this evening.
And that d@mn3d Weather Link software I have to run on my PC to upload observation data to the internet isn't working. (There's something about going to Seattle that causes all of my automated processes to cr@p the bed within 24 hours.) Apologies for the "No Data" Atlantis Farm weather applet. This may be the last straw in my debate over buying the brand new direct IP connect version. Maybe it will restart itself automatically.
Posted by: johngalt at December 25, 2007 4:40 PMMerry Christmas to the Machos from us!
I wondered if your transmitter had iced over like a satellite dish. Good old Colorado, it's sunny this morning and all will be fine before noon.
Thank NED for neighbors. My across-the-street, reciprocal-dog-sit neighbor has shoveled my walk for the past two years. I hire out the yard work but I would not have been able to stay here without him. I have offered to purchase a new snowblower but he has so far taken this task on unremunerated (I guess I am a dirty hippie after all).
December 11, 2007
They Put The 'D' In DAWG
A complete list of things caused by global warming
Hat-tip: John Ives
December 3, 2007
Two Views on CO2
I'm going to link -- in one post -- to both The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I hope that the space-time continuum can handle the stress.
The WSJ folks point out An Inconvenient Reduction. It seems that the US is emitting less CO2 than it used to:
The Bush Administration announced last week that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 1.8% from 2005 to 2006. Output of all greenhouse gases was down 1.5% last year. All this while the American economy grew by 2.9%. It's the first time since 1990, when the U.N. began counting these things, that the U.S. has reduced emissions without also suffering a recession.Critics immediately pointed to the Energy Department's acknowledgment that the reductions were in part due to higher energy prices and favorable weather. But greater use of lower-carbon energy sources, including natural gas, also played a big role. The U.S. reduction also suggests that letting markets work through higher prices will reduce carbon emissions more than the cap and trade mandates favored by environmental lobbies and most Democrats.
Meanwhile, our intellectual betters in Europe have stumbled to meet their goals. Obviously, they are having too much fun -- but The Guardian is set to step in and fix it: Eat, drink and be miserable: the true cost of our addiction to shopping Subtitled: "Today it seems politically unpalatable, but soon the state will have to turn to rationing to halt hyper-frantic consumerism "
Is it enough to have halved family meat consumption, have foregone flights for several sun-starved years and arranged a life in which habits of cycling to work and walking to school are routine? No, it's just scratching at the surface. If the developed world is to implement the 80% cuts in carbon emissions the UN demands as part of the talks beginning in Bali today, the lives of our children will have to be dramatically different from everything we are currently bringing them up to expect.
First of all, it seems pretty irresponsible that you brought those CO2 exhaling offspring into being in the first place, never mind your difficulties telling them to "turn back to the caves" as Karl Popper would say.
You really really must read the whole Guardian piece, and as Samizdat Jonathan Pearce (inline hat-tip) says, actually read as much of the comment thread as your stomach will allow. Ms. Bunting gets quite a few "atta-girls," but also some concern from other lefty, Guardian readers. I meant to post there that President George Bush's plans seemed to be working really well, but I wasn't registered to post...
UPDATE: Lileks covers the Guardian article. He checks a questionnaire that he is "not very concerned" about global warming:
It’s like you’re one of those people they sang about in “Hair”! People who don’t care about war, or social injustice! Somehow “not very concerned” means you’re a global warming denialist, and you would, if you had time and money, drive to the Arctic in a Hummer and push polar bears into the drink. With the windows down. And the heat on.
November 12, 2007
Climate Reason
AWG advocate Bjorn Lomborg has a nice piece in the Telegraph: Ignore Al Gore, but not his Nobel friends
While Gore was creating alarm with his belief that a 20-foot-high wall of water would inundate low-lying cities, the IPCC showed us we should realistically prepare for a rise of one foot or so by the end of the century. Beyond the dramatic difference, it is also worth putting that one foot in perspective. Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about one foot - yet, did we notice?Most tellingly, while Gore was raising fears about the Gulf Stream halting and a new Ice Age starting, the scientists discounted the prospect entirely.
Reasonable discussion -- sans hyperbole -- would serve the scientific community and the environment a lot better than the exaggerated claims of the doomsayers.
Wait a minute. Are you saying, "Objective reporting," of "objective science," WITHOUT a bunch of self-serving fear mongering? Pshaw! How's the medical marijuana stash holding out over there in Boulder County?
Posted by: johngalt at November 13, 2007 2:24 AMJoin me in a quick chorus of Kumbaya?
Posted by: jk at November 13, 2007 12:28 PMMaybe it's a coincidence, jg, but the New York Times highlights new books with centrist views of global warming.
Posted by: jk at November 13, 2007 4:11 PMNovember 10, 2007
DAWG Classes in Colorado Schools
While JK's comment posits that the forces of DAWG are losing momentum in the scientific community, the movement is clearly in ascendency in the realm of popular culture and consequently, politics. To wit: Colorado's newly minted Governor announced his bold new "Climate Action Plan."
"Climate change is our generation's greatest environmental challenge," Gov. Ritter said. "It threatens our economy, our Western way of life and our future. It will change every facet of our existence, and unless we address it and adapt to it, the results will be catastrophic for generations to come."
This "catastrophic" threat to "every facet of our existence" sounds serious - almost as frightening as the gratuitous worldwide use of the hazardous compound dihydrogen monoxide.
A critical component of the governor's plan is to ensure that "the youngest generation" drinks the Kool-Aid. From page 25:
I. CLIMATE EDUCATION AND THE NEW ENERGY ECONOMY“If we fail to educate the youngest generation in the ways of sustainability, then we will truly fail as a whole.” U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson
Education about the choices we can make as citizens and as consumers is a primary ingredient in our individual and collective ability to successfully limit human contribution to climate change. People want to do the right thing — but they must be provided the
right information and means for doing so. Education will also be key to training Colorado’s workforce to meet the challenges and expectations of the New Energy Economy.Climate curricula. The state will work through the Governor’s P-20 Education Council and others to make sustainability curricula become standard fare in K-12 classrooms throughout the state. Today’s students will be living in a warmer climate resulting from the activities of previous generations. They need to understand the science of climate change, what its impacts will be on their lives, and how to critically evaluate the steps needed to reach our 2020 and 2050 emission reduction goals. Students will also need academic and technical skills to be ready for jobs in the New Energy Economy.
Best practices already in use, such as in the Poudre Valley School District in northern Colorado, will be featured through state web-based communications. A “Best in Education” category will be highlighted in the Governor’s Annual Excellence in Sustainability Awards program.
(Underlining for emphasis is mine.)
First, what does "sustainability" have to do with climate change? Which elements of this broad environmentalist mantra will be championed to "successfully limit human contribution to climate change?"
Secondly, why is it a good idea to teach students to "critically evaluate the steps needed to reach our (...) emission reduction goals" but not to teach them to critically evaulate the science of climate change?
I plan to write the esteemed governor and ask him how he justifies instruction in selectively applied reason in our publicly funded schools.
You're always there to dash the faintest glimmers of my optimism, jg -- thanks.
This time I have to agree. This will be just like recycling. It will live on by being inculcated in our youth. Sad but true. We live in a bona fide blue state now, with all privileges thereunto appertaining and all that.
Posted by: jk at November 10, 2007 12:58 PMNovember 9, 2007
Bringing Reason to DAWG
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. - Robert A. Heinlein
What civilization needs is to wrest climate science from the fuzzy side of campus where Albert Gore Junior and his minions have kidnapped it.
I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it. - John Coleman, Founder: The Weather Channel
(Mr. Coleman's remarks were originally published on Icecap.us, a scientifically oriented website dedicated to climate science that is directed by Joseph D'Aleo, founding Director of Meterology at TWC.)
Nice post and link. I'm pretty pessimistic on politics these days, but am feeling that the DAWG advocates have overplayed their hand with "the science is settled" and that we have passed a turning point for acceptance of skepticism.
Posted by: jk at November 9, 2007 6:12 PMOctober 29, 2007
Give Me a D!
The D in DAWG stands, of course, for deleterious. Even if global warming is real and caused my man, are we certain it is so bad?
The Pollyannaish folks at the NYTimes Europe bureau have a piece on Greenland:
But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests.“If it gets warmer, a large part of southern Greenland could be like this,” Mr. Hoeg said, walking through Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny southern community notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a half acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are plunked in the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord, as startling as a mirage. “If it gets a little warmer, you could talk about a productive forest with enough wood for logs,” Mr. Hoeg said.
It seems four trees planted by the Dutch botanist Rosenvinge in 1893 are coming out of dormancy and springing green buds. I was not aware that we had global warming in 1893. I should get out more.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
Whoops, hit Enter when putting in the password. Anyway, why shouldn't Greenland be like how it was before? A few years ago, there was a report on "global warming" that the MSM ignored, about tree rings dating back to AD 1200 showing a warmer Earth back then.
The Earth's cooler temperatures during Medieval times was no small reason why European populations suffered. It destroyed harvests of certain grains, which was well-known to Jefferson and some other intellectuals of his day. By the end of the 18th century, they were worried about new global cooling and a repeat of the near-famine conditions.
I just remembered Isaac Asimov writing in his "Book of Facts" in 1979 that it wouldn't take much to cause a new Ice Age, only a slightly cooler summer followed by a slightly cooler winter. That was the climate change hysteria back then.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 30, 2007 11:22 AMYou mean Greenland might actually be GREEN again? Say it ain't so!
Posted by: johngalt at October 30, 2007 2:44 PMOctober 28, 2007
Global Warming Doomsday Called Off
An uncommon referral (my brother's been researching the latest objective criticism of Al Gore's Nobel Prize winning eco-thriller since the science teacher at his children's elite (expensive) private Boulder County school screened it in her classes) and an uncommon source (CBC is the state-sponsored television outlet in socialist Canada) "explodes the doom and gloom of global warming."
As the Nobel Peace Prize begins collecting dust on Al and Tipper's mantelpiece it is fair to reprise these "deniers" contradictions, originally aired in November 2005, of the IPCC orthodoxy upon which this granting of the once illustrious award was largely based.
Humans stand accused of having set off a global climate catastrophe by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.The prophecy of doom is clear and media pass on the message uncritically.
Now serious criticism has arisen from a number of heavyweight independent scientists. They argue that most of the climatic change we have seen is due to natural variations.
They also state that if CO 2 is to play a role at all -it will be minuscule and not catastrophic!
This story presents a series of unbiased scientists as our witnesses.
We will hear their eloquent criticism of the IPCC conclusions illustrated by coverage of their research work.
The documentary is posted on YouTube here. It's 43 minutes long but I suggest the following excerpts:
5:30 to 8:30 - Ice core samples in Greenland show average temperature 1 degree higher now than 100 years ago, but 1 degree lower than 1000 years ago and 2 degrees below previous millenia. Corroborated by measurements elsewhere in North America, China and North Africa. "In 1875 we have the lowest temperatures in the last 8000 years and that matches exactly the time when meteorological observations started."
8:30 to 11:00 - Computer models, using probability theory, replace the "old" Little Ice-Age Theory with the infamous "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures over the last 10,000 years. Hockey stick theory developed by Dr. Michael Mann of U of Virginia, adopted by IPCC, of which Mann is a committee member. Hmmm. "It makes you believe, that in particular, the [IPCC] climate view is held by many. In fact it's really held by few."
I haven't watched the rest yet. Feel free to post your own highlights below.
Very cool. I'm intrigued with the 20th Century graph around 17:47. It shows a little dip through the 1960s, meaning that all the boomers remember it being a lot colder in my childhood. Boomers, of course, extrapolate their personal anecdotes into a worldview. Show -- or refute -- real data all you want, but a baby boomer will easily believe in DAWG from personal experience.
Also note John Christy, highlighted in a previous post.
Posted by: jk at October 28, 2007 5:14 PMOctober 25, 2007
An Annoyed Nobel Laureate
WSJ's Notable and Quotable shares a snippet of an interview between John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and CNN anchor Miles O'Brien:
O'BRIEN: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?CHRISTY: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that -- I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here -- that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities.
And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.
O'BRIEN: So, what about the movie ["An Inconvenient Truth"]; do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?
CHRISTY: Well, there's any number of things.
I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is -- well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.
O'BRIEN: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?
CHRISTY: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing. And when we build -- and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets -- we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place.
For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.
October 12, 2007
Somebody's Happy
To be fair, a lot of people are happy that VP Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize (though I have enjoyed much blog commentary today from those who do not).
But I was surprised to see Professor Gregory Mankiw celebrate. As VP Gore is a member of his beloved Pigou Club, however, Mankiw is pleased.
That is the problem with the Pigou Club. Mankiw is right that that is probably the best way to cut emissions but he glosses over the necessity (or lack thereof) for cutting emissions. He says (I paraphrase) that it is a public good to cut emissions, so irrespective of DAWG, why not do it?
French fries are bad too. Trans fats. Too much sugar. Let's raise revenue with taxes, trying to do the least damage possible to innovation and investment -- let's not use the tax code to achieve dubious "social good." That argument is far more worthy of Gore than Mankiw.
Mankiw's Pigou Club is nonsense. Why should we raise the tax on gasoline? Even if we admit that we should reduce pollution through taxation, we should tax the emissions of pollutants and not the consumption of gasoline.
Posted by: Everyday Economist at October 12, 2007 7:47 PMIt's official:
The Nobel Peace Prize is officially a joke. Al Gore, U.N. Climate Panel
Win 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Gore will have a platform to raise the profile of the issue later today, when he gives a press conference. In his own statement after the prize was announced, he said: "We face a true planetary emergency…The climate crisis is not a political issue ...''
If it is not a political issue then why was he granted a political prize for his "advocacy of the future of the earth?"
Even Yasser Arafat must consider his own prize tarnished by this.
Those Burmese monks were certainly undeserving. Glad to see it went to real peace advocates: VP Gore and the U.N.
Posted by: jk at October 12, 2007 11:07 AMI'm with Czech president Vaclav Klaus:
"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."
You don't have to be a DAWG denier to agree.
Posted by: AlexC at October 12, 2007 11:17 AMSame Algore who looked the other way (along with Blow-Job Bill) while Islamofascists took shots at us, until they found a weakness in our defenses.
Yeah, sounds like a man of peace to me!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at October 13, 2007 11:59 AMSeptember 28, 2007
Brave (VP) Sir Rodney
It's Vaclav Day at ThreeSources! TCS looks at the skeptics with whom VP Gore refuses to debate, and who comes up first, right after I suggested him for UN SecGen?
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who addressed the General Assembly on climate change September 24, is but the latest global warming skeptic to receive the cold shoulder from Gore. In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.
[...]
"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
UPDATE: Changed the headline to be clear whom I am calling a coward (Hint: It's Vice President Gore).
FEE honored him and Walter Williams last year with the Adam Smith Award for Excellence in Free-Market Education. That right there says volumes about the man, and his friendship with freedom.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 28, 2007 12:39 PMSeptember 24, 2007
"The Time for Doubt Has Passed"
If the Secretary General of the UN says so. (Paid link) WSJ:
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an unprecedented summit on climate change Monday that "the time for doubt has passed" and a breakthrough is needed in global talks to sharply reduce emissions of global-warming gases."The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," Mr. Ban told assembled presidents and premiers, an apparent caution against what some see as a U.S. effort to open a separate negotiating track.
Looking at the transparency and efficacy of the United Nations on its other projects, this means a lot. Former-Friedmanite Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chimed in on cue:
While the Bush administration has resisted emissions caps, California's Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 25% by 2020. Other U.S. states, in various ways, are moving to follow California's lead."California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action," Mr. Schwarzenegger said. "What we are doing is changing the dynamic."
What they are doing is choosing to replace science with politics.
September 12, 2007
The Antarctic
Yeah, well I have it on good authority that you have accepted funds from Big Oil, so who's gonna listen to you?
Posted by: jk at September 12, 2007 7:44 PMSeptember 5, 2007
The Forces of Darkness and Anti-modernity
A good week for transparency. Senator John Edwards demonstrated, if I may borrow Don Luskin's words, "You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath."
Today, James Taranto links to an article about a company that provides "carbon offsets" by paying people to stay in poverty. Is this for real?
Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’ (3)Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…
It has verisimilitude. This seems exactly what the warmies want, but I can't believe they have that much of a tin ear.
UPDATE: Sorry, bloggers, I'm a little comfier with this story's veracity seeing it in the London Times. Taranto also had this link.
August 31, 2007
'bout that consensus
A good friend of this blog sends a link to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Specifically, Senator Inhofe’s EPW Press Blog. Looking at recent peer-reviewed research, Senator Inhofe’s staff doesn't quite see the consensus that a certain former Vice President claims.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
August 19, 2007
NASA Scientist Lashes Out
Dave Price at Dean's World compares NASA Scientist James Hansen to Ann Coulter. He's dead on, although I bet she has better hair.
When you're working to advance science, the appropriate response when someone finds an error in your data or calculations is contrition (best expressed by an openness to further scrutiny and re-evaluation), and perhaps gratitude that truth has been served. James Hansen, on the other hand... well, read for yourself:
Do read it for yourself. Errors are discovered in his data set, so he calls those who found them "jesters" and impugns their motives. Our tax dollars at work. It is as polemical as Ms. Coulter but I never heard her sound quite so childish.
On the good side, I give Hansen points for using the word 'usufruct,' although he seems a couple of degrees off there as well.
August 15, 2007
Oldies but Goodies
Extreme Mortman remembers Newsweek's Global Cooling.
Good News from the Battlefield
Pretty good news out of Iraq these days, but I am talking about Roy Spencer's piece on TCSDaily: "A Report from the Global Warming Battlefield." He is right that it has become a war.
In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.
I'll admit that I find myself hoping for a slow hurricane season, just to confound the alarmists. Of course, that is childish, unscientific, and irrelevant. At least I am not rooting for hurricanes like the other side.
Spencer lines up the Y2K bug, faulty thermometer placement, then adds a paper that he has published.
Next, my own unit and I published satellite measurements that clearly show a natural cooling mechanism in the tropics which all of the leading computerized climate models have been insisting is a warming mechanism (Spencer et al., August 9, 2007 Geophysical Research Letters).We found that when the tropical atmosphere heats up from extra rain system activity, the amount of infrared heat-trapping cirrus clouds those rain systems produce actually goes down. This unexpected result supports the "Infrared Iris" theory of climate stabilization that MIT's Richard Lindzen advanced some years ago.
No one in the alarmist camp can figure out how we succeeded with this sneak attack. After all, there isn't supposed to be any peer-reviewed, published research that denies a global warming Armageddon, right?
All this against a Newsweek cover story that was refuted by a Newsweek columnist. A good week.
August 10, 2007
Thw W is now in question
Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe (DAWG).
When I tell people about, I say that as we move right to left down this tendentious acronym, things get a bit harder to prove.
G - I like to concede that the Earth is round; this gives me a lot of cred around lefties.
W - I usually concede that most data show warming. But that some question the methods and accuracy.
A - I claim this is the stinker. Mars seems to be warming, pari passu, with Earth -- with no SUVs.
D - Here I quote Bjorn Lomborg who believes 100% in A, W, and G. Yet he thinks there are far more pressing needs and that a longer growing season might be beneficial to humankind.
This is to avoid the dreaded "denier" label that Newsweek has now picked up (raise your hand if you're surprised). I'm a skeptic, says I. Then I bring up the epistemology of Karl Popper and their eyes glaze over and they ask "do you have any more beer?"
Of late, there have been two stunning hits at the W. The first is the superb original blog reporting from surfacestations.org who had visited the collection sites in California and found egregious contraventions of standards: some comical like an asphalt parking lot under the sensor or a barbecue pit 10 ft away. (DoS attack on link at present. No comment.)
Yesterday, I read about the Y2K bug (I think off Insty) and I looked forward (lazy blogger, no link, no biscuit!) to somebody else fleshing it out. Not to be overly literal, but how did the Y2K bug affect the 1998 readings?
Bill Hobbes does not answer that penetrating question. But he does catalog some of the issues, challenge the media to report on them, and call for new demands for accuracy.
The private sector ought to demand the government revamp the temperature sensor network, with input from private-sector scientists and academia, to ensure that the data being collected is accurate from each sensor, and broadly accurate as well. The problem is that even if such a network of sensors was installed today, its data would still be compared to historical data from the current problematic network. Still, is it too much to ask that global warming policy be based on facts that we can trust?
If you see some good links on flat earth, let me know. We can kill this Global Warming thing where it lives.
UPDATE: Don Luskin is on it,.
UPDATE II: I have always hoped this acronym would be picked up by a bigger blog. Last night I thought a catchy jingle might help. To the tune of Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E:"
D, is Dallas under rising seas,
A, And it's caused by S-U-Vs,
W is Well determined
G, Grossly endothermic.
It's here. It's bad, It's caused by we.
July 26, 2007
Tryin' to Reason with Hurricane Season
I was a Jimmy Buffet fan before I discovered jazz. That is one of his many funny song titles.
Germaine today. WSI Corp., a private forecasting entity, was reported to be backing off its predictions for 2007. I meant to post but saw that Terri had beat me to it.
Today, DAWG-deniers' patron saint Dr. William Gray is a little less sanguine. He still looks for an active season with an above average number of major storms. Yet Gray is trying to get out front of the news coverage and dissever links to global warming.
Some scientists, journalists and activists see a direct link between the post-1995 upswing in Atlantic hurricanes and global warming brought on by human-induced greenhouse gas increases. This belief, however, is unsupported by long-term Atlantic and global observations.Consider, for example, the intensity of U.S. land-falling hurricanes over time -- keeping in mind that the periods must be long enough to reveal long-term trends. During the most recent 50-year period, 1957 to 2006, 83 hurricanes hit the United States, 34 of them major. In contrast, during the 50-year period from 1900 to 1949, 101 hurricanes (22% more) made U.S. landfall, including 39 (or 15% more) major hurricanes.
The hypothesis that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the number of hurricanes fails by an even wider margin when we compare two other multi-decade periods: 1925-1965 and 1966-2006. In the 41 years from 1925-1965, there were 39 U.S. land-falling major hurricanes. In the 1966-2006 period there were 22 such storms -- only 56% as many. Even though global mean temperatures have risen by an estimated 0.4 Celsius and CO2 by 20%, the number of major hurricanes hitting the U.S. declined.
He offers another hypothesis:
My Colorado State University colleagues and I attribute the increase in hurricane activity to the speed-up of water circulating in the Atlantic Ocean. This circulation began to strengthen in 1995 -- at exactly the same time that Atlantic hurricane activity showed a large upswing.Here's how it works. Though most people don't realize it, the Atlantic Ocean is land-locked except on its far southern boundary. Due to significantly higher amounts of surface evaporation than precipitation, the Atlantic has the highest salinity of any of the global oceans. Saline water has a higher density than does fresh water. The Atlantic's higher salinity causes it to have a continuous northward flow of upper-ocean water that moves into the Atlantic's polar regions, where it cools and sinks due to its high density. After sinking to deep levels, the water then moves southward, and returns to the Atlantic's southern fringes, where it mixes again. This south-to-north upper-level water motion, and compensating north-to-south deep-level water motion, is called the thermohaline circulation (THC).
The strength of the Atlantic's THC shows distinct variations over time, due to naturally occurring salinity variations. When the THC is strong, the upper-ocean water becomes warmer than normal; atmospheric circulation changes occur; and more hurricanes form. The opposite occurs when the THC is weaker than average.
Since 1995, the Atlantic's THC has been significantly stronger than average. It was also stronger than average during the 1940s to early 1960s -- another period with a spike in major hurricane activity. It was distinctly weaker than average in the two quarter-century periods of 1970-1994 and 1900-1925, when there was less hurricane activity.
Dr. Popper would suggest that both theories are exposed to rigorous academic discussion and experimentation. But Dr. Gray points out that it might not work that way.
The warming theorists -- most of whom, no doubt, earnestly believe that human activity has triggered nature's wrath -- have the ears of the news media. But there is another plausible explanation, supported by decades of physical observation. The spate of recent destructive hurricanes may have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases and climate change, and everything to do with the Atlantic Ocean's currents.
But that would reinstate Copernicus and the heliocentric universe. And many men cannot accept that the 'verse does not revolve around us.
All the hot air coming out of DC (and everywhere that staged a Live Earth concert)is pushing the storms out to sea before they make landfall.
And anyway, don't you know by now,...if Nostra-Gore-mus didn't predict it, it won't come true?
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at July 26, 2007 10:18 PMJuly 19, 2007
Beef: It's Bad for the Environment
Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday.Japanese scientists used a range of data to calculate the environmental impact of a single purchase of beef.
Taking into account all the processes involved, they said, four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide.
This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy.
That means that 2.2lb of beef is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions which have the same effect as the carbon dioxide released by an ordinary car travelling at 50 miles per hour for 155 miles, a journey lasting three hours. The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days.
On the menu on my next road trip?
A big frigging burger.
Mmmm. Beef.
A 2.2-pound piece of beef, cut into four steaks? Pathetic. That's barely enough for two! Well, more like dinner and then a midnight snack.
Since I'm still in training, my meat consumption is almost exclusively fish and chicken. I do allot myself red meat twice a month, and I think these Japs have inspired me to increase that frequency. There's this bar & grill in Throgs Neck that offers 22-ounce USDA Prime boneless ribeyes for $23. Not the best seasoned, but they serve it sizzling hot, and there's plenty of room at the bar if you and the guys want to stop somewhere.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 20, 2007 10:58 AMThat's the metric system for you, Perry.
Posted by: jk at July 20, 2007 11:30 AMJuly 11, 2007
It stirs up the CO2
The forces of darkness and anti-modernity frequently tip their hand. A Doron Levin story in Bloomberg suggests Europe will try to outlaw cars that go 100 Miles Per Hour -- in the name of global warming, of course. Instapundit links and reminds that the Prius can do that with Al Gore III at the wheel.
Levin nails it. These people want to remake society in a fairer, poorer way to sate their peculiar aesthetics.
Who are these people anyway who decide on behalf of everyone what car is proper to drive? In the U.S. they're members of Congress, which is considering fuel-efficiency standards that will affect vehicle size. In Europe, it's the ministers and parliamentarians of the European Union, which wants to limit how much CO2 cars can emit as a proxy for a fuel- consumption standard.Chris Davies, a British member of the European Parliament, is proposing one of the most-extreme measures -- a prohibition on any car that goes faster than 162 kilometers (101 miles) an hour, a speed that everything from the humble Honda Civic on up can exceed. He ridiculed fast cars as ``boys' toys.''
Don't know if the little MR2 can do 160 K/hr or not. Only 140 ponies, I'd need a tailwind to get banned.
I'm sure it could do 100. My three first-gen Neons had the 132-hp SOHC engine, and they were capable of at least 130 mph. On more than one occasion, I personally, uh, "tested" the computer-based 120 mph speed limiter, which was not hard to hit on a flat road. One guy found a workaround for the speed limiter and was caught doing 132. Luckily it was Texas, because most anywhere else, he'd have been arrested on the spot instead of merely being given a ticket.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 11, 2007 10:43 PMProb'ly right. I had a 440 when I was a lad and think of displacement as the cure for everything.
Wanna Bet?
Taylor Buley, writing in the Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal Political Diary, wants a certain former Vice President to put up or shut.
Al Gore thinks the climate crisis is so dire that he's written a book, produced a movie and organized a world-wide music event to raise awareness. These have helped to make him a rich man, but is he willing to put his money where his mouth is? Don't bet on it.J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and expert on long range forecasting, has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that he can do a better job of predicting the future of climate change than the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts of rising temperatures are cited in virtually every media account. Mr. Armstrong and a colleague, Kesten Green of New Zealand's Monash University, examined the IPCC's work for last month's 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting and found it essentially valueless according to established principles of forecasting. "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder," concluded the two.
So what's Prof. Armstrong's own climate prediction? No change at all. "The methodology was so poor that I thought a bet based on complete ignorance of the climate could do better," says Mr. Armstrong. "We call it 'the naove model.' Things won't change."
Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting -- the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods -- and Principles of Forecasting, which was voted a "favorite book" by researchers and practitioners associated with the International Institute of Forecasters. If Mr. Gore accepts his challenge, Prof. Armstrong has proposed that each man put $10,000 into a charitable trust at a reputable brokerage house. The winner would then choose a charity to receive the total amount.
So far, Mr. Gore -- usually quite the opportunist -- has balked at the opportunity to establish credibility with global warming skeptics. "Please understand that Mr. Gore is not taking on any new projects at this time," read a note to Mr. Armstrong from Mr. Gore's communications director.
I would call that the Calvin Coolidge Climate Model, myself. Our 30th President famously said that if ten problems are rolling your way, nine will roll off the road before they reach you. We could use a little Silent Cal these days, in more ways than one.
July 9, 2007
Worse Ratings than Hockey!
Hockey's my favorite sport. Like some of my politics however, I realize that I am a little out of the mainstream. During the strike, ESPN ran professional bowling in its place and found ratings went up. Sad, True.
NEW YORK -- NBC's three-hour primetime "Live Earth" special, which included highlights from Saturday's global concerts, failed to generate much enthusiasm in the ratings.The estimated 2.7 million viewers was slightly under the 3 million viewers NBC has averaged on Saturday nights in the summer with repeats and the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs on what is already the least-popular night of television.
Let’s recap:
1) Professional bowling
2) Ice Hockey
3) Vice President Al Gore's Live Earth concert
Ouch. Hat-tip: Insty, who has updated the post to say "a guy who can't outdraw hockey won't make much of a candidate."
It's okay, Mr. Vice President. I love hockey!
Sooo... what you are saying is that only lefty Canadians were watching from over the border.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at July 9, 2007 10:13 PMWow! Outdoor lacrosse All-Star Game was more popular than Live Earth? Who-da-thunk-it!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at July 10, 2007 10:14 AMI told my wife that Madonna was the only artist to write new material for the show. Not missing a beat, she said "Al Gore, Don't Preach?"
Posted by: jk at July 10, 2007 5:57 PMQuote of The Day
Richard Bennett, emailer to James Taranto's Best of The Web:
But here is the irony: nearly 500 years after Copernicus took man out of the center of the universe and placed the sun firmly at the center of our little planetary system, the new secular religionists are trying to put man back at the center as the cause of everything. In order to feel good about themselves, they need to feel that man is causing all negative change and only Enlightened Man (Homo goriens) can make it right. Only by listening to, and following, our modern Moses in form of Al Gore can we reach the Promised Land. Welcome to the new Middle Ages, all you have to do is believe!
July 6, 2007
A Voice of Reason
Josh at Everyday Economist provides a generous excerpt from a NYTimes Magazine article (it's less that I am too cheap for TimesSelect. I'm cheap and I disagree on principle. I'd consider paying for their news pages if they gave away their editorials -- but I digress).
Gary Rosen is a true DAWG believer, but he admits to having "global warming fatigue" on the eve of VP Al Gore's envirotainment extravaganza. Rosen is not a skeptic but he questions what can be done and how much focus can be placed on a distant threat.
As Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago argues in his book “Laws of Fear,” a critique of the precautionary principle, a single-minded focus on particular environmental dangers excludes too much. “A better approach,” he writes, “would acknowledge that a wide variety of adverse effects may come from inaction, regulation and everything between.”If “precaution” is to make sense, it must be tempered by the logic of cost-benefit analysis, with its trade-offs and estimates of relative risk. Taxing carbon consumption is a fine idea — it would create incentives for new energy technologies — but if pushed too far it could depress economic growth. Resources might be better invested in adaptation — that is, in developing new crops and water supplies for a hotter world. Nor can we let climate change divert attention from more pressing human needs. The social scientist Bjorn Lomborg persuasively argues that the Third World suffers more from malnutrition and H.I.V./AIDS than it is likely to suffer from global warming.
Such a balance sheet will not satisfy those who see the campaign against global warming as an evangelical cause, a way to atone for central air conditioning, S.U.V.’s and other sins against nature. But the current debate would benefit from less emotion and more calculation. Maybe we can still manage to enjoy a perfect 72-degree day, even when it arrives in January.
Such a reasoned and reasonable debate would do a lot to bring people like me in. Our former Vice President's OpEd, in contrast, is alarmist and reactionary, pointing out that Venus has a lot of Carbon in its atmosphere and it averges 867 degrees.
The hard core environmentalists know, however, that in a reasoned debated that properly discounted distant threats and evaluated cost-benefits, little would be done. Lack of Reason (what's the title to VP Gore's book again?) is their agenda's only chance.
June 21, 2007
THE COOLING PLANET
In his latest book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb discusses the fallacy of induction. The example he gives is that of the turkey. For 1000 days, the turkey goes about its life being fed by human beings and leading a normal, dull life of a turkey. Each day the turkey's belief that it exists solely for the purpose of being fed. Then, shortly before Thanksgiving the turkey is killed and incurs "a revision of belief."
Skeptics of global warming are treated as though they were Holocaust-deniers. Even those who admit that the planet is warming and contend that the result is not due to human action are derided as naive. These criticisms are especially ironic considering that those who propagate global warming are committing the fallacy of induction.
It is nearly impossible to predict the future. I think that it would generally be universally agreed upon that I would not be able to forecast the weather for a given week one year hence or GDP five years into the future. There are far too many variables that could have a large impact on the actual outcome, many of which would be unexpected and thus would not be incorporated into the forecast.
Nevertheless, forecasts for climate change are widely accepted. We assume that trends will continue (or possible become worse). Yet this is an example of the fallacy of induction. We cannot safely assume that simply because the earth has gotten warmer over the past century that it will continue to do so ad infinitum. What about technological progress? What about natural changes in the environment that are unforeseen, yet part of the natural process? These are largely ignored.
Thus it is encouraging to find scientists who challenge this notion. R. Timothy Patterson writes:
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.[...]
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
[...]
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all. [Emphasis added.]
The findings are startling, essentially rejecting the status quo. While this certainly will not change the minds of the Al Gore's of world, it does give credence for those of us who dare to be skeptics.
Go Long on Monsanto. Glenn Reynolds says "So we'll either be roasting, or freezing. I guess either way, more insulation in my attic is a good idea."
Posted by: jk at June 21, 2007 12:05 PMJune 10, 2007
Lefties against DAWG
Blog buddy Sugarchuck sends a link to The Nation. Two Nation links in a month -- that has gotta be a record. Again it is DAWG apostate Alexander Cockburn providing devastating heterodoxy
The Achilles' heel of the computer models, the cornerstone of CO2 fearmongering, is their failure to deal with water. As vapor, it's a more important greenhouse gas than CO2 by a factor of twenty, yet models have proven incapable of dealing with it. The global water cycle is complicated, with at least as much unknown as is known. Water starts by evaporating from oceans, rivers, lakes and moist ground, enters the atmosphere as water vapor, condenses into clouds and precipitates as rain or snow. Each step is influenced by temperature and each water form has an enormous impact on global heat processes. Clouds have a huge, inaccurately quantified effect on heat received from the sun. Water on the Earth's surface has different effects on the retention of the sun's heat, depending on whether it's liquid, which is quite absorbent; ice, which is reflective; or snow, which is more reflective than ice. Such factors cause huge swings in the Earth's heat balance and interact in ways that are beyond the ability of computer climate models to predict.The first global warming modelers simply threw up their hands at the complexity of the water problem and essentially left out the atmospheric water cycle. Over time a few features of the cycle were patched into the models, all based on unproven guesses at the effect of increased ocean evaporation on clouds, the effect of clouds on reflecting the sun's energy and the effect of cloud warming on rainfall and snow. All of these equations are hopelessly inadequate to describe the water cycle's role.
Cockburn defended himself against critics last May. Now he implies that global warming is something of a capitalist plot to pave the way for nuclear power (We are reading The Nation, still).
Water has a unique property that causes it to expand when it freezes (most compounds shrink) thus giving ice a lower density than water and making it float on the surface of lakes and oceans rather than sink to the bottom and destroy life on earth. An equally important property of "dihydrogen oxide" is the energy required to convert it from state to state. Converting from solid to liquid and also from liquid to vapor takes many times as much energy as is required to raise the temperature of its mass. This state conversion energy potential thus serves as a gigantic moderator on the earth's temperature. When energy is in excess, more of the planet's water is in the form of vapor. When in relative decline, the ice mass is greater. All the while the earth's temperature remains in a far narrower range than would be the case in the absence of planetary water.
Presumably the would-be climate modelers hypothesized that the effect of water vapor was constant, as the mass of water on the planet is constant. The reality, though, is that without water we'd be witnessing such dramatic temperature fluctuations from year to year that nobody would dare claim that humans could affect it.
This then is my beer fortified thesis on the subject.
Posted by: johngalt at June 12, 2007 12:23 AMBecause water was difficult to account for in their models, they just left it out.
Whom do they think they are -- economists?????
Posted by: jk at June 12, 2007 7:03 PMMay 30, 2007
Speaking Truth to Power
Or at least speaking truth to moonbats. Blog friend Sugarchuck sends a link to an article in The Nation magazine where Alexander Cockburn defends himself for his aposty of questioning Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe (DAWG) in the lefties' flagship publication.
I began this series of critiques of the greenhouse fearmongers with an evocation of the papal indulgences of the Middle Ages as precursors of the "carbon credits"--ready relief for carbon sinners burdened, because all humans exhale carbon, with original sin. In the Middle Ages they burned heretics, and after reading through the hefty pile of abusive comments and supposed refutations of my initial article on global warming I'm fairly sure that the critics would be only too happy to cash in whatever carbon credits they have and torch me without further ado.The greenhouse fearmongers explode at the first critical word, and have contrived a series of primitive rhetorical pandybats, which they flourish in retaliation. Those who disagree with their claim that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of the small, measured increase in the average earth's surface temperature are stigmatized as "denialists," a charge that scurrilously combines an acoustic intimation of nihilism with a suggested affinity to those who insist the Holocaust never took place.
This is one little datum, but the computer model I feed it into suggests that the warmies may have overplayed their hand with their apocalyptic predictions, overwrought rhetoric, and scientific arm-twisting. More people are recognizing that this is not science anymore.
Hat-tip to sc -- reading The Nation so you don't have to!
May 29, 2007
Hurricanes May Predate Bush Presidency
Looking back at 5,000 years of hurricane data suggested by soil samples, a scientist has determined that "There are stormy periods and more placid epochs -- and they alternate back and forth." Who'd have thought?
The samples have allowed hurricane historian Donnelly from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to look more than 5,000 years into our planet's past. And what he found may have profound implications for our understanding of the effects of global warming on violent storms. The frequency of fierce storms that sweep into the Caribbean and onto the Puerto Rican island of Vieques varies considerably. There are stormy periods and more placid epochs -- and they alternate back and forth.Donnelly and his colleague Johnathan Woodruff listed their results in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature. Hurricanes, they wrote, regularly struck the lagoon between 5,450 and 3,650 years ago. This period of intense hurricane activity was interrupted only briefly by a 150 year respite. After that period, there were only few hurricanes -- until about 2,550 years ago, when an interval characterized by a relatively high number of strong hurricanes began, continuing until the next quite phase, which began about 1,050 years ago. But during the last 300 years, the lagoon has once more been exposed to a higher number of violent hurricanes -- just as the unpleasant storms have been multiplying elsewhere as well.
I hate to be flip -- it is an interesting study. And even Der Spiegel has to admit that "The samples suggest that recent devastating storms may not necessarily be linked to global warming."
Hat-tip: I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err
May 15, 2007
Peer Review
Josh at Everyday Economist says "If you read one thing today" it should be this commentary by Robert Higgs for the Independence Institute. Higgs admits that he is not an expert in climatology but that he has experience with peer review and the machinations of the scientific community.
I have always claimed that my objections to DAWG were epistemological. Scientifically, it seems a good theory and I am no climatologist, either -- I don't even play one on TV. But I am a devotee of Karl Popper and was a scientist wannabe in my school years. I don't think good scientific procedures are being followed in the climate change debate. Higgs pokes some holes in peer review and "consensus."
In this context, a bright young person needs to display cleverness in applying the prevailing orthodoxy, but it behooves him not to rock the boat by challenging anything fundamental or dear to the hearts of those who constitute the review committees for the NSF, NIH, and other funding organizations. Modern biological and physical science is, overwhelmingly, government-funded science. If your work, for whatever reason, does not appeal to the relevant funding agency’s bureaucrats and academic review committees, you can forget about getting any money to carry out your proposal. Recall the human frailties I mentioned previously; they apply just as much in the funding context as in the publication context. Indeed, these two contexts are themselves tightly linked: if you don’t get funding, you’ll never produce publishable work, and if you don’t land good publications, you won’t continue to receive funding.When your research implies a “need” for drastic government action to avert a looming disaster or to allay some dire existing problem, government bureaucrats and legislators (can you say “earmarks”?) are more likely to approve it.
The Everyday Economist is right, you have to read the whole thing.
In this connection, we might well bear in mind that the United Nations (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees) is no more a scientific organization than the U.S. Congress (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees). When decisions and pronouncements come forth from these political organizations, it makes sense to treat them as essentially political in origin and purpose. Politicians aren’t dumb, either―vicious, yes, but not dumb. One thing they know above everything else is how to stampede masses of people into approving or accepting ill-advised government actions that cost the people dearly in both their standard of living and their liberties in the long run.
May 3, 2007
Selling Rice Offsets
Drive your Prius, fly commercial, you're still contributing to DAWG unless you eschew the real global warming culprit, rice.
"Methane emissions are unique to rice," he said. "If Asian countries are exploring possibilities to reduce greenhouse gas, they have to look at rice production. I'm not saying it's the biggest source, but in Asia it's a source that cannot be neglected."It's the bacteria that thrive in flooded paddies that produce methane, by decomposing manure used as fertilizer and other organic matter in the oxygen-free environment. The gas is emitted through the plants or directly into the atmosphere.
A molecule of methane is 21 times more potent than a molecule of carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas. Although carbon dioxide is still the bigger problem, representing 70 percent of the warming potential in the atmosphere, rising levels of methane now account for 23 percent, reports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
If you must order that Kung Pao, fear not -- I will sell you rice offsets. Send me $10.00 and I will not eat rice all day.
A co-worker generously gave me "a gazillon" carbon credits.
I'm throwing another caribou on the fire right now.
Posted by: AlexC at May 3, 2007 3:20 PMApril 18, 2007
Unwilling to Sacrifice for the Environment
As Pennsylvanians prepare to mark another Earth Day, (April 22) they believe that global warming exists but look to government and science to solve the problem rather than take steps to solve it themselves.That's what two Mansfield University researchers found via an "action index" they created to analyze the willingness of adult Pennsylvanians to take action to reduce global warming.
"Our results suggest that a majority of people in the state are not very committed to taking broad action against global warming," says Tim Madigan, associate professor of sociology at Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA.
... and why should they?
Government has always been there to solve our problems, eh Comrade? Eh?
Slightly more than half, 52 percent, expressed willingness to use fluorescent light bulbs. Forty-six percent said they would compost kitchen scraps and 51 percent would take reusable bags to the grocery store.Fifty-five percent said they would buy things from environmentally friendly companies.
Only 38 percent said they were willing to wash dishes by hand while 41 percent would own a hybrid car, and buy a solar power system for their home.
Just 26 percent indicated willingness to allow washed clothes to air-dry.
Twenty-five percent would purchase a windmill and 30 percent would remove meat from their diet.
But are we buying carbon credits?
Heartwarming how many people are willing to change their lightbulbs to keep this world pristine for our progeny. I get teary eyed just thinking of their courage and sacrifice.
Seriously, I think this article identifies the true measure of how many people really "believe" and to what extent.
Posted by: jk at April 18, 2007 12:16 PMApril 13, 2007
When you can do tomorrow, we'll talk 2050
This argument makes my DAWG-believing friends very unhappy, but indulge me this once.
Yesterday morning, KDVR FOX31 weather brought in two meteorologists for team coverage of the impending storm. "We're tracking the models," one intoned gravely, and we're prepared to predict snow totals. The other member of the tag team then projected where and when the snow would fall with a detailed timeline. Sunny in the morning, turning to rain after noon, rain mixed with snow all afternoon but no accumulation until overnight. Then snow all day Friday and they provided totals, by area, for accumulation through 7PM this evening. My area was to be the hardest hit, expecting 10-16".
Well they've got 77 minutes left (this blog is on Eastern Time), but what I have seen is: it got overcast and chilly yesterday afternoon, it drizzled just enough to make you think they were right. A little snow this morning but not enough to wet the paving stones in my patio.
Umm, ladies, would those be at all like the "models" that everyone uses to predict warmer temps through the century? It is sunny and the skies are blue. There is zero measurable precipitation at Atlantis Farm.
When you guys can tell me blue skies vs. 16" of snow in 36 hours, your 36-year models will carry a lot more weight.
My thoughts EXACTLY.
In *defense* of the "meteorologists" on Fox31, they were just regurgitating the NWS forecast from the real meterologists. You know, the ones with Cray supercomputers running the really, really, REALLY good computer models! They had me fooled too. I was contemplating whether to drive the all wheel drive Audi or the V10 4x4 Ram to work today, and whether to mount the 96" snowblower to the tractor in advance or wait until after the "certain" blizzard. When I drove past the CDOT equipment yard Thursday night they were busily re-mounting the plow blades to the sand trucks.
And this morning, when I awoke, in the immortal words of the 70's B-movie "Oklahoma Crude"... Drier than a popcorn fart.
Posted by: johngalt at April 13, 2007 9:41 PMApril 6, 2007
The Consensus Wins
Approximately 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species are at risk of extinction if the global average temperature increases by another 2.2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a major consensus report released Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The IPCC is a United Nations body charged with assessing the scientific record on global warming.
"More droughts, floods, forest fires, and heat waves are in store for us and for future generations, unless we act boldly to reduce global warming pollution," said Nathan Willcox, energy and clean air advocate for PennEnvironment.
"This consensus report from the world’s scientists should be a direct challenge to the U.S. Congress and Pennsylvania's leaders in Harrisburg," he added. "It paints a clear and disturbing picture of the consequences of failing to take serious action."
Since science has become all about consensus, I think that the 90% of Americans who believe in God should pray for a miracle, and the 10% who believe in the power of government shouldn't be allowed to object.
After all, consensus is truth.
Con-sen-sus
1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month
2. general agreement or concord; harmony.
I don't see anything here about probability, or "high confidence" as is attributed to the IPCC. Calling the product of the panel's years of self-serving blather a "consensus" report from "the world's scientists" is like measuring distance in gallons. (Oops. "litres" Sorry.)
No matter. One needn't fret over "1/4 of all species" being "wiped out," at least for now. After all, they're only "at risk." Call me when there's a "consensus" on this one too.
Posted by: johngalt at April 6, 2007 3:42 PMApril 5, 2007
Did jk Overestimate Government Efficiency?
I posted a dour and alarmist reaction to the Supreme Court's terrible decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. The EPA was to be empowered to "devastate the economy" I said, whomever appoints the next EPA head.
A blog post by New York Times's John Tierney suggests that I may have missed or forgotten the inability of a bureaucratic institution to get anything done.
My favorite guide to the E.P.A. is David Schoenbrod, who sued to force the E.P.A. to take lead out of gasoline in the 1970s, when he was a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The environmentalists won in court. But as Mr. Schoenbrod watched the agency dither, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, he became convinced that the lawsuit hadn’t really been a victory — that lawmakers at the state and federal levels would have been forced to act sooner if the problem hadn’t been delegated to the E.P.A.
Tierney is, of course, sad that "The Environmental Procrastination Agency" will stall and delay all kinds of needed action to confront the DAWG.
But I'm elated. Perhaps a wise, GOP, 44th President will appoint an earnest, avidly environmentalist, and completely incompetent person to head the division. I don't think it will be too hard to find a candidate.
April 3, 2007
The Religion
Two columnists, same idea.
DAWG is a religion.
The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was: Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative, leaving to one side subsidiary specifications.It is required today to believe that carbon-dioxide emissions threaten the basic ecological balance. The assumption then is that inasmuch as a large proportion of the damage is man-made, man-made solutions are necessary.
As has been widely reported, Gore's Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the energy of the average home in that state. But it's OK, according to the priests of global warming. Gore has purchased "carbon offsets."It took the Catholic Church hundreds of years to develop corrupt practices such as papal indulgences. The global warming religion has barely been around for 20 years, and yet its devotees are allowed to pollute by the simple expedient of paying for papal indulgences called "carbon offsets."
Americans spend an extra $2.2 billion on gas a year because they're overweight, requiring more fuel in cars to carry the extra pounds. So even with all those papal indulgences, Gore may have a small carbon footprint, but he has a huge carbon butt-print.
I've been ready to kick Ms. Coulter off the island for a while now, but the comparison of carbon offsets to papal indulgences is good stuff -- really good.
Yet, as Buckley points out, you have no credibility on the issue, ac, being funded by big oil.
Posted by: jk at April 4, 2007 11:16 AMCry havoc! and let loose the wars of DAWG
In Jolly Green Justices, the WSJ Editorial Page -- let us say -- registers its disappointment in the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Massachusetts v EPA.
The five Supreme climatologists granted Al Gore's fondest wish by declaring that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." The majority warned about a "precipitous rise in sea levels," "severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems" and "increases in the spread of disease."
So, I suppose the science is settled. If SCOTUS has embraced the DAWG, who am I to be skeptical?
I laugh to keep from crying. Every presidential candidate in both parties has, so far, publicly accepted the precepts of anthropogenic global warming. The EPA will continue to be a great cabinet appointment for one of the more liberal members of any party. I was a big fan of Gov. Christine Todd-Whitman until President Bush gave her the keys to that regulatory behemoth.
Now, that position will have the power to devastate the economy, and even a President McCain or Giuliani will appoint a DAWG acolyte. I shudder to think of what havoc a President (HR) Clinton or Obama administration could wreck.
As the editorial is not available online, I have included all the text (Click "Continue Reading...") This is important to read in full.
The current Supreme Court is a talented group of jurists, but until yesterday we didn't think their expertise ran to climatology. The Justices would have done better in their big global warming decision if they'd stuck more closely to the law.They showed no such modesty. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a narrow majority managed to diminish the rules of judicial standing, rewrite the definition of "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act, and dramatically curtail the decision-making authority of the executive branch. And judging from Justice John Paul Stevens's 5-4 majority decision, they did so because the five Justices are personally anxious about rising temperatures. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, the "Court's alarm over global warming" has led it to substitute "its own desired outcome" for the EPA's judgment.
The case goes back to 1999, when activists frustrated that Congress hadn't enacted a global warming program demanded that the EPA use its Clean Air Act power to unilaterally regulate CO2 "pollutants" from cars. The EPA declined to do so in 2003, claiming it lacked authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2. The greens and several states turned to that mecca for frustrated liberal policy makers -- the courts.
The five Supreme climatologists granted Al Gore's fondest wish by declaring that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." The majority warned about a "precipitous rise in sea levels," "severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems" and "increases in the spread of disease."
The Court used all of this not-so-inadvertent opining to justify its conclusion that CO2 is indeed a "pollutant." The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate "any air pollutant" from cars that might "endanger public health or welfare," though the majority took the widest view that the definition includes any "physical, chemical" substance that goes in the air. (Next up: oxygen.) Justice Scalia poked fun at this reasoning, noting Webster's definition of "pollute" is "to make or render impure or unclean" -- which might apply to sulfur dioxide or other dirty gases but not a product of human respiration that resides in the upper atmosphere.
In any case, isn't this something for Congress to decide? Global warming was already a hot topic in 1990, when Congress last amended the Clean Air Act. Yet it declined to enact amendments that would have forced the EPA to set CO2 emissions standards. The Members have since been engaged in periodic brawls over whether and how to regulate CO2, but, voila, the High Court has now declared that it shall be so.
The ruling means the EPA must regulate automobile CO2 emissions unless that agency can show the science of global warming, or the potential harm it may cause, are too uncertain to justify action. The Bush EPA will no doubt be sued whatever it does. Congress will also dive in with more regulation, if only to clear up the legal uncertainty.
Perhaps most distressing is the way the majority made a hash of traditional "standing" doctrine, which determines when a plaintiff has a right to sue. To justify its global warming afflatus, the Justices simply asserted that the Massachusetts coastline faces imminent threat from rising seas. Not even Mr. Gore goes that far. But the Court cites climate models to suggest future harm in order to claim the threat of immediate injury, and thus standing by the Bay State.
"Aside from a single conclusory statement, there is nothing in petitioners' 43 standing declarations and accompanying exhibits to support an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20th century global sea level increases," writes Chief Justice John Roberts in his dissent. "It is pure conjecture."
And done for the purpose of pure policy invention. Standing is one of the few self-restraints on the power of the federal courts, and it is a far too frequent habit of the current Supreme Court to view its own power as unlimited. By diluting the standards for standing, the High Court creates a highway by which judges can speed past the political branches and play an ever larger role in American public life.
It is also worth noting that this is at least the third case in two years in which Justice Kennedy has provided the fifth vote for a decidedly activist liberal majority. Someone recently quipped that Justice Stevens considers it his late life's work to compete for the jump ball that is the jurisprudence of Justice Kennedy, and he seems to be winning most possessions.
(Copyright 2007, Dow Jones & Co. -- stolen without permission).
I suppose somebody has to be the Cuffy Meigs of our times ...
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at April 3, 2007 12:10 PMThis SCOTUS decision is Step 8 in the Road to Serfdom pamplet linked in the previous post.
Thanks for the text JK.
Posted by: johngalt at April 3, 2007 3:39 PMMarch 31, 2007
jk Defends John Travolta
Instapundit calls it "More Celebrity Global Warming Hypocrisy." This Is London says With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming. And I settled in for a feast of self rigorousness at a Scientologist’s expense. What a great Saturday.
Travolta owns five jets, and a mansion with a private runway. He logged 30,000 flying miles in 12 months.
But the hypocrisy charge is a little thin. At a gala glitteratifest, Travolta suggested that people "can do their bit;" that's hardly hectoring. He suggested alternative fuels; President Bush is Federally funding them. He wants to colonize other planets and build domed cities; that does not comport with Vice President Gore's solutions.
They excerpted the following quotes:
"It [global warming] is a very valid issue," Travolta declared. "I'm wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities."Everyone can do their bit. But I don't know if it's not too late already. We have to think about alternative methods of fuel.
"I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.
I give the man points for admitting his glass house (with private runway) and seeking technological solutions. He didn't tell anybody to live in a cave.
We now resume ThreeSources's anti-celebrity, DAWG denyin' editorial content in progress...
You know.... most religions allow sinners to repent (or, Catholic history, look the otherway while taking money).... Our Lady of Global Warming is no different.
Posted by: AlexC at April 1, 2007 4:54 PMMarch 30, 2007
Consensus
Josh at Everyday Economist picks up on an interesting comment that a reader sent to Don Luskin.
Now, let me get this straight.When we are talking about climate change, “consensus” is invoked as the ultimate argument that this is, after all “settled science.” Breaking with that consensus gets one labeled anti-intellectual, anti-science. One is a “denier,” with its interwoven echoes of holocaust deniers and “being in denial” in the pop-psychological sense. It is prima facie evidence of being stupid or in the pay of big energy.
On the other hand, when we are talking about free trade, the argument that “99% of economists since the days of Adam Smith” are free traders, which might be taken to be “consensus,” appears to be unpersuasive…
In-freakin-deed.
I'm waiting to drop the 90% of Americans believe in God consensus bomb on my liberal-atheist-global-warming-will-kill-us-all-if-King-George-doesnt-volvo driving arch-nemesis.
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