The EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been accused of systematic double counting of carbon allowances by a new report released last week.
November 2007
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just issued the final installment of its year-long scare-the-pants-off-the-public assessment of global warming.
It has been billed as the summit that could help save the planet, but the latest United Nations climate change conference on the paradise island of Bali has itself become a major contributor to global warming.
The Associated Press’s Man in Sydney, announcing John Howard’s defeat at the polls reveals a fairly typical understanding of the politics of global warming that it is fair to predict we will more of on our own shores soon, as the cries of our purportedly "rogue" global warming stance increase:
"Australia’s SYDNEY, Australia (AP) – Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.
Labor Party head Kevin Rudd's pledges on global warming and Iraq move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush's staunchest allies.
Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it."
Oddly, Australia’s government admits that it already signed Kyoto, in 1998, though its Parliament has yet to ratify it, just as the U.S. Senate has yet to vote on the duly signed pact (November 12, 1998, previously posted here though something to which our own government seems disinterested in admitting further as the announcement no longer appears in any form on State's website).
It is true that under parliamentary systems prime ministers generally have more sway over whether his legislature approves such agreements — he controls the chamber, by definition — a procedural twist making this expression of factual ignorance mildly less glaring than when asserted in the U.S. as it most certainly will be with increasing frequency. It is worth noting that members of Rudd’s party having insisted as recently as last week that “Australia should have signed Kyoto.” Now's your chance.
Why is this of interest to us? At some point, after we hear anew shrieks of how mean Bush was for having "refused to sign Kyoto", how this was responsible for why the French and Germans don't like us — oh, right, we now need to find other proof that this "squandered post-9/11 goodwill" by announcing the position 6 months before 9/11 — and so on, someone will get the bright idea to point out that not only are we signatories but, should the speaker be a member of the United States Senate, well, the Aussies have shown it's not too late.
Shall we have at it, now that the lame shuffle of "well, it's too late" has been overtaken by events (presuming Austrialia does, er, sign Kyoto)? That is, possibly we could actually glimpse the opportunity for those expressing the greatest angst to put their legislating where their mouths are. Or for the debate over the wisdom of "Kyoto" to actually occur, leading into a discussion of the wisdom of "post-2012" Kyoto.
Should we be turning our turkey drippings into fuel for our cars instead of gravy?
Though a great idea, it’s still not cost competitive. But many are looking to Congress for this gravy-boat: “producers of U.S. biodiesel, traditionally made from soybeans, are fighting a joint bid by oil giant ConocoPhillips and meat processor Tyson Foods Inc. for access to a credit ($1 per gallon) for “renewable diesel” fuel they would make from animal fat,” according to Jeffrey Ball in his WSJ article, “As Energy Prices Soar, U.S. Industries Collide,” (subscription required). That tax credit is then paid by those at the bottom of this pecking order—taxpayers—after all.
And though originally promised to be economically competitive with crude oil at $50 a barrel, crude oil will now have to be at $130 a barrel before, specifically, palm-oil based biodiesel is competitive. Large amounts of petroleum products are used in the planting and harvesting of soy and the transportation of the fuel. "Biodiesel is inextricably linked to oil," said Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.
Therein lies the problem with using Tom’s fat to drive us home from Grandma’s Thanksgiving dinner.
It is often suggested that global warming and/or the environment is becoming more important in deciding how Americans vote. The latest poll figures, from the Washington Post and ABC News, suggest that for Democrats in the crucial state of Iowa, that is far from the case.
In a state where ethanol and energy are important issues, too few people to register mentioned global warming as the most important issue in determining their choice of candidate. Taking the top two issues together, 4 percent said the Environment, 3 percent said Energy/Ethanol and 2 percent global warming. There may be some overlap between these groups, so it is impossible to add these up even to 9 percent.
And that's the Democrats. Now admittedly, this is from a midwest state but the figures for environmentally "aware" New Hampshire aren't much different. In the latest CNN poll there, just 4 percent of Democrats make it their #1 issue, with 3 percent their #2 (an additional 5 percent named it their #3 issue, something that wasn't asked in the Iowa poll).
In South Carolina, a Winthrop University poll in October found just 0.8 percent of Democrats mentioning the Environment as their most important issue – lower (though meaninglessly so) than the 1 percent of Republicans!
It looks as if enviros have finally turned against biofuels. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the greens had remained faithful to the illusion that biofuels are good for the environment. In fact, biofuels pollute the air and water worse than gasoline, and they have a larger carbon footprint to boot.
Jeanne Cummings reports in the Politico that environmental groups are now so concerned about the environmental impact of biofuels that they are poised to oppose the miracle fuels. That opposition would likely sound the death knell for ethanol, which would be a marvelous development for the environment, the world’s poor, American consumers, asthmatics, cattlemen, etc. etc. etc (like the energizer bunny, the list of those harmed by ethanol goes on and on).
Last month, professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke to the 350 students at St. Marks School in Providence, R.I., on the science of global warming.
Some of you may have noticed over the past few days the UN’s multi-tiered alarmism road show to push the “new” scary IPCC report. This actually happens to be a summary of the three summaries released in staggered, media savvy fashion over the past ten months, the window for work to be considered having closed well over a year ago. As such, it inherently cannot contain anything new or newsworthy without running afoul of the IPCC’s claim that the underlying work and claims made in the summaries has been “peer reviewed” (now proven to be an unsupportable claim, if one that's still made today).
As part of its campaign the IPCC has claimed that everything is happening faster than previously projected. Why, they’ve even claimed that greenhouse gases are increasing faster than predicted, which is really quite something given that the IPCC assumes, via its computer models, an annual rate of GHG increase that has been exposed as being twice as great as three decades of observations reveal.
In a completely unrelated development, during this same week the IPCC continues this push the UN office that obtains increased money and authority depending on the extent of the AIDS epidemic was forced to admit it had long grossly overestimated the global infection rate, by more than forty percent. “‘There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda,’ said Helen Epstein, author of ‘The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS’. ‘I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way.”
Possibly these two offices might speak some day.
A U.N. that can't save the world from war, famine, disease and pestilence now releases a report saying global warming will cause all of the above — and it's your SUV that's doing it.
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