Cooler Heads Digest

Peter Hannaford, Spectator.org, 2 January 2008

 

Cal Thomas, Sun Sentinel, 2 January 2008

 

Orange County Register Editorial, 1 January 2008

 

John Tierney, New York Times, 1 January 2008

 

Les Kinsolving, WorldDailyNet.com, 1 January 2008

 

George Pell, news.com.au, 30 December 2007

 

Terry Easton, Human Events, 27 December 2007

 

Patrick Michaels, Spectator.org, 27 December 2007

 

Shikha Dalmia, NY Post, 26 December 2007

 

Andrew Ferguson, Weekly Standard, 31 December 2007

 

The leading surface temperature data sets compiled by the Met Office's Hadley Centre and by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the weather satellite data set compiled by John Christy and Roy Spencer show no increase in the global mean temperature since 1998, even though the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has risen by roughly four per cent.

 

 

Members of the House and Senate don’t return until the 15th to begin the second session of the 110th Congress. It’s not clear whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will try to pick up any of the pieces they dropped from their big anti-energy package before passing it last month. These include the 15% renewable portfolio standard for electric utilities and the $21 billion in new taxes for oil companies.

 

It’s also not clear whether Reid and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will try to bring the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to the floor. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), Chairman of the relevant subcommittee, have said that the committee will consider their version of a cap-and-trade bill this year. But it’s unclear when or what’s going to be in it in the way of targets and timetables for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Turning to the executive branch, it’s unclear whether the Bush Administration is going to go ahead and find that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The EPA did decide the day after the President signed the anti-energy bill not to grant California’s request for a waiver so that California and twenty-two other States could begin regulating CO2 emissions from new vehicles. EPA based its decision on the fact that the new CAFÉ standards in the anti-energy bill were a more effective way to achieve what California wants to do. This week California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed suit in federal court to overturn EPA’s denial. It’s not clear which way the court will rule.

 

So that’s what my crystal ball tells me for 2008: unclear.

 

 

Among the candidates for the biggest whopper in 2007 must be NASA’s James Hansen with his work of creative genius on Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice sheets.

 

Though Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice rest in deep bowls, Hansen declares them inclined planes. Despite ice cores that show little to no movement for the past 400,000 years (including the warm periods), he shamelessly states that these gigantic ice sheets are slip, slidin’ away and the world will be flooded. Of course, Hansen’s ignorance isn’t all that shocking. After all, he studied physics, not geology.

 

According to an actual expert, Cliff Ollier at the School of Earth and Geographical Science at the University of Western Australia, a “collapse” of the ice sheets is “impossible.”