Berkeley – The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases even more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once joked that Sacramento was "death," apparently doesn't want to spend many nights in the graveyard.
As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the governor has been spending nearly every night in his Brentwood mansion, shuttling between Sacramento and Southern California in his private jet.
CEI's commercial shows that many in the Third World – particularly those in Africa – are literally dying due to a lack of adequate power, and the catastrophe that could result from imposing anti-global warming emissions regulations on power generation in these areas. Forcing these people to go without would be especially galling considering Gore and his ilk are living opulent lifestyles.
In question is an advertising campaign that begins today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The broadcast spot says Mr. Gore's Tennessee residence uses 20 times more energy than the average American household — a claim based on damning information released last year by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which examined Mr. Gore's utility bills.
Schwarzenegger has eschewed living in Sacramento, preferring his Brentwood mansion and traveling back and forth in his private jet. Some question his concern for the environment. Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he lives so far from the office. But his ride is a private jet.
Just how pervasive the bias at most news outlets is in favour of climate alarmism — and how little interest most outlets have in reporting any research that diverges from the alarmist orthodoxy — can be seen in a Washington Post story on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), announced last week in New York.
Funny how the biggest beneficiaries of combustion often like to get behind laws that will hinder the rest of society, but them–not so much. NASCAR driver Leilani Munter has decided that you should be subject to the Climate Security Act, a sweeping piece of legislation, dissected here, that will help the developing world stay poor in the bargain. As for another beneficiary of the energy economy, be sure to check out CEI’s National Press Club event tomorrow contrasting Al Gore’s lifestyle with the way he wants others to live.
California deregulated its electricity industry in 1998, and shortly afterward the lights went out. Apparently, regulators hadn't realized how easy it would be for unscrupulous traders such as Enron to manipulate the state's power market once it was open to competition; the results were rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity charges. Californians are for all this — in many areas, power bills are inflated with extra fees to cover bonds and other expenses incurred during the disastrous experiment.
Eskimos in Alaska and Canada have joined to stop polar bears from being designated as an endangered species, saying the move threatens their culture and livelihoods by relying on sketchy science for animals that are thriving.
The Interior Department's Inspector General has started preliminary investigations into why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delaying their decision on whether polar bears ought to be listed as a threatened species due to global warming.
Bloomberg even brings breaking news today that the greens are going to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the two months delay as compared to the initial projected processing time.
I can come up with two very good reasons for the delay:
1. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service do not consider the polar bear as threatened, but do not have the political cahones to just say so outright. The ostrich tactic of sticking their heads in the sand is not working, so they might want to consider just fess up to the lack of scientific evidence to support the claim that the bear is threatened.
2. The evidence for the polar bear status as threatened is shaky at best. It is based on selective use of statistics and models that assume that the current trends in climate change will continue perpetually, which is highly unlikely.
Morten Jødal, the chair of the Biology Society in Norway has criticized the World Wildlife Foundation's selective use of population statistics in this debate in a recent commentary in the largest newspaper in Norway. It is in Norwegian, but here is a translation:
" Polar bear populations has increased dramatically from the 1960's to our time from about 5,000 individuals to about 25,000 individuals. It appears to be stable."
"It is correct as they point out that the population is down from 1,200 individuals in 1987 to about 950 individuals in 2004. What they omit si that the same population increased from 500 individuals in 1981. That gives a different picture, which does not indicate a species on the brink of extinction."
"Another piece of information that changes the statistic is that 49 polar bears are shot annually in the Western part of Hudson Bay. 833 polar bears have been shot over 17 years from 1987 to 2004. That is far more than the ones assumed to have lost their lives due to global warming."
There is no doubt that the listing of polar bears as an endangered species will have an enormous symbolic effect for the alarmists, but I was not aware that the endangered species list was a political propaganda tool, I thought it was a conservation tool, but then again I am naïve when it comes to politics and the things people are willing to do in the name of a cause.
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