2007

The Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill, S. 2191, was approved by a 4-3 vote of the Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection on Thursday, November 1st. Since Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) is the chairman of the subcommittee and Senator John Warner (R-Va.) is the ranking Republican, this was not a big surprise. The Senators voting in favor were Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). Those voting against were Senators John Barasso (R-Wyo.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.).

It was reported just before the subcommittee’s meeting that the Congressional Budget Office would release a study that demonstrates a cap-and-trade proposal similar to the Lieberman-Warner bill would raise consumer energy costs significantly, while providing approximately $50 billion in annual subsidies to big business special interests.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, October 31st, voted out the Law of the Sea Treay (LOST) by a 17-4 margin. It has been reported that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is wasting little time trying to move the treaty to the floor for a ratification vote, which requires a 2/3 majority of those Senators voting. Senator Reid is rushing because he realizes that opposition to LOST is building as Americans find out the threat it poses to American sovereignty, and also how it facilitates a backdoor implementation of Kyoto-style energy rationing regulations.

In his pursuit of reelection, the chairman of my Northern Virginia county’s commission sent out a flyer on how he has partnered with the Sierra Club to launch the “Cool Counties” initiative, making ours a “national model” in the fight against global warming. He neglected to add that this initiative will cost us millions of dollars, though the typical county homeowner already pays $4830 in real estate taxes per year. The flyer has four boasts:

He has set aside 30,000 acres of open space. Rather than increasing the tax base through allowing businesses in, he is preventing “overdevelopment.”

He has instituted new “green building” standards for county buildings, supposedly “saving taxpayers money.” If cost/benefit analyses have been done on previous public building projects, then supposedly the amount saved versus the added cost of “green standards” should have been calculated to maximize the taxpayers’ dollars already. Therefore, these standards, would be either be unnecessary or more expensive to enact.

He has added hybrid vehicles to the county fleet. This is even though companies, such green-minded FedEx, have realized that the ten year break-even costs of hybrids are not worth the added expense.

He is increasing our use of renewable energy. Even though he claims to have doubled our use of costly wind power, fortunately this will not have much effect upon us, as it currently is such a small fraction of our power sources.

 Yes, I will remember to vote on Tuesday, November 6.

If the globe’s not warming what do we call global warming?

From Mark Landsbaum

The scary threat of global warming depends entirely, of course, on the globe getting warmer. Duh. Well, guess what.

There’s little dispute that greenhouse gases have increased in the atmosphere, but it’s a leap in logic to assume that increase has heated the planet. As a matter of fact, CO2 levels historically increase after temperatures increase, not before. It’s kinda difficult to cause something by coming along afterward.

So, back to the underlying question. What do the thermometers say?

“There is important disagreement about the temperature record since 1979,” writes S. Fred Singer in his book on global warming, “with satellite data showing a slight cooling and surface thermometers showing a warming.”

“Atmospheric data taken with balloon-borne radiosondes agree with the satellite data,” Singer says.

(Incidentally, many surface thermometer readings are corrupted by placement near heat-radiating asphalt, concrete and machinery.)

“All three sets of observations,” Singer writes, “show much lower trends that what computer models predict.” (page 36)

Then there’s this:

“Surface measurements with thermometers show a warming of 0.13 degree C per decade since 1979, while global satellite measurements using a microwave sensor actually show a slight cooling of the lower troposphere – about -0.04 degree per decade,” says Singer. (page 10)

And then there’s this dagger to the heart of the global warming beast, from page 4:

“There is no detectable anthropogenic (manmade) global warming.”

Underway is a hearing by the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming discussing the link between global warming and wildfire. The hearing, of course, was spurred by the Southern California wilfires.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that the fires were the direct result of a combination of arson and a child playing with matches and that the general increase the frequency and intensity of wildfire is due largely to the failure of the federal government to effectively manage the nation's forests over the last 50 years, is there a case to be made that rising temperatures are to blame for the current Southern California wildfires?

The answer to that question is, probably not. The Center for Science and Public Policy has recently published a report that addresses that question. The peer reviewed literature discussed in the paper shows that Southern California wildfires are due to increased wintertime precipitation, that facilitates the growth of grasses and other, highly flammable, fine fuels, which leads to an increased likelihood of wildfire. Higher temperatures and drought have nothing to do with wildfire in Southern California since it is always hot and dry there in the summer.

The full report is available here.