Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.
But where exactly is that money going?
According to an article in today’s North County Times (San Diego), California is considering a measure by which “California utilities would control the temperature of new homes and commercial buildings in emergencies with a radio-controlled thermostat…”
By “emergencies,” California regulators mean power crunches.
To recap the madcap, the State of California, has decided to dictate the room temperature of its citizens instead of increasing energy supply to meet increasing demand. What kind of energy policy is this?
Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) argue that American biofuel subsidies are boosting deforestation in the Amazon. How? STRI's staff scientist William Laurance explains the cascade of effects that occur as the result of $11 billion per year in corn subsidies.
Check out this great post from Reference Frame, a blog operated former Harvard Physics Professor Luboš Motl. Motl tallies the number of mainstream media outlets that had predicted that 2007 would be the warmest on record. The list includes America’s two most prominent dailies, USA Today and the New York Times, among other august news sources.
In fact, 2007 was the coldest year of our young century.
Everybody's got one. The American Meteorological Society has one, too, having thrown its lot in with The Weather Channel, the UK’s Royal Society, and others in pursuing the “global warming” gravy train. It recently issued its own updated, alarmist statement on the matter, widely touted as representing the views of its membership which actually was never asked its opinion or agreement (as is the case with the National Academies’ statement(s), that of the American Geophysical Union, and so on). This caused no small amount of discomfort and objection among the AMS’s members who protested, in what one AMS Council member told me, were “record numbers”, to no avail, as Roger Pielke, Sr., detailed here and here.
I have recently had this AMS statement tossed at me by alarmists in tv debates, the intellectually sloppy “appeal to authority” as proof of the validity of an argument the individual is apparently unable to make. That made it ever more odd that the alarmists dismissed the inclusion of meteorologists in the Sen.. Inhofe et al. compilation of more than 400 scientists (remember, they also assailed economists and engineers being included, who actually are among the more highly trained plurality of none other than the IPCC’s “two thousand leading scientists”).
To wit, notice the wonderful reply by Grist Magazine’s Dave “Nuremberg-style trials for these [deleted]s” once the alarmists take power, in a Hannity and Colmes hit we shared:
“if you want to know what climate scientists think, you should ask climate scientists, not weathermen. They don’t study climate science in meteorology, this school.”
Got it. Yet one more alarmist says the IPCC is unqualified to speak to the matter. Of course, James Hansen is an astronomer, former IPCC head Robert Watson an atmospheric chemist, the current IPCC head – “the UN’s chief climate scientist” according to the AP, NY Times and USA Today, is, ahem, an economist and engineer (but he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).
I tend to agree about the IPCC, now that we see that among the world’s leading scientists are anthropology TAs.
As I have previously noted, every possible benchmark that can be applied to the European Union’s carbon cap-and-trade scheme is pointing downward. Still, supporters of imposing Kyoto-style cap-and-trade schemes in the U.S. insist, against all evidence, that after three years of operation “it is too early to call Europe’s ETS a failure.”
So what constitutes failure?
Maybe this. We now can add to the pile of evidence a remarkable report of how cap-and-trade is subject to rampant rent-seeking. According to the AP, well-heeled lobbying interests (much like those pushing for such a scheme here, come to think of it) have made tens of millions of dollars in pure windfall by working their pals in government and gaming the greenhouse gas regulatory regime.
Åm published his book "Battle over climate –In defense of humanity" in December at the Press Club in Oslo. I have only leafed through the book so far, but its choked full of hard science, mixed up with the same moral argument that Bjørn Lomborg makes; we have to prioritize our resources, and poverty is more pressing than anything else. He is also a very well known figure in the Norwegian blogosphere.
According to Norwegian Aftenbladet, Pachauri had done his usual alarmist presentation in a good mood. He even included a joke about 20-30 percent of species will die out as a cause of global warming, and this extinction would include climate skeptics.
Åm had done his homework and disproved the outrageous statements, and concluded by accusing the IPCC of committing scientific fraud. One of his strongest points was the scientific critique of the hockey graph that the climate alarmists love so much.
Personally, I have read so many science reports discrediting that graph that it is hard to believe that IPCC is still using it with a straight face, but that is just my meager science reporter opinion…
Pachauri did not take kindly to the accusation of scientific fraud, but was not able to turn room back around after Åm's devastating debunking according to Aftenbladet.
After the debate, Aftenbladet asked Åm what his scientific credentials on climate science was, and Åm answered "I have the same credentials as Al Gore".
Sometimes, nothing gets the message through as a barrage sometimes. The guys at Popular Technology have collected a barrage of videos on climate change, so check it out when you have time.
From WeatherQuestions.com
Many people believe that we should act now on global warming, as a sort of "insurance policy", just in case it ends up being a serious threat. For instance, there has been quite a bit of buzz lately about a YouTube video in which an Oregon high school teacher, Greg Craven, uses logic to convince viewers that the only responsible course of action on global warming is to act as if it is manmade and catastrophic. In other words, the potential risk of doing nothing is so high that we must act, no matter what the science says.
Unfortunately, as in all exercises of logic (as well as of scientific investigation), your conclusions are only as good as your assumptions. The bad assumptions that Mr. Craven makes that end up invalidating his conclusions are these:
1. That there are actions we can take now that will greatly alleviate the global warming problem if it is manmade, and
2. That the cost of those actions to the world will, at worst, be only economic.
Both of these assumptions are false. Humanity's need for energy is so vast that, until a new energy technology is developed, fossil fuels will continue to dominate our energy mix. The only way to substantially reduce the risk of catastrophic manmade warming in the near-term (the next 20-30 years) would be to bring the daily activities of mankind to a virtual standstill.
Using Mr. Craven's logic, I could argue that people should stop eating because, no matter how small the risk, people can (and do) die from choking on food. Paraphrasing Mr. Craven, not eating is the only responsible course of action to prevent choking to death. The only problem with this, of course, is that we would all die of starvation if we quit eating.
While this is admittedly an extreme example, in the case of reducing mankind's greenhouse gas emissions it is much closer to the truth than what Mr. Craven portrays. People tend to forget that every decision we make in life, whether we know it or not, involves weighing risks against benefits. Mr. Craven incorrectly assumes that the benefits of immediate action on global warming will outweigh the risks.
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