"Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by luxury private jet," invites the WWF in a brochure for its voyage to "some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans."
2008
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Center for Climate Strategies and their fellow economic holocaust deniers in North Carolina continued their shenanigans this week as they formally released 56 recommendations to create artificial green jobs at the expense of useful ones. The state's Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG — sounds like some kind of garment, doesn't it? "That's one ugly CAPAG you're wearing!") posted its final report this week, which is not dissimilar to what they've done with other state climate commissions.
What is different with North Carolina, as opposed to the other states, is that CCS went out of their way to go to an outside entity — Appalachian State University's (should be called "Alternative") Energy Center — to conduct an additional economic analysis of their recommendations. The reason for this is obvious: my colleagues at the John Locke Foundation have pounded away for over a year at CCS's/CAPAG's willful disregard for current climate science and trends; their absurd economic claims; and their suspect changing of numbers, seemingly on a whim. It got so bad that CCS felt the need to shore up their credibility by overhauling the personnel page on their Web site to emphasis more economics credentials.
Anyway, CCS subcontracted the Energy Center to put lipstick on their pig, and the ASU gang used a distinctly rosy shade (PDF) in doing so. Here's what the swine left on the CAPAG collar: a projection that the state would realize 15,000 new jobs, $565 million in "employee and proprietor income," and $302 million in gross state product by 2020. Compare that to what the Beacon Hill Institute, who analyzed CAPAG's recommendations for the Locke Foundation earlier this year, found: "By 2011, the state would shed more than 33,000 jobs, annual investment would drop by about $502.4 million, real disposable income by more than $2.2 billion, and real state Gross Domestic Product by about $4.5 billion." So I guess the question boils down to, whose analysis do you believe: a political science graduate student's or PhD economists'?
But wait, there's one final knee-slapper: In an effort to legitimize the Energy Center's study, they enlisted Adam Rose to track down six peer reviewers for comment. That wouldn't be so unusual except that Rose is listed by CCS as one of their "team members," and has been paid for work he's done for CCS in the past. So not surprisingly these peer review comments (kept anonymous, and do you really wonder why?) lavished praise on the Energy Center's work:
- "I find no logical errors and am impressed by the sophistication of the analysis; it is superior to most impact analyses written over the last decade."
- "I must say that the document is superior to many I see."
- "There is an abundance of careful and thoughtful work on converting the options to reduce greenhouse gases to some accounting measures."
- "Two thumbs up!" (oops — clicked on the "Ebert and Roeper" tab by accident)
All in all, a "certified fresh" review if you're projecting a fantasy tale, but if reality is your measuring stick, then you've got splat.
Wisconsin Governor James Doyle (D) last week signed a partnership agreement with the German government to collaborate on renewable energy. Like most global warming statesmanship, the agreement is primarily a public relations stunt, and will produce little substantive policy. It does, however, raise serious legal questions, because Governor Doyle’s climate diplomacy could violate the Compact Clause of the U. S. Constitution.
Crutzen concedes that sacrificing economic prosperity on the green altar might sound “cruel.” Yes, and the idea that two leading scientists seriously discuss things like vandalism and the benefits of financial meltdown only shows how silly the global warming movement really is.
This undoubtedly will shock readers, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a tendency to shade the truth. And only in one direction. It seems … drumroll, please! … that the member governments have their own agendas and aren't above lying to the people to achieve their ends.
With activists and politicians continuing to push draconian energy control schemes even with no net increase in temperature over the past decade, it is ever more important for the public to understand the myths being presented as facts.
The article is a bit old, but is worth rereading. Writing from Bali, Christopher Monckton, who contribiuted to the 2007 IPCC report, explained:
As a contributor to the IPCC’s 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords – through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers – profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate’s alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year’s Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.
Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.
My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. The report’s first table of figures – inserted by the IPCC’s bureaucrats after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent – listed four contributions to sea-level rise. The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10.
The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than twice the IPCC’s published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the internet and earning me my Nobel prize.
The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold.
Recently a High Court judge in the UK listed nine of the 35 major scientific errors in Gore’s movie, saying they must be corrected before innocent schoolchildren can be exposed to the movie. Gore’s exaggeration of sea-level rise was one.
Others being peddled at the Bali conference are that man-made “global warming” threatens polar bears and coral reefs, caused Hurricane Katrina, shrank Lake Chad, expanded the actually-shrinking Sahara, etc.
Drudge called it “B-O-R-I-N-G.” Mark Steyn was even more brutal, labeling last night’s presidential debate a “horrible travesty” for the excruciating tedium created by the event’s artificiality. Given the dreariness generated by the two candidates and moderator Tom Brokaw, last evening’s showdown was a travesty for any viewer who stuck it out to the bitter end.
It is said that Vladimir Lenin once called Soviet sympathizers in Western countries “useful idiots” for unwittingly advancing the cause of revolutionary Russia. Were the Bolshevik leader alive today, he might apply the same label to German environmentalists, whose influence over their country’s energy policy has been an inadvertent, but essential factor in Moscow’s post-Cold War rise.
The European Union’s promise to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020 looks doubtful as member countries increasingly dilute their climate strategies to allay economic concerns.
Half the 2020 emissions reductions are supposed to come from the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), a continent-wide cap-and-trade scheme that would cover industrial users and suppliers of energy. The ETS occurs over three phases, but all the significant emissions cuts have been postponed until Phase Three, which starts in 2012. Yet phase three is already in dire straits, four years before it is set to begin. Two weeks ago, Germany, the EU’s largest economy, indicated that it will opt-out of phase 3 of the ETS, by granting heavy industry free carbon permits after 2013. In defending the policy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she “could not support the destruction of German jobs through an ill-advised climate policy”.
In calling for industrial exemptions, Germany has been joined by Poland, which gets 95% of its electricity from coal. Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic have also expressed reservations about phase three of the ETS.
A major portion of the 2020 target would also derive from stringent fuel efficiency standards applied to all EU countries. This week, however, France proposed an auto emissions plan that both postpones and weakens the existing regulations. The French plan was hashed out with Germany over the summer, and it reflects the concerns of German’s powerful automaker lobby.
Last night’s Presidential debate confirmed what had become apparent when the vice presidential candidates locked horns last week: Both campaigns have horrible energy ideas.
For starters, both Senator John McCain and Senator Barak Obama contributed to the irrational hatred of “big oil.” McCain even said that he voted twenty times against renewable energy giveaways (which is a great idea, because renewables are a waste of taxpayer money; See next paragraph) only because they also included favorable treatment for “big oil.” McCain had it half right—all government handouts to business are bad ideas, not just those to “big oil.”
For his part, Senator Barack Obama said that he would create 5 million jobs with a green jobs program. That’s simply not true; government cannot create jobs out of the blue. Instead they come from other sectors, and the transition costs involved in the switch means a loss in economic productivity. Think of it this way: For every green job “created” by government, a greater number of jobs are lost in businesses that supply or use large amounts of conventional energy.
Moreover, both candidates advocate expensive energy rationing policies to cure climate change.
When it comes to energy, there is in no choice for the American voter in the 2008 presidential election.
Heating U.S. homes with oil this winter will cost a painful $450 more than a year ago, another slap to families already reeling from high gasoline and food costs and fearful of losing their heat because of unpaid bills.
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