New York, March 4—Let's start with some possible news from Heartland Institute's International Climate Change Conference. In the context of man-made global warming, climate sensitivity asks how much temperatures increase if one adds a specified amount of a greenhouse gas. In general, most climatologists accept the proposition, all things being equal, that if one doubles carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the average temperature will go up by +1 degree centigrade. But all things are not equal.
2008
It has almost become something of a joke when some “global warming” conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.
A record 23 countries will participate in the Group of Eight summit meeting to be held in July in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, government sources said Wednesday.
The upcoming meeting will become the largest so far after it was decided to invite 15 nonmember countries to participate in "expanded dialogue" that will focus on climate change and African development, according to the sources.
During meetings involving the G-8 member countries, Japan–the host of the summit–will propose a plan to establish the "Toyako Process" (Lake Toya Process) in which 20 countries, including major greenhouse gas emitters, will discuss a post-Kyoto Protocol framework, the sources said.
| Western citizens want to use the limited land to produce ethanol rather than food for the poor. |
| Food riots in Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines and Vietnam. Price controls and food rationing in Pakistan and China. Are we back to the Malthusian trap as prices of agricultural and food commodities from wheat and corn to dairy products and meat have risen in the last few years to historically unprecedented levels? |
All right, let’s talk about the money.
After I asked readers to focus on the substance of the skeptics’ arguments at this week’s conference on global warming, readers insisted that I should have focused on the financing of the sponsor, the Heartland Institute. Others objected to my (and my colleague Andy Revkin) even writing about a conferenced sponsored by this group. I’m used to this sort of criticism, but I still find it baffling. Do the critics really think there’s more money and glory to be won by doubting global warming than by going along with the majority?
I believe that even if the case for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was completely disproved, some groups will never give it up. The reason is this: advocates of big government need lots of money for their government programs. Policies such as universal health care are hardly cheap, and “pay-go” is very restrictive.
Taxing big oil companies for them is a start—the tax title is under consideration again. But to fund monumental, New Deal-like programs, trillions of dollars are needed.
In comes cap and trade. Auctioning carbon emission allowances would provide a colossal new revenue stream.
They will most likely start this frog in cold water, so the first projections of consumer costs will be low. But, as with the origins of the federal income tax, this can later be ramped up to blood-sucking proportions.
The coming together of several sectors in favor of cap and trade policies has created the perfect storm. Though industry has often been a force against big government, some in the energy industry currently support cap and trade, expecting handouts and windfall profits. It makes for strange bedfellows—environmental pressure groups aligned with Big Oil. And major banks, large investment firms, and farmers want a piece of the action, too.
Stopping cap and trade is possible. But as with the demise of the immigration/amnesty bill, it will require the American people to speak out against a cap and trade tax.
I just happened upon the text of President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" [actually, the "crisis of confidence"] speech from 1979 when he counseled Americans to adopt their own energy policy along the lines of the once-and-again fashionable "put on a sweater and sit at home in the dark" variety. No talk about curly lightbulbs, though.
He did set forth the "goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade" and "To give us energy security…the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun." It really is time we began investing in those things, you know.
He also opened with what would become a familiar, signature refrain from a new kind of Democrat a decade-and-a-half later:
"I promised you a president who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain…"
Now, about those complaints that Obama lifts riffs from other peoples' speeches…
President Bush has just reaffirmed the unanimous Byrd-Hagel position established by the Senate in 1997, as its (otherwise unsolicited) Article II, Section 2 “advice”.
Let’s see if this is also how the warmists portray it, including aspiring occupants of the Oval Office, three of whom hail from the Senate one of whom was serving in ’97 and voted for the resolution.
Particularly galling is that Mr. Bush had the temerity to flatly state what the establishment media have so far refused to print, “We’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies. We’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change, and we’ll stay that way”. No no no, we need to “begin ‘investing’” in these new technologies!
That is, all have refused to reveal such things except the Washington Post, once, in a piece last fall wonderfully titled “White House Taking Unearned Credit for Emissions Cuts” – a week or so after our emission reduction was announced and only for the purpose of saying that (suddenly) U.S.-only emissions aren’t the important point and besides Bush shouldn’t get credit anyway.
I adore Matthew Nisbeth's research but he is off his rocker in this comment he posted on his blog and that he presented in an interview on The World. I did not see him at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, and this is not the first time I catch researchers I respect in their lack of actual grounding in facts before they present research on an issue.
The first ever research conference I attended as a graduate student, I attended a panel on the ethical issues on plant biotechnology. I won't mention names, but some old geezer that had not left his ivory tower for quite a few years was talking about the problem of having one genetically modified plant growing all around the world. He was a bit shocked to find out that the GMO trait was bred into more than 70,000 local varieties, because the corn that will grow in the Midwest will not grow in India quite as well. But that is the reporter in me, I call people, and I ask what they actually do.
A communication professor that I adore got into my car when I gave her a ride to a conference, and she saw a name tag from the Heritage Foundation with my name on it hanging from my rear view mirror (yeah, it's a quirky habit, but good for conversations). She said, "but Lene, aren't those conservatives?" Hell yeah they are, and I don't like them much for it, but every year they put on a conference where you meet everything from the pro-life think tanks from St. Louis (Phyllis Schlafly & Co.) to the hippie libertarian lawyers from San Francisco. At one of these conferences I got to have lunch with the guy that organize some of the bioconservative groups that Nisbeth is comparing the Heartland Institute with. I need to know those groups, it is my job and my research passion. An trust me, Nigel S. Cameron, David Prentice, or their left wing ally Wesley Smith would never publish any of my work, but Joe Bast would.
Nisbeth is off his rocker, cause he is applying theory as a map without checking the terrain. I am a reporter first, communications researcher second. I call the people that I don't think will ever talk to me again, and ask them to show me their way, I might have my facts wrong after all. So maybe, just maybe, I should challenge the guy to put on a climate change panel for AJMC in August, cause I know that I have access to enough data to prove that his point in the World segment is doggone wrong, and I think the coverage from the conference prove it. There is no way Heartland's view of climate change is the predominant frame on this issue, no matter how right those scientists and policy wonks are in their assessment of the consequences and lack of scientific justification for current public policy on the issue.
Last night I got home from an exhausting and exhilarating trip to New York City. During my stay, I barely got out of the hotel and I am still annoyed at all the wonderful presentations that I missed. Lucky for me, they will end up on the Internet shortly. I attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. There was some totally cool and breaking science stories at this conference, and here are some of the impressions I had when I was talking to Gardner Goldsmith at Against the Grain on Monday and Tuesday.
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