France, one of the world's largest producers of atomic energy, must act fast to avoid a shortage of skilled staff to run its reactors and win a role at the heart of a global nuclear revival.
Julie Walsh
The appointment of former foreign secretary Shyam Saran as the PM’s special envoy on climate change is a signal of a government looking ahead to a new administration in the US that might seek to renegotiate the nuclear deal with India. India is increasingly using the climate change argument to push forward its nuclear deal.
The Toyota hybrid is hailed as an eco-paragon, so how does it fare against a big BMW? To find out our correspondents go on a run to Geneva.
A new study by NAM and ACCF projects the costs to consumers of the Leiberman-Warner cap and trade bill (S. 2191). Using the Department of Energy model and realistic estimates of the number of new nuclear power plants that could be built [approximately 10 plants (10GW) by 2030 in their High Cost Scenario and 25 plants in their Low Cost Scenario—in contrast, EIA projected 145GW new capacity, even though there hasn’t been a new reactor built since 1978], the well-respected Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) came up with these impacts on American consumers:
Job Losses: Between 1.2 and 1.8 million jobs lost by 2020; between 3 and 4 million lost by 2030
Disposable income decrease per household: Between $739 to $2,927 per year by 2020; between $4,022 to $6,752 by 2030
Gasoline price increase: Between 60% to 144% by 2030
Electricity price increase: Between 77% to 129% by 2030
Natural gas price increase: Between 84% to 146% by 2030
Reduced Gross Domestic Product: Between 0.8 percent and 1.1 percent off the gross domestic product in 2020 ($151 billion to $210 billion) and between 2.6 percent and 2.7 percent by 2030 ($630 billion to $669 billion).
Low income families will spend between 19% and 22% of their income on energy, compared to a projected 17% spent on energy without Leiberman-Warner.
If you’d like to know how Leiberman -Warner will affect your specific state, click here.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkgXa4_MWUw 285 234]
Reports by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the earth is experiencing unprecedented global warming are flawed and cannot be supported, investigators now report.
In a study reported in the Washington Times, a panel of statisticians, chaired by Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process.
From IceCap.us
As a climate scientist, I would like to see some answers to a few basic global warming science questions which I’m sure the U.N.’s Ministry of Global Warming Truth (also known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) can handle. After all, since they are 90% confident that recent global warming is manmade, they surely must have already addressed these issues:
1) Why are ALL of the 20+ IPCC climate models more sensitive in their total
cloud feedback than published estimates of cloud feedbacks in the real climate system (Forster and Gregory, J. Climate, 2006)? If the answer is that “there are huge error bars on our observational estimates of feedback”, then doesn’t that mean that it is just as likely that the real climate system is very insensitive (making manmade global warming a non-problem) as it is to be as sensitive as the IPCC models claim it is?
2) And regarding those observational estimates of (somewhat) positive cloud feedbacks: How do you know that the cloud changes that have been observed during temperature changes really are “feedbacks”? In other words, how do you know that the temperature changes caused the cloud changes, rather than the other way around? This basic distinction between cause and effect is critical because such a misinterpretation will ALWAYS make the climate system look more sensitive than it really is (e.g., it is energetically impossible for more low clouds to cause a warming). Doesn’t it seem like a coincidence that the ONE case were we know that there was a huge non-cloud forcing (the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo) resulted in a negative solar shortwave cloud feedback, whereas all other periods showed supposedly positive shortwave cloud “feedback”?
3) As a follow on to question #2, we all agree that there has been strong global-average warming since the 1970’s. Well, how do you know this wasn’t the result of a small, natural change in cloud cover? Doesn’t it seem like (another) coincidence that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) just happened to shift to a different mode in 1977, about the time that the warming started? (Please don’t say that the greater warming over land versus ocean is consistent with manmade greenhouse gas forcing…because it is also consistent with ANY kind of change in the Earth’s radiant energy budget, whether natural or manmade.)
The fact is, we DON’T know how much of recent warming is natural, simply because we don’t have good enough global cloud observations back to the 1970’s (and earlier) to measure any long-term changes in cloudiness to the required accuracy – 1% or less.
The same cause-versus-effect uncertainty is true of any other climate variable as well, for instance water vapor, our main greenhouse gas. A small change in precipitation
efficiency (the main process which ultimately limits the strength of the natural greenhouse effect) could cause a change in average water vapor content, which then would change the average temperature. In other words, increased water vapor doesn’t have to only result from warming…warming can also result from increased water vapor.
The fact that we don’t have a good enough understanding (or observations) of cloud changes, or precipitation efficiency changes, on decadal time scales to document such potential mechanisms seems like pretty weak justification for blaming all of our recent warming on mankind. And if you say, “well, the IPCC doesn’t claim that ALL of the warming is manmade…”, then tell me: About what percentage of the warming IS natural, and how did you come up with that quantitative estimate?
I fear that the sloppy science that too many climate researchers have lapsed into could, in the end, hurt our scientific discipline beyond repair. The very high level of certainty (90%) claimed by the IPCC for their manmade explanation for warming can not be justified based upon the scientific evidence, and is little more than an expression of their faith that they understand the causes of climate variability – which they clearly don’t.
For those scientists who value their scientific reputations, I would advise that they distance themselves from politically-motivated claims of a “scientific consensus” on the causes of global warming — before it is too late. Don’t let five Norwegians on the Nobel Prize committee be the arbiters of what is good science.
The EU has just decamped from its most recent summit at which it was to finally agree to those individual country quotas to arrive at their post-2012 promise to reduce GHG emissions, as a group of nations, to 20% below 1990 levels.
Of course, this was the most recent in a series of meetings following on the heels of their most recent promise to announce these quotas, which had been postponed until December 2007 after an inability to agree on individual member state quotas, and was ultimately scuppered.
See, this is where this "world leadership", in making such group-wide promises, at least, gets difficult. Attentive readers will recall German Chancellor Angela Merkel's revealing, possibly too-clever admission to Der Spiegel on March 9, 2007:
Addressing the need for a post-2012 “Burden Sharing Agreement” that assigns real cuts to countries previously given a free-ride, German Chancellor Angela Merkel “admitted that tough negotiations are still ahead. The compromise would be a tough task. The beauty is, Merkel said smiling, that each member state thinks they're a special case. ‘That makes us all equal’”. (emphasis added)
Apparently all of those special cases are holding out to make sure it's the fellow behind the tree who takes the hit. You will recall the initial promise shared by every EU-15 nation, to reduce emissions by 8% below 1990 levels on average over 2008-12, was abandoned (as is permitted under Kyoto’s Article 4) in favor of collectivizing their emissions (it’s Europe, remember). This allowed Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and others to swap their promise of a reduction into a promise of an often-steep increase, France to trade hers in for a promise of no reduction at all, Italy for a very slightly smaller promise and so on all because of two political decisions preceding and unrelated to Kyoto. Those were the UK’s “dash to gas” and shutting down East Germany, for all intents and purposes, after reunification made it smart to replace Soviet-era industrial capacity with cleaner, West German capacity.
Those two “one offs” having been exercised, this leaves European countries stuck with the need to meet their promises of emission reductions with – gasp – actual reductions (or even far more massive wealth transfers to exempt countries like China under the HFC scam, for example).
So, in classic form, they have trumpeted an historic agreement to agree later, this time by December 2008. We’ll be waiting.
True, the EPA's ruling is a minor setback for the global warmists. But it may pour the bureaucratic foundation for their larger policy goal, which is economy-wide regulation of carbon dioxide. Worse, the Bush EPA may do so by rewriting current environmental law, with little or no political debate.
Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin leads the pack in this year’s contest for biased climate journalism.
Eilperin’s March 10 article entitled, “Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say” has the same sort of journalistic objectivity that one might expect from totalitarian state-controlled media.
With nary a critical word about the computer models used to project increases in global temperature, Eilperin touted two new model-dependent studies that “suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.”
“Using advanced computer models to factor deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide, the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further,” Eilperin reported.
But none of the models in the studies — nor for that matter any other mathematical model of global climate — has proven to be particularly useful. No model has been validated against historical climate data. So why would any rational person assume that they can be used to predict future climate or serve as a basis for developing national energy policy?
As reported in this column last December, global climate models uniformly predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than have actually occurred.
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Such model failure should come as no surprise since they have many built-in biases, including the unproven assumption that atmospheric carbon dioxide drives global climate. But all the available real-life data — including 20th century records and ice core samples stretching back 650,000 years — fail to support such a cause-and-effect relationship. The ice core samples show, in fact, an opposite relationship.
Eilperin, who has long reported on climate for the Washington Post, must know about the models’ problems, but she apparently chooses not to report it.
In her March 4 Post article, Eilperin mentioned a report by a number of climate experts from around the world entitled, “Nature Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate.” She even interviewed one of the experts for her story.
A section of that report, entitled “Climate Models Are Not Reliable” discusses in plain language how climate models don’t consider solar dimming and brightening, don’t accurately control for clouds, don’t simulate the potential feedback effects of water vapor, don’t explain many features of the Earth’s observed climate, and don’t produce reliable predictions of regional (let alone global) climate change.
At JunkScience.com, we label climate modeling as PlayStation® Climatology, with no disrespect intended toward Sony since its PlayStation games are in fact what they purport to be — just games.
Not content with ignoring viewpoints she doesn’t like, Eilperin goes on to diminish, if not ridicule critics of her apparent point of view.
Eilperin’s March 4 article featured four ad hominem attacks from three environmental activists, abusing those who question global warming orthodoxy as members of a “flat Earth society” and participants in the “climate equivalent of Custer’s last stand.” If Eilperin wants to poke fun at those who disagree with her on public policy issues, she ought to write an opinion, rather than a news column.
Another disturbing aspect of Eilperin’s article was the accompanying photo of downtown Beijing.
The photo was captioned, “A heavy haze could be seen in Beijing in August 2007. Two recent reports call for a heightened global effort to reduce carbon emissions.”
The juxtaposition of the article and photo clearly implied that unless we cut carbon dioxide emissions, U.S. cities would soon look like Beijing.
But as virtually anyone who breathes knows, carbon dioxide is an invisible gas. Not only can you not see it, there’s no possible way for carbon dioxide emissions to cause smog, haze or whatever was fouling Beijing’s air in the photo.
The irrelevant and misleading nature of the photo has been pointed out to Eilperin, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell and the paper’s editors. As of the writing of this column, none have responded and it remains to be seen whether the Washington Post has the journalistic integrity to remove the photo from its web site and publish a correction in its print edition.
It’s quite possible that if Eilperin and the many other members of the mainstream media who so far have been in the tank for global warming started reporting on the very real debate about climate model validity rather than simply regurgitating what the agenda-driven modelers tell them, then we could avert the looming national economic disaster that Congress is preparing for the next president to sign into law.
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