Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A new article in the journal Science attributes the "worldwide problem" of increased algae blooms in ponds and reservoirs to global warming. The News & Observer of Raleigh reports:
Warmer weather has created longer growing seasons. It has allowed the blue-green algae range to expand from Florida northward throughout the Southeast. When algae blooms die and decompose, they pull oxygen from the water and can cause fish kills.
"The temperature change is playing into hands of blue-green algae," [Hans] Paerl [of the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences] said. "We have to be more diligent in reducing nutrients to slow down expansion into lakes that are now amenable to these blooms."
Except the global temperature has not increased for 10 years. What gives?
The first round of negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is taking place this week in Bangkok. The head of the “G-77 plus China” group (which now represents 130 developing countries) told a reporter for Inter Press Service that the developed countries were going to have to meet their Kyoto commitments before asking the developing countries to make commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. John Ashe, Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the UN, told Marwaan Macan-Markar of Inter Press, “Those who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol have to meet their targets first…. We are concerned that the (industrialized nations) have not given sufficient priority to the legal mandate of achieving quantified emissions limitations and reduction commitments through national actions.”
The G-77 are keen on Kyoto because of its two wealth-transferring programs, which are called the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation. But they are making a larger, very strong point: how can poor countries be expected to sign a new agreement to reduce emissions if the rich countries have failed to reduce emissions?
In related news, it was reported this week that the European Union's emissions went up again in 2007. That's on top of the 2006 increase of 1.6 per cent.
Former Vice President Al Gore's three-year, $300 million advertising campaign to sell the American public on global warming alarmism kicked off on Wednesday with television and print ads. I can't figure out what the goal is, but I guess with that much money they'll eventually develop a coherent message.
The first full-page newpaper ad, which I saw in the Washington Post, announces in huge letters, “You can't solve the climate crisis.” So far, so good. But then there's the fine print, which asks people to sign up with the Alliance for Climate Protection so that we can solve the climate crisis together.
My Google search turned up the web site for the “We” campaign (as they call it), www.wecansolveit.org, as the thirteenth site listed. It took me about a minute to join, as the ad promised. If that's all that's needed to solve the crisis, then I've done my part, but I suspect that further commitments will be expected.
CBS's Sixty Minutes helped Gore's campaign get started with an interview Sunday night. It showed Gore in a totally rosy light, but—alas—he just can't help embarrassing himself with his pettty, vindictive, and laughably untrue comments about anyone who disagrees with him. When Leslie Stahl said that there was still a lot of skepticism about global warming alarmism and some pretty impressive people disagreed with him, Gore responded, “I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit [oh, really?], but it's not that far off.”
So climate realists are now in the same class of people as politicians who claim to have invented the Internet? For a different view, I invite you to watch CEI's television ad, which is part of a $60,000 campaign, and to read my comments posted by Google News on Juliet Eilperin's comprehensive story about Gore's campaign in the Washington Post.
Africa Science News reports that “the World Growth report entitled, ‘The Real Climate Threat to Developing Countries – Early, Deep Cuts in Emissions’ demonstrates that Europe’s call for steep reductions in emissions to reduce world economic growth by one percent would cut economic growth in developing countries in Asia between 12 and 15 percent…The World Growth report assessed the cost of Stern’s claim that deep cuts would only shave one percent of annual economic growth in the world economy over time. It found Stern’s 1% cut in global GDP equated to a GDP loss of 15% in China, 12% in India, 12% for ASEAN economies and 4% in Brazil.”
Nigeria needs more power plants to be able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, more. They have the seventh largest gas reserves in the world, but haven’t turned these into electricity. Most of the population still uses wood for cooking, as does rural India.
Last August, scientists found that these “dirty brown clouds created by millions of cooking fires in Asia contribute as much to global warming as greenhouse gas emissions.”
Plus, this past week an expert from the National Forest Conservation Council predicted that all of Nigeria’s remaining forests would be gone in twelve years, a casualty of the need for fuel. Ethiopia has already lost its forests. Those carbon sinks are gone.
And yet environmental pressure groups continue to push for energy reductions in Africa.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and more than a dozen other conservative groups filed an amicus brief March 21 against a Sierra Club petition demanding that EPA regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new electric power plants. (The amicus brief can be read at CEI.org.)CEI Fights Sierra Club Demands for CO2
In the very same week that Gore launched a $300 million public relations campaign to convince Americans that "together we can solve the climate crisis," prominent climate alarmist Tom Wigley essentially endorsed President Bush’s approach to global warming while criticizing that of Gore’s co-Nobelist, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A chemical engineer friend in Colorado, Ed Rademacher, Jr., who also has Montana ties, was so impressed with Chris Horner's Capital Research Center report on the Center for Climate Strategies that he sent it to several Montana legislators. He asked that the lawmakers "take a little time to investigate all of the pertinent facts before you take action on the recommendations generated as part of the Montana Climate Change Action Plan," which CCS created through the state's climate commission process. He received a response from State Rep. Sue Dickenson, who also served on Montana's Climate Change Advisory Committee, which I have pasted here — make sure you read the second paragraph:
Mr. Rademacher—I served on the advisory council and I know the Center for Climate Strategies and their personnel very well. They are highly regarded by more than 17 states and regional organizations for their expertise and ability to facilitate climate change discussions. The people I worked with were excellent and were not in any way trying to influence the decisions which the advisory council made. I need to remind you that the 56 (actually 54) recommendations which the council brought forward were decided on by consensus. That includes representatives from PPL, SME, Nance Petroleum, etc. After our recommendations were released, a few of these individuals, pressured by their companies I am sure, voiced reservations. Before that time they were active participants and there were several small last minute working groups which came up with compromises which better reflected the concerns of all. I suggest you look into the funding for the organization/ article which you cite; if they are similar to Beacon Hill, there are funded by oil, gas, and coal. It is difficult to see where their position would be impartial and based on fact alone.
I appreciate hearing from you but will respond with the comment I made at the last EQC meeting—Some people may still believe that the stork delivers babies. I will defend their right to hold whatever belief they feel is correct. But in a discussion or decisions made about human reproduction, the overwhelming science says babies do not come from storks. At some point, one has to discount the stork as a deliverer of babies, even if somewhere in some corner of our state, a few stork feathers are found near the bed of a woman who just delivered a baby. In the same way, the arguments of those who continue to deny climate change and man's impact on it need to be rejected as the overwhelming amount of science and scientific opinion show otherwise. The time is right to move forward. If those of us who fear adverse effects if we do not act immediately to reduce our CO2 emissions are wrong, we all still will be ahead when it comes to energy efficiencies, independence from fossil fuels, a whole new area of job creation, and enhanced sense of community. If we are right, then our planet is also saved in addition to all the above mentioned benefits.
Sincerely, Rep. Sue Dickenson
I nominate Rep. Dickenson as enviro-elitist of the week, as Ted Turner's chief competition.
Meanwhile, while I'm on the subject of Montana, Craig Sprout of Mtpolitics.net has begun a series of posts about CCS and the stork-deniers up there. Looks very promising.
Sure, just the other day Sen. Barack Obama uttered the questionable assessment that a "crisis pregnancy, as I read it euphemized today, which is left, er, unterminated, is punishing a young lady with a baby. But have you heard the one about Ted Turner…? By now of course you have caught Turner's latest inanity, including a rant about how “We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they’d be using less stuff.”
Reading the transcript I see how with a minor clarification of the punctuation Turner could be simply stating the apparent mindset of most of those whose ideology he was parroting for Charlie Rose’s amusement.
“We’ve got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we’ve got to stabilize the population. When I was born-”
(Rose interrupts)
Yes, it does seem that most environmentalists adhere to P.J. O’Rourke’s interpretation of their faith, that there are just enough of them, way too many of you and me. So it seems almost natural were Turner saying that we've got to stabilize the population when (he) was born (1938), meaning either the typical “I’m here, we can stop now” or go back to those levels (appx. 130 million). Naturally, this is a silly interpretation. If Turner believed that – well, any of it – he wouldn’t have had 5 children (or 3 residences at once).
I suppose it is forgivable for people with large families to convince themselves on occasion that there are too many people in the world – or, say, if you live in New Jersey…now, now, just saying it’s got the most condensed population in the country – but shouldn’t the fact that all of these down-with-people types like Turner and Gore have so many houses mitigate that somewhat?
From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says it's going to get worse fast. "It gives me goose bumps," says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote sustainable ranching on the Amazon frontier. "It's like witnessing a rape."
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