The American Geophysical Union, the world's largest organization representing earth and space scientists, has issued a new statement on the causes and consequences of recent climate change and possible responses.
San Francisco-area air quality regulators are proposing to charge a fee to most businesses based on the amount of greenhouse gases they emit.
The fee–4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide–would affect everything from oil refineries to power plants and would include landfills, factories, and small businesses such as restaurants and bakeries.
TIME magazine warned that scientists had observed "bizarre and unpredictable weather patterns" which led them to believe the world was headed for "a global climatic upheaval." Fluctuations in temperature, rainfall and sea ice were all described as signs of impending doom.
Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the global bio-fuel boom, by increasing the global supply of transportation fuel almost 300,000 barrels a day, has decreased the price of gasoline by 15%.
That's well and good, but no account of biofuels in complete without an acknowledgement of their nasty side effects, including: rising food prices, environmental degredation, and depletion of our aquifers.
In fact, there's a better way. As noted by my colleague Iain Murray, we could up conventional production by 800000 barrels per day by drilling in ANWR without the associated costs of biofuels.
In 1989 Stanford professor Stephen Schneider said in an interview in Discover magazine, "We (scientists) need to get broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have." In 2006 Al Gore told the radically environmentalist magazine Grist, "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations."
ENERGY was one of the few issue areas in which David Paterson was allowed at least briefly to play a visible role during 14 months in the shadows as New York's lieutenant governor. But now that he has succeeded the disgraced Eliot Spitzer in the governor's office, Paterson needs to break with policies that have made energy increasingly expensive and potentially scarce in New York.
I have lost the count on the number of stories I have seen about coral reefs dying out because of global warming. A recent report in Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences details the corals warming adaptation strategy.
As the so-called climate change deniers emphasize continually: Climate changes, the only thing stable about the climate is that it changes. They are a modern day version of Heraclitus and his proclamation Panta Rei! for those of you who remember your western civilization classes. If climate change is permanent, it follows that the species alive today have a strategy for coping with the change.
We have seen this in papers published last year as well; one I remember quite vividly was about the migration of plants in the Arctic.
Now we have documentation about how the rich ecosystems around coral reefs adapt, so maybe its time to stop crying wolf and dedicate ourselves to an honest and meticulous examination of the actual effects of the changing climate?
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Pledges are nice for organizations like public television and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, but until the promises are actually fulfilled with checks, they are meaningless.
The global warming panic community is beginning to learn this lesson the hard way, as the New York Times reports that Norway's promise to be "carbon neutral" by 2030 is empty:
But as the details of the plan have emerged, environmental groups and politicians — who applaud Norway’s impulse — say the feat relies too heavily on sleight-of-hand accounting and huge donations to environmental projects abroad (rent-seeking, anyone?), rather than meaningful emissions reductions.
That criticism has not only set off anguished soul-searching here, but may also come as a cold slap to the many countries, companies, cities and universities that have lined up to replicate Norway’s example of becoming carbon neutral — with an environmental balance sheet showing that they absorb as much carbon dioxide as they emit.
Reminds me of a quote from Tad Aburn, director of the Air and Radiation Management Division in the Maryland Department of the Environment, after his state's climate commission announced they had similar carbon-reduction aspirations (90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050): "“If you asked me right now, how are you going to do it? What exactly are you going to do? The answer is, I don’t know.”
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
William just summarized it, but today Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius just executed the broken-legged horse: she vetoed the bill that would allow two coal-fired power plants to be built in the state. Legislators tried to create a new law that would have overridden a ruling by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to deny air permits for the plants. The Senate has enough votes to override the veto, but the House does not, so lawmakers I spoke to earlier this week expect the veto to stand.
But what's of greater interest is that Sebelius, simultaneous with the veto, issued an executive order creating the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group. This is another one of those state global warming commissions, and as I reported earlier this week, they have hired the Center for Climate Strategies to manage their policy development process. I've reported ad nauseum that CCS's work in dozens of states is funded mostly by global warming alarmists like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Energy Foundation, but in Kansas there is a new multi-million dollar resource paying the bill: the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation.
Who else has Sandler supported? They were instrumental in joining George Soros to create the Center for American Progress and Democracy Alliance. Gave nice contributions to ACORN, Oceana, and Environmental Defense too. For the first time in watching the maneuvers of CCS, we've discovered a bond not only to the environmental left, but the explicitly political activist left as well.
UPDATE 3:05 p.m.:
From the last 3 tax returns (tax years 2003-2005) available on Guidestar, other contributions (cumulative for the period) of note made by the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation (the Sandlers owned Golden West Financial until they sold to Wachovia):
ACLU: $6.5 million
American Institute for Social Justice: $3.2 million
Center for American Progress: $6.7 million
Human Rights Watch: $7 million
Natural Resources Defense Council: $350,000
Sierra Club Foundation: $500,000
Media Matters of America: $100,000
Oceana: $2.5 million
People for the American Way Foundation: $150,000
Sojourners: $219,000
Pew Charitable Trusts: $250,000
Also included are a number of contributions for asthma research and Jewish support organizations.
· The Washington legislature this week sent H. B. 2815, the Climate Action and Green Jobs Act, to Governor Chris Gregoire, whose signature is guaranteed because she requested the law. Like similar legislation passed in California and New Jersey, the Climate Action and Green Jobs Act establishes legally binding emissions targets, but does not specify how those targets are to be reached, and instead gives regulatory agencies the responsibility to formulate a plan.
· A bill to slash Maryland’s carbon emissions as a way to address global warming was delayed Wednesday by senators who feared the bill could hike energy prices and put factories out of business.
· In Kansas, a confrontation is likely between the Legislature and Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who is indicating she intends to veto a bill that would allow the expansion of coal power. The Legislature passed the bill after the Sebelieus administration blocked the construction of 2 coal power plants because of their impact on climate change.
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