Just how pervasive the bias at most news outlets is in favour of climate alarmism — and how little interest most outlets have in reporting any research that diverges from the alarmist orthodoxy — can be seen in a Washington Post story on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), announced last week in New York.
Funny how the biggest beneficiaries of combustion often like to get behind laws that will hinder the rest of society, but them–not so much. NASCAR driver Leilani Munter has decided that you should be subject to the Climate Security Act, a sweeping piece of legislation, dissected here, that will help the developing world stay poor in the bargain. As for another beneficiary of the energy economy, be sure to check out CEI’s National Press Club event tomorrow contrasting Al Gore’s lifestyle with the way he wants others to live.
California deregulated its electricity industry in 1998, and shortly afterward the lights went out. Apparently, regulators hadn't realized how easy it would be for unscrupulous traders such as Enron to manipulate the state's power market once it was open to competition; the results were rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity charges. Californians are for all this — in many areas, power bills are inflated with extra fees to cover bonds and other expenses incurred during the disastrous experiment.
Eskimos in Alaska and Canada have joined to stop polar bears from being designated as an endangered species, saying the move threatens their culture and livelihoods by relying on sketchy science for animals that are thriving.
The Interior Department's Inspector General has started preliminary investigations into why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delaying their decision on whether polar bears ought to be listed as a threatened species due to global warming.
Bloomberg even brings breaking news today that the greens are going to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the two months delay as compared to the initial projected processing time.
I can come up with two very good reasons for the delay:
1. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service do not consider the polar bear as threatened, but do not have the political cahones to just say so outright. The ostrich tactic of sticking their heads in the sand is not working, so they might want to consider just fess up to the lack of scientific evidence to support the claim that the bear is threatened.
2. The evidence for the polar bear status as threatened is shaky at best. It is based on selective use of statistics and models that assume that the current trends in climate change will continue perpetually, which is highly unlikely.
Morten Jødal, the chair of the Biology Society in Norway has criticized the World Wildlife Foundation's selective use of population statistics in this debate in a recent commentary in the largest newspaper in Norway. It is in Norwegian, but here is a translation:
" Polar bear populations has increased dramatically from the 1960's to our time from about 5,000 individuals to about 25,000 individuals. It appears to be stable."
"It is correct as they point out that the population is down from 1,200 individuals in 1987 to about 950 individuals in 2004. What they omit si that the same population increased from 500 individuals in 1981. That gives a different picture, which does not indicate a species on the brink of extinction."
"Another piece of information that changes the statistic is that 49 polar bears are shot annually in the Western part of Hudson Bay. 833 polar bears have been shot over 17 years from 1987 to 2004. That is far more than the ones assumed to have lost their lives due to global warming."
There is no doubt that the listing of polar bears as an endangered species will have an enormous symbolic effect for the alarmists, but I was not aware that the endangered species list was a political propaganda tool, I thought it was a conservation tool, but then again I am naïve when it comes to politics and the things people are willing to do in the name of a cause.
Canada has warned the US government that a narrow interpretation of new energy legislation would prohibit its neighbour buying fuel from Alberta’s vast oil sands, with “unintended consequences for both countries”.
In a letter to Robert Gates, US defence secretary, Canada said that it “would not want to see an expansive interpretation” of the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007.
Finally some science applied to the scientific consensus on global warming, and guess what, it does not exist! Consensus studies are not uncommon in the world of economics, and the people that claim constituency in the discourse over climate policy ranges from every academic discipline in Hayek's grand tradition of being an expert in all areas once you established your "expertdom" in one.
However, the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, did canvas their members with a consensus survey and here is some highlight from the results. 99 percent thinks the climite is changing, 45 percent blame both human and natural causes, and 68 percent disagree with the statement "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled." 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.
For those of us that talk to scientists that have gag-orders, that fear retribution from colleagues that thinks skepticism jeopardize department funding, and that feel mistreated and ridiculed by the media; this does not come as a surprise. These results was not a surprise to APEGGA executive director Neil Windsor, but then again, the man is a scientist, not a media spin doctor with political credentials.
Last week, virtually unreported in Britain, the extraordinary winter weather of 2008 elsewhere in the world continued. In the USA, there were blizzards as far south as Texas and Arkansas, while in northern states and Canada what they are calling "the winter from hell" has continued to break records going back in some cases to 1873. Meanwhile in Asia more details emerged of the catastrophe caused by the northern hemisphere's greatest snow cover since 1966.
A Victoria environmental activist was quoted in the Times Colonist in January as saying he is trying to prevent "the demise of the planet." No less a figure than UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, at the Bali environmental summit in December: "One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear."
Is it? Are we heading for the "demise" of the planet, to "oblivion," if carbon dioxide levels go up much beyond their current level of 380 parts per million, or if the global temperature goes up three or four or five or, for that matter, 10 degrees from its current average of 12 degrees Celsius?
Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.
The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.
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