The United States will not meet Congress' mandate to produce more ethanol from waste products over the next 15 years, resulting in an overall shortfall in ethanol production requirements contained in a new energy law, a government forecaster said Tuesday.
This week, half of CEI’s staff, it seems, decamped to New York City for the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change organized by the Heartland Institute.
There was a lot going on at the Heartland conference, with five different tracks – paleoclimatology, climatology, climate impacts, economics and politics. Unlike some of my colleagues, I hardly heard any science while there, because I was more interested in the economics and politics discussions. My own presentation (I’ll post a link when it’s online) took the line that, even if we accept that temperature is going to increase significantly this century, short-run emissions reduction of the scale necessary to have any effect on global temperatures is still a bad idea. Others, like Julian Morris of IPN or Sterling Burnett of NCPA, took a similar approach. Barun Mitra from India, Leon Leouw from South Africa and Roy Innis of the Congress on Racial Equality talked with passion backed up with data about how affordable energy is an absolutely vital weapon in the fight against poverty. Matt Sinclair from London’s Taxpayers Alliance outlined how even with the entire British establishment in favor of green taxes, the British public was still more opposed to them than in favor.
Yet we weren’t all generalists. Kendra Okonski outlined how getting proper property rights into the almost-universally nationalized water industry is a critical step in avoiding any possible negative effects of warming on water access. Owen McShane from New Zealand demonstrated how “smart growth” policies were contributing to the increase in housing prices that spurred the subprime crisis while at the same time being less environmentally friendly – on environmentalists’ own terms – than traditional suburban homes. Michael Economides hilariously dissected claims that “renewable” energy sources could easily and quickly replace hydrocarbon fuels. One law professor (I regret not being able to recall his name right now) demonstrated how alarmists use graphical misrepresentation of data to win over the public.
The highlight of the conference for me, however, was the advance screening of the new film from Mine Your Own Business’s Phelim McAleer and Anne McIlhenny. “Not Evil, Just Wrong” looks at how sanctimony and misunderstanding drove environmentalists to stop Africans from using DDT to help save children’s lives and how that model is repeating itself in the global warming debate, with potentially even greater tragic consequences. It moved me to tears.
Meanwhile, there were disagreements. I understand there was real scientific debate between, for instance, those who regard natural factors as overwhelming in the science and those who believe man is having a substantial effect, but that it won’t amount to any warming to worry about. There were economic disagreements between those who believe a form of revenue-neutral carbon tax is an appropriate response and those who regard that as an unwarranted and/or potentially disastrous market distortion. No-one who attended could at all honestly contend that this was scripted by some vast energy conspiracy. Politically, there were libertarians, conservatives, moderates and, yes, self-described socialists.
My one complaint with the conference was that there was so much going on that I felt like I’d missed most of it. I’m reading Harry Potter to my daughter at the moment. I could really have done with Hermione’s time-turner.
Former US vice president and renowned climate change fighter Al Gore said Saturday that the global warming crisis is getting short shrift in this year's presidential race.
Gore used the stage at a prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California, to call for activism to push climate change to the top of the candidates' political agendas.
A strange thing happened last year Down Under. A shark ate a kangaroo.
That wasn’t the odd part. Inexplicably, the media found themselves unable to blame the event on global warming.
Marc Morano and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) caused quite a stir when they exposed the dwindling climate-change consensus. So much so, that even the New York Times has quietly shifted from the chimera of “2,500” of the world’s leading climate scientists — not all of them were “climate scientists" to begin with, of course (credentials in other fields were deemed acceptable, apparently, as long as you accepted climate alarmism.) We’re now down to “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [being] the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize,” [emphasis added]. Hat tip to Ed Craig for noting how not everyone has gotten the memo.
All we need to do now is begin the search for those missing 2,000 world’s leading scientists.
As winter prepares to yield to spring, we find the world well into its fourth straight year of cooling. Since atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are still increasing, this suggests the obvious if monumentally important conclusion that CO2 does not drive atmospheric temperature, and that something else — larger and presumably “natural” (i.e., not man-made) — is at work. The past few years of a strangely quiet sun suggests that celestial body’s dominant role in global climate. Time and science will tell.
These are troubling signs for the global warming industry — but as many are coming to learn, the field of climate change is driven by drama, not by fact and logic. The principal question is whether policymakers will do the taxpayers the service of waiting for verifiable facts before granting the alarmists’ agenda the force of law.
Five hundred people from around the world who pay attention to such things gathered in New York City this week to share experiences, research, and insights. These included scientists of every variety (from geologists and climatologists to economists and statisticians), as well as policy experts and local activists.
As the conference — sponsored by Chicago’s Heartland Institute — loomed, warming advocates betrayed a bit of their own drama. Alarmists suddenly began to insist that it was a mistake for them to have for so long claimed that they enjoy a “consensus” — because they never really meant “consensus” anyway. Alarmist professor John Holdren now says that they never really meant “global warming” (or, presumably, the “global cooling” before that), but “global climate disruption.” Frankly, I had thought that their conflict was resolved with the rhetorical bait-and-switch of “climate change” for “global warming.”
The warmists’ unease and contortions were manifested in a piece by the New York Times’ Andy Revkin, called “Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell.” On the eve of the event, he condensed recent climate into the past few weeks in order to explain it away as a “cold spell” — and a meaningless one in the face of a bigger picture that any fool knows to be warming. The Times, at least for now, has decided that discrete weather events and temperatures are not portents of things to come. The Gray Lady now now finds it fashionable to quote well-known skeptics, who describe the recent cooling as “just good old fashioned weather.”
Of course, these same skeptics would have said the same thing to Times reporters about warm weather and violent storms, if only the media sought non-alarmist opinion on those occasions. But back then, they were hyping a warming trend, as opposed to trying to explain a cooling trend away. On Tuesday, CNN adopted the same approach. Now, the calmer voices will be reliably ignored until the next time there is a need to trot them out to reassure the public that calamitous warming still awaits them.
Skeptics are used to the media chasing after catastrophic story-lines, whether built around warming or cooling or – soon, no doubt — simply the now-ominous “change.” As such, the New York gathering remained largely light-hearted. Sober moments included Czech President Vaclav Klaus repeating his counsel of vigilance against global salvationism — which his experience suggests, following Mencken’s adage, is always a false front for the urge to rule.
My presentation at the conference spoke to these hilarious media contortions in the name of the global-warming agenda. A single year or weather event is newsworthy and meaningful . . . unless it’s the wrong kind. Individual research papers warrant coverage . . . and what coverage! . . . but only when their results are alarmist. Otherwise, they’re just one paper.
We have learned that three years is a pattern . . . unless it is on the cooling side of the ledger. We know that ten years is conclusive . . . unless it’s the past ten years, when no warming is evident. Unseasonably warm weather is clear evidence of global warming, exceptional cold is merely an anomaly — or better yet, further proof of climate disruption. Warming temperatures — over whatever period the press chooses — and retreating glaciers — whatever the season — are sure signs of “global warming.” Cooling temperatures and advancing glaciers signify nothing.
The alarmists and their press proxies are also quick to point to funding and financial interests . . . if you disagree with their agenda. Meanwhile, absolutely no one on the skeptics’ side of the argument has earned as much money as Al Gore and his tiresome advisor James Hansen have off of their high-profile climate alarmism.
An event like the Heartland conference, that by its very nature disparages media irresponsibility on climate matters, shouldn’t expect to receive thoroughly objective press coverage. The media that did stop in revealed by their mien and questions that they were none too happy about it — poor Miles O’Brien of CNN was reduced to hectoring attendees with an ad hominem suggesting that they were the equivalent of the “Flat Earth Society.” So we should expect the press attention the conference receives not to stray too far from the approved alarmist narrative. As I noted earlier today, some members of the press are even using an outdated alarmist fact-sheet — like the environmental reporter at the Baltimore Sun who repeats the now-abandoned factoid that the IPCC climate-scientist consensus on global warming is 2,500-strong.
Reality might eventually force the media and other alarmist friends out of their comfort zones. In such trying times, anything can happen — even real debate over the actual facts.
A senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute says the recent enforcement of a 1979 California law regarding solar panels will be a good litmus test for environmental laws.
James Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia myth and convinced that the world is coming to an end, soon, because global warming is going to get us.
OK, so we have heard that one before. However, what I found interesting about the story is that Lovelock thinks carbon offsetting is a joke and "green ethical living" is a sham.
Although I am sure that the most prominent greens know this, they will not tell you if their life depended on it, so Lovelock's honesty is refreshing even though his reasons for thinking so is logically invalid.
All the presidential candidates say they’re for energy independence. So why didn’t they do something about it when they had the chance?
Hillary Clinton rails on her web site about Americans sending “billion of dollars to the Middle East for their oil.” Barack Obama warns that Middle East oil is the “lifeline of Al Qaeda.” Republican hopeful John McCain says that, if elected, his energy policy will “amount to a declaration of independence from our reliance on oil sheiks and our vulnerability to their troubled politics.”
But Clinton and Obama recently voted for a bill that can only promote dependency on oil from the Middle East . And John McCain, went AWOL, not voting on the bill at all.
A little-noticed provision of the ironically-named “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007” that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush last December bars the federal government from purchasing fuels whose lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are greater than those from fuels produced from convention petroleum sources.
Before we get into the energy independence implications of this provision, it’s worth appreciating the obscurity of the provision and the fact that the media doesn’t seem to understand its import.
I only learned of the provision while thumbing through the Feb. 15 Financial Times, serendipitously noticing the egregiously mis-titled article, “US risks trade dispute with Canada on fuel.” A bit of research turned up no other media reports relating to this particular section of the bill.
The Financial Times article reported on how section 526 of the energy bill prohibits the federal government from buying oil that was produced from Canadian tar sands — a reserve that holds about two-thirds the amount of recoverable oil as compared to reserves in Saudi Arabia.
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Because it takes greenhouse gas-producing energy to extract oil from the tar sands, the article focused on the fact that the law could affect billions of dollars of trade in oil, particularly since the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest single buyer of light refined petroleum.
But while I give the Financial Times credit for reporting this story, it really dropped the ball with respect to understanding it — this is yet another effort by environmentalists and their congressional henchmen to cause chaos in our energy supply.
Sure enough, it turns out that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) are already pressing the Department of Defense to comply with the provision. In a recent letter to the Secretary of Defense, Waxman and Davis asked how the DOD will ensure that the fuel it buys doesn’t come from Canadian tar sands or from domestic coal-to-liquid processing.
Waxman and Davis apparently expect the military to expend the Herculean effort of tracing the source of the fuel it purchases and then to refuse North American oil from unconventional sources apparently in favor of oil from OPEC sources like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela . How’s that for energy independence and security?
It gets worse if you’re one of those who believe that biofuels are the path to energy independence.
The plain language of section 526 would also seem to ban the federal government from purchasing biofuels like ethanol, since their lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are greater than that of conventional petroleum.
“Turning native ecosystems into “farms” for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate,” researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy reported in Science (Feb. 7). Another study in the same issue of Science projected that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emission from ethanol over 30 years are twice as high as from regular gasoline.
Interestingly, Reps. Waxman and Davis specifically excluded biofuels from their letter to the DOD. Not to worry, though, biofuels will likely soon become fuel-non-grata as the environmentalists have already started to demonize them.
Similar to the case of compact fluorescent lightbulbs discussed in this column last week, the New York Times editorial page this week signaled that biofuels will soon become as politically incorrect as the Canadian tar sands and domestic coal-to-liquid fuels.
The Times opined that, “Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.”
“Done right” for the Times is what’s required in the energy bill — a 20 percent reduction in lifecycle greenhouse gases as compared to gasoline. But of course this is a next-to-impossible goal since the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for ethanol currently are projected to be 100 percent greater than for gasoline.
It will likely require nothing short of technological miracle for ethanol to achieve the energy bill’s standards in the near, or even, distant future.
Now, if the federal government is barred from bio-, tar sand, coal-to-liquid fuels, how long will it be before such a ban spreads to contractors that do business with the federal government, to states and their contractors, and then, by default, to the nation as a whole?
It’s hard to take the presidential candidates, President Bush and Congress too seriously on the energy independence issue when none of them opposed a bill that actually makes us more dependent on OPEC.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The article "Weather Singularities over Alaska?" by Jan Curtis of the Alaska Climate Research Center (21 December 2001) on John Daly’s website "Still Waiting for Greenhouse" includes two interesting comments. "So if there isn’t a physical explanation for these singularities, statistics might be able to answer this mystery" and "For a singularity to exist, a physical mechanism is needed." The author speculates on reduction of solar heating in winter, an expansion of cold dense air and a subsequent surge across Alaska as a cause. "With the release of this pool of cold air over the Arctic, a temporary temperature rebound occurs. After about a month, this scenario is repeated and a month later repeated again." A reasonable speculation, but it simply describes the pattern of Rossby Waves. A 4 to 6 week cycle that causes shifts in the weather as the waves migrate through the mid-latitude regions. Changes in the amplitude of the Waves cause variation in the severity of the changes – a feature overlooked in the climate pattern of the last few years. The amplitude change results in increased variation yet the statistical focus remains close to long term averages. We have to distinguish between increased variability of cyclical events and real singularities. We also have to understand the distortion to hemispheric and global temperature averages created by the Wave pattern.
Current weather patterns have extremes of hot and cold round the world – what appear to be singularities. The pattern is most noticeable in the Northern Hemisphere because of differences in land/water ratios, especially in the middle latitudes. Advocates of global warming due to human actions use the patterns as support for their argument. The problem is the Rossby Waves offer a natural explanation.
Climatology is a generalist subject struggling with the dominance of specialization. It requires a wide grasp that links all the factors, but that’s a great challenge. Computer models offered a chance to handle large volumes of information and make many linkages, but General Circulation Models (GCM) only illustrate the limitations and underline the linkage problem.
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