According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona — two prominent climate modellers — the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
The speeding freight train carrying toxic waste liability for makers, sellers and purchasers of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, was only faintly audible in the distance last spring when this column first warned of it. Now we’re beginning to see that environmentalist-stoked train speed toward its victims, whom President Bush and Congress just finished tying to the tracks.
CFLs and all other fluorescent lightbulbs require special clean-up and disposal procedures because they contain small amounts of mercury, which is neurotoxic at sufficiently high exposures. For example, you’re not supposed to vacuum breakage or toss used bulbs in household trash.
Mr Kabil Sibal union minister for science and technology recently said that the western world is putting pressure on India to adopt very expensive clean coal technologies, which could be feasible only after 15 to 20 years.
Mr Sibal said for the next 20 years, India would have to depend on coal as the main energy source to sustain a GDP growth rate of 9% to 10%. He added that as far as alternative sources of energy are concerned, India had limited options, 70% of our oil is imported, hydroelectricity is not a feasible option in all parts of the country and wind power could account for just 4% of the energy mix.
European consumers shunning imported food supposedly to limit climate change should not make African farmers a scapegoat, a Brussels conference has been told.
In Britain, several supermarkets have begun labelling products flown into the country with stickers marked “air-freighted,” to reflect concern about the contribution of aviation to global warming.
But Benito Müller, a director at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, dismissed the concept of food miles as “an extremely oversimplified indicator” of ecological impact.
DAVID CAMERON is to abandon plans for “green” taxes amid fears of a backlash from voters unhappy about having to pay for climate change.
A leaked policy paper commissioned by the Tory leader warns that action on the environment is too often seen in terms of “consumer sacrifice”.
“If the US economy moves into recession this year, world economic growth could slow to just 1.6 percent in 2008,” according to a recent United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs policy brief, an almost 50% percent decrease.
Conversely, today in our global economy, the trickle-down theory correctly predicts that the poorest person’s lot in the developing countries would be improved by our increasing GDP. But the Lieberman-Warner (S.2191) tax on hydrocarbon energy would reduce that possibility. According to CEI’s Iain Murray,
Economist Anne Smith testified to Congress that her state-of-the-art economic modeling estimates that Warner-Lieberman would cause net reduction in 2015 GDP of 1.0% to 1.6% relative to the GDP that would otherwise occur. That loss rises to the range of 2% to 2.5% after 2015. Smith found that the annual loss in GDP would increase to the range of $800 billion to $1 trillion, which is serious money. By 2020, Smith estimates losses of 1.5 to 3.4 million jobs – and that is net jobs, after adjusting for the new "green" jobs that might be created by the bill.
The world depends upon America’s pursuit of happiness. And as those Third World boats float in the world’s rising tide, only then will people in those countries begin to be able to afford to be environmentally conscious.
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