The new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards – set by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in the new energy bill – will require vehicles to get 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020 and will add somewhere between $900 and $10,000 to the cost of buying a car, dependent upon which expert is consulted.
A WORSENING global food shortage is a problem far more urgent than climate change, top Australian scientists have warned. The Australian Science Media Centre briefing heard why prices for some staple foods had risen by as much as 60 per cent in the past year, and how dramatic price rises are expected to sweep across all staples in the near future.
Germany warned Thursday that a European Commission plan to auction pollution rights threatened key sectors of German and European industry.
The New York Times today suddenly finds outrage in someone not having the taxpayer facilitate an airing of their views on climate change. No, it wasn’t bullying of head and assistant state climatologists like Pat Michaels, David Legates, George Taylor, Mark Albright, et al., over which the Grey Lady wasn’t exactly exercised. It is about a high school presentation that some parents objected to because of the lack of balance. In Montana. Get our man at the New York Times on this, stat!
But in this rather overwrought article, “Climate Talk’s Cancellation Splits a Town”, we see an individual who is, with great media assistance, serially and apparently in all seriousness milking this phony tag of “Nobel laureate” for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Enough already. Let the record reflect that, according to the Nobel Committee, neither he or the hundreds of anthropology TAs et al are Nobel laureates, any more than the carbon trader-funded DeSmogBlog’s Ross Gelbspan is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
The IPCC as a discrete legal entity, the organization based in Geneva, shared the award, 50/50, "in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.” Not anyone who served as an author, expert reviewer, or otherwise. Not 50% and .5/2500. Read the award speech and you’ll see that the 130 countries taking part in the IPCC were given equal praise as the authors et al.
Let that one sink in.
Yes, the press release and other associated statements said things like “Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming”. They also said “Currently over 130 countries are taking part, with 450 authors and 800 contributors, while 2,500 scientific experts take part in the hearings”.
I know that many IPCC participants openly dispute the claims with which they are associated by virtue of their efforts to keep the IPCC honest, like John Christy, Vincent Gray, and many, many others, but there’s really no point in continuing this charade simply to note that fact.
Al Gore won the Nobel, along with a group in Geneva. Not a bunch of alarmists who seem desperate for reflected glory. They only helped. Just like President Bush.
A new study, much hyped by the media, blames humans for escalating ice loss in Antarctica. The media, however, seems to have no idea as to how truly manmade the supposed ice loss may be.
“Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica; Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming” was the Washington Post’s front-page, above-the-fold headline last Monday (Jan. 14). The headline for the continuation of the article was “Antarctic Ice Loss Could Speed Rise in Ocean Levels.”
If true, it would be quite a worrisome situation given that Antarctica contains enough ice to raise ocean levels by about 60 meters, a deluge that would put every major coastal city in the world deep under water and uproot hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.
NASA scientist Eric Rignot reported in Nature Geoscience (Jan. 13) that increased melting had been detected in the ice sheets of western Antarctica, an area where surface temperatures have remained unchanged.
As warming surface temperatures could not be blamed for the ice loss, Rignot hypothesized that the cause may be the flow of warmer waters from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. “Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes,” Rignot told the Post. “We believe it is related to [manmade global warming]”, he added.
Rignot may indeed “believe” that humans are the cause – he is, after all, part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization founded on the belief that humans are causing catastrophic global warming. But the facts belie such beliefs.
First, standard climate alarmism claims that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are warming surface temperatures. But not only is such warming not being observed in Antarctica, it’s actually getting cooler in western Antarctica, according to surface temperature analysis from each of eight NASA stations located there.
Rignot, of course, admits that standard climate alarmism can’t possibly explain the western Antarctic melting; that’s why he shifted to blaming man for the warmer Antarctic Circumpolar Current. But is this true?
In an effort to support Rignot’s hypothesis, Columbia University’s Douglas Martinson told The Washington Post that “the [Antarctic Circumpolar Current”, which flows about 200 yards below the frigid surface water, began to warm significantly in the 1980s, and that warming in turn caused wind patterns to change in ways that ultimately brought more warm water to shore.”
But Martinson also admitted to the Post that there is not enough data to say for certain that the process was set in motion by global warming. Truth be told, there is good reason to question Martinson's assertion about the temperature trend, let alone its hypothetical cause.
According to World Climate Report, a 2007 study by University of Washington researchers reported that, although there is much interest among scientists in ocean temperature, “below-surface ocean temperature data are sparse, and the existing data sets involve substantial ‘interpolation, extrapolation, and averaging’ that may compromise the integrity of results from such data sets.”
Adding to the mix is the most recent IPCC report, which says that the upper ocean adjacent to west Antarctica warmed by 1 degree Celsius from 1951 to 1994. But global surface temperatures actually declined from 1940 to 1976, even as manmade emissions of carbon dioxide dramatically increased.
The bottom line is there is no established linkage between manmade emissions of greenhouse gases and any melting in the western Antarctic.
But then, is there even any net ice loss in the western Antarctic to begin with?
While Rignot did use satellite observations of Antarctica’s coastline to estimate melting, he compared this real-life data to computer model estimates of Antarctic interior snow accumulation. So the western Antarctic appears to losing mass only when compared to computer models that, when it comes to global climate, are of questionable relevance to the real world.
At JunkScience.com, we label these sorts of computer modeling exercises as “PlayStation® climatology.”
Even if you put faith in climate models, Rignot’s don’t seem to agree with those of the IPCC, which stated in its most recent assessment, “Current global model studies project that the Antarctic Ice Sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.”
Finally, according to NOAA data presented on the web site of Bill Chapman of the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the global level of sea ice has reached about the same level as it was at in 2003. The current change in global sea ice coverage is a positive 1 million square kilometers — that is, a gain of 1.8 million square kilometers in the Southern Hemisphere netted against a loss of 800,000 square kilometers in the Northern Hemisphere.
It’s quite possible that the reported Antarctic melting is manmade — but the “man” may be Eric Rignot, as opposed to the term’s broader connotation.
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.
News Highlights
David Gow, The Guardian, 14 January 2008
Finfacts,15 January 2008
Editorial, Washington Examiner, 16 January 2008
AFP, 17 January 2008
Peggy Hollinger, Andrew Bounds and Sarah Laitner, Financial Times, 15 January 2008
Sterling Burnett, Planet Gore, 16 January 2008
AFP, 16 January 2008
Felicity Berringer, New York Times, 16 January 2008
[note—after public outrage, the State of California dropped the thermostat proposal]
Paul Driessen, Conservative Battleline, 16 January 2008
David Ljunggren, Reuters, 14 January 2008
CEI, 17 January 2008
William Yeatman, Denver Post, 11 January 2008
News You Can Use
Survey Shows Eco-Warriors Are Worst Polluters
Survey Shows Eco-Warriors Are Worst Polluters
A survey of 25,000 people, by the market research company Target Group Index, found that the most environmentally conscious people are seven per cent more likely than the general population to take flights, and four per cent more likely to own a car. The survey found similar trends in France and the United States .
Inside the Beltway
CEI’s Myron Ebell
At the big Detroit auto show this week, Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters that he hoped to have a global warming bill ready to go as soon as possible. Of course, he might have meant next year or next month. The real news was that he hinted that he may exclude automobiles from his cap-and-trade bill on the grounds that the auto industry has already been assigned its fair share of the climate burden by the enactment last month of a forty per cent increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.
This makes some sense, but the more logical alternative if a cap-and-trade bill is going to be passed would be to repeal all the specific mandates, subsidies, and limits. They only get in the way of a cap-and-trade scheme working efficiently to find the cheapest ways to lower emissions. Thus as part of Dingell’s bill, he should include repealing CAFÉ, ethanol mandates and subsidies, the new ban on incandescent light bulbs, and a whole lot of other government regulations that are no longer needed once a cap on emissions is in place. The same would be true if Dingell pursues his carbon tax proposal. A tax would make cap-and-trade and all these other regulations unnecessary.
Around the World
CEI’s Marlo Lewis
“Everybody wants ta get inta de act!” So said Jimmy Durante, the great vaudeville comedian, singer, and actor. How true of global warming policy these days!
Proponents of Kyotoism call their planetary salvation nostrums “market-based.” Most want cap-and-trade. Some want carbon taxes. Some, like Al Gore, want both. After all, cap-and-trade is an implicit tax. If big government is your bread and butter, then piling tax upon tax seems like a great idea.
So “market-based” is not equivalent to“good,” unless you think higher taxes are good.
But most warming hysterics also want a slew of measures of the command-and-control variety. They want central planning “inta de act.”
Congress, for example, recently mandated that 36 billion gallons of the nation’s motor fuel be “renewable” by 2022—a production quota worthy of Uncle Joe Stalin. House leaders also tried to enact a Soviet-style production quota for electricity, popularly known as a “renewable portfolio standard.”
Command-and-control climate policy is big in the European Union. Yes, the EU boasts that its emission trading system (ETS) is “market-based.” But it isn’t really, because politicians rather than markets allocate the emissions credits. Unsurprisingly, the ETS so far has failed to reduce emissions while bilking consumers for the benefit of special interests. See this eye-popping report.
But Eurocrats are not content to use dubious market mechanisms like the ETS or real ones like motor fuel taxes that push European gasoline prices above $7.00 a gallon. The EU has also adopted a renewable portfolio standard requiring 20 percent of all electricity to come from wind, solar, or hydro-electric sources by 2020.
The Brits at least understand that renewable portfolio standards defeat the alleged purpose of an emissions trading program, which is to discover the most cost-effective emission reduction options and motivate investment accordingly. “In a briefing note on EU renewables targets leaked last August,” reports The Parliament.Com, “the UK government said that achieving the 20 per cent renewables target risks causing spiraling energy costs within the emissions trading scheme, also under review in the commission’s energy package.”
The UK briefing note warns of substantial economic inefficiency: “The costs of increasing renewable energy technology use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is around three times higher than allowing flexibility in reducing options through emissions trading. This additional cost will be reflected in increasing electricity and other energy prices.”
The anti-energy bill recently enacted by Congress and the President was atrocious. But at least it kept renewable portfolio standards “outa de act.” Whether cooler heads continue to prevail in 2008 remains to be seen. Stay tuned.
In the Home
CEI’s Julie Walsh
I was having lunch a few months back with a friend who thinks that “maybe there is global warming” because when he was growing up in the ‘70’s it was colder than it is now. And it’s gotten a little warmer ever since then.
People tend to think of “normal” as the way it was at some point in their past, most often their childhood. So in the ‘70s, people started worrying about global cooling, partly because many people remember balmier temperatures when they were growing up.
The truth is, we don’t live in a climatically-static world. The Earth’s climate is a dynamic system, as these graphs clearly demonstrate.
Some of the text of the comic strip: “More than 400 prominent scientists around the world now say they have major objections to the so-called ‘consensus’ that global warming is ‘man-made.’ Never fear, however; the ‘consensus’ on ‘man-made’ global warming in the mainstream media is as healthy as ever.”
Harvesting the body heat of Svedes, cheesy floor and cars running on chocolate is some of the environmentally friendly energy alternatives in a recent Guardian article. Great story that shows how innovation happens between self-interested actors, rather than through government planning.
There was only a question of time until politically correct energy rationing and reality TV would meet…
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Worthy of its own post (I didn't want it to get buried in the last one) is today's column by John Locke Foundation president John Hood, who follows up all the work done by his people and by the Beacon Hill Institute with his own devastating perspective:
Remember when your math teacher required you to show your work? There’s a good reason for it. In this case, thanks to diligent spade work by Carolina Journal and careful analysis by economists at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, it has become glaringly obvious that the “experts” consulted by (North Carolina) officials have no earthly idea what they are talking about….
…When scientists do, indeed, step forward to question the supposed consensus about an impending global catastrophe, the alarmists attempt to assassinate their character or compare them to Flat-Earthers. Only the minority of scientists who subscribe to the entire alarmist agenda are said to be credible.
They say this is science. It is precisely the opposite of science. It allows for no reasonable debate. It asserts the Truth as an article of faith, and treats dissent as heresy.
Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – no matter how much he may squawk. Whenever anyone claims that North Carolina should adopt regulations, taxes, and spending programs to combat global warming, and that the result will boost the economy and make North Carolinians better off in the future, check to see if the speaker is an economist trained to employ mainstream economic science. If not, you are permitted to respond with ridicule and contempt.
It is well worth your time to read the whole thing.
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