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Matt Ridley on Climate Change, Scientific Heresy

by Brian McGraw on November 2, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Matt Ridley, a prolific author (among many other professional accomplishments) recently name-checked by Bill Clinton as one of the “smartest, most penetrative thinkers” remains one of the highest profile skeptics toward the likelihood of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Last week he delivered the 2011 Angus Millar Lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh. The title of his talk was “Scientific Heresy,” and it detailed extensively why he remains skeptical on this issue. You can read the entire text of the talk here. A PDF with accompanying graphs and charts is here.

Here are a few excerpts, though the speech in its entirety should not be missed if you follow this debate:

Using these six lessons, I am now going to plunge into an issue on which almost all the experts are not only confident they can predict the future, but absolutely certain their opponents are pseudoscientists. It is an issue on which I am now a heretic. I think the establishment view is infested with pseudoscience. The issue is climate change.

Now before you all rush for the exits, and I know it is traditional to walk out on speakers who do not toe the line on climate at the RSA – I saw it happen to Bjorn Lomborg last year when he gave the Prince Philip lecture – let me be quite clear. I am not a “denier”. I fully accept that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible. When a study was published recently saying that 98% of scientists “believe” in global warming, I looked at the questions they had been asked and realized I was in the 98%, too, by that definition, though I never use the word “believe” about myself. Likewise the recent study from Berkeley, which concluded that the land surface of the continents has indeed been warming at about the rate people thought, changed nothing. [click to continue…]

Green Special Interests Launch Another Sleazy Attack Ad

by William Yeatman on November 1, 2011

in Blog

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As I’ve noted before, environmentalist special interests run the sleaziest attack ads in the business.

Until very recently, MoveOn.org held the dubious honor of having produced the vilest enviro attack ad. In early 2010, the far-left political advocacy group ran a television spot insinuating that three Members of the Senate (including two Democrats who are also mothers) were forcing cigarettes upon pregnant women. Their crime was to have voted to rein in the EPA’s global warming power grab.

Move On was knocked off its perch upon the sleaze heap on October 12, when Environment Ohio issued an ad suggesting that Rep. Steve Stivers (Ohio) FED A BABY WITH A GERBER JAR FULL OF MERCURY. I’m not kidding! See for yourself.
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The Consequences of our Biofuel Policy

by Brian McGraw on October 31, 2011

in Blog

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Dave Juday, a commodity analyst writing in The Weekly Standard, has a long essay covering the largely negative consequences of our nation’s ethanol policy. He covers many of the familiar arguments, such as rising food costs and the ongoing nonexistence of cellulosic ethanol, but also many topics less often covered by the media, such as the clever ability of corporations to take advantage of these subsidies in ways that were not intended:

For a time, the $1 tax credit provided a huge incentive to import soy oil from South America, blend it with a small amount of petroleum diesel to claim the U.S. tax credit​—​the blending often occurred while the tanker ship was still in port​—​and then re-export the blended fuel to Europe to further capture EU subsidies. That little scheme was known as “splash and dash,” and it was a $300 million subsidy to promote domestic biofuel use that did not in fact subsidize biodiesel use in the United States.

Consider the absurdity of splash and dash at its height: According to the Department of Energy, in 2008 the United States produced 678 million gallons of biodiesel and exported 677 million gallons. We imported 315 million gallons, and domestic U.S. consumption was 316 million gallons. That particular stratagem ended in 2009, but exports haven’t. Despite not meeting the mandated minimum for domestic biodiesel use last year, more than a third of the biodiesel produced in this country was exported in 2010. [click to continue…]

This Week in Washington

by Myron Ebell on October 16, 2011

in Blog

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Perry Releases Energy Plan

Texas Governor Rick Perry on 14th October gave a major speech on energy policy at a steel plant near Pittsburgh.  His campaign also released an energy policy white paper that spells out the details of Perry’s policy commitments.  In short, Perry as President promises to increase oil and gas production quickly and substantially on federal lands and offshore areas; block or repeal all the Obama Administration’s new Clean Air Act regulations, including regulation of greenhouse gas emissions; radically downsize the Environmental Protection Agency and turn local environmental issues over to the States; stop allowing environmental law to be made by settling lawsuits with environmental pressure groups with consent decrees; and eliminate all federal energy mandates and subsidies.  Perry claims that his plan will provide a major boost to economic growth and create 1.2 million new jobs.  Looking over the plan, my guess is that 1.2 million jobs is a lowball figure if his proposals were fully implemented.

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Arctic Ice Loss: Portent of Doom or Reason to Rethink IPCC Climate Sensitivity Assumptions?

by Marlo Lewis on October 3, 2011

in Blog, Features

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“Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research,” reports an Associated Press (AP) article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The impact is significant and yet only a piece of the ongoing and accelerating response to warming of the Arctic,” Dr. Robert Bindschadler, emeritus scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Center, told the AP.

The Canadian team’s research confirms MIT scientists‘ recent finding that the Arctic is shedding ice much faster than forecast by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published just four years ago (2007). Which of course is taken to mean that global warming ‘is even worse than scientists previously believed.’

Not so fast, say climatologists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger, editors of World Climate Report (WCR). Paradoxically, more-rapid-than-projected Arctic ice loss is additional evidence that IPCC climate models are too “hot” — that is, overestimate climate sensitivity and forecast too much warming.

In IPCC climate models, decline of Arctic sea ice is treated as both a consequence of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and as an important “positive feedback” that amplifies the direct GHG warming effect. Al Gore popularized this idea in An Inconvenient Truth, noting that as Arctic ice melts, less solar energy is reflected back to space and more absorbed by the oceans.

But, as WCR points out, if the IPCC models’ climate sensitivity estimates were correct, then the greater-than-expected positive feedback from greater-than-expected Arctic ice loss should be producing greater-than-expected global warming. Yet, despite the extra unanticipated warming influence from accelerating ice loss, the world is warming more slowly than IPCC models project.

Far from being a portent of doom, greater-than-projected ice loss, coinciding as it does with smaller-than-projected warming, indicates that actual climate sensitivity is less than model-estimated sensitivity.

Similarly, argues WCR in a related post, had IPCC models properly accounted for the planet’s recovery from the cooling effect of aerosols blown into the stratosphere by the Mount Pinatubo volcano eruption, they would be projecting even more warming than they do now. Yet model current projections already exceed the observed warming of the past 10-15 years.

The relevance to the survival of civilization and the habitability of the Earth? WCR explains:

The reason that all of this is important is that climate models which produce too much warming quite possibility are doing so because they are missing important processes which act to counteract the warming pressure exerted by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations—in other words, the climate sensitivity produced by the climate models is quite possibly too high.

If this proves to be the case, it means that there will be less future warming (and consequently less “climate disruption”) as greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase as a result of our use of fossil fuels.

Evidence continues to mount that this is indeed the case.

 

President Obama’s Jobs Plan—Silly or Sinister?

by Marita Noon on September 26, 2011

in Blog

We all know that each president has his own unique pet projects. He talks about them in the campaign, and we expect him to act on them once in office. Even the first ladies have their favorites, which also influence policy.

We should not be surprised than that President Obama has directed billions of dollars to green-energy projects, such as Solyndra, and that he continues to push though measures that punish petroleum—believing he can make winners and losers.

But directing policy based on waves of popularity—rather than fact, makes as much sense as taxing or providing federal funding to Barbie Dolls.

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Blame China for Solyndra’s Downfall?

by Marlo Lewis on September 22, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold its second hearing on Solyndra, the manufacturer of innovative non-silicon-based solar panels that borrowed $527 million only to file for bankruptcy, shutter its brand new Freemont, Calif. factory, and lay off 1,100 employees on September 6. Expect Committee Democrats to blame China and the allegedly unforeseen fall in the price of conventional silicon-based solar panels for the debacle.

That’s the line the Department of Energy’s (DOE) witness, Jonathan Silver, took at the Committee’s first (September 14) Solyndra hearing, noting China’s provision of more than $30 billion in subsidized financing to its solar manufacturers, which rapidly dropped silicon prices, “taking Solyndra, and many industry analysts, by surprise.” DOE’s blog, Energy.Gov, had already adopted this explanation on August 31, the day Solyndra announced it would file for bankruptcy.

Similarly, Solyndra’s August 31 announcement coyly cited the “resources of larger foreign [i.e. Chinese] manufacturers” and a “global oversupply of [mainly Chinese] solar panels” as factors foiling the company’s business plan. Solyndra’s ex-employees have applied to the Department of Labor (DOL) for aid under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, claiming that China put them out of work. If DOL approves the application, Solyndra’s former workers will receive allowances for job retraining, job searching, and health care for up to 130 weeks, or about $13,000 per employee. Blogger Scott Linicom decries such double dipping:

So to recap: massive government subsidies created 1,100 “green jobs” that never would’ve existed but for those massive government subsidies.  And when those fake jobs disappeared because the subsidized employer-company inevitably couldn’t compete in the market, the dislocated workers blamed China (instead of what’s easily one of the worst business plans ever drafted) in order to receive . . . wait for it . . . more government subsidies. Behold, the Circle of Government Life.

Whether it’s Solyndra execs and DOE officials trying to save face, “progressives” defending the honor of green industrial policy, or former employees looking for more taxpayer freebies, they all would have us believe that Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee was a good bet at the time it was made. They need a scapegoat for Solyndra’s crash, so they blame China. Indeed, some (e.g. Grist) claim Solyndra’s collapse shows that the U.S. government isn’t doing enough to help our “clean tech” companies “compete.” Balderdash.     [click to continue…]

What Obama Could Say in His Speech That Would Really Turn the Economy around

by Marita Noon on September 8, 2011

in Blog

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Recent polling indicates that seventy-six percent (76%) of voters say the country is heading down the wrong track. Clearly, something needs to be done to turn the train around and head in a different direction.

First we need to know where we’ve been headed and then make a conscious decision to do a 180.

Three recent news stories—all under-reported—offer a snapshot of the wrong direction.

The Julia Field

Exxon is in a legal battle with the US government. The company has a new oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico in what is called the Julia Field. Exxon reports an estimated one billion barrels of recoverable oil—worth potential royalties to the government of $10.95 billion. The discovery is believed to be the largest in the Gulf of Mexico. (Note: we are not out of oil; we keep finding more.)

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Solyndra Collapse: Long Time Coming

by William Yeatman on September 6, 2011

in Blog

In late 2009, Solyndra, a California-based  manufacturer of solar power rooftop components, received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DOE). It was the first such loan guarantee offered by the DOE with stimulus money. Last week, in a major blow to President Barack Obama’s green jobs agenda, the solar company became the latest stimulus-beneficiary to fail. It announced that it was entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

The announcement came as a surprise to many observers, such as Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills). Over the summer, Rep. Waxman, the architect of the stimulus program that benefited Solyndra, praised the company’s economic outlook. In an April letter, he boasted that “Solyndra has obtained additional equity investments from existing equity holders, an indication of investor confidence in the company’s prospects.”

California Governor Jerry Brown, too, must have been surprised by Solyndra’s sudden collapse. Two weeks ago, he invited Solyndra, Inc. to join him onstage to unveil a proposed package of tax subsidies for green energy companies. Solyndra’s presence was supposed to lend evidence to the “success” of past clean energy subsidies. Obviously, this is a poor omen for Governor Brown’s tax plan.

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The Myth of Oil Addiction

by Marlo Lewis on September 1, 2011

in Blog, Features

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It’s a trick employed by rhetoricians from time immemorial. When their case against an opponent is unpersuasive on the merits, they invoke the image of something their target audience fears or hates. Thus, for example, political pleaders have asserted that money, Dick Cheney, or Zionism “is a cancer on the body politic.”

Perhaps the most influential use of this tactic in modern times is the attack on carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” and on CO2 emitters as “polluters.” Many who know better, including highly credentialed scientists, routinely couple the words “carbon” and “pollution” in their public discourse.

In reality, CO2 — like water vapor, the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas — is a natural constituent of clean air. Colorless, odorless, and non-toxic to humans at 30 times ambient concentrations, CO2 is an essential building block of the planetary food chain. The increase in the air’s CO2 content since the dawn of the industrial revolution — from 280 to 390 parts per million – boosts the water-use efficiency of trees, crops, and other plants; helps protect green things from the damaging effects of smog and UV-B radiation; and helps make food more plentiful and nutritious. The many health and welfare benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment make CO2 unlike any other substance ever previously regulated as a “pollutant.”

A closely related abuse of the English languge is the oft-repeated claim that America is “addicted to oil.” Although popularized by a Texas oil man, former President G.W. Bush, the phrase is a rhetorical staple of the same folks who inveigh against “carbon pollution.” NASA scientist James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous carbonophobe besides Al Gore, recently denounced the Keystone XL Pipeline as a “dirty needle” that, if approved, would feed our supposed oil addiction. [click to continue…]

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