Recently in Environment Category

I'm sorry to link to a story Matt Drudge links to, but when I heard about it on the BBC NewsPod a day or two ago it is remarkable to understand that the UN's IPCC used as its source a 1999 mass market magazine. Hardly a reputable scientific source. The parallels are eerie to the breathless report I heard on Good Morning America by Charlie Gibson in 1993 on the reported forty percent increase of violence perpetrated against women. When the source of that was unraveled, it was found to be utterly bogus. Advocacy statitics. Like ten percent of people are gay or lesbian. Advocacy statistics. Like the glaciers are melting in the Himalayas because of man's spewing out of carbon dioxide, that beneficial plant food.

Man-made global warming increasingly looks to be on the ropes. It's time to debate, Algore! He won the Nobel Prize, after all.

Going after the "carbon footprint" of the family pet. How low will they go?

Unbelievable video. I guess these marxists didn't get the memo to dress themselves in the green of environmentalism. They are straight up commies. I actually respect that more than the watermelons: green on the outside, red inside.

HT: Matt Drudge

I, as well as many others, have been beating the ClimateGate meme to death. It's about time AGW met its long overdue comeuppance. Despite claims by many of the AGW faithful that the fraud committed by the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was not major, being that the CRU was only one of many climate research institutes, they have overlooked the fact that the CRU was a major clearinghouse for climate data used by other institutions to generate their climate models. That meant they were using the same 'corrected' data as the CRU, which in turn meant the other models were wrong, too. And one must keep in mind that the CRU data and models were used by the UN IPCC to generate their reports. The fraud committed by the CRU did not affect just the CRU, but any research team or institution using their data to create climate models and the resulting predictions.

As an aside, I came across this presentation about Anthropogenic Global Warming (available here in both PDF and PowerPoint format) given by Burt Rutan at Oshkosh this past summer. (Yes, that Burt Rutan of SpaceShip 1 fame.) For anyone not familiar with Burt Rutan, he is an aeronautical engineer extraordinaire. And as such, he has a considerable amount of experience analyzing test data and putting it in formats easily understood (and reproducible) by just about anyone wishing to spend the time to do so. With that in mind, Burt applied his considerable data analysis skills to the theory of AGW...and totally shreds it. Using readily available data from a number of sources including NOAA, NASA, as well as from global warming advocate sites and organizations, he delves into the data and its presentation to the world.

As he states more than once in a number of ways, it isn't always the amount of data you have that 'proves' a case like AGW as much as how it is presented. In this case he shows how climate data has been manipulated in ways that change the meaning as well as the context in order to sell a theory that is pretty crappy at best. Never mind the data massaging and corrective algorithms applied at the CRU to make it look like we're all doomed because of AGW. He shows how data analysis should be done to show what's really happening and why, regardless of one's personal beliefs one way or the other.

I must remind you that Burt Rutan is not a climate scientist, nor has he studied climatology or meteorology or atmospheric physics. He is an aeronautical engineer and he makes his living designing aircraft and spacecraft. Part of his engineering duties include analysis of flight test data and making sure the analysis is accurate. His job demands accuracy and an elimination of bias because if he gets it wrong people die. This isn't something abstract like AGW. If he fails in his job the aircraft or spacecraft he's designed and built will fail and those on board will die. That gives him great incentive to get it right. And so it is with his analysis of AGW.

Look at his presentation and decide for yourself whether he's on to something or not.

KN at Posse Incitatus--I'm a long-time reader--makes the analogy startlingly apt: Michael Bellisiles & gun control with anthropogenic climate change and the recently released "climategate" e-mails of Phil Jones. I'm impressed:

The question of climate change is, from a purely scientific perspective, a very difficult one to answer. The only way that we can even approach the truth is to take an open, collaborative attitude to research - basically we have to use the classical scientific method.

This method, where data is openly shared, where theories are constantly questioned - is what has allowed the Western world to make the quantum advances it has in less than a century. What the Climategate emails show is that the supporters of the globalwarmism are not interested in real science. Their agenda is too important.

They are driven by a moral certitude that is so overwhelming that it renders facts unimportant - it's bigger than such trifling considerations. There is also a "bunker mentality" at work. These people simply cannot handle the thought of being proved wrong. They must be right, they have to be right, they know they are right - so they believe they are permitted to use any means necessary to win the public debate.

What has been buzzing away in the blogosphere (It's my opinion most journalists are too lazy and intellectually incurious to even read Instapundit.) is treated at most as a very minor blip in the dinosaur media's coverage of climate change. CNN, for example, takes a very leisurely path to report the leaked e-mail news after only six days. Only to downplay it, of course.

Climate czar does her best Valley Girl imitation at Climategate: Whatever.

This is yet another great post from Nathan, in this case covering a subject near and dear to my heart - the Land of Fruits and Nuts.

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Upon reading this, my emotions are mixed.

Sacramento - The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions.

At first, what I felt was disgust: yet another way for (soon to be) Uncle "Big Brother" Sam to control me, an American citizen, and force me to do/have/buy what he wishes. However, a second later I had a brilliant thought. Perhaps this really was for the good of the people. After all, California is in the midst of just about every crises known to the modern US state, so much so, that it has been referred to as a possible "failed state". Clearly, "desperate times call for desperate measures", right? The old adage must have some meaning to be passed down through all those parental lectures. But then, I came across this in the article:

On Tuesday, executives and consultants for the Arlington, Va., trade group asked members of the California Energy Commission to instead let consumers use their wallets to decide whether they want to buy the most energy-saving new models of liquid-crystal display and plasma high-definition TVs.

What? What is this? Let consumers decide with their wallets? What revolutionary concept is this? But of course, instead of banning a product, why not just tax the product? No one will argue that these large televisions are "better" (in terms of power consumption) than these smaller, more energy efficient ones. However, if an individual works a hard, honest days' work and wishes to use the proverbial fruits of his labor to watch the Pats take the Super Bowl in 55" of HD glory, by all means, I say we let him. Does this mean I am advocating a tax on these "power guzzlers"? In all honesty, no. I think the only "tax" this man should pay for his "power guzzling television" should be to his electric company. In any case, far be it from me to question the all-knowing lawmaker. Clearly, this idea of consumers deciding with their wallets must not be happening, right? They must be spending every last penny they have to make sure they get the least energy efficient model possible, right? That's why we need Uncle "Big Brother" Sam to step in and save the environment and the stupid citizens from themselves. Oh, wait...

"Voluntary efforts are succeeding without regulations," said Doug Johnson, the association's senior director for technology policy.

Oh? Odd. Does this mean that the "stupid consumer" may not be so stupid after all? Could we, as citizens, possibly be capable of making an environmentally friendly choice completely on our own?! Clearly, this is an age of miracles. Again, I believe represents another piece of "Trojan Horse" legislation delivered by our government management team. Sure, saving the environment is a good thing. Whether or not one believes that global warming exists is irrelevant here. This is just about being good stewards and taking care of what we have. Even those that do not believe in global warming cannot argue that it is good to save energy when we can, to invest in cleaner, more efficient technologies. The consumers have shown that they do, in fact, care about their environments, and have already shown that they are capable of making an "eco-friendly" choice without any government intervention. Why, then, do they insist on making more and more laws to govern what clearly is not in any need of governing? Again, from the article:

Too much government interference could hamstring industry innovation and prove expensive to manufacturers and consumers, he (Doug Johnson) warned.

Another novel concept brought to us today. Of course too much government involvement can hamstring an industry, and for those who "don't know", once you come out of your rock, I invite you to go to that glowing thing with a keyboard and type in "General Motors". Read for about five minutes, and I'm sure you and I will be on the same page. This isn't about helping the environment, or even "solving the energy crisis". This is about power, plain and simple. There is no other reason for legislature to be passed on this issue. The populous is already moving in the direction that has been deemed "good". It would be one thing if these were causing widespread black/brown outs, etc. But they are not. Simply put, Uncle Big Brother Sam wishes to take one more freedom away from the citizen. As previously mentioned, I firmly believe that if you work an honest day's work, you should by all means be able to take your check and buy that 55" inch behemoth. As to Uncle Big Brother Sam, I'd offer you this bit of advice: Focus your powers on the ones that are spending other people's money, not the ones that are spending their own. (I know, one's own money. Such a concept). In closing, I believe I could sum up my view on this entire article with this one good old fashioned New England quip:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

---TNJ

One thing we hear again and again is how alternative energy sources will somehow "save" us and that all other forms of energy are bad/dangerous/icky and aren't green. But that view is shortsighted, ignoring far too many other factors that determine whether a particular energy source is truly green. For instance, what good is a green alternative energy source if it uses materials that are extremely toxic in the manufacturing process or is far less efficient than traditional energy sources meaning more of them are needed to produce an equivalent amount of energy? What if making the shift of more energy production to alternative sources in an effort to save the environment ends up destroying it instead?

The House of Representatives has passed climate legislation that started out as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. It has morphed into an engine for raising revenues by selling carbon dioxide emission allowances and promoting "renewable" energy.

The bill requires electric utilities to get 20% of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. These renewable energy sources are receiving huge subsidies--all to supposedly create jobs and hurry us down the road to an America running on wind and sunshine described in President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address.

Yet all this assumes renewable energy is a free lunch--a benign, "sustainable" way of running the country with minimal impact on the environment. That assumption experienced a rude awakening on Aug. 26, when The Nature Conservancy published a paper titled "Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America." The report by this venerable environmental organization posed a simple question: How much land is required for the different energy sources that power the country? The answers deserve far greater public attention.

This is something too many alternative energy proponents have overlooked in their zeal to move the US towards more sustainable energy production. They've ignored the actual impact of some of those alternative sources on the surrounding environment, ignored the amount of land these alternative energy sources will take up to provide the amount of energy to meet the needs of the people. Simply put, alternative energy sources of the type most are talking about are what would be called low density sources, meaning the amount of energy produced for each square meter of space taken up by those sources is very low as compared to the more traditional sources of energy like coal, gas, oil, and nuclear plants. And of the more traditional sources, nuclear power has the highest density of energy produced per unit of land, above that of the other traditional sources and well above that of the alternative sources.

By far nuclear energy is the least land-intensive; it requires only one square mile to produce one million megawatt-hours per year, enough electricity for about 90,000 homes. Geothermal energy, which taps the natural heat of the earth, requires three square miles. The most landscape-consuming are biofuels--ethanol and biodiesel--which require up to 500 square miles to produce the same amount of energy.

Coal, on the other hand, requires four square miles, mainly for mining and extraction. Solar thermal--heating a fluid with large arrays of mirrors and using it to power a turbine--takes six. Natural gas needs eight and petroleum needs 18. Wind farms require over 30 square miles.

--snip--

Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape. Before we find ourselves engulfed in energy sprawl, it's imperative we take a closer look at nuclear power.

One must also consider the up-time and maintenance requirements of the various energy sources. Both wind and solar are primarily daytime sources (yes, wind also blows at night, but generally not as much or as steadily as it does during the day). The maintenance required is higher for alternative sources. Solar collectors, PV panels, or mirrors must be cleaned constantly to maintain efficiency. Wind turbines undergo mechanical stresses that require constant inspection and repair, with such duties often being more difficult due to the size and height of each turbine.

Traditional power sources can run 24 hours a day. Nuclear power plants can run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for two or three years at 100% power. The traditional combustion-based power plants (coal, oil, and natural gas) have higher down time and require more maintenance, usually of the boiler systems for coal and oil and the combustion turbines of the natural gas plants due to the corrosive nature of high temperature combustion.

Maybe it's time to seriously look at new nuclear plants as a green source of energy and avoid the 'energy sprawl' common to alternative energy sources.

Part I can be found here.

Part II can be found here.

Anyone reading my humble blog knows I am a proponent of nuclear power, probably one of the 'greenest' forms of generating electrical power when all factors are taken into account. Even one of the founders of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, sees nuclear power as leading the way to a greener energy. So why aren't those in Congress pushing for reductions CO₂ emissions by promoting more nuclear power?

Could it be it's an emotional issue, one that too many on the Left see as the so-called 'third rail' of environmentalism? It would appear (to me) that that's the case.

Three Mile Island and Chenobyl have been used for decades as an argument against nuclear power. While Three Mile Island was the worst accident at a commercial nuclear power station in the West, no one died, no one was injured, and the safety systems did what they were supposed to do even though the humans running the plant screwed up.

Chernobyl was a different matter...and a different reactor design. Between a very poor design (a graphite moderated reactor), lack of a containment vessel, and a major screw-up by both the plant engineers and the overseeing Soviet government, it's no wonder the reactor destroyed itself, killing hundreds (if not more) and making the surrounding area not habitable. One thing constantly overlooked by people against nuclear power: none of the RBMK type reactors like that at Chernobyl exist here in the US. But that doesn't stop people from being against nuclear power.

US designs have a great safety record, Three Mile Island notwithstanding. There's only one thing I can say I don't like about the nuclear power industry in the US and that's the lack of standardization. There are over 100 nuclear plants operating in the US (not counting those on US Navy ships and submarines), and every one of them is custom built. No two are alike, even those built side-by-side at the same time. If we ever get around to building the next generation of nuclear reactors for power production, we should go to a standardized design.

Standardization makes for less costly plants, the ability to use modular construction, and greater safety because all plants will be identical. The learning curve for workers moving from one plant to another becomes very shallow and very short because all the valves, switches, access panels, electrical components, and critical subsystems will be in the same place in every plant.

The newer designs have taken the lessons learned from the older plants to heart, making them simpler, more reliable and efficient, and easier and less expensive.

The next generation of reactors so-called Generation III units is intended to take everything that's been learned about safe operations and do it even better. Generation III units are the reactors of choice for most of the 34 nations that already have nuclear plants in operation.

The current generation of nuclear plants requires a complex maze of redundant motors, pumps, valves and control systems to deal with emergency conditions. Generation III plants cut down on some of that infrastructure and rely more heavily on passive systems that don't need human intervention to keep the reactor in a safe condition reducing the chance of an accident caused by operator error or equipment failure.

Nuclear plants also have an envious record in regards to the amount of 'up-time', meaning how long the plant is online generating power before it's shut down for routine maintenance or refueling. Fossil fuel plants require intense and frequent maintenance of their boiler systems, meaning they must be shut down far more often compared to nuclear plants. It is not uncommon for nuclear plants to run continuously for two years without a shut down. Fossil fuel plants (particularly coal plants) may have been shut down three or four times in that same period. And because nuclear plants run for much longer periods than conventional fossil fueled plants, both their operating costs and cost per kilowatt-hour are lower. They aren't affected by the fluctuations in fuel prices.

Continued in Part II - Why nuclear waste isn't an issue.

Skip over at Granite Grok does a pretty good job deconstructing the Waxman/Markey plan for the so-called cap-and-trade of carbon emissions.

As Skip puts it "Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) & Ed Markey (D-MA), under the guise of saving the planet, are about to unleash the most sweeping curtailing of our liberties and thinning out of our wallets by taxes ever seen in the history of the US."

Henry Waxman, the most feared man in Congress, has decided we should fear him too. So he and his Massachusetts cohort, Ed Markey, have decided it would be a great idea to cripple the US economy , heavily burden the American taxpayer with higher energy costs, more taxes, and greater government control of our lives.

Somehow this does not surprise me. Waxman has already shown on more than one occasion that he has little if any respect for the American public. All he wants is power over them and this is one way he can do it without the need to run for President. Despite protestations to the contrary, Mr. Waxman does not have our best interests at heart. He wants to tie our hands because of the badly thought out and ever more discredited theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. He doesn't appear to care if it's true or not. All he knows is that it gives him more control over every aspect of American lives. He wants us to live the way he decides we should (not that I expect him to do likewise). It will be yet another example of a watermelon environmentalist telling us "Do as I say, not as I do," just like AlGore.

At the suggestion of Dan from Taiwan (see this post), I looked into the lawsuit filed by an environmental activist against world leaders to the tune of $1 billion, citing their failure to prevent global warming.

Say what?

So this boob has decided because world leaders won't act on questionable scientific hypotheses they should pay up?

Activist and blogger Dan Bloom says he will sue world leaders for "intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2″.

The prosecutor's office at the ICC, the world's first permanent court (pictured below right) for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, says it is allowed to receive information on crimes that may fall within the court's jurisdiction from any source.

"Such information does not per se trigger a judicial proceeding," the prosecutor's office hastened to add.

The question is: will or should the prosecutor take on the case?

I would think true environmentalists would want the ICC to stay as far away from this suit as possible. Should the prosecutor decide to go forward with the suit, the "warmists", those blaming all climate change on human use of fossil fuels, will finally have to put up their evidence, meaning all their evidence, to back up their claims. They may find their evidence falls far short of convincing anyone, let alone a judge or jury, that climate change is All-Our-Fault. The skeptics will finally be able to present their case, putting holes in the claims made by the AGW faithful. It could be such a suit would finally put a stake through the heart of the warmist dogma. Then we can get back to doing the things that need to be done rather than wasting our time with this dreck.

Why is it this does not surprise me?

With calls for more alternative energy sources, in many cases mandated by state laws, the so-called environmentalists are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that those alternative energy sources will not see the light of day.

Oh, they make all of the appropriate noise about making the move away from the use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, for generating electricity. But once plans for wind farms or solar electric facilities are proposed, those same environmentalists then protest against the power lines needed to get that power to the consumers.

So what is their real agenda?

To control the populace by controlling access to the sources of energy.

In other words, the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.

They give with one hand and take away with the other.

One of the arguments made on either side of the anthropogenic global warming debate is there are not enough definitive records about daily, monthly, and annual weather that go back more than a century or two. Beyond that scientists have had to use geological, sedimentary, and chemical studies in order to determine weather conditions over the centuries. But it could be that extensive weather records going back over 400 years may take some of the wind out of AGW proponents' sails, thanks to the British Royal Navy.

Scientists have uncovered a treasure trove of meteorological information contained in the detailed logs kept by those on board the vessels that established Britain's great seafaring tradition including those on Nelsons' Victory and Cook's Endeavour.

Every Royal Naval ship kept a detailed record of climate including air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and major meteorological disturbances.

A group of academics and Met Office scientists has unearthed the records dating from the 1600s and examined more than 6,000 logs, which have provided one of the world's best sources for long-term weather data.

Many scientists believe that storms are caused by global warming, but these were came during the so-called Little Ice Age that affected Europe from about 1600 to 1850.

The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.

"British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone," [Sunderland University geographer] Mr Wheeler said. "They are a stunning resource. Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions."

The Royal Navy recordings would have been consistent, using the same units of measure, the same instruments, made by officers trained to observe their surroundings and to record their observations. I doubt one could find more definitive records than those in the thousands of Royal Navy logbooks. There can be no "adjusting" the climate records as has been done by some researchers (anyone remember the Mann 'hockeystick' graph?), no explaining away the measurements made, no way to claim some kind of bias in the data collected. This data was collected through observation and measurements made by trained observers. Should the data show global warming is part of a natural cycle, it could be a major blow against the AGW faithful.

(H/T Never Yet Melted and Maggie's Farm)

It's not just climate scientists questioning the validity of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. Quite a few of my fellow engineers are also questioning the conclusions brought forth by the UN IPCC, conclusions based upon conjecture, some data, and unvalidated hypothesis.

I do agree with Mr. Williston that engineers should add their voice to the discussion. This is especially true because if the world adopts all the proposals of the AGW alarmists, then you can expect to spend at least twice as much for gasoline and natural gas and you can also expect to spend twice as much for electricity. In addition, the cost of every single manufactured good should go up about 25% due to the higher cost of energy. So what do we know for certain about anthropogenic global warming? Not very much for sure.

Lets go over the basis for AGW.

1)      CO2 concentrations have gone from 300ppm to 400ppm in the last century.

2)      That increase is due to human consumption of fossil fuels and burning forests.

3)      The increases in CO2 from 0.03% to 0.04% is triggering much larger increases in water vapor.

4)      The increase of CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere that block infrared radiation out to space means that the equilibrium temperature that can radiate heat out to space is at a higher altitude.

5)      The higher altitude of the equilibrium sphere means that surface temperatures have to be hotter.

6)      The world's climate is demonstrably getting hotter, by about a degree in the last century, so all the above is true.

7)      There are one or more tipping points, positive feedback mechanisms, that once passed will cause massive climate change and that may well destroy the human race.

8)      Hence it is a simple fact that mankind is causing all the earth to warm and if we don't do something right away we are all going to kill our grandchildren.

Nice, but first off, it is not a theory. It is a hypothesis. See a theory is built up from a whole series of hypotheses that have been proven experimentally. There are a lot of things wrong with AGW, but the most glaring is that it is not science, no more than intelligent design is. They are both broad sweeping hypotheses that have not only failed experimental testing; real-world results often contradict the stated hypothesis.

That's one of my biggest problems with AGW. It doesn't appear to fit in with any hypothesis with any consistency. So far no one has been able to model the effects given the data available. The models are always off, in most cases by orders of magnitude even over a relatively short period of time (a year or so). So how can we possibly expect to accurately model what the climate will be like 100 years from now? The answer: we can't. No one can.

Even with this failure to prove AGW we are expected to spend billions, if not trillions of dollars fixing a problem that likely does not exist. Yet we are asked to take it on faith that if we don't do something now WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

At first I was one of those believing in the premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming. But as time went by, I started seeing too many holes in the various predictions and hypotheses, causing me to take a closer look. What I saw changed my mind. What I saw also reminded me of the dire predictions of global overpopulation, famine, plague, and a host of other doomsday predictions that never came to be even though those making the predictions swore they had the proof. All that was required was for the rest of us to take it on faith.

While some folks have maintained I am a global warming denier (or rather, a global climate change denier), they would be wrong. I am, proud to say, an Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptic, and with good reason. My skepticism comes from too much conflicting information, where some data suggests AGW may be valid, and other data suggests natural processes. There's been far too many statements made that "the debate is over." I beg to differ. The debate is just beginning. In fact, many skeptical climate scientists were once proponents of the AGW theory. But as more data became available, their support for AGW waned and they started looking for other causes.

One of those scientists is Dr. David Evans, a former consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office. For six years he worked collecting and analyzing data and generating computer climate models for the Australian government. The more data he reviewed, the more convinced he was that CO₂ was not the driving force behind climate change. As he put it, "As Lord Keynes famously said, 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?'"

There were four basic facts that convinced Dr. Evans the theory of AGW was wrong.

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

So data being quoted by some to support the idea of AGW either have no connection with CO₂ or are slanted in such a way to as to make it appear so.

Data that challenges AGW is being ignored or explained away as an anomaly, even though there's plenty of anomalous data being used to support the AGW theory. One of those 'anomalous' data sets shows global temperatures have been dropping since 1998, but the AGW faithful ignore it, trying to explain it away as merely a pause in the inexorable rise in temperatures. Yet solar astronomers point to a lengthy delay in the start of Sunspot Cycle 24, a signal the Sun's output has declined and may be entering a period of relative quiet after over a century of increasing sunspot activity. Earth's climate has a tendency to track sunspot activity, with long quiet periods of sunspot activity, called minimums, heralding equally long period of colder temperatures. Are we entering one of those minimums as some solar astronomers suspect?

Regardless, it would be prudent to examine all of the data available, making sure to take into account all factors that can affect the accuracy of the collected data, as mentioned by Dr. Evans. Otherwise the theory of AGW can never be adequately debated or tested.

Last week I wrote about Senator John Warner (R-VA) and his idea to re-impose the National Maximum Speed Limit and why it was such a bad idea. I have no idea how far his efforts to do so will go. But even if he tries and fails, there may be another way we will see the hated 55MPH speed limit make its return, and neither Congress or state governments will have anything to do with it. Instead it may make its reappearance as a regulation created by the Environmental Protection Agency.

What kind of nonsense is this? How is it they can be allowed to set speed limits on the nation's highways when they have no part in traffic regulations and laws? By using a back door.

That back door has to do with CO₂ emissions from cars and trucks. If they slow vehicles down the amount of CO₂ emissions will decrease. Never mind the fact there may be additional costs associated with the lower speed limits they have ignored, one of them being time. After all time is money and the longer it takes people or cargo to get from Point A to Point B, the more it can take its toll on the economy.

Never mind the extra cost might be minimal, there's still the idea that this course of action was decided upon by a friggin' bureaucrat rather than our duly elected representative to Congress or our state legislature. The EPA is sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong and where it has no jurisdiction. Nowhere in its charter is it stated they have control over the highways and byways or the laws and regulations governing them.

If the Agency's aim is to lower CO₂ emissions, would the lower speed limits apply to electric cars? Why should they be forced to drive at a lower speed if they have no emissions? (Yes, I know that ultimately they do have emissions due the the smokestack gases from fossil-fired power plants. But what if you live in an area that uses little, if any fossil fuel for power plants? Much of New Hampshire's electric power comes from nuclear and hydro, with a few coal and natural gas plants, as well as 5 biomass plants. Does that mean we'd get a pass for electric cars? Of course not.)

This proposal by the EPA is merely an end run around the legislative process, usurping the powers of Congress and the state legislatures. We should let them know in no uncertain terms to back off. Another approach is to take them to court. Yet another is to string a few of 'em up, to let them know of our displeasure. (No, we wouldn't hang them until they are dead. Just until they're mostly dead. Of course, with a bureaucrat that might be hard to do because so many of them are already mostly dead...from the neck up.)

As much as it may pain many of the more faithful believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming, it turns out George W. Bush's approach to the reduction of greenhouse gases was the right one.

Bush has been criticized for not embracing the Kyoto Protocols, a treaty that was rejected unanimously by the US Senate during the Clinton administration. It obligated the US to onerous measures in order to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those measures would have crippled the US economy while those countries exempt from the limits imposed by Kyoto would have been able to continue increasing their emissions and expand their economies with no consequence. President Bush certainly wasn't going to sign on something that would do nothing but impoverish the US.

As time has shown, Bush made the right decision. Many nations that were signatories to Kyoto haven't even come close to meeting their greenhouse gas emission goals, with most of them seeing their emissions rise. On the other hand, the US has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions 3% since 2002 and they're still falling. With the large increase in energy prices over the past year, I would expect they'll fall off at an even greater rate.

The US has been doing what the Kyoto signatories have failed to do, and we didn't have to destroy our economy to do it. We did it our way, not by following draconian measures laid out by parties that do not have our best interests at heart.

At least someone out there understands the Greens are not friends of the environmental movement, but rather have their own agenda which has little to do with protecting the environment.

I linked to this WSJ opinion piece yesterday, but really should have dug into it a bit more than I did.

As Bret Stephens explains it, the true believers in anthropogenic global warming don't need proof or science or data, because they believe. They want it to be true. They need it to be true.

The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore - population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations - and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

These are the "watermelon" environmentalists - Green on the outside, Red on the inside. Any excuse to exert control over the great unwashed masses (that's you and me, folks) is just fine with them. If they can't sell outright overt socialism, then they can use global warming as a back door entry into the lives of the world's population.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Hmm. Where have we heard this line of reasoning before? Could it be from folks like the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other militant fundamental religious cults of a number of faiths? They want us to return a few centuries into the past, eschewing the modern conveniences all in the name of saving the earth. But it wouldn't surprise me that they would exempt themselves from such restrictions because they would need much of that technology to keep an eye on the rest of us, right? Of course it would also mean we would then fall prey to illnesses and diseases we rarely see anymore because the means to treat them would be against God's will...except for them, of course.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

This last one ties in closely with the second one, and makes me wonder what our ancestors from 100 or 200 years ago would say about this foolishness.

I have little doubt the Founding Fathers would be walking around dope-slapping the lot of these AGW believers. They would see it for the foolishness it is, as would anyone from back then. This need to 'voluntarily' dismantle a society based solely upon an over-hyped and unproven theory would be seen for what it is: stupidity.

In response to this post about anthropogeneic global warming, a commenter suggested I visit their blog and read their take on the issue of global warming. It is something I could have responded to immediately, but decided to hold off for a short while in order to gather my counter to the 'fact' of AGW.

My biggest problem with the whole AGW claim is that we are solely responsible for the climate change over the past 150 years or so, with too many of the so-called 'warmists' using temperature recordings over that period to prove what's happening and that it's all our fault. They conveniently ignore the previous 850 years of climate during which the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age occurred. During the Medieval Warm Period (approximately 700 through 1300 A.D.) global temperatures were warmer than they are today. The old canard about Leif Erikson conning Viking settlers to Greenland by calling it "Greenland" was disproved years ago. Greenland was actually green, with a temperate climate not unlike New England or the northern Mid-Atlantic states of today. It wasn't until the Little Ice Age descended upon mankind around 1300 A.D that Greenland became a cold and inhospitable place to live. The settlers finally had to abandon their homes when agriculture was no longer possible and fishing was too poor to sustain them.
 
How do we know this? Part of it is in written records kept by the Norse and part by archaeological research at the sites of the settlements, showing hundreds of years of agricultural work done by the settlers of the kind only possible in a temperate climate.
 
Looking back even farther in the past one must take into account the Roman Warm Period, when there was a lengthy time of well above 'average' temperatures. It was even warm enough for vineyards in northern England/southern Scotland. (The Romans never really tamed the rest of Scotland. The Picts saw to that.) Some vineyards were also prevelent during the Medieval Warm Period, but not to the extent seen during the earlier Roman Period.
 
Work done by Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute has postulated a direct tie in with the solar activity during those two periods as well as the cold periods between them and from the Medieval Warm Period and today. There are those who disagree with Svensmark's conclusions, but also plenty of climatologists that see there is something to Svensmark's theory.
 
I think my biggest problem is that too many are more than willing to ascribe climate change to a single cause, particularly the AGW proponents. Far too many people on both sides of the debate are willing to cast aside data or additional theories that are in direct conflict with their beliefs or try to minimize factors that may have as great or even greater affect on climate.
 
One chart used by my erstwhile commenter shows changes in the CO₂ and changes in temperatures. Does anyone else notice the same things I did?
 
First, it shows a somewhat regular cycle from the beginning of the chart to the end. Second, it shows both increases and decreases in both CO₂ levels and temperatures. What is driving those cycles? It sure as heck isn't likely to be human activity, is it? Obviously not. Could it possibly be driven by the sun's change in activity in a combination of the 11 year, 23 year, and 178 year solar cycles?
 
Regardless of the mechanisms driving climate charge - warming or cooling - there's far too much hysteria out there making debate difficult, if not impossible. The AGW folks seem to driven to neurosis, their cause taking on the characteristics of obsession, or worse, a religious cult.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited.
 
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
 
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

This WSJ opinion piece goes on to claim that too much of the environmental/climate change movement has been hijacked by those with a political or ideological ax to grind, leaving the actual scientists out of the debate, except for those who are willing to trade their scientific objectivity for personal gain, political or monetary. (Let's face it, there are millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars out there for grants and research, particularly if you'll use the money to prove climate change, specifically warming, is All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans™. That's one hell of an incentive.