News & Commentary February 10, 2010

 

Obama’s EPA – Creating Real Pollution to Reduce CO2

Obama’s EPA – increasing air pollution in the form of particulate matter to chase the CO2 bogeyman.

A recent EPA ruling (EPA-420-F-10-007, February 2010, [ http://www.epa.gov/otaq/renewablefuels/420f10007.htm ]) is mandating the use of 36 billion gallons of “renewable fuels” by 2022.

Health Effects

“The increased use of renewable fuels will also impact emissions with some emissions such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides (NOx), acetaldehyde and ethanol expected to increase and others such as carbon monoxide (CO) and benzene expected to decrease. However, the impacts of these emissions on criteria air pollutants are highly variable from region to region. Overall the emission changes are projected to lead to increases in population-weighted annual average ambient PM [particulate matter] and ozone concentrations, which in turn are anticipated to lead to up to 245 cases of adult premature mortality.”

Trading non-toxic CO2 for airborne particulate matter is not a good idea. (Global Warming Science)

 

Democratic Climate Revolt - A bipartisan effort to stop the EPA's anticarbon crusade.

The Obama Administration has been moving full-speed ahead on anticarbon regulation, never mind waiting for Congress to pass a bill. But now opposition is building among senior Democrats, with two powerful committee Chairmen introducing a bill last week to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from declaring that carbon is a dangerous pollutant.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is busy writing new rules that would let her drive a tax-and-regulation bulldozer through the U.S. economy under laws never meant to apply to greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson is expected to issue new anticarbon regulations for cars and trucks next month before moving on to power plants and other industries.

This is all too much for Missouri's Ike Skelton and Minnesota's Collin Peterson, the Chairmen of the House Armed Services and Agriculture Committees, respectively. Along with Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson, they are pushing a two-page bill that would amend the Clean Air Act to restore Congress's original intent and strip CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the statutory language.

This is bipartisanship we can believe in. Such legislation would vaporize the EPA's "endangerment finding" for carbon and thus require the Administration to use democratic debate and persuasion if it really wants to reshape the energy markets and impose huge new costs on American consumers. What a thought.

"If Congress doesn't do something soon, the EPA is going to cram these regulations through all on their own," Mr. Peterson said. "I have no confidence that EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without severe harm to all taxpayers."

Added Mr. Skelton: "Simply put, we cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats at EPA. America's energy and environmental policies should be set by Congress." Yes, they should be. (WSJ)

 

Still trying to ration your energy: Senate offers some hope for legislation to combat climate change

CLIMATE CHANGE legislation, according to conventional wisdom, is all but dead for the year. It fell victim to Senate gridlock, yawning gaps between lawmakers over how and even whether to tackle the issue and President Obama's decision last year to place it third on his list of priorities, after the stimulus and health care. The president himself seemed to admit at least temporary defeat last week; at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama cited speculations that the Senate might pass only a modest energy bill. Such a bill inevitably would contain expensive subsidies and research programs, but it would not place a price on carbon. (Washington Post)

 

Safety Valves and Rabbit Holes

You have heard much talk about various schemes devised by members of Congress to ensure that the energy tax masquerading as a rationing scheme — the cap-and-trade wonder that President Obama insists will cause your electricity prices to "necessarily skyrocket" and "bankrupt" key industries — won't cost you anything. And yet it will still lead you to use far less energy, result in the invention of pixie dust, and otherwise do all those things that Europe's scheme failed to do.

From Europe today comes yet another admission that, unless the thing hurts — bad, it won't do anything emissions-wise (nor climate-wise, given that the overwhelming majority of the world's nations say fuggedaboudit). (Chris Horner, NRO)

 

New York Times on IPCC's and Pachauri's scandals

As I have mentioned several times, most of the revelations about the U.N. climate panel and its boss, Rajendra Pachauri, were first published in the British newspapers, especially The Telegraph and The Times. A more limited coverage has been available to the readers and viewers of FoxNews.

But the gospel may finally be coming to the U.S. mainstream media, too. Elizabeth Rosenthal named her article

U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege

Although it includes some bizarre alarmist comments such as

"The general consensus among mainstream scientists is that the errors are in any case minor and do not undermine the report’s conclusions,"

it actually says enough true stuff about the GlacierGate and especially various conflicts of interest of the IPCC boss. I feel that they find it easier to sacrifice particular individuals, such as Pachauri, than the core elements of the orthodoxy. That's an explanation why the financial interests are being given so much space while the discussion of the errors and sub-par references in the 2007 report remains limited to the GlacierGate and is not too detailed, anyway.

» Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)

 

All the News That Fit the Foreign Press Last Month

Today the New York Times finally gets round to covering the scandals roiling the International Panel on Climate Change and its controversial head, high-flying railroad engineer and soft-porn novelist Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. It's a front-page story but incredibly dully written, as if its object is to depress interest in the subject. In its way, it's a textbook example of why the Times is doomed.

The first thing you notice is that the NYT is not investigating the scandals itself but merely commenting on stories reported by the Times of London and my old colleagues at Britain's Telegraph. Jay Currie asks:

Perhaps the New York Times has become a blog.

Not quite. If so, they'd include links to the Brit originals. I will make just one observation, relating to the reporter's dogged attempts to exonerate Dr. Pachauri from charges of conflict of interest. Elisabeth Rosenthal says it's all hunky-dory because the money the IPCC chair gets as a paid consultant to private companies goes to help poor children in rural India or something. She adds:

Dr. Pachauri, 69, said the only work income he received was a salary from the Energy and Resources Institute: about $49,000, according to his 2009 Indian tax return, which he provided to The New York Times. The return also lists $16,000 in other income, most of it interest on accounts in Indian banks.

But the most casual glance at Dr. Pachauri suggests that this is not a man with a $65,000 lifestyle. For example, within the space of a week he made two round-trips from New York to Delhi, in each case staying a day and then flying back to the U.S. — the first time for a cricket practice, the second for the actual match. First-class airfare for those two trips alone would be about a third of his pre-tax income.

So who paid for them? The U.N.? Or one of his consulting clients? Or more likely that institute of his for helping upcountry villagers? He was, after all, playing for his Institute's amateur cricket team. So, when Deutsche Bank pay Dr. Pachauri's consulting fees to his Institute, are they in fact funding his remarkably lavish lifestyle?

Let's take another example: The launch festivities for his warmographic novel (in which he demonstrates an obsession with bosomly swell on a par with noted breast man Andrew Sullivan) were paid for by BP. Curious. Big Oil sponsoring Big Breasts for Big Climate.

Dr. Pachauri is in the happy position of so many people one encounters in "public service" who rarely if ever have cause to write a personal check. But why is the New York Times reporter assigned to this story so ill-informed that she doesn't even ask him about the cricket and the breast-book party and all the other stuff?

As I said, the Times coverage only makes sense if your object is to bore readers away. (Mark Steyn, NRO)

 

Hansen's colleague eviscerates AR4 Chapter 9

While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen's at GISS. Lacis's is not a name I've come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC's report is simply breathtaking.

Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report - it's the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.

Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:

There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn't the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community - instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.

I'm speechless. The chapter authors, however weren't. This was their reply (all of it):

Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.

Simply astonishing. This is a consensus? (Bishop Hill)

 

Freddy tries a clean up: Victory for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors

Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency despite being hectored and abused by rabid climate sceptics ( Fred Pearce, The Guardian)

 

Climate Group Admits Mistakes - Some IPCC Officials Say the U.N.-Sponsored Group Must Improve Procedures for Reviewing Reports

Some top officials of a Nobel Prize-winning climate-science organization are acknowledging the panel made some mistakes amid a string of recent revelations questioning the accuracy of some of the information in its influential reports.

Officials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored network of scientists whose reports strongly influence global policy on greenhouse-gas emissions, initially played down some of the allegations and criticized those who called them important. Increasingly, however, they are acknowledging the panel's mistakes and saying it needs to tighten its procedures.

"This has not increased the credibility of the IPCC," said Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist who is co-chairing one of the main sections of the IPCC's next big climate-change report, due out in 2013 and 2014. "There is some room for improvement." (WSJ)

 

Passing sentence

It being the 350^th anniversary of the Royal Society, celebrations by the new Greenie proprietors are only natural. The Telegraph has a page largely dominated by President Martin Rees with an article entitled The unstoppable spirit of enquiry. Rees is a notorious serial scaremonger, through doom-laden books and articles. One wonders, however, whether many readers paused to consider the import of one particular paragraph that occurs in the middle of this piece:

Traditional journals survive as guarantors of quality, but they are supplemented by a blogosphere of widely varying quality. The latter cries out for an informal system of quality control, indicated by the approbation by discerning readers, by blogs or by commentaries.

There are those of us, who have long ago published in some of these traditional journals, who might question whether some of them still act as guarantors of quality. It is the second sentence, however, that for all its vagueness and understatement carries an implied threat. Who are these discerning readers, blogs and commentators? While no one can argue that most of what is on the internet is not irredeemable nonsense, it still has the overarching merit that it is uncensored. Readers are able to make their own judgement. The implication of this statement is that there are those who are more qualified to decide what hoi polloi are allowed to read. So far the internet has been free of the self-censorship observed by the establishment media, which has allowed ludicrous and costly theories to reign, and it is only recently that the establishment has come to realise that upstarts out there are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The neo-Marxists who are the backbone of the new Greenie establishment would dearly love to extend their censorship to the internet. Be warned! (Number Watch)

 

NOAA's Ministry Of Propaganda

Despite failures at Copenhagen, the fraud of the IPCC and the farce of Climate-gate, the administration wants an agency to monitor climate change. Why must we fund one-stop shopping for climate charlatans?

As the climate freezes, there's no freeze on federal employment that will grow even more with the establishment of a new agency, the Climate Service office. The new agency was announced Monday by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This ministry of climate change propaganda will operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service. "Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Lubchenco said at a press conference as snow measured in feet blanketed the Eastern seaboard. This new agency represents a threat to real climate science.

Lubchenco also announced a NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect climate data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information."

That portal will be more like Alice's rabbit hole, leading to a world of disinformation where climate data will mean whatever Locke and Lubchenco want it to mean. (IBD)

 

Response from Coleman's Corner

Richard Somerville, Ph.D. is a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He has told San Diego "City Beat" that KUSI promised to present his full statement on-air but didn’t. He was talking about my January 14th hour long program "Global Warming: The Other Side". KUSI contacted Scripps seeking a response to the program for our 10 PM newscast that night. Scripps referred our Producer to Somerville. The Producer who had that assignment assures me that no "promise" was made. But according to the nasty City Beat editorial that slam-bams the program, Somerville said the station didn't run his written statement and included only a couple of “garbled” sentences from a lengthy interview during a 10 p.m. newscast. He called KUSI and me "unethical."

I object to his remarks to "City Beat" and take particular exception to being called unethical. (KUSI)

 

Let’s pick apart this politics of doom

‘Climategate’ confirms what many of us already knew: that claims of future catastrophe are political, not scientific. (Ben Pile, spiked)

 

Comments On The New National Climate Service

The federal government of the United States has announced the establishment of a National Climate Service; e.g. see the NY Times article by Lauren Morello titled Agency Will Create National Climate Service to Spur Adaptation.

The article includes the text

“The Obama administration announced plans yesterday to create a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service…..

Lubchenco [NOAA Administrator] said her agency already receives millions of requests each year for the type of information the proposed climate service would provide, “and we fully expect requests for information to grow explosively.”

“There is no question about the critical need for this service,” she said. “Climate change is real. It’s happening now in our own backyards and around the globe, and it’s beginning to touch nearly every aspect of our lives.”

The NOAA chief said climate change is already raising sea levels, lengthening growing seasons, prompting earlier spring snowmelts and shifts in river flows, causing more intense drought and increasing the incidence of extreme weather….

NCDC head Thomas Karl will serve as the climate service’s transitional director. NOAA also plans to create new positions for six regional climate service directors.”

The statements by Jane Lubchenco and the appointment of Tom Karl as the transitional director, assures that policymakers will continue to receive an inappropriately narrow view of our actual knowledge with respect to climate science. I have documented the biases of Tom Karl in a number of reports and weblog posts; e.g. see

Comment On Tom Karl’s Interview In The Washington Post

Erroneous Climate Science Statement By Tom Karl, Director Of The National Climate Data Center And President Of The American Meteorological Society

E-mail Documentation Of The Successful Attempt By Thomas Karl Director Of the U.S. National Climate Data Center To Suppress Biases and Uncertainties In the Assessment Surface Temperature Trends

The NOAA Administrator, in making the appointment of Tom Karl, has apparently not learned that the climate science community has a broader view of the issues and less confidence in the skill of the multi-decadal global and regional climate predictions than she does.  By selecting Tom Karl, she has assured that this narrow viewpoint will be perpetuated within the new National Climate Service. (Climate Science)

 

Sir David King: Half Right on the IPCC and Global Warming Policies, Despite Bad Logic

Guest post by Indur M. Goklany

Sir David King, erstwhile Chief Scientific Adviser to Her Majesty’s Government, famous for his claim that “climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism,” had an op-ed in the Telegraph over the weekend, in which he notes that the IPCC runs against the spirit of science. [Full disclosure: I have previously tangled with Sir David on the pages of Science magazine, here.] He states, absolutely correctly in my opinion:

“Faced with the social need to tell the world what the science says, the IPCC was set up as a means of seeking consensus. My concern has always been that it runs against the normal spirit of science.” [Quotes are italicized; emphasis added.]

He explains, “In science, people are supposed to rock the boat,” and ideas have to survive “ordeal by fire.”  So thank you, Sir David, for endorsing skepticism and the scientific method. In our world, that cannot be repeated often enough. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

 

The Heretics: Anthony Watts

Given the dogmatic fervor of global warming proponents, and their intolerance of skeptics who dare to question the latest commandment (see: cap-and-trade) in the green scripture, it is perhaps no coincidence that the environmentalist movement sometimes seems to have more in common with theology than with science. If that is true, then the logical word to describe those scientists who have challenged environmental hysteria and extremism is “heretics.” In a series of profiles, Front Page’s Rich Trzupek will spotlight prominent scientists whose “heretical” research, publications, and opinions have helped add a much-needed dose of balance and fact to environmental debates that for too long have been driven by fear mongering and alarmism. In a field that demands political conformity, they defiantly remain the heretics. Previous profiles in the series include Steve Milloy, Dr. Craig Idso, Dr. Roy Spencer, and Lord Christopher Monckton. – The Editors (Rich Trzupek, FrontPage)

 

Wild speculation alert: Animals cope with climate change at the dinner table

Some animals, it seems, are going on a diet, while others have expanding waistlines. 

It's likely these are reactions to rapidly rising temperatures due to global climate change, speculates Prof. Yoram Yom-Tov of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology, who has been measuring the evolving body sizes of birds and animals in areas where climate change is most extreme.

Changes are happening primarily in higher latitudes, where Prof. Yom-Tov has identified a pattern of birds getting smaller and mammals getting bigger, according to most of the species he's examined. The change, he hypothesizes, is likely a strategy for survival. Prof. Yom-Tov, who has spent decades measuring and monitoring the body sizes of mammals and small birds, says that these changes have been happening more rapidly.

His most recent paper on the topic, focused on the declining body sizes of arctic foxes in Iceland, appeared in Global Change Biology. (PhysOrg)

 

Brown pelicans struggling to survive

All along the Oregon coast over the last month, hundreds of brown pelicans have turned up dead, starving or begging for food. 

As many as 1,000 of the gangly seabirds failed to make their annual fall migration to California, many instead winding up at Oregon's rehabilitation centers.

Those that did head south, leaving the Pacific Northwest winter behind, were battered by California's recent storms. Shelters in San Pedro and the San Francisco Bay Area too are full of emaciated pelicans.

Researchers, at a loss to explain the casualties, are looking at unusual ocean currents and the depletion of fish stocks -- as well as warmer temperatures, toxic runoff and algae booms -- as possible causes. (PhysOrg)

 

From CO₂ Science Volume 13 Number 6: 10 February 2010

Editorial:
Ed Miliband's "War on Climate Sceptics": It's an operation that is sadly misdirected.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 804 individual scientists from 476 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Boniface River Area, Northern Québec, Canada. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summaryl
Little Ice Age (Regional - South America: Peru): An externally-driven millennial-scale oscillatory phenomenon has been influencing the climate of Peru -- and most all of the rest of the world as well -- as far back in time as researchers have been able to discern its effects.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Chinese Red Pine (Zhao et al., 2009), Reed Grass (Zhao et al., 2009), Soybean (Kanemoto et al., 2009), and Sugar Beet (Burkart et al., 2009).

Journal Reviews:
The Hydrometeorology of the Amazon Basin: How did it vary over the last seven decades of the 20th century?

The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in Northern Patagonia: How do their times-of-occurrence compare with those of the rest of the world? ... and how do their temperatures compare with those of the present?

Deaths Due to Coronary Heart Disease in the Elderly: What a difference a day makes!

Dengue Fever and Climate Change: Does the latter promote the former?

The Effects of Increases in Atmospheric CO2 and Soil Nitrogen Concentrations on Grassland Biodiversity: How do the impacts differ when the two phenomena occur separately and concurrently? And what are the implications of the results? (co2science.org)

 

January 2010 Global Tropospheric Temperature Map

Here’s the UAH lower tropospheric temperature anomaly map for January, 2010. As can be seen, Northern Hemispheric land, on a whole, is not as cold as many of us thought (click on image for larger version). Below-normal areas were restricted to parts of Russia and China, most of Europe, and the southeastern United States. Most of Canada and Greenland were well above normal: (Roy W. Spencer)

 

Q & A: Will Instrumentation Having Sufficient Temporal And Spatial Coverage And Sufficient Measurement Accuracy Ever Be Available To Validate The Expected Change In The Radiative Energy Balance At The TOA?

Question: Will instrumentation having sufficient temporal and spatial coverage and sufficient measurement accuracy ever be available to validate the expected change in the radiative energy balance at the TOA?

As you can tell, my questions have focused on the energy balance that is fundamental to the AGW argument. I suspect that the UV reflectivity ( the albedo ) and IR absorptivity ( the greenhouse factor ) are not know with sufficient precision to differentiate at the level of change associated with all AGW sources.

[thanks to Dan Hughes for asking!]

Answer:

We do not, in my view, even need the measurements of the TOA radiative imbalance since we can let the climate system itself perform the diagnosis. I discuss this in my paper

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.

See also

Ellis et al. 1978: The annual variation in the global heat balance of the Earth. J. Climate. 83, 1958-1962.

I also discuss the value of using the upper ocean heat content to diagnose the radiative imbalance in my paper

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.

Upper ocean (and total ocean mass) is the dominant reservoir of heat change in the climate system. We can use this component of the climate to accurately diagnose the heating rate (i.e. the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere). (Climate Science)

 

GPS Aids in Sea Level Rise Debate

The Technical Summary of the most recent IPCC reports states that “Over the 1961 to 2003 period, the average rate of global mean sea level rise is estimated from tide gauge data to be 1.8 ± 0.5 mm yr–1.” “The average thermal expansion contribution to sea level rise for this period was 0.42 ± 0.12 mm yr–1, with significant decadal variations, while the contribution from glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets is estimated to have been 0.7 ± 0.5 mm yr–1. The sum of these estimated climate-related contributions for about the past four decades thus amounts to 1.1 ± 0.5 mm yr–1, which is less than the best estimate from the tide gauge observations. Therefore, the sea level budget for 1961 to 2003 has not been closed satisfactorily.” (WCR)

 

Is geoengineering inevitable?

Geoengineering, says scientist David Keith, “is like chemotherapy. It’s something nobody should like.”

But if you can’t avoid cancer, chemotherapy may be your best option. And, if it becomes evident that the earth can’t avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change, it is not merely possible that governments will turn to geoengineering.

Some people believe that it is all but certain.

Geoengineering, as you probably know, is the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planet to counter global warming. It can take a number of forms, as the graphic below shows, some perhaps still to be discovered. Long a taboo subject, geoengineering is being talked about openly these days by scientists, environmentalists and policy thinkers.

The National Academy of Sciences held a workshop on geoengineering in June. Influential books including SuperFreakonomics and Whole Earth Discipline, by longtime environmentalist Stewart Brand, argue that it’s time to take geoengineering seriously. A congressional subcommittee held its second hearing on geoengineering just last week. ( Marc Gunther, Energy Collective)

We already engineer our world on the small and medium scale, as we should. Engineering is a nice capacity to have but deliberately cooling the world? That's a good way to start a fight (or three, probably more).

 

Stupid idea: Capturing carbon dioxide

In 1997, Rob Seeley was assigned to a small team of engineers charged with finding a way to launch Canada’s first new oil sands mining and upgrading project in 20 years. 

It was the year leading up to the Kyoto Protocol, which sought a globally binding agreement to reduce manmade carbon dioxide, which had been linked to rising global temperatures, or climate change. 

Seeley and his teammates saw Kyoto as a sign of the times, and they designed Shell’s oil sands project with two cogeneration power plants, producing 225 megawatts of low-emissions electricity and thermal energy for their oil sands extraction plant. 

Today, with one oil sands operation in production and another nearing completion, Seeley is working on Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage project, the next big step in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the Shell oil sands operations. 

If approved, Quest would attach a carbon capture and storage system to Shell’s two oil sands upgraders near Edmonton, reducing its combined carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 1.2 million tonnes per year, or nearly 40 per cent. ( Brian Burton, Calgary Herald)

There is absolutely no excuse for such a monumental waste of such a magnificent environmental resource -- atmospheric CO₂ is an essential trace gas, we can't live without it and its current abundance is critically low.

 

$58,000 Solar Investment for a $21 Carbon Credit a Bright Idea?

We can see the t-shirt slogan already: I paid $58,000 for solar panels and all I got was a $21 carbon credit that bought me this t-shirt. It’s not very catchy, but that’s the story of a Harrisburg couple, Tami and Randy Wilson, who installed solar panels in their home to reduce their electricity bill:

The Pennsylvania couple has sold the world’s first carbon credit awarded for a reduction in personal carbon emissions. About 1,800 others have signed up to follow suit – underlining the US public’s readiness to press ahead on the issue. The Wilsons began by getting rid of their son’s heated water bed, turning off power to computers and televisions when not in use, changing to energy-efficient light bulbs, hang-drying their laundry and, finally, investing $58,000 in a solar panel system – until they reduced their electricity bill to zero.

Then they signed up on the MyEmissionsExchange.com site to have their energy savings calculated. They found that they had already saved one tonne of carbon, which earned them a carbon credit. The exchange sold the credit for $21.50 to Molten Metal Equipment Innovations of Ohio, taking a 20 per cent commission.”

Make that $17.20 for the t-shirt after subtracting the exchange’s take. But if we wanted to have some truth to a t-shirt for the Wilsons, it would read: Thank you taxpayers for paying for $36,000 of our investment and thanks federal government for creating an artificial market for carbon dioxide credits. The Wilsons received an $18,000 federal tax credit and an $18,000 rebate check from Pennsylvania’s state government and also expect to collect $2,700 in renewable energy certificates. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

 

Who cares? Suppliers of oil sands fuel shunned

Two big US companies have decided to avoid suppliers that source fuel from Canada's oil sands to curb their carbon footprints.

The decisions by Whole Foods Market, an organic grocery chain, and Bed Bath & Beyond, a household goods company, underline how industry is moving to fill the void left by inaction at Copenhagen and the failure of the US Congress to limit carbon emissions.

Both companies are responding to ForestEthics, a non-governmental organisation that last year began campaigning to lead the US corporate sector away from oil sands fuel, which has a higher carbon content than conventional crude oil. (Financial Times

Great, if these two want their oils imported from hostile regimes and wish to fill the coffers of America haters, that's up to them. That will trivially add to supply pressure on non-oil sands supply and cause more consumers to use oil sands crude as greater supply reduces price pressure. Net result, those yielding to misanthropic watermelon pressure groups increase consumer costs and reduce shareholder profits while acting against American interests and no change in global oil supply or consumption. Wonder if such pointless cowardice makes them proud?

 

Scrap UK's wind farm plans, says Gazprom boss

Deputy chairman of Russia's Gazprom argues plans for renewable energy are irrational and should be replaced by more gas-fired power stations (Tim Webb, The Guardian)

He's partly right, although coal would be a much wiser fuel choice.

 

Jump to site menu

 

Senate Health Bill May Violate First Amendment

Today, the Cato Institute released “Scientific Misconduct: The Manipulation of Evidence for Political Advocacy in Health Care and Climate Policy,” by George Avery of Purdue University.

Avery points to a troubling provision of the Senate-passed health care bill that Democrats are trying to get through the House:

In a section creating a new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to conduct comparative-effectiveness research, the bill allows the withholding of funding to any institution where a researcher publishes findings not “within the bounds of and entirely consistent with the evidence,” a vague authorization that creates a tremendous tool that can be used to ensure self-censorship and conformity with bureaucratic preferences….As AcademyHealth notes, “Such language to restrict scientific freedom is unprecedented and likely unconstitutional.”

He warns that government bureaucrats aren’t likely to let that power go unused.

In July 2007, AcademyHealth, a professional association of health services and health policy researchers, published results of a study of sponsor restrictions on the publication of research results. Surprisingly, the results revealed that more than three times as many researchers had experienced problems with government funders related to prior review, editing, approval, and dissemination of research results. In addition, a higher percentage of respondents had turned down government sponsorship opportunities due to restrictions than had done the same with industrial funding. Much of the problem was linked to an “increasing government custom and culture of controlling the flow of even non-classified information.”

Avery observes that such power enables bureaucrats to engage in “data manipulation to cover inconvenient findings,” much as the scientists at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia appear to have done.  Indeed, he points to evidence of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials suppressing an, ahem, inconvenient internal debate. (Michael F. Cannon, Cato @ liberty)

 

Oh boy... Even third-hand smoke carries carcinogens

WASHINGTON - Old tobacco smoke does more than simply make a room smell stale - it can leave cancer-causing toxins behind, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

They found cancer-causing agents called tobacco-specific nitrosamines stick to a variety of surfaces, where they can get into dust or be picked up on the fingers. Children and infants are the most likely to pick them up, the team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported.

"These findings raise concerns about exposures to the tobacco smoke residue that has been recently dubbed 'third-hand smoke'," the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They suggested a good clean-up could help remove these potentially harmful chemicals and said their findings suggest other airborne toxins may also be found on surfaces. (Reuters) | Formation of carcinogens indoors by surface-mediated reactions of nicotine with nitrous acid, leading to potential thirdhand smoke hazards

With the obligatory: "Children and infants are the most likely to pick them up". Well yes, that's possibly true but why would parents worry about such an idiotically small risk (if it even exists)? Compare it say with the small but real risk junior will pick up pathogens walked in on mom's shoes - ever thought about what's on that sidewalk? The rats and raccoons rummaging through garbage probably don't wipe their feet before scurrying across the sidewalk & their feces are probably loaded with intestinal parasite eggs. What pathogens lurk in that dog poop smeared up and down by foot traffic and that guy who sneezed and spat, what is he incubating?

Most kids in Western society survive the various environmental assaults thrown at them without too much problem and yet we search assiduously for the most trivial and inconsequential of risks. Silly game, isn't it.

 

Food for thought: Ojai environment, nutrition activist dies at age 56

Marty Fujita of Ojai, co-founder of the Food for Thought nutritional program, died of lung cancer Monday morning. She was 56.

Fujita was an author, environmental scientist and community organizer.

“Of all her interests and passions, Marty was most inspired by her love of the Earth and her children. Caring for the Earth and its wild inhabitants was her vocation, her avocation and her spiritual practice,” brother Rod Fujita said. “She was a big thinker and used her ability to understand and communicate difficult concepts to educate people around the world about climate change and the perils of conventional food production. (Ventura County Star)

 

Junk food gets spotlight in many movies: study

NEW YORK - A majority of the top-grossing films in recent years have featured food and beverage product placements -- with junk food and fast-food restaurants grabbing most of the starring roles, a new study finds.

What's concerning, researchers say, is that brand placements were seen in a majority of PG and PG-13 films, which often target children and teenagers, and in one-third of G-rated movies.

Whether those product placements affect kids' food preferences is the big question. And that will be a subject of future research, said Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland, of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, the lead researcher on the current study.

For now, she told Reuters Health in an interview, parents should be aware that movies can be a source of junk-food advertising of sorts. (Reuters Health)

 

Childhood Obesity: It's Not the Amount of TV, It's the Number of Junk Food Commercials

The association between television viewing and childhood obesity is directly related to children's exposure to commercials that advertise unhealthy foods, according to a new UCLA School of Public Health study published in the American Journal of Public Health. (ScienceDaily)

 

Surgery better than diet, exercise in obese teens

CHICAGO - Severely obese teens who had surgery to limit what they could eat lost more weight and enjoyed more health benefits than those who did an intensive lifestyle program, researchers said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

 

The Left Confronts the Eco-Police State (yet another PR problem for climate alarmism?)

by Kenneth P. Green
February 9, 2010

An odd thing happened during Sunday night’s Superbowl game: Joe Romm at Climate Progress and I came to the same conclusion regarding an environmentally controversial Superbowl commercial. We both thought the advertisement portraying Audi’s ability to thrive in an environmental police state with its ‘clean diesel’ technology missed its mark here in the U.S., at least among left-of-center environmentalists.

Sure, Romm wanted the Saints and I the Colts in the big game … and Joe would probably like the environmentalist police portrayed in the commercial, while I’d hate it. But still, there were areas of agreement between us, including on the practice of so-called greenwashing.

As Romm puts it, casting a scurrilous aspersion on the appropriateness of Germanic humor:

I’m not sure the German car company understands that the idea of “Green Police” they are spoofing is, in fact, precisely what many conservatives in this country actually think is the primary reason people who care about the environment—the apparent target audience of this ad—are trying to get the nation to take action on global warming.

And by pointing out Audi’s incongruous focus on powerful cars, Romm sees a bit of greenwashing at work: “Audi isn’t perceived as a green car company, so they aren’t poking fun at themselves, a typically much safer strategy.”

Romm is right on this point. On their website, Audi’s vehicle descriptions focus on driving performance far more than environmental performance. Audi, we’re told, features “legendary,” “nimble,” and “supreme” performance (all euphemisms for high horsepower). The focus is clearly on “Legendary Audi Power,” rather than “Legendary Audi Environmentalism,” as the ad would suggest.

But I wouldn’t call that modest greenwashing, I’d call it blatant and shameless greenwashing–in a league with that of Al Gore, the head of the IPCC, most Hollywood green-advocates, the Obama Administration, and the Democrats in Congress, all of whom encourage others to live green lifestyles while consuming more energy per capita than some of the small countries they claim will be drowned by global-warming-induced sea level rise. And did I mention Nancy Pelosi’s entourage going to climate negotiations in Copenhagen? They put out enough carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic sized swimming pools! Now that’s a bodyprint, not a footprint, by green standards!

But Romm’s big concern probably isn’t about the state of Germanic humor, nor is it really about greenwashing (he’s all for that when various companies flog his favorite carbon-rationing schemes). It is that humor might inadvertently lead people to actually think about what a future of bag police, lightbulb police, foam-cup police, recycling police, plastic bottle police, and hot-tub-temperature police might be like, and view such a development with less than a humorous attitude. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

 

If ya don't want to provide the commodity then get out of the business! Sheesh! Price Ultimate Driver Of Greener Energy Use: GE

LONDON - Pricing systems that encourage households to use energy more efficiently are the best way to help consumers to protect the environment, a senior General Electric Co executive said on Tuesday.

Bob Gilligan, GE's vice president of transmission and distribution, said the development of appliances that adjust their own energy use in response to signals from utility companies would be a key step in achieving this.

"As consumers ... we speak from our heart, we express concern about the environment but we respond from our wallet," he told a conference on the future of cities at Chatham House, the London think-tank.

"If we really want to drive consumer behavior we have to have pricing mechanisms that encourage us to change." (Reuters)

 

Enviro-hysterics wrecking the environment: The Hudson Cleanup

The first phase of the long-delayed dredging of toxic chemicals from the Hudson River is over. The polluter, General Electric, and the Environmental Protection Agency have issued separate reports evaluating the six-month cleanup, which was designed as a trial run for a much larger second phase that will finally rid the river of PCBs, industrial lubricants that have poisoned its mud and fish for generations. (NYT)

If anyone else wanted to so disturb fish habitat and benthic organisms there'd be hell to pay but no, a bunch of zealots can wreck the place, at everyone else's expense, just because they dislike modernity. Leave the Hudson alone, dipsticks!

 

Column - Greens smash your food bowl

I ONCE asked the boss of a big Australian company working on Hong Kong’s new airport what he’d advise young engineers back home.

“Leave,” he snapped.

Our culture had gone sour. Development was now a sin. If you wanted to build stuff, forget Australia.

In fact, Hong Kong showed it could squash an island into a giant landing strip and build a huge bridge, underwater rail link and massive airport in the time it took in Australia to get an environmental effects statement for an extension to a milk bar.

Actually, the truth is more serious - and this week showed just how much.

It’s already a criminal betrayal of our future that we’ve had governments ban genetically modified crops, new uranium mines and nuclear waste facilities for purely superstitious or rabble-rousing reasons.

It’s already beyond reckless that not a single state capital has built a new dam since 1983, which is the real reason for years of water restrictions in Melbourne.

But what we’ve seen this week from the Government now beats all that for sheer, mindless stupidity, as deep-sigh green dreaming triumphs over jobs, trade and the spirit of adventure.

I’m talking about the report the Government released that declared an end to any dream of turning the nation’s vast north into a food bowl.

Continue reading 'Column - Greens smash your food bowl' (Andrew Bolt)

 

Food bowl taskforce attacked by former chief

THE original chairman of the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce has called for a Senate inquiry into the processes and outcome of its final report, which found the Top End couldn't become the nation's next food bowl because of water shortages.

The taskforce came under more fire over the contentious findings, with its members accused by current and past Coalition MPs of having one goal: to lock up vast tracts of land forever.

Former taskforce chairman and Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday there should be an inquiry into how the taskforce arrived at its findings and the findings themselves.

Earlier, Nationals Senator Ron Boswell, Liberal MP Barry Haase and Warren Entsch, the former MP for the north Queensland seat of Leichhardt, said the taskforce had failed to address the north's development potential.

The findings, released on Monday, are that the north of Australia received about a million billion litres of rain a year, but there was not enough water available to create a big new food bowl that could replace the drought-crippled Murray-Darling. The report only considered the north's agricultural potential in terms of available groundwater supplies and not surface water and dams. (The Australian)

 

India Delays GM Vegetable Start For Further Tests

"The moratorium will be in place until all tests are carried out to the satisfaction of everyone ... If that means no start of production, so be it," Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters on Tuesday.

Until the tests are done, the country should build a broad consensus to use GM technology in agriculture in a safe and sustainable manner, he said.

The decision is seen as boosting the Congress party among its main farming vote base, much of which is fearful of GM use, and comes despite pressure from Farm Minister Sharad Pawar who supported introduction of genetically modified "BT Brinjal," or eggplant.

It also signals Congress's leading position within the ruling coalition made up of difficult allies such as Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party. The Congress and Pawar, who also controls the food portfolio, are currently involved in a blame game over rising food prices. (Reuters)

 

Jump to site menu