Today, environmentalists like Guardian columnist George Monbiot are adding a gloss of ‘scientific truth’ to elite prejudices and fears.
This Climate Change Statement is veritably an orchestrated litany of lies, to borrow a phrase. As a longstanding member of the Royal Society of New Zealand I am unable to tolerate such a departure as this from the supposed objectives of fair or responsible comment on scientific matters, so I have resigned in protest.
While former Vice President Al Gore mesmerized activists at Netroots Nation this morning with a surprise visit to Austin, Texas, a different kind of conversation about global warming was taking place at the Right Online conference in the same city. The intensity and energy during the global warming session was by far the most passionate of any of the sessions I have attended here. It seems some conservative activists may be undecided about all the scientific data concerning global warming, but they understand some in the environmental, and big government movements are using the climate change excitement to chip away at personal and economic freedoms.
Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute was present to discuss the topic with all the attendees. Murray cited the Cornwall Alliance as an important evangelical voice on this issue. He also summed up the failure of cap-and-trade measures in Europe and just how ineffective government spending on global warming has been across the pond.
Nobody said this job was going to be easy. How to get people worked up about a slow-motion global catastrophe, one without explosions, has vexed the best minds of this generation. But Mr. Gore himself has done more than anybody to put global warming on center stage, with just a PowerPoint presentation that became an Oscar-winning movie. So it’s vexing that his new campaign — so far, anyway — seems unlikely to break out of the pack of “green” advertising that, as The Times reported last week, is making consumers bored and skeptical.
Our favorite question: If meat causes more carbon emissions than cars, what should we do?
Al said, "It is true that it would be healthier for us as if we consumed less meat." How come that hasn't been a more prominent? "I myself am a meat eater and perhaps that has something to do with it." We've got to walk before we run, Al said. "None of us are perfect."
Monckton’s demand for redress and an apology from the APS is being picked up on the internet.
How will the American Physical Society respond to Lord Monckton’s procedural and scientific gauntlets?
As of noon on Saturday July [19], 2008, the offending paragraph in the table of contents had been removed. However, this offending paragraph was still very much evident in Monckton’s paper Climate Sensitivity Revisited. It was also evident in the Forum’s full PDF of its July, 2008 newsletter Physics and Society Vol 37, No 3, p 6.
The APS’s PeerGate scandal may well prove to provide much greater publicity and serious examination of Monckton’s thesis than if the disclaimers had never been posted. It also exposes the superficiality of statements by executives of the American Physical Society and other scientific organizations supporting the IPCC’s global warming. Those statements were typically not submitted to the rank and file for scientific peer review, nor were they typically voted on by the rank and file. Whatever will come out of this PeerGate Scandal?
Addressing the Washington Policymakers in Seattle, WA, Dr. Don Easterbrook said that shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from its warm mode to its cool mode virtually assures global cooling for the next 25-30 years and means that the global warming of the past 30 years is over. The announcement by NASA that the (PDO) had shifted from its warm mode to its cool mode is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and is not an oddity superimposed upon and masking the predicted severe warming by the IPCC. This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1F per decade for the rest of the century.
[Fossil] fuel prices as high as $52 a litre are mainly to blame for budget cuts threatening vital climate-change research in Antarctica.
This month has also been particularly cool, especially in central and northern Finland. Temperatures on average reach over 20 degrees Celsius in July throughout the country.
Meteorologists say July hasn't been this cool since 1993, and hasn't been this rainy since the years 2004 and 2007.
Both Gore and Pelosi addressed domestic and offshore drilling, a solution to high gas prices that John McCain first included in his energy plan last month. "The idea that we can drill our way out of this is so absurd as to not warrant a reply," Gore said, before comparing the idea to the hangover remedy of 'the hair of the dog that bit you.'
Well, fine, but are human activities "primarily responsible", as per the IPCC? If the sacrifices demanded by environmentalists will reduce global warming by 8% rather than 80% will people still support them? The APS position remains unchanged and uninformative.
"The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to
all of the reviewer's requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity - a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately
after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC's viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society
disagrees with this article's conclusions."
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than
the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur's findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council's decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and, tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY."
The answer, of course, is that Gore would build a huge mansion, power it with more electricity in a month than an average family would use in the year. He’d drive everywhere in convoys, fly in private planes, make a fortune flogging “green” investments and give $250,000 speeches suggesting other people live more simply.
Of the 8 primary corn and soybean producing states of the Midwest, corn silking stood at 9 percent versus the five year average of 36 percent. The percent blooming of the soybean crop was 22 percent compared to the average at 46 percent.
"Leno’s punchline: Democrats say drilling in ANWR wouldn’t produce any oil for 10 years — the same point they’ve been making for more than 10 years now. President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have opened ANWR to oil exploration." It would be nice to have some extra oil coming on line about now.
In its judgment on King's complaint, Ofcom will say: "Channel 4 unfairly attributed to the former chief scientist, David King, comments he had not made and criticized him for them and also failed to provide him an opportunity to reply".Personally, I'm not convinced that Singer materially misrepresented David King's words, given this 2004 Independent story:
In the program, the concluding voice over from the climate change skeptic Fred Singer claimed "the chief scientist of the UK" was "telling people that by the end of the century, the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic ... it would be hilarious if it weren't so sad".
King has never made such a statement and it is believed Singer confused his views with those of the contrarian scientist James Lovelock. King did once say that "the last time the Earth had this much C02, the only place habitable was the Antarctic".
Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
He said that the Earth was entering the "first hot period" since 60 million years ago, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The shock warning - one of the starkest yet delivered by a top scientist or senior government figure - comes as ministers are deciding whether to weaken measures next week to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".
The crowning blow: After nine years of non-warming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a miniscule 0.2 degree C; the UK’s Hadley Centre says earth’s temperature has now dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. There has thus been no net global warming within “living memory”!
In his research, Beaufoy interviewed everyone from the chief executives of oil companies to the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and representatives of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. He says: "There isn't a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were notional threats. A warming planet isn't a threat – it's happening.More on the show is here.
"But I'm still aware that it's potentially a very dry subject. Dealing with a gas you can't see makes it very difficult for a writer. It's like writing Spooks without any terrorists. So I had to tackle the subject through the characters; that's always the way in to any issue. I thought a thriller seemed the appropriate genre, given the devious, underhand way so many oil companies have behaved."
These icebergs can vary dramatically in size—from the size of fists to small countries, Barnes said.
Once freed from the fast ice, icebergs are blown by winds and carried by sea currents until they smash into the seabed in shallow depths.
"They not only kill virtually everything underneath on the seabed—mainly animals—but crush rock and reshape the seabed," Barnes said.
...
In some areas, it can promote diversity, where it turned over nutrient-rich sediments and pushed out dominant grazers, such as sea urchins.
In other locations, however, the result could be catastrophic, "producing black pools of death," she said.
We all want to be wise and careful stewards of the beautiful planet we call home. However, many aspects of the modern green movement that is permeating every segment of our society are not about saving the environment. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover the true beliefs and agenda of the influential leaders who are attempting to impose their vision of a New Green Order on the world. Please carefully consider the implications of the opinions that they so openly and freely express...
The proposed changes amount to a reversal of the basic right of all households to have their rubbish collected, which was enshrined in law by the Public Health Act 1875.
The measures have already passed through two parts of a three-stage scrutiny process in parliament and will become law later this year if they are approved by the standing committee on climate change, which is dominated by Labour MPs.
It comes at a time when the government is already under fire over controversial fortnightly rubbish collections instead of weekly collections, and “pay as you throw” schemes being tried by some councils, in which bins are weighed and penalties imposed on people whose rubbish exceeds set limits.
The government said it wants to change the image of Britain as the “rubbish dump of Europe”. Minister for Climate Change and Waste Joan Ruddock said: “All that has changed is that when a household is given a formal notice, if they don’t abide by it then the council no longer has a duty to collect.”
ELECTRICITY customers who signed up for green power with two of South Australia’s major energy retailers are being delivered power predominantly sourced from coal and gas.
As the U.S. gears up for another shot at a climate-change bill—and another avalanche of reports tallying the costs to the economy—it’s worth remembering: No matter how the pie is sliced, somebody is going to get the ugly piece.
It’s not like it’s a secret that wind turbines are an unreliable source of electrical power. Bryce points out that, “In July 2006, for example, wind turbines in California produced power at only about 10 percent of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at about 17 percent of their rated capacity.”
That means that there has to be nuclear, coal-fired or natural gas power plants functioning fulltime as a backup to the pathetically unreliable and inefficient wind farms. Moreover, what electricity they do generate is lost to some degree in the process of transmitting it over long distances to distribution facilities.
No one wants to live near a wind farm. You could have a nuclear power plant in your backyard and not know it was there unless you looked out the window. Wind farms are noisy neighbors and can make people crazy listening to them. Legislatures have to pass laws to exempt them from law suits identifying them as a public nuisance.
I don't blog about that kind of thing anymore. I never enjoyed blogging about energy, anyway, because for too many people "alternate energy" is more about religion than about physics. They believe that if we are just creative enough, we can overcome fundamental physical limitations -- and it's not that easy.
In order for "alternate energy" to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria:
1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power)
2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable)
3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse)
4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently
5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources (per gigawatt, and per terajoule).
If it fails to satisfy any of those, then it can't scale enough to make any difference. Solar power fails #3, and currently it also fails #5. (It also partially fails #2, but there are ways to work around that.)
The only sources of energy available to us now that satisfy all five are petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.
My rule of thumb is that I'm not interested in any "alternate energy" until someone shows me how to scale it to produce at least 1% of our current energy usage. America right now uses about 3.6 terawatts average, so 1% of that is about 36 gigawatts average.
Show me a plan to produce 36 gigawatts (average, not peak) using solar power, at a price no more than 30% greater than coal generation of comparable capacity, which can be implemented at that scale in 10-15 years. Then I'll pay attention.
Since solar power installations can only produce power for about 10 hours per day on average, that means that peak power production would need to be in the range of about 85 gigawatts to reach that 1%.
Without that, it's just religion, like all the people fascinated with wind and with biomass. And even if it did reach 1%, that still leaves the other 99% of our energy production to petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.
The problems facing "alternate energy" are fundamental, deep, and are show-stoppers. They are not things that will be surmounted by one lone incremental improvement in one small area, announced breathlessly by a startup which is trying to drum up funding.
The way you can tell that a fan of "alternate energy" is a religious cultist is to ask them this question: If your preferred alternate source of energy is practical, why isn't it already in use?
Planet Gore readers owe Al Gore a big thank you. The scale of Gore’s project would make even the Pharoahs blush, and executing his plan would require a literal Energy Czar. Never before has the global warming movement’s ambition to control and dictate and commander been so prominently on display. Never before has the movement’s flight from reality been more open to public view.Fact Checking Obama on Alternative Energy
We also point out that even over the long term there can be no guarantee that just spending more for research will produce the sort of new fuels, vehicles or other breakthroughs that would actually reverse the growth of oil imports. Keep in mind that the U.S. imported the equivalent of 13.4 million barrels of oil per day last year, up nearly 17 percent from just five years earlier and 32 percent higher than in 1997. This is a huge problem that has been getting worse for a long time. Reversing it will not be "fast" or painless.Climate Skeptic: A Reminder
So if climate change is in fact somehow "accelerating," then it cannot possibly be due to CO2. I believe that they are trying to create the impression that somehow CO2 is directly causing extreme weather, which it does not, under any mechanism anyone has ever suggested.Climate Skeptic: Antarctic Sea Ice
I think everyone's numbers are low, because they don't include the cost of storage (technology unknown) or alternative capacity when it is a) dark and/or b) not windy.
A while back I took on Gore's suggestion that all of America's electricity needs could be met with current Solar technology with a 90 mile x 90 mile tract of solar. Forgetting the fact that Al's environmental friends would never allow us to cover 8100 square miles of the desert in silicon, I got a total installation cost of $21 trillion dollars. And that did not include the electrical distribution systems necessary for the whole country to take power from this one spot, nor any kind of storage technology for using electricity at night (it was hard to cost one out when no technology exist for storing America's total energy needs for 12 hours). Suffice it to say that a full solution with storage and distribution would easily cost north of $30 trillion dollars.
Is Gore just a wild-eyed optimist with a compelling end-of-days sermon who truly believes with enough of our Yankee moxie and knowhow we can accomplish this lofty goal? Maybe. But he's more Joseph P. Kennedy than JFK. More likely, he just realizes that if Kleiner Perkins's investments in cleantech don't pay off in 10 years, he and buddy John Doerr won't be able to threaten, "One of these days, to the moon!"
The Liberals are fast heading for a confrontation on this issue, because the more they commit themselves to their present policy, the more embarrassing will be their eventual retreat.
But they must remember this: No matter how late you decide to start sawing, it’s always a good idea to cut the rope that ties your neck to an anchor.
Q: If Obama wins the election, should Al Gore go in and be the energy czar?
Pickens: Well, you know, you asked me a question, I don't know. I would certainly not... In that case, I think I would be for Al Gore for energy czar.
...
Q: Do you have an opinion on the offshore drilling that's being talked about in Congress?
Pickens: I've got an opinion on everything. Sure, you ought to do OCS [Outer Continental Shelf], you ought to do renewables, you ought to do biofuels, you ought to do ethanol -- all of them. Those are ours, and we've got to get off the dependency on the foreign oil.
Q: Well, but wait a minute, though, because part of the food crisis is being blamed on the fact that so much of corn is going towards ethanol.
Pickens: OK, don't do it then. I'd rather eat than drive my car.
The most important guide is the starting date of the carbon pollution reduction scheme, as the emissions trading regime is now called, which is intended to be on July 1, 2010.
...
The most significant indications this is the most preferred timing are the soft start for emissions trading and the petrol tax holiday of at least three years.The front end of the trading scheme is full of free rides and concessional treatment for some businesses, and also feature the heaviest compensation for low-income earners.
...
So, if Rudd will not consider an election in 2011 and he remains inclined to have a "normal" poll for half the Senate and the House of Representatives, the earliest possible date is Saturday, August 7, 2010, for an election called on or just after July 1 that year.
The reason this is the earliest date is because the term for senators elected in 2004 – the next group up for re-election – expires on June 30, 2011, and they must go to the polls in the 12 months before that date.
Also, the emissions trading scheme would have been operating for just five weeks (without any impact on petrol) and people would not have received their first post-low carbon era household energy bill.
One refreshing quality of the book is its lack of hysteria. It lays out the facts of climate change without the typical accompanying doomsday scenarios of rising tides flooding coastal cities and drought choking off food supplies.
John McCain and Barack Obama call climate change one of the biggest challenges facing the world, and both pledge major reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, if elected.
To spread that message, though, the two campaigns are pumping thousands of tons of the global warming gas into the atmosphere.
On a single, two-hour flight from his hometown of Chicago to Washington, Obama's 757 emits an estimated 19 tons of C02, about as much as the average American is responsible for producing in an entire year.
For McCain, a four-hour flight from his Arizona ranch to Washington on his Boeing 737 emits an estimated 34 tons of C02, almost twice as much as the average American.
"Air travel is so carbon intensive. It takes a lot of energy to get a big plane off the ground," said Billy Connelly, marketing director for Native Energy, a renewable energy firm that has worked with political candidates to reduce carbon emissions from campaign travel.
Tokyo's mayor has just joined the mass of politicians spouting off about the U.S. being "selfish" for not embracing the Kyoto Protocol — which is already a miserable failure, except when it comes to transferring wealth. Don't we know there is "face" at stake here?
Of course, as Larry Kudlow has noted on NRO, U.S. GHG emissions increased 6.6 percent since 1997, when Kyoto was agreed, compared with 18 percent for the entire world and 22 percent for the less selfish Kyoto countries.
Good news! Despite the recent global warming alarmism in the media that Arctic ice might melt away completely from the North Pole this summer, the latest scientific observations show that Arctic ice has actually increased by nearly a half million square miles over this time last year. This is in stark contrast to the Chicken Little hysteria that was being promoted less than a month ago on the CBS Early Show as reported by Kyle Drennen on June 27 here in NewsBusters...
Congress and many states have complained about the Bush administration's refusal to address climate change. But administration officials have said as recently as this week that there will be no federal action to curb greenhouse gasses.
Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, agreed Thursday that no action is warranted. He doubted that the information "is there to support the conclusions in the report," which he hadn't read.
He called EPA's suggestions "overkill," because temperatures are not expected to increase more than a few degrees over the next 70 years.
"I'm definitely not going to be jumping on the bandwagon of climate change," Noel said. "I haven't joined the church of global warming, and I don't worship at the altar of carbon dioxide chastity."
One day Americans are moaning about the harmful impact of cheap oil and the next they're grousing about the harmful impact of expensive oil.
Which one is it?
Environmental Health Australia has carefully considered the scientific data I presented yesterday that suggested global warming had stopped - or at least paused. And its Victorian president, Geoff Fraser, has emailed this closely reasoned critique in response:Environmental Health Australia struggles to determine how any reader from age 4 up could support and credit your article. It was lazy and represents the opinions of no-one. It may have had some place in journalism about 20 years ago. 10,000 farmers out there call for your resignation or hope your air conditioner breaks down when it reaches 50 degrees in your modest urban environment.That’s the response in full.
Barr said in no uncertain terms: “Global warming is a myth.”2. From a 7/17/08 Bob Barr statement:
Former Vice President Al Gore and I have met privately to discuss the issue of global warming, and I was pleased and honored that he invited me to attend the "We" Campaign event. Global warming is a reality as most every organization that has studied the matter has concluded, whether conservative-leaning, liberal oriented or independent. I am, however, also aware that scientists differ on its causes, impact and remedies. I remain firmly committed to free market solutions and innovations to address this issue; not tax-driven policies.
I commend Mr. Gore for his efforts and leadership in this area...
President Bush almost got it right this week when he declined to call on Americans to conserve energy. Sadly, he still seems to think that conservation is a win-win proposition. Worse, so do both major presidential candidates.
A reporter asked President Bush, "... understanding [that energy supplies are] tight and the debate over energy... has gone on for years and will continue... into the next administration... one thing nobody debates is that if Americans use less energy the current supply/demand equation would improve. Why have you not sort of called on Americans to drive less and to turn down the thermostat?"
President Bush responded, "They're smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not... it's interesting what the price of gasoline has done, is it caused people to drive less. That's why they want smaller cars, they want to conserve. But the consumer is plenty bright... The marketplace works. Secondly, we have worked with Congress to change CAFE standards, and had a mandatory alternative fuel requirement... One way to correct the imbalance is to save, is to conserve... I talked about good conservation. And people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less; they can balance their own checkbooks."
AT an annual gathering of the advertising industry a year ago in Cannes, the environment was the topic du jour. “Be seen, be green,” one agency urged on the invitation to its party at a hillside villa.
Al Gore, invited by another agency, delivered a message linked to “An Inconvenient Truth,” his book and film about climate change: That the ad industry could play an influential role in encouraging businesses and consumers to change their ways and slow global warming.
The sun was still beating down on the Côte d’Azur last month as advertising executives from around the world returned for this year’s festival. But Mr. Gore was nowhere to be found, and the party buzz was about the American presidential election, the Euro 2008 soccer tournament and even the business of advertising itself. Green marketing, while booming, had lost some of its cachet.
The advertising industry is quicker than most to pick up on changing consumer tastes and moods, and it seems to have grasped the public’s growing skepticism over ads with environmental messages.
In short, the Earth is not in danger of “getting a fever”, and the global-warming theory has been shown to be a Chicken Little scenario with no real scientific basis. Even those who helped lead the hysteria now have serious doubts. It’s time to stop wrapping public policy around a fraud.
Most people do not realize that the U.N.'s IPCC report was a political document, not a scientific one. As such, it explicitly refused to consider any of the recent scientific work on carbon dioxide and the earth's climate. That work seems to show rather definitively that human activity has little to do with climate change, which has occurred constantly for millions of years.
This would be an appropriate occasion for John McCain to announce that, in view of the fact that the claim of a scientific "consensus" has now unraveled, he is rethinking his own position on the regulation of carbon emissions.
Now is a good time to visit Mt. Rainier...
According to the park's phone message, there are now 60 inches of snow on the ground at the Paradise Visitor Center. That's a bit misleading because, though there is that much snow at the weather station where they make the official measurements, there are also bare spots, as you can see in that picture. And some of the bare spots have flowers. So, in some places you can ski along, as I did yesterday, enjoying the corn snow — and admiring the spirea, the glacier lilies, and many other flowers.
The sad truth is that the benefit of commercial wind turbines is one of the most controversial topics in environmental circles today. One of the major problems is the unpredictable nature of wind. A recent article in the Globe and Mail Wind turbine marketers are full of hot air, printed July 11, outlined the troubles Denmark has been having with its wind industry. Denmark generates more wind power per capita than any country in the world.
The Danes have found that their coal-fired generators still need to run on standby, ready to take over whenever the wind stops blowing. Wind power is expensive and hasn’t led to the shutting down of one coal fired plant.
The article further suggests that inadvertently Denmark’s wind turbines may have actually increased that countries carbon emissions.
Another issue is the devastating impact that wind farms can have on tourism and other local industries.
Parry Sound is one of Ontario’s top tourist destinations. Vacationers flock here from all over the world, in awe of the region’s natural beauty and heritage.
The United Nations has given the area special UNESCO status in recognition of its ecology and breath taking scenery. Even the popularity of the Group of Seven’s work is further proof that the 30,000 Islands are a national treasure. Wind farms threaten to change everything.
Profits from commercial wind farms are heavily subsidized by the government and pale in comparison to those brought in by tourism.
Make no mistake, wind farms are big money for the corporations that build them. As usual it is the working people who will suffer if this initiative goes ahead.
Are they really worth jeopardizing our economic viability and way of life?
Americans for Prosperity rallied taxpayers outside Al Gore's big global warming speech in Washington, and found that some Gore followers didn't exactly practice what he preached.
If the movement to confront climate change is perceived as partisan, anti-capitalist and hostile to human life, it is likely to fail, causing suffering for many, including the ice bears. And so the question arises: Will the environment survive the environmentalists?
Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said: “John McCain has been a leader in the fight against global climate change, working with Democrats on this issue since 2003, but no one has more successfully recruited Americans into this effort than Al Gore. This is a key issue, and John McCain has put solutions over partisanship to pursue meaningful, market-driven cap and trade legislation aimed at drastically reducing harmful carbon emissions.”Note that Lawrence Kudlow suggested that McCain dropped cap and trade here.
This is the sort of thing that naturally goes unchallenged in the New York Times. Imagine a Republican equivalent of Al Gore — say, Dan Quayle — giving a speech claiming that we must do what he wants or it is, literally, the End of the World. If we could imagine that such a speech would be covered at all, we could be sure that it would be covered with mockery. Which it would deserve. But this slavish deferral to Al Gore, this media attempt to make him the Mahatma Gandhi of the environmental movement, is absurd, and the Times should be embarrassed for being such a big part of it.
A Climate Audit reader in Australia drew CSIRO’s attention to criticism of their data stonewalling here at CA. CSIRO promptly told the Australian reader that the “appropriate CSIRO climate scientists and Communications team have responded accordingly to Stephen McIntyre and David Stockwell directly, in order to address their concerns” and that “some of the direct responses have even been posted on the www.climateaudit.org website”.
Well, for the record, they haven’t responded to me “directly” in the sense that anyone from CSIRO actually sent me an email of any sort and, to the extent that they are claiming to be responding to my particular criticisms, it is untrue that “some of the direct responses have even been posted on the www.climateaudit.org website”.
...
Why would CSIRO send out a response where the particulars are not merely untrue but the inaccuracy of which can be easily checked? Maybe they used someone from the Team as a fact checker.
...The 10-year plan is commensurate with the threat, which threatens the survival of our country and of human civilization as we know it.
Whew! Well, I don’t normally drink carbonated beverages (at least not non-alcoholic ones) out of respect for the planet, but I think I’ll have a Coca-Cola with my sandwich. The fact is that utilities are having a hard time keeping up with population and demand growth building every kind of power plant they can — coal, natural gas, wind. Meeting all new demand in the next few decades just with renewables would be extremely difficult and expensive. Doing that and replacing all current coal and gas power plants in ten years is preposterous.
Gore is saying that we should rip out 71.1% of the nation’s energy plants and replace them in a decade. Keep in mind that that infrastructure has been built over the course of a century.
...That statement is about like challenging your 2 year old to finish college by the time she is 12. Not exactly practical, more than a little crazy, and likely to be either ignored, or if you push it, to cause lots of therapy sessions by the time she is 8. I will, however, credit him with getting almost every renewable energy platitude I’ve ever heard into one succinct speech.
As McCain put it, Katie, if the Vice President says it's doable, I believe it's doable.”
The Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge is firing lots of interest. If reconstructions of past climate are going to be based on sound science in future, it will be a big step forward. A kick-off conference was held (behind closed doors) in Trieste but some of the papers presented have fortunately found their way onto the internet. One, by the CRU's Keith Briffa, was very candid about the problems of verification of tree ring regressions, describing them as "of limited rigour", and that they tell us "virtually nothing about the validity of long-timescale climate estimates". Strangely, while writing the paleoclimate chapter of the IPCC report, he rejected any such criticism out of hand. The IPCC's final report talked of "the general strength of many such calibrated relationships, and their significant verification using independent instrumental data."
As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.
Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”
"This campaign is focussing on children because we feel they are the best way of carrying the message on climate change to their families and their communities.Children under 10 are also useful because they may not understand these graphs.
“But now, as the reality of global warming sinks in, and species are becoming endangered, I’m seeing a new willingness in the conservation community to at least talk about the possibility of helping out species by moving them around.”
The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.
For numerous reasons many reports were fabricated. No one imagined their fabrications would comprise a data set that would, in future years, be used to detect minor global warming trends and trigger a panic in the world.
"If we put all of the land-based casinos in the world out of business, including Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Macau, we could reduce our carbon foot-print by several billion units per day", says Claude Alexander, a retired professor and global warming researcher.
"The amount of electricity required to power one Las Vegas casino is beyond belief, the lights, air-conditioning, smoke-filled card rooms, and the jet-fuel to fly-out there; these are legitimate concerns", he added.
When asked how Western lawmakers should handle the situation, "any business that grossly exceeds it carbon footprint and does not provide an essential service should be required to shutdown".
He continued to say, "I am not against online casinos, if someone wishes to gamble in the privacy of their own home, they shall be given the opportunity. Government should not block that right, especially since there is no environmental impact by online casinos and poker
rooms."
In any case, Ishihara thinks it is too late to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
"I personally believe we are not going to make it in time," he said.
That does not mean that Ishihara -- whose city of nearly 13 million people will be half-swallowed by the rising sea by 2050, if worst-case predictions come true -- intends to stand by quietly and let Tokyo slip into a warm, wet grave.
He has bullied the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly into setting binding limits on greenhouse-gas emissions in his city, which is home to one in 10 Japanese.
REGINA -- With climate change expected to cause stormier weather, can homes and buildings in Saskatchewan take the heat, heavy snow or devastating winds?
In an address at a recent meeting of provincial ministers responsible for local government in Halifax, Gordon McBean, a leading climate expert in Canada, suggested that building codes that are largely set federally or provincially need to be updated.
"These building codes are designed for the weather of the past as opposed to the weather of the future," the University of Western Ontario professor said in a phone interview.Building codes were designed on the basis of the climate norms for
the past 30 years but do not address the changing weather of the
future, said MacBean. More extreme weather events are expected, which
may mean heavy rain events and flash flooding for some Canadian
communities or tornadoes in the Prairies.
Meanwhile, prominent human rights lawyer Julian Burnside says wasting electricity could become a criminal offence in the foreseeable future.
Wasteful large companies in particular could be targeted, he said.
"If we come to general agreement that part of the problem is that people are using too much electricity, then you have to create a regime that encourages people to use less electricity, you might make it an offence to waste electricity," Mr Burnside told ABC Radio.
There were obvious difficulties enforcing such a regime.
According to tradition, if the greenhouse gashog sees his ego but is not afraid of it, it will resurrect the tired 10-year-window to avert global warming scare tactic (circa 1989) that typically leads to six more weeks of unseasonable weather.From that last link:
GREENHOUSE WARMING NATIONS MAY VANISH, U.N. SAYS
Source: From Herald Wire Services Southern Cross Astronomical
Society
A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the United Nations U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the [problem].
Published on July 5, 1989, Page 2E, Miami Herald, The (FL)
You elected them now wear it. The country is being held to ransom by a bunch of alarmists and where are the Liberals in our moment of danger - can’t here ‘em. Surely they should be questioning the basic tenet that says mere humans having more impact on global climate that the sun.
We need someone with sufficient testosterone and wit to start educating the public. Tabloid TV, SBS and the ABC have rolled over and we can’t view a scene of nature or animals cavorting without a sombre voice-over mentioning global warming. Films of icebergs melting, as they do every summer, cannot be shown without a mention of the impending doom for all mankind, Polar bears and penguins.
You can consider Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) as definitely not enthused by former Vice President Al Gore's speech Thursday on U.S. energy policy.
Voinovich had an initial one-word response — "ridiculous" — to Gore's speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, in which the Democrat called for the United States to end its dependence on carbon-based fuels and begin using renewable energy to produce electricity within the next 10 years.
Farmers in Tacna will also be aided with a multi-million-sol fund that is to help them after their cattle died because of cold weather.
In other regions such as Cusco, a state of emergency has been declared because of extremely low temperatures.
In Puno, 39 children under the age of five have lost their lives because of pneumonia. In this region alone, there have been 65,000 cases of respiratory infections and 750 cases of pneumonia.
THESE are the seven graphs that should make the Rudd Government feel sick.
These are the seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?
Look for yourself. They show that the world hasn't warmed for a decade, and has even cooled for several years.
Nonetheless, like Custer at Little Big Horn and the Jewish zealots at Masada, a small if dwindling band of global warming deniers continues to fight on, insisting that as long as they hold out against the hordes of smock-clad scientists, no consensus can be said to exist.
...
So step on up, deniers. Tell us again about the sunspots, and why Greenland is called Greenland, and the 30,000 signatures on that petition, and how Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone and the spaceships they’ve got stored out in Area 51.
Of course, we saw plenty of hypocrisy -- especially the fact that Gore didn't ride his bike or take public transporation to the event. He didn't even take his Prius! Instead, he brought a fleet of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevy Suburban SUV! Even worse, the driver of the Town Car that eventually whisked away Gore's wife and daughter left the engine idling and the AC cranking for 20 minutes before they finally left!
Check it out in our video from the scene...
Don’t expect objective analysis from the World Bank’s coming World Development Report on Climate Change and Development due in 2010. The report will be co-authored by Gore's former climate advisor Rosina Bierbaum, professor and dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) at the University of Michigan.
While the press bird dogs any think tank that has pocketed even a dime of Exxon-Mobil money, Bierbaum’s appointment is evidence that Green activists are at the wheel of much of climate-policy machinery.
...
Bierbaum is one of many Gore allies who bias global warming “research.” Bierbaum’s colleague at the U of M, Henry Pollack, is the university’s leading climatologist. He is also a Gore drone, serving as a member of Gore's Climate Project which trains volunteers so they can proselytize the message of Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth.
The list goes on: Media darling Hansen of NASA is a close Gore advisor, the IPCC is stacked with green politicians with self-serving agendas, etc. Beware the authoritative climate-policy document: It may be Gore in sheep's clothing.
Among the bad news for ratepayers is that these billions of dollars in transmission costs will be distributed among all ERCOT utilities, in proportion to their relative load. Thus, conventional generators will pay much more than wind generators, even though the new transmission lines will be built in order to accommodate new wind capacity. These costs will subsequently be passed on to all ERCOT ratepayers. In other words, the costs of the legislatively mandated wind-energy boom will be socialized across the state, while the developers rake in subsidies, enjoy accelerated depreciation on their equipment, and get fat tax breaks.
The following amount of electricity, in gigawatt-hours (GWh), was generated from the nation’s fuel mix:
Coal: 2,020,572 GWh
Nuclear: 806,487 GWh
Gas: 893,211 GWh
Hydro: 241,319 GWh
Fuel Oil: 65,708 GWh
Other renewables (geothermal, non-wood waste, wind, and solar): 102,988 GWh
Other: 29,230 GWh
=====
Okay. Those of you who think the Gore speech was wonderful, give us the mix we’ll be using in 2018. You’ve only got 2,913,783 GWh to replace.
Don't miss the homepage items today by NRO's David Freddoso and Americans for Prosperity's Ed Frank.
For the Congressional ban on offshore drilling to continue, it will need reauthorization before it expires some five weeks before Election Day.
For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat. I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President. It’s a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer.
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
To that end, Ward has organized media workshops on global warming for top editors as well as reporters. A daylong meeting last fall at Stanford University attracted heavy hitters like Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and top editors from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and metropolitan papers from Detroit to Des Moines. Eighteen news executives spent the morning with leading scientists, who emphasized the strong agreement among international experts that the earth is warming and that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are largely to blame. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year issued a widely publicized report (in four parts) that provided the most comprehensive scientific agreement to date on the causes and potentially devastating impact of global warming. Yet, recalls Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford climatologist, “several editors were surprised there was so much consensus.”Also note the helpful list of websites under "Everything You Wanted to Know About Climate Change"--as you'd expect, RealClimate is on the list, but I don't see a single climate realist site.
...
The era of “equal time” for skeptics who argue that global warming is just a result of natural variation and not human intervention seems to be largely over—except on talk radio, cable, and local television. Last year, a meteorologist at CBS’s Chicago station did a special report entitled “The Truth about Global Warming.” It featured local scientists discussing the hazards of global warming in one segment, well-known national skeptics in another, and ended with a cop-out: “What is the truth about global warming?…It depends on who you talk to.” Not helpful, and not good reporting.
Setting the pace, the Minister himself stormed into a conference room for his summer university lecture on Tuesday at the old summer palace el Escorial outside of Madrid, and demanded that the air conditioning be turned off, as a wretched indulgence of the weak.Planet Gore on National Review Online
I rode in my first Hybrid vehicle on a HOT day, yesterday, and learned something about those suckers that will really stink (figuratively and likely literally) for New Yorkers — when the battery kicks in, the compressor on the air conditioner kicks out. No cool air coming out of the vents when the gasoline ain’t pumping. Just the fan going.
And having lived in NYC for five years, summers can be such a joy in an unairconditioned cab. Imagine, rush hour traffic at a standstill, which means the hybrid’ll kick into battery power constantly. Temperatures in the upper eighties, humidity at 90 percent — and cool air coming into the cab only a few minutes at a time. Won’t that be a joy on those hot, humid summer city days!
... the future of human civilization is at stake...The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse – much more quickly than predicted...Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months...Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world...And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West...We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet...Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative...The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis...We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them...It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now...However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.
And so it goes. The outcome of this green duel will be depend on economic events in two years. Global warming will always yield to economic cooling. If the state's economy doesn't improve, the voters won't be choosing a green candidate. They'll be choosing a chief executive who has answers about jumpstarting the California economy, and getting serious about it's fiscal dysfunction.
Indeed, there is something in the bill for almost every conceivable constituency: health care, agriculture, forestry, Indian tribes, mass transit, renewable energy, education, and so on. These constituencies may not be convinced of the merits of carbon-trading but might just go along with the bill if they believe it serves their own interests.
With elections looming in November, the bill’s chances of passing this year are virtually zero. However, Blumenauer’s goal is to move it through the legislative process as far as possible, and resubmit it next year.
By then, the White House will have a new occupant, and the presumptive presidential nominees of both parties, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, both have voiced support for some form of emissions bill.
“That will change the dynamic radically,” Blumenauer says.
Blumenauer and other advocates of a cap-and-trade system acknowledge that their proposal will inflict real pain on working Americans, and may spell the end of particular industries (coal mining springs to mind.)
But he maintains that the disruption is justified because the potential consequences of global warming are disastrous.
“There’s no free ride on this,” he says. “Compared to the cost of doing nothing, it’s a bargain.”
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”
NPR drops in on a speed dating session for global warming fanatics in Los Angeles. Some, er, highlights...
But Rudd hasn’t given a bit to both, but nothing to anyone. He’s somehow managing to deliver an expensive plan for a questionable problem that won’t even do what he promised. To one side he offers a plan that isn’t necessary; to the other, he’s giving one that won’t work.
Yet the article was still accepted by the journal! Having served as Chief Editor of two major professional journals (the Monthly Weather Review and the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences), I am aware of what constitutes a valid scientific contribution. This paper, however, is an embarrassment to the science community. There is no way to test their conclusions, yet it will be used by some policymakers to promote their particular perspective on the climate change subject.
ONE of Herefordshire’s largest strawberry growers is to make 300 migrant workers redundant.
S&A Davies says a poor crop is to blame, caused by cold weather earlier in the year and “a deluge of wind and rain”.
GORDON Brown and David Cameron both considered resigning from their posts after being forced to spend another summer holiday in Britain, it was claimed last night.
Both party leaders are understood to be furious at the prospect of two weeks in a dreary seaside hell-hole thanks to the economic slowdown and 'bastard environmentalists'.
With my return to posting, I sense a new, yet real, opportunity for all of us in the UK who argue that ‘global warming’ - as distinct from climate change - is the dangerous nonsense of the age to begin to redirect British politics on this issue.
Election: There's little doubt voters want more drilling if even congressional candidates are starting to trek to Alaska to urge more oil development. Seven are there now. That's a wake-up call to Congress.
Energy Policy: Imagine an energy plan that does it all — from allowing more oil drilling to spending billions on alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear. Well, guess what? Been there, done that.
'Energy has enormous implications for our economy, our environment and our national security," President Bush said in proposing the plan. "We cannot let another year go by without addressing these issues together in a comprehensive and balanced package."
That was in June 2001 — more than seven years ago.
His words came just after he first proposed a comprehensive energy bill that included 105 separate steps the U.S. could take to boost its energy supplies. It was something he promised repeatedly while campaigning for the presidency in 2000. He kept his promise. His first plan included, among many other things:
• New drilling for more oil and gas and new refineries.
• Building of nuclear power plants.
• Revamping the U.S. electricity grid.
• $10 billion in tax breaks to help push energy efficiency and alternative energy.
The fact is, these are remarkably similar to the plans that economists, oil experts and energy wonks say need to be put in place today in order to end our oil crisis.
Yet, those proposals went nowhere — not approved in 2001, not in 2002, not in 2003, not ever. Bush tried repeatedly to get something through Congress. He pleaded. He tried to cut deals with Democrats. It didn't work.
Here are ways that Reid can help inspire Americans to kick our "sick" fossil fuel addiction. Lead by example, Harry!
Meanwhile, McCain and the Republicans have finally found an issue -- oil drilling -- exposing how the Democrats oppose drilling virtually anywhere that there might be recoverable oil. Not in Alaska. Not offshore. Not in shale deposits in the West. The Democratic claim that we "cannot drill our way out of the crisis in gas prices" begs the question of whether, had we drilled five years ago, we would be a lot less dependent on foreign market fluctuations.
The truth is that the Democrats put the need to mitigate climate change ahead of the imperative of holding down gasoline prices at the pump. If there was ever a fault line between elitist and populist approaches to a problem, this is it. In fact, liberals basically don't see much wrong with $5 gas. Many have been urging a tax to achieve precisely this level, just like Europe has done for decades.
Obama said that he was unhappy that there was not a period of "gradual adjustment" to the high prices, but seems to shed few tears over the current levels. After all, if your imperative is climate change, a high gas price is worth 10 times a ratified Kyoto treaty in bringing about change.
Republicans can drive a truck through the gap between this elite opinion and the need for ordinary people to afford the journey to work in the morning. And, with a 16-state media buy, the Republican Party and the McCain campaign are doing precisely that.
The committee's chairman, Seán Barrett of Fine Gael, said that the current climate change strategy should be scrapped by the Government and a new one published with ambitious, reachable targets for 2050.
In that context, both ESRI representatives talked about the difficulty of meeting the targets by 2020 in areas where there are slow turnarounds of capital. New housing insulation regulations will not have an appreciable effect until the decade after 2020; power plants are not replaced for decades and people hold on to cars for a decade and longer.
Prof Fitzgerald said that agriculture, which is responsible for 28 per cent of emissions mainly through methane produced by livestock, presented a problem.
"We are wrestling with it and do not have an answer on this. If we had to meet the target and it was an absolute imperative, the cheapest thing to do would be to get rid of all our livestock.
"But it would be a lunatic thing to do. It would do nothing for the world. They would just be bred in Brazil or elsewhere," he said.
Temperatures warming over the next 42 years will cause a 30 percent jump in nephrolithiasis, or kidney stones, especially in hotter regions of the country, said scientists at the University of Texas.
"This will come and get you in your home," said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they're doing to the climate. "
It was the eighth warmest June on record for the globe, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday in the 129 years since records began in 1880. And the first six months of the year were the ninth warmest since record keeping began in 1880, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported. The planets average temperature for June was 60.8 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.9 degrees warmer than average for the month.
DON’T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT. Just a few days ago, the University of Alabama, Huntsville came out with their global assessment and they reported the 22nd warmest in the 30 years of records in their data base (in other words the 9th coldest). In fact, their global mean was actually below the average (base period 1979-1998) with a value of -0.11C (-0.19F). This is a full 1.1F degrees colder than the NOAA guesstimate. The other NASA satellite source, RSS had June as the 13th coldest out of the last 30 years.
Al Gore hopes to put global warming back at the top of Washington’s agenda Thursday, but some Democrats in Congress are questioning his timing when they are getting pummeled by Republicans over record gas prices.
Gore hopes to deliver a major speech on the environment at Constitution Hall in Washington that will “press the reset button on how people are looking at the energy crisis and the climate crisis,” said Brian Hardwick, spokesman for Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.
...
Space and other Democrats say that gas prices have begun to overwhelm other issues.
Republicans are pouncing on Gore’s re-emergence, holding it up as proof that Democrats favor environmental policies that further escalate energy costs.
“Mr. Gore will yet again call attention to the policies called for by radical environmentalists that would result in even higher gas prices,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).
I actually rode in my first NYC hybrid taxi, a Toyota Highlander, a few days ago. This particular driver was the owner of the taxi, which means to non-New Yorkers that the cab was far cleaner and better maintained than a taxi which is leased out on a daily basis. This driver/owner knew his fuel usage to the penny. He said when he first took delivery of the cab, he was getting about 26 m.p.g. About a year later, this number had dropped to 18 m.p.g. He went on to say the battery is under warranty for 100,000 miles, but, even if he could put in a claim, there just aren't any extra batteries out there. He's also furious that he went out and bought a hybrid before the law kicked in. He didn't quote me a figure, but he said he paid "much more" for the hybrid instead of a Ford Crown Victoria and there's no way he'd ever make up the difference in price now that the Toyota's gas mileage had decreased. This driver also said he would regularly get 18 m.p.g. on the Ford, not the 14 m.p.g. quoted by the A.P.
In terms of tourism, the United Kingdom is Florida's top overseas tourism market, with 1.34 million United Kingdom arrivals for 2006. On average, travelers from the UK spend nearly two weeks in Florida, with 72.5 percent traveling to Orlando, 15.3 percent to Miami and 12.5 percent to the Tampa/St. Petersburg area.
During the remainder of the United Kingdom portion of the Florida trade trip, the governor will meet with Environment Minister Phil Woolas and participate in a Visit Florida marketing campaign kick-off.
China will build eight nuclear reactors a year for the next decade. We’re so superstitious we won’t even discuss it, and will build useless windfarms instead.
In fact, the Government has a plan it hasn’t costed to make cuts it hasn’t quantified. We don’t know how much we’re paying, or how much we’re getting. Does Rudd shop with his own money like that, too?
There is one company that could be Kleiner's first energy-sector grand slam- and there's nothing green about it. The secretive, seven-year-old company, called Terralliance Technologies, has developed software that purports to make it easier and cheaper to find and extract oil and natural gas. Rather than license its software to petroleum giants, Terralliance decided to become a wildcatter itself. According to Kleiner partner Joe Lacob, Terralliance has already dug 100 wells around the world and is in the process of raising additional capital. Sources peg the new financing at more than $1 billion and a valuation of around $4 billion. In addition to Kleiner, Terralliance investors include Goldman Sachs and San Francisco hedge fund Passport Capital.You may remember Doerr as the guy that got all weepy last year when he imagined that trace amounts of carbon dioxide might kill us all.
...
It would be ironic, to say the least, if Kleiner's first "green" jackpot turns out to be a company that actually drills for oil. Doerr, who has made the reduction of fossil-fuel use a personal crusade, refused to comment on Terralliance.
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