North Coast Online

Carbon-Constrained?

There's one huge flaw in the Buffalo News editorial today on the siting of new energy plants.

The [Republican-controlled] Senate may argue that this is a review process and every type of technology should be considered, but in a carbon-constrained world, in which this country now exists, and in a world in which safety and security is an issue, it makes sense not to fast-track every coal or nuclear power plant. [emphasis mine]

We do not live in a "carbon-constrained" world.  Carbon is a most plentiful element.  If it's constrained, that's only through the efforts of those who adhere to an unproven scientific theory that it's causing the earth's climate to warm unnaturally. 

I suspect that Senate Republicans are probably reacting more to big business interests out of concern for campaign donations than they are the principals of sound science.  Nonetheless, they're on the right side.  But damn, just for once, I wish they'd stand up for a principal.

The 'Call Your Bluff' Tax

If we have to tax carbon dioxide emissions (and I don't think we do) then at least let's do it based on measured atmospheric temperature increases.  If the temperature goes up, so does the tax.  If the global warming crowd is wrong, though, and it remains constant or even drops, um, so does the tax.

We skeptics would be mollified and the advocates couldn't refuse -- that is unless stopping global warming isn't their real goal. 

Carbon Offset Hi-Jinks

This carbon-offset business at some point will turn out to have been a huge scam.

Sterling Sommer was accredited within the past month, a process the firm started at the request of one of its biggest client’s, HSBC. About three years ago, the bank became more interested in environmentally sensitive practices when its London-based chairman Stephen Green announced that he wanted HSBC to be “carbon neutral.”

This means the $1.8 trillion bank with offices in 82 countries, has found ways to make up for the carbon dioxide it emits using energy to heat and electrify its buildings by doing things such as buying renewable windpower.

And if you believe that, I've got a sub-par mortgage for you.

George Bush -- Diplomat Extraordinaire?

Kimberley Strassel thinks that, at least when it comes to global warming, he just might be.

Don't expect anyone to admit it. When Mr. Bush unveiled his new climate framework last week, calling on the world's powers to reduce greenhouse emissions, it was portrayed as a capitulation. He'd removed the last "obstacle" to world unity on this issue, and seen the error of his ways. At this week's Democratic presidential debate, every candidate vowed to fix the damage Mr. Bush had done to America's international reputation, his Kyoto failure the obvious example.

There's been a capitulation on global warming, but it hasn't happened in the Oval Office. The Kyoto cheerleaders at the United Nations and the European Union are realizing their government-run experiment in climate control is a mess, one that's incidentally failed to reduce carbon emissions. They've also understood that if they want the biggest players on board--the U.S., China, India--they need an approach that balances economic growth with feel-good environmentalism. Yesterday's G-8 agreement acknowledged those realities and tolled Kyoto's death knell. Mr. Bush, 1; sanctimonious greens, 0.

Last week when I heard the mainstream press exulting that Bush had finally come around to Kyoto, I wondered what the heck they were talking about.  He's done nothing of the sort.

Ve Vill Not Allow Dissent

This is pitiful.

The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that “unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it.”

“All I can really do is apologize to all you guys.... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this,” he said.

He stated his own opinion -- a rather widely-held one -- but now thinks he must grovel before the anthropogenic global warming mafia.  Here's his "shocking" remark.

“I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin said on NPR. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

That's what passes for controversy these days.   Tell my why, if this is a debate over science, that no opposing findings can be expressed openly without condemnation.  Never mind, I'll answer it myself. 

It isn't a debate over science, it's political.  The theory of greenhouse gases' causing global warming may have started out as science, but it's become little more than a justification to crusade against the industrialization of the developed world.

Al Gore likes to say (cutely) that the Earth has a fever, but the sweat seems to be dripping down the brows of the warming advocates, themselves.  They're starting to realize that as climate science advances, it's getting harder and harder to scare us into passing their anti-human agenda into law. 

Time grows short -- must distort, subvert and exaggerate while they can.

Can't Even Stage A Little Symbolism These Days

Al Gore wanted the UK to switch its lights off simultaneously to, well, I don't know what.  But National Grid has nixed it.  The resultant power surge when everyone lit up again, they warn, would burn out circuits, overload powerlines and even put patients on life-support in danger. 

Things would be so much simpler if only we lived in solar-powered huts in old-growth forests and bought  strictly local.

Garbage In, Global Warming Out

I installed my window air conditioner this afternoon.  At the same time, I took care to move my indoor/outdoor temperature sensor from that windowsill to another so the A/C's exhaust wouldn't distort its readings (duh).  One town in Oregon never bothered to do that and global warming data got another shot in the arm.

[UPDATE:] Check this out, too.

Please, Please, Please, Prove Us Right

The media is hoping desperately for a terrible hurricane season.

Climate Change

I grow increasingly convinced that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is false.  The evidence mounts that the CO2 greenhouse effect has been overstated, and former believers have become skeptics, themselves.  But even if I'm wrong -- even if man has created the conditions that are changing our climate, I could never agree to the suggested fixes.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Wednesday called for a rational debate on global warming, rejecting what he called "hysteria" driven by enviromentalists.

"Let's bring the debate to whether the 0.6 (degree Celsius warming over the last century) is much or little, how much Man has contributed to the warming and ... if there is anything at all Man can do about it," Klaus said when presenting his book "Blue, Not a Green Planet."

He charged that groups other than scientists have now seized on the topic and ambitious environmentalists are fueling a global warming hysteria that has no solid ground in fact and allows manipulation of people.

"It is about a key topic of our time, and that is the topic of human freedom and its curtailment," Klaus said.

"The approach of environmentalists toward nature is similar to the Marxist approach to economic rules, because they also try to replace free spontaneity of the evolution of the world (and of mankind) with ... global planning of the world's development," Klaus writes in his book.

Luckily, for us skeptics, the climate change hype has finally become un "sustainable."

It's Not The Theory That Bothers Me -- It's The Response

If Larry Summers were representative of the human-caused global warming believers, I'd be much less inclined toward skepticism.

[D]eveloping countries are where most of the future action has to be. They will account for 75 per cent of the increase in emissions over the next quarter century and are now making the infrastructure investments that will shape their future economies.... [A]ny international regime that does not include them will [simply] not work... as energy intensive activities relocate to the developing world....

Read the whole thing at Brad DeLong's blog.

One Square Or Two?

I can't really add too much to the general hilarity which has ensued over Sheryl Crow's exhortation to use just one square of toilet paper, but I suspect that much of middle America will be unimpressed.  While they might not have taken the time to fully consider the global economic ramifications of precipitously reducing human CO2 emissions, the unfortunate mental images caused by Ms. Crow's  environmental proselytizing will have convinced many that a few inches of sea level rise may not be so bad after all.

I've always believed that if the personal costs of attempting to rectify so-called anthropogenic global warming could be presented clearly to the public, it would roundly reject the ridiculous asceticism the environmentalists are asking us to practice.  Sheryl Crow may have accomplished just that -- albeit in a very icky manner. 

The Other Side Continues To Come Out

Climate Catastrophe Cancelled

Can You Say "Wolf?"

I predict that the global warming alarmists will eventually lose all credibility through their insistence on using the same tactics as the peak-oil believers.

Oil Production Could Peak Next Year

I've been hearing that one since the seventies.

"Doomsday Called Off"

Even as a teen-ager in the late 1960's I could sense that our Western New York winters were milder than they had been not 15 years earlier.  My paternal grandmother, who had been born in 1886, talked of the her childhood in Ellicottville where the family occasionally had no choice but to exit the house through a second-story window -- so deep was the snow.

Global warming is happening, but even the CBC admits that it's not an unusual phenomenon and that the causes are not universally agreed-upon.

If that piqued your interest, theres' more here,  here, here (and if you aren't motivated to watch them all, then, by all means, watch this one) and finally here.  It's an excellent program that I wasn't aware of.  If you have the time, please watch.  It shows that the "skeptics" have a bit of science to back their doubts up with, too. 

The Only Boom Buffalo's Experienced In Ages -- And Now It's Gone

Using the well-known "ice-boom-removal-date" method to measure the effects of global warming on Buffalo, it appears that we're safe this year.  Interestingly enough, the latest date on which the ice boom was ever removed was in 1971 when we were in the grips of a global-cooling panic, and the earliest date recorded for its removal was May 3, 1998, which is the last year, many scientists claim, that the globe experienced any noticeable warming.  It's sort of eerie, isn't it?

Conflicting Signals

Where we once thought that forests would ease global warming, one new study shows that they may exacerbate it and that global-scale deforestation might help.  I think it's worth a shot.  After all, if we're wrong, they'll grow back and think of what the logging -- in New York State alone -- would do for the economy.

Yeah, I'm joking -- well sort of.  It would make a lot of money.

Only Seems Logical

Russell Roberts poses a question.

Suppose we discovered that the earth was cooling rather than warming due to a natural cycle. Would you encourage people to drive more and use more carbon-based energy as a way of warming the earth?

Can't Win For Losing

With the release of the latest IPCC report on global warming, a hastily-convened group of Ohio ecologists has cobbled together a curious report on its potential impact on the Lake Erie region.   The feared results range from a "dwindling" Lake Erie that emits more water vapor (another greenhouse gas, you know) to increased rainfall and snowfall.

Like me, you might have thought that more rain and snow would be a good thing for the old lake but no, it would just lead to more pollution-laden run-off -- and so it goes.

Fake Controversy Of The Day

Here's the newest global-warming "controversy." Whatever will we call the millions upon millions of people who will no doubt flee their inhospitable climates.

Global warming could create tens of millions of climate refugees, although numbers are hard to predict with accuracy and the definition itself is open to debate, experts say.

"According to some estimates, there are already almost as many environmentally displaced people on the planet as traditional refugees," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"As the impacts of climate change strike home, the numbers are likely to rise considerably, possibly as high as 50 million by 2010," de Boer said on Friday on the sidelines of a meeting in Brussels of the UN's top climate panel.

"Climate refugees" works for me, but in Florida they've always just called them "snowbirds."

Those Polluting Forests

Remember when we thought that North America's forests would offset at least a portion of our CO2 emissions?  Well, think again -- the environmentalists have determined that they probably emit more than they absorb.  So, caught in what increasingly looks like a losing battle, Canada's government won't include them in their emissions calculations anymore.

The government decision has angered environmentalists, who say the Kyoto opt-out clause, negotiated under the Chrétien government, means Canada is not taking responsibility for its total emissions.

"The problem is that ultimately we're going to have to include our forests because forests and ecosystems can be bigger emitters (of greenhouse gas) than industry," said Brinkman.

In 2003, Brinkman said, forest fires in Europe, the United States, Australia and Canada sent more emissions into the atmosphere globally than any other source, including industry.

Brinkman, a recognized specialist in sustainable forest management, is married to Joyce Murray, who is contesting the federal Liberal nomination in Vancouver Quadra riding.

Louise Comeau, a climate-change expert in Ottawa, said Canada had always assumed it would realize a greenhouse-gas benefit from managed forests.

But she said damage caused by climate change has turned that assumption on its head. "We've got more trees being destroyed than we have growing, and so our forests are turning into a source of emissions as opposed to a sink for carbon."

Forests account for 402 million hectares [1.55 million sq. miles] of Canada's 909-million-hectare [3.5 million sq. miles] land area. Managed forests take up 240 million hectares [927,000 sq. miles.]

You understand, of course, that the environmentalists are upset because these calculations would mean that Canada's CO2 emissions would be much higher and thus would require even more draconian reductions in emissions from industry or even larger transfers of money to poor nations as an offset.  You see where this is going don't you?  Soon our individual exhalations of CO2 will be added into the calculations -- it isn't just our "wasteful" Western lifestyle that's causing the problem -- it's our wasteful lives themselves. 

There's no compromise with these people, just economic ruin.  At some point we have to say "no."

Like The Sun, Hello

The growing number of reports of global-warming on Mars are always fun to read.  I mean, after all, its atmosphere is almost completely made up of carbon dioxide and always has been.  Gee, sorta makes you wonder if there aren't other contributors, doesn't it?

Stamp Feet, Scream Real Loud

Another condemnation of my own sadly misled and benighted Baby Boomer generation.  But it's apt and, after all, Michael Barone's a baby-boomer, too.

Read the history of the 1930s: fascism, communism, world war. There are worse things than a rise of 1 or 2 degrees Centigrade.

The natural human yearning for spirituality has produced in many people educated in secular-minded universities and enveloped in an atmosphere of contempt for traditional religion a faith that we vulgar human beings have a sacred obligation not to inflict damage on Mother Earth. But science tells us that the Earth and its climate have been constantly changing.

Gore and his followers seem to assume that the ideal climate was the one they got used to when they were growing up. When temperatures dropped in the 1970s, there were warnings of an impending ice age. When they rose in the 1990s, there were predictions of disastrous global warming. This is just another example of the solipsism of the baby boom generation, the pampered and much-praised age cohort that believes the world revolves around them and that all past history has become irrelevant.

We're told in effect that the climate of the late 1950s and early 1960s was, of all those that have ever existed, the best of all possible climates. Not by science. But as a matter of faith.

Climate changes -- always has and always will.  We'd be smarter to use our human faculties to figure out how to adapt to it instead of tilting at building windmills to stop it.

What? Me Worry?

A very interesting article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel compares almanacs kept by local naturists during the last century to conditions being experienced today. You'd have to conclude that the climate is warming.

Bradley is 89 years old, and using a pair of hiking poles, she pointed out places where she has recorded the arrival of spring for the last 30 years. Her father, the famed ecologist and pioneer of wildlife management Aldo Leopold, had done the same before her.

But spring's advance has been so dramatic that if Leopold were alive today, he'd have to rewrite parts of his seminal book, "A Sand County Almanac."

Take, for example, the Canada geese. Leopold wrote that they "tumbled out of the sky like maple leaves" in March.

But records by his daughter show that migratory geese are returning home more than a month sooner - now arriving about Feb. 19.

The differences chronicled by father and daughter along the Wisconsin River in Sauk County mirror hundreds of studies worldwide that show that the climate is changing.

Other observations include quicker-blooming plants, the migration northward of the praying mantis and later freezing dates for Wisconsin's lakes.  This is all similar to informal (and undocumented) observations I've made in my lifetime.  It's getting warmer in Western New York, too, after all.  I can't dispute it.  But even though the article takes pains to mention how adaptable humans are, it's oddly worried about nature's ability to cope.

Indeed, scientists are worried that warming is causing mismatches in the ecosystem - when a change in temperature alters the traditional pattern of one species and harms another that depends on it.

"The $64 question," said UW's Waller, is whether this is happening yet in Wisconsin.

Near the Leopold cabin, the fly-catching eastern phoebe has started to return home sooner in spring, apparently to catch up with the skunk cabbage, which it depends on. The plant now blooms about two weeks earlier than during Leopold's day.

"We are seeing life becoming uncoupled, and what we are talking about next is life unraveling," Waller said.

Schneider told an audience in Madison last fall that policy-makers have responded to global warming faster where the signs are more visible.

It's why California, under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed a law in September to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 25% by 2020, effectively rolling back emissions to 1990 levels.

I was raised to believe that Darwin's Theory of Evolution explained how nature would evolve to account for changes to its environment -- survival of the fittest you know.  In fact, evolution is the most sacred of our secular beliefs -- even more than human-caused global warming.  These days only an evolution-doubter is met with more scorn than a global-warming skeptic. 

Just this week, professors at Southern Methodist University protested a conference the mere scheduling of an Intelligent Design conference scheduled to be held on campus.  While technically still only a theory, evolution is now so solidly entrenched in American thought and education that doubts about nature's ability to cope with change ring hollow.  So why the concern, all of a sudden, over nature's ability to adapt? I thought this was "settled" science.

The big cry over global warming has little to do with nature, it's really about how humans feel about change.  We're perfectly suited to deal with it, but we rarely welcome it and nature is an easy proxy for our fears.  Now, for some anti-climate-change fanatics, global warming is a chance to make the capitalist West pay some penance for its evil profit-making ways, but for many others there's a very real fear of the unknown -- change might make things worse.

They should relax.  Global warming -- if it even continues -- will be a blessing to some and a problem for others.  But if Mr. Darwin's theories are correct, we'll all (praying mantises and Canada geese included) turn out just fine eventually.   And if he was wrong, then Intelligent Design declares that all is happening according to plan.  No cause to worry folks -- we've got both bases covered -- you can move along now.  But please, put on some sunscreen -- it's hot out there.

Listen To The Other Side

Please take the time to listen to a quick 10 minute podcast of an interview by Tom Keene of Bloomberg.net of prominent global-warming-as-disaster skeptic, Richard Lindzen of MIT.  Upshot:  global temperatures haven't changed since 1998 - could this explain the panic to do something about it now?  Before the whole theory falls apart?

Greenhouse Gas Savings I Can Live With

Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet

According to scientific estimates, the methane gas produced by cows is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. And now, German scientists have invented a pill to cut bovine burping.

The fist-sized plant-based pill, known as a bolus, combined with a special diet and strict feeding times, is meant to reduce the methane produced by cows.

"Our aim is to increase the wellbeing of the cow, to reduce the greenhouse gases produced and to increase agricultural production all at once," said Winfried Drochner, professor of animal nutrition, who has led the ground-breaking project at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. "It is an effective way of fighting global warming."

Prof Drochner wants to use the pill to trap some of the energy from the methane, which is naturally produced in the fermentation process when a cow digests grass and is later mostly burped out through their mouths. Until now it has been wasted.

"We could use the energy to boost the cow's metabolism," he said. The idea is that the cows would use the methane to produce glucose instead of passing it as wind. In turn this should help them to produce more milk.

"The fist-sized tablets mean that microbiotic substances can slowly dissolve in the cow's stomach over several months," said Prof Drochner.

Over the past 50 years the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has increased six-fold. With meat consumption growing, it is set to rise further.

Give ol' Bonnie some Beano with the burp pill and we've got both ends covered.  Who says technology won't save the planet?

Feeble Response

Martin Durkin, director of "The Great Global Warming Swindle," fully expected criticism but remains surprised at how "feeble" their arguments have been.

Too many journalists and scientists have built their careers on the global-warming alarm. Certain newspapers have staked their reputation on it. The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Getting it to die before we've had our economy legislated out from under us will be the challenge.

Today's Weather Doesn't Prove Anything?

Tim Blair:

Summer is just around the corner for us folks north of the equator.  A few more months from now, every idiot who mutters about how all these inconvenient cold snaps don’t actually prove anything about global warming will be on a soapbox.  Shouting.  That it is hot.  In the summertime.

The Great Debate

Ellis Henican lauds one effort to debate global warming in a calm and rational manner.

What Hath Edison Wrought?

Have you joined the "must-replace-incandescent-bulbs-with-fluorescent" club?  Australia's legislating it, can we be far behind?  But it all seems too easy.  Could there be a downside?  We might be rushing to a hasty conclusion that proves just as wrong as computer-voting.

More seriously, because CFLs [compact fluorescent bulbs] need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Astonishingly, according to a report on 'energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector', carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs'. In other words, on the Government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3billion.

In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their 'green' bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.

But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximise their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs - thus cancelling out their one supposed advantage.

In other words, in every possible way this looks like a classic example of kneejerk politics, imposed on us not by our elected Parliament after full consultation and debate, but simply on the whim of 27 politicians sitting around that table in Brussels, not one of whom could have made an informed speech about the pluses and minuses of what they were proposing.

What say we let Europe and Australia experiment before we follow suit.  If, however, you're convinced that CFR's are the ticket, then do us all the favor of monitoring your electricity bills while we wastrels wallow in the luxury and convenience of incandescent light.

How Much Does It Cost To Offset Shoe Transport?

Here's how ridiculous the argument over carbon "footprints" has become.

The Duchess of Cornwall had a favourite pair of shoes flown 3,000 miles to Kuwait for a lavish dinner with senior members of the Kuwaiti royal family, it emerged last night.

After discovering to her horror that a pair of her killer heels had been forgotten by careless aides, a member of staff is said to have been ordered to find them at the couple's Highgrove home and get them to her within 48 hours because they matched an outfit she had chosen for a gala event.

But astonishingly after the pair were flown over in the nick of time, Camilla decided not to wear them after all.

Last night Clarence House confirmed that the shoes were dispatched to Kuwait along with other personal items mistakenly left behind, but a spokesman denied claims that Camilla personally ordered the extravagant move.

The admission comes as the 3,000 mile trip was condemned as a profligate waste by green campaigners.

Now, think whatever you wish of the ability of Camilla to have a set of shoes flown to her in Kuwait.  But, and the article doesn't specify this, I'd suspect that said shoes were not dispatched on a specially-chartered royal jet.

In other words, whilst one might indeed be jealous of Ms. Parker-Bowles-Windor's profligate shoe-spending habits, the world didn't suffer one single kilogram more of CO2 emissions because of them.  THE PLANE WAS GOING THERE ANYWAY.

Sheesh.

Heretics' Lies No Doubt

From the Buffalo News letters to the editor:

Let’s heed the warning about global warming

Why not hear another side (yes, there is one.)  The Great Global Warming Swindle produced for Britain's Channel 4 is now up on Google video.

According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it. We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.

It's less science than politics.

Not Your Father's Science

Coyote Blog explains how climate science differs from the science we were taught.

[UPDATE:] He also has a good post on the carbon-credits scam -- they're the energy equivalents of the Star Registry.

Also, this is a brilliant way to finance a power station.  Say you want to build a wind power station.  Actual regular investors will, you know, want a return paid to them on their investment.  But TerraPass has apparently found a way to get capital from people without paying any return.  They just give these people a feel-good share of the lack of CO2 emissions and a little certificate for the wall, and TerraPass gets capital they never have to repay to build a power station they likely would have built anyway that they can then in turn sell the power from and not have to give any of the revenues to investors.  Smart.

Yeah, so smart that Al Gore has set up his own carbon-credit trading company and buys his offsets from himself.

Al Gore's Personal Fairness Doctrine

A report on a speech by Al Gore about the media's coverage of global warming.

Back in Tennessee on Tuesday, Gore told a crowd of about 50 people at the U.S. Media Ethics Summit II that the presentation's single most provocative slide was one that contrasts results of two long-term studies. A 10-year University of California study found that essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists, whereas, another study found that 53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed the global warming premise.

Russel Roberts observes that he's, in effect, criticizing the media for reporting in a balanced manner.

Gore thinks it's a mistake for the media to report on any dissension or skepticism in the scientific ranks. After all, Gore knows there's a consensus. He does not seem to realize that his attitude toward scientific inquiry, the role of newspapers, and his assessment of the significance of global warming are not a source of positive energy for anyone who doesn't already agree with him.

If a consensus of the world's scientists jumped in the lake, would Al Gore jump in the lake, too? 

One certainly hopes so.

Some Science Not Worth Mentioning

One of the annoying (and dishonest) behaviors of the global warming alarmists is their refusal to admit the existence of weather patterns that go against their theory.  Take, for example, this report of a "noted" scientist at the University of Madison.

The increasing intensity of hurricanes hitting the U.S. is partly driven by global warming, and the ferocity of storms to come is likely to increase as surface temperatures of the ocean rise, says a noted scientist visiting UW-Madison.

"The effects of global warming do not only concern scientists," Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Kerry Emanuel told an audience at a public lecture Thursday. "I want to put this issue into a societal context."

Emanuel, a professor in the department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at MIT, has published two books and over 100 scientific articles. One article published in the journal "Nature" in 2005, addressed the increasing destructiveness of hurricanes in recent years.

Weeks within its publication, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the article gained Emanuel widespread attention. Time magazine named him one of the "100 Most Influential People" of 2006 for his findings on hurricane intensity.

I invite you to read the entire article.  Nowhere in it will you find the least mention of the fact that during the last couple years the surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean have been dropping. Or that last year, due primarily to that drop, there was a marked decrease in hurricane intensity and that, oh yeah, none struck the United States.

One year without hurricanes, of course, does not disprove global warming theory but it would seem to me that honest scientists would be considering it and bringing it to our attention.  That is unless all they're interested in is getting more research money and flacking their books.

Plant Attacks

CO2-induced global warming skeptic that I am, I have to admit that there's some weird stuff going on.

A Backlash Against Science

Keith Burgess-Jackson believes it's coming.

How many of you think that science is in for a backlash? Many scientists have obliterated the line between fact and value. Instead of giving us the facts (about climate change, for example) and letting us decide what to do about them, they tell us what we should do. Many scientists aren’t content to understand and describe the world; they want to shape it. Almost invariably, they want to shape it in accordance with progressive values. When nonscientists resist these encroachments by science into the realm of value, they’re accused of being “stupid,” “ignorant,” and “anti-science.” Nonscientists have only so much patience for bullies. I believe there will be a backlash against science, and it will be richly deserved. Hard-working taxpayers will tell scientists, in effect, to fund their own research.

But What If I Had To Pay For It?

Mandatory curbs on so-called greenhouse gases look more and more possible given the current political climate.  The Wall Street Journal examines the costs.

With mandatory curbs on U.S. global-warming emissions looking increasingly likely in the next several years, industries are starting to argue over who will pay for the cleanup. One thing is clear: Whatever the cost, it will get passed along to consumers.

Everyone knows this, but almost no one talks about it.  What impact would do you suppose Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth might have had if he'd offered something like this during the conclusion?

Let me make it clear, folks, that mitigating the effects of global warming won't be cheap.  We'll all pay to fix it.  Our electricity will cost more and there may even be some rationing as our old, dirty powerplants are retired.  Fuel oil for your furnaces will be more expensive and you may well have to pay a carbon tax for it.  Gasoline for your car will be taxed more heavily, too.  $3 a gallon will be the lowest we'd allow it to go.

Air travel will become more expensive as we work to reduce carbon emissions and all those cheap Asian TVs and knock-off jeans will cost more because the ships they're transported on will pay the same carbon taxes you're subject to.  No one is above helping.

I'll guarantee you that all the talk of an Emmy would be history.  In fact, his "green" supporters would be furious.  They love him now because he doesn't talk about the costs of their imaginary "fixes" (in numbers that mean anythng to an individual) which they admit wouldn't do much at all to stop what they predict.

A cold snap like the one we've been stuck in for the last 4 weeks combined with some sensible numbers about the burdens we'd each suffer if we were to embrace Kyoto would put the whole global warming debate on figurative ice.  And the enviros know it.      

Hey, The Science Ain't Perfect

Looks as if we overreacted just a bit to forecasts for the "big" storm.

For almost two days, local TV stations led their newscasts with warnings about a coming snowstorm - which left less than a foot of snow falling throughout Western New York.

But officials in the school district with perhaps the toughest school-closing decision, Buffalo, insisted that their decision to close schools Wednesday had nothing to do with any prestorm hype.

It's not the first time we've erred on the safe side of a weather forecast, but it does point out how inexact weather forecasting is.  Now, it's certainly better than it used to be.  When I was growing up we didn't even know we were getting lake effect snow, we just knew we got a lot of it around here.

And it's these weather forecasts "gone wrong" that are the best reason, I think, for resisting the calls to drastic action in the face of global warming.  While we all know that we're in a warming spell -- that's simple observation -- we can't predict with certainty how long it might last or how bad it will get when. 

When the weatherpeople muff a forecast, the worst that happens is that kids and parents lose a day or two of Easter vacation to make up for it.  But if the global warming alarmists turn out to have been wrong, we'll be out trillions of dollars and our economy (and living standards) will be much less than they could have been.

Mark Twain is quoted as having said that everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.  That's probably as it should be.

Unsettling Statistics About Unsettled Science

The Union of Concerned Scientists revealed the results of a poll they commissioned that supposedly indicates widespread government suppression of climate change findings.  The study's so flawed it makes those exit polls that predicted Kerry's victory look accurate.