Global warming crowd takes a break

[TheBlueVan]

^what he said

[purplefrog]

I agree that we need to continue to invest in wind and solar. But until those sources prove to have the capacity to meet our population and energy needs I think we need to supplement with other technologies. IMO, nuclear is the best the option we have right now. I am totally against building any more coal plants unless they come with clean technology.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by TheBlueVan

you know dude, i did always find that funny about windfarms. they look TERRIBLE...

here's my opinion in a nutshell though. we have such incredible resources of money, education and ingenuity, we should be able to come up with viable alternatives for energy that have less of a lasting impact on the environment.

whether you think global warming is real or not, it wouldnt hurt to clean up the world a little you know? i know you think its "not economically feasible" or whatever, i can see that too. but, i dont think we should undersell our ability to invent viable solutions to these problems.

Should (and might, probably will wind up having to be nuclear or something like tremendously increased battery technology and paintable solar panels) but don't hold your breath and certainly don't think that changing over is going to be cheap or easy. I just read that canda is going to shelve kyoto for example (emissions up 24% since 2006) http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/kyoto/timeline.html .

Also don't kid yourself that big bad corporations are holding something back from the market, gasoline costs way too much for that to be happening.

Enviromentalists just don't realise how effective oil/coal is at providing energy. And I"m sure that AlGore isn't going to cut his electricity usage by 80%, nor is anyone else.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

I also don´t think, to change the behaviour of the people is the best possible way. It´s way better to construct houses and technical equipment more efficient, to lower the consumption of energy. There is a great potential for improvement!

[TheBlueVan]

Originally Posted by Dr.Zoidberg

I also don´t think, to change the behaviour of the people is the best possible way. It´s way better to construct houses and technical equipment more efficient, to lower the consumption of energy. There is a great potential for improvement!

agreed.

[dude1394]

Hey...maybe this global warming stuff is better than I thought!!

Stop coming to work and save the planet

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...22/nclim22.xml

[dude1394]

WE'RE NUMBER TWO!

China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper. . . . China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.

Will we try harder? (Via Lou Minatti).

[dude1394]

Now I like this. I'm shocked that those evil car companies would be spending money to save energy?? Seems counter-intuitive to me.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...html?series=19

When General Motors unveiled the Chevy Volt in January, plug-in hybrids suddenly seemed to matter again. Sure, the Volt is a concept car, and more of a testbed for various electric-drive systems than a showcase for plug-in charging. And the aftermarket kits that turn a Toyota Prius into a plug-in have been around for years. But with GM planning to build two plug-in vehicles — the Volt, as well as its next Saturn Vue Green Line — this technology is looking like the biggest thing since, well, hybrids.

How do plug-in hybrids work?
Their batteries can be recharged either by the vehicle's gasoline engine or the electric grid. A plug-in's batteries are usually lithium-ion, which are more powerful than a standard hybrid's nickel-metal-hydride batteries, but need to be plugged in for hours to fully charge. When the charge is depleted, the plug-in runs like a standard hybrid.

How energy-efficient are they?
Fully charging a kit-modified Toyota Prius adds around 50 cents to an electric bill, and the car has a battery-only range of 31 miles. Then the gas engine kicks in. Even so, a 100-mile trip burns just over 1 gal. of gasoline. Sounds like a bargain — but keep in mind, the warranty-voiding kits cost up to $10,000.

Why aren't plug-ins in production?
Automakers cite the high cost of lithium-ion batteries. Ford and Toyota have announced active interest in plug-ins, but for now they are sticking by their hybrids. DaimlerChrysler is currently testing a plug-in hybrid version of its Sprinter delivery van. Progress, maybe, but no one's making production commitments. GM has taken the biggest leap, awarding contracts to battery makers to produce lithium-ion packs for its Saturn Vue Green Line. The more radically designed Chevy Volt — which has a gas engine that recharges the batteries, and never powers the wheels — will have to wait. It needs a 400-pound battery, which GM estimates won't be feasible until 2012 at the earliest.

Bring on the coal and nuclear plants!!!!

[Dr.Zoidberg]

WE'RE NUMBER TWO!

China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper. . . . China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.

Will we try harder? (Via Lou Minatti).

Nice teasing.

You don´t have to be proud to be Number Two in the rear of an economic developing nation. USA rather should set a good example and exert leverage on them, together with the other countries.

That China is exempt from it´s restrictions because it´s a developing country is not the best solution, but the economical strong countries have not the right to complain, as they had no restrictions too at this development stage. Here we have a lot of hard work to do, to convince those developing countries of the importance in restricting greenhouse gases. At least should the countries with the technical know how try to support them. I know the economists will squall about this, but probably there is no satisfactory solution for this problem at the moment.

Now I like this. I'm shocked that those evil car companies would be spending money to save energy?? Seems counter-intuitive to me.

They jump on the save-the-world-thru-environmentalism-bandwagon! Hybrid-technologie is an old hat.

It was two american which have modified a Buick Skylark (GM) to a hybrid car 1972. Especially the German car companies (Porsche, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz and Audi) did pioneer this technics. The first seller of cars with hybrid technics was Audi (1994). But the first hybrid car which has been sold effectively, was the Toyota Prius (since 1997).

As nice as this alternative technics (not only the hybrid technics) and endeavors of the car companies are, it´s hard for me to belive that they do it for the environment. I think they use it only for sales promotion at the moment, as it facilitate the publicity an ecosensitive mind. And they do it for the future of course. Who can say what will be in the future? Maybe there will appear a lack of oil for example (even if this is rather unlikely for the near future) or the countries will enact laws, to construct and use ecofriedly cars. So if you don´t have something up your sleeve at this point, you will have a problem.

Bring on the coal and nuclear plants!!!!

A good designed hybrid car doesn´t need to be charged through plug-in via outlet. The electricity is generated during the braking procedure and by the combustion engine of the car. The electromotor is used as drive at low speeds (e.g. getting into a parking space, lower city speed,...) and as support to the acceleration. So you can use a smaller combustion engine.

[dude1394]

You need to keep reading those articles doc. The hybrid cars are okay, but not terribly cost-effective. And as I've been saying at the end of the day it's all about dollars/mile.

The battery discussion they are talking about is spot-on for the electric cars. Those Lion batteries are expensive and are pretty dangerous, they still need some work there.

[Mavdog]

saw this a few months ago, a very creative approach by the austinites. imho there is a huge opportunity for commuter cars that are "plug in", and in this sceanrio an owner of an electric car can recoup their investment pretty quickly.
not to mention the potential for our economy to benefit from the investment in this new technology....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Austin hopes to lead on plug-in cars

By Elizabeth White, Associated Press
AUSTIN — In some ways, Texas' capital city doesn't belong in stereotypical Texas at all. Its quirky music scene and liberal attitudes defy the state's well-known rough-and-tumble character.
Now the liberal enclave of Austin wants to distinguish itself again.

Austin hopes to be the first city in the nation to put the emerging technology of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to use in the fight to reduce dependence on foreign oil, combat high oil prices and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Austin Energy, the city's public utility, has big plans for plug-in vehicles beyond just cutting down on gas consumption. The city hopes the cars can eventually supplement the city's electricity supply during peak hours.

"People have said for many years that eventually the electric grid and the transportation sector will unify into one," said Roger Duncan, deputy general manager for Austin Energy.

Duncan said it'll take a few years for enough plug-ins to hit the road to make a difference on the power grid.

"There is a time frame involved, but the concept is solid," Duncan said.

Plug-In Partners, an Austin-founded national coalition of governments, businesses and non-profit groups, is seeking to show automakers there's a market for the vehicles.

And it seems to be working. A few automakers are planning to roll out on a wide scale some version of a plug-in in the next several years after improving the cars' technology, particularly the battery.

The plug-in car technology contemplates a vehicle that can go about 25 miles off its rechargeable battery, said Austin Energy's Daryl Slusher, the deputy coordinator of Plug-In Partners. After that, a gasoline engine, or perhaps even a flexible-fuel engine that could use alternative fuels, would power the battery.

Bob Graham, program manager for electric transportation at the non-profit Electric Power Research Institute, in Palo Alto, Calif., said most Americans drive fewer than 30 miles a day, with average trips lasting 5 to 6 miles.

"If we can operate all of those miles on electricity, just think of what we can do," he said, adding that plug-ins will get up to 30% better fuel economy than the hybrids on the road today.

Austin Mayor Will Wynn said the mass production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is widely considered the technology that can have the biggest impact on oil dependence, oil price and emissions.

But wait, says Wynn, there's more.

After charging their cars at night, plug-in owners would drive the vehicles to work and plug them in there. Then, when peak demand time hit in the afternoon, the city would be able to draw down power that's stored in the cars' batteries to supplement electricity used during high demand times.

"It's very viable technology," said Jon Wellinghoff, a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "We ought to accelerate it as fast as we possibly can."

Drivers would be charged for electricity their cars take in at night and credited for electricity Austin Energy uses during the day.

Wynn said the energy stored in the plug-in cars during the day would come from renewable sources like wind as the cars charged at home overnight. So during peak demand time — particularly hot afternoons when Austinites have their air conditioners on full blast — the city would be using renewable energy.

Willett Kempton, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who first wrote about vehicle-to-grid power a decade ago and developed the idea, said the technology also could be used to regulate the system, sometimes drawing power away from the grid.

"Regulation has to be in operation continuously," he said. "You could have cars doing that with almost no ... change on the battery."

While the vehicle-to-grid concept did not originate in Austin, Wynn said he'd be very disappointed if the city isn't the first to put it to use.

"We here in Austin just like the idea of our cars not emitting many emissions and using West Texas wind and not Middle Eastern oil," Wynn said.

Once they're available, Wynn said he thinks the plug-ins, which use regular old wall sockets, will catch on quickly with the public, businesses and government, which he hopes will replace aging fleets with the new models.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

But wait, says Wynn, there's more.

After charging their cars at night, plug-in owners would drive the vehicles to work and plug them in there. Then, when peak demand time hit in the afternoon, the city would be able to draw down power that's stored in the cars' batteries to supplement electricity used during high demand times.

"It's very viable technology," said Jon Wellinghoff, a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "We ought to accelerate it as fast as we possibly can."

Drivers would be charged for electricity their cars take in at night and credited for electricity Austin Energy uses during the day.

Wynn said the energy stored in the plug-in cars during the day would come from renewable sources like wind as the cars charged at home overnight. So during peak demand time — particularly hot afternoons when Austinites have their air conditioners on full blast — the city would be using renewable energy.

Willett Kempton, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who first wrote about vehicle-to-grid power a decade ago and developed the idea, said the technology also could be used to regulate the system, sometimes drawing power away from the grid.

"Regulation has to be in operation continuously," he said. "You could have cars doing that with almost no ... change on the battery."

While the vehicle-to-grid concept did not originate in Austin, Wynn said he'd be very disappointed if the city isn't the first to put it to use.

"We here in Austin just like the idea of our cars not emitting many emissions and using West Texas wind and not Middle Eastern oil," Wynn said.

Once they're available, Wynn said he thinks the plug-ins, which use regular old wall sockets, will catch on quickly with the public, businesses and government, which he hopes will replace aging fleets with the new models.

I'm really on-board with electric-hybrid autos, it makes perfect sense to move to coal/nuclear. But that last part, having a parking lot of plugged in autos??? Not so sure about that, the infrastructure costs look enormous. I wouldn't bet on that one.

[dude1394]

This is some very good stuff. The guy lays out just how difficult (if not impossible) it will be to get rid of oil based fuels. However that there is a big payoff to getting alternatives, which I'm on board with. Very interesting is the point about brazil. Even though ALL autos are required to be able to run on alcohol(hmm..sounds like a good idea just in principal!) only half do and only 20% of their liquid-based fuels run on it. In other words, there just ain't nothing like oil baby.

But a goal to invest in R&D for energy diversification is right on target, oil shale, coal, nuclear, anything but middle-eastern oil.

The recent terrorist attack that was stopped in Saudia Arabia (flying planes into oil-fields) would have been pretty damn tramatic for the world economy. France and probably even US would make out due to the strategic reserve and france's nuclear program, but boy you want to talk about inflation and recession, ooh boy.

Bottom line here is diversification is good, carbon-as-bad-guy is not.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...DcyMjg0Wj.html

The Mirage of Energy Independence
By DOUG WILSON
April 28, 2007; Page A9

With oil prices some three times higher than a decade ago, and access to more than half of the petroleum reserves on the planet beneath nations vulnerable to the whims of Islamic fundamentalists, it's understandable that Americans want Washington to free them of dependence on foreign energy. Understandable -- but misguided. The goal of energy independence is simply an illusion in an age of global interdependence. The goal of U.S. energy security through diversification is not.

Start with a reality check. In 1974, when President Nixon first called for energy independence, America was importing about six million barrels of oil a day from other countries -- a bit more than one-third of consumption. Today, daily imports are around 14 million barrels, two-thirds of our consumption. The Bush administration's prescription, more rapid exploitation of America's own dwindling reserves, could make a difference. But not a big difference: A combination of stepped-up production from offshore wells and successful exploitation of reserves in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge could pare dependence on foreign oil by, at most, a few percentage points over the next few decades. The priorities of the domestic oil industry shouldn't be confused with the priorities of the nation.

The inherent limits of domestic oil exploitation have led many to embrace alternative fuels. Indeed, just about the time Richard Nixon was promising to slash oil imports, Brazil was actually working to make it happen. Today, thanks to a mix of generous subsidies to stimulate ethanol production from sugar cane and mandates requiring that cars be equipped to run on alcohol, only about half the fuel burned by cars in Brazil is petroleum-based.

But the payoff to Brazil's Herculean effort has been less salutary than is sometimes advertised. Since alcohol is not an adequate substitute for either diesel fuel or heating oil, ethanol comprises less than 20% of the liquid fuels used in the country. And that modicum of independence has come at a substantial cost in terms of government subsidies, higher automobile and fuel prices for motorists, and environmental damage to ecologically fragile agricultural land.

Gearing up to make large quantities of ethanol from corn in the U.S. is likely to be equally problematic. An explosion in demand for corn to make fuel has already raised corn prices -- increases that will ripple through the economy in higher prices for everything from hamburger to Coke. And some truly unintended consequences are already being felt: The price of tortillas, the staple food of Mexico's poor, has gone up.

In a way, though, this sobering news is beside the point. The very idea of energy independence clashes with the realities of globalization. Suppose, for the moment, that accelerated exploitation of domestic oil reserves, technological advances in alternative fuels and a sea change in Americans' enthusiasm for energy conservation made it possible to power the economy without imported oil. Would we be free of dependence on foreign oil in any meaningful sense?

No. As long as the U.S. remains part of a global market in fuels, the impact of events abroad will not stop at the border. For example, in a crisis that cut off supplies from Saudi Arabia, the price of oil needed in Europe and Asia might double or triple overnight. Prices would rise in response in the U.S. even if we weren't importing oil, as markets directed the fuel that was available to the highest bidders.

Well, couldn't the U.S. go it alone, insulating the economy by prohibiting fuel exports? That would be difficult, in light of the complex supply chains in refining, transporting and storing petroleum products that crisscross political boundaries. More to the point, it would shake the foundations of modern global capitalism, in which individual economies can specialize in what they do best, confident that they can buy abroad what they don't make for themselves. When President Nixon dared to challenge this global division of production by temporarily barring soybean exports during a period of global grain crop failures in 1973, our allies shuddered. Japan, a big grain importer, vowed never to be caught short again, buying insurance against future embargoes by underwriting a major shift in global soybean output to Brazil.

If the very idea of energy independence is an illusion in an interdependent global economy, what's the point of having any national energy strategy? A surprising number of free-market economists would answer "not much" -- it should be up to major oil distributors and consumers to assess the risks of a supply crisis and plan accordingly. But I think there is still a good case to be made for a national energy strategy that is based on energy security as our goal and diversification as our means.

Some of the biggest fuel consumers -- electric utilities, heavy industry -- long ago responded to the unreliability of oil supplies by switching to natural gas, coal and uranium. However, conventional options for powering cars and trucks are more limited, justifying diversification efforts into both alternative liquid fuels and alternative foreign sources of fuel.

In the spirit of diversification it makes sense to provide incentives for R&D in liquid fuels from coal, oil shale and biomass -- though not open-ended commitments to production subsidies like the Brazilian ethanol-from-sugar program or, for that matter, America's ethanol-from-corn program. By the same token, the goal of fuel diversity might justify incentives to design and build "plug in" electric hybrid vehicles that could displace a portion of liquid fuels now used in transportation by deriving part of their power from the electricity grid. But probably the cheapest source of diversification in transportation is still conservation -- using taxes or tougher federal mileage mandates to increase the fuel economy of cars and trucks.

The other, more controversial, leg of a fuel diversification program would promote fuel production from more reliable foreign sources. With oil prices hovering in the $50-a-barrel range, Canadian companies may need no more encouragement to expand fuel extraction from the country's virtually limitless tar sands. But it might well make sense to offer financial incentives and technological assistance to Mexico to develop its deep undersea reserves beneath the Gulf of Mexico. To the same end, it might be useful to extend a hand to Venezuela to exploit its humungous deposits of viscous, high-sulfur heavy oil.

Venezuela's current government is, of course, no friend of the U.S. But the producer-consumer interdependence between the two economies transcends ideology. And in any event, the broad goal is security through diversification -- making oil-consuming countries less dependent on oil from far less reliable, politically problematic sources like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

The idea of energy independence resonates in a country fed up with fighting in the Mideast and, more generally, uncomfortable with the economic entanglements of globalization. But independence should be seen for what it is: a distraction from the task of diversifying sources of liquid fuels in order to minimize the risks of doing business in a risky world.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

IPCC CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

How The World Can Be Saved

By accepting a reduction of just 0.12 percent in global economic growth, we can avoid the worst consequences of global warming, according to the IPCC. The catch? It only works if everyone joins in.

Climate experts are pinning their hopes on a brown line: It rises constantly and has already reached three times the level of 1970.

The line represents humanity's total income -- the overall economic output produced on the planet. This curve rises more steeply than the blue, red and green lines on the same graph, which represent energy consumption, CO2 emissions and population growth -- meaning growth and prosperity are not inextricably tied to rising emission rates.

It is possible to increase humanity's income and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time -- that's how Ogunlade Davidson, the co-chairman of the United Nations (UN) climate panel, formulated the good news in Bangkok. There, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented Friday the third part of its climate report, which describes ways of escaping the climate trap.

Davidson said the proposals were not about "sacrifices" people have to make, but about changes in "lifestyle." People could just ride their bikes more frequently instead of getting into their cars, for example, he said. But such practical advice tended to be relegated to the footnotes in Bangkok.

Photo Gallery: Last Resort To Prevent Climate Catastrophe

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (4 Photos)



The IPCC's recommendations on how to avoid the dangerous consequences of global warming are an omnibus of average values, predictions and technological assessments. The goal set by the climate experts is that of reducing CO2 emissions by between 50 and 85 percent by 2050. That would require emissions to stop increasing as early as 2015.

That way, the average warming worldwide could probably be limited to about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. The experts minutely list the current and future technologies (see table) that could be employed to achieve this goal -- many of which are easily available.

Minimal costs

The costs for achieving this would amount to -- at most -- a mere 0.12 percent reduction in global economic growth. That is the central figure hidden in a table in the 35-page summary of the document presented in Bangkok. To be more specific: if humanity were to agree on an upper limit of between 445 and 535 parts per million (ppm) of CO2, it would mean a reduction in average annual GDP growth rates of up to 0.12 percent in 2050, and a reduction of up to 5.5 percent in total economic output.

However, many of the necessary costs can actually be considered investments -- investments which can pay for themselves in a relatively short space of time by providing a technological advantage.

Mitigating Technologies and Practices

Sector Energy supply:

Already Available

Improved supply and distribution efficiency, fuel switching from coal to gas, nuclear power, renewable heat and power (hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy), combined heat and power, early applications of CCS (e.g. storage of removed CO2 from natural gas)

Available by 2030

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) for gas, biomass and coal-fired electricity generating facilities, advanced nuclear power, advanced renewable energy, including tidal and waves energy, concentrating solar, and solar PV.

Sector Tranportation:

Already Available

More fuel efficient vehicles, hybrid vehicles, cleaner diesel vehicles, biofuels; modal shifts from road transport to rail and public transport systems, non-motorized transport (cycling, walking), land-use and transport planning

Available by 2030

Second generation biofuels, higher-efficiency aircraft, advanced electric and hybrid vehicles with more powerful and reliable batteries

Sector Buildings:

Already Available

More efficient end-use electrical equipment, heat and power recovery, material recycling and substitution, control of non-CO2 gas emissions and a wide array of process-specific technologies

Available by 2030

Integrated design of commercial buildings including technologies, such as intelligent meters that provide feedback and control; solar PV integrated in buildings

Sector Industry:

Already Available

More efficient end-use electrical equipment, heat and power recovery, material recycling and substitution, control of non-CO2 gas emissions and a wide array of process-specific technologies

Available by 2030

Advanced energy efficiency, CCS for cement, ammonia and iron manufacture and inert electrodes for aluminium manufacture

Sector Agriculture:

Already Available

Improved crop and grazing land management to increase soil carbon storage, restoration of cultivated peaty soils and degraded lands, improved rice cultivation techniques and livestock and manure management to reduce CH4 emissions, improved nitrogen fertilizer application techniques to reduce N2O emissions, dedicated energy crops to replace fossil fuel use, improved energy efficiency

Available by 2030

Improvements of crop yields

Sector Forestry:

Already Available

Afforestation, reforestation, forest management, reduced deforestation, harvested wood product management, use of forestry products for bioenergy to replace fossil fuel use

Available by 2030

Tree species improvement to increase biomass productivity and carbon sequestration. Improved remote sensing technologies for analysis of vegetation/soil carbon sequestration potential and mapping land use change

Sector Waste:

Already Available

Landfill methane recovery, waste incineration with energy recovery, composting of organic waste, controlled waste water treatment, recycling and waste minimization

Available by 2030

Biocovers and biofilters to optimize CH4 oxidation

(Source: IPCC)

But such a scenario also requires a global pollution tax per ton of CO2. "If one ton of greenhouse gas would cost between $20 and $50 (€15 and $37), many investments (in low-emission technologies) would already become attractive," says Bert Metz, a member of the climate panel. But experts doubt that such a measure can be pushed through the world over.

Photo Gallery: Greenhouse Gas Sectors: The Dirty Seven

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)



The problem involved in the calculation presented in Bangkok is that it only works if everyone joins in. But the attitude of China in particular -- the country that will soon be the greatest producer of CO2 -- raises doubts about whether that will actually happen. Furthermore, the industrialized nations still have to develop a common stance towards climate protection, which they hope to hammer out at the G-8 summit in the German resort of Heiligendamm in June. Whether their efforts will meet with success remains an open question.

Climate protection as economic problem

British government advisor Nicholas Stern and a team of economists already presented an economic analysis of the risks involved in excessive global warming and the costs of prevention in the fall of 2006.

Their conclusion then was that, if nothing is done, there is the danger of an economic crisis such as has not been seen since the 1930s -- but investments in the region of 1 percent of annual economic output would be enough to prevent the worst consequences. Similar conclusions had already been reached by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.


Much as in the Stern Report, the third part of the IPCC report also proposes that excessive global warming can be prevented through an economically feasible blend of technological fixes and tougher environmental legislation -- provided that both the technological and legal changes are implemented worldwide.

Hence appeals to fears about the end of the world could also be heard in Bangkok. Ogunlade Davidson put it simply: "If we continue doing what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble."

stx/ap/dpa

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...481085,00.html

[Dr.Zoidberg]

EMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE

Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science?

By Uwe Buse

No United Nations organization currently dominates the headlines as much -- or is as controversial -- as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Critics call the panel politically one-sided and its reports alarmist. Its defenders say the opposite is true. The IPCC will publish its third report on Friday.


AP
Drought: A dry cracked reservoir bed in Alcora, Spain


It was about 10 a.m. when Rajendra Pachauri climbed up on a chair in the lobby of a European Union conference building in Brussels and turned to the cameras and microphones to give an improvised press conference. It was a situation to which the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's largest scientific commission, was unaccustomed. Normally Pachauri stands in front of podiums instead of on chairs to inform the public about the progress of his panel's work and the current state of the earth.

Pachauri held up his hands and asked the assembled journalists to be patient. It would be a while yet, he said, before the group preparing the IPCC's global climate report would be able to present its results. Discussions were still underway. In short, Pachauri couldn't tell the journalists what the current prognosis is for the future of the globe.

A laborious process

The discussions Pachauri mentioned were taking place in the large conference room on the third floor of the building. There, behind closed doors, politicians from more than 130 countries were arguing with the authors of the report of the precise wording of a thin, 23-page document. The document, known as the SPM, or Summary for Policymakers, contains the essence of the actual climate report, which is a scientific compendium divided into three volumes, each containing at least 1,000 pages. Negotiations were underway in Brussels over the summary of the second volume and, as always, it was a laborious process. The two groups debating the issue had little in common except a mutual interest in reaching a consensus.

On the one side were the authors of the report, all scientists, who have done little else in the last three years than work on this report. For many of them, it was already asking too much to compress the contents of more than 1,000 pages into a 23-page summary.

On the other side were the politicians, members of delegations from almost every country on earth. Sitting in alphabetical order in the chamber, their main concern was to adjust the report to suit their individual economic, environmental and foreign policies.

The delegations from the industrialized nations dominated the debate, especially that of the United States, which, as is so often the case, had sent the largest delegation. The Saudi Arabian delegation, not much smaller, was aligned with the Americans, as were the Australians and the Chinese.

Their opponents -- the report's authors, supported by the delegations from the core European Union countries, as well as Great Britain -- would register collective outrage each time the US delegation demanded that an unambiguous phrase like "will happen" be changed to a less clear "will likely happen." The US delegation submitted this request alone more than a hundred times. These objections were possible because the IPCC's rules make it possible to negotiate the summary line by line and word for word -- a necessary provision when so much could be riding on a single word. No other document has such a far-reaching impact on global environmental and industrial policy.

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS

• New Energies: The Path away from Climate Catastrophe
• SPIEGEL 360: Our Climate Change Coverage

The IPCC is a scientific panel created by the UN Environmental Organization (UNEO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Once every five or six years it issues a report summarizing the current status of research on climate change. It operates on a minimal annual budget of only €5 million ($6.8 million). To be able to fulfill its mandate, the IPCC is dependent on assistance from UN members. They finance the conferences and provide the scientists who, as authors, are responsible for the contents of individual chapters.

The IPCC's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, consist of only a few glass-enclosed offices lining a hallway. The organization's real work -- reviewing, analyzing and summarizing studies -- takes place in research centers, institutes and universities around the world. The IPCC is a highly decentralized and very typical UN organization. Its leadership positions are handed out in the hallways and chambers of the political bazaar otherwise known as the United Nations.

The IPCC's control board currently includes an Indian -- Pachauri -- a Russian, a Kenyan and a Sri Lankan researcher. The involvement of governments in the reports was part of the process from the very beginning. The organizations that established the IPCC -- the UNEO and the WMO -- wanted to prevent governments from using the reports as little more than notepaper. And the politicians were intent on preventing the scientists from gaining sole responsibility for the content of the reports.

Coalition of the unwilling

Shortly after the negotiations began in Brussels, the room became divided into a coalition of the unwilling, under US leadership, and a coalition of the willing, consisting of the authors with support from Old Europe. The overwhelming majority of participants were silent throughout most of the debate.

The US delegates used a classic tactic to achieve as many of their demands as possible, a tactic that has proven effective in many venues, from UN diplomacy to living situations to marital disputes. The Americans simply talked long enough, were hardnosed enough in refusing to compromise and kept submitting new demands until their opponents were worn down and exhausted, and finally gave in.

The same thing happened in Paris in early February, when the summary of the first volume was being debated and the central question revolved around the extent to which human activity is responsible for climate change. And the same thing is also likely to happen this week in Bangkok, where the parties will argue over the contents of the third summary and the question of what man can in fact do to avert climate change.

At noon on Good Friday, after a 22-hour marathon negotiation, Rajendra Pachauri went before the press, this time at a podium, and introduced colleagues who reported on what had been agreed in the chamber. At issue were the consequences of climate change, which are specified in the second volume.

The panel informed the world that 20 to 30 percent of all known species will become extinct if the rise in temperatures, measured from 1850 to the end of the 21st century, exceeds 2°C (3.6°F). The world also learned that there could be water shortages and more frequent flooding, and that food production would decline if global warming exceeds 3°C (5.4°F).

Pachauri, exhausted and his suit wrinkled by then, listened to what the scientists had to say. He knew what would happen after the press conference. The speakers' sentences would make waves, big waves, and in the space of a few hours they would reach virtually every corner of the earth.

And he was right. A headline in the next day's issue of German tabloid Bild read: "Climate Report Shocks Germany." The British Independent reported: "Mankind will be divided." US newsmagazine Time complained: "Our feverish planet badly needs a cure." The world was in a panic, almost as if there had been a major terrorist attack.


DPA
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri: The world was in a panic, almost as if there had been a major terrorist attack.


Pachauri had good reason to be pleased, and not just over the media reactions. The scientists, supported by their European allies, had warded off most of the attacks from the coalition of the unwilling. Concessions were made, but they were more symbolic than anything else. Because the IPCC's rules require that politicians produce scientific arguments to implement changes, the scientists have, in a sense, a home court advantage.

As pleased as he is about these rules, Pachauri is concerned about the critics who are not bound by the rules -- the outsiders. He calls them skeptics, and when he pronounces the word, he shrugs his shoulders as if he wanted to shoo away a fly. And then he says: "There will always be skeptics."

Down to earth and diplomatic

Pachauri is now sitting in a hotel room in Brussels, a surprisingly plain room for someone so high up in the UN hierarchy. Also, the fact that he has scheduled this interview here and not in a conference room rented specifically for this purpose suggested that he is a person who has not allowed his status to go to his head. Pachauri is an economist. When colleagues describe him they mention his beard, the way he combs his hair straight across his head and his diplomatic skills.

In his native India, Pachauri heads an institute that employs a staff of more than 700 and is devoted to sustainability. He has worked for the World Bank, is a consultant to the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) and teaches in the United States. He could be characterized as a member of his continent's humanitarian jet set.

Pachauri became head of the IPCC in 2002, when he was elected after being nominated by the US. The Bush administration had really wanted more of an obstructionist but was unable to find someone who would have been acceptable to other members of the organization. Instead, it nominated Pachauri, who had the reputation of being thoughtful and deliberate.

It was a miscalculation, though. Some time ago, Pachauri likened a critic of the IPCC to Hitler because the man had publicly reflected on whether it would make more sense to compensate and relocate the residents of Pacific island nations threatened by rising sea levels instead of attempting to keep sea levels somewhat constant.

Skeptics have hounded Pachauri since he took office, but he is anxious to play down their importance. In fact, he prefers not to discuss these people at all. But the deep-seated global debate that the IPCC has triggered with its reports, its analyses and its predictions also directs a great deal of attention to precisely these skeptics.

Questioning from skeptics

Is climate change truly manmade? Are the scientists' arguments convincing? Aren't there some scientists who hold completely different views? And this IPCC, isn't it really just a collection of political activists and eco-fundamentalists who are playing up their research results to transform all of mankind into users of public transportation and converts to car-pooling?

These are the questions the skeptics are asking, and they are debated in serious media outlets, including the influential German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt and the television program heute journal. In other countries, like the United States, people like bestselling author Michael Crichton debate with Pachauri's colleagues on radio talk shows, experts debate the scientific foundations of the IPCC's reports on the TV talk show "Larry King Live," and in Great Britain the Channel 4 television network aired a documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle."

The discussions revolve, among other things, around issues like climate sensitivity, Dansgaard-Oeschger events, the question of whether a global temperature increase of just under 0.8°C (1.4°F) in the last 100 years is a lot or a little, and whether the rise in CO2 levels is a consequence of increasing temperatures or vice-versa.

Who can answer these questions? Certainly not laymen. And neither can most politicians because they too are scientific laymen, and they too haven't the faintest idea what a Dansgaard-Oeschger event is. It's a difficult situation. A layman can only attempt to consider arguments he actually understands. And he can also attempt to discover whether the others, the critics, in fact have the better arguments.

The skeptics' figurehead is an American named Richard Lindzen. Lindzen is repeatedly referred to as the only one who, in the struggle for dominance in the climate debate, can compete in the same weight class as his opponents. These days Lindzen is much in demand and often on the road. He sits on the terrace of a hotel in Venice, facing the Grand Canal and the dome of St. Mark's Cathedral to the left. He fumbles in his pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights a Marlboro.

He has come here directly from the United States. His delayed flight landed two hours ago, and he plans to fly back tomorrow. During his short stay, Lindzen plans to explain to Italian investors what this greenhouse effect means for them and their money. He has been asked to limit his comments to 20 minutes.

Lindzen is a 67-year-old physicist and a professor at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His area of expertise is that of the physical processes that take place in the atmosphere and regulate the weather and climate. Lindzen is a theoretician, and he looks the part. His body seems a bit hunched over, as if its main purpose were to support the weight of his head.


DPA
Pollution in China: Climate change is real, and it is overwhelmingly manmade.


An 'Alarmist' and 'Hysterical' Debate

In his speeches, articles and studies, Lindzen concedes that climate change is a reality, but he also insists that it is unclear whether the warming measured to date can be considered dramatic. He criticizes the models that are used to estimate climate change, calling them too imprecise and therefore unusable. Lindzen also says that the results achieved by his opponents in the scientific debate are based on arbitrary assumptions. He calls the SPM, the summaries of the IPCC reports prepared for the politicians, "alarmist" and the tone of the debate "hysterical." In his opinion, mankind would be better off addressing the world's true problems: wars, epidemics and hunger.

Perhaps Lindzen's overall criticism is correct. Perhaps his field is as dysfunctional as he claims, and perhaps his fellow scientists are more interested in manipulating than informing. After all, the world, and man, isn't driven purely by good intentions. But if this is the case, why is he the only one among serious critics who is expressing his outrage so vehemently? Lindzen's response: "It could have something to do with the fear of opposing the mainstream."

But Lindzen hasn't exactly suffered as a result of his critical stance. He is still a professor at MIT. He continues to conduct research and publish. He may be controversial, but he is also very well known. Indeed, he even seems to derive benefits from his position. Italian businessmen fly him in for presentations. The media court him and ask for his opinions. Lindzen was the skeptic who appeared on US talk show host Larry King's show, a crowning achievement in the United States for someone who wants publicity.

Lindzen's second argument is that the scientific research and discovery process is distorted. Instead of being devoted to truth, its main emphasis is opportunity, says Lindzen, which distorts the results.

A transparent global process

Lindzen's arguments sound convincing, but they are still nothing but claims, popular theories as opposed to a transparent global process, a global plebiscite among climate researchers.

The work on each report begins by reviewing all scientific studies in all relevant disciplines, summarizing them, organizing their results and then writing a first draft. This work is done by IPCC staff members, and their draft is accessible to scientists worldwide, who are invited to comment on it and submit suggestions for improvement. Each of these suggestions is considered and either incorporated or not. The lead authors of the individual chapters must maintain an accounting of their decisions, in the form of endless Excel tables that document the path and fate of each comment. When necessary, the authors are also required to justify their decisions to those submitting the comments and suggestions.

Once this process is complete the first draft is written. It is sent to all governments, which also have the option of submitting comments. Once again, the suggested changes are either incorporated or not. And once again, the scientists are at an advantage and the fate of each suggestion is meticulously documented. Finally the last draft is produced, which serves as the basis for the SPM, the production of which is similar to the production of the actual report and ends with the negotiation between scientists and politicians.

Lindzen's next argument goes like this: The scientists are exaggerating the dangers of climate change, because this is the only way to get the research funding they receive, primarily from their respective governments.

In the history of global climate research, the research budget in Lindzen's native United States has been inflated twice -- once during the presidency of the first President Bush and once during that of his son, George W. Bush. In both cases the injection of funding was preceded by a sentence uttered by the president: We know too little. If climate researchers wish to secure or expand their budgets, they shouldn't be saying: We are 90 percent certain that the lion's share of climate change is manmade. Instead, they should say: We know too little. But there is one climate researcher who says precisely these words: Lindzen.

Lindzen can argue that the models need to be more precise, and other, less competent critics can demand that details need to be better understood. This can happen, and will probably happen, but it is virtually impossible that these changes and these conclusions will throw doubt on the core conclusion of the current global climate report: Climate change is real, and it is overwhelmingly manmade.

When it comes to his one remaining argument, however, Lindzen is dead-on. The tone of the debate, he says, is hysterical.

There is hardly a newspaper article and hardly a TV or radio program that doesn't conjure up images of "climate catastrophe," prophesy floods of gigantic proportions, droughts and hunger. Indeed, the media have developed something akin to a complete apocalyptic program.

It's the fault of the media, of course, but not exclusively. It's also the fault of a new hero, an environmental activist who likes to introduce himself by saying: "Hello, I was once the next President of the United States of America."


AP
A polar bear in Alaska: Al Gore's film neglects to mention that it would take several centuries for Greenland and western Antarctica to become ice-free.


Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," is a PowerPoint presentation, a modern-day slide show about the causes and consequences of climate change. It also paints apocalyptic scenarios, and its dramatic climax shows large parts of Florida, as well as San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and New York, complete with the World Trade Center memorial, being swallowed by the sea. Gore spends a great deal of time on this sequence, in which each region appears on the screen and the regions ultimately disappear, one after another, into the dark sea.

The world climate report assumes that sea levels will rise by about 38.5 centimeters (15 inches). This is the mean of all scenarios, which predict increases of between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 and 23 inches). The report also states that sea levels could even rise by several meters if Greenland and western Antarctica were to become ice-free. According to the IPCC's estimates, this process, if it happens, would take several centuries, perhaps even millennia. Gore neglects to mention this time frame.

Instead, all he says is this: "If the ice on Greenland melts or slides into the sea, or if half of Greenland and half of western Antarctica become ice-free, the sea level will rise by seven meters." Gore makes it sound like something that could happen tomorrow.

Emotionalizing the debate

This doesn't mean that Gore should necessarily be taken to task for his statements. He is a politician. But it is odd to hear IPCC Chairman Pachauri, when asked what he thinks about Gore's film, responding: "I liked it. It does emotionalize the debate, but it seems that it has to do that." And when Pachauri comments on the publication of the first SPM by saying, "I hope that this will shock the governments so much that they take action," this doesn't exactly allay doubts as to his objectivity. When Renate Christ, the secretary of the IPCC, is asked about her opinion of reporting on climate change, she refers to articles that mention "climate catastrophe" and calls them "rather refreshing."

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of the physics of oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the world's bona fide experts on the subject and the lead author of the current report, praised Gore's film unconditionally, even for its inclusion of the sequence depicting New York sinking into the ocean. And Rahmstorf's boss, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who serves as the institute's director and as an advisor to the German government, sounded a lot like Al Gore recently when he said in an interview: "We could see a one-meter rise in sea levels by 2100. The expected, climate-related shift in the ocean current could cause the water to rise by an additional meter in the Helgoland Bight." It sounds as if it could happen tomorrow. But it can't, and Schnellnhuber's colleague Rahmstorf, who has an inclination toward extreme scenarios, estimates that there is only a 10-percent probability that it will even happen at all.

Is activism trumping science?

No matter where one encounters officials from the IPCC -- at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, in Brussels during the negotiations over the SPM or in Potsdam, where the German authors, together with the Federal Ministry of the Environment, are staging a workshop on the world climate report -- everyone seems to be talking more like environmental activists than scientists these days.

In Potsdam, Michael Müller, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a state secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, pleaded for a sea change in energy policy on a global scale, and the tone of his arguments was not unlike that adopted by Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, in Brussels. When asked about this, climate researchers respond: "And? Where is there a problem? What's wrong with warning the world about a catastrophe?"

The problem is that the IPCC is not a political group whose goal is to exert pressure, but a scientific institution and panel of experts. Its members ought to present their results and analyses dispassionately, the way pathologists or psychiatrists do when serving as expert witnesses in court, no matter how horrible the victim's injuries and how deviant the perpetrator's psyche are.

Peter Weingart, a sociologist of science from Bielefeld, a city in northwest Germany, believes that the climate experts' lack of distance has something to do with their training. Scientists usually learn only to reflect on the results of their work, not on their role within the social decision-making process. As a result, they join forces with politicians who share their views. And in this way they do harm to science.

But Rahmstorf, the professor from Potsdam, dubbed a climate protection zealot by some, is unswayed by these arguments. He sees climate change as an existential issue, "a baptism by fire for the developing global society." Rahmstorf is the father of a baby, which he drives through Potsdam in a bicycle trailer. He doesn't own a car. He wants to do his utmost to leave behind for his child a world that is as similar to today's world as possible, at least as far as the climate goes. He feels responsible, as someone who sees the big picture. And in half a century, when many things will be clearer, when things may even be worse, he doesn't want to have to answer the question: Why didn't you do anything?

The same question haunts IPCC chairman Pachauri. This week he will be in Bangkok, where the subjects of debate will be possible solutions, distribution of the burdens and the structure of the future. Pachauri will sit on the podium, follow the debate and do what he believes he has to do -- be on the side of a good cause and not on the side of science.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...480766,00.html

[dude1394]

Very interesting coming from the Leftist "The Nation" mag. The following posts will be interesting.
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mh...528&s=cockburn

Beat the devil by Alexander Cockburn
Who Are the Merchants of Fear?

[from the May 28, 2007 issue]

No response is more predictable than the reflexive squawk of the greenhouse fearmongers that anyone questioning their claims is in the pay of the energy companies. A second, equally predictable retort contrasts the ever-diminishing number of agnostics with the growing legions of scientists now born again to the "truth" that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the earth's warming trend.

Actually, the energy companies have long since adapted to prevailing fantasies, dutifully reciting the whole catechism about carbon neutrality, repositioning themselves as eager pioneers in the search for alternative fuels, settling comfortably into new homes, such as British Petroleum's Energy Biosciences Institute at UC, Berkeley.

In fact, when it comes to corporate sponsorship of crackpot theories about why the world is getting warmer, the best documented conspiracy of interest is between the fearmongers and the nuclear industry, now largely owned by oil companies, whose prospects twenty years ago looked dark. The apex fearmongers are well aware that the only exit from the imaginary crisis they have been sponsoring is through a big door marked "nuclear power," with a servants' side door labeled "clean coal."

The world's best-known hysteric and self-promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear and coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Lab. White House advisory bodies on climate change in the Clinton/Gore years were well freighted with nukers like Larry Papay of Bechtel.

As a denizen of Washington since his diaper years, Gore has always understood that threat inflation is the surest tool to plump budgets and rouse voters. By the mid-'90s he'd positioned himself at the head of a strategic alliance formed around "the challenge of climate change," which stepped forward to take Communism's place in the threatosphere essential to political life.

The foot soldiers in this alliance have been the grant-guzzling climate modelers and their Internationale, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose collective scientific expertise is reverently invoked by devotees of the fearmongers' catechism. The IPCC has the usual army of functionaries and grant farmers and the merest sprinkling of actual scientists with the prime qualification of being climatologists or atmospheric physicists.

To identify either government-funded climate modelers or their political shock troops at the IPCC with scientific objectivity is as unrealistic as detecting the same in a craniologist financed by Lombroso studying a murderer's head in a nineteenth-century prison. The craniologist's calipers were adjusted by the usual incentives of stipends and professional ego to find in the skull of that murderer ridges, bumps and depressions, each meticulously equated with an ungovernable passion or a mental derangement.

At least Lombroso and his retinue measured heads. All Al Gore has ever needed is a hot day or some heavy rain as opportunity to promote the unassailable theory of man-made global warming. Come a rainy summer (1995) or a routine El Niño (1997) and Gore is there for the photo op, his uplifted finger warning of worse to come.

Man-made-global-warming theory is fed by pseudo-quantitative predictions from climate careerists working primarily off the megacomputer General Circulation Models, whose home ports include the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Department of Commerce's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab.

These are multibillion-dollar computer modeling bureaucracies as intent on self-preservation and budgetary enhancement as cognate nuclear bureaucracies at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. They are as unlikely to develop models refuting the hypothesis of human-induced global warming as is the IPCC to say the weather is getting a little bit warmer but there's no great cause for alarm. Threat inflation is their business. Think of the culture that engendered the nonexistent missile gap of the late 1950s and you'll get some sense of the political, economic and bureaucratic forces at work today stoking panic at the specter of man-made global warming and the nuclear plants needed to fight it.

By the late 1980s the UN high brass clearly perceived the "challenge" of climate change to be the horse to ride to build up the organization's increasingly threadbare moral authority and to claim a role beyond that of being an obvious American errand boy. In 1988 it gave us the IPCC.

The cycle of alarmist predictions is now well established. Not long before some new UN moot, a prominent fearmonger like James Hansen or Michael Mann will make a tremulous statement about the accelerating tempo of the warming crisis. The cry is taken up by the IPCC and headlined by the New York Times, with exactly the same lack of critical evaluation as that newspaper's recycling of the government's lies about Saddam's WMDs.

When measured reality doesn't cooperate with the lurid model predictions, new compensating factors are "discovered," such as the sulfate aerosols popular in the 1990s, recruited to cool off the obviously excessive heat predicted by the models. Or inconvenient data are waterboarded into submission, as happened with ice-core samples that failed to confirm the modelers' need for record temperatures today. As Richard Kerr, Science's man on global warming, remarked, "Climate modelers have been 'cheating' for so long it's almost become respectable."

The consequence? As with the arms-spending spiral powered by the cold war fearmongers, vast sums of money will be uselessly spent on programs that won't work against an enemy that doesn't exist. Meanwhile, real and curbable environmental perils are scanted. Hysteria rules the day, drowning useful initiatives such as environmental cleanup, while smoothing the way for the nuclear industry to reap its global rewards.

Next: Are things really that bad?

[dude1394]

Pretty interesting stuff on this bloggers site. His blog title gives a hint of what he has on it. He seems to be a pretty numbers oriented blogger which is always refreshing. The most recent post is on casualties in Iraq (civilian, military and number of suicide bombers).

The second and third and many subsequent are on climate stuff. Worth the time.
http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/...apita-co2.html

Back Talk

I am a professor at a major research university, a registered Democrat, a liberal by some measures, but a radical conservative relative to the large majority of my colleagues.

Anyway..First up is a very interesting graph on CO2/GDP. Which to me has usually made the most sense when talking about CO2. And a little commentary

It's clear that economic output and CO2 emissions go together, but I wondered how strong the relationship really was. To find out, I compared GDP per capita with CO2 emissions per capita. Here is what that relationship looks like: ,<graph inserted>

The GDP data can be found here and the CO2 data can be found here. Each symbol represents one country in the world, and that point way out to the right is Luxembourg. The red symbol is the United States. The other 4 colored symbols are the nations of the EU-4 (Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy). The trend line shows that as GDP per capita increases, CO2 output per person increases as well. No surprise there. But you can also see that the EU-4 nations fall a bit below the trend line, which means that they produce less CO2 than you'd expect given the size of their economies, whereas the United States falls above the trend line, which means that we produce more CO2 per person than you'd expect given the size of our economy.

Our economy has been growing smartly but CO2 emissions have remained almost constant since Bush took office, so that red point is essentially walking straight right toward the trend line. I'm not sure why our CO2 output is higher than you'd expect given the size of our economy, but part of the problem may be that we are really spread out (which means long drives to work, large trucks crisscrossing a country 3000 miles wide, etc.). Well, first quarter GDP growth was a dismal 0.6%. Quarterly GDP statistics don't really mean much (the same was true that quarter when we had 7% growth), but if we do have an economic slowdown this year, our CO2 output for 2007 ought to be impressively low. That's something, I guess.

What are those 4 really high points on the chart? Those high-CO2-output countries are Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. I had not realized that these Arab countries are really cranking out the CO2 emissions.

China is one of the points way down and to the left (near the origin), but it is going to move up fast, an that's the real CO2 problem we face.

[dude1394]

Another very interesting CO2 post. I'm not sure he's thinking this through however, we'd get sued in ICC if we signed up and ignored it. Or we'd never hear the end of it, the bar's just a little different for the US.

I don't understand why the U.S. must be this way:

BERLIN (AP) - The United States rejects the European Union's all-encompassing target on reduction of carbon emissions, President Bush's environmental adviser said Tuesday.


The politically expedient thing to do would be to agree to the new targets and then promptly ignore them. Canada, for example, used that strategy with respect to the Kyoto Protocol. So did most of the European countries. Is anyone mad at them? No. I say we follow their example. Boldly pronounce our new war on greenhouse gas emissions, and set a bunch of silly targets like this:

Germany, which holds the European Union and G-8 presidencies, is proposing a so-called "two-degree" target, whereby global temperatures would be allowed to increase no more than 2 degrees Celsius—the equivalent of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—before being brought back down. Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.


These people appear to be suffering from delusions of grandeur, but who knows? A technological miracle could happen between now and 2050, so let's just sign on to this. And then let's consider the real problem we face:

China and India balked at carbon dioxide emissions cuts after the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.


Well, no kidding. Those two countries alone have about 40% of the world's population, their economies are growing rapidly, they have large stores of cheap coal, and they are building coal-fired power plants at the speed of light. And as I noted yesterday, China's ability to stop the construction of new power plants seems extremely limited even if they wanted to do that (which they don't).

But there is something to be said for declaring a new war on global warming anyway. If nothing else, it will make people feel better. And those of us who would like to reduce our dependence on foreign oil have much in common with those who believe that we can control the temperature of the globe (e.g., we probably both favor increasing fuel-efficiency standards). It's good to be green even if you don't believe that agreements like these are going to affect global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol was signed in the late 1990s. It sets a goal for ramping back CO2 output to below 1990 levels. News reports often show progress by reporting how countries are doing in relation to that goal (i.e., in relation to 1990 output). But to see the effect of the treaty itself, it seems more useful to look at the change on CO2 output since the treaty was signed. Those numbers can be found here, and I charted them for your consideration:

The "Annex I" parties are all of the nations with relatively advanced economies that signed the agreement. The EU-4 (Great Britain, German, France and Italy) is always our most sensible comparison group. Among that group, only France and Germany increased their emissions, with Italy increasing by 5% (which brought up the average of that group). As a whole, their emission increased slightly less than emissions in the U.S., though I wish I could find statistics through 2006. As I noted here, U.S. emissions are now only 1.1% above 2000 levels. I wonder how the EU-4 is doing over the last 2 years?

As a whole, the EU-15 is clearly headed in the wrong direction. Among two other notable signatories, Japan is doing fairly well, but Canada is really out of control. Canada faced a choice between maintaining economic growth and cutting CO2 emissions. They made their choice, and it's the same one that China and India are going to make.

As you can see, there does not appear to be much of a difference between the nations that signed on to the Kyoto Protocol and the United States. And the U.S. achieved this low percentage increase while having an economy that was expanding much faster than any of these comparison groups (except for Canada, which experienced about the same level of growth). We should have participated in the Kyoto agreement and then just done what everyone else seems to be doing. That chart would look exactly the same, but the feel-good gesture of signing the agreement would make people less angry at America (a little, anyway).

You could still reasonably say that America has more of an obligation than other nations of the world to reduce CO2 emissions because our CO2 output (like our economic output) is the highest in the world, but these numbers are still useful for keeping things in perspective. That's what I love about data.

[dude1394]

A wealth of stuff from this guy. This on a carbon-neutral lifestyle. Seems like the best thing we can do is what we are doing, developing (as quickly as possible) clean coal technology and dispersing it.

So forget about your carbon-neutral lifestyle. The problem is that oil is expensive and coal is cheap, and emerging nations have an interest in keeping the lights on. What that means is that China is going to build a lot of coal-fired power plants, and Chinese government officials don't seem to be in a position to stop the trend even if they wanted to (which they don't). If you decide to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle, good for you. If we all did it, and if we all kept it up for the next 100 years (which isn't likely), the effect would be fairly trivial compared to effect of new coal-fired power plants that are coming you way soon.

So, how important is it to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle? Not very. It would be a noble gesture, but addressing the problem in a serious way is going to be much, much harder than that.

[dude1394]

Another "fact-based" post.

Consider what Al Gore thinks we need to do, right now:

Gore: Time Is Running Out, Freeze All C02 Emissions NOW...

From Al Gore's Speech At NYU Law Today:

So, what would a responsible approach to the climate crisis look like if we had one in America?

Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions. Merely engaging in high-minded debates about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways, that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not.


Al Gore talks the talk, but George Bush walks the walk:

U.S. Carbon Emissions Fell 1.3% in 2006

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 24, 2007; A14

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

The 1.3 percent drop in CO-2 emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.


Actually, the US economy expanded slightly in 2001 relative to 2000. Growth was weak, but there was still growth, not shrinkage. Despite the fact that economic output increased from 2000 to 2001, CO2 emissions declined.

The red dots depict the Bush years. You can see that the value for 2006 is about the same as the value for 2000. This is true even though the U.S. economy in 2006 was a whopping 16% larger than it was in 2000. If you think that 2000 was a statistical aberration, then we can use 1999 instead. The economy was 21% larger in 2006 than it was in 1999, but CO2 emissions were only 4% higher than they were then.

Here is a chart that captures both economic growth in America and CO2 emissions since 2000:

[Dr.Zoidberg]

The biggest problem in the future will definitely be China and India, but we don´t have the right to proctorize them regarding that topic, as we (industrialized countries) are not quite a good role model. The best way is, to assist them in the matter of know how and CO2-reducing technologies.

Regarding CO2-neutral lifestyle, I have a different opinion. If everyone would live in energy-saving houses and make sure to use energy-saving technologies (refrigerator, washing machines,...), it would definitely save many coal power plants and therewith additionally CO2-emission. Also to use CO2 friendly cars would help, especially in USA, as we all know now that people in America have to drive a lot more than in other countries.

[dude1394]

This blogger continues to knock my socks off. It's like having a scientist puruse the internet and pull out DATA. Good stuff, I tell you what!

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/...l-warming.html

Letter
Nature 447, 698-701 (7 June 2007)

Low Atlantic hurricane activity in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the past 270 years

Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean has increased significantly since 1995. This trend has been attributed to both anthropogenically induced climate change and natural variability, but the primary cause remains uncertain...The record indicates that the average frequency of major hurricanes decreased gradually from the 1760s until the early 1990s, reaching anomalously low values during the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, the phase of enhanced hurricane activity since 1995 is not unusual compared to other periods of high hurricane activity in the record and thus appears to represent a recovery to normal hurricane activity, rather than a direct response to increasing sea surface temperature.


Gee, recent hurricane activity represents a return to normalcy? I don't think the global warming alarmists are going to be very happy about this. Here is more from the article itself:

The years from 1995 to 2005 experienced an average of 4.1 major Atlantic hurricanes (category 3 to 5) per year, while the years 1971 to 1994 experienced an average of 1.5 major hurricanes per year.


And here is the main chart in the article (it is a complex chart, so I snipped the part that provides the essential story):

You see clearly that the number of hurricanes has come back to normal, not increased as an alarmist (ahem..gore) would point out.

The blue line shows hurricane frequency over the years, and you can see that it declined to very low levels between about 1970 and 1990, and then it has increased again in more recent years. Is the recent increase the result of global warming? Here is what the article says:

Although hurricane intensity and destructiveness may increase with increasing global mean temperatures, the effect of climate warming on hurricane frequency is poorly known. Furthermore, it is possible that hurricane activity responds to changes in other external forcings, such as solar activity and aerosol loading.


Blasphemy! I have to admit that I was surprised to see such a balanced presentation in an academic article (especially one appearing in a leading journal). Although I generally worry that liberal academics are incapable of being objective when it comes to research on politically charged issues, this new article suggests that I should probably try to keep a more open mind about that.

Instead of letting Al Gore interpret the science for me, I'm going to start reading the science for myself. Although the "news" article in Nature reflects Gore-like liberal commentary, the research article (i.e., the science) does not. To me, that's news!

[Dr.Zoidberg]

I think those are a little hastily conclusions of this poster, respectively a misinterpretation of the scientific facts:
As I posted before:

Dr. Eberhard Faust

Changing hurricane risk in the North Atlantic

What we are concerned about

Updated to the end of the hurricane season 2005

The elevated frequency of intense storms in 2004 and 2005 — no fewer than four of the ten strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred in 2004 or 2005 — hints at a systematic change in the hazard situation and hence a shift in the loss distribution and its parameters.

After an extremely active US hurricane season in 2004 with an absolute record of four hurricane landfalls in/near Florida and the highest overall insured loss from tropical cyclones until then, 2005 has been a season with even higher losses from hurricanes (particularly Katrina, Rita, and Wilma).
Accordingly, the current situation has to be characterised by a higher average market-wide annual loss and different return periods for market-wide claims expenditure compared with the situation a few years ago. In the following analyses, we address the question of new evidence with respect to causes of changes in hurricane frequencies and intensities.

01 Ocean temperatures and cyclone intensities worldwide

A scientific study performed by the Scripps Institute (Barnett et al. (2005) Science) compares recordings of ocean temperatures and respective computer simulations and shows that anthropogenic climate change is having a strong impact on increases in recorded temperatures of the upper ocean layers since 1960 (cf. Tourre/White GRL (2005)).
Other scientific studies by US researchers (Emanuel (2005), Nature; Webster et al. (2005), Science) have shown the following. There is evidence of a warmer trend during the summer season in all tropical oceans amounting to an average of 0.5°C since 1970. The intensity of tropical cyclones, characterised by the parameters of maximum wind speed and cumulative length of time with high wind speeds, increases in correlation with sea surface temperature (Fig. 1). As a consequence of this correlation, the global number of severe tropical cyclones (4–5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) has increased in relation to the annual total for all ocean basins. There has been a steep increase in absolute terms too, from about 8 per year at the beginning of the 1970s to 18 per year, i.e. more than double — in the period 2000–2004. At the same time, the proportion of weaker cyclones (Category 1) has decreased, while there is no recognisable trend as far as the moderate types (Categories 2-3) are concerned (Fig. 2).

02 Climate oscillation in the North Atlantic

In addition to this shift in the intensity distribution towards the higher categories, changes may also be observed in the total frequency in some regions. The number of cyclones occurring throughout the world every year on average is 80 (margin of deviation: 20) without any distinctive trend.
A general increase in frequency is observed in the North Atlantic since 1970, that means from a comparatively cool period to the current "warm phase" in terms of sea surface temperatures (Fig. 3). Accordingly, the hurricane season of 2005 has set an absolute record in terms of the number of named tropical storms (27, old record 21) and hurricanes (15, old record 12).
If further research findings of recent years are taken into account (Goldenberg (2001), Science; Trenberth (2005), Science), the result for the North Atlantic is such that cyclone activity is determined there both by a natural climate oscillation and by a superimposed linear warming process — most probably not explainable without anthropogenic global warming.
There are alternating phases lasting for several decades with exceptionally warm or exceptionally cool sea surface temperatures, the margin of deviation being around 0.5°C. The natural climatic fluctuation is driven by the ocean's large-scale currents (thermohaline circulation, Knight et al. (2005) GRL, Willoughby/Masters (2005)). Warm phases produce a distinct increase in hurricane frequency and also more intense storms, whereas cold phases have the opposite effect. So in the current warm phase, for example, 4.1 strong hurricanes have already occurred per year on average while in the previous cold phase this figure only was 1.5 (this means an increase by 173%). Of course, a definitive value for the average annual level of activity for the whole of the current warm phase can only be given when this phase has ended. The figures correspond to the observation possible up to 2005.

03 Global warming

At the same time, the natural fluctuation between these phases seems to be intensified by a superimposed long-term warming process so that sea surface temperature and the level of hurricane activity increase from warm phase to warm phase (Fig. 4). The increase in the number of strong hurricanes per year from 2.6 to 4.1 from the previous warm phase to the current warm phase means an increase of 58%.* There are strong arguments in favour of climate change as the long-term warming agent. The current unusually high level of activity is most probably due to the warm phase prevailing since the mid-1990s, which is supposed to continue for several years and intensified by the relatively linear process of global warming.

There is a clear indication that both the natural climatic cycle and global warming influence not only overall frequency but also landfall frequency. Between the last warm phase (approx. 1926 to approx. 1970) and the current warm phase since approx. 1995, the average annual number of landfalls increased as follows (Fig. 5):

Cat. 3—5 hurricanes+67% (from 0.6 to 1.0)
Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+33% (from 1.8 to 2.4)
Trop. storms and Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+47% (from 3.4 to 5.0)

This comparison has to be seen as being primarily linked to the influence of global warming.


The change in level between the last cold phase (approx. 1971 to approx. 1994) and the current warm phase since 1995 has the following impact on the number of landfalls (Fig. 5):

Cat. 3—5 hurricanes+233% (from 0.3 to 1.0)
Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+100% (from 1.2 to 2.4)
Trop. storms and Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+100% (from 2.5 to 5.0)

This comparison has to be seen as being primarily indicative of the natural climatic oscillation.

* The records of the period before aircraft reconnaissance started in the mid-1940s are not as reliable as the records since then. This applies primarily to intensity attributions, because one has to rely on observations made by ships.

04 Different loss distribution

These strong changes, reflected in both the number of tropical cyclones and the number of landfalls, can only mean that we must expect a different loss distribution in the current warm phase since 1995 compared with the distribution in the prior period.
We should recall that we observe an increase in terms of the annual frequency of major hurricanes in the order of 170% from the foregoing cold phase (1971 to 1994) to the current warm phase since 1995. In terms of landfalls the increase is of the order of 230%.
Even if we compare the loss distribution of the current warm phase with a loss distribution based on all years since 1900, which can be called indifferent towards the natural climate cycle, we should expect a large difference. This is strongly indicated by a comparison of hurricane intensity distributions calculated for the whole period 1900 — 2005 versus the current warm period 1995 — 2005 (Fig. 6). It is plain to see that the current warm phase is marked by a higher proportion of strong hurricanes (Categories 4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) and a lower proportion of weaker hurricanes (Categories 1 and 2 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale). Category 4 and 5 hurricanes account for 14% and 6% respectively in the distribution since 1900 and have increased to 20% and 10% in the current warm phase distribution. On the other hand, the Category 1 and 2 hurricanes account for 37% and 23% respectively in the distribution over all years since 1900 and have decreased to 34% and 17% in the current warm phase distribution.
None of the loss models available commercially incorporate such a change in the distribution. So it is a major challenge for the insurance industry to respond to the present-day hazard distribution and — as a consequence of this — the present-day loss distribution and to take them into consideration adequately in its risk management.

05 Glossary

Anthropogenic climate change/global warming

During the period of industrialisation, greenhouse gas emissions increased steadily and led to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 380 ppm in 2004. The pre-industrial level was 280 to 300 ppm which at least for the past 650,000 years and probably for the last millions of years has not been exceeded. There are other greenhouse gases such as methane or dinitrogen oxide, which have increased equally fast.
Greenhouse gases alter the radiation properties of the atmosphere in such a way that much more energy from the sun is trapped by the lower parts of the atmosphere. This anthropogenic global warming comes in addition to what is called the natural greenhouse effect. Even before the appearance of mankind and of the industrial age the earth's atmosphere contained greenhouse gases (in particular CO2 and others), which have warmed the earth's surface by roughly 33°C. This natural greenhouse effect must be regarded as a precondition for the development of life on the planet.

Tropical cyclone

General expression for tropical storms forming over tropical oceans. Depending on the region and strength they are called hurricanes (Atlantic and Northeast Pacific), typhoons (Northwest Pacific), or cyclones (Indian Ocean and Australia).

Saffir-Simpson intensity scale

The Saffir-Simpson Scale is a five-stage intensity scale for tropical cyclones. The scale spans the following categories:

• Cat 1: windspeed 118—153 km/h; central pressure >= 980 hPa
• Cat 2: windspeed 154—177 km/h; central pressure 965—979 hPa
• Cat 3: windspeed 178—209 km/h; central pressure 945—964 hPa
• Cat 4: windspeed 210—249 km/h; central pressure 920—944 hPa
• Cat 5: windspeed > 250 km/h; central pressure < 920 hPa

Atlantic cold phases/warm phases

The so-called cold and warm phases in the North Atlantic are part of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The mechanism behind it is a large-scale water flow conveyer belt in the ocean with periodically enhanced or reduced activity resulting in unusually warm or unusually cool surface waters in parts of the ocean. This overturning circulation, which is driven by water temperatures and water salinities, is called the thermohaline circulation.

Natural climate oscillation

Natural climate oscillations can be differentiated by the respective time scales. They are not driven by external influences on the earth's climate system, such as changes in solar irradiance or anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Examples of natural climate oscillations are the El-Nino/Southern-Oscillation events (interdecadal time scale), the North Atlantic Oscillation (quasi-decadal Oscillation) or the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (multidecadal time scale).

http://www.munichre.com/ (Choose English on the upper right side and than go to: --->TOPICS & SOLUTIONS --->Georisks)

[dude1394]

We'd better hurry up and approve Kyoto, so China and India can get a leg up on our economies while the pollute us to death.

You think the enviro-nazis will start protesting and railing against China now? Sorta doubt it.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/cl...106689,00.html

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

I think the industrialized nations are strong enough to withstand the booming economies of China and India.

Also, as I wrote before, we have not the right to forbid those countries to do, what we did (wrong) before, for decades! People in glass houses shouldn&#180;t throw stones.

All the whining doesn&#180;t help. It&#180;s better to assist those nations to prevent the failures we&#180;ve made.

[dude1394]

That's why kyoto is a bunch of horse-hockey, it addresses nothing, but gives people a feelgood.

[dude1394]

Eek...Eeeekkk...Eeekkkk.... GLOBAL COOLING!!! Thank you China, hurry up please!!

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/f...4068db11f4&p=4

Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by dude1394

That's why kyoto is a bunch of horse-hockey, it addresses nothing, but gives people a feelgood.

Agree!

So I don´t understand the fuss and bother USA staged around the signing of the protocol?!? It seems like none has a disadvantage after signing.

To your Global Cooling post:

Hooray, we are rescued!

[Usually Lurkin]

I'm too tired to read this thread. But it's obvious to anyone who pays attention that CO2 is causing changes in sunspots and planetary temparature.

[dude1394]

Dang that scientific concensus just can't keep everyone under it's thumb. Facts keep leaking out.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/othervi...REF30b.article

Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny

June 30, 2007
BY JAMES M. TAYLOR
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.

[Mavdog]

I guess it is which report one wants to use to further their position.

google"himalayan glaciers" and up comes reports from national geographic, world wildlife federation, and the nepalese government that state the glaciers are indeed shrinking.

do the same for "Mount Kilimanjaro ice cap" and low and behold you get reports from universities and national geographic that agree with al gore the ice caps are truly retreating.

the above article says greenland is indeed the ice sheet is thinning; it just wants to sy that it isn't as "rapid" as gore makes out.

it's easy to say that there isn't a need to react to the global warming trend in a forceful a way a gore is advocating. however it is impossible to NOT agree that there is a warming trend in our planet's atmosphere.

so do we just put our head in the sand and hope for the best, or do we act in a responsible manner and adjust our actions which contribute to this warming trend to lessen its severity and perhaps its affects?

a responsible, thoughful person would say the latter.

me, I weigh in on being proactive and responsible.

which do you want to be?

[dude1394]

I actually agree with you mavie. As long as we don't make it some sort of crusade that shouts down all folks who have data that contradicts the climatology religion.

I want to reduce our emissions as long as it's not a detriment to our standard of living. I do NOT want any kind of large beauracratic Kyoto-like world treaty at all. That I feel is bull-honkey.

I would like to see us reduce our reliance on oil (mainly for security purposes and drain the dollars from the radical oil regimes).

I refuse to be caught up in the hysteria that gore is trying to ram down folks throats, that will just cause a lot of politicians passing laws to make themselves look good while the pick the winners.

Ethanol being a good example.

As soon as Gore and his ilk stand up and ask for x number of nuclear plants, I'll listen to him.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

I personally don´t want to shout down all folks who have data that contradicts the climatology religion, but I have some comments to your second last post:

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Global glacial mass balance in the last fifty years, reported to the WGMS and NSIDC. The increasing downward trend in the late 1980s is symptomatic of the increased rate and number of retreating glaciers.

No more to say.

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Maybe. But there are many other glaciers, not affected from deforestation, also shrinking rapidly, which most likely is caused through global warming.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

At first I would like to see the data, which affirm those statements. And even if there are some stats, it´s his word against hers:

02 Climate oscillation in the North Atlantic

In addition to this shift in the intensity distribution towards the higher categories, changes may also be observed in the total frequency in some regions. The number of cyclones occurring throughout the world every year on average is 80 (margin of deviation: 20) without any distinctive trend.
A general increase in frequency is observed in the North Atlantic since 1970, that means from a comparatively cool period to the current "warm phase" in terms of sea surface temperatures (Fig. 3). Accordingly, the hurricane season of 2005 has set an absolute record in terms of the number of named tropical storms (27, old record 21) and hurricanes (15, old record 12).
If further research findings of recent years are taken into account (Goldenberg (2001), Science; Trenberth (2005), Science), the result for the North Atlantic is such that cyclone activity is determined there both by a natural climate oscillation and by a superimposed linear warming process — most probably not explainable without anthropogenic global warming.
There are alternating phases lasting for several decades with exceptionally warm or exceptionally cool sea surface temperatures, the margin of deviation being around 0.5°C. The natural climatic fluctuation is driven by the ocean's large-scale currents (thermohaline circulation, Knight et al. (2005) GRL, Willoughby/Masters (2005)). Warm phases produce a distinct increase in hurricane frequency and also more intense storms, whereas cold phases have the opposite effect. So in the current warm phase, for example, 4.1 strong hurricanes have already occurred per year on average while in the previous cold phase this figure only was 1.5 (this means an increase by 173%). Of course, a definitive value for the average annual level of activity for the whole of the current warm phase can only be given when this phase has ended. The figures correspond to the observation possible up to 2005.

03 Global warming

At the same time, the natural fluctuation between these phases seems to be intensified by a superimposed long-term warming process so that sea surface temperature and the level of hurricane activity increase from warm phase to warm phase (Fig. 4). The increase in the number of strong hurricanes per year from 2.6 to 4.1 from the previous warm phase to the current warm phase means an increase of 58%.* There are strong arguments in favour of climate change as the long-term warming agent. The current unusually high level of activity is most probably due to the warm phase prevailing since the mid-1990s, which is supposed to continue for several years and intensified by the relatively linear process of global warming.

There is a clear indication that both the natural climatic cycle and global warming influence not only overall frequency but also landfall frequency. Between the last warm phase (approx. 1926 to approx. 1970) and the current warm phase since approx. 1995, the average annual number of landfalls increased as follows (Fig. 5):

Cat. 3—5 hurricanes+67% (from 0.6 to 1.0)
Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+33% (from 1.8 to 2.4)
Trop. storms and Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+47% (from 3.4 to 5.0)

This comparison has to be seen as being primarily linked to the influence of global warming.


The change in level between the last cold phase (approx. 1971 to approx. 1994) and the current warm phase since 1995 has the following impact on the number of landfalls (Fig. 5):

Cat. 3—5 hurricanes+233% (from 0.3 to 1.0)
Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+100% (from 1.2 to 2.4)
Trop. storms and Cat. 1—5 hurricanes+100% (from 2.5 to 5.0)

This comparison has to be seen as being primarily indicative of the natural climatic oscillation.

* The records of the period before aircraft reconnaissance started in the mid-1940s are not as reliable as the records since then. This applies primarily to intensity attributions, because one has to rely on observations made by ships.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

The causes of this phenomenon are not efficiently explored, unknown or debatable. Here nice short summary of wikipedia:

The British Antarctic Survey, which has undertaken the majority of Britain's scientific research in the area, has the following positions: [6]

• Ice makes polar climate sensitive by introducting a strong positive feedback loop.
• Melting of continental Antarctic ice could contribute to global sea level rise.
• Climate models predict more snowfall than ice melting during the next 50 years, but models are not good enough for them to be confident about the prediction.
• Antarctica seems to be both warming around the edges and cooling at the center at the same time. Thus it is not possible to say whether it is warming or cooling overall.
• There is no evidence for a decline in overall Antarctic sea ice extent.
• The central and southern parts of the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by nearly 3°C. The cause is not known.
• Changes have occurred in the upper atmosphere over Antarctica.

The area of strongest cooling appears at the South Pole, and the region of strongest warming lies along the Antarctic Peninsula. One possible explanation for this is that the warmer temperatures in the surrounding ocean have produced more precipitation in the continent's interior, and this increased snowfall has cooled the high-altitude region around the pole. Another possible explanation is that loss of UV-absorbing ozone may have cooled the stratosphere and strengthened the polar vortex, a pattern of spinning winds around the South Pole. The vortex acts like an atmospheric barrier, preventing warmer, coastal air from moving in to the continent's interior. A stronger polar vortex might explain the cooling trend in the interior of Antarctica.



This image shows trends in skin temperatures—temperatures from roughly the top millimeter of the land or sea surface—of Antarctica from 1982 to 2004. Red indicates areas where temperatures generally increased during that period, and blue shows where temperatures predominantly decreased.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Antarctica

Altogether, the research around the topic global warming is borderland-science. Many coherences are insufficient clarified, nevertheless more facts rather point to warmer global temperatures than constant or even colder temperatures.

Concerning the Kyoto Protocol I completely agree with you dude. It´s not particularly effective. A typically solution from the politicians, to silence their conscience. The best and in my opinion the only way to prevent global warming is to develop, support and use ecofriendly technology and to live a little less energy wasteful.

I for one feel better to do something for protecting the environment, as it wouldn´t harm anybody, even if the global warming trend is a wrong interpretation of our climate.

[kg_veteran]

Mavdog - I think most people agree that we need to make efforts to conserve energy, reduce pollution, etc. The problem is that Gore (and others) are using the issue to further an agenda that has everything to do with political power and nothing to do with saving the world.

If Gore and company would stop with the outrageous claims which clearly aren't settled science and give up all of the alarmism, that'd be one thing. But Gore doesn't want his version of the "truth" to be challenged -- a sure sign for an educated and reasonable person that he's up to no good.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Mavdog - I think most people agree that we need to make efforts to conserve energy, reduce pollution, etc. The problem is that Gore (and others) are using the issue to further an agenda that has everything to do with political power and nothing to do with saving the world.

an "agenda" of what exactly? is setting policy directed towards reducing our emmissions granting power to one group over another?

I cannot see that the effort being made has "nothing to do with saving the world", it seems that it has everything to do with that very goal.

If Gore and company would stop with the outrageous claims which clearly aren't settled science and give up all of the alarmism, that'd be one thing. But Gore doesn't want his version of the "truth" to be challenged -- a sure sign for an educated and reasonable person that he's up to no good.

as was shown above, the claims that dude's article addressed aren't outrageous.

it seems that to get the public's attention one must be a bit alarmist, if the statements don't entail a degree of alarm and tinged with some sort of catastrophic calamity at the end nobody pays much attention. this isn't just gore & co. who uses this to their end, it's used by all sides.

as for if gore or anyone passionate about the issue doesn't want to be challenged, all I can point out is the recent case of nasa as well as noaa scientists who were muzzeled by the current administration for his advocacy of the global warming position such as gore's. there's an example of being "up to no good" for ya...

http://audubonmagazine.org/fieldnote...notes0703.html

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

an "agenda" of what exactly? is setting policy directed towards reducing our emmissions granting power to one group over another?

I cannot see that the effort being made has "nothing to do with saving the world", it seems that it has everything to do with that very goal.

The agenda is to assert greater governmental control over the lives of the people.

it seems that to get the public's attention one must be a bit alarmist, if the statements don't entail a degree of alarm and tinged with some sort of catastrophic calamity at the end nobody pays much attention. this isn't just gore & co. who uses this to their end, it's used by all sides.

I don't want anyone doing it.

There is no concrete proof that any catastrophic calamities are coming. To act as if there are is deceptive at best.

as for if gore or anyone passionate about the issue doesn't want to be challenged, all I can point out is the recent case of nasa as well as noaa scientists who were muzzeled by the current administration for his advocacy of the global warming position such as gore's. there's an example of being "up to no good" for ya...

What does that have to do with Gore not wanting us to think for ourselves and challenge the science behind his claims?

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

The agenda is to assert greater governmental control over the lives of the people.

take a leap and say that there is validity to the issue, and that we are exacerbating the problem by our actions.

what would you want done, nothing? leave it up to individuals and to industry themselves to change?

do you believe that there would indeed be any changes made if this were the path?

There is no concrete proof that any catastrophic calamities are coming. To act as if there are is deceptive at best.

seems to me that the "concrete proof" would only happen once the calamity occurs. that doesn't seem to be a very wise course to take....

there can be no question with the fact that our planet's temperature is increasing. do you disagree?

What does that have to do with Gore not wanting us to think for ourselves and challenge the science behind his claims?

you claim thatgore wants to silence his critics yet it is those who disagree with gore that have been guilty of that very act....seems that you accuse Gore of this. just what has he or his group done?

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

take a leap and say that there is validity to the issue, and that we are exacerbating the problem by our actions.

what would you want done, nothing? leave it up to individuals and to industry themselves to change?

do you believe that there would indeed be any changes made if this were the path?

I'm pretty much in agreement with dude1394 on this issue. I think conservation and innovation should be promoted, but not in such a manner that it has crippling economic effects.

seems to me that the "concrete proof" would only happen once the calamity occurs. that doesn't seem to be a very wise course to take....

there can be no question with the fact that our planet's temperature is increasing. do you disagree?

Yes. The average temperature appears to have slightly increased over the past century. As Jonah Goldberg put it, that's a pretty good trade-off for the amazing increase in standard of living experienced in most parts of the world.

you claim thatgore wants to silence his critics yet it is those who disagree with gore that have been guilty of that very act....seems that you accuse Gore of this. just what has he or his group done?

Gore and other environmental scientists who believe in the climate change religion have shouted down the opposition at every opportunity, claiming that the issue is "settled science", when in fact it is not. FWIW, I'm not in favor of the Bush Administration muzzling government scientists, either. Let all of the information be heard, and then let people make up their minds.

Gore's hysteria has led to people like Nicholas Kristof writing pieces in the NY Times (last week) claiming that our SUVs are causing people to starve in Africa. And he didn't suggest that it was a possibility; he stated it as FACT -- something it clearly is not.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Gore's hysteria has led to people like Nicholas Kristof writing pieces in the NY Times (last week) claiming that our SUVs are causing people to starve in Africa. And he didn't suggest that it was a possibility; he stated it as FACT -- something it clearly is not.

I read that article, and I just laughed out loud.....

the hysteria on global warming has reached a fevered pitch....perhaps we should all just cool off a bit?

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

I'm pretty much in agreement with dude1394 on this issue. I think conservation and innovation should be promoted, but not in such a manner that it has crippling economic effects.

so in your opinion it is OK to "promote" but not to require?

if we as a nation had only promoted environmental diligence, rather than to require it, we would still have people exposed to lead paint and such.

I'm of the opinion that this is a legitimate use of government power. our free market needs to be preserved, but the negative affects of a free market need to be avoided.

Yes. The average temperature appears to have slightly increased over the past century. As Jonah Goldberg put it, that's a pretty good trade-off for the amazing increase in standard of living experienced in most parts of the world.

so you are not disputing the fact that the average temperature is increasing?

there is no trade off as aquid pro quo, our increased standard of living could have been realized without contributing to the increase in temperatures. to make the assumption that we could not have progressed isn't valid.

Gore and other environmental scientists who believe in the climate change religion have shouted down the opposition at every opportunity, claiming that the issue is "settled science", when in fact it is not. FWIW, I'm not in favor of the Bush Administration muzzling government scientists, either. Let all of the information be heard, and then let people make up their minds.

Gore's hysteria has led to people like Nicholas Kristof writing pieces in the NY Times (last week) claiming that our SUVs are causing people to starve in Africa. And he didn't suggest that it was a possibility; he stated it as FACT -- something it clearly is not.

what is settled science is a) the earth's temperature has increased, b) greenhouse gases have contributed, and c) we can moderate the increases going forward if we change how much we add to our atmosphere.

so, why shouldn't we do that? and also, why shouldn't we mandate that our industry do that? it is sensationalist to claim that by curtailing our contribution to the warming of our atmosphere our standard of living will plumment.

in other words, it's an "outrageous claim" that we will have economic calamity.

didn't read the kristof column so I can't comment.