Global Warming | Küresel Isınma

Lawmakers at Impasse on Incentives for Renewable Energy

2008-10-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

The House and the Senate conceded Monday that they were in a stalemate over proposals to provide tax incentives for the production and use of renewable energy, leaving the future of the nascent industry in limbo.

Tax credits for investing in solar energy and producing wind energy will expire at the end of the year unless Congress resolves the impasse, and lawmakers said they saw no immediate prospect of an agreement.

The deadlock comes at a time when economists and politicians of all stripes are saying the United States must rapidly develop solar, wind and other energy sources as alternatives to oil.

“Congress is furthering our dependence on foreign sources of energy — dirty, polluting sources of energy,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. “It’s scaring away investment, just as our industry is beginning to get a toehold. Solar projects are already being delayed.”

Gregory S. Wetstone, director of government affairs at the American Wind Energy Association, another trade group, said the tax legislation had broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, but had been “caught in a crossfire on unrelated issues.”

The National Association of Home Builders, the Sierra Club and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association are among the many groups that have urged Congress to extend and expand the energy tax breaks, scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

“We are down but not out,” Mr. Wetstone said Monday. “If Congress fails to act, it’s a real blow to renewable energy. It means that fewer wind turbines will be used to generate pollution-free power in the United States.”

The legislation would also provide tax credits for homeowners and home builders to make their properties more energy efficient.

“Our members build homes that are significantly more energy efficient than those of a generation ago,” said Jerry M. Howard, executive vice president of the National Association of Home Builders. “But in today’s economic climate, home builders need incentives to spur them to even more action.”

The House and the Senate are caught up in a bitter fight over legislation to extend various expiring provisions of federal tax law. The tax breaks for renewable energy are not controversial. But in the current debate, they are tied to many other tax breaks for businesses and individuals, including an extension of the tax credit for research and development, expansion of the child tax credit and relief from the alternative minimum tax, which threatens to snare millions of middle-income families next year.

The two chambers are at loggerheads over the question of whether and how to offset the cost of extending and expanding the business and individual tax breaks, with House Democrats insisting that the costs should be fully offset. That position is opposed by many Republican senators.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, tried on Monday to call up a House-passed bill to expand tax credits for renewable energy. Republicans objected, in part because the bill would offset more of the cost than they are willing to accept.

Representative Mike Ross of Arkansas, a co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative House Democrats, said, “Senate Republicans are threatening to stop American investment in affordable, renewable energy.”

Senate Republicans contend that Congress should not have to offset the cost of legislation that continues existing tax breaks beyond their scheduled expiration date.

“Simple extensions of existing tax policies should not be held hostage to the demand by some for ever-greater tax collections,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee.

The dispute is a kind of proxy battle for a much bigger fight looming in the next Congress over whether to preserve tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2001 and 2003.

Many Democrats want to scale back the tax benefits that go to higher-income people. If Republicans have to cover the cost of extending those tax breaks beyond 2010, they will need to find hundreds of billions of dollars in offsets or savings, a formidable challenge.

House Democrats also bristle at what they see as the Senate’s insistence that the House accept the tax legislation in the form approved by the Senate, without changes.

The House Democratic leader, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, complained Monday that the Senate version of the tax legislation came “with a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum.”

The Senate tax package, approved last week by a vote of 93 to 2, deals with issues addressed in four separate bills passed by the House.

Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, pleaded with the House on Monday to accept the Senate version of the legislation.

“The House-passed bills cannot pass” in the Senate, Mr. Baucus said.

Emissions Impossible: Norway Taxes Carbon, Emissions Rise

2008-10-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

The big debate over how to tackle climate change generally boils down to what kind of pain a climate plan will do to the economy; environmental benefits are generally assumed.

But what if the economic pain doesn’t even translate into environmental gain? That’s what happened in Norway, a pioneer in putting a pricetag on carbon emissions almost twenty years ago. Net result? Carbon emissions have increased 15% since then. Leila Abboud writes today in the WSJ:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. By making it more expensive to pollute, carbon taxes should spur companies and individuals to clean up. Norway’s sobering experience shows how difficult it is to cut emissions in the real world, where elegant theoretical solutions are complicated by economic changes, entrenched behaviors and political realities.

For economic changes, read “growth.” Norway’s growth in emissions has been a lot less than its economic growth over the same period, so the economy is clearly getting cleaner. But not enough to offset the simple math of more economic activity spewing more emissions into the atmosphere. Norway’s oil industry became one of the world’s cleanest since it started paying to pollute; but it’s grown so much in the meantime, oil and gas emissions have quadrupled, the WSJ notes.

People also learn to roll with punches. While $4 gasoline has changed some driving habits in the U.S., $10 gasoline hasn’t in Norway—car sales surged in the last decade and people still choose expensive commutes. Does that mean expectations that pricey gasoline will end America’s car addiction are overblown?

Then there’s politics. Norway isn’t alone in giving some economic sectors, like fishing, preferential treatment. China and India don’t even want to talk about emissions curbs. Germany and Poland are rapidly backpedaling on environmental commitments to save key industries at a time of economic strife. Australia has tied itself in knots trying to figure out how to clean up a coal-fired export economy without killing it.

Which brings us back to one of the bigger questions. If Norway can’t slash emissions almost two decades after slapping a hefty pricetag on carbon, what does that say about the belief that “making polluters pay” will automatically transform America’s economy?

Calif. lawmakers get free gasoline

2008-10-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

California lawmakers enjoy a perk not available to their colleagues in any other state: unchecked use of gasoline charge cards that stick taxpayers with the bill.

Through the first seven months of the year, California taxpayers have spent $220,000 to pay for lawmakers' gasoline, according to a review of records requested by The Associated Press. That includes July, when lawmakers already were past their deadline to approve a budget and the state faced a $15.2 billion deficit.

California is unique in giving legislators free rein on transportation spending, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In most other states, lawmakers must submit the same kind of mileage-expense forms used by companies to reimburse employees for their business travel.

"You have to prove what you're using it for," said Morgan Cullin, a Denver-based researcher for the bipartisan national organization.

On top of free gas, California lawmakers also get state-issued vehicles, another perk that most states avoid.

Put it on my card
The fuel cards given to lawmakers are supposed to be "for legislative purposes," but there is no way to check if they use it for public business or private travel.

Lawmakers pull up to the pump, swipe the gas card and never see the bill, which is sent directly to legislative committees and paid with tax dollars.

"I trust them," said Jon Waldie, chief administrative officer for the Assembly Rules Committee.

The charge cards also can be used for incidental purchases such as snacks, drinks, windshield wipers or even oil changes. Legislative officers said there is no way to know how much lawmakers are spending on such items, but most payments are for fuel.

Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said use of the charge cards should be scrutinized more closely or scrapped altogether.

"There should be a random audit done of the use of the car and other expenses by an outside auditor," said Stern, the former general counsel of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. "If everybody knows there is no oversight, they're going to slip a little bit."

He said California could save money by reimbursing legislators for each mile they drive on official business instead of handing them a taxpayer-funded car and gasoline charge card. The practice of giving legislators both began about 50 years ago, when gas was cheap and part-time lawmakers earned little.

"Now they're paid a lot, and they still get the perk," Stern said.

EU eastern states fear carbon plan empowers Russia

2008-10-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Eastern members of the European Union said on Friday its tough plans to tackle global warming could force them to rely more on Russian gas and the bloc should be equally ambitious in ensuring their energy security.

The EU is pushing through measures aimed at cutting CO2 emissions by a fifth by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, in hopes of averting the worst effects of climate change.

But ex-communist EU members such as Warsaw fear such targets will increase their reliance on imports from their former overlord Russia of natural gas, which produces much less carbon dioxide than coal, a resource Poland has in abundance.

"The (EU's) climate and energy package will significantly increase the demand for imported natural gas in some member states, enhancing their dependence on external sources of energy," senior officials of five ex-communist EU states said in a joint statement after talks in Warsaw.

"The European Commission should act ambitiously in the field of secure supplies of energy resources and should propose solutions equally challenging as those proposed in the climate and energy package," they said.

Officials from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania signed the statement. A Czech representative who attended Friday's talks did not sign as Prague takes over the EU's rotating presidency in January and wants to remain neutral.

Moscow's war with ex-Soviet Georgia in August has reignited regional fears of becoming too dependent on Russian energy.

But EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, a Latvian, told Reuters in an interview this week the 27-nation bloc should build up its energy ties with Russia.

Piebalgs expressed support for both the Nord Stream pipeline that would bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany -- a project opposed by Poland -- and for Nabucco, a pipeline that would transmit Caspian gas via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria.

The five eastern EU states also reiterated their worries about the high costs of the bloc's climate change plans.

"Each EU member state's situation should be fully taken into account... A gradual approach to the auctioning in the energy generation sector should be adopted," their statement said.

Poland says EU plans to make power generators buy all their permits to produce carbon dioxide at auction from 2013 would increase electricity prices by up to 70 percent.

Reuters

GREEN SHACKLES

2008-08-28T10:04:00.002-07:00

Václav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, chaffed for many years under the thumb of Soviet totalitarianism. In his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles – What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? he argues there is a new mantra menacing the West – that environmentalism has become a significant threat to human liberty and progress.

Environmentalism, Klaus warns, is “an anti-human ideology,” which “sees the fundamental cause of the world’s problems in the very expansion of homo sapiens.” For radical environmentalists, human prosperity is undesirable because it alters the Earth’s landscape from its natural state. So they try to limit and ultimately arrest the engine of progress – economic freedom – through the regulatory state.

The most dangerous manifestation of environmentalism, notes Klaus, is global warming alarmism. Global climate changes have occurred without human intervention. Volcanoes, comets and the sun have changed the climate drastically over the planet’s history. Only 11,000 years ago a sheet of ice miles thick covered much of Canada.

But this time humans could be the cause of a gradual warming by burning fossil fuels to generate energy, and that, apparently, is unacceptable. So, in order to control the globe’s thermostat, the solution proposed is to control global energy production.

Former vice-president Al Gore recently launched a multi-million-dollar campaign to promote a climate policy to have the United States government usher in a carbon-free electricity sector within ten years. Take a moment to imagine the scale of government intervention necessary to accomplish this.

Would the state have to seize all suppliers and providers of hydrocarbon electricity – coalmines, natural gas drills, pipelines, coal-fired power plants, gas turbines, and much more?

Gore says that government must ensure that no workers lose their jobs during the transition to a “greener” energy supply – a policy that would instantly turn millions of workers in the hydrocarbon sector into dependents of the state.

This socialization of the electricity sector would cost trillions in taxpayer money. Government would have to expropriate millions of hectares of land upon which to build enough solar panels, wind turbines, and transmission towers to get these new sources of power to the masses.

If the alarmists get their way, developing countries, too, would be forced to adopt expensive energy policies. Economists predict an 80 percent increase in global energy demand by 2050 will cause global greenhouse gas emissions to grow by 70 percent. Almost all the increase in energy demand and emissions will come from developing countries, where a quarter of the global population currently lacks access to electricity.

Forcing energy poverty upon the developing world is bad enough. But central planning of the energy sector faces another big problem: it doesn’t work. The alarmists simply aren’t knowledgeable enough to plan how best to produce and use energy. No one is. That’s why centralized, command-and-control climate policies are worse for human welfare than climate change could be.

In his book Cool It, Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg applies a cost/benefit analysis to climate change mitigation measures like the Kyoto Protocol, and finds that they are a tragic waste of money. According to his research, we could spend a fraction of the cost of climate policies on immediate problems, like HIV or malaria, and save millions more lives than global warming could possibly take.

Dr. William Nordhaus of Yale University estimates that unabated global warming would cost the world $22 trillion this century. Nordhaus calculates that Al Gore’s package of measures would reduce those warming costs to $10 trillion, but at a cost of $34 trillion. That’s a crummy deal.

It’s time to start talking about real problems – and real solutions. Affordable energy is the lifeblood of prosperity. Environmentalists may deplore economic growth, but the rest of the world wants it desperately. If developing nations’ energy use is causing global warming, then we’re not going to stop rising temperatures.

But humans can adapt to a gradual warming. To do so, mankind must become resilient, and the best measure of resiliency is wealth. Wealth creation, in turn, is facilitated by economic freedom.

Global warming alarmists claim that their primary concern is the well-being of future generations. If that’s really the case, they should take up Klaus’s challenge, and embrace – not stifle – prosperity.

UN urges phasing out of energy subsidies

2008-08-28T10:04:00.001-07:00

A new U.N. report urges countries to phase out energy subsidies, saying they often waste money, do not always help the poor and are bad for the environment.

Gas-rich Russia leads countries spending the most in energy subsidies, laying out $40 billion a year, according to the U.N. Environment Program report released Tuesday at a 160-nation conference aimed at drafting a new treaty to contain global warming. Oil-exporter Iran is second, spending $37 billion, while Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil producer, is also among the top five.

Governments spend as much as $300 billion a year total in subsidies that encourage consumption and discourage efficiency. The subsidies delay the transition from dirty energy to more climate-friendly sources of power, said the UNEP report.

Subsidies "don't always help the poor who need it most" and often benefit the wealthy, said Kaveh Zahedi, UNEP's climate change coordinator. "Some countries spend more on subsidizing oil than they do on health and education combined," he said.

Low electricity prices do not help villages that are not connected to the grid, and poor families consume only modest amounts of fuel, the U.N. report said.

Some African countries are known to spend all the foreign development aid they received to pay for the increase in fuel prices, which may be politically popular but economically damaging.

"In the final analysis, many fossil fuel subsidies are introduced for political reasons but are simply propping up and perpetuating inefficiencies in the global economy," said UNEP director Achim Steiner, who also is a U.N. undersecretary general.

In a statement released with the report, Steiner advised governments to "urgently review their energy subsidies and begin phasing out the harmful ones."

Several countries have felt the consequences of cutting subsidies. Last year, riots erupted In Myanmar when cash-strapped authorities raised fuel prices as much as 500 percent. In the last few months, India, China, and Indonesia have all trimmed their fuel subsidies, unable to keep pace with the rapid rise in oil prices.

The U.N. report said money could be redirected into programs that support low income families more directly and should be targeted to promote green energy, such as wind or solar.

Cutting off the subsidies would be good for the environment as it would reduce carbon emissions by as much as 6 percent, said Zahedi.

"It's clearly an area that we need to re-examine in our fight against climate change," he said on the sidelines of the conference in the Ghanaian capital.

The conference is the third session this year working on the details of a climate change accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Scientists say the emission of carbon and other greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil fuels, must peak within 10 to 15 years and then drop sharply to avoid potentially catastrophic changes in the climate.

Green Paychecks: Dems Pitch Clean Energy For Jobs

2008-08-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

As our thoroughly unscientific poll indicated, worries about the economy seem trump big policy choices like climate change or health care. That’s in line with recent national polls, as well. And that concern about the economy and jobs shows up clearly in Democratic talk about clean energy in Denver.
grejobs_art_257_20080827103403.jpg
Keep your hard hat (AP)

Sure, it’s a way to wean off foreign oil and clean up the environment, as keynote speaker Mark Warner of Virginia said. But the drumbeat throughout was clean energy’s potential ability to create role high-paying, outsource-proof jobs for American workers. Five million of them, to be precise—that’s the Obama campaign’s promise for “green collar” jobs that will be created by diving wholeheartedly into renewable energy.

Hillary Clinton, who championed “green jobs” legislation in the Senate and hammered the theme on the campaign trail, urged support for Sen. Barack Obama precisely for that reason: “He’ll transform our energy agenda by creating millions of green jobs and building a new, clean energy future.”

Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius, a big-time opponent of coal power and a one-time darkhorse for the VP slot, matched T. Boone Pickens’ enthusiasm for turning the American midwest into a clean-energy paradise:

We know that the fuel for our future can be found in the grasses and crops that grow, year after year, on our fertile prairies. The energy for tomorrow is there in the clean, renewable power of the steady winds that blow across our fields. Investing in American energy will create 5 million green jobs—jobs that will revitalize many of our rural communities. Jobs that can never be outsourced to a foreign supplier.

Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who’s already turned his state into a magnet for renewable-energy investment from overseas, showed a laser focus on clean energy and green jobs:

[Obama] will invest $150 billion over the next decade to grow our energy supply and put 5 million Americans to work building solar and wind farms, clean coal gasification and geothermal plants, the kind of jobs that can’t be outsourced to India or China […] One person who understands what this can mean is a Pennsylvanian named Troy Galloway. Troy is a 44-year-old steelworker who was laid off after working for 15 years for the same company. But today, Troy is working in Pennsylvania for one of the largest wind energy companies in the world, and he’s earning as much as he earned at the steel mill. Troy’s new employer has more than 1,000 Pennsylvanians working green-collar jobs that pay well and have a future.

Gov. Rendell is presumably talking about Gamesa, the big Spanish wind-turbine maker that recently opened several Pennsylvania factories. But his anecdote reveals a couple of problems with the idea that “green jobs” will be a panacea. Pennsylvania, as he noted, has been a green-jobs pioneer, and yet the wind-turbine plant only employs 1,000 people. Reaching the 5 million mark will require an awful lot of factories nationwide in a lot of different sectors.

And at least some of those jobs aren’t new—they just replace lost jobs at the steel mills and the like. That’s why fussy economists always ask about new “net” job creation from the green-collar stampede. Replacing rust-belt jobs with green-collar jobs doesn’t alter the overall employment picture—it just shifts employment around.

Still, now that the sputtering economy is forefront on voters’ minds, any plan that can preserve, if not necessarily create, jobs seems likely to win votes in November.

Even The Mere Threat Of Drilling Will Bring Down The Price Of Oil

2008-08-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

One of the most contentious issues of late has been the question of whether increased drilling for oil would reduce the price of oil today.

Certainly increased drilling will not bring an immediate increase in the supply of oil. But many people, even so-called experts, believe that the effect on the pump price would not be felt until the oil is actually at the pump, possibly years later.

In fact, the price will fall well before the first hole is drilled. Even the possibility of increased drilling will bring down the price of oil. It already has.

Almost everyone knows that supply and demand determine price in a market. But that knowledge seldom goes beyond understanding how supply and demand themselves are determined.

The belief that the current quantities demanded and supplied are the sole determinants of price misses an important point. Both current and expected future demand and supply interact to determine the quantity demanded and supplied in the current marketplace.

That is true because oil, and indeed almost everything else, is storable.

When a quantity is storable, the amount a producer will supply and a consumer will demand is not independent of future expectations.

Take the case of Robinson Crusoe, an example used in some economic texts. Crusoe is a simple case because he is both the supplier and the demander.

Stranded on an island with some corn, he might consume all of it in the first year if he expects to be saved in the second. If he does not expect to be saved in the second year, he will consume some of the corn and use the rest as seed corn.

His consumption might also be affected by other factors. If he feels weak, he might consume more today; if he feels strong, he might consume less. Crusoe will hardly ignore his expectations when deciding how much to plant and eat.

Thus, the current price of any storable commodity will be affected by expectations of future supply because producers use those expectations to determine when to bring their product to market.

Oil is an excellent example because it has a long storage life. Every drop of oil consumed is on the market for only a small fraction of the millions of years of its life.

Oil is also inexpensive to store. Futures prices suggest a cost of less than one-half percent a month, a portion of which is the financing cost.

If producers expect increased supply in the future, the incentive to bring oil to market later is reduced.

If storable commodities are affected by expectations of future prices, we might think that nonstorable commodities would be unaffected by expectations. That is true only more or less in theory, because in practice virtually all commodities are storable.

Even a highly perishable product like fresh fish is nonstorable only at the final stage of production, the step between being caught and cooked. Fish are, of course, stored in the water, but producers determine the rate of catch. If world governments declare a moratorium on tilapia fishing to start later, the expectation is of a decreased supply of fresh tilapia.

Even in that case producers will increase the current catch and consumers will increase their current demand, knowing that tilapia will be off the menu soon. Frozen tilapia might even become a reasonable substitute, thereby increasing the effective storage life of the commodity.

Electricity also appears to be essentially a nonstorable commodity, it being consumed almost immediately after being produced. But the production of electricity requires the storage of raw materials.

In short, a pure nonstorable commodity is virtually an academic construct. While some commodities have limited storability, most are storable in some form and therefore are affected by expectations.

One so-called expert has argued that the recent failure of an energy trading firm is what actually brought down oil prices of late. Energy trading firms are intermediaries between producers and retailers and trade contracts for current and future delivery of energy, thereby facilitating risk transfer.

To argue that the failure of one firm in this competitive market would reduce prices would be like arguing that the failure of an insurance company would lower insurance premiums. And if we believe that the failure of an energy trading firm would reduce prices, markets would have to be terribly slow to take several weeks to fully absorb that information into the price.

Expectations that are unrealized will cause a reversal of the initial price impact. If intentions are not backed by actual drilling, prices will rise. The market will tolerate a period of discussion, but if the drilling naysayers win the debate, prices will head up and sharply. The rise and fall of oil prices are likely to mirror this debate.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is arguably the most powerful woman in America. But if she wants to see her real power, she should bring the drilling issue to a vote. Only a Fed chairman could have so much impact on market prices.

T. Boone Pickens wants your water

2008-08-23T22:05:00.001-07:00

Examiner Columnist | 8/21/08 7:10 PM Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is about to make a killing by selling water he doesn’t own. As he does it, it will be praised as a planet-friendly wind project. After he pulls it off, the media will deride it as craven capitalism. In truth, it is one the most audacious examples of politics for profit, showing how big government helps the biggest business steal from the rest of us. The plotline behind Pickens’ water-and-wind scheme is almost too rich to believe. If it were a movie script, reviewers would dismiss it as over-the-top.

The basic story amounts to this: Pickens, thanks to favors from state lawmakers whose campaigns he funded, has created a new government whose only voters are two of his employers; this has empowered Pickens to more cheaply pump water from an aquifer and, by use of eminent domain, seize land across 11 counties in order to pipe the water to Dallas. To win environmentalist approval of this hardly “sustainable” practice, he has piggybacked this water project onto a windmill project pitched as an alternative to oil.

Pickens’ scheme is a perfect demonstration of why it’s worth asking cui bono — who benefits — from regulatory and environmental initiatives. Last week, this column pointed out that Pickens, before his current lobbying blitz for increased federal support of wind power, built the largest wind farm in the world.

I received dozens of responses from environmentalists and Pickens fans objecting to my implication that Pickens’ profit from expanding wind subsidies ought to cast suspicion on his call for more wind subsidies. “Why should I care if someone’s getting rich?” was the general gist, “windmills are good, and we need more of them.”

This objection is grounded in a good instinct: The profit motive, far from being evil, is the driving force behind most of our society’s advances. But, especially when it comes to government plans involving your tax dollars, asking cui bono helps us unearth less desirable aspects of the scheme.

Amid all the hype Pickens’ windmill plan has gotten, the interesting part — the water part — has been mostly ignored, except for an excellent Business Week story by Susan Berfield and a column by Steve Milloy.

Roberts County, Texas, sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground reservoir that stretches all the way to South Dakota. It’s in Roberts County that T. Boone Pickens set aside eight acres from his ranch for drilling deep into the aquifer.

Then he turned this parcel into a town, basically, with only two eligible voters — both of whom were his employees. (This required a change in Texas law in 2007 — a change facilitated no doubt by his $1.2 million in campaign contributions to Texas legislators in 2006).
Then there was an election in this district, in which both voters voted to make this 8-acre municipality a special fresh-water district.

Pickens’ wholly owned government entity now can issue tax-free bonds (meaning he can borrow at a serious discount) and use the power of eminent domain to pressure landowners to sell — or to take their land if they hold out. The eminent domain power is key to building the pipeline that will run this water down to the Dallas area, where Pickens hopes to sell the water. If your land lies in the path of his proposed pipeline, you got a letter explaining that T. Boone wants to buy a stretch of your land — and explaining that he can use eminent domain if you resist. If this begins to sound too cutthroat to the public, Pickens just reminds journalists and politicians that following this water pipeline will be the transmission cables for Pickens’ mammoth wind farm.

Are you really going to side with some greedy holdout ranchers over the future of green power? Sure enough, the Sierra Club is now rallying behind this whole scheme.

Nobody owns the aquifer — that would be too capitalist, of course — but in Texas, whoever has the water beneath his land can pump as much as he wants. The limits on this are usually pumping capacity (which requires money) and ability to sell it (which requires, among other things, pipelines). Pickens has cleared those hurdles, and now he can drain the aquifer faster than anyone ever before, future generations and other water users be damned.

This is why, when presented with some big government program, it’s worthwhile to ask who’s getting rich — because you may find something interesting when you look below the surface.

Voters Want Everything on Energy

2008-08-23T22:04:00.002-07:00

Voters are crying out for more solar and wind energy -- but that doesn't mean they are opposed to drilling for more oil at the same time, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll.

The poll's findings suggest any political advantage Democrats or Republicans hope to get from the national debate over energy policy will depend on how skillfully they package their positions. Democrats have opposed expanded offshore drilling and stressed alternatives to oil. Republicans have called for expanding oil exploration to areas currently off limits. Leaders in both parties have begun scrambling for ground somewhere in the middle, where a big chunk of voters appear to stand.

According to the Journal-NBC poll, 72% of the respondents said developing alternative energy sources could "accomplish a great deal." When the question was asked another way, 61% of respondents chose "developing alternative energy sources" as the step that should receive the most emphasis from policy makers. Twenty-five percent responded that "exploring and drilling for oil" in the U.S. should get the most emphasis, and 12% picked "having Americans conserve and use less oil."

When asked whether expanding areas for drilling for oil off coastal states was a step in the right direction, 63% said it was, with 44% saying it would accomplish "a great deal." Only 27% said that allowing more drilling off coastal states was a step in "the wrong direction."

Asked about building more nuclear plants, 53% said it was a step in the right direction. Thirty-one percent said it was a step "in the wrong direction."

"Voters are telling us they want everything," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican who conducts the poll with Democrat Peter D. Hart. Mr. Hart said the results indicate that the current energy debate between Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, "is not the fight that the American public cares about."

The poll found greater levels of skepticism among voters about releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- an idea advocated by Sen. Obama and many congressional Democrats -- and suspending the federal gas tax, an idea championed by Sen. McCain. Less than half of those polled thought those ideas were a step in the right direction.

"What these voters are saying is that there needs to be a whole new way of looking at our problems, and that they don't want the same old fights and the same old divisions," Mr. Hart said.

After weeks of criticizing expanded drilling, Sen. Obama has said he could support an expansion of offshore drilling, as long as it is part of a "genuine bipartisan compromise" that includes other measures to reduce the country's oil dependence.

Similarly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) announced last week that her party is drafting legislation that "will consider opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, with appropriate safeguards, and without taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil."

Many Republicans have dismissed that statement, saying they suspect the Democrats' proposal will contain other provisions unacceptable to their side. Sen. McCain has also continued to attack Sen. Obama on the issue, visiting an offshore oil rig this week to highlight his support for more offshore drilling

"Congressional Democrats are still kind of lagging" public opinion on drilling, Mr. Newhouse said. "They've been extraordinarily slow to pick up on this [issue], and some of their [candidates] may end up paying the price."

Congress is preparing to return to Washington in September to debate whether to pass new legislation that attempts to respond to high oil prices by funding alternative-energy sources and increasing access to domestic petroleum. Focal points in the debate are whether to lift the 27-year-old drilling moratorium that largely covers the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and whether to expand tax credits and other subsidies for alternative energy technology such as wind and solar power.

Green with Hypocrisy

2008-08-23T22:04:00.001-07:00

Less than a week before the Democratic National Convention, the convention committee has overspent and underplanned, though they deny both. As of mid-August, with less than two weeks before Democrats convene in Denver to nominate Senator Barack Obama, the construction of the stage at Invesco field had not been completed and many predict labor will continue down to the wire.

Bad planning and tight funds may be part of the problem, but the biggest obstacle is the Democrats' priorities. Since the early planning stages, the DNCC has been more interesting appearing green than getting things done. The result has been a PR effort rather than a practical example of stewardship and a convention committee more interested in appearing environment-friendly than being cost-effective.

While the DNCC splurged and has enjoyed working at their posh, rented office space in Denver for $100,000 a month, they didn't hesitate to put tight restrictions on other businesses. In June, the Greening Task Force of the Denver Host Committee developed "Lean 'N Green" guidelines for local caterers and restaurants participating in the convention (but not for themselves). Among the restrictions: Dishes served during the four-day period include three of five specific colors, the food grown locally or organically, and cannot be fried.

The double-standards began a year ago last summer when the DNCC hired Andrea Robinson to be their Director of Greening to make their convention as green as possible. Robinson was also the "Green Manager" for Live Earth, the event last summer that used more energy in its 24-hour duration than over 3,000 people use in one year.

While DNCC encouraged bloggers from all over the country to attain credentials and travel to Denver to blog the convention (thus emitting CO2), their Republican counterparts encouraged bloggers to obtain credentials but also acquired the services of Ustream.TV -- allowing bloggers to view the proceedings via live streaming from their own living rooms.

But the Republicans aren't broadcasting their greenness. The Rocky Mountain News reported House Speaker Nancy Pelosi helped launch an initiative within the DNCC's green efforts called the "Green Democratic Challenge." Delegates attending the convention are challenged "to buy offsets for the carbon footprint they'll leave by traveling and staying in the metro area" and are encouraged to purchase an offset from Native Energy, a firm located in Oregon and Colorado, for about $7.50.

A carbon offset is a way of balancing one's carbon footprint through funding projects like wind farms that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Native Energy's website explains: "Basically, carbon offsetting involves helping someone to do something that they wouldn't otherwise have done, that results in less CO2 emissions than would have happened had you not helped them to do it."

The DNC also has a carbon calculator on their convention website which delegates are supposed to use to track their footprint. The calculator does not allow for travel to and from all cities, so it's not entirely accurate, but if I use an alternative carbon calculator to estimate the carbon footprint of the DNCC's Convention Conversations (a series of 10 forums that occurred over the course of this last year about the convention across the Rocky Mountain Region), the numbers are interesting. This last January, DNCC head Leah Daughtry traveled to Las Vegas for one of the "conversations." If she took just two staff members with her and traveled by air from Denver, the total air emissions would have been 1.47 metric tons of CO2.

That's probably fewer miles than Al Gore logs on his jet, but it still amounts to preaching green while polluting tons. Will the staff of the DNCC be purchasing carbon offsets for their own travel, or will they just expect those attending the convention to do so? It's not easy seeming green.

This year so far coolest for at least 5 years: WMO

2008-08-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.

The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.

Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.

Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.

"We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years," said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.

"Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say."

"Up to July 2008, this year has been cooler than the previous five years at least. It still looks like it's warmer than average," added Baddour.

The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.

"Of course at the beginning of the year there was La Nina, and that would have had the effect of suppressing temperatures somewhat as well," Met Office meteorologist John Hammond said.

"But actually La Nina is showing signs of moving towards a more neutral state."

The weakening of the La Nina effect over the last few months could see the global mean temperature creep up again in the latter part of the year, he added.

The past decade ending in 2007 was the hottest since reliable records began around 1850, according to the WMO. World temperatures are about 0.74 Celsius (1.2 F) higher than a century ago.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was "unequivocal" and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were very likely part of the problem.

The WMO releases its final figures for global temperature and ranking for 2008 in December.

JEFFREY: A crude October surprise?

2008-08-17T09:08:00.002-07:00

COMMENTARY:

Republicans may be planning a crude surprise for Democrats this October. I mean crude in the sense that it will involve unrefined petroleum.

Since the House recessed earlier this month, Republicans have been demanding that Speaker Nancy Pelosi call it back into special session to vote on whether to allow new offshore oil-drilling. The Republicans know Mrs. Pelosi won't do that. So, what do they really want?

Let's start with some sense of the oil resources America could develop if Congress would allow it. In 2006, the Interior Department estimated about 85.9 billion barrels of "undiscovered technically recoverable" oil sit offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf within U.S. territory.

In 2007, the Energy Department's "Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels" reported that: "America's oil shale resource exceeds 2 trillion barrels, including about 1.5 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in high quality shales concentrated in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ... Depending on technology and economics, as much as 800 billion barrels of oil equivalent could be recoverable from oil shale resources yielding [more than] 25 gallons per ton."

This combined 885.9 billion barrels of recoverable oil the government estimates lie undeveloped within U.S. territory is almost 3.5 times as much as the 260 billion barrels in proven oil reserves under Saudi territory. America is an oil-rich country.

Since 1982, however, each year's Interior appropriation has included language forbidding Interior from selling oil-drilling leases in about 85 percent of the acreage comprising the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. (In July, President Bush lifted an executive order- originally imposed by his father - that essentially duplicated this congressional moratorium.)

Since this fiscal year, the Interior appropriation has also included a moratorium, sponsored by Rep. Mark Udall, Colorado Democrat, that forbids Interior from issuing final regulations governing the sale of leases to develop oil shale lands. This effectively stops leases from being sold.

Because these moratoria are part of an appropriations bill that runs for only one fiscal year, they also run for one year. If not renewed by Sept. 30, they expire.

Unless Congress enacts a new law banning offshore leases and oil-shale leases, Interior can legally start selling these leases on Oct. 1. This fact was not lost on House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, when I interviewed him Aug. 7. I asked him if Mr. Bush should veto any bill that includes a moratorium.

"My view is that the president should just take the position right now that these moratoriums will end on Sept. 30 and the Democrats have to be responsible for putting them back in," said Mr. Blunt.

"Well, the Democrats wouldn't be responsible, congressman," I said. "With all due respect, President Bush would have to sign the moratorium into law for it to exist."

"And I don't think he should do that," said Mr. Blunt.

"So, if a bill passes Congress that has that moratorium, your belief is President Bush, your advice to him is: Mr. President, veto that bill?" I asked.

"That's right," said Mr. Blunt. "And my advice to him today would be to start the process up right now for what we do on Oct. 1 when this moratorium is ended and move forward assuming that there will be no moratorium after Sept. 30."

"You would tell him to instruct those people in the Interior Department, who are responsible for administering these leases for the offshore oil and the shale oil, to begin the process of getting ready so that on Oct. 1 he can sell a lease?" I asked.

"I would," said Mr. Blunt.

"And you would go ahead and sell those leases? You would say: 'Let's do it. Let's move ahead'?" I asked.

"Well, after Oct. 1 when there is no moratorium," said Mr. Blunt. "The studies are there. The resource is there. We know you can safely go after it. The American people are hurting. We need to do whatever is necessary."

The Democrats would likely try to pre-empt such a strategy by using the traditional method Congress uses for ramming through legislation that cannot stand on its own: They will roll almost all fiscal 2009 appropriations into one monstrous continuing resolution and attach to that monstrosity the offshore oil and shale oil moratoria.

They will say to President Bush: If you want to develop U.S. oil resources, you must first shut down most of the U.S. government. You must be willing to face a massive national controversy over oil drilling and government spending.

President Bush might balk at that. For conservatives, it's a two-fer.

Terence P. Jeffrey is a nationally syndicated columnist.

MALKIN: Big wind Boone-doggle

2008-08-17T09:08:00.001-07:00

COMMENTARY:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes "hand maidens of the oil companies." Let's call Mrs. Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers.

Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a "hoax" this week, Mrs. Pelosi refuses to consider Republican energy proposals that don't include massive subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out.

That brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists "Assets and 'Unearned Income"' of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. - Public Common Stock. Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens - former oilman turned wind-power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos.

Mr. Pickens and Mrs. Pelosi share the same talking points downplaying the need to drill and open up more access to American oil. Instead, the Pickens pie-in-the-sky plan proposes to replace natural gas with wind power in electricity generation and theoretically free up natural gas for America's transportation needs.

All well and good in la-la land, but let's be real about the limitations and costs of wind power. Past and ongoing experience demonstrates the unreliability of wind and the miserably low operating capacity of wind power facilities here and around the world. Depending on wind requires supplemental fossil fuel plants as backup to be turned on and off to compensate for wind power supply shortfalls - nullifying any reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, which are minuscule, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Not to mention the thousands of sliced-up birds and other wildlife that have become wind power casualties - a problem scientists say would be solved by "repowering" old turbines at a cost of untold billions.

Fittingly, the environmental mascot of the Democratic National Convention - the showcase of their alternative energy approach - is an eastern Colorado wind turbine propped up with Democratic carbon-credit funds that has never produced any substantial energy because of its chronic equipment malfunctions. But I digress.

Naturally, the Pickens Big Wind plan is proudly endorsed by Do-Nothing Pelosi's friends at the obstructionist Sierra Club. Through another company, Mesa Power, Mr. Pickens has committed upward of $12 billion in wind farms on the Texas Panhandle. CLNE and Mesa Power are separate entities, but what benefits one piece of the Pickens puzzle benefits them all. The wind venture, as Mr. Pickens himself acknowledges, depends on permanent federal subsidies.

Mr. Pickens is banking on 'em. And Mrs. Pelosi is banking on him.

As reported on dontgomovement.com, Mrs. Pelosi bought between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in Mr. Pickens' CLNE Corp. in May 2007 on the day of the initial public offering:

"She, and other investors, stand to gain a substantial return on their investment if gasoline prices stay high, and municipal, state and even the federal governments start using natural gas as their primary fuel source. If gasoline prices fall? Alternative fuels and the cost to convert fleets over to them become less and less attractive."

CLNE also happens to be the sponsor of Proposition 10, a ballot initiative in Mrs. Pelosi's home state of California to dole out a combined $10 billion in state and federal funds for renewable energy incentives - namely, natural gas and wind.

Follow the money. Or, to put it in economist's terms as energy analyst Kenneth Medlock III did in an interview with the Dallas Morning News about the Pickens multibillion-dollar wind farm investment: "A lot of what he's trying to do is add value to a stranded asset... he's obviously got millions of dollars on the line."

And so, potentially, does the Democratic Speaker of the House - all the while wagging her finger at the financial motivation of others.

Michelle Malkin is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."

The Great Energy Confusion

2008-08-17T09:07:00.001-07:00

Forget about a candid national conversation on energy. As John McCain and Barack Obama campaigned last week, that much seemed clear. To lower oil prices (which were already dropping), Obama proposed releasing 10 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is an atrocious idea. The SPR was intended as insurance against a catastrophic loss of oil from wars, embargoes, terrorism or natural disasters. It should not be manipulated cynically for political advantage. Earlier, McCain suggested suspending the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax; that was another bad and expedient idea.

No doubt Obama and McCain want to relieve Americans' discomfort at the pump. The trouble is that Americans should feel discomforted. We want a return to cheap, secure oil; we want painless pathways to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. These are fantasies; they should not be indulged.

In 2006, coal, oil and natural gas provided 85 percent of U.S. energy. In 2025, regardless of what we do, they will almost certainly remain the leading energy sources. We will still import huge volumes of oil and face global disruptions. And any serious effort to curb oil use and greenhouse gases will require high energy prices -- whether imposed by the market or taxes -- to induce conservation and conversion to nonfossil fuels.

Judged by their rhetoric, you might conclude that McCain and Obama differ dramatically on energy. Actually, their agendas overlap substantially. Both advocate a "cap and trade" system to reduce greenhouse gases; that's essentially a tax on fossil fuels, though neither describes it that way (candor grade for both: D). Both hold out, in similar language, the vision of resurgent American technology riding to the rescue.

To be sure, some contrasts are glaring. McCain and most Republicans support more offshore oil and natural-gas drilling; most Democrats don't (Obama has said he might consider more offshore drilling). The Democrats are deservedly getting pounded on this. Of course, "we can't drill our way out of this problem." But if we don't increase drilling, import dependence will worsen, as production from mature fields ebbs. Since 1990, U.S. oil production has dropped 23 percent, while imports have gone from 42 percent to 58 percent of consumption. Greater exploration is common sense, as more Americans recognize (Democrats' candor grade: F).

McCain proposes achieving "strategic independence" by 2025 -- a seductive but empty phrase. In 2025, oil would still represent a third or more of total energy use (it was two-fifths in 2006), with more than half imported, projects the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Although these figures could change, dependence on foreign oil is unavoidable. The projection already assumes big gains in fuel efficiency (the average for new vehicles goes from 25 miles per gallon now to almost 37 mpg). But the gains are diminished by a 25 percent increase in cars and light trucks, mainly reflecting population growth. Even if oil imports came mostly from Canada and Mexico, flows could still be affected by global disruptions (McCain's candor grade: D).

It's easy to exaggerate how quickly new technologies can improve our situation. Obama says that we can have a million plug-in hybrids averaging 150 miles a gallon on the road within six years (plug-in hybrids run on electricity and gasoline). Sounds impressive. But that would be less than one-half of 1 percent of all vehicles, and the forecast is probably a stretch. The battery technology required for plug-in hybrids is still not competitive, adding $7,000 to $10,000 per vehicle, says Brett Smith of the independent Center for Automotive Research. Obama would address this problem by providing a $7,000 tax credit (in effect: a rebate) on plug-in hybrids. These subsidies might go mainly to upper-middle-class buyers, permitting them to flaunt their "green" credentials (Obama's candor grade: C).

We are not powerless, and some policies would help more than others. A straight carbon tax, for instance, would be better than a complex cap-and-trade program. But with a growing population and the existing stock of vehicles and buildings, even good policies and technological breakthroughs will only gradually shift our energy consumption. In the government's projection, renewable energy (wind, solar, some biomass) grows seven times faster than average energy use; still, it's only 7 percent of total consumption by 2030.

All this can be seen as the messy process by which democracies reach consensus. "Crises are the only times when we are capable of making difficult decisions," says former Democratic Rep. Phil Sharp, who heads the think tank Resources for the Future. High pump prices, he says, "are drawing both parties toward the center": Republicans will be more open to regulation, Democrats to offshore drilling. The next president will find it easier to act. Maybe. But the preamble has involved so many exaggerations and simplicities that it's uncertain whether the ultimate response would make us better off -- or worse.

Russia's vast energy supplies worry US

2008-08-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Cold War competition between the United States and Russia — played out in Europe with the threat of mutual nuclear destruction — ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire nearly two decades ago.

But the Russian bear has re-emerged from its cave with a new and powerful weapon — the West's dependence on Moscow's vast energy supplies.

The Russians now supply about 25 percent of the European Union's crude oil needs and half of its natural gas.

And Moscow, with its recent attack on its former Georgian republic, may be trying to blunt the West's counteroffensive in the deadly serious energy competition. A key, U.S.-backed pipeline that carries oil out of Caspian and Central Asian fields to a Turkish port on the Mediterranean was nearly hit in recent attacks.

The stakes are high for the Europeans.

Some U.S. lawmakers worry about divisions within NATO due to Russia's domination of European gas markets and the threat of cold, dark winters if an angry Kremlin closes the valves.

"It is unlikely that aggression against our NATO allies will occur with aircraft and tanks and troops," said Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an Associated Press interview. "A nation could achieve the same and worse effects simply by turning off the taps_ people freeze, industry stops."

To counter this influence, the U.S. sent special envoy C. Boyden Gray to energy-rich Central Asia to lobby for new routes that run through Georgia — notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that was almost hit by a Russian bombing raid Monday.

That pipeline carries Caspian crude to international markets from suppliers independent not only of Russia but also OPEC. Lesser amounts flow through the Baku-Supsa line, which ends on the Black Sea.

The Caspian Sea port of Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan, another former Soviet republic that controls major petroleum reserves.

In Azerbaijan, Gray's visit in early June was overshadowed when Alexei Miller, the chief executive of Russia's government-controlled energy giant, Gazprom, made a bold offer — still pending — to buy all of Azerbaijan's natural gas exports at market prices.

Gray continued on to Turkmenistan. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev immediately announced his own trip and flew there a month later to unveil a major gas agreement that dealt another blow to U.S. hopes.

Those setbacks underscore the challenges confronting Washington and the European Union, which is hamstrung by its limited power to set a unified energy policy in the face of Russia's divide-and-conquer strategy in the gas market.

It has struck lucrative deals with individual European countries and companies to extend its distribution reach to the Western end of the continent. To overcome growing Russian sway, U.S. and European officials believe that the U.S. must use its influence to push through more pipelines from Central Asia to Europe.

While Russia appears to hold a powerful hand, especially its long dominance over former republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia, countries like Turkmenistan, Khazakhstan and Azerbaijan are wary. The former republics want signs the West is serious about building more pipelines before making moves that would anger Moscow.

The Kremlin has used its energy dominance as a weapon.

In late 2006, Russia's Gazprom threatened to cut off natural gas supplies to Georgia in the dead of winter. Russia reduced its oil supply to the Czech Republic last month, shortly after the country agreed to allow a U.S. missile defense radar on its soil over Moscow's objection. Russia had previously cut gas supplies to Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.

Russia denies political motivation.

As a counter to Moscow's growing strength, Washington wants pipelines built from Turkmenistan, across the Caspian to Azerbaijan, then through the Caucasus to Turkey and on to Western Europe. The route would bypass both Russia and Iran.

Gray's trip and a similar one by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher were aimed at promoting those pipelines and signaling that the U.S. was stepping up its game.

"Paying more attention — and letting these countries know we are paying attention — is our main objective," said Gray, who was recently appointed as Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy.

But the Russians seemed to be watching. Whether by coincidence or design, Miller, Gazprom's chief executive, scheduled an overlapping trip that mirrored Gray's.

"People think — it's too flattering to me — that Alexei Miller was kind of stalking me when I was in the region," Gray said.

Lugar, who has been pressing his concerns in trips to Central Asia and Europe, praises the appointment of Gray, a confidante of Bush and recent ambassador to the European Union. He says Russia will likely counter U.S. moves in its backyards.

"Given the characteristics of Russian diplomacy, which have been not only competitive but sometimes gripping people by the throat, they are likely to feel irritated that someone else is in the field," he said.

Lugar and others, including Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, believe that U.S. efforts to promote pipelines have foundered so far because they are a low priority for the Bush administration.

"The United States does not have a clear, consistent strategy to promote our long-term security interests, or our near-term energy and economic interests. The Russians do," Biden wrote in response to written questions from the AP.

But Konstanin Batunin, an oil and gas analyst at Alfa Bank in Russia, believes the U.S. — itself dependent on foreign oil — has failed to make much headway because it has little to offer the Europeans in terms of alternate supplies.

"The powers are not equal," Batunin said, referring to a struggle between the U.S. and Russia to control the region. "The United States cannot offer an adequate alternative. A political resource with no economic element is not enough."

Finland Joins Methane to Markets Partnership to Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions

2008-08-10T15:38:00.003-07:00

(Washington, D.C. - July 23, 2008) Finland is the latest country to join the Methane to Markets Partnership, sharing their expertise in the fight against climate change. The partnership, now 26 members strong, aims to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and clean energy source.

"The challenge of global climate change is exactly that - global," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. "As good neighbors, the U.S. and Finland are working together toward a cleaner, healthier, more productive world."

By 2015, Methane to Markets has the potential to reduce annual methane emissions by up to 50 million metric tons of carbon equivalent. Roughly, this equals the carbon dioxide emissions from the annual energy use of about 16 million American homes.

Finland is reducing methane emissions by encouraging farmers to recover and use methane and by installing biogas recovery units on 33 of the nation's landfills. The Finnish government is providing grants that cover some of the costs of these domestic projects as well as funding projects overseas in nations like Honduras and Nicaragua.

"Our nation is one of the world pioneers in the capture and the utilization of biogases from landfills and agriculture," said Mr. Pekka Lintu, Finland's Ambassador to the United States. "Our companies have developed new technologies and gained expertise in methane utilization projects not only domestically but also around the world. The Methane to Markets Partnership offers an important new networking facility to Finnish companies and experts."

Finland's decision to seek membership in the Methane to Markets Partnership is well in line with its energy and climate policy objectives. Finland plans to serve on the Methane to Markets technical subcommittees for the landfill and agricultural sectors.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere at a rate more than 20 times higher than carbon dioxide. In addition, methane is a primary constituent of natural gas and an important energy source. Efforts to prevent or utilize methane emissions can provide significant energy, economic and environmental benefits.

The other Methane to Markets partners include - Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, the European Commission, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Additionally, the partnership's project network includes more than 750 private sector entities, financial institutions, nongovernmental agencies and other organizations.

Methane to Markets, launched in 2004, is a public/private partnership that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by promoting the cost-effective, near-term recovery and use of methane, while providing clean energy to markets around the world.

EPA Honors Climate Change, Ozone Layer Protection Award Winners

2008-08-10T15:38:00.001-07:00

(Washington, D.C. - May 19, 2008) EPA today honored 39 individuals, organizations and companies from around the world for their outstanding efforts to protect the Earth's climate and stratospheric ozone layer. The award recipients have demonstrated ingenuity and leadership by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, negotiating international agreements to protect the ozone layer and climate, and spreading awareness about the importance of these issues.

“Efforts to help restore the ozone layer and fight climate change will benefit the planet for generations to come,” said Bob Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Air & Radiation. “We commend the 2008 Climate and Ozone Layer Protection Award winners for their work to protect our environment.”

The 2008 Climate Protection Award winners have contributed greatly to scientific understanding of climate change and its impacts on human health and the environment. They have also generated on-site wind and solar power, increased energy efficiency, introduced new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from mining, and slashed the use of potent greenhouse gases.

The 2008 Stratospheric Ozone Layer Protection Award winners have strengthened the international Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. The Protocol now calls for a faster phase-out of ozone depleting substances called HCFCs, which are also potent greenhouse gases. The winners are also responsible for the eliminating ozone-depleting substances in medical, agricultural, aviation, and shipping applications where alternatives are difficult to implement.

The 10th annual Climate and Ozone Layer Protection Awards were presented today at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Since the annual Ozone Layer Protection Awards began in 1990, EPA has honored 533 recipients from 46 different countries. EPA began the Climate Protection Awards in 1998 and has so far recognized 154 recipients from 18 countries for outstanding efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2008 Climate Protection Award Winners:

Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnydale, Calif.
Austin Energy, Austin, Texas
City of Albuquerque, N.M.
Climate Protection Team of Mr. Durwood Zaelke & Mr. Scott Stone, Washington, DC
Ms. Gay Browne, Montecito, Calif..
Mr. John Morrill, Arlington, Va.
Mr. Kenneth Davis, Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.
Ms. Laura Miller, Dallas
Ms. Laurie David, Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Life Cycle Analysis Team of Dr. Stella Papasavva & William R. Hill, Warren, Mich.
Mr. Marco Gonzalez, Kenya and Costa Rica
MEGTEC Systems, De Pere, Wis.
Ms. Romina Picolotti, Buenos Aries, Argentina
Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, New Delhi, India
Xerox Corporation, Norwalk, Conn.

2008 Ozone Layer Protection Award Winners:

Dr. Husamuddin Ahmadzai, Sweden
Asada Corporation, Japan
Dr. Paul Atkins, Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Kingdom of Bahrain National Ozone Unit, Bahrain
Australian Fumigation Accreditation Scheme, Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, Australia
Chinese Negotiating Team for the 19th Meeting of the Parties, China
Civil Aviation Halon Transition Team, Worldwide
Climate Co-Benefits of the Montreal Protocol Science Team, Netherlands & United States
Dr. Corrado Clini, Italy
Mr. James Curlin, France
Dr. Arumugam Duraisamy, India
Dr. David Fahey, Boulder, Colo.
Fiji National Ozone Unit, Fiji
Mr. Maas Goote, Netherlands
HCFC Phaseout Acceleration Team, Washington, DC
Mr. Mazen Hussein, Lebanon
Ms. Ana Maria Kleymeyer, Argentina
Dr. Michael Kurylo, Washington, DC
Kuwait National Ozone Committee, Kuwait
Dr. Kazufumi Nishi, Japan
Nordiko Quarantine Systems, Australia
Mr. Sateeaved Seebaluck, Mauritius
Dr. W.L. Sumathipala, Sri Lanka
World Customs Organization, Asia Pacific Capacity Building, Thailand

Colorado architects recognized for green building excellence

2008-08-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

(Denver, Colo. - May 15, 2008) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized green building projects by Architecture West, LLC, and RB+B Architects, Inc., both of Fort Colllins, as among 46 architecture projects nationwide to achieve Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR, the government’s mark of superior energy efficiency in building design. The awards were presentation today at the American Institute of Architects Convention (AIA) in Boston.

“These firms are setting a new standard for energy and environmental performance in building and design,” said Patty Crow, of EPA's Energy Star program in Denver. "Their leadership and expertise is defining the next generation of green buildings in Colorado."

The Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR designation recognizes commercial building projects that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment through energy-efficient design. Nationally, this year’s 46 new projects are estimated to save 120 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions and $5 million in energy costs annually across eight million square feet.

In addition to three new projects in Colorado, Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR projects are also planned in 18 other states, including: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Since 2004, 94 building design projects representing a total of more than 13 million square feet of space have achieved Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR. Collectively, these projects were designed to prevent 178 million lbs/year of CO2 emissions, a 42 percent reduction over comparable existing buildings. The buildings have estimated energy cost savings of $6 million per year.

“ENERGY STAR is an important partner with the AIA in making buildings more energy efficient and reducing carbon emissions from the built environment,” said Paul Mendelsohn, AIA Vice President, Government and Community Relations. “The Energy Star Challenge for Architects is a great tool to help architects design energy-efficient buildings, meet the Institute's target for carbon neutral buildings by 2030, and improve their communities.”

Energy use in commercial buildings and manufacturing plants accounts for nearly half of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption nationwide. ENERGY STAR was introduced by EPA in 1992 as a voluntary, market-based partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency. Today, the ENERGY STAR label can be found on more than 50 different kinds of products, new homes and commercial and industrial buildings. Buildings that have earned the ENERGY STAR designation prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy-efficiency specifications set by the government. Last year alone, Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved about $16 billion on their energy bills while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of 27 million vehicles.

Pelosi's Energy Stonewall

2008-08-02T06:30:00.002-07:00

Hell -- otherwise known as Congress -- has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production.
[Nancy Pelosi]

Or even a mere debate about energy. The Democratic leadership is stonewalling any measure that might possibly relax the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they would lose if a vote ever came to the floor, and they're desperate to suppress an insurrection among those Democrats who are pragmatic about one of the top economic issues. Behind this whatever-it-takes obstructionism is an ideological commitment to high energy prices. The rulers of the Democratic Party want prices to keep rising.

A good gauge of the radicalism of their energy blockade is the lowest common denominator of this energy fight: The effort to blame "speculators" for $4 gas was promoted by both Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as nearly everybody else in Washington. Sure enough, the House voted 276-151 on Wednesday for a bill that would have driven oil futures trading overseas.

But the legislation actually failed to become law -- by design. It needed a two-thirds majority because Speaker Pelosi suspended the rules to prevent Republicans from offering amendments, drilling among them. Ms. Pelosi had decreed that she would not permit a roll-call vote under any circumstances, even if it stopped her own goal of wrecking the U.S. futures market.
[Harry Reid]

Meanwhile, the Senate is locked down over its own antispeculation bill. Majority Leader Reid briefly agreed to allow four amendments on GOP policy alternatives, but he withdrew the offer after he was subjected to the fury of the environmental lobby and Ms. Pelosi. To prevent a vote on offshore drilling this week, Senate Democrats also let fail a bill providing home heating assistance for the poor. Same thing for tax subsidies for wind and solar energy.

Other liberal inspirations, including suing OPEC and a windfall profits tax on the oil industry, also ended up in the Congressional dumpster. And of course Democrats long ago shut down the normal budget process in both the Senate and the House to avoid any vote.

Normally, the spending hiatus would be a useful byproduct of Congressional bickering. But in this case the shutdown is malign neglect. Surging energy prices act like a huge tax increase on the economy, since energy demand is relatively fixed over the short term. The price spike is imposing genuine hardships on middle-income and working-class voters across the country.

The Democratic leadership isn't oblivious to this man-at-the-pump reality. But Al Gore's vision of the apocalyptic tides of climate change perfectly expresses their mentality: Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid see soaring prices as a public good -- the mechanism that will force energy enlightenment on the U.S. If anything, they think the price of gas is too low. As recently as June, the Senate debated a multitrillion-dollar carbon tax-and-regulation scheme that was designed to boost energy costs. A new version will be a priority in the next Administration.

If nothing else, this summer's oil drilling stonewall is giving voters an insight into this ideology, which recoils at any oil, natural gas or coal production -- oh, and nuclear besides. That puts 93% of all U.S. energy off limits for expansion. Back in the real world, and barring a cold fusion or other miracle, the U.S. will remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades. A fresh round of domestic oil-and-gas exploration would ease the long-term pressures that supply and demand are exerting on prices, plus bolster energy security.

And those not bound by anticarbon theology are coming around. Broad margins of the American public -- now even a slim majority of Californians -- favor increasing domestic production. Many Congressional Democrats are working below the radar to craft a compromise that couples drilling with conservation and programs to prop up renewable alternatives.

But the leadership won't bend even a bit, and so Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have spent the summer using every parliamentary deception to evade debating the issue that the American public cares most about. Short of cutting off the air conditioning on Capitol Hill, Democrats won't get the message until voters make them -- perhaps in November.

Dems Stop Approps Bills To Block GOP Energy Push

2008-08-02T06:30:00.001-07:00

Blame it on a delayed Fiscal Year 2009 budget, on a long fight over funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential veto threats or over energy issues Republicans are using to score political points: This year, Democrats have no plans to finish as many as ten of the twelve annual appropriations bills before Congress adjourns.

Instead, frustrated lately by Republican efforts to include provisions on energy legislation in recent appropriations bills during committee hearings, Democrats are planning to offer a massive continuing resolution next month, according to Hill aides. That bill, which would continue spending at current levels into next year, will include spending measures for all but three traditional appropriations areas, all of which are military-related.

House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey and other top Democrats have said the process for passing the spending bills simply takes longer than the amount of time the committee has left. Time ran out, Obey has said, after the chamber was held up working on supplemental funding for two wars, and veto threats from the White House targeting any bill that spends above levels requested by President Bush.

But Republicans reject that argument. "We have veto threats on these bills almost every year," said Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for Republicans on the Appropriations Committee. Rather, she said, Democrats are avoiding bringing up the bills, and have since late June, to prevent a series of votes on energy issues designed to open new areas for oil exploration. With gas prices hovering near $4 a gallon, Republicans pushing what they call their "all of the above" energy plan think they have found a political issue that works to their benefit.

Repeated calls and emails to the House Appropriations Committee's Democratic spokeswoman went unanswered.

The issue first erupted in late June, when Obey made clear he had no intention of bringing up the Interior Appropriations bill. That measure contains an annual renewal of a ban on the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Instead, while working on a bill to provide money to the Labor and Health and Human Services Departments, ranking Republican member Jerry Lewis, of California, offered an amendment replacing it with language from the Interior bill, and would have forced a series of votes on those same energy issues.

Instead of taking the votes, on which Republicans likely would have prevailed, Obey adjourned the committee, and he has not answered repeated questions about when, or if, the hearing would continue. "This is the meat of our legislative responsibility here in Congress," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. "They have shut down the process based entirely on their fear that we would get a vote on energy issues."

Since then, Obey has not brought up measures on which Republicans could offer similar amendments, intent on avoiding similar votes. When Lewis offered to refrain from trying to amend other appropriations bills in exchange for a vote on the Interior measure, Obey did not respond.

One measure that has made it through to a vote on the floor is a bill providing funding for military construction and veterans' affairs, which is expected to pass as Congress finishes its summer workload today. But four others -- allocating money concerning homeland security, financial services, energy and water and a combined measure on commerce, justice and science have yet to be scheduled for a floor vote despite passing the committee. All of those measures would be open to amendments on the floor, where Democrats do not want to be forced into politically tenuous votes on additional oil drilling.

Democrats face the fundamental problem that there are enough pro-oil members of their own party, along with endangered freshmen who want the issue off the table, who will abandon their leadership and vote with the GOP. "The Democratic leaderhip clearly knows that they are defying the will of the American people by not allowing a vote on increasing the supply of American energy to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices," Steel said. "They're so scared that they know there's a bipartisan majority in the House to [pass the GOP's legislation]."

That intraparty rift showed on Wednesday, when nearly enough Democrats defected to defeat a plan to adjourn for August recess by the end of the week. By a single vote, 213-212, Congress agreed to adjourn by the end of the week and return the week of September 8. Every Republican and seventeen Democrats, including vulnerable freshmen like Reps. Patrick Murphy, Harry Mitchell, Jim Marshall, Jason Altmire and Kirsten Gillibrand, voted against the measure and to stay in session.

The attack on appropriations is not the only method the GOP has used to highlight support for new and increased energy exploration. Republicans in the Senate have stalled legislation all week in hopes of getting a vote on energy issues, killing dozens of bills in the process. And two weeks ago, Boehner and ten House Republican freshmen visited an alternative energy facility in Colorado and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to highlight their proposals.

Polls show the GOP is on the right side of the issue; a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released last week showed 75% of Americans support increased oil drilling in the U.S., while 71% support increased drilling offshore and 56% support drilling for oil in ANWR. That's up eight points since a poll in early March 2006, when 48% supported Arctic oil exploration. Polls repeatedly show energy issues and gas prices are as high a priority for Americans as the war in Iraq. More than half of voters say their top priority is either the economy, energy or gas.

Still, Americans have yet to associate high gas prices with the Democratic Party, a critical connection Republicans have to make if the issue will benefit them in November. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll two weeks ago showed voters trusted Democrats to handle gas prices better by a twenty-point margin, a significant lead on any issue. But there are signs, at least, that the lead might be shrinking: In January, Democrats led by a whopping twenty-eight points.

Republicans have sent a message with their efforts to amend appropriations bills, and Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday that the GOP will return to the issue in September, when Congress returns. If Democrats start seeing poll numbers moving dramatically against them, they may rethink their opposition to allowing votes on amendments. If they don't, Republicans may have found an issue on which to connect with voters this November.

Pelosi: Save the Planet, Let Someone Else Drill

2008-08-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because, as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."

A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium's effects on the planet?

Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it's 25 percent. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47 percent. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day, the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?

Places such as Nigeria, where chronic corruption, environmental neglect and the resulting unrest and instability lead to pipeline explosions, oil spills and illegal siphoning by the poverty-stricken population -- which leads to more spills and explosions. Just this week, two Royal Dutch Shell pipelines had to be shut down because bombings by local militants were causing leaks into the ground.

Compare the Niger Delta to the Gulf of Mexico, where deep-sea U.S. oil rigs withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without a single undersea well suffering a significant spill.

The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling. Today, directional drilling -- essentially drilling down, then sideways -- allows access to oil that in 1970 would have required a surface footprint more than three times as large. Additionally, the United States has one of the most extensive and least corrupt regulatory systems on the planet.

Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?

The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world -- thereby increasing net planetary damage.

Democrats want no oil from the American OCS or ANWR. But of course they do want more oil. From OPEC. From where Americans don't vote. From places Democratic legislators can't see. On May 13 Sen. Chuck Schumer -- deeply committed to saving just those pieces of the planet that might have huge reserves of American oil -- demanded that the Saudis increase production by a million barrels a day. It doesn't occur to him that by eschewing the slightest disturbance of the mating habits of the Arctic caribou, he is calling for the further exploitation of the pristine deserts of Arabia. In the name of the planet, mind you.

The other panacea, yesterday's rage, is biofuels: We can't drill our way out of the crisis, it seems, but we can greenly grow our way out. By now, however, it is blindingly obvious even to Democrats that biofuels are a devastating force for environmental degradation. It has led to the rape of "lungs of the world" rain forests in Indonesia and Brazil as huge tracts have been destroyed to make room for palm oil and sugar plantations.

Here in the United States, one out of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home but intensive increases in farming, with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).

This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves undisturbed a refuge one-third the size of Britain.

There are a dizzying number of economic and national security arguments for drilling at home: a $700 billion oil balance-of-payments deficit, a gas tax (equivalent) levied on the paychecks of American workers and poured into the treasuries of enemy and terror-supporting regimes, growing dependence on unstable states of the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin. Pelosi and the Democrats stand athwart, shouting: We don't care. We come to save the planet!

They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.

The energy speech McCain should deliver

2008-08-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

W e need a new John McCain, one who throws overboard some worn-out ideas he has been toting around, and — with fire in his eyes, his belly and his rhetoric — would give an energy speech something along these lines:

“My fellow Americans, we are facing a crisis that could cripple our industry while lowering our standard of living to something that will make today’s travails seem puny by comparison.

“The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way as long as we are willing to fasten our faith to our technological gusto and spit in the eye of the radicals whose sense of proportion is zero.

“These forever-yelping fringe-dwellers would have you believe that if you need more of something, the last thing you should do is go out and get some. Oil is becoming so scarce that the prices are already pummeling some industries to decrepitude while also punishing some of our least well-off families, and yet, guess what? The radicals insist it would make next to no difference to start drilling offshore and in Alaska where we know vast quantities of oil reside.

“I myself only recently agreed that offshore drilling was crucial, and hereby change my stance on Alaska. The situation is veering toward extreme jeopardy, and there is no choice but to face up to that reality and embrace facts that the radicals don’t want you to understand.

“One is that we have learned how to do this drilling without grave environmental hazard. The other is that these sources contain tens of billions of barrels of oil, enough to tide us over handsomely while other things fall into place.

“Sure, it will take time to get there, but that lame excuse for inaction is one reason we are now in such a pickle in the first place, and the point is to get started so as to begin edging us toward rescue. Price-induced conservation has already begun, and will help in the meantime, along with overcoming radical objections to new refineries.

“We now have strenuous efforts in the auto industry to produce more fuel-efficient cars than anything we have yet seen in this country. We need to look hard at ways to restore the dollar’s value as still another means of making visits to gas stations less a cause for heart palpitations.

“I myself am among those who need to get over this absurd notion that oil company profits are the enemy instead of what they actually are — the incentive to produce more and get us past our present troubles.

“Right now, one major oil company is investing millions on learning non-harmful ways to extract oil from oil shale residing on our continent. We’re talking about the equivalent of Saudi Arabian reserves several times over in the Rocky Mountains alone.

“Nuclear energy and new technology will someday obviate the need for oil, which we can also obtain from coal liquefaction and tar sands, just as it will give us answers to global warming if all the speculation about human-induced dangers should prove true.

“We should at the least heed a Yale scholar who has shown that a number of the anti-carbon proposals would cause trillions more dollars worth of economic damage than any harm caused by warming, and understand that anti-capitalist ideology is as much at work here as anything.

“Even as we look at a future without them, we should acknowledge how fossil fuels have made hundreds of millions of lives possible while helping to advance civilization. The main thing we have to fear is irrationality, and my opponent.”

Dems’ Doublethink on Drilling

2008-07-18T03:42:00.002-07:00

In the novel 1984, George Orwell used the word “doublethink” to describe the process of believing two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The concept invites an appropriate but superficial comparison to congressional Democrats’ current approach to gasoline prices.

Idea Number One: High gasoline prices are good. A high price, imposed through federal carbon taxes or carbon caps, is precisely the mechanism by which Democrats hope to curb carbon emissions. We know that this mechanism works because it is already working: As gas prices rise, American consumption is down right now, year over year (a historical rarity). CO2 emissions from gasoline are down from 2007 by a modest 84,000 tons, or roughly 2 percent.

Idea Number Two: High gasoline prices are bad. With constituents irate over gasoline prices that are pushing $5 a gallon, Democrats complain that high prices are a bad thing. They have dreamed up a number of boogie men responsible for high prices and drafted silver-bullet bills to kill them off.

This is more a case of cynicism than irrationality, however. Democrats only pretend to believe in Idea Number Two. Their presidential nominee, Barack Obama, lamented in mid-June that high gasoline prices have hurt Americans, but he later gave a much more accurate representation of the party line: “I think that I would have preferred a more gradual adjustment,” he said in an MSNBC interview. It should be noted that the Kyoto treaty calls for emissions reductions some 15 or 20 times as great as those induced by higher gas prices. Its goals would presumably require much higher gasoline prices — perhaps $7 or $8 a gallon, or even more — over a very long period of time.

Given that lower gasoline prices would defeat the purpose of their entire environmental program, Democrats are in a very awkward position on the energy issue. They know it, too. They are caught between their environmentalist allies, well-funded groups with a very loud voice in Washington, and their constituents, working people with almost no voice in Washington. The constituents’ feelings are only now becoming so intense that they are starting to matter. Regular people are noticing that high gasoline prices hit them not only at the pump, which is bad enough, but also through inflated prices for food and other important daily necessities that require transportation or otherwise track the price of oil.

This summer, Democrats have sought some course of action that will appease these constituents — something that gives a false but convincing impression that Democrats are indeed concerned about high gasoline prices. They have proposed several solutions that range from the impractical (“sue OPEC”) to the irrelevant (crack down on “speculators”) to the absurd (“nationalize the oil industry”).

After tilting at these windmills, House Democrats brought the so-called “use it or lose it” law to the House floor on June 26. They charged that, with 68 million acres under lease allegedly containing 4.8 million barrels of crude, domestic producers were consciously sitting on a ready supply of oil — as if today’s exorbitant prices weren’t sufficient incentive to bring as many barrels as possible to market. The Democrats’ bill threatened to confiscate or double the price of non-producing leases. But the Secretary of the Interior already has the authority under current law to revoke leases that are not exploited within five years (it can take that long to explore and get a well running). And as Rep. Gene Green (D., Tex.) remarked in June: “You can’t produce on every acre or even every 100 acres. I think those numbers come from people who don’t understand this business.”

Sure enough, upon further questioning, it was revealed that the 4.8-million-barrel number was made up by Democratic staffers without the involvement of government scientists — a “guesstimate,” as Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D., Ill.) put it. The bill failed to attain the two-thirds majority it needed, but it would not have lowered gasoline prices anyway.

On the other hand, were Congress to take real steps toward increasing the domestic-oil supply, many things would change on their own, some of them overnight. “Once the speculators in the market see that we’re serious about increasing the oil supply,” one House GOP aide told National Review Online, “the door won’t be large enough for them to get out.” Don’t forget: speculators short oil, too. As in all other markets (such as housing), prices do indeed decline as soon as speculators are convinced by reality.

President Bush’s decision this week to allow preparation of leases for energy exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lets Republicans press their energy advantage even harder. Bush’s executive order of Monday removes all White House restrictions on the establishment of new oil leases. Democrats had been using these restrictions as an excuse for Congress to do nothing about oil exploration. The ball is clearly in the Democrats’ court. The OCS drilling ban expires on September 30, with the Department of the Interior’s fiscal 2008 appropriations. Although House sources believe it will almost certainly be renewed, that renewal will create another political pressure point on a good Republican issue close to this year’s election.

“We’re going to keep putting pressure on them until they do the right thing,” says Rep. Charles Boustany (R., La.). It was Boustany who rallied congressional Republicans on this issue last Wednesday, circulating a letter that might have pushed President Bush to take action this week. “We have to strategically manage our reliance on fossil fuels while we make the transition to the new technologies. To completely turn our backs on oil drilling, like the Democrats have been advocating, is just not realistic.”

Recent polls show that between 57 and 67 percent of Americans want to drill for oil on the OCS. The U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) has estimated that there are 85.9 billion barrels of oil (11 years’ worth of U.S. consumption) and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (an 18-year supply) sitting out there. And there could be much more, since many areas off the coasts remain unexplored.

Although Democratic leaders continue to resist, a few small cracks have already appeared in the Democrats’ opposition to drilling. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), who cast the deciding Senate vote against letting Virginia drill off its coast last June, said last week that he is now, well, warming to the idea.

The issue of high gasoline prices is suddenly becoming the congressional GOP’s first real political break of 2008. They have finally found an issue on which the public clearly supports their position.

There is nothing like the prospect of five-dollar gasoline to remind everyone in Congress — perhaps even Democrats — that their constituents’ well-being is more important than any ideological environmental goal of keeping gasoline prices high.

Drilling in the Offshore

2008-07-18T03:42:00.001-07:00

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered banks have been selling off valuable energy contracts to pay for other debts; and there’s even some speculation that computer programs used by Wall Street may create a “cascading effect” once prices start to drop.

But bizarrely, the AP didn’t mention that on Monday — again, the day of the single biggest one-day drop in oil prices in five years — President Bush removed the executive order imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States.

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn’t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly. Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.

“If they [Saudi Arabia] produced half a million barrels more oil a day the price would come down a very significant amount and, at the same time, it would stop the speculation that keeps driving up the price of oil,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

But if half a million barrels a day is all that’s needed to get the price of oil down, why, pray tell, are we at the mercy of the Saudis?

Last December, at the behest (and expense) of the American Petroleum Institute and Shell oil, I flew down to the Gulf Coast to visit an offshore oil platform. They helicoptered me 165 miles out into the gulf and I stepped onto Brutus, a tension-linked platform anchored to the seafloor 3,000 feet below. It would be an understatement to say I was in awe. Until you’re actually standing on one you can’t begin to appreciate the sheer size and complexity of such a thing.

The platform is the size of a few football fields jammed together, and the top of the derrick was easily a few hundred feet off the water. Dozens of people lived on board, and everything — from the computer systems to the actual drilling rig — was state of the art. Brutus produced over 100,000 barrels of oil a day — down from over 300,000 at its peak capacity.

That sounds impressive. But here’s what truly floored me: Shell decided Brutus’s location in the gulf would be profitable for drilling in April 1999. The company then built the massive oil platform, transported it to the right location in the gulf, anchored the floating leviathan onto the seafloor 3,000 feet below, drilled 17,000 feet below that, and began producing oil in July 2001. It took only two years to get Brutus online.

Of course, it helps that the oil companies have plenty of money to throw at the problem. Constructing oil platforms can cost in the billions of dollars. A few new oil platforms equivalent to Brutus off-shore in the U.S. could easily account for the half a million barrels Senator Schumer claims are driving prices up.

Of course, it’s not as simple as saying that, if we allow more offshore drilling, the oil companies will have America’s energy problems solved in a mere two years. It takes time to discover oil, for one thing. But they’re getting much better at finding it. The technology for oil prospecting has improved dramatically. At Shell’s headquarters in New Orleans, I visited their conference room where geologists, engineers, and executives gather to make decisions about where to drill. Suffice to say, it involves looking at scarily accurate maps and computer-generated images of cross sections of the earth’s crust on a 10-foot-high screen the width of the room. And it’s all in 3-D.

But due to restrictions on drilling, much of America’s coastline has never been fully explored, let alone with the latest technologies. Just a few months ago, an oil find was made off the coast of Brazil that might contain 33 billion barrels of oil. Now imagine what a similar find off the coast of America would do for oil prices.

Again, there’s no guarantee that oil will be up and pumping in just a few years. But given the price of oil, and the fact that oil companies have an obscene amount of cash sitting in the bank to throw at prospecting and construction of new facilities, oil companies are highly motivated. There’s an excellent chance they’ll start producing oil much faster than naysaying politicians would have you believe.

It’s also worth noting that existing oil production in America is declining, particularly in the Gulf Coast. The long-term path to energy independence can’t focus exclusively on offshore drilling at the expense of other forms of energy and new technologies.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said that the idea that more offshore drilling would bring down gas prices amounted to “blowing smoke.” The cigar enthusiast might want to reconsider that statement—as should Obama, who also opposes more drilling. It’s a losing political issue. With gas $4 a gallon, a June Gallup survey found that 57 percent of Americans support drilling off-shore and in wilderness areas.

Saying offshore drilling won’t bring down gas prices is demonstrably wrong. The price of gas dropped significantly upon Bush’s word that more domestic offshore drilling was one small step closer to becoming a reality. How much more will it drop if we actually start drilling and producing oil?

Carbon Copies Down Under

2008-07-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

The global warming craze officially landed in Canberra yesterday, as the Labor government released a sketch of what it calls "one of the highest priorities of the Australian government": its carbon trading scheme. That should signal the beginning of an important debate about the costs of this grand plan. But can the opposition Liberal Party muster a coherent argument?

Yesterday's 516-page report calls for a huge bureaucratic expansion and undefined costs to industry. Canberra has pledged to reduce emissions to 60% of 2000 levels by 2050, and it wants to set emissions caps this year. The government hasn't yet said how much companies will have to pay for all this. But they did say electricity prices could rise 16%, and fuel, 9%, when emissions trading begins in 2010.

You'd expect the Liberals to be howling. Instead, they're as green as Al Gore. Part of this is a legacy issue. Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard embraced the idea of an emissions trading scheme by 2012 when he saw then-opposition leader Kevin Rudd gaining support by fearmongering about global warming. Mr. Howard said he'd implement carbon trading only if costs to the Australian economy were capped. His commitment has, for now, left the Liberals mostly on the same page as Labor.

Current Liberal leader Brendan Nelson hasn't tried very hard to distance himself from Mr. Howard's platform. He hasn't questioned the science underlining global warming. (Yesterday's report takes as truth the United Nations' discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates.) He's repeatedly said that he supports an emissions trading scheme without seriously exploring other, more transparent, forms of taxation on industry – or opposing the tax altogether. He hasn't questioned the wisdom of the schemes Australia already has in place to pick winners among clean energy industries, such as mandatory renewable energy targets.

Mr. Nelson's only attempt to rejig the Liberals' position was a feeble try last week to step back from that 2012 implementation date and to ask that Australia – which emits only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions – not act until big emitters like China lead the way. But as soon as he floated these common-sense ideas, his deputy Julie Bishop, shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull and shadow environment minister Greg Hunt all publicly cried foul. Mr. Nelson fell back into line. So much for leadership.

Labor is taking full advantage of the Liberals' disarray. Yesterday's report blithely asserts that an emissions trading scheme will touch "around 1,000 Australian companies in total," or "less than 1%" of Australian businesses. In reality, forcing companies to buy pollution permits would raise the cost of energy production and hit every corner of the world's 15th-largest economy.

Labor's report admits as much, noting there will be "adjustment costs" and pledging to offset energy price hikes by temporarily cutting excise taxes on gasoline. But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong played down any change of making such cuts permanent, suggesting yesterday that the Labor government would instead buffer the immediate impact on low-income families through cash handouts.

As for the economic havoc Labor's global warming plan would wreak, you know it's bad when even the labor unions – the Labor Party's core constituency – cry foul. The 130,000-member Australia's Workers' Union, the country's largest blue-collar union, and a local think tank estimate that the cost to the aluminum industry alone in job losses could range "from A$285 million to A$1.124 billion."

Given rising fuel costs, now is the perfect time for the Liberals to point out the economic cost of Labor's global warming scheme. But they can't do so effectively if they are carbon-copies of Labor. The public may not understand carbon trading schemes, but they understand hits to their pocketbook. It's time for the Liberals to start pounding that message home, in unison.

EU Climate Plan Hurts Business, Says German Ministry

2008-07-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

The European Union's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions doesn't sufficiently take business needs into account, said Germany's economics ministry.

At a meeting of government and industry officials on Tuesday, July 15, Germany's Deputy Economics Minister Jochen Homann and all other speakers said that the EU plan was not business-friendly.

"The conclusion of the conference is that there is only limited scope for reducing "emissions" in the industrial sector and the EU climate package needs improvement in key areas," said the ministry in a statement.

The ministry was particularly critical of the EU's goal to cut the quota of emissions trading permits by 21 percent, compared to 2005 levels, saying this would cost Germany both jobs and growth. As a major burner of fossil-fuels, which cause unwanted CO2 emissions, Germany would be especially hard hit by the plan, added the ministry.

The statement also pointed out that an emissions trading program would result in a price hike for products that are useful in reaching climate goals, such as insulation glass and insulating construction materials.

No more room for cuts, says economics ministry

"Due to exploding oil and gas prices, further measures to achieve climate goals should be considered only with great caution," read the statement. "Rising energy prices are already a strong incentive to investment in renewable energies, energy savings and energy efficiency."

Germany's industry has already contributed extensively to reducing greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, despite economic growth, but has little leeway to do more, it added.

Earlier this month, the EU proposed a legally-binding bloc-wide initiative to slash energy consumption by 20 percent by the year 2020. EU environment ministers have suggested the use of biofuels as a way to cut carbon emissions by 35 percent in the short-term and by 50 percent by the year 2015.

EU legislators this month also approved an emissions trading plan for the aviation industry, which airlines say will drive up the price of flights.

But as long a key polluters like the United States, China and India don't implement similar strategies to reduce emissions, the EU's efforts won't have a significant impact on global climate change, concluded the economics ministry.

PAUL CHESSER: ADVOCATES BEHIND CLIMATE PANEL

2008-07-11T10:38:00.001-07:00

Imagine that former Republican Gov. Bill Graves created and appointed members of an "objective" commission to study school choice, but the panel would be managed by a conservative-funded, limited-government nonprofit organization from out of state that disavowed its advocacy origins on the issue.

This group would run the commission process, provide the research, run the Web site and set the meeting agenda. No input from voucher opponents (teachers' unions) would be allowed (because there is "consensus" that vouchers work).

How would this be perceived? Outrage would leap from newspaper editorial pages, teachers' unions would organize mass protests, and liberal legislators would demand an investigation.

And they would be justified in doing so. It's wrong for an advocacy group, funded by like-minded activist benefactors, to so completely control an "objective" commission to create state policy -- on any issue.

Yet that is the reality with the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy advisory group, created and populated by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and the group's management team, the Center for Climate Strategies.

Despite what the center's executive director Tom Peterson says ("It doesn't have an advocacy history"), the group's own tax returns explain that the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, a nonprofit that (by its own admission) advocates for environmental causes, "formed (CCS) to carry out their nonregulatory agenda."

It doesn't stop there. In every state where the center runs one of these climate commissions (there have been at least 16), global-warming alarmist grant makers have subsidized the majority of the center's work. Its biggest patron is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, whose introductory statement to its 2005 annual report --"Earth is running a fever" -- reveals its prejudice.

Millions of the fund's dollars have flowed into the pockets of Center for Climate Strategies contractors, and together they both tout the fraudulent claim that states with CCS-driven climate action plans have "enjoyed economic benefit as a result," with the creation of "more jobs" and "economic expansion." Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that the center's proposals to tax and raise costs for energy, and to subsidize inefficient forms of power generation (wind and solar), will depress economic activity and lead to layoffs.

Yet the center remains undeterred, and sets up rules in the states to make sure it accomplishes its goals.

Kansans should see clearly that the big fix is on. The government-growing, tax-raising policies that the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy group produces will win the day if resistance doesn't start now.
Paul Chesser is director of Climate Strategies Watch, a free-market, limited-government project based in North Carolina that assesses global warming commissions in the states.

A crafty G8

2008-07-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

The G8 summit on climate policy, and its categorical rejection by China, India and the other Group of Five developing countries has reinforced the post-Kyoto standoff. Rather than breaking the climate deadlock, as Tony Blair had advocated in the run-up to the Hokkaido summit, the G8 agreement has deepened the existing gulf within the international community with no sign in sight of a possible solution.

It seems increasingly unlikely that the fundamental conflict between the developed nations and the emerging economies of the developing world about collective climate targets can be resolved anytime soon. The time has come for policy makers around the world to ponder whether a new global climate agreement no longer based on mandatory and legally binding emissions targets is a viable compromise.

In the interminable game of climate poker that is the post-Kyoto negotiation circuit, this year's G8 summit in Japan has pulled off a remarkable feat. Instead of the customary wrangle between Europe and the U. S., a unified West submitted a strategic challenge to the rest of the world. In one of the shrewdest gambits of international climate diplomacy, the leaders of the Western world offered steep emissions cuts -- under the condition that China, India and other developing countries take part in the global effort.

Predictably, China, India and other major economies fear that the G8's crafty climate strategy is backing them into a precarious corner. Reiterating their position that it was the responsibility of rich nations to cut CO2 emissions, they emphasized that poor and developing nations had no option but to reject any proposal that would inevitably undermine the economic growth that is necessary to pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Nevertheless, by conditioning their offer on the concrete and verifiable participation of developing nations, the Group of Eight has strengthened accord and unity within itself. At the same time, it is further shifting the weight of international pressure and expectation on to its economic rivals and competitors from the developing world.

One of the most notable achievements of the G8's new climate strategy is the fact that the U. S., Europe, Japan and Russia appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet. The EU and Russia are now supporting President Bush's persistent demand that any new climate deal include China and India. By bringing Europe on board a united platform, the G8 has managed to divide the green movement, which is rapidly losing its traditional allies within European governments. Western governments have thus begun to unshackle their post-Kyoto policy-making from the influence and public pressure of environmental campaign groups.

The change in the climate of opinion can perhaps best be detected in European and North American media reporting. Much of the news outlets favourably welcomed the G8 agreement. Its rejection by China and India, however, was often portrayed as a major obstacle for future progress. In contrast, the habitual objections by environmental campaigners and climate scientists looked rather trivial if not out of tune. In its strategic realignment, the G8 has been aided, if not forced, by a significant economic downturn that is gradually changing the world of international climate policy. A mighty storm is brewing, taking aim at fragile policies that were developed during much better times. In its wake, it is overturning green policies as fresh pressures and new priorities emerge that are significantly shifting political agendas and voter behaviour.

Climate policies and green taxes that were considered trendy only a few years ago, have turned into major liabilities for many governments -- so much so that approval ratings of environmental schemes and policies have begun to dive. Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Australian PM Kevin Rudd are both struggling to fend off growing revolts over green taxes and carbon trading schemes that are driving away Labour's core voters and threaten to bring down their governments. Both centre-left leaders are under mounting pressure to delay or scrap altogether some of their most costly climate policies.

There is now growing concern among environmental campaigners that the momentum for radical climate policies may have been lost, at least for the foreseeable future, if not for good. These fears are fully justified. In the absence of sustained temperature rises and in light of deepening economic problems, the green enthusiasm of Western governments and opposition parties appears to have been suspended, at least for the time being. After years of heating up precariously, the issue of climate change seems destined for a gradual but manifest cooling-off period.

As long as global temperatures remain flat (or even go into reverse), governments and policy makers will increasingly regard costly climate policies as economic risks and political millstones that should be evaded as much as possible - both at national and international levels. Accordingly, it is no longer in the interest of European and other G8 governments to endorse a new climate deal that would further burden their struggling economies unilaterally.

Given the economic crisis and stagnant temperatures, and in view of the intractable climate deadlock, it seems prudent to ponder alternatives to a Kyoto-style treaty. A first step in this direction would be an acknowledgement that such an accord is now extremely unlikely to be attainable at next year's UN climate conference in Copenhagen. What is more, governments would be well advised to prepare the public for a global climate agreement devoid of mandatory targets that have become emissions impossible. - Benny Peiser is the editor of the science policy network CCNet.

Our leaders are in carbon-cloud cuckoo land

2008-07-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

For a perfect example of what is meant by "gesture politics" - an empty pledge given solely for effect, which the politician has no hope of honouring - one could not do better than this week's commitment by the G8 leaders on how they want us to fight climate change.

Sitting on their cloud-wreathed Japanese mountain top, they solemnly agreed that, to halt global warming, their countries would aim by 2050 to halve their emissions of carbon dioxide.

A tiny indication of the fact that they didn't really have a clue what they were talking about was a slip by Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, when he had to be corrected for announcing that the CO2 cut would be measured from "1990 levels".

Even when he amended this to "present-day levels", he was merely spouting empty words into the oriental air.

Three things make this aspiration by the leaders of the world's "eight richest countries" not just vainglorious grandstanding, but positively dangerous.

The first is that, as well as having no idea how they could achieve such an absurdly ambitious target, they may inflict immeasurable damage on their economies just by trying to do so.

One after another, it is becoming clear that all the costly measures so far proposed to cut carbon emissions are pie-in-the-sky.

The drive for "renewable" sources of energy, such as building thousands of wind turbines, is turning out to be little more than self-deception (the combined output of all the 2,000 wind turbines so far built in Britain is less than that of a single, medium-sized, gas-fired power station).

Even the environmentalists have realised that biofuels are a farce, needing more CO2 to produce than they save. The EU's much-vaunted "emissions trading scheme", so far costing us all an estimated £40 billion, has not resulted in any reductions of CO2 emissions whatever.

If the G8's leaders genuinely wanted to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent over the next 40 years, this would mean taking steps they haven't even begun to contemplate. It would require such a drastic cut in our energy use and standard of living that their peoples would have risen up in mass revolt long before the target was reached.

And nothing better shows up the unreality of all this - as President Bush tried to point out in the summit's only flash of honesty - than the fact that China (not represented at the G8, although it now has the world's fourth largest economy) is already putting out more CO2 than anyone else.

As it builds two new coal-fired power stations a week, China has no more intention than India of joining the Western economic suicide club.

The second reason why this infatuation with cutting carbon emissions is beginning to look extraordinarily reckless is that the whole scientific theory on which it is based now appears distinctly questionable.

The orthodox global-warming thesis, accepted by pretty well every politician in the Western world, but not by a growing number of scientists, is that, as CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, so too should global temperatures. Unless we can drastically reduce those CO2 levels, the world is thus threatened with catastrophe.

In the past year or two, however, evidence has been piling up to suggest that there may be a fundamental flaw in this theory. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise to levels not seen since the distant geological past, temperatures have not been following suit.

After 2000 the global temperature curve flattened out at a level significantly lower than the freak year 1998, and in recent months temperatures have dropped to levels not seen since the early 1980s.

Despite the best efforts of the global-warming lobby to keep the scare going, the northern hemisphere enjoyed its coldest winter for decades, and this summer has shown the curve sinking even lower.

Even the warmists are having to find excuses for the fact that their theory doesn't exactly seem to be holding up, conceding that the next 10 years may see a period of global cooling, before the "underlying warming trend" returns worse than ever.

Other scientists point out that, rather than look to CO2 for an explanation of global temperatures, a much more convincing link can be seen in the activity of the sun, with current sunspot levels having dramatically fallen to levels associated with historic periods of global cooling recorded in the past.

Yet just when such huge question marks are being raised over the "CO2 equals warming" theory, our politicians have swallowed it whole, as an act of blind faith - using it to justify such massive costs to our economy that our whole way of life seems destined to change significantly for the worse.

The third respect in which all this is becoming seriously dangerous applies specifically to us here in Britain. While Gordon Brown prattles about wind turbines, and plays silly games for the cameras with electric cars, Britain within a few years is facing the near certainty of a massive shortfall in our electricity supplies.

By 2015, thanks to the obsolescence of our nuclear power plants and the forced closure of nine of our major coal and oil-fired power stations under EU anti-pollution rules, we are due to lose 40 per cent of our current generating capacity - and Mr Brown hasn't the slightest practical idea of how to fill the gap.

Forget the nonsense about a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. Our Government has already committed Britain to go even further, by imposing a statutory cut of 60 per cent through its Climate Change Bill.

But long before that, unless those who rule us come down out of cloud cuckoo land very fast, our lights will go out, our computers will shut down, our economy will judder to a halt and we shall face a national catastrophe. We may well be meeting that 60 per cent target sooner than we think - but not for reasons that reflect well on our politicians, of any party.

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

2008-07-05T18:23:00.001-07:00

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is proud to announce a provocative new book on environmental policy, Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.President Klaus makes the case that policies being proposed to address global warming are not justified by current science and are, in fact, a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity around the world.

Klaus argues that the environmental movement has transformed itself into an ideology that seeks to restrict human activities at any cost, while pursuing an impossible utopian dream of a perfectly "natural" world. The supposed threat of human civilization against a fragile Earth has become an article of faith, especially in the realm of global warming activism.

"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism," writes Klaus. "It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

The publication of Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? continues the Competitive Enterprise Institute's history of fighting alarmist climate policies. CEI has long argued that whatever challenges future climate changes might bring, the worst possible response is to restrict human freedom and slow economic growth and innovation.

"Today, the global warming debate raging in both the United States and Europe has become extremely contentious. On both sides of the Atlantic, the debate has metastasized into cultural warfare against economic liberty," writes CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr. in the book's foreword. "For that reason, pro-freedom voices are needed to reframe the debate to show how a free people can better address the challenges facing Western civilization. To that end, we are proud to publish Blue Planet in Green Shackles."

An America First Energy Plan

2008-07-05T18:22:00.002-07:00

President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive. He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices, and said he wants them “to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways.” He specifically mentioned opening up ANWR, the outer continental shelf, and oil-shale exploration. He also took a whack at lawmakers, saying “the Democratically controlled Congress has refused to budge.”

That’s spot-on correct. But it has me wondering. Where in the world is John McCain on this very same issue? It’s simple: Sen. McCain should be pummeling Barack Obama daily on drill, drill, drill. Why? Because oil and gas pump prices are potentially the single-biggest wedge issue in the presidential campaign. Mr. McCain has to pound the point home.

According to a new Rasmussen poll, 48 percent of Americans say lower gas prices are the key to an economic recovery, and 60 percent are in favor of off-shore drilling.

Here’s another one. Rasmussen asked voters about the now-infamous Harry Reid YouTube video, where the senator says coal and oil are making us sick, and that fossil-fueled global warming is “ruining our country” and “ruining our world.” Well, Rasmussen shows that 52 percent of voters reject Reid on coal; 50 percent disagree with him on oil; and 51 reject his idea that we need to stop using fossil fuels.

And all this is McCain’s opportunity. He needs to hammer away on an America First energy policy that will completely deregulate and decontrol this nation’s great energy industry. He needs to mothball his errant statements on “obscene oil profits.” Instead, he needs to support and unleash all of our energy companies and entrepreneurs, allowing them to develop whatever it takes on oil, gas-to-liquid, clean coal, nuclear, offshore, onshore, oil shale, wind, solar, and biofuel.

America First should be the rallying cry. We have the natural resources to become the Saudi Arabia of coal and the Saudi Arabia of oil. Lift the moratoriums. Stop attacking our own businesses. Put technology to work. Put venture capital to work, with rock-bottom capital-gains and corporate tax rates. Stop being mau-maued by the extremist greenies who have prevented energy production for over three decades. America First. Unleash our free-enterprise energy sector: 2 trillion barrels worth of shale; 90 billion barrels of offshore oil; at least 10 billion barrels up in ANWR and more throughout Alaska, both onshore and off.

Politically, Sen. McCain must also understand how Hillary Clinton clobbered Barack Obama in the big state primaries: Blue-collar workers. They can be the key to victory for McCain. Guess who works in the energy business? Blue collar Reagan Democrats. They work on the rigs. They work in the fields. They drive the trucks. And they’re paid high wages — substantially above the average hourly wage.

Or McCain can sell it this way: American workers are worried about jobs going offshore to India, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Well, a drill, drill, drill, America First energy plan would create millions of new domestic American jobs.

Of course, there’s also a national security aspect to this. Worried about funding terrorist rogue states? Drill, drill, drill. A complete portfolio of oil energy sources in America — that’s the answer.

And while he’s at it, Sen. McCain should stop blaming “reckless traders.” As soon as you say “end the drilling moratoriums,” it is precisely those traders who will start selling oil contracts — long before the first offshore oil barrels are delivered to market. If they see presidential leadership on oil and shale drilling, they will rapidly turn a bull market into a bear market.

Sen. Obama is opposed to drilling. Opposed to nuclear. Opposed to coal. He and Harry Reid believe wind, solar, and ethanol are the answers. They’re not. It’s doubtful even at full development and commercialization that these alternative technologies will ever power more than 10 percent of our energy needs. We should go down this road as part of a full energy portfolio. But let’s not kid ourselves: These sources alone will never be sufficient.

Sen. McCain has to make this case daily. He must contrast his America First energy plan with Obama’s declinist American vision. He must argue America First for fuel, power, jobs, wages, and national security. He must enlist the Reagan Democrats who may be out of work and are surely angry at $4 gas at the pump and $140 a barrel oil in the world market.

Take a page from Ronald Reagan, Mr. McCain. Be optimistic about our future. Be clear, straightforward, and consistent. We can grow this economy and remain number one. This is how to do it.

DALE: Preparing for the G8 summit

2008-07-05T18:22:00.001-07:00

Next week, the leaders of the G8 countries will be meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, for their annual summit. Once again it will at least provide the world with the opportunity to reflect on whether this is the kind of institution the world needs for the 21st century. Like many of the institutions of the 20th century shaped by distinct but now bygone circumstances, the G8 has started to look like a rather arbitrary gathering.

Of the countries that will be represented - Japan, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia - seven used to be considered the world's major economic powers, the so-called "club of the rich." Russia was added in the 1990s, turning the G7 into the G8 as a matter of courtesy to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a morale boost for a beleaguered leader of a country on the verge of collapse. In today's world, the roster looks almost quaint.

The issues that have been placed on the table by the Japanese hosts reflect an agenda with a distinctly green or liberal flavor, as has become customary at these meetings. In this, of course, the rest of the world has a great deal of interest and might indeed like to have a seat at the table. Here, the Tokyo summit (like other G8 summits) bears some resemblance to the meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, which is developing an ever expanding penumbra of auxiliary meetings in order to allow the voices of many affected countries to be heard.

For instance, at a pre-meeting on April 6, G8 development ministers met with representatives of Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea and South Africa; as well as a long list of U.N. entities, such as UNESCO and UNICEF, and regional organizations, including the African Union and the Association of South East Asian Nations. The list of who is on the inside and who is on the outside is certainly suggestive of the nature of the G8 itself, and ought to give rise to consideration of opening up the meetings.

The topics for discussion equally reflect a world of global concerns. At the top of the agenda, the presidents and prime ministers meeting in Japan will be discussing African development, focusing on partnerships with the private sector to accelerate economic growth and expanding partners for the development agenda. It follows up on the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development held in late May.

Climate change, an inevitable item on the agenda in today's world, will be the second order of business. The world, of course, has not grown measurably warmer in the past 10 years, but the weather is indisputably ever changeable giving climate - change alarmists something to discuss. On this subject, where discussion has previously focused on the industrialized nations under the ill - fated Kyoto Protocol, the developing world plays a crucial role. This role will be a focus of discussion. The rise of China and India as industrial powers and consumer nations make efforts to conserve energy in the United States and Europe seem almost symbolic in the greater scheme of things. At the same time, developing nations are by nature at greater risk when their climate does change (for whatever reason), having fewer economic resources to mitigate the consequences.

The global economy will make an appearance on the agenda, too. This issue used to be the focal point of the G8 meetings. The leaders will not be discussing the relative values of the dollar and the euro, however. Instead, they will focus on the reasons for the (alleged) world food crisis and the (indisputable) rise in energy costs. This discussion will happen under the guise of "human security" as defined under the U.N. Millennium Goals, a rather wide-ranging concept that includes everything from nutrition to education.

The problem is that the climate change agenda, with its emphasis on biofuels causing farmers to grow crops for biofuels like ethanol, has collided head on with the "human security" agenda, which reflects that human beings must also eat.

What can we expect from the next summit? Probably more resolutions and statements by world leaders and some nice photo-ops, which can be analyzed for body language and the order of who stands next to whom. What we ought to see, though, would be a serious discussion on opening up the meetings to many of the countries affected by the global agenda and a real discussion of free-market and free-trade solutions to the global problems on the table.

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis

2008-07-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
[Global Warming as Mass Neurosis]
AP
The New True Believers

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

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

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

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

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

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

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

A Better Way Than Cap and Trade

2008-06-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

The bitter arguments in the Senate this month over the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have required major emitters to pay for the right to discharge greenhouse gases, proved that climate change caused by humans has come to the fore of U.S. policy debates. This fact may comfort those who believe that future generations will judge us on the zeal with which we face the challenge. It may even assuage the fears of those who believe that warming will end life as we know it. But political rhetoric is unlikely to put us on a path toward solving the problem of climate change in the best possible way.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years.

Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions allowances, and the flow of billions of dollars of subsidies and sweeteners.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

This message was recently backed up by the findings of the Copenhagen Consensus project, which gathered eight of the world's top economists -- including five Nobel laureates -- to examine research on the best ways to tackle 10 global challenges: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, gender inequity, lack of water and sanitation, terrorism, and trade barriers.

These experts looked at the costs and benefits of different responses to each challenge. Their goal was to create a prioritized list showing how money could best be spent combating these problems.

The panel concluded that the least effective use of resources in slowing global warming would come from simply cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Research for the project was done by a lead author of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the group that shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore -- who noted that spending $800 billion over 100 years solely on mitigating emissions would reduce inevitable temperature increases by just 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. Even accounting for the key environmental damage from warming, we would lose money, with avoided damage of just $685 billion for our $800 billion

investment.

The economists didn't conclude that the world should ignore the effects of climate change. They pointed out that a better response than cutting emissions would be to dramatically increase research and development on low-carbon energy -- such as solar panels and second-generation biofuels.

The United States has an opportunity to lead the world on research and development, which would give it the moral authority to demand that everyone else do the same. The world's sole superpower could finally provide the leadership on climate change that has been lacking in the White House.

Even if every nation spent 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development of low-carbon energy, this would be only about one-tenth as costly as the Kyoto Protocol and would save dramatically more than any of Kyoto's likely successors.

In the United States, this approach would open up new avenues for the nation's creative, innovative spirit and leave behind the political mess of Kyoto-type negotiations.

A low-carbon energy, high-income future is possible. Unfortunately, the political battles we just witnessed in Washington have done nothing to make it a reality.

Climate breakthrough unlikely at G8 summit -UK envoy

2008-06-29T19:43:00.002-07:00

G8 rich nations and major emerging economies probably won't achieve a big breakthrough in talks on global warming in Japan next month, Britain's climate envoy said on Thursday, echoing other forecasts for modest progress at best.

Climate change is a key topic for the July 8 Group of Eight leaders' summit as well as an expanded meeting the next day with heads of eight other major economies including China and India.

But doubts persist as to whether and how far the leaders will be able to go beyond an agreement reached at last year's summit in Germany, where they said they would seriously consider a global goal of halving the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"The very fact that that conversation is taking place is helpful because we need to build a sense of common purpose among the people who are leading our economies," said Britain's special representative for climate change, John Ashton.,

"But at the same time, I think we should be careful not to expect too much of the conversations," he told a news conference.

"We're not going to have a major breakthrough in the global effort on climate change because the conditions at the moment are not conducive. We're still in the process of building the political consensus that we need to have."

Last December, 190 countries agreed on a two-year U.N.-led negotiating process to forge a successor to the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions, talks that will culminate in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Kyoto pact's first phase obliges many industrialised nations to curb emissions between 2008-12 but excludes developing nations. The goal for the next stage is to bind all nations to emissions cuts.

Big emerging economies such as China and India want rich nations to take bold steps first, including setting midterm targets for reducing emissions by 2020 or 2030, a step already taken by the European Union.

But Washington insists it will only agree to binding targets if big emerging emitters also come on board, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said earlier this month that the G8 was not the right forum for agreeing on midterm targets.

"I would look for a very strong signal that the industrialised economies are in 'follow me' mode. We're not saying we'll only do this if China and India do it," Ashton said.

"That's an absurd proposition. If you want China and India to do it quickly, then you have to have the confidence to continue leading the way," he added.

Ashton also said he expected the "beginning of a sense that we have a shared goal, a long-term goal," to emerge at the summit but added: "We're still some way from having agreement on that." (Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Britons fear the carbon cops are coming

2008-06-29T19:43:00.001-07:00

First there were the thought police, then the surveillance society, now Britons fear the carbon cops are coming to ensure compliance with climate change legislation, a survey showed on Wednesday.

And with warnings of global catastrophe ringing in their ears some people fear that failure to cut personal carbon emissions will eventually result in enforced carbon behaviour re-education, the Energy Saving Trust said.

It said 41 percent of Britons think the country will need its own Carbon Police Force by mid-century and one quarter believe repeat offenders will have to go into carbon rehab and take carbon addiction classes.

"The UK's perception is that by 2050 we could have the sort of draconian infringements on our civil liberties that have been highlighted in our research. This need not be the case," said EST chief Philip Sellwood said.

"The carbon emissions we all produce from our homes and travel amount to over 40 per cent of the UK's total emissions so we all have a part to play."

The survey coincides with the EST's "Emission Impossible, a vision for a low carbon lifestyle by 2050."

EST, set up to help people to kick their carbon habit, wants more home power generation, smart meters in homes to help cut power consumption, less water wastage, more reuse and recycling and more emphasis on efficient appliances.

"Our report outlines the Energy Saving Trust's vision for achieving a low-carbon lifestyle by 2050 where we meet our 80 per cent reduction targets without adopting austere lifestyles or making unpleasant personal sacrifices," Sellwood said.

China to lead 50 pct jump in world CO2 output-EIA

2008-06-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the U.S. government forecast on Wednesday.

China's coal demand will rise 3.2 percent annually from 2005 to 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its International Energy Outlook 2008.

U.S. coal use will rise 1.1 percent during the same period, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy projected.

EIA economist Nasir Khilji said China's coal demand will likely rise steeply because it is the cheapest fuel to feed its surging manufacturing industry and demand for electricity as much of the population moves to urban areas.

In the United States a move to more nuclear power should help slow emissions growth, he said.

EIA raised its forecast of annual Chinese carbon emissions in 2030 by 6.8 percent from its outlook released last year, while cutting its forecast for 2030 carbon emissions in the United States by 13.8 percent.

"Coal's share of world energy use has increased sharply over the past few years, and without significant changes in existing laws and policies, particularly those related to greenhouse gas emissions, robust growth is likely to continue," the agency stated.

Not everyone agreed the forecast was accurate. Trevor Houser, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the EIA forecast was based on the past five years of China's manufacturing rise, as it became an exporter of steel.

"This is not necessarily where China will be decades from now," he said, adding that the country has already taken steps to balance its exports of emissions-intensive goods.

China's annual carbon emissions should hit slightly more than 12 billion tonnes per year in 2030, up from more than 5.3 billion tonnes per year in 2005. U.S. carbon emissions should hit 6.9 billion tonnes per year in 2030, up from nearly 6 billion tonnes per year in 2005, EIA said.

In India, another rapidly growing economy, coal consumption was forecast to rise an average 2.4 percent per year to 15.5 quadrillion British thermal units per year.

Coal use in China was forecast to hit 103.4 quadrillion Btu a year in 2030, while in the United States it was expected to hit 29.9 quadrillion Btu. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by John Picinich)

Floridians concerned about effects of global warming

2008-06-24T14:57:00.001-07:00

A survey was conducted by researchers at Yale University and the University of Miami claims that most Floridians “are convinced that global warming is happening now and that more should be done by key leaders to help Florida deal with climate change.”

The online survey conducted among 1077 adults found that 71% of Floridians believe that global warming is “happening” and 55% are convinced that it is caused mainly by human activities. 65% think that global warming already has or will have dangerous impacts on people in Florida within the next 10 years. 80% expressed concern that global warming will cause worse storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and water shortages while 68% pointed to flooding of major cities, 64% to less tourism and 57% to increased rates of disease.

As a result, there seems to be growing support for green technologies and a more environmentally-focused government. 65% support requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from wind (even if that would cost a household an extra $100 per year), 65% support a state subsidy to encourage building owners to replace old air conditioners, light bulbs, and insulation and 63% support the installation of solar panels on state-owned buildings.

It is interesting to note that, according to Brookings’ per-capita carbon footprint ranking of 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S. , Florida has been listed as the state with an above average carbon footprint. Five metropolitan areas in Florida are listed in the bottom half of the ranking, which was topped only by Ohio with six areas. Sarasota/Bradenton/Venice came in at #81, Jacksonville at #80, Cape Coral/Fort Myers at #70 and Palm Bay/Titusville at #59 and Orlando at #54. Only Miami/Fort Lauderdale was mentioned in the top half at #28.

When it comes to global warming, the rich make big impression

2008-06-24T14:56:00.002-07:00

When it comes to ecological footprints, wealthy Canadians are a confirmed size 12, creating a global warming impact 66 per cent greater than the average household, according to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The study is the first to link national income and consumption patterns with global warming, and it showed that the richest 10 per cent of Canadians create an environmental footprint that's 2.5 times the size of those created by the lowest 10 per cent on an income scale.

"When we look at where the environmental impact of human activity comes from, we see that size really does matter," said Hugh Mackenzie, a research associate for the Ottawa-based think-tank and co-author of the study. "Higher-income Canadians create a much bigger footprint than poorer Canadians."

The study revealed a gradual progression of environmental impact going up the income scale, but a marked jump with the richest 10 per cent. In fact, the highest 10 per cent has an environmental impact that's one third larger than the next lower 10 per cent, Mackenzie said.

The differences stem largely from the homes wealthy people own and the way they get around, Mackenzie said. The top 10 per cent own homes that are larger, cost more to build and to heat, and they are more likely to own more than one vehicle and travel more frequently by air, Mackenzie said.

The impact of food consumption, on the other hand, hardly varies from one income group to another.

The study measures environmental impact in terms of the amount of hectares it would take to sustain a certain level of consumption.

When it comes to the wealthiest Canadians, their environmental footprint requires 12.4 hectares per capita, compared with the average Canadian's 7.5-hectare footprint. Globally, the average Canadian's footprint is still several times the average of those in poorer nations.

What the study highlights, Mackenzie said, is the need for policy-makers to realize how activities related to global warming concentrate themselves in the upper income groups. Failing to recognize that could lead to policies that penalize lower-income Canadians yet fail to achieve their objectives, he said.

"All Canadians share responsibility for global warming," said co-author Rick Smith. "But wealthier Canadians are leaving behind a disproportionately larger footprint - and should be expected to make a disproportionate contribution to its reduction."

Scientists urge PM to speed up global warming efforts

2008-06-24T14:56:00.001-07:00

More than 100 leading climate scientists have launched a new offensive challenging the federal government's climate change plan and urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper along with other Canadian politicians to accelerate efforts to crack down on human activity linked to global warming.

In an open letter sent to the prime minister, opposition leaders and Canadian premiers on Tuesday afternoon, the scientists warned that the existing national climate change policies would fail to address the dangerous impacts of global warming. They also warned that new research suggests human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could do more damage to the earth than was previously predicted in the last international assessment of climate change science from 2007.

"New analyses show that global greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing, sea level(s) rising and Arctic sea ice decreasing faster than projected only a few years ago," said the letter, signed by 130 Canadian climate science leaders from the academic, public and private sectors. "Water shortages are predicted in the western Prairies, the Okanagan and in the Great Lakes basin. Earlier targets to avoid human interference with the climate system are now seen to be inadequate."

In the spring of 2006, the scientists sent their first letter to the newly elected Harper government urging it to develop a national climate change strategy, but the new letter says the government isn't moving fast enough.

More than 200 Canadian experts contributed to the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from 2007 which was awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about the threat of global warming.

Although they are not economists or public policy experts, many scientists believe that putting a price on the release of greenhouse gas emissions which trap heat in the atmosphere should be an essential part of a climate change strategy, said Dr. Gordon McBean, a climatologist from the University of Western Ontario who organized the letter campaign.

"Addressing greenhouse gas emissions will require a polluter-pay approach and absolute emission caps," said the letter. " Adaptation to the inevitable impacts of climate change is now imperative and we need a national adaptation strategy to minimize those impacts and gain whatever benefits there may be. We are concerned that the pace with which action is being taken in Canada does not reflect adequately the urgency of the threat."

Last week, Harper described a carbon tax proposal from the Green party and the federal Liberals as an "insane" approach that would "screw everybody."

But McBean, who was honoured on Tuesday by his university and the city of London, Ontario, for his contribution to the Nobel Prize-winning report, said he was disappointed about the reaction.

"I'm concerned at the way the debate has turned," he said in an interview. "I think this is a very serious issue and to respond to it with what I would think are inappropriate comments is not what I would expect from our political leaders."

The Harper government has proposed to cap the growth of emissions from large industrial facilities by imposing flexible targets per unit of production that would allow some sectors in growth such as the oilsands to increase their overall emissions.

Environment Minister John Baird has described the process of drafting regulations as a massive undertaking that he is trying to complete as fast as possible.

"Our government certainly agrees that climate change is a major issue facing both Canada and the world today," said Baird's director of communications Garry Keller. "That's why our government has a real plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an absolute 20 per cent by 2020 and we certainly believe in the 'polluter pays' principle."

He added that the government's plan had also allowed for the creation of a carbon-trading regime in Montreal.

The letter was released as Jim Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, issued a new warning in an interview with The Guardian that the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere has already risen above the safe level.

The Canadian scientists said that governments must make further investments in research to guide "sound policy" and international negotiations for a new treaty on global warming.

"In less than 18 months, the global community will convene in Copenhagen to put in place a new agreement to address climate change," said the letter. "We sincerely hope that, based on the compelling science at hand, our political leaders display the urgency and determination that we believe is required."

NASA scientist issues dire warning on global warming

2008-06-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

"We're toast" is how a top NASA scientist describes the dire condition he predicts if the world doesn't get on a "very different path" regarding global warming.

Exactly 20 years after warning America about the phenomenon, James Hansen says the situation is so bad the world's only hope is drastic action.

Hansen has told a U.S. congressional panel the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels.

He says Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

Hansen is head of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences. He's sometimes called the godfather of global warming science

Global warming book wins science prize

2008-06-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

An investigation of how global warming could change the planet over the next century has won the world’s leading award for science writing.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by the journalist Mark Lynas, was named as this year’s winner of the £10,000 Royal Society Science Books Prize.

Mr Lynas’s book describes what science suggests could happen with each degree Celsius by which global temperatures could warm by 2100, to highlight the urgency of tackling climate change now.

He was a 6/1 outsider to win, and saw off strong competition from the two favourites, the geneticists Craig Venter and Steve Jones.

Dr Venter, who led the private effort to sequence the human genome, was shortlisted for his autobiography, A Life Decoded. Professor Jones, a previous winner, was shortlisted for Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise, which uses the marine organism to assess the past and future of the planet.

Professor Jonathan Ashmore, of University College, London, who chaired the judging panel, said: “Lynas gives us a compelling and gripping view of how climate change could affect our world. It presents a series of scientifically plausible, worst case scenarios without tipping into hysteria.

“Six degrees is not just a great read, written in an original way, but also provides a good overview of the latest science on this highly topical issue. This is a book that will stimulate debate and that will, Lynas hopes, move us to action in the hope that this is a disaster movie that never happens. Everyone should read this book.”

Past winners of the prestigious award have included Professor Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond (twice), Bill Bryson and Stephen Jay Gould.

The Junior Prize for children’s books, also worth £10,000, was awarded to Rebecca Gilpin, Leonie Pratt and their illustrator Josephine Thompson, for Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do.

It was chosen from a shortlist of six by a judging panel of almost 1,200 children from more than 120 schools and youth groups in the UK. Children from Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Thailand and Malaysia also took part in the judging process.

This year’s awards were supported by the Beecroft Trust, but the Royal Society is still seeking a full sponsor for the awards, which were backed by the pharmaceutical company Aventis until 2006.

Climate change policy footprint amid threat of global warming

2008-06-17T04:54:00.002-07:00

Global warming has arrived, in more ways than one. There is now scientific consensus that global warming is taking place and that the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes two things clear: first, global warming is a fact. And second, a delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will increase the risk of global disasters -- from droughts, floods and storms, to declines in agricultural productivity and food security as well as rising sea levels.

Indonesia ratified the convention on the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in November 1950, and has been actively involved in the organization. In 1988, the WMO and the United Nations Environment Program established the IPCC. Indonesia has also committed itself to participating in all UN General Assembly meetings, in particular the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This article will examine the Indonesian government's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The first IPCC report was published in 1990. The key findings were as follows: "Emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide. These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface."

Despite this report, the Indonesian government's response in addressing the problem has been lackadaisical. In 1990, a conservation law was passed. Unfortunately, it was enacted not as a legal basis for climate change policies, but merely to respond to Article 12 of Law No. 4/1982 on the environment. The 1993 People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) decree on state policy guidelines (GBHN) is also similarly oblivious to the IPCC's recommendations.

Likewise, when the government ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1994, it failed to implement regulations that would reduce GHG emissions.

In 1995, the IPCC released a second report, reaffirming "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate change". This report served as the basis for negotiations in the Kyoto Protocol.

The protocol has been adopted by most governments around the world, and 1996 was a pivotal year for environmental and natural resource laws and policies in Indonesia: an environmental law and a marine law were enacted that year.

But even as these laws were passed, the government failed to recognize climate change as a key environmental problem. As the world's longest and largest archipelagic state, Indonesia is at high risk from the adverse effects of climate change, including rising sea levels in low coastal areas, which pose immense threats to the country's marine ecosystems, biodiversity and fishing industry.

And to make matters worse, a government regulation on forestry was passed in 1999, which, given its centralistic and exploitative character, will significantly aid in devastating the country's forests -- forests that can offset the effects of climate change by acting as a massive carbon sink.

However, there has been some progress. In the same year, conservation efforts were boosted by the passing of four regulations, which became the legal basis for environmental conservation and pollution control. They enabled government agencies to allocate existing national parks as carbon sinks.

The IPCC's third report, issued in 2001, states, "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".

The report also highlighted the major role of fossil fuels in contributing to GHGs. Indonesian forest fires, which release billions of tons of GHGs, are also a significant contributor to global warming. In 2001, former president Abdurrahman Wahid signed into law a regulation on forest fire prevention. Unfortunately, this law lacks any authority, and is brazenly flouted at every opportunity.

In 2007, the IPCC published its fourth report, saying, "There is a greater than 90 percent certainty that human activities, led by burning fossil fuel, account for most of the global warming in the previous 50 years. Most of the observed increase in the globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentration".

The UNFCCC conference was held in Bali that same year. Realizing the importance of this conference, the Yudhoyono administration actively campaigned against global warming during 2007. They explored the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change, particularly through the Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) project. The Ministry of Forestry, in cooperation with the Indonesian Forest Climate Alliance (IFCA), even launched a REDD pilot project.

Recent studies in national climate change policy and environmental policy generally demonstrate the government's failure to address global warming. The government should continue developing the aims, incentives, strategic policies and measures to track progress of GHG reduction.

An effective policy response to climate change must combine mitigation -- actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- and adaptation -- actions to manage the impacts of climate change. The adaptation planning and policies must also recognize the link between the environment, the economy and society, and must integrate, accommodate and reconcile social, economic and environmental priorities. Effective adaptation will involve incorporating climate concerns into a broad range of planning and development activities across multiple sectors and institutions.

Indonesia must also take into account the impact of climate change on national development. Economic development goals and climate change policy goals must not be seen as opposite ends of a spectrum. They must be seen as paths toward the same goal. Economic development is necessary to alleviate poverty, improve access to energy, increase economic growth and aid our adaptation efforts.

Finally, the government has to integrate climate change policy into development plans for inclusive and sustainable development. In this context, we need to rethink spending money on subsidizing fossil fuels, a practice that may be inconsistent with GHG reductions

Global Warming Bill

2008-06-17T04:54:00.001-07:00

“Another Failure on Climate Change,” the June 11 editorial about the recent Senate debate on global warming legislation, was off the mark.

Questioning the scheduling of the debate because of high gas prices makes little sense. If gas prices don’t go down, should we never address global warming? Of course not.

Many Republicans used gas prices as a reason not to act, even though the long-term solution to gas prices lies in the new green technologies that will come to the fore once we do act.

In addition, our bill sets aside more than $2 trillion that can be used for consumer relief for energy costs. The economic modeling of our bill indicates a very small (2 cents per gallon) increase in gas prices per year over the 38-year life of the bill, which will be largely offset by new fuel economy requirements.

The editorial also suggests that economic issues should have been the subject of more hearings on the bill. Before the global warming legislation hit the Senate floor, dozens of hearings were held, many focused on economic issues.

Finally, the editorial questioned why we included language ensuring that the global warming bill was deficit neutral.

Fighting global warming without increasing the deficit is a key principle of this legislation. If we had not ensured that the bill did not add to the deficit, it could have been held up and not considered further, simply for parliamentary reasons.

Real progress was made last week in focusing the attention of the Senate on this important issue. The 54 senators now on record in support of action add to the momentum we will need to successfully enact landmark legislation.

The Republican leadership’s decision to block consideration of the legislation is a serious obstacle to progress in this Congress. It is also true that landmark legislation is rarely passed overnight.

We started voting on comprehensive global warming legislation five years ago. The last major clean air legislation took nearly 10 years to enact. We must act more quickly on this threat, and I believe we will.

There is an important point in the editorial with which I agree: that presidential leadership will be critical to any solution to global warming, and the next president’s commitment to action must be bold enough to address the problem.

Barbara Boxer
Chairwoman, Senate Committee
on Environment and Public Works
Washington, June 12, 2008

Al Gore Stuns the World - "Global Warming is a Hoax!"

2008-06-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

At a hurriedly prepared Press Conference this morning at Al Gore's Nashville home, the former Vice-President stunned the World by stating that Global Warming is a hoax.

He explained that his wife Tipper had been kidnapped in December 2005 by a group calling themselves 'The International Left' (TIL). Gore was told that if he didn't comply to their wishes, his wife would be assassinated and their four children hunted down and killed. Meanwhile, the group gave him a clone of his wife who was programmed to act out the part of Tipper.

The former Vice-President then said he had been forced to engage in the film 'An Inconvenient Truth'. "I never believed in what I was saying. I never believed in the science," he commented. "I am sorry for this deception but I had no choice."

Gore, with tears rolling down his cheeks, said that his wife had escaped from a basement cell the day before and they were now reunited. The police had not been notified until this morning due to the seriousness of the group's threats. His cloned wife had been killed during a gunfight with FBI agents.

Journalists at the Press gathering were speechless. One finally asked who TIL were.

"From what I've learnt, leading members include the journalist George Mionbot; actors Leonardo di Caprio and Alec Baldwin; top officials from the IPCC; and a variety of scientists and environmental campaigners including Fred Singer and Greenpeace executive director John Savven," continued Gore. "David Mayer de Rothschild bankrolled the organisation. I met him several times."

Gore arch critic and founder of the US weather channel, John Coleman, commented. "I am shocked and utterly amazed. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Obviously, Gore has been to hell and back these last few years."

Another critic, TV commentator Glenn Beck, said, "I've known all along that global warming is a hoax. But it's good to hear it coming from the horse's mouth. Hopefully, the world will now sleep more easily."

Gore stated that he would immediately hand back his Nobel Peace Prize along with the Oscar for his film.

"I have lived a lie for close on three years," he commented. "I will now spend time with my real wife while considering an option to re-enter politics."

Global warming to hit hardest in south and east

2008-06-10T01:17:00.001-07:00

A study due to be published today is reportedly warning that the south and east of the country will be most affected by global warming in the coming decades.

Reports this morning say the assessment by the Community Climate Change Consortium for Ireland warns that temperatures in the south and east will rise by up to four degrees by the end of the current century.

It reportedly says the warmer climate will be most obvious in the summer and autumn.

Winter rainfall could also increase by up to 15%, while summer rainfall could decline by up to 20%.

Such changes would have major consequences for agriculture and domestic water supply.

French daredevil defends reference to 9/11

2008-06-10T01:16:00.001-07:00

The French “human fly” who climbed the façade of The New York Times building and alluded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to draw attention to global warming said he did not mean any disrespect to the victims of the attack, and never endangered anyone with his stunt.

“Actually, global warming is killing more people every week than 9/11, which is a big amount of people,” 45-year-old daredevil Alain Robert told TODAY in an exclusive interview in New York. “The global warming is killing and the government are not doing that much.”

Robert is due in court on Wednesday to answer charges of criminal trespass, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and posting graffiti, in the form of a banner he hung from the side of the 52-story Times building. The banner read: “Global Warming Kills More People than a 9/11 every week.”

“I feel so sad about what’s happened in New York seven years ago,” Robert said in heavily accented English. “I pay a lot of respect to the victims, to the people who have lost husband or daughter and so on.” But, he added, he felt that because of the importance of his cause, “I needed to have a very strong message.”

Going full-scale
Robert has been climbing since 1975. For more than 20 years, he has been pursuing a passion he developed as a child despite having vertigo, the result of a bad fall he took while rappelling more than 20 years ago. He moved from mountains to buildings when he learned he could make films and earn a living that way.

Robert’s first conquest was the Sears Tower in Chicago. He claims to have scaled more than 80 structures, including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, without ropes or safety devices.

This year, he said, he decided to dedicate his publicity-gathering stunts to fighting global warming. “That’s the reason why I decided to climb the New York Times building,” he said.

He did Thursday’s climb, which brought midday traffic in midtown Manhattan to a standstill, at the request of thesolutionissimple.org, an organization that promotes awareness of the dangers of global warming. The organization is paying Robert’s travel and legal expenses, but he said he donated his time and effort.

The Times was not amused to have its building used to promote a cause. “Their illegal and ill-considered actions jeopardized their safety and the safety of others,” the newspaper said in a statement directed at Robert and his supporters.

Copycat climber
Robert said the charges are without ground. The new offices of the newspaper are clad in horizontal ceramic bars that make scaling the building as easy as climbing a ladder. It was so easy that a copycat, a 33-year-old man from Brooklyn who saw Robert’s feat on television, climbed the building shortly after Robert finished his climb. He, too, was arrested when he got to the top.

“I did the highest solo climb on the planet,” Robert said, reciting his resume. “Climbing the New York Times is climbing a ladder. You think by climbing a ladder I injure people? I don’t think so.”

His agent, Julie Cohen, who appeared with him, added that Robert prepared extensively for the climb, scouting out the building in advance and testing the bars to make sure they could hold his weight.

“We want to be very careful so that he’s not ever putting anyone in danger,” she said. They said they even planned the timing of the ascent — 11 a.m. — so that it would be at a time of minimal street traffic instead of during rush hour, when it would have caused massive traffic jams.

Robert — who has been arrested frequently on similar charges in many other cities around the world — said he has an excellent lawyer, and dismissed the trespassing charges, saying, “Trespassing is entering inside the property, so there is no criminal trespass.”

'Special Report' Panel on Obama-Clinton Meeting; Global Warming Bill

2008-06-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, D-CALIF.: I welcomed them. I had a chance to talk to — Hillary and came early. I had a chance to talk with her a little bit. And then Barack came, and I seated them in comfortable chairs by the fireplace, and some water, and I went upstairs to work.

And when they were over, finished, he called up, and I came down and said, "Goodnight," and that was it. That was it.

QUESTION: They didn't tell you anything?

FEINSTEIN: No, and I didn't ask.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAIER: She didn't ask?

Senator Dianne Feinstein talking about the clandestine meeting between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at her house here in Washington. But, apparently, she did not get in any details about that meeting, didn't listen in, didn't ask.

But what about that meeting and the fallout from it and what it means for this race? Some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer — FOX News contributors all.

Charles, this meeting, secret. The Obama people put all the reporters on the press plane. They start taking off for Chicago, and there's no candidate on the plane. The secret meeting happens in D.C. What do you make of it?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Feinstein won't say anything, but I suspect the bidding started at $20 million, which is her debt.

Look, she came into that meeting, and she still is a very strong Democratic personality. As I was saying last night, she is not an ordinary loser. She has come closer than any runner up since Reagan in '76, a lot closer than Kennedy did in 1980 when he stole the limelight in the convention from Jimmy Carter.

Look, in normal circumstances, somebody who comes in in what is essentially a dead heat would be the obvious choice to be on the ticket. You would split it. The guy who wins gets the top spot, she would get the second.

It can't happen in her case because of the antipathy between them, and because of the ham handed way she has lobbied openly for it. And, of course, most importantly, because her husband is an ex-president of the United States, who is also an impossible human being who is impossible to cage.

Because of that, she won't be number two. But there is a lot I think he owes her. She represents a constituency that he is going to have to have, and he is going to have to tiptoe and show her respect in a lot of ways.

BAIER: Mort, she met with her campaign staff at her house today in D.C. She is going to make an announcement tomorrow, a speech. What do you forecast?

MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: The people I have talked to in the Clinton campaign, who obviously are anxious to protect her, explain her behavior this week as follows — that she was exhausted from all the campaigning — stop laughing, Fred, I'm telling you what they said — that she was exhausted from campaigning, that she was going through the stages of grief — denial, anger, and all that kind of stuff.

She has got all these supporters saying go, girl, go, on to Denver, and all that. She does not think that Barack Obama is qualified and, therefore, she was egged on, and took the egging on, and made that terrible speech on Tuesday night.

However, they now say, she has come to her senses, ministered to by some of her aides, even Harold Ickes, who said you have to drop this stuff. And so now she is going to knock herself off the ticket. And tomorrow's speech will be the complete opposite of the Tuesday night speech.

And I think she understands that she's not going to be vice president, but she does want other stuff, like her debt paid off, and probably a roll call at the convention just to make it clear that she was the runner-up, and so on. But the conclusion will be foregone, and so on.

But if she wants something after the election, it will be contingent on good behavior, and on really working for the ticket.

BAIER: Fred, what do you think that conversation sounded like? Dianne Feinstein didn't provide any details, but what do you think the fireside chat really developed?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: I don't know that Hillary Clinton could say much because she was so overcome with exhaustion and grief, and having gotten all this bad advice, having been egged on.

Did they really say that? That is just amazing. That is pathetic. I'm surprised. Maybe she had an upset stomach. Maybe she stubbed her toe on the way up to the room where they talked.

I don't really think they said much of anything. I bet it was mainly pleasantries. When they make some deals on the things that Charles talked about, and they definitely will — the $20 million and what kind of role her supporters might play in the administration — that will be done by underlings who will have meetings of this, and probably they already are.

I think tomorrow we're going to see a 180 degree shift. She will go from someone who said he's not fit to be president, to be commander and chief, to someone who will say he will be wonderful as president and commander in chief, and then she will attack Bush and McCain.

BAIER: Is she still pushing for number two?

BARNES: The way she pushes for number two is the opposite way that she did before — before it of hardball, now it's being nice. That's her tactic.

KRAUTHAMMER: She's going to hope. And the only way to get it is to underplay. But I think it is impossible. There is no way he would give it to her. It would look as if he caved to her pressure. It would utterly ruin him as a candidate, and it would utterly ruin him as a president, having the Clintons traipsing around the White House.

You would have three presidents serving at once.

KONDRAKE: I completely agree with that. There is no way she is going to be vice president.

BARNES: I just want to say that the next time I say something in anger here on the panel, I was exhausted.

BAIER: That's the last word. When we return, debate on the Global Warming Bill was choked off almost before it got started. Good news for your wallet or bad news for the planet? That's next with the all starts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BARBARA BOXER, D-CALIF.: This issue is front and center on the minds of the American people, 89 percent of whom say it needs to be addressed. And now, because we did this, we got a good Bill out of our committee, and Senator Reid had the courage to bring it to the floor, we now see that people are engaged.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: My suspicion is there was never any great desire to seriously address what they think is the most important issue affecting the planet because of the way it's been handled. I think they realize they made a colossal blunder and wanted to get it up and get it out of here as quick as possible with minimal exposure of their members to bad votes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: That was Senator Barbara Boxer and Senator Mitch McConnell talking about the global warming Bill that died in the Senate today. So what about this Bill, and the prospects going forward to, possibly, the next congress?

Mort, let's start with you. Why did it die, first of all, and what about McConnell's thoughts about the motivation behind it?

KONDRACKE: It never had a chance to pass anyway. And if it had passed the Senate, the House wasn't ready to take it up, and the president was going to veto it. So this was kind of a marker for the future.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama favor cap and trade. You will have a much more Democratic Congress in 2009, so, probably, we're going to get cap an trade as the solution to the global warming problem, which I think is crazy, frankly. I mean, this is the most bureaucratic, the most government-heavy, the most dishonest way to do conservation.

What you want to do is what Charles wrote a column about today, is have a gasoline tax or a carbon tax, raise the price, let the market determine, what the alternatives are, use the proceeds of a gasoline tax to do intensive research, and maybe some startup money, but not subsidize the way this Bill would do.

This Bill would collect trillions of dollars over time to be invested by the government in various ways, which will be lobbied for. It will be politically determined. Escape hatches will all be politically rigged. It is a terrible way to go.

BAIER: Republican opponents, Fred, said it would dramatically raise the cost of gasoline at the pump. And, today, we saw prices go above $138 a barrel for crude, and the stock market took a dive. So was that all factors in in how this Bill was doing, the price at the pump?

BARNES: That was the main thing. It had nothing to do with unemployment jumping up in the report that came out this morning. It had everything to do with the price of gas. Charles wrote about this today.

This was a colossal blunder — McConnell's right about that — by Harry Reid bringing up a Bill that would raise gasoline prices have a lot of hidden taxes, and all the things Mort talked about, but mainly boost gasoline taxes at the time it is $4 a gallon.

This was crazy. Democrats can't get rid of this Bill fast enough. They didn't lay down a marker. They laid down, well, I won't say.

But this was a huge defeat for them. They don't have a majority for the Bill, despite what Barbara Boxer said, a bunch of people who voted with Harry Reid aren't for it, and I think it is going to be tough next year.

Cap and trade is taking a brutal beating, as you hear from Mort, intellectually and politically, and it's going to be hard for them to revive it next year.

But you know what the most fun thing to watch? Total role reversal. You have Democrats who, supposedly, want to talk about climate change, and they can't get rid of it fast enough. Republicans want to prolong the discussion and consideration of this, because they think it helps them.

BAIER: All three senators involved in the presidential race — McCain, Obama and Clinton — said they would support this Bill, although they were not there to vote on it.

KRAUTHAMMER: The Bill is a travesty.

The one thing you have to know about it is this — it was read on the floor of the Senate. The reading took the ten hours — ten hours of rules, regulations, loopholes, exceptions, mandates, out of the hat numbers, throwing darts at a dartboard is a way to arrive at goals. It is an invitation, as Mort has said, to unbelievable corruption and intervention.

And the other important news is a statement that came out of the Indian minister in charge of these affairs, not Navajo Indian, but South Asian Indian, who yesterday said explicitly that India will not reduce the greenhouse gases if it impedes development and alleviation of poverty, which obviously it does.

India is not going to act, China is not going to act, which means anything that we do here in this Bill would destroy our economy, would be utterly useless. Until India and China join a world regime of cap and trade or taxation or reduction, any action here is complete economic suicide.

And here I'm trying to speak with restraint about how bad this Bill is.

BAIER: Holding back, huh, Charles?

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm trying to restrain myself. It is unimaginable. And the invitation to corruption and lobbying is really on a scale never seen.

KONDRACKE: But it is a symbol of the dysfunction of this government that we all acknowledge that we need to be energy independent, that we need to conserve energy, that we need to produce more domestic — increase domestic production — and control, I think, control global warming, and this government can't come to a solution.

BARNES: The Bush administration wants to increase domestic production, Democrats are fighting it.

Global warming should not be a bipartisan issue

2008-06-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

As your June 3 editorial noted, this week the U.S. Senate was scheduled to debate the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which addresses the most daunting environmental problem of our age: global warming ("A chance to clear the air).

Unfortunately, the Senate Republican leadership, captive to special interest polluters and big oil, and backed by the president's veto threat, blocked debate of the bill. By using procedural maneuvers like forcing clerks to read aloud all 492 pages of the bill, they stifled any substantive discussion of it.

In a 2007 report authored by 600 experts from 40 countries, the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed the reality of global warming. As global temperatures rise, drought, extreme weather, food and water shortages, and infectious disease will become more severe.

At a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), scientists predict catastrophic impacts including intense hurricanes, loss of 97 percent of the world's coral reefs, and the displacement of tens of millions of people due to rising sea levels. At current pollution rates, such a temperature increase is likely.

The United States, the world's worst global warming polluter, must limit this pollution to avoid these devastating impacts. The IPCC urges pollution cuts of 20 percent by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050 to curb global warming's most dire consequences. The Lieberman-Warner bill should set lower pollution caps, invest more in technologies to achieve those reductions, and build in responsiveness to new scientific findings.

Although the Lieberman-Warner bill does not contain all such measures, it would have been an historic step in the right direction. The Senate, however, was unwilling to even consider this bill.

The good news is that most senators wanted to engage in a meaningful discussion about global warming solutions. The Senate voted 48-36 in favor of advancing the bill to a debate. Although short on votes to end the filibuster, 54 senators, including Sens. Obama, Clinton and McCain, indicated they favored debate on the issue.

This willingness to debate the issue reflects growing nationwide support for combating climate change. Solutions that exist today, like energy-efficiency and renewable energy, can solve much of the problem, and some states are already making these global warming solutions a reality.

In light of this progress, the Senate GOP leadership behaved shamefully. Faced with an urgent problem that demands action, these senators passed the buck.

--Elizabeth McCarthy

Senate Opens Debate on Politically Risky Bill Addressing Global Warming

2008-06-03T18:08:00.002-07:00

The Senate on Monday opened a raucous debate over climate change legislation even though it will put supporters of the bill, including all three presidential candidates, on the spot — essentially forcing them to come out in favor of high energy costs at a time when American consumers are paying record fuel prices.

While the three candidates are on record favoring legislative action on global warming, the Bush administration opposes a far-reaching bill.

The measure’s sponsors say the nation must take immediate action to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions, but many senators in both parties see the legislation as an expensive long-term plan that would do little to solve today’s energy supply and price problems. In fact, the legislation is not expected to pass in the Senate this year.

The debate, which could last all week, will force senators to take a stand on some of the most difficult, expensive and potentially life-altering questions the world will face in coming decades.

And lawmakers on Monday embraced the challenge, voting 74 to 14 in favor of the first of several procedural steps needed to bring the bill to the Senate floor.

Thirteen Republicans, including the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, voted in opposition as did one Democrat, Robert C. Byrd, from the coal-producing state of West Virginia.

Proponents say the nation cannot afford to wait until fuel prices come down to begin to deal with these problems. Opponents argue that the bill would direct the largest changes in the American economy since the 1930s and should not be rushed through without painstaking debate.

“There’s a great feeling all across America by people in small villages and towns to large cities to state legislatures and others: we must move and move now,” Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and a co-sponsor of the bill, said as debate opened on the floor. “Do something. Doing nothing is not an option. Let us do something.”

But critics of the bill said it would do more harm than good.

“Any action has to provide real protections for the American economy and jobs, and we must protect the American families,” said Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma. “Any action should not raise the cost of gasoline or energy to American families, particularly the low-income and elderly who are most susceptible to energy costs.”

The debate is shaping up as both a landmark moment and an opportunity for both sides to score political points. Opponents could pay a price for voting to block legislation that is intended to slow and ultimately reverse production of greenhouse gases that scientists warn are exacting an increasingly heavy environmental toll.

Even though high energy prices and an overheated political climate pose serious obstacles to such a far-reaching bill this year, whatever the Senate does will set the terms of the debate when a new Congress and president take office next January.

The heart of the bill is a plan to cap the production of greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming and, for the first time, force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide. For better or worse, putting a price on those emissions could be a wrenching change.

All three major presidential candidates have expressed support for the cap-and-trade concept that underlies this legislation, but all have said they would like to see changes in the current bill. The Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, would like to see its pollution targets strengthened, while Senator John McCain, a Republican, is demanding that it provide more help for the nuclear power industry.

All three candidates said that their schedules for the week were in flux but that they would participate in debates and votes if they were in Washington.

The bill’s chief promoter, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said that the Bush administration had failed to address either energy costs or global warming and that Congress had to step into the breach now.

“There were a lot of voices saying, ‘Why do this now? Why do we have to do this now?’ ” Mrs. Boxer said, opening the Democrats’ argument for the bill. “Because it is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges of our generation and we have to respond with a landmark bill, and it will take us awhile and we must get started.”

The bill is a revision of a plan proposed last year by Mr. Warner and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

The measure would reduce American production of climate-altering gases by nearly 70 percent from current levels by 2050. It would provide billions of dollars in subsidies for energy conservation and environmentally clean technologies, creating millions of jobs, proponents say.

The sale of the permits would raise more than $5 trillion for the government in the coming decades, money that the bill proposes to distribute to affected industries, consumers and local governments in one of the biggest programs of redistribution of American wealth in history. The bill’s proponents say the money would help pay for a technological leap that would create millions of new jobs while cleaning the atmosphere.

Given the timing and the range of opposition, it appears unlikely that the bill will pass the Senate. (Similar efforts are under way in the House.) President Bush has stated opposition to the mandatory emissions limits and numerous other provisions.

But history shows that far-reaching environmental legislation often gets off to a slow start, then passes both houses of Congress and is signed into law when the political time is ripe. “If we get a majority or even close, we will be that much closer to addressing global warming and passing legislation in the next Congress, whoever the president is,” said David Doniger, director of climate policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We may not get it done this year, but if not we start next year just a few steps from the finish line.”

Senator Bob Corker, a freshman Republican from Tennessee, said in an interview that he favored a cap-and-trade program in theory but found serious flaws in the bill. He will be among those seeking to derail it.

“This bill is not going to become law,” Mr. Corker said. “It has no chance, none.”

Mr. Corker is proposing a string of amendments that Democrats characterize as “poison pills” that would undermine the purpose of the legislation. His amendments would return more of the receipts from the carbon permits directly to taxpayers, eliminate the issuance of free permits and do away with the ability of American companies to meet their emissions targets by buying offsets overseas.

One of the major points of contention arises from the bill’s treatment of goods from developing countries that are among the world’s biggest carbon emitters, including China, India, Brazil and Mexico.

The measure directs the president to negotiate agreements with those countries to ensure they are imposing binding limits on carbon emissions on their own industries. If they fail to do so, the United States will impose unspecified tariffs on carbon-intensive products like steel, paper, concrete and glass from those countries. The provision was included at the behest of labor unions and American companies in those industries who would not support the bill without such a cost equalizer.

In a speech on global warming in mid-May, Mr. McCain endorsed a similar carbon tariff, then backed away from it because of objections from the free-trade wing of the Republican Party. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, courting labor support, favor tough carbon-based tariffs.

Frank Ackerman, an economist at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, said that the nation had lost crucial time in not addressing climate change and that other nations were bypassing the United States in the development of alternative energy technologies. Mr. Ackerman acknowledged that the conversion to a low-carbon economy will be costly for many industries and consumers, but said that the cost of inaction is many times greater.

“How do you price the increased deaths, the losses of endangered species and unique habitats, the increased damages from hurricanes that are becoming more intense?” he asked. “Those numbers dwarf any reasonable estimate of the cost of doing something about climate change. The choice is a no-brainer.”

FOCUS ON GLOBAL WARMING

2008-06-03T18:08:00.001-07:00

Senators argued Monday as they voted to begin debate over far-reaching climate legislation that would require major emitters, such as coal-fired power plants, to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases. Here are excerpts from some of the speeches:

"Now, today you will hear from those who wish to kill this bill. Kill it, kill it as dead as they can. They say it's too complicated, that we should do nothing and we should continue the status quo. The status quo is devastating, my friends. The scientists have told us that." - Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

"As summer driving season begins and oil prices remain at near-all-time records, it is simply incredible that the first measure debated in this session will not be a bill to lower energy bills, but a bill that will in fact substantially increase them." - Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M .

"It will not only deal with the problem of global warming, this bill is the energy independence, energy security act that America in its right mind should have adopted 30 years ago." - Sen. Joe Lieberman, independent-Conn., a chief sponsor of the bill

"The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that if China and India do not institute similar plans to the same extent we do, as they have already told us they will not, this bill before us will have no measurable impact on world temperatures. That means $6.7 trillion in pain for American families and workers for no gain in global temperatures lowering." - Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.

"Let's show the American public this institution can work and address a complicated subject and try and reach a common understanding. To do nothing is not an option." - Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a sponsor of the bill

"If the United States were to act unilaterally, manufacturing facilities will go overseas. They go to where the energy is, we know that. And that's where the energy regulations or emissions regulations are more lax. This results in more emissions in transporting the product back to the United States." - Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

Source: Chronicle staff report

Nasa 'played down' global warming to protect Bush

2008-06-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

NASA officials censored and suppressed scientific data on global warming in order to protect the Bush administration from controversy close to the 2004 presidential election, an internal investigation has found.
A 93-page report by the space agency's Office of the Inspector General reveals that personnel in the agency's public affairs office were guilty of "inappropriate political interference" in their attempts to play down climate change findings.

e staff, who were appointed by the White House, "marginalised or mischaracterised" studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, denying media access to top global warming scientist James Hansen, cancelling a press conference about a space mission that was set to monitor ozone pollution and, on more than a dozen occasions, unilaterally edited or downgraded press releases on climate change.

Nasa's top management was not part of the censorship, nor were career officials within the department, the report noted. The problem centred on two names who have subsequently left Nasa – one of whom, the agency's former press secretary Dean Acosta, now works for the aeronautical giant Boeing.

"Climate change scientists and the majority of career Public Affairs Officers strongly believe that the alleged actions taken by senior Nasa headquarters public affairs officials intended to systematically portray Nasa in a light most favourable to administration policies at the expense of reporting unfiltered research results," the report concludes.

Mendacious officials "managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalised, or mischaracterised climate change science made available to the general public," it noted.

The report – which was drawn up at the request of 14 senators concerned at Nasa's censorship – concluded that "inappropriate political posturing or advantage" was behind some of the actions, prompting criticism yesterday on Capitol Hill.

"Our government's response to global warming must be based on science, and the Bush administration's manipulation of that information violates the public trust," complained the Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg.

At the heart of the issue is Mr Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and arguably the world's leading global warming researcher. He has long campaigned for more stringent limits on greenhouse gases – views that are considered politically embarrassing. He cites the accelerating rate of ice-thaw in the Arctic and Antarctic as proof that global warming is harming the planet – and argues that the causes are man-made because of the ozone-depleting carbon dioxide that is emitted from fossil fuels.

He theorises that man has less than a decade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the levels reach a "tipping point" that cannot be reversed.

His interaction with the public and media had been subjected to what he claimed was censorship after he made a speech in 2005 that complained: "I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster."

Nasa downplayed the report yesterday, saying that it related to a problem that has since been fixed and that the agency's new policies have now been hailed for openness by the US Government Accountability Office.

Mr Acosta, who was accused of telling underlings that there were "too many" global warming news releases, denied manipulations. "My entire career has been dedicated to open and honest communications," he said.

The report came as the Senate opened debate on climate change legislation, which could see new measures to cap the production of greenhouse gases – a move that the Bush administration is opposed to.

All three US candidates are strong on global warming: UN climate chief

2008-06-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said on Tuesday the profiles of all three US presidential candidates pointed to a major change in US policies on global warming after George W. Bush leaves the White House next January.

Yvo de Boer, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said he found the stances of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain "very encouraging."

"All three presidential candidates have recognised the importance of climate change; want to act on climate change; want to develop a strong domestic policy approach; seem to favour a policy approach that goes in the direction of a cap-and-trade regime which would mesh very well with the direction in which other industrialised countries want to go; and seem to favour an international approach to climate change," de Boer said in Paris.

"So, in other words, whoever wins the presidential elections, I think that we will see a pro-active, international, market-based approach to climate change in the United States, founded on solid domestic policy."

The United States is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases which stoke man-made global warming, although by some estimates it has been overtaken by China.

Under the Bush presidency, the United States walked away from the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol, saying its caps on emissions by industrial countries were too costly for the US economy and unfair as big developing countries do not have such constraints.

Under a bill put before the US Senate this week, the United States would set up its own cap-and-trade system, meaning that companies would be set a ceiling of carbon emissions, and those who are below it can sell the surplus to those who are above it.

The idea behind cap-and-trade is to provide a financial incentive to reduce carbon pollution.

De Boer, speaking at a climate conference hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said it was a "very exciting week in Washington" but added "let's see" if the so-called Lieberman-Warner bill becomes law.

Bush has threatened to veto the bill "in its current form," saying it would impose six trillion dollars of new costs on the US economy.

Proponents, though, say the bill, in addition to reducing carbon emissions, would raise fuel efficiency and ease dependence on foreign energy imports.

The end of the fake consensus on global warming

2008-05-29T18:17:00.002-07:00

The most intriguing part of The Deniers is the attempt by dozens of credible scientists to point out what should be common-sense obvious: the sun might affect Earth's climate.

"We understand the greenhouse effect pretty well," writes Solomon, "we know vanishingly little about how the sun -- our main source of energy driving the climate -- affects climate change."

But the IPCC refuses to even consider the sun's influence on Earth's climate -- it conceives of its mission only to investigate possible man-made effects upon climate. But that's akin to a hit-and-run investigation where police rule out all cars except one model, this before they even question witnesses.

No one who reads The Deniers will be able to claim a scientific consensus exists on global warming. (Some scientists even argue the planet's climate is about to cool.) But it might leave honest readers with this question: So what? Why not spend billions to reduce possible human-induced climate change just in case? Because, as Antonio Zichichi (a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna and author of more than 800 papers) argues, global warming is only one alleged calamity that faces the world's poor. As Solomon writes in his interview with Zichichi, "every dollar and hour diverted to a crisis that might not exist, has real and tragic costs."

The "deniers" and The Deniers matter because the book is about the search for scientific explanations for a complex phenomenon by eminent scientists in a better position than most to judge whether a consensus exists on global warming. Their collective verdict, much varied in the particulars, is "no."

The most intriguing part of The Deniers is the attempt by dozens of credible scientists to point out what should be common-sense obvious: the sun might affect Earth's climate.

"We understand the greenhouse effect pretty well," writes Solomon, "we know vanishingly little about how the sun -- our main source of energy driving the climate -- affects climate change."

But the IPCC refuses to even consider the sun's influence on Earth's climate -- it conceives of its mission only to investigate possible man-made effects upon climate. But that's akin to a hit-and-run investigation where police rule out all cars except one model, this before they even question witnesses.

No one who reads The Deniers will be able to claim a scientific consensus exists on global warming. (Some scientists even argue the planet's climate is about to cool.) But it might leave honest readers with this question: So what? Why not spend billions to reduce possible human-induced climate change just in case? Because, as Antonio Zichichi (a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna and author of more than 800 papers) argues, global warming is only one alleged calamity that faces the world's poor. As Solomon writes in his interview with Zichichi, "every dollar and hour diverted to a crisis that might not exist, has real and tragic costs."

The "deniers" and The Deniers matter because the book is about the search for scientific explanations for a complex phenomenon by eminent scientists in a better position than most to judge whether a consensus exists on global warming. Their collective verdict, much varied in the particulars, is "no."

Harper touts nukes as solution to global warming

2008-05-29T18:17:00.001-07:00

Public policies to combat climate change must not harm national economies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a well heeled business audience here today.

And he made a pitch to increase the use of nuclear power, describing it is a green energy source that would use uranium produced in Canada as its fuel.

It's a message Mr. Harper and other government officials have often repeated for domestic audiences but he is now taking to the international stage in advance of the G8 summit in Japan in July.

"The bottom line is that global warming is a global problem," Mr. Harper said in a speech to the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce. "We will not solve it unless our environmental plans are economically balanced. Environmental progress will never be achieved unless the economic needs of the population are being met."

Mr. Harper then outlined Canada's plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 2006 levels and to do that by 2020.

"Our mid-term, 2020 target is... one of the most aggressive emissions-reduction goals in the world," Mr. Harper said.

Britain and other European Union countries, however, are finalizing plans to bring down greenhouse gas emissions by 20% to 40% by 2020 and the baseline Europe will use will be 1990.

Greenhouse gas emissions were much higher in 2006 than they were in 1990 so using a baseline year that is farther in the past means that the European target, should it be implemented, will be more aggressive.

Britain and other countries have also been pressing Canada to aim for the European target.

Mr. Harper, however, has rejected targets based on any year prior to when his government took office.

"Our targets are ambitious but realistic," he said.

He is expected to further elaborate on his plans in a private meeting this afternoon with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Britain and Canada do not agree on an approach to cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Mr. Harper also believes that a more modest target for emissions cuts has a better chance of being endorsed by the United States, which never signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, and the fast growing economies of India and China.

"The next UN protocol on climate change must be truly global," Mr. Harper said. "It must include binding targets for all the world's major emitters, including China and the United States.

"We will never see the United States ratify a protocol that does not require genuinely global action."

Mr. Harper spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush by telephone last Friday morning and, according to PMO officials, the two discussed climate change.

Mr. Harper told the business crowd today that nuclear energy must play a key role as a replacement for other power sources, such as coal-fired electricity plants, which produce greenhouse gas emissions.

"As the largest producer of uranium, we can contribute to the renaissance of nuclear energy, a no-emissions source that will be expanding here in Britain and around the world," Mr. Harper said.

Global Warming Follies

2008-05-29T18:16:00.001-07:00

When it comes to the issue of global warming, it seems that there are three different types of people in the world: those who want to do something to put an end to it, those who don’t believe in it at all and those who really don’t care what happens.

But what do you get when a country’s government finds itself in the process of passing legislation on a topic recent studies have proven to be a myth?

One in the U.S. Senate, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and the Boxer Substitute Amendment on the side, may do just that.

According to Andrew Wheeler, director of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, Congress will be opening its floor to the discussion of the Lieberman-Warner Act and Boxer Substitute Amendment on June 2 to discuss the additions to the Act and the Act itself.

The objective of the Act is to introduce measures that will help protect the environment from what many scientists and politicians believe are harmful greenhouse gases—i.e., carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons—through methods such as “deploying advanced technologies and practices for reducing emissions” and “protecting low-and-middle-income Americans from higher energy cost.”

The opening lines of the act read, “The bill will establish the core of a federal program to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough between 2008 and 2050 to avert catastrophic global warming. It will accomplish that purpose without harming America’s economy or imposing hardship on its citizens.”

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Lieberman-Warner bill will produce “very little change in global temperature,” perhaps even less than .07 degrees Celsius.

However, if passed, the amendment to the original bill could harm American citizens financially, said Wheeler.

“The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act calls for the largest tax increase in American political history and, arguably, is the largest re-distribution of wealth ever,” Wheeler said.

In a U.S. Senate Committee of Environment and Public Works (EPW) press release issued on May 20, Ranking Minority Member Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the Lieberman-Warner bill doesn’t, in any way, stay out of American’s pocketbooks. “Lieberman-Warner will redistribute over $5.6 trillion from American consumers to pet congressional projects. Despite paying for the trillions of dollars mandated by this cap-and-trade scheme, American families and workers will only receive back $800 billion in consumer tax relief—$7 paid for every $1 returned,” Inhofe said.

“No matter how many revisions this bill undergoes, it remains a massive redistribution of wealth, the largest new tax and spend program in our Nation’s history,” Inhofe added.

Yet, while Congress waits to pass or veto acts such as Lieberman-Warner, which many believe will affect the lives of Americans negatively, a study released by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) in 2007 concludes after its 12 pages of charts and calculations that there is no such thing as global warming.

According to the OSIM study, “there are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use of in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather or landscape.”

After releasing the 12-page study of charts, graphs and findings to the public, some 31,000 scientists from across the United States read, researched, and accepted this report to be as close to truth as scientifically possible.

In turn, all 31,000 have signed a petition “urging the US government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals,” according to the Petition Project’s website.

The petition also states “there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

OISM co-founder Arthur Robinson said the response of 31,000 degree-holding scientists, which include some 9,000 PhDs within the area of physical science, shows there is clearly not a consensus amongst professionals in the field where global warming is concerned.

“The idea that a committee can decide scientific truths is unprecedented,” Robinson said.

“The claim that the point is settled is just not true. There is no consensus on the issue, therefore, the science must be examined,” he added.

“We have a political movement that wants to [restrict] 85% of our energy because of a committee,” Robinson said.

Indeed, Congressional acts such as Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act entail cutting energy sources over time, and according to Robinson these restrictions will have profound effects on the people of the world.

“The currency of technological progress is energy,” he said. “When you deprive the world of energy, you deprive the world of technology, and if you deprive the world of technology, people will die.”

This is why Robinson said he and his team and many other scientific teams across the world who are conducting research on the issue of global warming continue their plight to prove the conventional knowledge false.

Yet, their reports and findings seem to not come into the consideration of politicians as elected officials draft legislation that would affect not only our nation, but the world as well.

And it’s this fact that leaves some wondering: why would Congress try to pass a bill that would harm the lives of its people when the harm the bill is designed to alleviate may not even exist?

Emily Ham

Under Fire, White House Releases Report About Global Warming

2008-05-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

Today, the White House finally released an overdue report on the comprehensive impact of global warming on the United States. It is the first such report from the Bush administration since it took office more than seven years ago.
forest fire
A Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter drops water on a brush fire near Arcadia, Calif. on... Expand
A Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter drops water on a brush fire near Arcadia, Calif. on Saturday, April 26, 2008. More than 40 acres of brush has burned in steep terrain bordering the Angeles National Forest. Over 100 people were trapped for several hours at a nearby recreation area due to the flames. Collapse
(Dan Steinberg/AP Photo)

Starting to catch up with the understanding long agreed on by the world's climate scientists, the report says, "It is likely that there has been a substantial human contribution to surface temperature increases in North America."

With recent U.S. wildfires, downpours, drought and smog, the report paints a sobering picture of threats to America's food, water and energy supplies -- stressed in an ever hotter country.

Integrating federal research efforts of many agencies and literally thousands of scientists, it reports that the global climate disruption now under way is already damaging U.S. water resources, agriculture and wildlife and is expected to keep doing so -- often worsening -- for "the next few decades and beyond."

There is no part of the country that escapes some sort of consequence," said Anthony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Institute

Temperatures are expected to continue rising by about 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit before the century is out. The report says that in the West grain harvests and vegetable and fruit crops are more likely to fail because of rising temperatures. It also points out that weeds -- of concern both to farmers and those who suffer from pollen allergies -- are growing more rapidly due to elevated levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the air.

"These are consequences for forests in our backyard, for agriculture on which we depend, for the water resources that we depend on, both for agricultural production and household use and manufacturing, that this is the basis of a good quality of life for everybody," Janetos said.

The report projects a likely increase in frequency and severity of heat waves and other extreme weather events, including storms and floods, stating that "cold days and cold nights are very likely to become much less frequent."

It also projects that because of worsening weather and heat the nation's transportation systems face "significant challenges." Coastal and river flooding and landslides are hitting roads, rails and ports, and heat spells buckle or soften roads.

Forests in the West, Southwest and Alaska will be assaulted by more frequent forest fires and decimated by insects that no longer die off in winter because winters are generally warmer. In the middle of the country are reports increasing drought.

"These are things that are happening today. They're not just things that will happen 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now," he said. "We wanted to be within the planning horizon that land managers and conservation planners and farmers actually have to deal with."

Rick Piltz at Climate Science Watch worked on the report for the administration before quitting in 2005, protesting the White House was rewriting the science. He and other administration critics charge the White House delayed this report for years and is taking credit for it now while passing any decisions about action to the next president.

"Here we have an administration that has one foot out the door. They have run out the clock on taking any really meaningful action on climate change." Piltz said.

During a teleconference with reporters, White House associate science director Sharon Hays said the report "communicates what the scientists are telling us."

But Piltz points out that the scientific community has been articulating these findings for years and says that the subsequent action on the report is what will count.

"This is something that has been well understood in the scientific community and the government for some time now," Piltz said. "Even after we lift the hand of censorship off this climate science communication, we still need the political leaders to embrace it and learn from it and act on it."

Protecting Polar Bears Must Include Mitigating Global Warming, Group Argues

2008-05-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

Following a three-year legal battle to protect the polar bear from extinction due to global warming, three environmental groups won protection for the species with the announcement today that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is listing the polar bear as a federally “threatened” species.

The decision was issued in response to a 2005 scientific petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and was required by a court order in a lawsuit brought by the groups to end the administration's delay in issuing a final Endangered Species Act listing decision.

While the polar bear listing is one of the administration's clearest acknowledgments to date of the urgent threat posed by global warming, the administration is simultaneously attempting to reduce the protections the bear will receive under the Act. It claims in the listing decision that federal agencies need not consider the impact of global warming pollution on the polar bear; it has also proposed a separate regulation reducing the protections the polar bear would otherwise receive.

“This decision is a watershed event because it has forced the Bush administration to acknowledge global warming's brutal impacts,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the 2005 petition. “It’s not too late to save the polar bear, and we'll keep fighting to ensure that the polar bear gets the help it needs through the full protections of the Endangered Species Act. The administration's attempts to reduce protection to the polar bear from greenhouse gas emissions are illegal and won't hold up in court.”

Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on the sea ice for all their essential needs. Global warming is an overwhelming threat to the polar bear, which is already suffering starvation, drowning, and population declines as the sea ice melts away.

"The polar bear is already on thin ice. Protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is a major step forward, but the Bush administration has proposed using loopholes in the law to allow the greatest threat to the polar bear — global warming pollution — to continue unabated," said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Endangered Species Project at NRDC. “If the key threats to the polar bear are not addressed soon, zoos will be the only place our grandchildren will be able to see a polar bear.”

“The administration's inclusion of this language exempts the impact of global warming on the polar bear and would gut any protections the ruling would have provided,” said Melanie Duchin, global warming campaigner for Greenpeace USA in Alaska. “Global warming threatens polar bears with extinction, so to exempt global warming pollution from the formula for protecting the species violates the spirit and intent of the ESA.”

Each step in the listing process has required legal action to enforce the Endangered Species Act's deadlines for protecting species. The three groups first sued the Bush administration in December 2005 because the government had ignored their petition to protect the polar bear. As a result of that lawsuit, in February 2006 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that protection of polar bears "may be warranted," and commenced a full status review of the species. A settlement agreement in the case committed the Service to make the second of three required findings by December 27, 2006, at which time the administration announced the proposal to list the species as “threatened.”

By law, the administration was required to make the May 15, 2008 final listing decision within one year of the proposal, or by January 9, 2008. When the administration failed to comply with that deadline, the groups filed suit on March 10, 2008 to end the delay. On April 28, the District Court issued an order requiring the administration to issue a decision by May 15.

Scientists predicted and have now documented the grim impacts to polar bears as the Arctic warms rapidly. Shrinking sea ice drastically restricts polar bears' ability to hunt their main prey, ice seals. In the spring of 2006, scientists located the bodies of several bears that had starved to death. Reduced food availability due to global warming has also caused polar bears to resort to cannibalism off the north coast of Alaska and Canada. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that, based on polar bear distribution and current global warming projections, two-thirds of the world's polar bear population would likely be extinct by 2050, including all polar bears within the United States.

The Arctic melt is also outpacing predictions. September 2007 shattered all previous records for sea-ice loss when the Arctic ice cap shrank to a record 1 million square miles — equivalent to an area six times the size of California — below the average summer sea-ice extent of the past several decades, reaching levels not predicted to occur until mid-century. Scientists already predict that this year's sea-ice minimum could shatter the record set in 2007, and several leading scientists have now stated that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the summer by 2012.

Listing the polar bear guarantees that federal agencies will be obligated to ensure that any action they authorize, fund, or carry out will not jeopardize polar bears' continued existence or adversely modify their critical habitat, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be required to prepare a recovery plan for the polar bear, specifying measures necessary for its protection.

Bay Area pollution board first in U.S. to levy emissions fee

2008-05-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

The Bay Area's air pollution board Wednesday became the first in the country to levy fees on businesses for the global-warming gases they emit.

Declaring that local governments have a role in helping solve a global problem that Congress and the Bush administration have been slow to tackle, the nine-county pollution board decided to collect a total of $1.1 million in annual fees from 2,500 businesses. The charges are based on the tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases released by a business.

"Greenhouse gases are a threat to the air quality of the Bay Area," said Pam Torliatt, Petaluma's mayor and vice chairwoman of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board. "We need to take a leadership role."

The 15-1 vote in favor of the new fees followed a heated debate. Representatives of oil refineries and business groups argued that the fee will duplicate or interfere with state efforts to rein in global warming. Environmentalists called the fee a modest first step at holding businesses responsible for their global-warming gases, which often result from burning large amounts of fuel.

The five oil refineries in the region will pay the bulk of the fees. Refineries will pay up to $180,000 a year, while most businesses will pay $1 or less a year for the new fee.

The charges also will be applied to bakeries, print shops and other businesses that already have air pollution permits restricting their emissions of smog-forming gases.

Air district administrators said the fee will recover the $1.1 million annual cost of the district's program to calculate and study local sources of global-warming gases and consider ways to reduce them.

Some scientists say higher global temperatures threaten to cause a variety of effects in the Bay Area, from flooded shorelines to higher smog levels. Because smog forms more readily at hotter temperatures, global warming threatens to subject more people to irritated lungs and eyes, asthma attacks and other lung problems, air quality experts said.

Businesses will be charged 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit.

Business groups said the air district's new fee and efforts to control global warming gases could disrupt the California Air Resources Board's far-reaching efforts to carry out the state's landmark AB 32, which requires cuts in greenhouse gases statewide.

"It's not about the fee, but about the jurisdiction," said Dennis Bolt, a representative of the Western States Petroleum Association. "Now we don't know who is in charge."

The lone air board member to vote against the fee Wednesday was Mike Shimanski, a member of the Danville Town Council.

He said that once the fee is in place, it is likely to escalate sharply, burdening oil refineries and other businesses with higher costs that they will pass on to consumers.

Global warming combat formula urged

2008-05-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

Thomas Homer-Dixon speaks at the annual TechAlliance annual general meeting at the London Convention Centre yesterday morning. (Ken Wightman, Sun Media)

Houston . . .'er . . . London, we have a problem.

At least that's what bestselling author Thomas Homer-Dixon said yesterday at the annual TechAlliance annual general meeting.

Speaking at the London Convention Centre, Homer-Dixon said "the situation we face now is staggeringly serious" and "we have to pull out all the stops if we're going to face these challenges."

The author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down said with the globe warming and polar ice cap starting to melt, we need to change -- fundamentally -- how we go about our lives.

"We need to do things differently . . . we need a new way of thinking," he said.

His keynote address was titled Supercharging Ingenuity to Aid a World in Crisis.

He asked the audience to imagine standing in a huge parking lot with 10 Mac trucks approaching simultaneously -- and no matter which way you turn, you're going to get hit.

"Right now we have a convergence of stresses that are threatening to overload society," he said. "We have to have the ability to be nimble and flexible in a rapidly changing environment."

And that's not easy, he explained, when we're also dealing with a transition period from the petroleum age to the post-petroleum age.

"The global population has quadrupled," said Homer-Dixon, "The output of oil has quadrupled . . . but the demand for oil has increased some 80 fold."

In addition to oil demand increasing and output eventually not being able to keep up with demand, it's taking more energy to extract oil, he said.

"In the early 1900s in Texas, it took just one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels of oil out of the ground," he said. "Now it's one barrel to get 17 barrels -- and falling."

He explained in Alberta's tarsands the ratio is four to one and with ethanol the rate of energy return is one to one.

"It's just a terrible technology, ethanol is."

And with all this energy being used, we're filling the atmosphere with carbon, causing global warming, which will eventually have dire consequences for the world as the polar ice cap melts, he said.

To stop a catastrophe, Homer-Dixon said we need to rethink how we innovate and make decisions, working together on technical and social innovation.

He suggests a new way of collaborative thinking and many small-scale experiments aimed at reversing global warming and eliminating carbon emissions -- a new way that brings together brains, science, the markets and politics.

"We need to do it so that we have something to give our children -- if we just hand them our problems, it may be too late to fix them."

TECHALLIANCE

TechAlliance is London's voice of the technology sector, committed to the region's knowledge-based economy and innovation that drives it.

Marilyn Sinclair, the president, told the annual general meeting this year TechAlliance put on 45 programs, initiatives and events, expanded its educational mandate and continues to focus on sector-specific initiatives.

"We are an innovative culture, where ideas grow new ideas."

Of particular note in TechAlliance's sixth year of operation was the creation of the Southwestern Ontario Angel Group (SWOAG).

SWOAG is an incorporated non-profit organization and member of the National Angel Organization. It helps entrepreneurs connect to potential investors with a structured process that facilitates a quick investment decision.

Is global warming too hot for the weather report?

2008-05-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Metro meteorologists Paul Douglas and Mike Fairbourne take sides on climate change, but other forecasters say they avoid the topic.

Mike Fairbourne and Paul Douglas worked side by side for years as meteorologists at WCCO-TV. But they couldn't have been further apart on the issue of global warming.

Douglas, who was dismissed last month in a cost-cutting move, has become a prominent speaker about the mounting evidence of human-caused climate change. Fairbourne, his predecessor and successor, once signed a petition opposing measures to combat climate change, and says he regards global warming as based on "squishy science."

Predictions of whether arctic ice caps will disappear don't typically come up during the TV forecast on whether it will rain this weekend.

"Broadcast meteorologists tend to avoid deep discussions on long term climate changes as that is really not our field of expertise," Claire Martin, chief meteorologist with CBS News in Canada and chairwoman of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorologists, said in an e-mail.

That hasn't kept local forecasters from taking a stand on the issue of predicting the global climate. Most of them are landing on the side of the skeptics.

KSTP-TV meteorologist Dave Dahl, in his regular afternoon weather spots on KSTP Radio (AM 1500), reads the record high and low for the day, illustrating extreme temperatures that are often many decades old. "More proof of global warming,'' radio host Joe Soucheray typically responds with sarcasm. Then Dahl chimes in with an affirming comment, such as "crazy" or "you got it, Joe."

Dahl did not return phone calls for this story.

KARE 11 meteorologist Belinda Jensen said the weather experts there regard global warming as an evolving theory, likewise not their area of expertise. She and her colleagues at KARE 11 all feel that human enterprise may only be partly to blame for global warming.

A multi-part series two years ago on global warming effects in Minnesota was done by a news reporter, not a meteorologist, Jensen noted. She added that the station does not prohibit any of the weather professionals from talking about global warming, but they don't.

"When it comes to our job here as meteorologists at a news station, I don't think that's our job," Jensen said. "We try to tread lightly and be smart in what we say," she said.

KMSP-TV (Fox 9) meteorologists anchored a half-hour special on global warming's effects in Minnesota last year that, said meteorologist Ian Leonard, was one of the station's most-watched specials. But as in the KARE 11 special, they let climate researchers explain the dynamics. Leonard said Fox network policy would not let him otherwise comment on the issue.

Jensen and Douglas, as well as Leonard, pointed out that forecasters might shy from global warming because they deal with short-term weather, not long-term climate.

Douglas has often brought his Power Point presentation to community groups with polar explorer Will Steger to explain the crisis. He said he is merely explaining the research that climate scientists around the world have assembled.

Meteorologists, as interpreters of the atmosphere, "have an ethical responsibility to present the state of the science, whatever that is," Douglas said.

Fairbourne said he has not changed his mind significantly in the approximately eight years since he signed a petition stating that there is no scientific evidence that gases released by human activity will lead to catastrophic global warming, and that remediation efforts would be harmful.

Though Fairbourne has been certified by the American Meteorological Society, that petition is at odds with a more recent statement by the AMS on climate change. The AMS states that there is "adequate evidence" that earth systems are warming and that "humans have significantly contributed to this change."

Those who want to get into global warming give-and-take with experts can do so on the Accuweather.com website, (www.startribune.com/a4414) which encourages debate and maintains a climate change discussion forum

Global Warming Linked to Increase in Kidney Stones

2008-05-20T01:06:00.000-07:00

ORLANDO, Florida, May 19, 2008 (ENS) - Links between environmental conditions and urinary tract diseases are emerging from papers presented this week at the 103rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association taking place in Orlando.

Rising global temperatures could lead to an increase in kidney stones, according to research conducted by Margaret Pearle, Yair Lotan, and T. Brikowski and published in the "Journal of Urology."

The southern United States is considered "the stone belt" because these states have higher incidences of kidney stones. Current risk of stone disease in the Southeast is up to 50 percent higher than for the Northwest, the researchers say.

Rising global temperatures could expand this region; the fraction of the U.S. population living in high-risk stone zones is predicted to grow from 40 percent in 2000 to 50 percent by 2050.
Kidney stones, small but painful. (Photo courtesy Texas A&M )

This could lead to an increase of one to two million lifetime cases of kidney stone disease, the scientists warn.

Dehydration has been linked to kidney stone disease, particularly in warmer climates, and global warming will worsen this effect. As a result, the prevalence of stone disease may increase, along with the costs of treating the condition, the researchers say.

Using published data to determine the temperature-dependence of kidney stone disease, researchers applied predictions of temperature increase to determine the impact of global warming on the incidence and cost of stone disease in the United States.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates an increase in temperature by 2050 for much of the United States. These findings place a greater significance on the harmful effects of global warming.

The impact of climate changes in stone disease will not be uniformly distributed and will likely be concentrated in the southern half of the country, according to one computer model or in the upper Midwest, according to another model, the researchers say.

They estimate that the cost associated with treating kidney stone disease could climb as high as one $1 billion annually by 2050, representing a 10 to 20 percent increase over current estimates.

The scientists point to a less well-defined kidney stone belt in Africa, the Mideast and South Asia that they say will experience similar changes, with a greater impact on morbidity in developing nations.

The same research was presented at the October 2007 meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado.

In another presentation, scientists Sunday warned that the incidence of urological abnormalities such as undescended testicles are higher in boys whose mothers had high serum levels of certain organochlorine compounds.

Two separate studies presented Sunday during the American Urological Association, AUA, meeting in Orlando confirmed existing hypotheses that maternal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals may contribute to an increased incidence of these conditions.

These chemicals include total polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, such as Arochlor, and organochlorinated pesticides, such as DDT. Both these long-lasting chemicals are no longer manufactured in the United States, but still are prevalent in the environment.

"Mothers with known exposure to these enduring compounds should tell not only their own doctors but also their sons' pediatricians," said Anthony Y. Smith, MD, a spokesman for the AUA. "These data underscore the importance of regular 'well-baby checkups' so that these easily treatable conditions are diagnosed promptly."

The studies on which the organochlorine presentations are based are cited as:

* Chen JJ, Zhang G, Wasnick R, Priebe C, Roelof B, Steinhardt GF et al: Maternal Burden of organochloro-compounds associated with undescended testes. J Urol, suppl., 2008; 179: 97, abstract 276.

* DeCaro JJ, Small CM, Terrell ML, Dominguez CE, Cameron LL, Wirth J, et al: Maternal exposure to polybrominated biphenyls and genitourinary conditions in male offspring. J Urol, suppl., 2008; 179: 97, abstract 277.

Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the American Urological Association is the foremost professional organization for urologists, with more than 15,000 members throughout the world.

Global dimming plan to curb warming

2008-05-20T01:05:00.000-07:00

SCIENTIST Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.

But he said it may be necessary, as the "last barrier to climate collapse".

Professor Flannery said climate change was happening so quickly that mankind might need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive. Australia's best-known expert on global warming has updated his climate forecast for the world, and it's much worse than he thought just three years ago.

He has called for a range of radical emergency measures.

The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth's stratosphere to keep out the sun's rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

"It would change the colour of the sky," Professor Flannery said. "It's the last resort that we have, it's the last barrier to a climate collapse.

"We need to be ready to start doing it in perhaps five years' time if we fail to achieve what we're trying to achieve."

The 2007 Australian of the Year said the sulphur could be dispersed above the earth's surface by adding it to jet fuel.

He conceded there were risks to global dimming via sulphur: "The consequences of doing that are unknown."

Professor Flannery, who spoke at a business and sustainability conference yesterday in Parliament House, Canberra, said new science showed the world was much more susceptible to greenhouse gas emissions than had been thought eight years ago.

Regardless of what happened to future emissions, there was already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, he said.

Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air. "The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change," Professor Flannery said.

"Everything's going in the wrong direction at the moment; timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing. It's extremely urgent."

As well as the global dimming plan, Professor Flannery said carbon should be taken out of the air and converted into charcoal, then ploughed into farmers' fields.

Wealthy people should pay poor farmers in tropical zones to plant forests, possibly through a direct-purchase scheme like the eBay website.

And all conventional coal-fired power stations that did not have "clean coal" technology should be closed by 2030.

Capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations and storing them underground was a good idea, Professor Flannery said.

AAP

Polar bear at risk because of global warming

2008-05-15T21:07:00.001-07:00

The polar bear has become the first animal to be listed as "threatened" because of global warming.

Presenter: Kim Landers
Speakers: Dirk Kempthorne, Interior Secretary Says It Was A "Difficult" Decision; Kert Davies, Research Director For Greenpeace; Kenneth Green, Resident Scholar And Environmental Policy Expert At The American Enterprise Institute

KIM LANDERS: Polar bears can survive in some of the world's harshest conditions and there are an estimated 20,000 of them in the Arctic region.

Yet a survey by US scientists last year found that up to two-thirds could disappear by mid-century because sea ice is melting due to global warming.

Now the Bush Administration has decided to list the polar bear as "threatened". Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says it was a "difficult" decision.

DIRK KEMPTHORNE: The loss of sea ice, not oil and gas development or subsistence activities, are the reason the polar bear is threatened.

KIM LANDERS: But the Interior Secretary is making it clear this decision is not a Trojan horse for forcing the Bush Administration into placing mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

DIRK KEMPTHORNE: Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears, but it should not open the door to use the ESA (Endangered Species Act) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources.

KIM LANDERS: It's a sign that the political tug-of-war over the polar bear is far from over.

Conservationists had wanted the polar bear to be listed as "endangered" and they're considering legal action.

Kert Davies is the research director for Greenpeace. He says the decision to list the polar bear as "threatened" is meaningless.

KERT DAVIES: They made pretty clear that they don't intend to take any action under law through this decision, that they are not going to look at the implications of oil and gas exploration.

Further they said that nothing that the US could do to limit greenhouse gases would affect the melting Arctic, which is a lie.

KIM LANDERS: Kenneth Green is a resident scholar and environmental policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

KENNETH GREEN: I believe it means ultimately more expensive energy. I believe that it's going to impact development of Arctic energy resources.

KIM LANDERS: However the Bush Administration concedes the "threatened" designation means the polar bear is likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

Global Warming: Refreshing change

2008-05-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

It's refreshing to hear that Sen. John McCain is willing to lead on global warming, based on the scientific consensus. We hope the next president will respect, use and incorporate the best science into the nation's policy decisions.

Combined with promises by Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, McCain's statements in North Bend and Oregon on climate change assure the country that the next president will be playing with a full deck of facts on climate change. McCain clearly and honestly distinguished himself from President Bush on the issue.

We like Clinton's and Obama's plans better, particularly for their higher goals and their commitments to charging industry for pollution credits at the start of any cap-and-trade controls on greenhouse gases. We also see a bit of irony in McCain's plumping for nuclear energy in a state whose history illustrates the atom's financial, environmental and human-health costs. But he starts the debate with one point over n-reactors' current White House champion: McCain can pronounce "nuclear."

We look forward to healthy climate and energy debates during the presidential campaign. Perhaps January 2009 will bring into office a president who cares as much for honest scientific advice as most presidents have valued the counsel of economic leaders. After eight years of phony "sound" science, it's time to let U.S. policy benefit from the most respected science on climate, endangered species, health and the like. We look forward to the next president telling us what his or her new council of scientific advisers has suggested and why, like it or not, policy must follow.
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Global warming effects pervasive: study

2008-05-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

A vast array of physical and biological systems -- from polar bears in the Arctic to tiny krill in the Southern Ocean -- are showing the effects of the world's rising temperature, say scientists who analysed more than 30,000 sets of data stretching back to 1970.

Shrinking glaciers, melting permafrost, earlier spring river runoff, and warmer water bodies point to pervasive physical changes, they say.

And earlier spring blossoms, bird migrations and altered distribution -- salmon showing up in the Arctic, the mountain pine beetle expanding into vast tracks of Western Canada's forests -- point to the many biological impacts.
An international team of scientists reported on the harmful effects of the world's rising temperature yesterday, at the same time that polar bears were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because of damage to their sea ice habitat.View Larger Image View Larger Image
An international team of scientists reported on the harmful effects of the world's rising temperature yesterday, at the same time that polar bears were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because of damage to their sea ice habitat.

"Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans," the international team reported yesterday in the journal Nature.

The study's release coincides with an announcement yesterday by the U.S. government declaring polar bears a threatened species due to shrinking Arctic sea ice caused by global warming. Canada has not made a similar announcement.

Meanwhile, the study builds on the work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year concluded that human-induced climate warming is "likely" -- within 66 to 90 per cent probability -- having a "discernible" effect on physical and biological systems.

The new study mined even more data and concludes human-influenced climate change is the main driver of what is being observed, outstripping more modest effects of deforestation and other land-use changes.

"Anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally," says the team, led by Cynthia Rosenzweig of at Columbia University in New York.

The team analysed data from hundreds of studies in peer-reviewed journals since 1970 and is the first to "formally" link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change and greenhouse, says Francis Zwiers, director of climate research at Environment Canada.

"Making the link using a rigorous scientific method is a pretty big advance," says Mr. Zwiers, co-author of a commentary on the study, also in Nature.

The study is not without its limitations, says Mr. Zwiers. It would be better to have evidence stretching back 50 to 100 years, but he says the study "largely overcomes the sampling limitations because of the sheer number of changes" included in the assessment.

Meanwhile, the federal government reacted to the U.S. announcement on polar bears, saying the concerns raised are clearly linked to global warming and the urgency of addressing pollution from industry.

"Let's be clear that there's no doubt that global warming is a major factor and a major concern in this," Environment Minister John Baird said. "It's not just global warming, but it's human-induced global warming which is what we need to take action on."

Conservation groups said Mr. Baird should follow through next month by clearly establishing a conservation plan if his government gives a green light to major oil and gas companies for new exploration in the Beaufort Sea, where melting ice and declining populations are considered to be a particular concern to polar bear populations.

The Canadian Arctic is home to 13 of 19 polar bear populations in the world, while the U.S. is home to two. Mr. Baird has indicated he plans to accept recommendations of an independent Canadian panel that suggested polar bears should be listed as a species of special concern -- a category below threatened or endangered.

NASA finds statistical evidence of global warming

2008-05-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

HOUSTON: Climatic changes induced by humans have affected the flora and fauna, along with the physical environment of the world at a much faster pace than previously thought, scientists have said.

A new NASA-led study, noting changes in the physical system, such as glaciers shrinking, permafrost melting and lakes and rivers warming, has linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with increase in temperatures during that period.

The scientists also noticed changes in biological systems such as leaves unfolding and flowers blooming at a faster pace, birds migrating earlier and plant and animal species moving towards the Earth's poles and higher altitudes.

In addition to global effects, the study also linked climate changes caused by humans with effects on individual continents, particularly North America, Europe and Asia.

The study was based on a database of more than 29,000 data series coming from about 80 studies, with at least 20 years of records between 1970 and 2004.

The team conducted statistical tests and found that patterns of observed impacts correspond with temperature changes around the globe, allowing them to conclude that global impacts are very likely due to human-caused warming.

"This is the first study to link global temperature data sets, climate model results and observed changes in a broad range of physical and biological systems to show the link between humans, climate and impacts," Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York told the media.

Continents including Africa, South America and Australia don't have as much observed changes despite warming trends. The authors attributed this to the lack of data and published studies on these continents.

Evangelicals press to fight global warming

2008-05-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

When the Senate takes up legislation next month to confront global warming, environmental groups will have some fervent new allies: evangelicals and other Christian activists.

Concerned about what they see as a moral and biblical issue, religious groups from the right are joining with environmental organizations from the left in supporting strong measures to fight global warming.

Some Christian leaders are using the clout they have built up in Republican circles to lobby conservatives in Congress to support regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions.

"When evangelicals speak, Republicans listen," said Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. "And Republicans, frankly, are listening to what we're saying."

For many religious groups, global warming isn't a political or environmental issue. It's a threat to God's creation.

"It's not a blue state, red state, scientific, or even a green issue," said Cizik, whose organization represents 45,000 churches. "It's a spiritual issue. And that, above all else, is why evangelical Christians should be concerned."

The once-tiny Christian environmental movement began quickly accelerating in 2006, when 85 prominent evangelical leaders signed on to the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for action on global warming. That number has since climbed to more than 100.

"It's a bit out of the ordinary for evangelicals to be involved with this issue," said Jim Jewell, chief operating officer of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a group that educates and mobilizes Christians on environmental issues. "The evangelical involvement with climate has kind of shaken the political landscape a bit."

In March, dozens of prominent Southern Baptist leaders called on followers to acknowledge human contributions to global warming and demanded bold action to address climate change.

They said the church's cautious approach was "too timid" in promoting stewardship of God's creation.

"To abandon these issues to the secular world is to shirk from our responsibility . . ." they declared. "The time for timidity regarding God's creation is no more."

Jonathan Merritt, the 25-year-old seminary student from Atlanta who organized the Baptist environmental declaration, said younger Baptists in particular were relieved to see church leaders take a bold public stance.

Young religious voters aren't abandoning opposition to abortion and gay marriage _ issues usually associated with the religious right _ but seem more willing than their parents to look at a broader spectrum of political positions, Merritt said.

"Younger Christians are finding it more pressing to live a life that is consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ ... rather than toe a party line," Merritt said.

The Rev. Larry Rice, director of the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis, has been an outspoken advocate for global-warming legislation. The left-leaning minister said Missouri is "in the dark age when it comes to renewable energy" and has argued for years that Christians have an obligation to protect the environment.

"There's an ethical principle that runs the whole thread of Christianity here," Rice said. "You can't just say that you love your neighbors as yourself and yet be totally indifferent to how your use of fossil fuels is directly contributing to global warming around the world."

Evangelicals will join an army of lobbyists and lawmakers now suiting up for battle over the most sweeping environmental legislation in years, which the Senate intends to debate early in June.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., and John W. Warner, R-Va., would create a program known as "cap-and-trade" to limit harmful carbon dioxide emissions.

Under the bill, companies, individuals and government agencies would see their greenhouse-gas emissions capped at an annually decreasing level, with the goal of setting emissions in 2050 at 30 percent of their 2005 levels.

Entities that come in below their cap could sell their remaining credits to others that pollute beyond their limit. The effect is a sort of carbon tax that encourages pollution reduction.

The bill is already the subject of intense political gamesmanship. Some business lobbyists fear the costs of complying with pollution caps and the penalties for exceeding them. Some environmental groups say the standards are too weak.

Backers of the bill hope support from the religious right will help pressure some Republicans to support the legislation.

"There's a good deal of interaction with folks at traditionally religious organizations, who have joined with environmental organizations to begin work on this," said David Sandretti, a spokesman for the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental interest group.

As the action unfolds on Capitol Hill, Missouri's two Senators are likely to play important roles.

Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican, has for years been one of the loudest critics of the science behind global warming and is a key opponent of the Lieberman-Warner bill.

The Environmental Defense Fund identified Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., as one of 10 "Senators to watch." McCaskill is undecided on the cap-and-trade bill, saying she favors the concept but worried about how it might affect utility costs for poor people.

McCaskill's staff has discussed cap-and-trade with religious leaders urging her to support the initiative.

"We're paying special attention to Senator McCaskill," said the Rev. Jim Ball, a national spokesman for the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

McCaskill's staff has also talked about the issue with religious leaders working with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a broad coalition of religious groups that includes Catholic, Jewish and other organizations.

"This is far and away the single highest environmental priority for the American religious community," said Paul Gorman, the Partnership's executive director. "There's isn't a single state in the union where people of faith and religious leaders aren't communicating their support for this bill."

Great tit loves global warming

2008-05-08T17:19:00.002-07:00

Climate change has already produced shifts in the distribution of some species, such as amphibians, grasses, migratory birds and butterflies, and by one estimate around one million species worldwide are in danger of extinction over the next half century.

But the great tit (Parus major) has changed its behaviour to take climate change in its stride, according to research by scientists from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh.

The reason for extinctions are many fold. For some species there will no longer be anywhere with a suitable climate for them to survive; in other cases they may be unable to reach distant regions where the climate is suitable.

Other species may survive elsewhere only to face new threats, notably if the new area is covered by crops or urban sprawl.

But the study of data that goes back 47 years on the great tits in Wytham Woods, near Oxford, published in Science by Anne Charmantier and colleagues shows that the birds have modified their breeding schedule over the years to adapt to the warming climate.
Newly hatched great tits
Newly hatched great tits. Syncronisation between the date of hatching and the date of caterpillar peak abundance is very important for the survival prospects of nestlings

The birds are now laying their eggs, on average, two weeks earlier than half a century ago. The change enables them to make the most of seasonal food: a bonanza of caterpillars that now also occurs around two weeks earlier due to warmer spring temperatures.

"In this great tit population, female birds are able to adapt their behaviour from year to year to respond to changing environmental conditions," says Prof Ben Sheldon, senior author of the study.

"They have been able to keep track with the changes that have happened over recent decades, showing that population responses to climate change can be driven by the adaptability of individuals rather than genetic changes."

Population numbers have roughly doubled since 1960, in line with a general increase in numbers of great tits across the country. While the data from nearly 10,000 breeding reports shows an overall trend of birds laying eggs earlier in response to warmer spring temperatures, there is surprisingly little variation between individual females as their behaviour closely follows the 'early bird' trend, as if all the birds "know" how to cope.
Larva of the winter moth caterpillar
Larva of the winter moth caterpillar on an oak tree. Emergence time of these caterpillars and hatch date of birds respond in the same way to the changing climate

But not all tits are responding the same way. Prof Sheldon comments: "While our study shows how important it is to be able to adjust behaviour from year to year, the lack of variation between individuals in their response to climate change is surprising and contrasts with a recent study of Dutch great tits - which found a much greater variation in flexibility between individual birds.

Little is known about the basis of this sort of behavioural adaptability and why it can vary within species. More work is also needed to discover whether the close matching of the changing environment found by the birds in our study is, indeed, unusual."

Co-author Dr Loeske Kruuk of Edinburgh adds: "If temperatures continue to rise, we do not know whether the birds will be able to track the advancing food peak so closely; although up to now they have kept up remarkably well, we don't know what will happen once temperatures rise to yet higher levels."

One recent study in the journal Nature predicted that climate changes over the next half century will eventually make a quarter of land animals and plants extinct, unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.
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"Although the current study shows that some populations may have the innate ability to respond immediately to changing environmental conditions, it is very likely that there are limits on this ability to change, and we may well soon reach a point at which populations fail to keep up," says Dr Kruuk.

The bird is a common species throughout Europe and Asia in any sort of woodland and is found throughout the UK (except for the Northern Isles and Western Isles of Scotland).

We've had U-turn on global warming: now let's have one on fuel tax, Gordon

2008-05-08T17:19:00.001-07:00

Surprise, surprise. After months of threatening us with environmental Armageddon, scientists are now saying global warming may be put on hold for ten years. Gordon Brown's U-turn technique has even spread to the science lobby. It must be time now for people such as Al Gore and the green lobby to accept the scientific claim from eminent international experts that global warming is, indeed, part of the climate cycles that the earth has been through many times and will again.
Could it be that our listening Prime Minister and his chums at Westminster will U-turn again and park the policies of crucifying drivers by huge taxes on fuel to save the planet while hammering the UK way of life? Go on, Gordon, give us leadership by

IAIN J McCONNELL

Gifford

East Lothian

While I believe, like George K McMillan (Letters, 7 May), that global warming is not the result of human action, we cannot get away from the fact we must find alternative energy sources and reduce our usage of the world's natural non-renewable resources.

In 1973, if memory serves, the cost of oil rocketed and our politicians said we must never again leave ourselves at the mercy of such occurrences, nor so dependent on overseas supplies. Needless to say, nothing was done about it.

Now, we are here again and paying the price for our elected representatives' neglect. Action is needed but not wind farms – we need a planned policy where we do not take one action that leads to disaster for others through ill-conceived initiatives.

IAN ROSS

Eden Lane

Edinburgh

Bob Graham (Letters, 1 May) appears to be blissfully unaware that the energy crisis and climate change are the consequences of the consumption of the bulk of the planet's reserves of fossil fuels. These were deposited over a period of millions of years during the Carboniferous Age, but we have succeeded in converting a large proportion into carbon dioxide and water in two-and-a -half centuries.

The only way of addressing this crisis is to abandon the large-scale combustion of fossil fuels for energy production in favour of renewable sources of energy, together with abandoning the notion that human progress is identical with a Malthusian population explosion and never-ending economic expansion. Unfortunately, this perception is not acceptable either to exploitative entrepreneurs or politicians, who may know nothing about the environmental importance of the carbon cycle on which all life depends.

(DR) DAVID PURVES

Strathalmond Road

Edinburgh

Perhaps the withdrawal of Shell from the 350 wind turbine scheme in the Thames estuary and the rejection of the apocalyptic plans for Lewis may be catalysts for a reality check on wind power.

Wind turbines will do nothing to mitigate against climate change. Even the British Wind Energy Association does not attempt to refute calculations that show that, even if all Britain's renewables targets are met, the savings in global emissions will be less than 0.0004 per cent, a total which would be eclipsed in less than seven days by increases from China and India.

J MARK GIBSON

Dalmellington

Ayrshire

Al Gore Blames Global Warming for Myanmar Cyclone

2008-05-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Hot Air?

Former Vice President Al Gore says global warming is to blame for the Myanmar cyclone. In an interview with National Public Radio, Gore called the storm one of the "consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with global warming."

But many experts say it is impossible to make such a link. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics tells FOX News: "It is an alarmist statement and Vice President Gore wants to confuse the crowd" adding "there is no way to blame any single event on CO2 and global warming."

That's a sentiment supported by Dr. Adam Lea at the University College of London who says, "it's impossible to say."

And Jeff Poor of the Business and Media Institute writes that "using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists."

Meanwhile, a Canadian environmental scientist says that university research should be added to the list of human activities that contribute to global warming. Professor Hervé Philippe from the University of Montreal has discovered that his own research produces 44 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The average American citizen produces 20 tons of CO2 per year.

According to his calculations, Phillippe says his computers produce 19 tons of CO2 a year, the air-conditioning in his lab produces 10 tons of CO2 per year and transportation to and from his many environmental meetings produce another 15 tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Phillippe was shocked at his findings, saying, "I did my PhD in the hope of advancing our knowledge of biodiversity, but I never thought that the research itself could have a negative impact on biodiversity."

The Wright Questions?

In a radio interview Wednesday, PBS anchor Bill Moyers defended his interview with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Moyers brushed off suggestions that he was soft on Barack Obama's former pastor saying, "I'm not a very adversarial fellow. I'm not a gotcha kind of journalist. I leave that to those people whose job it is for the commercial media."

Moyers interviewed Rev. Wright after a number of his controversial sermons were gathering worldwide attention. Moyers was pressed about why he failed to ask Rev. Wright about his statement that the federal government created AIDS to eliminate minorities. Moyers said, "I didn't get to ask him that on the show, we ran out of time."

Moyers' interview with Rev. Wright was an hour long.

20 Million Reasons

What will it take for either of the Democratic presidential candidates to win the support of California superdelegate Steven Ybarra? How about $20 million?

Ybarra says that is the amount of money he needs to register 1.3 million Mexican-American voters and get them to the polls in November. In an interview with the Associated Press, Ybarra says he has not decided whether to support Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton because, "nobody showed me any money yet."

But is $20 million to much to ask for? Ybarra says absolutely not, adding that in 2004, Democrats "spent a billion to lose."

Asian Development Bank announces fund to fight global warming

2008-05-06T00:53:00.001-07:00

The head of the Asian Development Bank announced on Monday a new fund to combat damage caused by climate change, which he termed a "fundamental threat" to economies and livelihoods in Asia.

"I am pleased to announce that we will ... establish a Climate Change Fund, with an initial contribution from ADB resources of $40 million (26 million euros)," Haruhiko Kuroda said in an inaugural address to the ADB's board of governors meeting in Madrid.

"The Fund will allow a more holistic approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation, including forestry and land use, changes in livelihood, health impacts, and increase emergencies and disasters caused by climate change.
"Climate change is a fundamental threat to achieving Asia's development objectives, and to life and livelihoods," the ADB president said.

The ADB said in a statement that some 1.2 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region could face freshwater shortages by 2020 owing to climate change, while crop yields in Central and South Asia could drop by half between now and 2050.

Asia's major coastal cities, including Bangkok, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Mumbai and Shanghai are vulnerable to flooding, it said.

By the end the end of the century, residents of Tuvalu, the Maldives and coastal Bangladesh may become "climate refugees," it said.

"Asian developing countries are now the fastest growing source of new greenhouse gas emissions and they will soon be the largest absolute source," said WooChong Um, the head of the ADB's Energy, Transport and Water Division.

"This new fund will help us pool resources from around the world to invest here in Asia to help deal with this problem."

The ADB said it is appealing for contributions to the Climate Change Fund from countries, development organisations, the private sector and other sources.

The new fund "will address the causes and consequences of global warming," said Werner Liepach, the head of the ADB's Office of Cofinancing Operations.

"Money from the fund will be used to provide grant financing for technical assistance, investment projects, research and other activities, and we welcome interested parties to participate in the fund," he said.

Kuroda noted that the bank's Asia Pacific Carbon Fund, supported by seven European countries, will also to provide over 150 million dollars to co-finance clean energy projects.

He said the ADB was also investing an additional $100 million in five funds to mobilize about $1 billion for clean energy over the next three years.

"Within the next four years, environment and climate change will grow to represent a significant share of ADB's total lending and technical assistance," he said.

Stop Chafing, Global Warming

2008-05-06T00:52:00.002-07:00

Steve Nash and Alonzo Mourning are among several athletes pushing a new brand of anti-chafing lube.

Really.

Mission brand anti-friction cream, according to the Mission website:

Regardless of sport or level, every athlete has to endure irritation stemming from skin-to-skin or clothing-to-skin friction at some time. Knowing that petroleum jellies and band-aids are nothing more than quick fixes, just as likely to irritate already sensitive skin, our team of professional athletes and scientists developed Anti-Friction Cream.

A little anti-friction goes a long way -- ounce for ounce, the concentrated formula lasts five times longer than traditional lubricants. Which means you can push yourself as far as you can go, and then some.

So, what does this have to do with global warming?

Are we to cool the planet one chafed groin at a time?

Not exactly. This is part of a bigger line of Mission skincare products (Nash is said to be especially fond of the foot synergy gel), from which a portion of the proceeds reportedly go to various charities, including Nash's charity, Mourning's charity, and StopGlobalWarming.org.

Senate passes global warming bill

2008-05-06T00:52:00.001-07:00

Connecticut moved closer Monday toward becoming the fifth state to adopt mandatory limits on global warming pollution.

The Senate, by a 35-0 vote, gave final legislative approval to a bill that puts caps on emission levels. The bill, already approved by the House of Representatives, moves to Gov. M. Jodi Rell's desk for her signature.

Proponents acknowledged that a small state like Connecticut passing such legislation won't solve the problem, but said they hope it will start a trend.

"This is another state initiative that we hope will become a leading light toward federal policy," Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said.

In a written statement, Rell, a Republican, said she'll consider signing the bill.

"This measure prescribes laudable goals, but as is the case with every piece of legislation, I will review it in its final form to ensure that the goals are achievable in a cost effective manner," she said.

Connecticut passed legislation in 2004 that established benchmarks for air pollution reduction. But that law was voluntary and has not produced the needed cuts.

The new bill would require total emissions to be capped at 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. It would also require emissions levels to be cut 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050. State agencies would be required to adopt policies to meet the new caps.

California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Washington State have passed similar measures.

Connecticut's bill also requires the state's Department of Environmental Protection to take an inventory of emissions and recommend ways to reduce the emissions. Beginning in 2012 and for every three years, DEP must list specific actions that have been taken.

Other parts of the bill require the Department of Transportation to investigate expanding high-speed and light rail systems in Connecticut; requires DEP to study low-carbon fuel standard in the state to reduce carbon content of fuels; and directs the Governor's Steering Committee on Climate Change to assess the impact of climate change on the state and recommend ways to mitigate the effects.

"This legislation creates a critical mechanism for Connecticut to better prepare for the very serious impacts that sea level rise and other effects of climate change will have on our human and natural communities," said David Sutherland, director of government relations for The Nature Conservancy.

He said the state is likely to lose neighborhoods and coastal wetlands over the next few decades because of the rising sea level.

The Nature Conservancy is part of a coalition of environmental organizations pushing for the bill.

Trouble In Paradise: Global Warming A Greater Danger To Tropical Species

2008-05-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

Polar bears fighting for survival in the face of a rapid decline of polar ice have made the Arctic a poster child for the negative effects of climate change. But new research shows that species living in the tropics likely face the greatest peril in a warmer world.

A team led by University of Washington scientists has found that while temperature changes will be much more extreme at high latitudes, tropical species have a far greater risk of extinction with warming of just a degree or two. That is because they are used to living within a much smaller temperature range to begin with, and once temperatures get beyond that range many species might not be able to cope.

"There's a strong relationship between your physiology and the climate you live in," said Joshua Tewksbury, a UW assistant professor of biology. "In the tropics many species appear to be living at or near their thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive. But once temperature gets above the thermal optimum, fitness levels most likely decline quickly and there may not be much they can do about it."

Arctic species, by contrast, might experience temperatures ranging from subzero to a comparatively balmy 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They typically live at temperatures well below their thermal limit, and most will continue to do so even with climate change.

"Many tropical species can only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures because the climate they experience is pretty constant throughout the year," said Curtis Deutsch, UCLA assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and co-author of the study.

Why should we be concerned with the fate of insects in the tropics?

"The biodiversity of the planet is concentrated in tropical climates, where there is a tremendous variety of species," Deutsch said. "This makes our finding that the impacts of global warming are going to be most detrimental to species in tropical climates all the more disturbing. In addition, what hurts the insects hurts the ecosystem. Insects carry out essential functions for humans and ecosystems -- such as pollinating our crops and breaking down organic matter back into its nutrients so other organisms can use them. Insects are essential to the ecosystem."

At least for the short term, the impact of global warming will have opposing effects. In the tropics, warming will reduce insects' ability to reproduce; in the high latitudes, the ability of organisms to reproduce will increase slightly, Deutsch said. If warming continues, the insects in the high latitudes would eventually be adversely affected as well.

"Unfortunately, the tropics also hold the large majority of species on the planet," he said.

Tewksbury and Deutsch are lead authors of a paper detailing the research, published in the May 6 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work took place while Deutsch was a UW postdoctoral researcher in oceanography.

The scientists used daily and monthly global temperature records from 1950 through 2000, and added climate model projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for warming in the first years of the 21st century. They compared that information with data describing the relationship between temperatures and fitness for a variety of temperate and tropical insect species, as well as frogs, lizards and turtles. Fitness levels were measured by examining population growth rates in combination with physical performance.

"The direct effects of climate change on the organisms we studied appear to depend a lot more on the organisms' flexibility than on the amount of warming predicted for where they live," Tewksbury said. "The tropical species in our data were mostly thermal specialists, meaning that their current climate is nearly ideal and any temperature increases will spell trouble for them."

As temperatures fluctuate, organisms do what they can to adapt. Polar bears, for example, develop thick coats to protect them during harsh winters. Tropical species might protect themselves by staying out of direct sunlight in the heat of the day, or by burrowing into the soil.

However, since they already live so close to their critical high temperature, just a slight increase in air temperature can make staying out of the sun a futile exercise, and the warming might come too fast for creatures to adapt their physiologies to it, Tewksbury said.

Other authors of the paper are Raymond Huey, Kimberly Sheldon, David Haak and Paul Martin of the University of Washington and Cameron Ghalambor of Colorado State University. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the UW Program on Climate Change.

The work has indirect implications for agriculture in the tropics, where the bulk of the world's human population lives. The scientists plan further research to examine the effects of climate change, particularly hotter temperatures, on tropical crops and the people who depend on them.

"Our research focused only on the impact of changes in temperature, but warming also will alter rainfall patterns," Deutsch said. "These effects could be more important for many tropical organisms, such as plants, but they are harder to predict because hydrological cycle changes are not as well understood."

Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study

2008-05-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

Global warming could gradually starve parts of the tropical oceans of oxygen, damaging fisheries and coastal economies, a study showed on Thursday.

Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures, according to the scientists based in Germany and the United States.

And models of global warming indicate the trend will continue because oxygen in the air mixes less readily with warmer water. Large fish such as tuna or swordfish avoid, or are unable to survive, in regions starved of oxygen.

"Reduced oxygen levels may have dramatic consequences for ecosystems and coastal economies," according to the scientists writing in the journal Science.

The north of the Indian Ocean, along with the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, is also oxygen-low but the available data showed no substantial change in the size of the oxygen-minimum zone in recent decades.

Lothar Stramma, lead author at IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, said there were signs the oxygen-low bands between 300 and 700 meters depths were getting wider and moving into shallower coastal waters.

"The expansion of the oxygen-minimum zones is reaching more to the continental shelf areas," he told Reuters. "It's not just the open ocean." That could disrupt ever more fisheries.

Problems of lower oxygen supply add to woes for the oceans led by over-fishing as the world struggles to feed an expanding population. A U.N. conference in 2002 set a goal of trying to reverse declines in fish stocks by 2015.

The scientists said levels of dissolved oxygen in the oceans had varied widely in the past and more study was needed. "We are far from knowing exactly what will happen," Stramma said.

In the most extreme case, at the end of the Permian period about 250 million years ago, there were mass extinctions on land and at sea linked to high levels of carbon dioxide and extremely low oxygen levels in the waters.

The U.N. Climate Panel said last year that global warming, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, would push up temperatures and bring more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. More and more species would be at risk of extinction.

Thursday's study showed that a swathe of the eastern Pacific from Chile to the United States and a smaller part of the eastern Atlantic, centered off Angola, were low in oxygen.

Stramma said the oxygen-poor regions were away from major ocean currents that help absorb oxygen from the air. And warmer water is less dense and so floats more easily -- that makes it less prone to mix with the deeper levels of the oceans.

'They cheat, I tell you'

2008-05-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

Nigel Lawson winces when he hears me talk of climate change: "It is a propagandist's term, it trips off the tongue nicely," he says. He will only refer to global warming, and even then with big qualifications. Almost 20 years after Margaret Thatcher's chancellor walked out of government, Lawson is back, defying scientists and politicians in a punchy book challenging what he calls "the global warming nonsense".

He makes an unlikely Dr Strangelove: a slimmed-down, pachyderm-skinned version of the face of Thatcherism, after a diet that he turned into a bestselling book. But like Peter Sellers' nuclear scientist, Lawson has learned to stop worrying and love a warmer world.

His argument boils down to two parts: climate change is not the threat we believe and efforts to stop it are doomed and dangerous. Everyone who says otherwise is either lying or ill-informed.

The book's title is moderate, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, but reaction to it has been anything but. Mention of Lawson's name provokes contempt among climate professionals, who say his views are ignorant and dangerous. Bob Watson, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a particular Lawson hate figure, accuses him of selective quotation and not understanding "the current scientific and economic debate".

Sipping coffee in the House of Lords, Lawson bristles at the charge that his book is nothing more than an upmarket green ink letter from an ill-informed retiree. He may be famous now as Nigella Lawson's dad and for his diet tips (cut out dairy and alcohol and eat less - he lost five stone as a result) but he is still a sharp debater.

At times, though, the mask of rationalism slips. "I think that the ordinary bloke has an instinctive sense that it wouldn't be too bad if the weather warmed up," he says, when I question his repeated claim that "gentle and moderate" warming could turn out to be good for the planet.

There are moments when talking to Lawson is like being trapped in a Bird and Fortune comic routine: all assertions and sweeping statements and a stubborn and rather engaging refusal to bow to conventional wisdom.

He is very drawn to what he says is the underrated upside of climate change. In his book, he says the hot summer of 2003, which killed 15,000 elderly people in France, was "perfectly tolerable" at his own house in Armagnac. "If you look around the world today there are countries that are very cold and countries that are very hot and you adapt," he says. "I do think it is slightly implausible to think that somehow we have arrived by some miraculous process at some optimum temperature."

Adaptation is at the heart of Lawson's case. He does not question the existence of the greenhouse effect, or of man-made climate change, only its extent and the balance between human and natural factors. But he thinks trying to limit carbon emissions is a fool's errand. If the world gets warmer, we will have to take off our jackets and trust in technical adaptation.

He makes much of his decision to accept the upper end of the IPCC's predictions for temperature rises as the basis for his argument. He says he accepts that over the next century the world average temperatures may rise by as much as 4C. His dispute, he claims, is with the lessons economists draw from that. He reserves particular ire for Sir Nicholas Stern's report, which he compares to the Iraq "dodgy dossier": "It was essentially a propaganda exercise".

For someone who makes so much of logic Lawson has an acidic tongue. The IPCC, the UN body whose work represents the synthesis of present scientific understanding, is "something like a politically correct alarmist pressure group". And "Al Gore is obviously just a propagandist". If Lawson really accepted the science of climate change - and simply disputed the practical and economic logic of tackling it - it is odd that he would talk like this. He has a chancellor's quick grasp of data which makes picking apart his argument like analysing one of Gordon Brown's budgets. It takes time to see all the tricks.

Prominent among these is to take a swift sidekick at the figures produced for global warming, but, rather than stand his ground, slide away to doubt whether it would matter even if they were accurate. Confronted on his rejection of both the evidence for and the unacceptability of global warming, he sidesteps again and questions whether it is possible to stop the process.

To dance from one to the other suggests a lawyer's concern to win the case rather than establish the truth. His skeleton courtroom argument for the defence seems to be that his client isn't doing it, but even if he is doing it's harming nobody, and even if it is harming anyone it cannot be stopped.

He asserts that "global warming ... is not at the present time happening", basing his claim on evidence from Britain's Hadley centre, which he says shows temperatures have ceased to climb since the millennium. He brushes aside my attempt to point out that the Hadley does not agree with such a sweeping claim or that scientists say no set of data over such a short time can be meaningful.

When I read a quote from Nasa - "the year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data behind the record warmth of 2005" - he gets cross. "They cheat ... I tell you how they cheat."

"The prevailing orthodoxy can be both stifling and intolerant," he says. But the reality is that climate change sceptics get a hearing out of all proportion to their scientific support.

His book has become a small bestseller, which he takes as a vindication of his struggle to get it published. It was rejected by every British publisher he approached. He is convinced climate change is as much a matter of faith as of science. "Global warming is a new religion and blasphemy against that religion is not a laughing matter," he claims. "There is a great gap in Europe with the decline in any real belief in Marxism and any real belief in Christianity. This has filled that vacuum." Perhaps it has. But does that make the science wrong?

Talking on polling day for the local elections, I ask whether he had been out, as the Tory slogan had it, to "vote blue to go green". Lawson - who commutes from southern France each week by easyJet with the assurance of someone not worried about aviation emissions - said he had voted by post.

But what about David Cameron's environmentalism: is it real? "He sees it as an important part of the rebranding exercise but I also think he believes it," Lawson says, rather sadly.

He is polite about the generation in charge of the Conservatives and expects to see them in power. But he thinks they have fallen for a fashionable consensus. "No doubt they have focus groups which indicate this strikes a chord".

Would he ever fit a wind turbine to his roof, like Cameron? "No, I'm not into political gestures." Has he ever done anything green at home - fitting low-energy lightbulbs perhaps? He looks appalled. "No, no, I don't do any of that. Most people don't."

Large parts of Lawson's well-written book suggest the world-weary views of an experienced man. He is a dust-dry intellectual, wary of any claim that idealism is enough to solve global problems. "Even Kyoto, which is trivial, hasn't been implemented," he says. It is hard not to share his view that even if the Bali talks are followed by a new treaty, it will be broken.

Nor does he find big business's new-found environmentalism convincing. "There are enormous business opportunities if you give huge subsidies to people to build wind farms. If you create a carbon trading scheme then banks will make a lot of money."

Such contrarianism is ever present: "Turn the conversation the other way around: do you think global cooling would be beneficial?" he asks me. But of course science does not predict global cooling, only global warming - and the IPCC scientists are clear that the impact will be something much worse than the warmer summers and snow-free winters that Lawson is prepared to tolerate.

What about energy security surely that is a reason to move to renewables? Isn't oil about to run out? "No." What happens when it does? "Obviously the answer is to develop our indigenous coal resources." I point out the irony of the chancellor who took on the miners with Thatcher backing King Coal but he barely pauses to smile.

He has sent his book to MPs and claims that many have replied supporting him. But he will not name names. When I ask if Cameron has discussed the issue with him, he fails to answer.

Some of the attacks on Lawson are unfair. He has every right to assert his opinions. He is right that scientific predictions of future climate change from computer models are inherently unreliable and right to warn that Stern's market-led solution to climate change may not work. But neither of these is to be celebrated. The triumphal note with which he drives home his points is odd: "The high tide of unthinking adherence to this new religion has been reached and I think it may well be in the coming years the tide will gradually recede but it will be a very glacial progress."

He does not appear troubled by the thought that he might just be wrong, and everyone else right, and that the consequences of following his advice would be global humanitarian disaster.

Poles have different responses to global warming

2008-05-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Earth's climate changes in response to external forcing, including variations in its orbit around the Sun, changes in solar luminosity, volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. But what is of more interest - to date the poles have responded differently, with little change in the South.

In the North global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, reducing the amount of sea ice in the Arctic.

In recent years the extent of the sea ice has declined, and there is some evidence suggesting Arctic water may be ice-free in summer. Some estimates suggest an ice-free summer Arctic by 2040, or 2100, while a more recent study accompanied by unexpected increased melting in summer 2007 estimates as soon as 2013. However according to the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat the arctic polar ice cap would be completely gone by summer 2008.

On the other hand, most of the Antarctic's icy mass has so far proven largely impervious to climate change. However, Antarctica's periphery has been noticeably affected by global warming, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and in Pine Island Bay which together are contributing to a rise in sea levels.

The relatively stable condition can be explained by the ozone hole which was detected by scientists in 1973 and continues to grow to this day. It masks conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent other than the peninsula reaching toward South America. But the ozone hole recovers in coming years, and global warming will finally affect the South Pole also.

According to NASA, the most significant Antarctic melting in the past 30 years occurred in 2005, when a mass of ice comparable in size to California briefly melted and refroze; this may have resulted from temperatures rising to as high as 5 °C (41 °F).

A bridge made of ice based on the Leonardo da Vinci draft plans for a bridge over the Golden Horn in Istanbul was built in Antarctica in 2007. This project was a plea to the world to stop the causes of global warming in the hope that the " Leonardo Bridge " in Antarctica remains standing forever. (A similar ice bridge had been constructed in the garden of United Nations on 15 December 2007 for the purpose of demonstrating global warming. That bridge melted fully on Christmas Day 2007).

On February 28 through March 8, 2008, about 570 square kilometers of ice from the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Western Antarctica suddenly collapsed, putting the remaining 15,000 square kilometers of the ice shelf at risk. The ice is being held back by a "thread" of ice about 6 km wide.

Lake With 20% of Earth's Fresh Water Is Warming Faster Than Air

2008-04-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

The world's largest lake is warming faster than the atmosphere, challenging the idea that large bodies of water can withstand global warming, according to U.S. and Russian scientists.

Siberia's Lake Baikal, which holds 20 percent of the world's fresh water, has warmed by 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.16 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1946, said Marianne Moore, assistant professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Global temperatures have risen 0.76 degrees Celsius since industrialization, a UN panel on climate change said in March.

The lake holds more than 2,500 plant and animal species, including the world's only exclusively freshwater seal, and some could become extinct by continued warming, said Moore, co-author of a report on Lake Baikal to be published in May in the journal Global Change Biology. The study challenges the idea that thermal inertia of oceans, seas and large lakes would make them more resistant to climate change, Moore said.

``The warming that we're seeing in this lake is of more concern than that of any other lake because of the extraordinary biodiversity,'' Moore said in an interview. ``You could potentially lose the Baikal seal.''

Carbon dioxide, produced mainly from burning petroleum fuels, is the chief pollutant blamed for global warming. Rising global temperatures driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases is causing Arctic ice to melt and rain to decline in parts of Africa and the Mediterranean, according to the UN.

Family Project

Beginning in the 1940s, data on Lake Baikal was collected by Mikhail Kozhov, a professor at Irkutsk State University in Siberia. The research was carried on by his daughter and granddaughter, Lyubov Izmest'eva, a co-author of the journal article.

The family members took samples of the lake every 7 to 10 days since 1946, amassing a history that Moore analyzed using modern statistical techniques. The data revealed that the lake's average summer temperature has increased by 2.4 degrees, Moore said.

``My jaw just dropped to the floor when I hear this,'' Moore said. ``I was extremely surprised that the data set even existed.''

Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake and holds more water than all of the U.S. Great Lakes combined. It's also the oldest, dating back 25 million years, predating humans.

Warming has reduced the amount of time the lake is frozen in winter, threatening the seal and other species that depend on the ice to hunt. In 1996, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared Baikal a ``World Heritage Site'' because of its biological diversity.

``The predictions are that that lake is going to lose ice each year by another two weeks to two months in this century,'' Moore said. ``If that happens, that is going to hammer the bottom and the top of the food chain.''

Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say

2008-04-30T19:07:00.002-07:00

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

``If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,'' Keenlyside said in an interview. ``There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''

CO2 Surge

Carbon dioxide, produced mainly from burning fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, is the chief pollutant blamed for global warming. Since 1988, CO2 levels in the world's skies have increased by 9.8 percent, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists debate how much carbon can be pumped into the atmosphere before the effects of climate change, including droughts, floods and reduced fresh water supplies, become irreversible. For every 1 million molecules in the atmosphere, about 384 are carbon dioxide, according to NOAA.

Global temperatures can't rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) without risking the worst effects of climate change, according to the European Union. A scenario to stay below that limit suggests that CO2 levels must be stabilized between 350 and to 400 parts per million.

Long-term climate changes in the North Atlantic region affect ``hurricane activity in the Atlantic, and surface temperature and rainfall variations over North America, Europe and northern Africa,'' according to the study.

`Cold Direction'

``Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,'' Wood said. ``If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.''

The world will become at least 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, compared with the pre-industrial period, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in March.

``We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don't want it to be turned around in the wrong way,'' Keenlyside said. ``I hope it doesn't become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.''

Exxon Mobil Corp. spokesman Gantt Walton said managers of U.S. oil company ``take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action,'' in an interview today.

Hurricane Expert Says His Global Warming Views Haven't Affected University's Support

2008-04-30T19:07:00.001-07:00

A pioneering expert on hurricane forecasting is disputing media reports that Colorado State University is pulling its support of his work because of his controversial views on global warming.

William Gray, a professor emeritus at Colorado State, is a skeptic of man-made global warming and once said that pro-global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children." An article Monday by the Houston Chronicle that was cited by FOX News claimed that Gray's views had prompted the university to stop promoting his renowned annual North Atlantic hurricane forecasts.

The Chronicle quoted a memo Gray sent the university last year accusing it of trying to stifle his views on global warming, but Gray issued a statement Tuesday saying that his status at the university hadn't changed.

"We're still putting the forecast out," he said. "CSU continues to support me. I'm in the same office I've been for 41 years now and I hope to stay here some more years and keep working as I always have."

Sandra Woods, dean of the university's College of Engineering, said the memo Gray sent last year was based on misinformation, and the misunderstanding has been corrected.

"We are all on the same page and CSU continues to offer full support of his forecast," Woods said in a written statement. "His funding has not been pulled."

Gray initially declined to be interviewed, according to the Chronicle, but after the story was published Gray told the newspaper that since last year the university had "backtracked" on its position toward him.

In the fall of 2005, Gray passed lead authorship of the hurricane forecasts to his former student Philip Klotzbach, but he continues to head the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU.

Using chemicals to cut global warming may damage ozone layer

2008-04-30T19:04:00.000-07:00

Washington: The rule of unintended consequences threatens to strike again. Some researchers have suggested that injecting sulphur compounds into the atmosphere might help ease global warming by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight.

After all, they reason, when volcanoes spew lots of sulphur, months or more of cooling often follows.

But a new study warns that injecting enough sulphur to reduce warming would wipe out the Arctic ozone layer and delay recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by as much as 70 years.

"Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects," said Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions," said Tilmes, lead author of a paper appearing in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

And while one study worries that fixing climate will destroy ozone, another raises the possibility that recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica will worsen warming in that region.

A full recovery of the ozone hole could modify climate in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming, scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA report in a paper scheduled for Geophysical Research Letters.

Although temperatures have been rising worldwide, there has been cooling in the interior of Antarctica in summer, which researchers attribute to the depletion of ozone overhead.

"If the successful control of ozone-depleting substances allows for a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica, we may finally see the interior of Antarctica begin to warm with the rest of the world," said Judith Perlwitz of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

The authors used a NASA supercomputer to model interactions between the climate and stratospheric ozone chemistry. A return to pre-1969 ozone levels would mean atmospheric circulation patterns now shielding the Antarctic interior from warmer air to the north will begin to break down during the summer, they concluded.

The idea of reversing global warming by injecting sulphates into the air was suggested by eruptions such as the 1991 blast by Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which produced a brief cooling.

The massive 1815 eruption of Tambora in what is now Indonesia produced such a strong cooling that 1816 became known as the "year without a summer" in New England, where snow fell in every month of the year.

For more news, analysis | For more Science and Medicine news

But Tilmes knew that volcanic eruptions also temporarily thin the ozone layer, which protects people, plants and animals from the most dangerous ultraviolet rays from the sun.

So she and colleagues calculated the effect of suggested sulfate injections and concluded that the result, over the next few decades, would be to destroy between one-fourth to three-fourths of the ozone layer above the Arctic. This would affect a large part of the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation patterns.

The sulphates would also delay the expected recovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic by about 30 to 70 years, or until at least the last decade of this century, they said.

The research was supported by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and NASA.

The study comes just a day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, the rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is accelerating.

Concern has grown in recent years about such gases, with most atmospheric scientists concerned that the accumulation is causing increases in the earth's temperature, potentially disrupting climate and changing patterns of rainfall, drought and other storms.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has worked to detail the scientific bases of this problem and the Kyoto agreement sought to encourage countries to take steps to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Some countries, particularly in Europe, have taken steps to reduce emissions.

But carbon dioxide emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas have continued to increase. Since 2000, annual increases of two parts per million or more have been common, compared with 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s and less than one ppm per year during the 1960s, NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory said. Last year the increase was 2.4 parts per million.

Meanwhile, in a separate paper in Science, researchers said human activities are at least partly responsible for the Arctic having become a wetter place over the last half century.

Seung-Ki Min of Environment Canada, and colleagues, studied rain and snowfall patterns in the arctic and the factors affecting them.

They concluded that human-induced greenhouse gases have contributed to the increased precipitation rates observed in the Arctic region over the past 60 years.

They warned that this "Arctic moistening" could occur more quickly than current climate simulations indicate.

Their work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Canadian International Polar Year Program.

Smoking bans stoke global warming?

2008-04-28T18:34:00.002-07:00

N. Virani stands in his outdoor bar and restaurant in central Oslo — his heating bills have jumped by $100,000 a year after Norway banned smoking indoorsFewer cigarettes get lit indoors in bars and restaurants because of smoking bans from California to Ireland but something else is going up in smoke from a sidewalk in central Oslo – about $100,000 a year in extra outdoor heating bills.

The heated pavement, installed at a cost of about $400,000, may be the most extreme example of an environmental side-effect of smoking bans: rocketing power use.

“It’s warm out here even when it’s snowing and minus 10 (14 Fahrenheit) on the worst winter day,” said N. Virani, managing director of the Mona Lisa restaurant, which includes an outdoor section named after former health Minister Dagfinn Hoybraten who introduced the smoking ban in 2004.

Virani said he believed it was the only heated sidewalk in Scandinavia. And it’s true — today at a chilly 10 Celsius (50F) outdoors it felt like sitting at a warm outdoor cafe by the Mediterranean.

The strip of heated paving outdoors, and heaters in the roof, represent about 180,000 watts of electricity. Total electricity bills for the large business have almost doubled to 1.2 million crowns ($240,000) a year, Virani said.

The Mona Lisa and Hoybraten outdoor restaurant and bar in central Oslo The restaurant had to close down an indoor ”cigar and cognac bar” with turnover plunging after the law entered into force. “Overall, turnover has recovered,” Virani said, even accounting for the extra bills.

In Norway almost all electricity comes from hydropower so the extra use is not doing much to stoke global warming, largely blamed on use of fossil fuels.

But think of all the thousands of extra gas and electricity heaters outdoors spurred by the smoking bans around the world…

I’m a big fan of the smoking bans overall as a way of protecting workers’ health and helping some people to kick the habit. But what can people like Mr. Virani do about the side-effect of soaring power use that in many countries is strengthening what U.S. President George W. Bush once called an ”addiction to oil”?

Global Warming, the carbon tax and the coming carbon tariff

2008-04-28T18:34:00.001-07:00

British Columbia has been a leader in establishing climate-change policy, particularly with the creation of the carbon tax. It's a revenue neutral model to try and redistribute a tax on carbon to other parts of the economy and taxpayer, so that there's no net revenue game to government.

But B.C. is having a tougher time implementing the tough, greenhouse gas targets for the economy, as this column shows. Premier Gordon Campbell says that the targets won't likely get put in place until late 2009.

Meanwhile, however, the United States is getting ready for some major moves on the file. A made-in-the-USA carbon-trading system is likely coming and there's probably going to be the creation of what many are calling a carbon tariff. Here's my take on it. It's a likely scenario because Hilary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama have all signaled support for a move to carbon controls in the next administration.

Hurricane forecaster's dispute with school focuses on global warming debate

2008-04-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

By pioneering the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting and teaching 70 graduate students who now populate the National Hurricane Center and other research outposts, William Gray turned a city far from the stormy seas into a hurricane research mecca.

But now the institution in Fort Collins, Colo., where he has worked for nearly half a century, has told Gray it may end its support of his seasonal forecasting.

As he enters his 25th year of predicting hurricane season activity, Colorado State University officials say handling media inquiries related to Gray's forecasting requires too much time and detracts from efforts to promote other professors' work.

But Gray, a highly visible and sometimes acerbic skeptic of climate change, says that's a "flimsy excuse" for the real motivation — a desire to push him aside because of his global warming criticism.

Among other comments, Gray has said global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children."

Now an emeritus professor, Gray declined to comment on the university's possible termination of promotional support.

But a memo he wrote last year, after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, reveals his views:

"This is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign (sic) in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms," Gray wrote to Dick Johnson, head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and others.

The university may have moderated its stance since last year. Officials said late last week that they intend to support the release of Gray's forecasts as long as they continue to be co-authored by Phil Klotzbach, a former student of Gray's who earned his doctorate last summer, and as long as Klotzbach remains at CSU.

When Klotzbach leaves, he will either produce the seasonal forecasts at his new position, or end them altogether.

Not only does this internal dispute reveal a bit of acrimony at the end of Gray's long career at CSU; it highlights the politically charged atmosphere that surrounds global warming in the United States.

"Bill Gray has come under a lot of fire for his views," said Channel 11 meteorologist Neil Frank, a former director of the National Hurricane Center and a friend of Gray's. "If, indeed, this is happening, it would be really sad that Colorado State is trying to rein in Bill Gray."

CSU officials insist that is not the case.

The dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, said she spoke with Gray about terminating media support for his forecasts solely because of the strain it placed on the college's sole media staffer.

"It really has nothing to do with his stand on global warming," said the dean, Sandra Woods. "He's a great faculty member. He's an institution at CSU."

According to Woods, Gray's forecasts require about 10 percent of the time a media support staff member, Emily Wilmsen, has available for the College of Engineering and its 104 faculty members.

A professor of public relations at Boston University, Donald Wright, questioned why the university would want to pull back its support for Gray now, after he has published his forecasts for a quarter-century.

"It's seems peculiar that this is happening now," Wright said. "Given the national reputation that these reports have, you would think the university would want to continue to promote these forecasts."

Gray, he said, seems to deliver a lot of publicity bang for the buck. The seasonal forecasts are printed in newspapers around the country and splashed across the World Wide Web.

There also seems to be little question that prominent climate scientists have complained to CSU about Gray's vocal skepticism. The head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Dick Johnson, said he has received many comments during recent years about Gray — some supportive, and some not.

The complaints have come as Gray became increasingly involved in the global warming debate. His comments toward adversaries often are biting and adversarial.

In 2005, when Georgia Tech scientist Peter Webster co-authored a paper suggesting global warming had caused a spike in major hurricanes, Gray labeled him and others "medicine men" who were misleading the public.

Webster, in an e-mail from Bangladesh, where is working on a flood prediction project, acknowledged that he complained to Johnson at CSU.

"My only conversation with Dick Johnson, which followed a rather nasty series of jabs from Gray, suggested that Bill should be persuaded to lay off the personal and stay scientific," Webster wrote.

Gray also has been highly critical of a former student, Greg Holland, who is among the most visible U.S. scientists arguing about the dangers posed by global warming.

Gray's comments about Holland include referring to him as a member of a "Gang of Five" that is interested in using scare tactics to increase research funding.

The comment was a reference to the Gang of Four, which terrorized China in the 1960s and '70s while purging the Communist Party of moderates and intellectuals.

"I have registered concern in several quarters, including CSU, on the manner in which he has moved away from scientific debate and into personal attacks on the integrity and motives of myself and my colleagues," Holland said.

Although he ceded lead authorship of the forecasts to Klotzbach in 2006, Gray has remained the headliner in storm prognostication. He annually is among the most popular draws at the National Hurricane Conference.

In recent years, as he has increasingly made sharp public comments about global warming, Gray quickly became one of the most prominent skeptics because of his long background in atmospheric sciences.

His views on the climate — he says Earth is warming naturally and soon will begin cooling — have been applauded by some scientists, particularly meteorologists such as Frank. But they are out of step with mainstream climate science.

The most recent report by an international group of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, concluded that there was 90 percent certainty that human activity had caused recent warming of the planet.

Yet at U.S. universities, threats to the rights of scientists who hold minority viewpoints are generally frowned upon.

A prominent legal scholar, Stanley Fish of Florida International University, said university public relations offices should not pick and choose where resources go, based upon the content of a professor's work.

"If it can in any way be established that (Gray's) global warming views were the basis of this action, then it is an improper action," Fish said.

In his memo, Gray clearly indicates that he believes his academic freedom is imperiled:

"For the good of all of us in the Department, the College and at CSU, please believe me when I say this is not a direction any of you want to go," he wrote. "Our department and college are strong enough to be able to tolerate a dissenting voice on the global warming question."

Woods, Gray's dean, insisted that dissent on global warming is welcomed at CSU.

"He's not the only faculty member in the world who questions global warming," Woods said. "When Bill talks about some of the data, he can make some very good points."

Global warming: What can we do?

2008-04-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

Writing about global warming has changed a lot in the past few years. This is not because the science itself has changed – but because political reaction to it has.

It seems that we have, at long last, moved beyond denial and inertia. The time for books that explain what global warming is and why it matters has come and gone. The need now is for answers to the one question that really mattered all along: What do we do about it?

Two current books examine the evidence and come up with a series of similar proposals. Each is coauthored by a prominent scientist and an accomplished science journalist and both make worthy additions to global-warming literature. But they go about it in very different ways.

Some environmental activists may be tempted to stop and savor for a moment the fact that the Bush administration and its climate obstructionists will soon be gone. But make it a brief moment, warn Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King, authors of The Hot Topic: What We Can Do About Global Warming. The long moment we've already taken between the first realization that burning fossil fuels would cause dangerous warming and our present state of modest concern have cost us.

Thanks to political foot-dragging and ever-increasing carbon emissions, they say, the best we can hope for now is to avert worst-case scenarios.

Sir David, a chemist at Cambridge University and chief science adviser to the British government, is famous for his 2004 statement that climate change is "the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism." So perhaps it's not surprising that this book conveys a sense of urgency. The authors' tone is chummy, but their focus is clearly on facts, analysis, and implications.

Strategies for change

They start with a capsule review of climate-change science. Their primary focus, however, is on technological and political strategies for controlling emissions and adapting to inevitable change. The proposed solutions are numerous and not terribly new. But they are pragmatic, well described, and convincing.

If "Hot Topic" is a concise guide to the world of climate change, then Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat – And How to Counter It is a slow and gentle travelogue. Written by journalist Robert Kunzig and renowned Columbia University climate scientist Wallace Broecker, "Fixing Climate" is as much Broecker's scientific memoir as it is a call to action. (The biographical material isn't necessary to understanding global warming, but it's a wonderful look at a life in science nonetheless.)

The authors wend their way through a good deal of the history of climate-science research – a fair amount of it over the past five decades conducted by Broecker or his close associates – in a measured, graceful manner.

But in step with the intensification of global warming itself, the pace and urgency of "Fixing Climate" increases significantly toward the end.

In a chapter provocatively entitled "Green Is Not Enough," Broecker and Kunzig make a convincing case that all the energy efficiency and conservation in the world, all the biofuels and carbon trading and climate treaties we can come up with, are not going to be enough to avoid very serious climate-change impacts.

"If we are to avoid dangerously warming the planet," Broecker and Kunzig write, "we need to figure out how to build the equivalent of a sewage system for carbon dioxide."

Kunzig and Broecker spend their last several chapters discussing carbon sequestration – technology for removing CO2 from smokestacks, and from the atmosphere itself, and storing it out of harm's way, underground or in the deep sea.

No retreat from responsibility

However, "the most fundamental lesson to be drawn from the whole [global warming] episode, write Broecker and Kunzig, "is that we can no longer expect Mother Earth to take care of us – the planet is ours to run, and we can't retreat from our responsibility to run it wisely."

The precise mix of approaches used might differ somewhat between the two writing teams. But taken together, these two books move us from the debate as to whether we should take real action on global warming to a clear blueprint for doing so.

Global warming slows weed invasion

2008-04-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

Tasmanian scientists have discovered a possible benefit to global warming.

In 50 years, it is expected our climate will be two degrees warmer with elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

The School of Plant Science at the University of Tasmania has simulated those conditions so they can see how global warming will affect important biosystems.

The seven-year study by the University of Tasmania has found climate change can slow the invasion of some types of weeds threatening native grasslands.

Dr Mark Hovenden from the School of Plant Science says it has been predicted that increasing levels of carbon dioxide will promote the growth of weeds.

But he says higher temperatures could change that.

"When you add warming to an experiment as well, the warming actually knocks the weeds out very strongly," he said.

"The type of weeds that we're talking about are the big problem weeds for grasslands across the country and these are the introduced flat weeds like dandelions and plantagos."

But it is not all good news.

A carbon dioxide-rich environment increases productivity, but only if there is substantial summer rain, and predictions point towards worsening summer droughts.

"It's highly unlikely that carbon dioxide's goinf to be the panacea that people see it," says Dr Hovenden.

Some of the findings are being applied to dairy pastures in Tasmania's north.

Mark Smith from DairyTas says adapting to climate change is a high priority for the industry.

"The scientific evidence is fairly clear, there are going to be some impacts through temperature and rainfall changes in the next 20 to 30 years," he said.

But Mr Smith says the industry is remaining optomistic.

"There's no panic in this, from a dairy industry point of view, but it's making sure that we're at the forefront with the scientists, knowing what the likely impacts are going to be," he said.

The research team is seeking funding to continue its studies for another five years.

Global Warming Consensus

2008-04-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Ronald Bailey points to an interesting survey by the Statistical Assesment Service (STATS) on global warming. It is a survey of the views of climate scientists. Here are some of the findings:

Ninety-seven percent of the climate scientists surveyed believe “global average temperatures have increased” during the past century.
Eighty-four percent say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; the rest are unsure.
A slight majority (54%) believe the warming measured over the last 100 years is not “within the range of natural temperature fluctuation.”
A slight majority (56%) see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius or more during the next 50 to 100 years.
Based on current trends, 41% of scientists believe global climate change will pose a very great danger to the earth in the next 50 to 100 years, compared to 13% who see relatively little danger. Another 44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous.
Seventy percent see climate change as very difficult to manage over the next 50 to 100 years, compared to only 5% who see it as not very difficult to manage. Another 23% see moderate difficulty in managing these changes.

These findings fit with my view of the global warming debate. Yes, there has been warming. Yes, it does appear that the rise is outside the normal range of variability assuming just nature is at work. Yes, that last part means mankind has had an impact. I’m also glad to see the inclusion of some uncertainty at to the degree to how much warming there will be. And what catches my interest is that 70% of the scientists see managing global temps as being a great difficulty.

Case in point, I was at a meeting where there was discussion of GHG mitigation measures in California and the interesting tidbit that caught my attention was that even with a pure market approach to limiting GHGs (e.g. a cap-&-trade program) electricity rates would be expected to rise by 40% and that is the low end scenario–i.e. all other scenarios are higher.

Now California is kind of weird when it comes to electricity. We have some of the highest rates, and residential users are some of the most efficient users as well. So such an increase wouldn’t be that bad since your typical California resident does not use electricity like Al Gore. Still if your average bill is $80 seeing it jump up to $112 in real terms is not a good thing. And think about the impact of the economy as a whole. Electricity is like oil in that it is used pervasively throughout the economy. Every manufacturing, production and commercial enterprise uses electricity. As such an increase in electricity prices would be felt throughout the entire economy.

It is all well and good to go see An Inconvenient Truth and feel good about yourself, but paying an extra $350-$400 a year for electricity, as well as higher prices for all other goods in addition….well it might not seem like such an important issue anymore. And it isn’t just electricity as well. Serious mitigation efforts might call for say an additional $2/gallon tax on gasoline and natural gas as well. Now driving your car, heating your home and all other goods will also be more expensive (and it is a double or triple hit for things like food, which are shipped via truck, rely on natural gas for fertilizers, and electricity is used in packing plant, stores, and refrigerators). I think that 23% who see the problem as only moderately difficult as being seriously out of touch. And that 5%…well they are just crazy.

Global Warming Holiday

2008-04-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Polls are cruel. Voters consistently say they want to stop global warming. They also say consistently that energy prices, especially for gasoline, are too high. So what are politicians supposed to do?

The answer, apparently, is to pretend the contradiction doesn't exist. The latest episode in this long-running bipartisan ruse aired last week, when John McCain proposed a "gas tax holiday" that would suspend federal levies between Memorial Day and Labor Day. "Americans need relief right now from high gas prices," a press release put it, and the holiday will "act immediately to reduce the pain." His Arizona colleague, Jon Kyl, promptly introduced it as Senate legislation.

The 18.4 cent tax per gallon of gas (24.4 cents for diesel) funds interstate highway repairs and other transit needs, though general revenue would offset losses from the moratorium. But even assuming such savings are passed on to consumers, it won't offer much help at the pump.

Most of the price of gasoline is determined by the global price of crude oil, which is spiking now due to a combination of the weak dollar and commodity speculation. The source of the problem isn't the tax. Domestic demand for gas always goes up with summer driving, but the McCain holiday doesn't affect production, and anyway, only applies over the short term.

More notably, it makes a hash out of the climate-change policies that the candidate purports to favor. In 2003, Mr. McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced the first Senate bill to mandate greenhouse-gas reductions through cap and trade. "There is no middle ground," Mr. McCain said in 2005. "You've got to have an immediate effort to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Anything less than that is a fig leaf and a joke."

As honest environmentalists admit, any effective policy to reduce emissions must increase the price of carbon, encouraging cuts in consumption and creating an incentive for competing energy sources. This is justified as a necessary sacrifice to avert "dire consequences . . . if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue," as Mr. McCain said last year.

But as the gas-tax moratorium gambit shows, such purity is dumped as soon as voters start complaining about high prices. Not that the Republican is alone: Hillary Clinton, slipping into her new role as tribune of the working class, has endorsed the holiday, while Barack Obama is opposed because he believes a windfall profits tax on oil companies would provide more relief.

The evasions continue down the line. It is easy for everyone to say the U.S. needs a "Manhattan Project" for alternative energy because the phrase is meaningless. Most politicians favor a cap-and-trade regulatory policy, instead of a carbon tax, because it would shift higher emissions costs onto businesses, which would pass them on to consumers indirectly. Yet the most popular Senate bill that would create a cap-and-trade program applies only to utilities and industry. It excludes automobiles, though about one-third of annual U.S. carbon emissions come from cars and trucks.

Such contradictions are easy to paper over now, because big climate change legislation is still a ways off in Congress. But it's becoming clearer all the time that whatever emerges will be so shot through with loopholes and exemptions that its effect on carbon emissions will be minimal, while still imposing economy-wide distortions.

No one could get elected, or for that matter govern, on a platform that called explicitly for increased energy prices. So we get contradictions like a gas tax moratorium married to cap-and-trade carbon limits. To quote Mr. McCain, it's "a joke."

Warming debate doesn't own the day

2008-04-25T14:35:00.001-07:00

The Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, in an editorial: "Much of the debate this Earth Day centers on whether global warming is real or not. Many scientists … maintain that man is causing the atmosphere to heat up, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels — coal for power plants and gasoline in cars and trucks. … Other scientists … say the earth is merely going through a normal cycle. …

(Photo - The Chippewa (Wis.) Herald, AP
Can they do it? Students in Chippewa Falls, Wis., turn cans into sculptures as part of Earth Day festivities / Mark Gunderman, )

... Eventually, the cycle will shift to one of global cooling. While Earth Day is as good a time as any to continue the global warming debate, fact is, you don't have to subscribe to the global warming theory in order to take steps to preserve the environment. The idea that what can be good for the air we breathe and the water we drink is also good for our pocketbook is a sound one. … Using energy efficient electrical appliances reduces … the monthly electric bill. … Eventual use of alternative and renewable sources of energy (will) reduce dependence on foreign oil and can boost the U.S. economy."

Orlando Sentinel, in an editorial: "How much impact can one American household have by switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs when China is bringing two coal-fired electric plants on line every week? It's the age-old question posed in the face of so many seemingly impossible situations, whether it is in fighting poverty, combating homelessness … or even just voting: What can one person do? … If being a responsible steward of the earth is the right thing to do, it is worth doing for its own sake. There isn't a religion or major philosophy on the planet that teaches right action is required only if the outcome can be known in advance."

Nancy Spence, Colorado state senator, for The Denver Post : "Now that climate change is on magazine covers and being debated by presidential candidates, the question is what kind of policy both Republicans and Democrats will support. It will have to be a policy that actually cuts the carbon pollution that is believed to contribute to climate change and creates new opportunities for workers and businesses. … Bipartisan leaders are coming forward to cut pollution that may contribute to global warming. … America's Climate Security Act, which would create a national cap-and-trade system (on greenhouse emissions) … is something Republicans and Democrats alike can support on Earth Day and throughout the years ahead."

The Oregonian, in an editorial: "Greenwashing, like its cousin whitewashing, is a form of deception. … 2008 … may be remembered as the election cycle that turned greenwashing into a campaign survival strategy. Suddenly, as never before, candidates of all political stripes are uttering words such as 'hybrids,' 'renewable.' … This rhetoric, much of it insincere, reflects a powerful shift. … Growing numbers of Americans, and not just on the political left, are increasingly concerned about global warming. … Thus the challenge for us … lies in distinguishing the sincerely green candidates from the … fakes. Global warming isn't the only crushing issue, of course, but it's a big one, requiring voters to weigh some tough questions."

Bill Maher, for The Huffington Post: "New Rule: From now on, Earth Day really must be a year-round thing. And in honor of this Earth Day, starting Monday supermarket clerks must stop putting the big bottle of detergent with a handle on it in a plastic bag. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but you see that handle you just lifted the detergent with? I can use that same handle to carry the detergent to my car. And stop putting my liquor in a smaller paper sack before you put it in the big paper sack with my other stuff. What, are you afraid my groceries will think less of me if they see I've been drinking? Trust me, the broccoli doesn't care. … Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children's children's children's children will never know you, but they'll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won't be trees."

A cool idea to warm to

2008-04-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

ABOUT the beginning of 2007, maintaining a sceptical stance on human-induced global warming became a lonely, uphill battle in Australia.

The notion that the science was settled had gathered broad popular support and was making inroads in unexpected quarters.

Industrialists and financiers with no science qualifications to speak of began to pose as prophets. Otherwise quite rational people decided there were so many true believers that somehow they must be right. Even Paddy McGuinness conceded, in a Quadrant editorial, that on balance the anthropogenic greenhouse gas hypothesis seemed likelier than not.

What a difference the intervening 15 months has made. In recent weeks, articles by NASA's Roy Spencer and Bjorn Lomborg and an interview with the Institute of Public Affairs' Jennifer Marohasy have undermined that confident Anglosphere consensus. On Amazon.com's bestseller list this week, the three top books on climate are by sceptics: Spencer, Lomborg and Fred Singer.

Archbishop of Sydney George Pell, a shrewd cleric who knows a dodgy millennial cult when he sees one, has persisted in his long-held critique despite the climate change alarmism of his brother bishops.

Even Don Aitkin, former vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, whom I'd previously been tempted to write off as a slave to political correctness, outed himself the other day as a thoroughgoing sceptic.

The latest countercultural contribution came in The Australian on Wednesday. Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He makes the standard argument that the average temperature on earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, with a new twist.

As of last year, the global temperature is falling precipitously. All four of the agencies that track global temperatures (Hadley, NASA Goddard, the Christy group and Remote Sensing Systems) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007.

Chapman comments: "This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850."

A little ice age would be "much more harmful than anything warming may do", but still benign by comparison with the severe glaciation that for the past several million years has almost always blighted theplanet.

The Holocene, the warm interglacial period we've been enjoying through the past 11,000 years, has lasted longer than normal and is due to come to an end. When it does, glaciation can occur quite quickly. For most of Europe and North America to be buried under a layer of ice, eventually growing to a thickness of about 1.5km, the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in as little as 20 years.

Chapman says: "The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027. By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining. Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees."

Chapman canvases strategies that may just conceivably prevent or at least delay the transition to severe glaciation. One involves a vast bulldozing program to dirty and darken the snowfields in Canada and Siberia, "in the hope of reducing reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun. We may also be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits".

He concludes: "All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead. It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake."

The 10-year plateau in global temperatures since 1998 has already sunk the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas will lead to catastrophic global warming. To minds open to the evidence, it has been a collapsing paradigm for quite some time.

But Chapman's argument about last year's 0.7C fall being "the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record" ups the stakes considerably.

It replaces an irrational panic in the public imagination with a countervailing and more plausible cause for concern. It also raises, more pointedly than before, a fascinating question: since there are painful truths with profound implications for public policy to be confronted, how will the political class manage the necessary climb-down?

In Australia, Rudd Labor's political legitimacy is inextricably linked to its stance on climate change. If the Prime Minister wants a second term, he'll probably have to start "nuancing his position", as the spin doctors say, and soon.

A variation on J.M. Keynes's line - "when the facts change, I change my mind" - admitting that the science is far from settled and awaiting further advice, would buy him time without necessarily damaging his credibility.

Taking an early stand in enlightening public opinion would be a more impressive act of leadership. While obviously not without risk and downside, it would make a virtue out of impending necessity and establish him, in Charles de Gaulle's phrase, as a serious man.

I don't think he's got it in him. But we can at least expect that some of the more ruinously expensive policies related to global warming will be notionally deferred and quietly shelved. Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr will be allowed to invest in high-profile nonsense such as funding "the green car".

But the coal industry is unlikely to be closed down or put into a holding pattern. Nor are new local coal-fired power stations going to be prohibited until the technology is developed to capture and sequester carbon.

Since the greater part of the funds for the research underpinning that technology is expected to come from the private sector - and there's a limit to what government can exact by administrative fiat - as the debate becomes calmer and more evidence-based, business will be increasingly reluctant to outlay money on a phantom problem.

Budgetary constraints and rampant inflation provide governments with plenty of excuses for doing as little as possible until a new and better informed consensus emerges on climate.

Ross Garnaut could doubtless be asked to extend his carbon trading inquiry for the life of the parliament and to make an interim report in 12 months on the state the science. In doing so, he could fulfil the educative functions of a royal commission and at the same time give himself and the Government a dignified way out of an impasse.

Whatever happens in the realm of domestic spin doctoring, economic realities in the developing world were always going to defeat the global warming zealots.

Before the election, Kevin Rudd had to concede that we would not adopt climate policies that were contrary to Australian interests unless India and China, emitters on a vastly larger scale, followed suit.

However, it has long been obvious that neither country was prepared to consign vast parts of their population to protracted poverty and to embrace low-growth policies on the basis of tendentious science and alarmist computer projections. Even if their governments were convinced that global warming was a problem - and they clearly aren't - it's doubtful they could sell the self-denying ordinances we're asking from them to their own people.

A likelier scenario would be full-page ads in our broadsheets and catchy local television campaigns paid for by the Indian and Chinese coal, steel and energy industries that buy our raw materials. Their theme would surely be that if many of the West's leading scientific authorities no longer subscribed to catastrophic global warming, why on earth should anyone else.