Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

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CBS Chicago affiliate Chief Meteorologist Steve Baskerville expressed skepticism that there is a "consensus" about mankind's role in global warming. "What is the truth about global warming? As you have seen in this program, it depends on who you talk to. As decision makers ponder our future as it relates to climate change, we need to keep asking questions. Because an informed public should have a role in determining the ultimate truth about global warming," the Emmy Award winning Baskerville concluded in an April 28, 2007 TV special he hosted called "The Truth about Global Warming." Baskerville's climate TV special clearly portrayed the science as not settled on man's role in climate change as he featured interviews with prominent skeptics, including MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen and environmental economist Dennis Avery, co-author of the 2006 book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years. (LINK)

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Atmospheric scientist and hurricane expert Dr. Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, dismissed fears of catastrophic man-made global warming. "It's a hoax," Frank told the Washington Post on May 28, 2006 regarding doomsday climate scenarios. According to the article, "[Frank] says cutting carbon emissions would wind up hurting poor people. I ask if he thinks more CO2 in the air would be a good thing. ‘Exactly! Maybe we're living in a carbon dioxide-starved world. We don't know.'" Frank also lamented that the UN's IPCC does not reach out to many skeptics of global warming like himself. Frank has published a variety of professional papers on tropical meteorology and served the chairman of the International Hurricane Committee. (LINK)

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Statistician Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and professor at the Copenhagen Business School, questioned former Vice President Al Gore's scientific presentations. "But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones," Lomborg co-wrote in a January 21, 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Will Al Gore Melt?" Lomborg, who proclaimed he "has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore's tune," accused Gore of "chicken[ing]" out of a debate. "But if we are to follow Mr. Gore's suggestions of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial," Lomborg wrote. "In the year 2100, Mr. Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change. Clearly we need to ask hard questions. Is Mr. Gore's world a worthwhile sacrifice? But it seems that critical questions are out of the question," he continued. "It would have been great to ask [Gore] why he only talks about a sea-level rise of 20 feet. In his movie he shows scary sequences of 20-feet flooding Florida, San Francisco, New York, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing and Shanghai. But were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The U.N. climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century. Moreover, sea levels actually climbed that much over the past 150 years. Does Mr. Gore find it balanced to exaggerate the best scientific knowledge available by a factor of 20?" Lomborg wrote. "[Gore] considers Antarctica the canary in the mine, but again doesn't tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century. Similarly, Mr. Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, but don't mention that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing. Shouldn't we hear those facts?" Lomborg added. (LINK) Lomborg organized some of the world's top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus which ranked the world's most pressing problems. The Copenhagen Consensus placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet's priorities, behind combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty. (LINK)

ican, do you want to tell us why you think ENSO is dependent on SI when no one else has found such a relationship--that what is apparent indeed is that the periodicity of el Nino and la Nina clearly occur without any relationship to where in the solar cycle we are, which is in fact why NASA says they have more of an effect on annual variation in global temp, because the changes in annual temp correlate with elNino/laNina but not with SI.

And yes, indeed, NASA is right and you are wrong. Temp changes due to SI cycle variation are in fact no more than 0.1 degree C, less than the variation due to weather alone. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512120523.htm

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

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Polar bear expert Dennis Compayre, formerly of the conservation group Polar Bears International, has studied the bears for almost 30 years in their natural habitat and is working on a new UK documentary about the bears. Compayre disputed fears of a potential global warming threat to polar bears. A December 7, 2007 article in the UK Daily Mail reported, "Dennis Compayre raises bushy grey eyebrows as he listens to the environmentalists predict the polar bear's demise. ‘They (environmentalists) say the numbers are down from 1,200 to around 900, but I think I know as much about polar bears as anyone, and I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid.'" According to the article, Compayre, who was born and raised in the Arctic town, "is among those who eye the new ‘experts' in town with deep suspicion. Compayre added, ‘Churchill [in Northern Canada] is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears. They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears' best interests at heart. The bear industry in Churchill is big bucks, and what better way to keep people coming than to tell them they'd better hurry to see the disappearing bears.'" The article also noted, "To some Churchill residents, who base their opinions on personal experience rather than fancy charts and computer models, [the polar bear's demise] is so much nonsense put about by scaremongers for their own dubious ends." (LINK

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David Dilley, founder of Global Weather Oscillations, Inc., rejects the idea of man-made global warming. Dilley's research found that the current global warming episode is a "Natural Recurring Cycle." "Dilley demonstrated that the current global warming episode is a ‘Natural Recurring Cycle,' and that this current cycle will begin to diminish as early as 2015, and no later than 2040," according to an April 6, 2007 press release. "Dilley's 15-years of ongoing climate research have uncovered a very powerful external forcing mechanism that causes shifts in regional weather cycles, and the world's climate. This forcing mechanism is called the ‘Primary Forcing Trigger Mechanism,' or PFM. The PFM is a cyclical forcing mechanism that can be forecast years in advance, or even traced back through the earth's climate history. The major influence of the PFM on the earth's climate is that it causes the world's dominating regional high-pressure systems to shift position, or become displaced from their normal seasonal position," noted the press release on the website of Global Weather Oscillations. "Dilley states that the current global warming is without a doubt the result of a known external "natural" forcing cycle. According to Dilley, most government officials, climatologists and meteorologists are looking only at the increase in temperatures and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels over the past 50 to 100 years. But when you take into account nearly 40 other global warming episodes over the past 5 thousand years, it becomes very apparent that CO2 levels cannot be the forcing mechanism that has caused global warming," the press release stated. (LINK)

Oh no, stupid stupid stupid. Watch energy bills rise. Great economy stimulation. I am beginning to think Obama wants to run the economy into the ground, on purpose.

I am beginning to think Obama wants to run the economy into the ground, on purpose.

So you think the free market can do it better then the govt can?

I was repsonding to this post...Post: # 3,627,675

But for Hobart glaciologist Ian Allison - with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre - the new findings settle the matter.

"This work suggests that the ice flow is accelerating," Dr Allison said.

"It's worrying because ... the changes are happening due to processes we don't understand."

Dr Allison said the findings confirmed previous work, much by Dr Rignot and another UCI scientist Isabella Velicogna.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
APRIL 17, 2009
Alternative Fuel Folly
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Every so often Washington throws out a controversy that brilliantly illustrates everything wrong with Washington. Consider the brewing outrage over "black liquor."



Barbara KelleyThis is the tale of how a supposedly innocuous federal subsidy to encourage "alternative energy" has, in a few short years, ballooned into a huge taxpayer liability and a potential trade dispute, even as it has distorted markets and led to greater fossil-fuel use. Think of it as a harbinger of the unintended consequences that will accompany the Obama energy revolution.

Back in 2005, Congress passed a highway bill. In its wisdom, it created a subsidy that gave some entities a 50-cents-a-gallon tax credit for blending "alternative" fuels with traditional fossil fuels. The law restricted which businesses could apply and limited the credit to use of fuel in motor vehicles.

Not long after, some members of Congress got to wondering if they couldn't tweak this credit in a way that would benefit specific home-state industries. In 2007, Congress expanded the types of alternative fuels that counted for the credit, while also allowing "non-mobile" entities to apply. This meant that Alaskan fish-processing facilities, for instance, which run their boilers off fish oil, might now also claim the credit.

What Congress apparently didn't consider was every other industry that might qualify. Turns out the paper industry has long used something called the "kraft" process to make paper. One byproduct is a sludge called "black liquor," which the industry has used for decades to fuel its plants. Black liquor is cost-effective, makes plants nearly self-sufficient, and, most importantly (at least for this story), definitely falls under Congress's definition of an "alternative fuel."

All of which has allowed the paper industry to start collecting giant federal payments for doing nothing more than what it has done for decades. And in fairness, why not? If Congress is going to lard up the tax code with thousands of complex provisions designed to "encourage" behavior, it shouldn't be surprised when those already practicing said behavior line up for their reward, too.

In March, International Paper announced it had received $71 million from the feds for a one-month period last fall. The company is on track to claim as much as $1 billion in 2009. Verso took in nearly $30 million from the operation of just one mill in one quarter of last year. Other giants are gearing up to realize their own windfalls. Wall Street has gone wild, pushing paper-company stocks up dramatically in recent weeks.

Happy as industry is to have this new federal lifeline in the middle of a recession, it is the only one smiling. Foreign competitors are screaming that the subsidy is unfairly propping up the U.S. industry in tough times. They claim the U.S. industry is ramping up production simply to realize more tax money. Canadian forestry firms are already demanding their government file a trade complaint.

In order to qualify for the credit, alternative fuel must be mixed with a taxable one. (The government might want to encourage alternative fuels, but not to the extent that it loses its gas-tax revenue.) This means that to qualify, the paper industry must mix some diesel with its black liquor. This has sent environmentalists around the bend. They have accused the industry of burning fossil fuels that it didn't used to burn, simply to get the tax dollars. (The industry has not been clear on whether it is, in fact, using more diesel.)

And then there's Congress, which is suddenly looking at billions more in red ink than expected. In 2007 it estimated a 15-month extension of the credit would cost taxpayers $333 million. It has since revised those numbers to take into account black liquor and is now figuring a one-year cost of more than $3 billion. Wall Street analysts are talking $6 billion. Senate Finance Committee bosses Max Baucus and Charles Grassley are reportedly aware of the issue, none too happy, and they are working to bar the paper industry from receiving the credit.

But this, in turn, has tossed up uncomfortable questions. The paper industry argues that if the government is going to be in the business of rewarding good behavior, it ought to do it equally. Is green policy only to be aimed at dirty or economically unviable actors? Is black liquor any less useful than ethanol or biodiesel, and if so why? If not, shouldn't Washington encourage its use? Isn't every green subsidy in fact the basis for a trade dispute?

These are questions Congress has no interest in confronting, since it would expose the muddle that is its entire green-energy program.

All of this is highly amusing, if not surprising. Every government attempt to manage energy markets has resulted in similar disarray. Look at the havoc that came from the energy price controls, regulations and subsidies of the 1970s. Or look, more recently, at the ethanol fiasco, and the accompanying soaring food costs. Energy powers the economy. Mess with energy markets, and mess with everything else. When will Washington learn?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993344387627879.html