Obama Administration Stupidity About Man-Caused Global Warming

Try and understand the logic of this. ClimateGate, among many recent developments, such as the failure of the climate meeting in Copenhagen, and the revelation that the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hopelessly flawed, fraudulent, and decidedly un-scientific, and the case for man-caused global warming and/or climate change is dead.

With that clear, why is the Obama administration going to spend (waste) another $154 million to try and "capture" and store (sequester) harmless carbon dioxide gas from the burning of coal in a power plant? Let's say it again. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, in spite of what the politically driven, Obama controlled EPA might say. We exhale CO2 with every breath; plants need it to grow, and yet our wonderful government is going to spend another $154 million of taxpayers money to capture this harmless gas and pump it underground. It doesn't get much more idiotic than that.

Note how in the following article, published today in USA Today, that the "green-washed", ignorant reporter(?) and even the Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu uses the term "carbon pollution", when anyone who is half-informed knows he's talking about simple carbon dioxide!

This is carefully calculated deception. I think Americans are beginning to catch on. Will Congress? Will Obama? Not any time soon. They have their agenda to follow. To heck with logic and common sense.
Peter

Clean coal? Obama funds research to capture carbon

Source

Al Ranson, a project manager for Alstom, readies a new facility last month that will capture the carbon dioxide produced by We Energies' coal-fired power plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wis.

CAPTION

None

Can coal really be clean? Environmentalists may be skeptical, but President Obama is moving ahead with efforts to create non-polluting coal.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced that it will give up to $154 million to NRG Energy, a Texas-based company, to create a facility that will capture coal's carbon and store it underground, thereby reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. It's one of several such federally funded coal projects.

"Advancing our carbon capture and storage technology will create new jobs in America and reduce our carbon pollution output," Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for physics, said in a statement.

In his State of the Union address, Obama called for a diverse mix of clean energy sources, including -- to the dismay of many environmentalists -- nuclear power plants and "clean coal technologies."

"We're highly skeptical," Bruce Nilles, the Sierra Club's national coal campaign director, says of Obama's plans to clean coal by capturing its carbon, according to a recent story by McClatchy Newspapers. He and other critics say it will be too costly to retrofit existing coal plants with such technology.

The Sierra Club says coal, which provides about half of U.S. electricity, should instead be phased out by 2030 and replaced by renewable power sources and energy efficiency, including efficient uses of natural gas.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, like other environmental groups, says there's no such thing as "clean" coal. France Beinecke, president of its New York City chapter, says "every single step in the coal power cycle is dirty," but she agrees with Obama's plan to fund efforts to clean it.

NRDC believes that a technology known as carbon capture and storage for coal plants should be included in the (climate) bill. This is what President Obama was referring to as "clean coal." We don't think that term is appropriate, but the technology really will reduce global warming pollution from power plants.

How does this technology work?

It removes carbon dioxide from coal's smokestack emissions, compresses it and pumps it deep underground, where it's stored. Such techniques for large coal plants have doubled the cost of producing power, so research is aimed at finding more cost-effective methods.

NRG Energy, which will match the Energy Department's funding, will build a 60-megawatt carbon capture demonstration facility at its plant in Thompson, Texas.

"Development and deployment of these carbon capture technologies at scale, not only in the United States but also worldwide as well, is essential if we are to meet successfully the challenge of global climate change," David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, said in a statement.

Scheduled to begin operating in 2013, the project is designed to capture 90% of incoming carbon dioxide, compress it and use it to enhance oilfield recovery operations.

A report to be released Wednesday by Advanced Resources International, a research and consulting firm, says capturing carbon and pumping it into oil reservoirs could increase U.S. oil production.

Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming Sinking Fast

The following comments by George Monbiot would be hilarious if they weren't so sad and serious. This George Monbiot seemingly believes that the reason the myth of man-caused global warming is coming apart is because people don't believe science! He must be delusional or at least overcome by a huge dose of hubris.

Speaking for myself, I was at first just mildly amused by Al Gore's alarmism over his claims of imminent doom because of man-caused global warming. However as I began looking into the things behind the movement to "stop global warming" and weighing it against my knowledge and experience as a professional geologist, I could see clearly that it is and was all a great hoax.

I have no sympathy for this George Monbiot for wasting his "life's work." He was played for a fool. The blame is on him. Will he accept responsibility, or maybe blame the "climate scientists" who have deceived him? I doubt it. We'll be hearing more whining from those who have been conned by Al Gore and all the other phony "environmentalists". The following comes from the excellent blog here.

Peter

Requiem for Green Dreams

George Monbiot has an epiphany about the collapse of the global warming hoax:

Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

George blames John Q. Public for not ‘believing in’ science, when he should be calling for the heads of those who perverted science to the point where it became a matter of faith over facts. They are the ones who made us question whether we were being fed hard science or rank propaganda.

There are other places where you can read about why Monbiot is off-base with his accusations, The Daily Bayonet is going to use George’s moment of clarity to remind hippies about the nightmares that sprouted from the green dream.

1. Your Prius wants you dead.

2. Biofuels do hurt the poor and hungry.

3. Solar power is a pipe dream.

4. Wind farms do shred rare birds.

Something To Think About: Air Quality

The following is an example of how misled the public is about air quality and the folly of predicting the future of climate change. What else are we misled about?
Peter

Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance

Monday, March 08, 2010

40 Years Later: Air Quality Has Never Been Better

Earth Day (April 22) is only six weeks away, and I just noticed that the EPA recently updated air quality data for 2008 and thought it was worth featuring now in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day:

Predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970:

“Air pollution is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich in an interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

MP: Here we are 40 years later, the U.S. population has increased by more than 50%, traffic volume (miles driven) in the U.S. has increased 160%, and real GDP has increased 204%; and yet air quality in the U.S. is better than ever - nitrous dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead have all decreased between 46% and 92% between 1980 and 2008 (see chart).

Al Gore Exposed

Al Gore is being revealed as a charlatan and a fraud like never before. Every time he speaks now he digs his hole deeper. He is becoming an ever-growing source of richly-deserved ridicule. Al Gore makes Tiger Woods look like an honest man. How do these people look themselves in the mirror? The best thing they could do is give all their money to charity and disappear, forever. Both of them have the morals of a sewer rat. Note that in the cartoon below even the polar bears are laughing at Big Al.
Peter

In Denial

The meltdown of the climate campaign.

BY Steven F. Hayward

March 15, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 25 (source)

It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago—changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress. Meanwhile, the climate campaign’s fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media—even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC—are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking. Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying “It is too so!” In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.

The body blows to the climate campaign did not end with the Climategate emails. The IPCC—which has produced four omnibus assessments of climate science since 1992—has issued several embarrassing retractions from its most recent 2007 report, starting with the claim that Himalayan glaciers were in danger of melting as soon as 2035. That such an outlandish claim would be so readily accepted is a sign of the credulity of the climate campaign and the media: Even if extreme global warming occurred over the next century, the one genuine scientific study available estimated that the huge ice fields of the Himalayas would take more than 300 years to melt—a prediction any beginning chemistry student could confirm with a calculator. (The actual evidence is mixed: Some Himalayan glaciers are currently expanding.) The source for the melt-by-2035 claim turned out to be not a peer-reviewed scientific assessment, but a report from an advocacy group, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which in turn lifted the figure from a popular magazine article in India whose author later disavowed his offhand speculation.

But what made this first retraction noteworthy was the way in which it underscored the thuggishness of the climate establishment. The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri (an economist and former railroad engineer who is routinely described as a “climate scientist”), initially said that critics of the Himalayan glacier melt prediction were engaging in “voodoo science,” though it later turned out that Pachauri had been informed of the error in early December—in advance of the U.N.’s climate change conference in Copenhagen—but failed to disclose it. He’s invoking the Charlie Rangel defense: It was my staff’s fault. (continued here)

The Un-Doing Of The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

The following article offers a perceptive and well-researched explanation of how the myth of man-caused global warming is being revealed and disassembled. However, as others have noted, this is not going to happen or be completed over-night. There are very, very powerful and wealthy forces (read "Environmental Organizations") that have much, if not everything to lose. They are fighting back.

What I find interesting is her (the author) analysis that independent bloggers (like myself) have had and are having an influence on public perception and opinion. She really ties things together well and supports her opinion with credible references. I wonder if Al Gore regrets "inventing" the internet?

I encourage everyone to read more of this blog. It is excellent!
Peter

Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists

[desktop wallpaper version available here]

Another day, another smarmy accusation that people who are skeptical of climate change are being funded by a shadowy conspiracy connected in one manner or another to big oil, big coal, big tobacco or - horror of horrors - right-wing think tanks.

These accusations are tiresome. They're ugly. They're almost entirely unsubstantiated. Most of all, they're a waste of time. They amount to shooting the messenger rather than addressing the bleeping message.

So why do they keep getting repeated? I think I've sorted out two reasons. First: the lavishly-funded corporate nature of the environmental movement circa 2010. Second: modern technological wonders such as personal computers and the Internet.

Environmental organizations today bear little resemblance to the shoestring operations of yesteryear. As a book published 14 years ago observed:

While Greenpeace used to be a pair of bell-bottomed blue jeans, today it is more like a three-piece pinstripe suit.

Indeed. In 1971, Greenpeace was an "upstart peace group from Vancouver" that held meetings in a Unitarian church. After it chartered a 30-year-old "creaking fish boat" to protest a US nuclear arms test, it could barely afford to pay for the boat's fuel.

Last month, however, when The Guardian reported that Greenpeace had commissioned a brand new £14 million ($22 million US) mega-yacht, it observed that "cost should not be a problem for the group, which, with nearly three million supporters, is extremely wealthy."

How wealthy? According to publicly-available figures compiled by Climate-Resistance.org, over a 12-year period Greenpeace raised $2.4 billion. That works out to $200 million a year in resources.

If you think that's impressive, take a moment to ponder the fact that the World Wildlife Fund raised $3.1 billion in just six years (2003-2008). Which means that that organization has ready access to half a billion dollars annually.

When you're that big – and that loaded – suddenly everything costs a small fortune. Want to start a new blog? That'll require a series of meetings. You'll need to invite web design folks, IT folks, a contingent of in-house PR people, an ad agency person or two, a corporate strategy person, and probably someone from legal. You'll meet in shiny offices in a fashionable part of town and order-in sandwiches from the pricey, organic, fair-trade café at the end of the street.

Compare and contrast to how independent individuals of utterly modest means from all over the world currently behave. They sign up to a service like Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) and, within a few hours at most, for no cost whatsoever, have launched themselves as a blogger. Alternatively, for well under $10 in hosting fees a month, they can publish their own website.

For no money, therefore, climate skeptics in the early 21st century are in a position to theoretically communicate online with as many people as is Greenpeace. From their basements and their attics, in often non-trendy geographical locations, it isn't their funding that matters - it's their skill sets.

Many skeptical-leaning bloggers have scientific, mathematical, and statistical training - not to mention decades of real-world experience under their belts. Others have been professional communicators (I, myself, am a former print journalist). Some are speed-readers, others have photographic memories. Many, like the folks who rendered the Climategate e-mails fully searchable within a matter of hours, have impressive information technology skills. Some are retired, with plenty of time on their hands. Others devote as many hours to reading and writing about climate issues in a week as they'd otherwise spend on knitting or golf.

From the perspective of environmental organization staffers, research agency employees, and tenured university professors it must appear as though skeptics have access to deep pockets. In the universe those people inhabit, even the simplest tasks can end up as budget line items. There are layers of bureaucracy, paperwork, office politics, and regulations to consider.

For the small and growing army of skeptical climate bloggers, however, none of that applies. The equivalent of a battered fishing boat will do nicely, thank you.

Those vessels are now everywhere. They're being sailed by real people and fueled by grassroots concern, outrage, and passion. And they're not going away.

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: The Great Peer-Review Fairy Tale

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: The Great Peer-Review Fairy Tale

No Consensus (About Global Warming)

I just came across another very good blog questioning the myth of man-caused global warming and the tactics and motivations of the people and organizations promoting it. The following is the lead-in editiorial and is very well done. Read more here.
Peter

Apr 1, 2009

That's It, I've Had It

Earth Hour 2009 finally pushed me over the edge. Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave knows about global warming and how we should all do our part to avert impending disaster.

I've been skeptical of the hype for some time, but life is short and until now I've felt I had other battles to attend.

But matters have gotten out of hand. Earth Hour started out as an entirely voluntary, highly symbolic expression of environmental concern. In astonishingly short order, however, it has morphed into something approaching a civic duty.

My hydro bill arrived two days after Earth Hour. But printed below my "daily usage" graph is the following:

Participate in Earth Hour by turning off all your lights on March 28 between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. To learn more, visit www.earthhourcanada.org/

That web address belongs to the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF describes itself as "one of the country's leading conservation organizations, enjoying the active support of more than 150,000 Canadians."

33 million people live in Canada. The WWF is, let's admit it, merely one among hundreds of groups devoted to good causes. So why is my public utility - the Toronto Hydro Electric System - promoting the activities of this particular lobby group?

The most recent issue of NOW, a free Toronto entertainment weekly, has a full-page ad inside its front cover promoting a free Earth Hour music concert. The ad was paid for, apparently, by the WWF and the City of Toronto. "Switch off & sign up at EarthHourCanada.org" it reads.

Given the enormous media coverage, why would additional government funds be spent on the promotion of such activities? The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, didn't write an article or two, it published an Earth Hour section.

At the top of the online version there's an ad for, you guessed it, the WWF. The page contains prominent links to dozens of stories published by The Star during the weeks leading up to Earth Hour. Then there's an additional 17 articles by columnists and guest writers ranging from Margaret Atwood (novelist) to Robert Bateman (painter) to Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel laureate).

The headlines on these articles leave no room for doubt or debate. They refer to the "moral aspect of climate change," the "apocalypse" of urban sprawl, and warn that we have mere hours to "prevent climate disaster."

One guest essay, titled "On a Leap of Faith," bears this as its subtitle:

If we stop flying and shipping, take bicycles to work and slash electricity use, would we sidestep the predicted environmental catastrophe? We don't know...But it would be immoral not to try.

I'm very sorry, but all of this amounts to hysteria. It really is time that sensible people started speaking up and pushing back.

The Failure And Betrayal Of The Mainstream Media

I'm referring to ClimateGate and the myth of Man-Caused global warming and climate change. The mainstream media, in this case The New York Times (but also NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Newsweek, etc.) have betrayed us by not questioning and challenging the blatant agenda-driven and grossly exaggerated claims of global warming alarmists like Al Gore and Jim Hansen. I think the following article is worth sharing with everyone who believes in integrity, truth and freedom. As I have said here many times, this is serious business folks.
Peter

Treason Is A Matter Of Dates

FROM-The American Interest Online

Walter Russel Mead

This observation, famously made by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna as the powers debated the fate of the turncoat King of Saxony, reminded the crowned heads of Europe that all of them had at one time or another worked with Napoleon. Talleyrand himself had served the emperor as foreign minister and trusted ally before switching to the other side as Napoleon’s power waned — and his megalomania grew.

These days, it’s The New York Times that is redefining treason. Three weeks ago, anyone who pointed at the lack of public confidence in climate science was aiding and abetting those horrible climate ‘deniers.’ Treason against Planet Earth! You had to be some kind of dread ‘right wing blogger’ or talk radio host to point out that blunders and arrogance had undermined the credibility of climate scientists and ended any short term chance of serious global agreement on urgent measures to stop global warming.

But a story this morning by John Broder gently lets Times readers know that something has gone badly wrong.

WASHINGTON — For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.

But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back. Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work

.

Admit mistakes? Open up their data? Change the way the work? You mean there was something wrong with the way climate science was operating last year? Is the Times telling us that the climate scientists–on the basis of whose work the whole world is debating complex and far-reaching changes in its economic structure and political governance–were using slipshod and careless procedures that need to be fixed?

Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn’t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn’t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country’s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources?

The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business. For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up. Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics. They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards. They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay. That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.

Reporters are not supposed to be wide-eyed gee-whiz college kids believing everything they hear and using the news columns of the paper to promote a social agenda. They are wet blankets, not cheerleaders, Eeyores, not Piglets and they can safely leave all the advocacy and flag-waving to the editorial writers and the op-ed pages.

This is not just a question of liberal bias. The same wide-eyed gee-whiz culture shaped much of the reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War. Maybe the word we are looking for when trying to describe what’s wrong with the mainstream press isn’t ‘liberal’ — maybe the term is something like ‘credulous’ or ‘naive.’ The gradual substitution of ‘professional journalists’ for the old hard boiled hacks may have given us a generation of journalists who are used to trusting reputable authority. They honestly think that people with good credentials and good manners don’t lie.

Today’s journalists are much too well-bred and well-connected to stand there in the crowd shouting “The emperor has no clothes!” They’ve worked with the tailors, they have had long background interviews with the tailors, they’ve been present for some of the fittings. Of course the emperor’s new clothes are fantastic; only those rude and uncouth ‘clothing deniers’ still have any doubts.

Meanwhile, over on the aforementioned op-ed pages, our old friend Al Gore is still crying a river of denial, blaming everyone but himself for the abject failure of the world to accept his views without checking the facts for themselves. If the New York Times and its peers had come at this story with more skepticism and rigor from the beginning, climate scientists would have realized long ago that if they hope to convince a skeptical world they need to be ultra-careful, ultra-cautious and even ultra-conservative in their public statements and recommendations. They would have understood long ago that because their science is important, they have to do it more carefully and more publicly than other people. That may be harsh and it may be ‘unfair’ in some sense, but when you are dealing with the interests of billions of people you have to expect a little bit of scrutiny — though not, apparently, from the New York Times.

The very idea that critics would have to use the Freedom of Information Act to pry back-up data from a scientist on a matter of great public importance is insane. That data should have been out there years ago, without anyone having to ask. If it’s considered ‘normal’ in climate science for researchers to keep their raw data under lock and key, and refuse to subject it to skeptical and hostile review, then climate science isn’t science.

The Times and its peers in the mainstream press need to ask themselves why something this obvious, this important, this newsworthy passed them by. If they don’t figure that out and make some wrenching changes, they will continue to watch helplessly as their credibility and readership inexorably shrink.

The meltdown that worries me most in this whole dismal story isn’t the meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers. It’s the evident meltdown of basic journalistic standards among a whole generation of reporters and editors that keeps me up late at night; I don’t just worry about what they missed on this story, or on the Iraq story–I wonder what else they are missing every day.

John Broder’s story this morning is good as far as it goes, but it looks more and more as if our greatest newspaper has been so wholly conquered by the spirit of enlightened upper-middle-class progressivism that it has lost the ability to view its own assumptions with the necessary skepticism. That is terrible news; the world is changing rapidly in ways that simply don’t fit the thought templates that upper-middle-class baby boomers developed over the last twenty years. Increasingly, the mental map that shapes the way the Times looks at the world simply fails to match what is happening out there, yet the Times seems less able than ever to see that.

Before you can report an inconvenient truth you have to be able to recognize it; this is the test that the Times‘ coverage of the ‘climategate’ story has failed.