Friday, May 28, 2010

Dallas FBI: Oil scams on the rise - Dallas Business Journal

Dallas FBI: Oil scams on the rise - Dallas Business Journal

Obama And EPA Out Of Control

It is good to see someone fighting Obama's EPA Gestapo. They are worse than a runaway BP oil well.
P


Friday, May 28, 2010, 12:06pm CDT
Gov. Perry pushes back against EPA, Obama administration
Dallas Business Journal - by Kerri Panchuk Web Reporter source
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is firing back at the Obama administration over a recent federal initiative to quash a Texas program that deals with air emissions. Perry said switching to a federally mandated program puts the state at risk of killing jobs.
He defended the emissions control program that Texas has in place now, saying it went into effect under Gov. Ann Richards and was approved by then President Bill Clinton.
“Since then, the EPA’s unelected bureaucrats haven’t ruled on it once, yet, with the arrival of a new administration in Washington, they have put a bulls-eye on the backs of hardworking Texans,” Perry said.
Perry said the feds decision to trade the Texas air permitting policy for a new federal plan ignores the fact that Texas has seen a 22 percent reduction in ozone and a 46 percent drop in emissions. He added that the EPA’s program is an overreach and violates the state’s rights under the 10th Amendment.
kerripanchuk@bizjournals.com

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Obama Has Entered The Stage On Energy And Climate Change

Obama just keeps looking more and more foolish, digging his (and our) hole deeper....
Peter


By Alan Caruba (source)

5/27/10 - The President, after a lapse of 309 days, held a news conference Thursday. It came shortly after news that earlier in the day the director of the Mineral Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, had either resigned or been fired. Obama professed to not know the circumstances. Yeah. Sure.

What we do know is that Obama’s method of dealing with a news conference is to talk each question to death. In addition, he makes sure that we all know that, no matter what the problem under discussion, it was all George W. Bush’s fault.

Watching Obama’s head swivel back and forth between the TelePromters as he read his opening prepared statement for the first fifteen minutes or so was mildly comical and it occurred to me that he has become a real life parody of a Saturday Night Live parody, the latter of which is at least entertaining.

The press conference was devoted largely to blaming oil company, British Petroleum, for the mess while, at the same time, saying that “BP is acting at our direction.” This is known as having it both ways. Somehow, knowing that the federal government is in charge is not all that reassuring. And, of course, the real problem began “under the previous administration.”

The president then used one of his snore-inducing answers to segue to the usual blather about a “clean energy” economy. This is pure fiction. America and the rest of the advanced nations of the world depend entirely on oil, natural gas, and coal. Long after all of us and our grandchildren are dead these hydrocarbons will still be used.

By then, however, Obama’s nonsense about clean energy jobs will have been long forgotten. They don’t exist now and they will not until the last drop of oil is extracted, the last cubic meter of natural gas, and the last lump of coal is dug from the ground. Wind and solar energy is largely a huge fraud based on the even bigger fraud of “climate change.

And of course the President took the opportunity push the legislation before the Senate that would put the federal government in charge of who gets energy, how much they get, and how much they will pay for it. Using the bogus claim that carbon dioxide is a threat to human life the EPA is currently trying to gain control all energy use. Cap-and-Trade, a huge tax, would destroy what little hope is left for the economy to recover.

Continued here:

Mammoths Caused Global Warming

Jean Auel, of the "Earth's Children" book series (e.g. Clan of the Cave Bear) take note!
Peter

From here:

Are You Shitting Me? Yes, Exactly.



Yeah, the guys who thought this up are, apparently, serious…Mammoth farts kept the earth warm 13,000 years ago. The link is to Simon…he smelt it.

Al Gore To Stop Oil Leak In Gulf Of Mexico

Where is Al Gore when we really need him? Borrowed from here.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Brits Losing Faith In Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

Even the infamously biased NY Times is recognizing that people the world over are rapidly losing faith in the myth of man-caused global warming. Buy your seaside mansions quick Al Gore; diversify, hide your assets, your reign of deception is coming to an end.
Peter

Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

LONDON — Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate Change Gallery as had previously been planned.

“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.”

Perhaps sensing that climate is now a political nonstarter, David Cameron, Britain’s new Conservative prime minister, was “strangely muted” on the issue in a recent pre-election debate, as The Daily Telegraph put it, though it had previously been one of his passions.

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

Politicians and activists say such attitudes will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,” Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here. “This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.”

The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November. These include the unauthorized release of e-mail messages from prominent British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that skeptics cited as evidence that researchers were overstating the evidence for global warming and the discovery of errors in a United Nations climate report.

Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had actively distorted climate data, but heavy press coverage had already left an impression that the scientists had schemed to repress data. Then there was the unusually cold winter in Northern Europe and the United States, which may have reinforced a perception that the Earth was not warming. (Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a United States agency, show that globally, this winter was the fifth warmest in history.)

Asked about his views on global warming on a recent evening, Brian George, a 30-year-old builder from southeast London, mused, “It was extremely cold in January, wasn’t it?”

In a telephone interview, Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank and a climate change expert, said that the shift in opinion “hadn’t helped” efforts to come up with strong policy in a number of countries. But he predicted that it would be overcome, not least because the science was so clear on the warming trend.

“I don’t think it will be problematic in the long run,” he said, adding that in Britain, at least, politicians “are ahead of the public anyway.” Indeed, once Mr. Cameron became prime minister, he vowed to run “the greenest government in our history” and proposed projects like a more efficient national electricity grid.

Scientists have meanwhile awakened to the public’s misgivings and are increasingly fighting back. An editorial in the prestigious journal Nature said climate deniers were using “every means at their disposal to undermine science and scientists” and urged scientists to counterattack. Scientists in France, the Netherlands and the United States have signed open letters affirming their trust in climate change evidence, including one published on May 7 in the journal Science.

In March, Simon L. Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds in Britain, filed a 30-page complaint with the nation’s Press Complaints Commission against The Times of London, accusing it of publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change, his own research and remarks he had made to a reporter.

“I was most annoyed that there seemed to be a pattern of pushing the idea that there were a number of serious mistakes in the I.P.C.C. report, when most were fairly innocuous, or not mistakes at all,” said Dr. Lewis, referring to the report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Meanwhile, groups like the wildlife organization WWF have posted articles like “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” providing stock answers to doubting friends and relatives, on their Web sites.

It is unclear whether such actions are enough to win back a segment of the public that has eagerly consumed a series of revelations that were published prominently in right-leaning newspapers like The Times of London and The Telegraph and then repeated around the world.

In January, for example, The Times chastised the United Nations climate panel for an errant and unsupported projection that glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. The United Nations ultimately apologized for including the estimate, which was mentioned in passing within a 3,000-page report in 2007.

Then came articles contending that the 2007 report was inaccurate on a host of other issues, including African drought, the portion of the Netherlands below sea level, and the economic impact of severe storms. Officials from the climate panel said the articles’ claims either were false or reflected minor errors like faulty citations that in no way diluted the evidence that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, successfully demanded in February that some German newspapers remove misleading articles from their Web sites. But such reports have become so common that he “wouldn’t bother” to pursue most cases now, he added.

The public is left to struggle with the salvos between the two sides. “I’m still concerned about climate change, but it’s become very confusing,” said Sandra Lawson, 32, as she ran errands near Hyde Park.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain Of Climate Change Deception And Lies

Call it the perfect storm. The sick economy has people alert and sensitive to government skulduggery and along comes ClimateGate. It is time to knock down the house of cards that is the myth of man-caused global warming. It has stood for far, far too long.
Peter






Bad data, bad public relations, new investigation bedevil quest for cap-and-tax bill.


If a climate scientist falls in the forest, does anybody hear?


Not if the old media have anything to do with it. Thankfully, in 2010, their hold on the news has started to weaken.


But it’s not like they didn’t try. For more than five months, from Nov. 20, 2009, to April 1, 2010, the broadcast networks did all they could to hide a crisis in the climate alarmist movement.


That first event, now called Climate Gate, has grown into a series of global warming scandals that have shaken faith in both the science we are fed on a regular basis and the scientists who do the feeding.


This week in Chicago, the Heartland Institute is bringing together the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, a meeting of hundreds of scientists and policy experts who dare to challenge so-called conventional wisdom on global warming.


Instead of having a meeting, they should be having a celebration.


Not that they’ve won. They haven’t. But for the first time in many years, there is a public understanding that our daily diet of climate propaganda might be somewhat or even entirely bogus. That’s due in a large part to the embarrassments that came out of the initial Climate Gate report where e-mails from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were leaked to the world.


Those e-mails, and a separate document showing the shoddy data gathering done by those involved, included thousands of messages showing the potential manipulation of temperature data, a willingness to destroy information rather than release it under British Freedom of Information (FOI) law and the intimidation of publications willing to publish skeptical articles.


The most famous of the e-mails included this line for CRU Director Phil Jones to Penn State scientist Michael Mann. Climate geeks know Mann for his hockey stick graph of global warming, which has been key to climate alarmists and even cropped up in Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth.”


Jones wrote Mann, saying: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”


An e-mail from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and lead author of three IPCC climate change reports, said this memorable comment: “The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.” Oops.


While Jones had to temporarily step down, the left continues to try and white wash the whole episode.


But skeptics and critics aren’t about to let that happen.


A group called Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) created a hilarious parody video mocking Mann called “Hide the Decline.” The video was based on the Tommy James and the Shondells song “Draggin the Line.” Mann screamed bloody murder about the parody and his lawyers claimed it “irreparably harms Dr. Mann’s personal and professional reputation.” The sequel appears on the group’s Web site along with an appeal for donations to a legal defense fund to fend off Mann’s legal attacks.


Mann and other global warming alarmists aren’t just facing video mockery on YouTube. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is “seeking documents related to the work of a former University of Virginia climate scientist, even as the university says it is preparing to comply with Cuccinelli's request,” according to The Washington Post. The former U.Va. climate scientist is, of course, Mann.


Lefty academics think it unfair that, after decades of suppressing climate skepticism, their own work can be held to some legal standard. Physics Today called the Cuccinelli move “blatantly political.” Science magazine published the complaints of 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences in a letter called “for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association.” According to the May 8 Virginia Pilot, the American Association of University Professors and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia have “asked U.Va. to fight Cuccinelli's demand.”



The left doesn’t get it. After decades of propaganda, we just don’t trust them anymore. Conservatives aren’t anti-science. They doubt the work of specific scientists who have destroyed data, manipulated their research, bullied those with an opposing view and included outright propaganda in UN reports on the issue.


Despite all this, Al Gore, the patron saint of green wrote on April 27 in the HuffingtonPost.com that “Global warming denialists have been re-discredited.” And that lunacy has taken form in Congress. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are unleashing their climate bill – the huge new tax of a “cap-and-trade” proposal.


Just as it was with Climate Gate, you can count on the media not telling us everything about this 1,000-page growth-of-government bill. No matter what they report, remember it’s a big green bill. And if it passes, every one of us will be sending big green to Washington.


Source


Friday, May 7, 2010

Global Warming: The Biggest Hoax Becomes The Biggest Heist

The myth of man-caused global warming has led to all kinds very real man-caused disasters, such as turning food crops into fuel (ethanol), subsidizing uneconomic forms of energy generation, (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), mandating absurd fuel economy standards for vehicles, promising "green jobs" to stimulate the economy, and now the biggest fraud of them all....."Cap and Trade" of carbon dioxide emissions. Will America wake up and vote these destructive, power-hungry, hypocritical socialists out of office?
Read the following article and see how well carbon trading, or "cap and tax" is going in Europe, a foretaste of what America can expect, fraud and corruption on an unimaginable scale. Thank you Al Gore.
Peter


The Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade 2

90% of the European cap and trade is a fraud according to Europol.

Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues.

Europol said:

“In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.

“Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it’s not always clear what is being traded,” says Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.”

This is the he system that Crime Ink wants to force on us, that puts all the burden on the common people and does nothing whatsoever for the environment.

This is a scam to enrich the corrupt.

THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANIDATE BARACK OBAMA:

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

See also my previous post:

The Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade

More on cap and trade on my blog uddebatt.wordpress.com

Europol announcement:

http://www.europol.europa.eu/index.asp?page=news&news=pr091209.htm

http://euobserver.com/22/29996

w.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532610

Europe’s Carbon Mafia, And Ours

Posted 05/06/2010 07:18 PM ET

Corruption: The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

All across Europe authorities have been conducting raids, rounding up individuals involved in a new version of Climate-gate. This time the data aren’t corrupted. Europe’s Emissions Trading System is. The system is so sick, it’s turned out to be a scam built upon a scam.

Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids by British and German authorities as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.

U.K. officials announced raids on 81 offices and homes, nabbing 13 people in England and eight in Scotland. The operation involved 450 investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs office.

German authorities raided 230 locations, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe. The German operation involved 1,000 investigators targeting 50 companies and 150 suspects.

The amount of money involved in carbon trading is huge and the temptations vast. While our Congress demagogues about banks and their “complex financial instruments,” they are simple compared to cap-and-trade, which as we have noted involves essentially the buying and selling of air. Throw in an oppressive value-added tax and you have a recipe for corruption and fraud.

Last December, Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.

“Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it’s not always clear what is being traded,” says Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.

Climate change has been found to be a fraud. Now the system to fight it has been. Yet it’s that system the administration and others want to establish here through cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer.

As we also have noted, the mechanism for such phantom carbon trading here has already been established in the form of the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start CCX when Barack Obama sat on its board.

CCX founder Richard Sandor estimates the climate trading market could be “a $10 trillion dollar market.” It is an invitation to fraud that would make Europe’s ETS scandal seem like petty theft.

In 2000, according to Joyce Foundation records, $347,600 was allocated to Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where Sandor was a research professor, “to design a Midwestern pilot program for the voluntary trading of carbon dioxide and other emissions that cause climate change.”

Now President Obama would make such carbon trading mandatory, limit total emissions and make carbon as valuable a commodity as booze during Prohibition.

The Joyce Foundation’s two grants totaled just over $1 million. CCX has proved very lucrative for Sandor, whose 8 million shares in the exchange has grown to more than $260 million even before a national cap-and-trade system like Europe’s is established.

Al Gore, who recently increased his carbon footprint by spending $8.9 million on an oceanview villa near Santa Barbara, Calif., sitting on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa, fountains, five bedrooms, nine bathrooms and no fewer than six fireplaces, is co-founder of Generation Investment Management LLP, the fifth largest shareholder in CCX.

The largest shareholder is, uh, Goldman Sachs. Other CCX founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. Presumably they know a lot about playing shell games with other people’s money.

What has happened in Europe is going to happen here and may already have begun. We, too, can save the earth for fun and profit.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Al Gore Is So Clever

Al Gore is laughing all the way to the bank while his totally delusional followers are supposed to be sacrificing to save Mother Earth. How dumb can the those who believe(d) Al Gore and his man-caused global warming fear mongering be? It sometimes seems there is no limit.
Peter

Al Gore's New $9 Million Ocean-View Villa in CA


Via- CARPE DIEM: Al Gore's New $9 Million Ocean-View Villa in CA

Congress Finally Hearing Truth About Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

It is nice to see some historical scientifically verifiable facts laid out for all to see which clearly destroy the myth of man-caused global warming. There is an abundance of this kind geologic information that has been ignored by the global warming alarmists and so called "climate scientists". Al Gore? As always, he is a hypocrite, fraud and a buffoon.....albeit a wealthy one.
Peter

Testimony of The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Before Congress, 6 May 2010

The Select Committee, in its letter inviting testimony for the present hearing, cites

various scientific bodies as having concluded that –

1. The global climate has warmed;

2. Human activities account for most of the warming since the mid-20

th

century;

3. Climate change is already causing a broad range of impacts in the United States;

4. The impacts of climate change are expected to grow in the coming decades.

The first statement requires heavy qualification and, since the second is wrong, the third

and fourth are without foundation and must fall.

The Select Committee has requested answers to the following questions:

1. What are the observed changes to the climate system?

Carbon dioxide concentration:

In the Neoproterozoic Era, ~750 million years ago,

dolomitic rocks, containing ~40% CO2 bonded not only with calcium ions but also with

magnesium, were precipitated from the oceans worldwide by a reaction that could not

have occurred unless the atmospheric concentration of CO2 had been ~300,000 parts

per million by volume. Yet in that era equatorial glaciers came and went twice at sea

level.

Today, the concentration is ~773 times less, at ~388 ppmv: yet there are no equatorial

glaciers at sea level. If the warming effect of CO2 were anything like as great as the

vested-interest groups now seek to maintain, then, even after allowing for greater

surface albedo and 5% less solar radiation, those glaciers could not possibly have existed

(personal communication from Professor Ian Plimer, confirmed by on-site inspection of

dolomitic and tillite deposits at Arkaroola Northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia).

In the Cambrian Era, ~550 million years ago, limestones, containing some 44% CO2

bonded with calcium ions, were precipitated from the oceans. At that time, atmospheric

CO2 concentration was ~7000 ppmv, or ~18 times today’s (IPCC, 2001): yet it was at

that time that the calcite corals first achieved algal symbiosis. In the Jurassic era, ~175

million years ago, atmospheric CO2 concentration was ~6000 ppmv, or ~15 times

today’s (IPCC, 2001): yet it was then that the delicate aragonite corals came into being.

Therefore, today’s CO2 concentration, though perhaps the highest in 20 million years, is

by no means exceptional or damaging. Indeed, it has been argued that trees and plants

have been part-starved of CO2 throughout that period (Senate testimony of Professor

Will Happer, Princeton University, 2009). It is also known that a doubling of today’s

CO2 concentration, projected to occur later this century (IPCC, 2007), would increase

the yield of some staple crops by up to 40% (lecture by Dr. Leighton Steward,

Parliament Chamber, Copenhagen, December 2009).

Global mean surface temperature:

Throughout most of the past 550 million years,

global temperatures were ~7 K (13 F°) warmer than the present. In each of the past four

interglacial warm periods over the past 650,000 years, temperatures were warmer than

the present by several degrees (A.A. Gore,

An Inconvenient Truth

, 2006).

In the current or Holocene warm period, which began 11,400 years ago at the abrupt

termination of the Younger Dryas cooling event, some 7500 years were warmer than the

present (Cuffey & Clow, 1997), and, in particular, the medieval, Roman, Minoan, and

Holocene Climate Optima were warmer than the present (Cuffey & Clow, 1997).

The “global warming” that ceased late in 2001 (since when there has been a global

cooling trend for eight full years) had begun in 1695, towards the end of the Maunder

Minimum, a period of 70 years from 1645-1715 when the Sun was less active than at any

time in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004). Solar activity increased with a rapidity

unprecedented in the Holocene, reaching a Grand Solar Maximum during a period of 70

years from 1925-1995 when the Sun was very nearly as active as it had been at any time

in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Usoskin, 2003; Solanki, 2005).

The first instrumental record of global temperatures was kept in Central England from

1659. From 1695-1735, a period of 40 years preceding the onset of the Industrial

Revolution in 1750, temperatures in central England, which are a respectable proxy for

global temperatures, rose by 2.2 K (4 F°). Yet global temperatures have risen by only

0.65 K (1.2 F°) since 1950, and 0.7 K (1.3 F°) in the whole of the 20

th

century.

Throughout the 21

st

century, global temperatures have followed a declining trend.

Accordingly, neither global mean surface temperature nor its rates of change in recent

decades have been exceptional, unusual, inexplicable, or unprecedented.

Ocean “acidification”:

It has been suggested that the oceans have “acidified” – or,

more correctly, become less alkaline – by 0.1 acid-base units in recent decades.

However, the fact of a movement towards neutrality in ocean chemistry, if such a

movement has occurred, tells us nothing of the cause, which cannot be attributed to

increases in CO2 concentration. There is 70 times as much CO2 dissolved in the oceans

as there is in the atmosphere, and some 30% of any CO2 we add to the atmosphere will

eventually dissolve into the oceans. Accordingly, a doubling of CO2 concentration,

expected later this century, would raise the oceanic partial pressure of CO2 by 30% of

one-seventieth of what is already there. And that is an increase of 0.4% at most. Even

this minuscule and chemically-irrelevant perturbation is probably overstated, since any

“global warming” that resulted from the doubling of CO2 concentration would warm the

oceans and cause them to outgas CO2, reducing the oceanic partial pressure.

Seawater is a highly buffered solution – it can take up a huge amount of dissolved

inorganic carbon without significant effect on pH. There is not the slightest possibility

that the oceans could approach the neutral pH of pure water (pH 7.0), even if all the

fossil fuel reserves in the world were burned. A change in pH of 0.2 units this century,

from its present 8.2 to 8.0, even if it were possible, would leave the sea containing no

more than 10% of the “acidic” positively-charged hydrogen ions that occur in pure

water. If ocean “acidification” is happening, then CO2 is not and will not be the culprit.

2. What evidence provides attribution of these changes to human

activities?

In the global instrumental record, which commenced in 1850, the three supradecadal

periods of most rapid warming were 1860-1880, 1910-1940, and 1975-2001. Warming

rates in all three periods were identical at ~0.16 K (0.3 F°) per decade.

During the first two of these three periods, observations were insufficient to establish

the causes of the warming: however, the principal cause cannot have been atmospheric

CO2 enrichment, because, on any view, mankind’s emissions of CO2 had not increased

enough to cause any measurable warming on a global scale during those short periods.

In fact, the third period of rapid global warming, 1975-2001, was the only period of

warming since 1950. From 1950-1975, and again from 2001-2010, global temperatures

fell slightly (HadCRUTv3, cited in IPCC, 2007).

What, then, caused the third period of warming? Most of that third and most recent

period of rapid warming fell within the satellite era, and the satellites confirmed

measurements from ground stations showing a considerable, and naturally-occurring,

global brightening from 1983-2001 (Pinker

et al.,

2005).

Allowing for the fact that Dr. Pinker’s result depended in part on the datasets of

outgoing radiative flux from the ERBE satellite that had not been corrected at that time

for orbital decay, it is possible to infer a net increase in surface radiative flux amounting

to 0.106 W m

–2 year–1 over the period, compared with the 0.16 W m–2 year–1

found by

Dr. Pinker.

Elementary radiative-transfer calculations demonstrate that a natural surface global

brightening amounting to ~1.9 W m

–2

over the 18-year period of study would be

expected – using the IPCC’s own methodology – to have caused a transient warming of 1

K (1.8 F°). To put this naturally-occurring global brightening into perspective, the

IPCC’s estimated total of all the anthropogenic influences on climate combined in the

256 years 1750-2005 is only 1.6 W m

–2

.

Taking into account a further projected warming, using IPCC methods, of ~0.5 K (0.9

F°) from CO2 and other anthropogenic sources, projected warming of 1.5 K (2.7 F°)

should have occurred.

However, only a quarter of this projected warming was observed, suggesting the

possibility that the IPCC may have overestimated the warming effect of greenhouse

gases fourfold. This result is in line with similar result obtained by other methods: for

instance, Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2010 submitted) find that the warming rate to be

expected as a result of anthropogenic activities is one-quarter to one-fifth of the IPCC’s

central estimate.

There is no consensus on how much warming a given increase in CO2 will cause.

3. Assuming ad argumentum that the IPCC’s projections of future

warming are correct, what policy measures should be taken?

Warming at the very much reduced rate that measured (as opposed to merely modeled)

results suggest would be 0.7-0.8 K (1.3-1.4 F°) at CO2 doubling. That would be harmless

and beneficial – a doubling of CO2 concentration would increase yields of some staple

crops by 40%. Therefore, one need not anticipate any significant adverse impact from

CO2-induced “global warming”. “Global warming” is a non-problem, and the correct

policy response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

However,

ad argumentum,

let us assume that the IPCC is correct in finding that a

warming of 3.26 ± 0.69 K (5.9 ± 1.2 F°: IPCC, 2007, ch.10, box 10.2) might occur at CO2

doubling. We generalize this central prediction, deriving a simple equation to tell us how

much warming the IPCC would predict for any given change in CO2 concentration –

ΔTS

(8.5 ± 1.8) ln(C/C

o) F°

Thus, the change in surface temperature in Fahrenheit degrees, as predicted by the

IPCC, would be 6.7 to 10.3 (with a central estimate of 8.5) times the logarithm of the

proportionate increase in CO2 concentration. We check the equation by using it to work

out the warming the IPCC would predict at CO2 doubling: 8.5 ln 2

5.9 F°.

Using this equation, we can determine just how much “global warming” would be

forestalled if the entire world were to shut down its economies and emit no carbon

dioxide at all for an entire year. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 388 parts per

million by volume. Our emissions of 30 bn tons of CO2 a year are causing this

concentration to rise at 2 ppmv/year, and this ratio of 15 bn tons of emissions to each

additional ppmv of CO2 concentration has remained constant for 30 years.

Then the “global warming” that we might forestall if we shut down the entire global

carbon economy for a full year would be 8.5 ln[(388+2)/388] = 0.044 F°. At that rate,

almost a quarter of a century of global zero-carbon activity would be needed in order to

forestall just one Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.

Two conclusions ineluctably follow. First, it would be orders of magnitude more costeffective

to adapt to any “global warming” that might occur than to try to prevent it from

occurring by trying to tax or regulate emissions of carbon dioxide in any way.

Secondly, there is no hurry. Even after 23 years doing nothing to address the imagined

problem, and even if the IPCC has not exaggerated CO2’s warming effect fourfold, the

world will be just 1 F° warmer than it is today. If the IPCC has exaggerated fourfold, the

world can do nothing for almost a century before global temperature rises by 1 F°.

There are many urgent priorities that need the attention of Congress, and it is not for me

as an invited guest in your country to say what they are. Yet I can say this much: on any

view, “global warming” is not one of them.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Vultures Begin To Gather

They say sharks can sense blood in the water at great distances, indicating probable crippled and easy prey. It seems lawyers and law firms react the same way to oil in the water. The following response to the recent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is illustrative of the motivation behind the legal action......money. The name of the game is make all you can, as fast as you can, economy be damned. Please don't tell us it will help the "environment" in any meaningful way.
Pete


Dallas lawyers prep for oil spill cases

Dallas Business Journal - by Kerri Panchuk Web Reporter

Law firm Baron & Budd said Wednesday it is pulling together an experienced environmental legal team to prep for lawsuits tied to the Gulf Coast oil spill.

One of their first priorities is getting Congress to review a previously passed legislative act that caps punitive damages in offshore pollution cases to $75 million, according to attorney Burton LeBlanc, a Baron & Budd attorney working the oil spill cases.

LeBlanc said lawsuits have already been filed on behalf of a marina and a group of commercial fishermen working off the Gulf Coast. Attorneys are already looking for ways to push the damages cap above $75 million. LeBlanc said a bill was introduced on the House floor this week to try to lift the damages cap to $10 billion.

The Dallas firm has a three-decade track record that includes claims against one of the chief parties in the Gulf Oil spill case: BP.

LeBlanc said Wednesday, “We are evaluating the spill itself, and the potential damages and economic loss to various constituencies.”

The damages could extend beyond clients who make their living on the water, he said. In addition to fisherman and marinas, he said the firm has also been talking to condo owners, hotels and hospitality outlets.

At this point, he said damage estimates are impossible to assess.

“I am hopeful this cap they are trying to put on the well tomorrow will be effective,” he said. “But right now, it’s spilling oil. I think potentially this could be the most dramatic case in the history of the United States.”


kerripanchuk@bizjournals.com

The American Gulag: Obama's Recruits Fight Oil Spill

At least Obama is putting someone to work. Hopefully this is not a picture of what our future holds under the Obama Regime. Is this his idea of "economic stimulus" and "jobs creation"? Look, they're even wearing the right color clothing....green. Let us hope this oil leak is resolved and cleaned up as quickly as possible.
Peter

Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images

Prisoners from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center line up, Monday, May 3, as they prepare to receive training in cleansing oil from birds affected by the oil slick from the BP Deepwater Horizon platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.