Here is a good summary article about the nuclear power industry in the United States. I discusses the history of nuclear power, compares the US with other countries, and sources of energy, and it weighs some of the costs. The conclusion is there are no easy answers.
Peter
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200709/NAT20070925b.html
Nuclear Power Can Help Solve U.S. Energy Concerns, Say Experts
By Kevin Mooney and Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writers September 25, 2007 (CNSNews.com) -
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's recent remark that the "Iraq war is largely about oil" sparked a political nerve and made headlines. It also highlighted a problem with America's energy supply, which some analysts and policy-makers think could be solved cleanly and abundantly through nuclear power. Nuclear energy currently provides about 20 percent of America's electricity, with 100 nuclear plants located at 65 sites in 31 states, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. By contrast, 80 percent of France's energy needs are supplied by nuclear power. Other examples include Belgium, 54 percent; Sweden, 46 percent; Switzerland, 41 percent; and Japan, 34 percent.
While the U.S. emerged as the world leader in nuclear power, research, design and construction in the latter half of the 20th century, the industry has been at a near-standstill since the Three Mile Island accident near Harrisburg, Penn., in 1979. There has not been a new nuclear plant built in America since then, largely because of environmental, political and financial considerations, according to energy policy analysts.
Both France and Japan, however, improved upon U.S. nuclear power technology and are way ahead of this country now in terms of providing energy for their citizens, former Virginia Sen. George Allen told Cybercast News Service. America can do better, he said, particularly as more of the public learns about nuclear power's benefits and discards unnecessary regulations that are impeding America's movement towards greater energy independence. 'Straight Line from Maryland to Texas'New nuclear power plants would offer a mix of environmental and financial benefits in the form of clean energy and lower property taxes, said Allen. Additional plants could be located, for instance, in Louisa County, Va., and Surry County, Va., where existing facilities already have yielded tangible dividends for residents, said Allen.
The demand for power that nuclear is expected to address will be in the American Southeast, where the population is expected to grow by about 100 million over the next 20 years, Adrian Heymer, senior director for new plant development at the National Energy Institute, said in an interview. "If you could draw a straight line from Maryland to Texas, this is where most of the new plants would be," he observed. The federal government now has licensing applications for about 30 new nuclear reactors that would be built between 2015 and 2025, Heymer said.
The new, streamlined licensing process Congress has authorized will remove a number of pre-existing hurdles for the 17 companies that are now considering additional plants, said Heymer. Under the old system, energy companies had to make their way through about two-thirds of construction before they could apply for an operating license. But now that all safety concerns must be addressed up front, the construction permit and operating license are approved simultaneously, said Heymer.
As the U.S. seeks to pull back from its dependence on foreign energy sources in unstable regions, the appeal of nuclear energy is beginning to resonate and has even "attracted the eye of Wall Street" in a way that was not conceivable until recently, Heymer argued. Going back to the late 1990s, only a handful of financial analysts expressed interest in pending nuclear reactor projects, he said. By comparison, more than100 analysts from financial institutions were present this year when industry officials made their case, Heymer noted.
Climate change 'new boogeyman'
The U.S. Department of Energy reported that nuclear power accounted for 54 percent of voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in 2004. The industry claims it kept 681.9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the air in 2005 -- that's the equivalent of taking 96 percent of passenger cars off the road. Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said energy demand will increase by 40 percent by 2030. Whitman is now co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which advocates for more nuclear power. "With an increase in awareness of climate change and an increased demand in energy -- everyone has a new IPOD or blackberry -- we can't continue mountaintop mining for coal," Whitman told Cybercast News Service.
Whitman added that increasing the use of nuclear energy should be done alongside increasing wind and solar energy production. But nuclear power generates electricity, and doesn't power automobiles, one of the biggest causes of global warming, said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace. "The new boogeyman into frightening the public to accept this 1950s technology is climate change," Riccio told Cybercast News Service. An independent report released in June by The Keystone Center, a diverse group of energy and environmental experts, determined that a larger growth rate of nuclear plants - greater than that currently planned by industry and government - would be needed to mitigate global warming.
'Bad terror targets'
The Keystone report also delved into safety concerns that surround the nuclear debate and which have only increased since 9/11. The potential theft of material from bulk-fuel-handling facilities to develop nuclear weapons is a major concern, stated the report, adding that the "expansion of nuclear power in ways that substantially increases the likelihood of the spread of nuclear weapons is unacceptable." "Reactors in the country are in violation" of general safety and environmental regulations and "the Nuclear Regulatory Commission just goes its merry way," said Greenpeace's Riccio. "To my mind it is unconscionable to build more terror targets in our midst. The 9/11 Report said Mohammed Atta was taking test flights over Indian Point." (Indian Point nuclear plant is in Buchanan, New York.)
Whitman believes the safety concerns are overstated. "People who fly airplanes every single day are exposed to more radiation" than from nuclear plants, she said. "They don't pose a threat to human health. It's minimum radiation." A person would have to live next door to a nuclear power plant for more than 2,000 years to get the amount of radiation exposure someone gets from a single X-ray, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.Also, "nuclear plants are bad targets for terrorists," said Whitman. "It's the most highly regulated power in the country and they are deemed to be one of the safest places to work because they are prepared for an attack.
If a plane flew into the facility, it would not cause a mushroom cloud."Power plants have numerous built-in sensors to watch temperature, pressure, water level and other safety indicators. The sensors are designed to shut down the plant immediately and automatically, if problems occur. Because of these precautions, nuclear plants are safer work places than most other manufacturing plants, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Also, American technology and equipment is far superior to that which was used in Russia, said William Meyer, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri. He points out there were about 5,000 cases of cancer in Russia after the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. But there were no such cases resulting from the Three Mile Island incident.
'Massive federal subsidies'
As long as cheaper energy alternatives are available to investors, nuclear power will remain stagnant, Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute told Cybercast News Service. "The entire industry is propped up by the most massive set of federal subsidies ever unleashed in the energy market, with the possible exception of ethanol," he said. "Without government preference and subsidy the nuclear industry would not exist today.
I believe in letting investors decide what to build and what not to build. I don't believe the government should rig the market to favor nuclear investments over other investments." Nuclear energy has failed to gain traction not so much because of environmental opposition but because it remains a poor investment, said Taylor. A University of Chicago study from 2004 on the economics of nuclear energy found many positive aspects, but affirmed Taylor's view on subsidies. "Without federal financial policy assistance," for "new nuclear plants to have a levelized cost of electricity" consumer rates for nuclear energy would be between $47 and $71 per megawatt-hour, compared to gas and coal powered electric that costs between $33 and $45 per megawatt hour, the report stated, adding that nuclear costs could be reduced to between $32 and $50 per megawatt hour with assistance from loan guarantees and tax credits.
But recognizing the move toward lower carbon emissions, the same report said, "A successful transition from oil-based to hydrogen-based transportation could, in the long run, increase demand for nuclear energy as a non-polluting way to produce hydrogen."Nuclear power is hardly the only industry to be buttressed by taxpayer dollars, advocates said. "We subsidize all energy," said William H. Miller, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri, told Cybercast News Service. "Nuclear is not unique.
The same people who are against subsidizing nuclear power want to give tax credits for hybrid cars. "Even if nuclear energy can prove itself in the marketplace, one should use caution in viewing nuclear as a "silver bullet" that would resolve America's energy challenges, said NEI's Heymer. Instead, he envisions a "balanced and diverse energy portfolio" that includes renewables, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear energy sources that can be applied to meeting rising demands.
The whole notion of energy independence peddled by politicians in both parties is a myth anyway, said Taylor. Even if nuclear power were to assume a larger percentage of electricity generation, the uranium comes from abroad, he noted."We import energy because it's cheaper than getting alternative sources here at home," he said. "Free trade is a good thing. Unfortunately, most Americans don't know much about economics."
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Lake Lahonton, Nevada: Climate Change
The Black Rock Desert and ancient Lake Lahontan in northwestern Nevada bring back fond memories for me. To those who know and remember, this is a tribute to "Bruno's Country Club", in Gerlach, Nevada, to days gone by.
Peter
Searching for Lake Lahontan
Evidence of the giant, ancient lake can be seen throughout northern Nevada.
Mark Vanderhoff RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Posted: 5/17/2003
There was a time when a giant lake covered much of northwestern Nevada. Between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago, the same mountains that exist today dipped into its deep, dark blue waters. Junipers or limber pine carpeted the slopes from the snowcapped peaks to its shores. Nearby, prehistoric camels, mammoths, bison and horses grazed. Cheetahs chased antelope. Huge sloths and the giant short-faced bear, larger than a Kodiak bear and fast on its long legs, roamed.
Fingers of the lake reached into mountain valleys and the tops of large hills poked out of the water, forming little islands. What is now the high country beginning in the Truckee Range north of Fernley to the Jackson and Kamma Mountains forming the eastern border of the Black Rock Desert once was a large island in the middle of the ancient lake.
Lake Lahontan, as the giant lake was called, reached its high point 15,000 years ago.
The climate then was much different than it is today because a massive glacier of the last ice age stretched down to the Canadian border, deflecting polar jet streams toward the southwestern United States. An abundance of rain and snow filled the Great Basin with hundreds of feet of water. During its highest years, the lake was almost 900 feet deep at present-day Pyramid Lake.
Lake Lahontan at its highest stretched from the Oregon border to Walker Lake, as far east as Winnemucca and as far west as Honey Lake up U.S. 395 in California. Although Reno and Carson City were high and dry, the Black Rock Desert, Lovelock and Fallon were under water.
Climate changes eventually dried up the lake, but today, clues about Lake Lahontan remain all across its former domain.
“You can see a world that was different from today,” said Pat Barker, the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada archaeologist.
The beach
The playa of the Black Rock Desert may be the most famous remnant of Lake Lahontan.
“I think one of the coolest things is it’s one of the biggest, flattest surfaces on the planet,” said Ken Adams, a Desert Research Institute geologist who studies Lake Lahontan.
Playa means beach or shore in Spanish, but in the days of Lake Lahontan, the playa was at the bottom of the lake. The fine silt and clay that compose the playa was light enough to be carried in by the rivers and streams that flowed into Lake Lahontan. That sediment eventually settled to the bottom.
Today, the playa owes its flat surface to the water table, Adams said.
A water table, standing water that sits underground, has a flat upper surface, just like a lake.
The winds that blow over the playa only blow off the loose items — they can’t pick up the cohesive, moist sediment wetted by the upper surface of the water table. Essentially, the playa surface has been “planed off by the wind,” Adams said.
Part of Adams’ research consists of finding remnants of the ancient shorelines and measuring their heights in the hills that once surrounded Lake Lahontan.
He has found the highest shorelines in the hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert and the Carson Sink. Those areas may have been under as much as 450 feet of water at one point, he said.
Shorelines and seashells
The highest shorelines may have been around the Black Rock Desert and Carson Sink, but the deepest waters stood at what is now Pyramid Lake.
Today, it is easy to see where the waves of Lake Lahontan also lapped at the hills surrounding Pyramid Lake.
“They’re very obvious if you know what to look for,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of places I could bring my mother and she’d understand what she was looking at.”
Look at the mountainsides that surround the lake, and white or light tan splotches will begin to appear among the brown dirt. Those spots consist of very fine silts that were deposited by Lake Lahontan on these hills thousands of years ago.
Next, search the slopes of the mountains for horizontal lines. Look closer and notice the terraces cut into the mountains like giant steps. Those terraces formed as crashing waves eroded soil from the hillsides. As the lake level dropped, the waves tore at successively lower spots on the slopes.
Pyramid Lake yields other clues about Lake Lahontan.
Walk to the beach and examine the sediment in the escarpments cut by the waves. Pick up a handful of sediment and look closely, and some white shells will appear among the sand and pebbles. “They look like snail shells, but there are no aquatic snails in the lake today,” Adams said. Those snail shells, called gastropods, have been dated to as far back as 25,000 years ago, suggesting they lived in Lake Lahontan. While the snails no longer live in Pyramid Lake, one species that swam Lake Lahontan does still call Pyramid Lake home. The qui-ui, a bottom-feeding fish that is now endangered because its spawning habitat on the Truckee River has been altered, thrived for thousands of years in Lake Lahontan and now only lives in Pyramid Lake.
“That’s one reason why we know Pyramid has never dried up since Lake Lahontan,” Adams said.
Pyramid Lake is, in fact, the real heir to Lake Lahontan. Walker Lake is also a remnant of Lahontan, but it has dried up numerous times over the years because of climate change and the diversion of the Walker River.
Surf’s up
If humans existed during Lake Lahontan’s prime, they could have stood on a sandy finger reaching into the lake now called the Russell Spit. Russell Spit looks like a long, wide pile of sand sticking out of the hills south of Fallon like an earthen finger. It was formed when Lake Lahontan’s waves crashed on nearby slopes at a slight angle, tearing away soil and then redepositing it down the shoreline. “You can stand on this beach and look north and go ‘Wow, there must have been huge waves here,’” Adams said. The waves here got so big because they had a large fetch, Adams said. Fetch is the area of open water where waves are built by the wind.
From the Russell Spit, it’s more than 50 miles as the wave rolls to the north end of the Carson sink. Back then, the Desert Mountains, on the edge of which Russell Spit stands, rose out of the water. Today, someone standing on Russell Spit can see where that giant expanse of water stood, clear beyond Fallon.
The human element
Throughout its long life, Lake Lahontan grew and shrank as the climate of the Great Basin gradually changed. After its high point, the lake dried up as the ice sheets retreated. A long drought ensued, followed by a very cold period that probably froze any water left.
Then the lake returned one final time. Scientists believe humans lived at the lake during this last incarnation, and the proof lies in sites like the Grimes Point-Hidden Cave Archaeological Area.
This site, south of Fallon, consists of caves hidden among hills and large boulders and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “Those boulders would have been on the shore lines,” said Amy Dansie, a retired Nevada State Museum anthropologist. The Spirit Cave Man might have lived on this shore and caught giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from its waters. This mummified human was found in nearby Spirit Cave in 1940 by two archaeologists who thought the remains were only 2,000 years old.
The remains were boxed and forgotten for six decades until the Nevada State Museum tested them as part of a program to return the remains to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who claim the Spirit Cave Man as their ancestor. The tests showed the mummy was about 10,630 years old. That places him at the Spirit Cave around the time Lake Lahontan was a dying lake.
But Dansie and other archaeologists believe humans may have seen Lake Lahontan in its prime.
Their theories are based on artifacts believed to have come from a period before this marshy time.
Some artifacts found at high elevations appeared to be “water tumbled,” Dansie said, suggesting they existed around the time of Lake Lahontan’s high stand. Dated bones belong to horses that appear to have been butchered using tools that predate the Spirit Cave Man’s culture. One spearhead called the McGee point is believed to be more than 13,000 years old, putting humans at Lake Lahontan no later than its high stand.
Any people that lived around Lake Lahontan through its varied life would have had to put up with — or perhaps retreated from — the changing climate. “They may have existed here but gone south and come back up multiple times,” Dansie said. Dansie is searching for a smoking gun, some artifacts that can be positively dated using the most modern technology. Those artifacts might be buried deep in layers of lake silt.
She believes such artifacts might prove humans appeared about 1,000 years before the Clovis Man, a member of a culture that lived 11,000 years ago — the earliest accepted date of a human presence in the New World. “It’s only another 1,000 years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re proposing 30,000 years.”
Peter
Searching for Lake Lahontan
Evidence of the giant, ancient lake can be seen throughout northern Nevada.
Mark Vanderhoff RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Posted: 5/17/2003
There was a time when a giant lake covered much of northwestern Nevada. Between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago, the same mountains that exist today dipped into its deep, dark blue waters. Junipers or limber pine carpeted the slopes from the snowcapped peaks to its shores. Nearby, prehistoric camels, mammoths, bison and horses grazed. Cheetahs chased antelope. Huge sloths and the giant short-faced bear, larger than a Kodiak bear and fast on its long legs, roamed.
Fingers of the lake reached into mountain valleys and the tops of large hills poked out of the water, forming little islands. What is now the high country beginning in the Truckee Range north of Fernley to the Jackson and Kamma Mountains forming the eastern border of the Black Rock Desert once was a large island in the middle of the ancient lake.
Lake Lahontan, as the giant lake was called, reached its high point 15,000 years ago.
The climate then was much different than it is today because a massive glacier of the last ice age stretched down to the Canadian border, deflecting polar jet streams toward the southwestern United States. An abundance of rain and snow filled the Great Basin with hundreds of feet of water. During its highest years, the lake was almost 900 feet deep at present-day Pyramid Lake.
Lake Lahontan at its highest stretched from the Oregon border to Walker Lake, as far east as Winnemucca and as far west as Honey Lake up U.S. 395 in California. Although Reno and Carson City were high and dry, the Black Rock Desert, Lovelock and Fallon were under water.
Climate changes eventually dried up the lake, but today, clues about Lake Lahontan remain all across its former domain.
“You can see a world that was different from today,” said Pat Barker, the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada archaeologist.
The beach
The playa of the Black Rock Desert may be the most famous remnant of Lake Lahontan.
“I think one of the coolest things is it’s one of the biggest, flattest surfaces on the planet,” said Ken Adams, a Desert Research Institute geologist who studies Lake Lahontan.
Playa means beach or shore in Spanish, but in the days of Lake Lahontan, the playa was at the bottom of the lake. The fine silt and clay that compose the playa was light enough to be carried in by the rivers and streams that flowed into Lake Lahontan. That sediment eventually settled to the bottom.
Today, the playa owes its flat surface to the water table, Adams said.
A water table, standing water that sits underground, has a flat upper surface, just like a lake.
The winds that blow over the playa only blow off the loose items — they can’t pick up the cohesive, moist sediment wetted by the upper surface of the water table. Essentially, the playa surface has been “planed off by the wind,” Adams said.
Part of Adams’ research consists of finding remnants of the ancient shorelines and measuring their heights in the hills that once surrounded Lake Lahontan.
He has found the highest shorelines in the hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert and the Carson Sink. Those areas may have been under as much as 450 feet of water at one point, he said.
Shorelines and seashells
The highest shorelines may have been around the Black Rock Desert and Carson Sink, but the deepest waters stood at what is now Pyramid Lake.
Today, it is easy to see where the waves of Lake Lahontan also lapped at the hills surrounding Pyramid Lake.
“They’re very obvious if you know what to look for,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of places I could bring my mother and she’d understand what she was looking at.”
Look at the mountainsides that surround the lake, and white or light tan splotches will begin to appear among the brown dirt. Those spots consist of very fine silts that were deposited by Lake Lahontan on these hills thousands of years ago.
Next, search the slopes of the mountains for horizontal lines. Look closer and notice the terraces cut into the mountains like giant steps. Those terraces formed as crashing waves eroded soil from the hillsides. As the lake level dropped, the waves tore at successively lower spots on the slopes.
Pyramid Lake yields other clues about Lake Lahontan.
Walk to the beach and examine the sediment in the escarpments cut by the waves. Pick up a handful of sediment and look closely, and some white shells will appear among the sand and pebbles. “They look like snail shells, but there are no aquatic snails in the lake today,” Adams said. Those snail shells, called gastropods, have been dated to as far back as 25,000 years ago, suggesting they lived in Lake Lahontan. While the snails no longer live in Pyramid Lake, one species that swam Lake Lahontan does still call Pyramid Lake home. The qui-ui, a bottom-feeding fish that is now endangered because its spawning habitat on the Truckee River has been altered, thrived for thousands of years in Lake Lahontan and now only lives in Pyramid Lake.
“That’s one reason why we know Pyramid has never dried up since Lake Lahontan,” Adams said.
Pyramid Lake is, in fact, the real heir to Lake Lahontan. Walker Lake is also a remnant of Lahontan, but it has dried up numerous times over the years because of climate change and the diversion of the Walker River.
Surf’s up
If humans existed during Lake Lahontan’s prime, they could have stood on a sandy finger reaching into the lake now called the Russell Spit. Russell Spit looks like a long, wide pile of sand sticking out of the hills south of Fallon like an earthen finger. It was formed when Lake Lahontan’s waves crashed on nearby slopes at a slight angle, tearing away soil and then redepositing it down the shoreline. “You can stand on this beach and look north and go ‘Wow, there must have been huge waves here,’” Adams said. The waves here got so big because they had a large fetch, Adams said. Fetch is the area of open water where waves are built by the wind.
From the Russell Spit, it’s more than 50 miles as the wave rolls to the north end of the Carson sink. Back then, the Desert Mountains, on the edge of which Russell Spit stands, rose out of the water. Today, someone standing on Russell Spit can see where that giant expanse of water stood, clear beyond Fallon.
The human element
Throughout its long life, Lake Lahontan grew and shrank as the climate of the Great Basin gradually changed. After its high point, the lake dried up as the ice sheets retreated. A long drought ensued, followed by a very cold period that probably froze any water left.
Then the lake returned one final time. Scientists believe humans lived at the lake during this last incarnation, and the proof lies in sites like the Grimes Point-Hidden Cave Archaeological Area.
This site, south of Fallon, consists of caves hidden among hills and large boulders and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “Those boulders would have been on the shore lines,” said Amy Dansie, a retired Nevada State Museum anthropologist. The Spirit Cave Man might have lived on this shore and caught giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from its waters. This mummified human was found in nearby Spirit Cave in 1940 by two archaeologists who thought the remains were only 2,000 years old.
The remains were boxed and forgotten for six decades until the Nevada State Museum tested them as part of a program to return the remains to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who claim the Spirit Cave Man as their ancestor. The tests showed the mummy was about 10,630 years old. That places him at the Spirit Cave around the time Lake Lahontan was a dying lake.
But Dansie and other archaeologists believe humans may have seen Lake Lahontan in its prime.
Their theories are based on artifacts believed to have come from a period before this marshy time.
Some artifacts found at high elevations appeared to be “water tumbled,” Dansie said, suggesting they existed around the time of Lake Lahontan’s high stand. Dated bones belong to horses that appear to have been butchered using tools that predate the Spirit Cave Man’s culture. One spearhead called the McGee point is believed to be more than 13,000 years old, putting humans at Lake Lahontan no later than its high stand.
Any people that lived around Lake Lahontan through its varied life would have had to put up with — or perhaps retreated from — the changing climate. “They may have existed here but gone south and come back up multiple times,” Dansie said. Dansie is searching for a smoking gun, some artifacts that can be positively dated using the most modern technology. Those artifacts might be buried deep in layers of lake silt.
She believes such artifacts might prove humans appeared about 1,000 years before the Clovis Man, a member of a culture that lived 11,000 years ago — the earliest accepted date of a human presence in the New World. “It’s only another 1,000 years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re proposing 30,000 years.”
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
UN Chief Says "Science Is Clear, and Time Is Short" To Act On Global Warming
What nonsense for the U.N. Secretary-General to say the "science is clear" about global warming. It may be clear to him and those who wrote the IPCC summary, but it is far from clear among many notable climate scientists, and scores of others. And saying "time is short" and we must act now, is also ridiculous. Why the scare tactics? People aren't buying the hype.
Peter
UN Chief: Global Warming Demands Action
UN's Ban Says Science Clear but Political Will Lacking in Confronting Global Warming
The Associated Press
By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS Sep 18, 2007 (AP)
The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday.
Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late."
Asked at a news conference about President Bush's planned separate meeting to discuss global-warming measures among a handful of countries later next week, the U.N. chief said Bush assured him it would be coordinated with the established U.N. process of negotiating climate treaty commitments among all nations.
The Bush administration rejects treaty obligations, such as the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Bush favors voluntary reductions instead.
"All the measures and initiatives should fit into the (U.N.) process," Ban told reporters.
He said about 80 heads of state and government, including Bush, would attend Monday's all-day climate discussion. It is not designed as a negotiation, but rather to produce some political momentum for negotiations to take place in December in Bali, Indonesia, at the annual U.N. climate treaty conference.
In a series of major reports this year, a U.N.-sponsored scientific network said unabated global warming, potentially raising average temperatures by several degrees Fahrenheit, would produce a far different planet by 2100 from rising seas, drought and other factors. The scientists said animal and plant life was already being disrupted.
"The science has made it quite clear, and we have been feeling the impacts of global warming already clearly," Ban said. "We have resources. We have technology. The only (thing) lacking is political will. Before it is too late, we must take action."
The Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 annex to a 1992 U.N. climate treaty, requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by, on average, 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Talks at Bali are intended to initiate negotiations on a similar regime of mandatory cutbacks for after 2012.
Bush has rejected Kyoto and has signaled no new readiness to accept such mandates. The meeting he has called for Sept. 27-28 in Washington, involving major industrial nations and a few developing countries, including China and India, is expected to focus on "goals," not obligations, for reducing climate-altering emissions.
Peter
UN Chief: Global Warming Demands Action
UN's Ban Says Science Clear but Political Will Lacking in Confronting Global Warming
The Associated Press
By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS Sep 18, 2007 (AP)
The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday.
Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late."
Asked at a news conference about President Bush's planned separate meeting to discuss global-warming measures among a handful of countries later next week, the U.N. chief said Bush assured him it would be coordinated with the established U.N. process of negotiating climate treaty commitments among all nations.
The Bush administration rejects treaty obligations, such as the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Bush favors voluntary reductions instead.
"All the measures and initiatives should fit into the (U.N.) process," Ban told reporters.
He said about 80 heads of state and government, including Bush, would attend Monday's all-day climate discussion. It is not designed as a negotiation, but rather to produce some political momentum for negotiations to take place in December in Bali, Indonesia, at the annual U.N. climate treaty conference.
In a series of major reports this year, a U.N.-sponsored scientific network said unabated global warming, potentially raising average temperatures by several degrees Fahrenheit, would produce a far different planet by 2100 from rising seas, drought and other factors. The scientists said animal and plant life was already being disrupted.
"The science has made it quite clear, and we have been feeling the impacts of global warming already clearly," Ban said. "We have resources. We have technology. The only (thing) lacking is political will. Before it is too late, we must take action."
The Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 annex to a 1992 U.N. climate treaty, requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by, on average, 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Talks at Bali are intended to initiate negotiations on a similar regime of mandatory cutbacks for after 2012.
Bush has rejected Kyoto and has signaled no new readiness to accept such mandates. The meeting he has called for Sept. 27-28 in Washington, involving major industrial nations and a few developing countries, including China and India, is expected to focus on "goals," not obligations, for reducing climate-altering emissions.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Stop Global Warming, Become A Vegan(itarian)
People will endlessly debate the merits of the kind of foods we eat, but it does get rather ridiculous when global warming and climate change is added to the pot.
Peter
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=/Commentary/archive/200709/COM20070917b.html
Be a Vegan or Else!
By Alan Caruba CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety CenterSeptember 17, 2007
To put it quite simply, unless you and everyone else becomes a vegetarian or adopts the vegan (no animal products, period!) lifestyle, the Earth is going to come to an end or you will probably die from some horrid disease. Sound extreme? Sound just a bit nutty? Not according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) or a recent study, "Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change and Health," by Professor Tony McMichael of the Australian National University and Dr. John Powles of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
If either of these deep thinkers took a moment to contemplate the success of the human race in terms of survival and expansion, they would find that humans have 20 teeth in their mouth designed exclusively to eat meat, but only 12 for fruit and vegetables.Moreover, the human stomach is, in fact, a carnivorous organ designed primarily to digest lean meat. The small intestine, pancreas and liver are mainly herbivorous and designed to digest vegetables, fruits, fats and farinaceous (starch) foods. All this has been known for a very long time.
Why am I telling you this? Because for quite a while, there has been a vigorous campaign by the United Nations agency and by militant vegans to convince people that eating meat is a bad thing. The only way to respond to these "studies" and claims is to examine and debunk them.First, however, one must ask why the FAO would foster a policy claiming that livestock is a major threat to the environment? Like the insidious Big Brother of George Orwell's novel, "1984", the purpose of the U.N.'s efforts is to exert control over every aspect of people's lives.
Why else would an organization set up primarily to ensure peace among nations create vast bureaucracies whose purpose is to advocate bogus notions such as "global warming" and then branch off with still other bureaucracies to impose restrictions based on idiotic notions such as the "precautionary principle"?Under the latter, any substance or process that might cause harm should be banned, no matter its benefit or known record of safety.All this affords a nice living to legions of "scientists" and academics that issue reports to support ideas such as those put forth by professors McMichael and Powles.
Their latest study, published in the The Lancet, a U.K. publication, is bound to receive the usual breathless media coverage that accompanies just about every witless environmental claim regarding the climate and every human activity.Do you really believe that the "worldwide average meat consumption could be realistically reduced by 10 percent to reduce the already substantial impact of livestock production on greenhouse gas emissions"?Do you really believe there are "health risks posed by the rapid worldwide growth in meat consumption, both by exacerbating climate change and by directly contributing to certain diseases"?
At a time when there are more humans than ever before in recorded history, when life expectancy is being dramatically extended, when breakthroughs in genetic modification of crops to enhance both their production and the ability to increase their nutritional value, when diseases of every description are being conquered, would we ever want to return to a time when life was short, disease was rampant, and famine was the rule, not the exception?
This latest study is not about meat consumption. It is one of thousands of such specious claims that the Earth is warming dramatically due to human activity. It is one of thousands designed to alter the improving lifestyle of millions around the world who enjoy a hamburger or any other meat product, whether it be beef, lamb, chicken or fish.The Earth is not experiencing a rapid increase in heat. If it does increase or decrease, it will be entirely due to the actions of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes and the other natural factors that determine the Earth's climate. Man is not causing the climate to change, but the climate most certainly impacts mankind.
The notion that livestock, like mankind, contribute to "global warming" is almost too ludicrous to consider, but that does not deter the FAO, the U.N. Environmental Programme and countless "environmental" organizations from foisting these notions on everyone. Like humans, each of whom exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide daily, livestock also emit "greenhouse gases," and this is the basis for the latest study being trumpeted.
However, the dominant greenhouse gas, estimated to be as much as 95 percent of the atmospheric layer that protects the Earth, is nothing more mysterious or threatening than water vapor. With considerable irony, the latest "study" notes the abundance of food in the world today. If there is famine in parts of the world, it often reflects the mismanagement of agriculture by the corrupt and ignorant people who control nations that otherwise would produce sufficient food for their populations.
Droughts and other natural factors contribute to famines, but food is often a weapon used against people as has been seen in Darfur, a section of Sudan where the Islamic fundamentalists in charge have been waging genocide.Meat and the lies told about it is part of the arsenal of weapons being used to coerce and frighten people into believing that less production will "save" the Earth from the non-existent threat of "global warming" and is responsible for unidentified health threats attributed to it.This accounts for the latest call that we all become vegetarians or vegans. It is idiotic on the face of its claims.
It is a veiled attempt to further control the lives of everyone. Fight back! Have a steak tonight!
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. The views expressed are those of the writer.)
Peter
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=/Commentary/archive/200709/COM20070917b.html
Be a Vegan or Else!
By Alan Caruba CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety CenterSeptember 17, 2007
To put it quite simply, unless you and everyone else becomes a vegetarian or adopts the vegan (no animal products, period!) lifestyle, the Earth is going to come to an end or you will probably die from some horrid disease. Sound extreme? Sound just a bit nutty? Not according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) or a recent study, "Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change and Health," by Professor Tony McMichael of the Australian National University and Dr. John Powles of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
If either of these deep thinkers took a moment to contemplate the success of the human race in terms of survival and expansion, they would find that humans have 20 teeth in their mouth designed exclusively to eat meat, but only 12 for fruit and vegetables.Moreover, the human stomach is, in fact, a carnivorous organ designed primarily to digest lean meat. The small intestine, pancreas and liver are mainly herbivorous and designed to digest vegetables, fruits, fats and farinaceous (starch) foods. All this has been known for a very long time.
Why am I telling you this? Because for quite a while, there has been a vigorous campaign by the United Nations agency and by militant vegans to convince people that eating meat is a bad thing. The only way to respond to these "studies" and claims is to examine and debunk them.First, however, one must ask why the FAO would foster a policy claiming that livestock is a major threat to the environment? Like the insidious Big Brother of George Orwell's novel, "1984", the purpose of the U.N.'s efforts is to exert control over every aspect of people's lives.
Why else would an organization set up primarily to ensure peace among nations create vast bureaucracies whose purpose is to advocate bogus notions such as "global warming" and then branch off with still other bureaucracies to impose restrictions based on idiotic notions such as the "precautionary principle"?Under the latter, any substance or process that might cause harm should be banned, no matter its benefit or known record of safety.All this affords a nice living to legions of "scientists" and academics that issue reports to support ideas such as those put forth by professors McMichael and Powles.
Their latest study, published in the The Lancet, a U.K. publication, is bound to receive the usual breathless media coverage that accompanies just about every witless environmental claim regarding the climate and every human activity.Do you really believe that the "worldwide average meat consumption could be realistically reduced by 10 percent to reduce the already substantial impact of livestock production on greenhouse gas emissions"?Do you really believe there are "health risks posed by the rapid worldwide growth in meat consumption, both by exacerbating climate change and by directly contributing to certain diseases"?
At a time when there are more humans than ever before in recorded history, when life expectancy is being dramatically extended, when breakthroughs in genetic modification of crops to enhance both their production and the ability to increase their nutritional value, when diseases of every description are being conquered, would we ever want to return to a time when life was short, disease was rampant, and famine was the rule, not the exception?
This latest study is not about meat consumption. It is one of thousands of such specious claims that the Earth is warming dramatically due to human activity. It is one of thousands designed to alter the improving lifestyle of millions around the world who enjoy a hamburger or any other meat product, whether it be beef, lamb, chicken or fish.The Earth is not experiencing a rapid increase in heat. If it does increase or decrease, it will be entirely due to the actions of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes and the other natural factors that determine the Earth's climate. Man is not causing the climate to change, but the climate most certainly impacts mankind.
The notion that livestock, like mankind, contribute to "global warming" is almost too ludicrous to consider, but that does not deter the FAO, the U.N. Environmental Programme and countless "environmental" organizations from foisting these notions on everyone. Like humans, each of whom exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide daily, livestock also emit "greenhouse gases," and this is the basis for the latest study being trumpeted.
However, the dominant greenhouse gas, estimated to be as much as 95 percent of the atmospheric layer that protects the Earth, is nothing more mysterious or threatening than water vapor. With considerable irony, the latest "study" notes the abundance of food in the world today. If there is famine in parts of the world, it often reflects the mismanagement of agriculture by the corrupt and ignorant people who control nations that otherwise would produce sufficient food for their populations.
Droughts and other natural factors contribute to famines, but food is often a weapon used against people as has been seen in Darfur, a section of Sudan where the Islamic fundamentalists in charge have been waging genocide.Meat and the lies told about it is part of the arsenal of weapons being used to coerce and frighten people into believing that less production will "save" the Earth from the non-existent threat of "global warming" and is responsible for unidentified health threats attributed to it.This accounts for the latest call that we all become vegetarians or vegans. It is idiotic on the face of its claims.
It is a veiled attempt to further control the lives of everyone. Fight back! Have a steak tonight!
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. The views expressed are those of the writer.)
Cap-and Trade System To Control Greenhouse Gases A (Very) Bad Idea
A well-known economist, (Arthur Laffer) says a cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions would harm the U.S. economy. Not only would the economy suffer, but I am sure any such efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions would have no effect on global warming or climate change. Read what Mr. Laffer has to say about the economics of the plan.
Peter
The Adverse Economic Impacts of Cap-and-Trade Regulations
Arthur Laffer and Wayne Winegarden
September 2007
The Adverse Economic Impacts of Cap-and-Trade Regulations
A cap-and-trade scheme for controlling greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) would impose significant economic costs on the U.S. economy and, consequently, are an inappropriate policy response to current concerns about global warming. Our analysis of cap-and-trade’s economic impacts reveals the following impacts:
• In economic terminology, cap-and-trade operates is a “quantity constraint” as the scheme establishes (or constrains) the GHGs that can be produced. As a quantity constraint, cap-and-trade regulations inherently create more price volatility in the GHG allowance market, as has already been observed in Europe. The Congressional Budget Office has also raised the price volatility issue, concluding that cap-and-trade regulations are not sound policies for addressing global warming.
• Cap-and-trade regulations would likely impose a large cost on the U.S. economy. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that overall economic growth could decline by up to 4.2 percent if a cap-and-trade system were implemented to achieve the Kyoto Protocol targets (7% below 1990 GHGs by 2008-2012). The costs to reach the ultimate goal of some GHG control proponents (e.g., reducing GHGs to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050) would be significantly greater. However, these estimates assume that the government will auction off the rights to emit greenhouse gases as opposed to simply giving these rights away, which is the
approach often discussed in the U.S. and what has actually been implemented in Europe.
• Fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) provide 86 percent of our current energy needs. It is not currently feasible for the alternative energy sources to significantly expand their energy contribution sufficiently in the near-term to substitute for the demand growth, according to the EIA. Consequently, a GHG cap could effectively become an energy production cap – or an energy supply shock.
• The U.S. economy’s past experience with energy supply shocks supports the conclusions of the EIA study. During the previous oil supply shocks (energy supply shocks) of 1974-75, 1979-81 and 1990-91, the economy declined, unemployment rose, and the stock market declined in value.
• Based on the energy efficiency responses to the energy supply shocks of the 1970s, the U.S. economy could be 5.2 percent smaller in 2020 compared to what would otherwise be expected if cap-and-trade regulations are imposed. This equates to a potential income loss of about $10,800 for a family of four for the initial Kyoto GHG reduction target.
• Technical difficulties in measuring and verifying the validity of traded GHG allowances imply that the global market will be inefficient, and subject to manipulation and fraud. Government regulations that fail to delineate future GHG control levels add more uncertainty. These uncertainties raise further questions regarding the efficacy of the cap-and-trade regulations.
When evaluated as a whole, cap-and-trade regulations are likely to impose significant economic costs on the U.S. economy. These costs argue against implementing cap-and-trade regulations as a response to concerns about the potential contribution of GHGs to global warming.
Peter
The Adverse Economic Impacts of Cap-and-Trade Regulations
Arthur Laffer and Wayne Winegarden
September 2007
The Adverse Economic Impacts of Cap-and-Trade Regulations
A cap-and-trade scheme for controlling greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) would impose significant economic costs on the U.S. economy and, consequently, are an inappropriate policy response to current concerns about global warming. Our analysis of cap-and-trade’s economic impacts reveals the following impacts:
• In economic terminology, cap-and-trade operates is a “quantity constraint” as the scheme establishes (or constrains) the GHGs that can be produced. As a quantity constraint, cap-and-trade regulations inherently create more price volatility in the GHG allowance market, as has already been observed in Europe. The Congressional Budget Office has also raised the price volatility issue, concluding that cap-and-trade regulations are not sound policies for addressing global warming.
• Cap-and-trade regulations would likely impose a large cost on the U.S. economy. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that overall economic growth could decline by up to 4.2 percent if a cap-and-trade system were implemented to achieve the Kyoto Protocol targets (7% below 1990 GHGs by 2008-2012). The costs to reach the ultimate goal of some GHG control proponents (e.g., reducing GHGs to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050) would be significantly greater. However, these estimates assume that the government will auction off the rights to emit greenhouse gases as opposed to simply giving these rights away, which is the
approach often discussed in the U.S. and what has actually been implemented in Europe.
• Fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) provide 86 percent of our current energy needs. It is not currently feasible for the alternative energy sources to significantly expand their energy contribution sufficiently in the near-term to substitute for the demand growth, according to the EIA. Consequently, a GHG cap could effectively become an energy production cap – or an energy supply shock.
• The U.S. economy’s past experience with energy supply shocks supports the conclusions of the EIA study. During the previous oil supply shocks (energy supply shocks) of 1974-75, 1979-81 and 1990-91, the economy declined, unemployment rose, and the stock market declined in value.
• Based on the energy efficiency responses to the energy supply shocks of the 1970s, the U.S. economy could be 5.2 percent smaller in 2020 compared to what would otherwise be expected if cap-and-trade regulations are imposed. This equates to a potential income loss of about $10,800 for a family of four for the initial Kyoto GHG reduction target.
• Technical difficulties in measuring and verifying the validity of traded GHG allowances imply that the global market will be inefficient, and subject to manipulation and fraud. Government regulations that fail to delineate future GHG control levels add more uncertainty. These uncertainties raise further questions regarding the efficacy of the cap-and-trade regulations.
When evaluated as a whole, cap-and-trade regulations are likely to impose significant economic costs on the U.S. economy. These costs argue against implementing cap-and-trade regulations as a response to concerns about the potential contribution of GHGs to global warming.
Iraq, Oil, and Alan Greenspan
What a unique idea, that the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent "war" is really about creating stability in the Middle East because of the need for oil. If this is the truth, which I believe it is, why weren't we told this from the beginning? Would people say no to war and stop using oil? Of course not.
Peter
from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20817260/
Greenspan clarifies Iraq war, oil link
Says he told White House ousting Saddam was 'essential' to world supplies
WASHINGTON - Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.
Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that “the Iraq War is largely about oil,” said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ’Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
In his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Gates rejects commentU.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected the comment, which echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war was to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Gates said, “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan.” But he disagreed with his comment about oil being a leading motivating factor in the war.
“I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true,” Gates said.
“I think that it’s really about stability in the Gulf. It’s about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s about aggressive dictators,” Gates said.
Greenspan retired in January 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman of the Fed, the U.S. central bank, which regulates monetary policy.
He has been conducting a round of interviews coinciding with the release of his book, which goes on sale on Monday.
Economic motivation for war
In The Washington Post interview, Greenspan said at the time of the invasion he believed like President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction “because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something.”
But Greenspan’s main support for Saddam’s ouster was economically motivated, the Post reported.
“My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day” passing through,” Greenspan said.
Even a small disruption could drive oil prices as high as $120 a barrel and would mean “chaos” to the global economy, Greenspan told the newspaper.
Given that, “I’m saying taking Saddam out was essential,” he said. But he added he was not implying the war was an oil grab, the Post said.
Dismay with DemocratsGreenspan, who in his memoir criticized Bush and congressional Republicans for abandoning fiscal discipline and putting politics ahead of sound economics, also expressed dismay with the Democratic Party in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday.
Greenspan told the Journal he was “fairly close” to former President Bill Clinton’s economic advisers, but added, “The next administration may have the Clinton administration name, but the Democratic Party ... has moved ... very significantly in the wrong direction.” He cited its populist bent, especially its skepticism of free trade. Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Greenspan, a self-described libertarian Republican, told the Journal he was not sure how he would vote in the 2008 election.
“I just may not vote,” he was quoted as saying, adding, ”I’m saddened by the whole political process.”
Peter
from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20817260/
Greenspan clarifies Iraq war, oil link
Says he told White House ousting Saddam was 'essential' to world supplies
WASHINGTON - Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.
Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that “the Iraq War is largely about oil,” said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ’Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
In his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Gates rejects commentU.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected the comment, which echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war was to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Gates said, “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan.” But he disagreed with his comment about oil being a leading motivating factor in the war.
“I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true,” Gates said.
“I think that it’s really about stability in the Gulf. It’s about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s about aggressive dictators,” Gates said.
Greenspan retired in January 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman of the Fed, the U.S. central bank, which regulates monetary policy.
He has been conducting a round of interviews coinciding with the release of his book, which goes on sale on Monday.
Economic motivation for war
In The Washington Post interview, Greenspan said at the time of the invasion he believed like President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction “because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something.”
But Greenspan’s main support for Saddam’s ouster was economically motivated, the Post reported.
“My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day” passing through,” Greenspan said.
Even a small disruption could drive oil prices as high as $120 a barrel and would mean “chaos” to the global economy, Greenspan told the newspaper.
Given that, “I’m saying taking Saddam out was essential,” he said. But he added he was not implying the war was an oil grab, the Post said.
Dismay with DemocratsGreenspan, who in his memoir criticized Bush and congressional Republicans for abandoning fiscal discipline and putting politics ahead of sound economics, also expressed dismay with the Democratic Party in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday.
Greenspan told the Journal he was “fairly close” to former President Bill Clinton’s economic advisers, but added, “The next administration may have the Clinton administration name, but the Democratic Party ... has moved ... very significantly in the wrong direction.” He cited its populist bent, especially its skepticism of free trade. Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Greenspan, a self-described libertarian Republican, told the Journal he was not sure how he would vote in the 2008 election.
“I just may not vote,” he was quoted as saying, adding, ”I’m saddened by the whole political process.”
Friday, September 14, 2007
NASA Interfering In Study Of Climate Data
Here is a brief summary of the unfolding saga of Jim Hansen of NASA and the recording and interpretation of temperature data as it relates to the theory of man-caused global warming.
Peter
from:
GCB Stokes
Message #109/14/07 02:10 PM
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/08/17/nasa_blocked_climate_change_blogger_from_data?page=full&comments=true
Despite the fact that NASA tried to block him from accessing U.S. temperature data, persistent efforts by a climate change blogger forced the government to amend U.S. temperature data. Because of the blogger’s efforts, NASA now recognizes 1934 as the hottest year in U.S. history, not 1998. Steven McIntyre, a former mineral exploration executive and policy analyst for the governments of Ontario and Canada who blogs at ClimateAudit.org, wrote to NASA on August 4. He had found miscalculations in the NASA’s U.S. temperature recordings made after January 2000. “For Detroit Lakes, Minnesota,” McIntyre wrote “this introduced an error of 0.8 **** C.” NASA responded on August 7 to tell McIntyre data was “changed correspondingly with an acknowledgement of your contribution.”
Without any fanfare, the changes were made on the NASA website. The recalculations resulted in an overall decrease in U.S. temperatures since 2000 by 0.15 degrees centigrade. In a phone interview McIntyre said, “That doesn’t necessarily seem that much, but when the entire increase in temperature in the United States had been previously reported to be about half a degree, this .15 degree is not a small number when you are measuring half degree numbers.”
Now, the ten hottest years on record in the U.S., beginning with the hottest year, are: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939. Before the revision, that list read: 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921, 1931, 1999, 1953, 2001, 1990 and 1938. The re-ranking completely knocked 2001 off the top 10 list.
This U.S. temperature revision could cause problems for former Vice President Al Gore. Assisted by Hansen, Gore asserted in his global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth” that nine of the ten hottest years in U.S. history occurred since 1995.
McIntyre said he began looking at the data because he questioned the reliability of NASA’s U.S. weather stations that recorded temperature data. He said, “Some of them were in places they weren’t supposed to be….one of them was in a parking lot and the trend for the station in a parking lot was way up and a nearby station that was in a proper location in a rural area was relatively flat.” Chris Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, said McIntyre was able to catch the mistake because he “knew that our surface measuring stations are suspect.”
Horner said the polling stations could be affected by things like the construction nearby asphalt parking lots, tar roofs, AC vents, chimneys, or even a grill restaurant. McIntyre said, “Defenders of the weather station system argued that NASA had software that could fix that data…And, so I wrote to NASA in May and asked them for the source code for the adjustment software that they used to fix these stations and they refused to provide it.”
But, “the adjustments are not small,” McIntyre said. “The adjustments that they make are fully equal the total amount of warming in the United States the past century.” According to McIntyre, when he began downloading data from NASA’s website to compare the adjusted and the raw data from the polling stations, “this led to a bit of a fight with NASA in May. As I started downloading the data in sequence they cut off my access to the data.” “They blocked my IP address,” McIntyre said.
When contacted by phone to verify the computer block NASA spokeswoman Leslie McCarthy said, “This is the first I’ve heard of this.” McCarthy had not yet responded to the full transcript at the time of publication.
“After I was blocked and I explained myself they still didn’t want to let me have access to the data,” McIntyre lamented. He continued: “They just said go look at the original data. And I said no, I want to see the data you used. I know what the original data looks like. I want to see the data that you used. But one of the nice things about having a blog that gets a million and half hits a month is that I then was able to publicize this block in real-time and they very quickly withdrew their position and allowed me to have access.” When he got the data, McIntyre then compared the raw and adjusted data sets for all 1200 U.S. weather stations. “Probably 75 percent of the stations had jumps of at least a quarter degree in the year 2000,” he said. Conservative media personalities like talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and blogger Michelle Malkin blasted the revision that was made quietly.
The Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen responded to the critics on the left-wing blog DailyKos. He said that U.S. temperature data change is inconsequential to overall global climate data.. He wrote a diary on their site on August 11 that said, “The effect on global temperature was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves [on global data] are indistinguishable.”
Jeff Kuerter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, said NASA’s mistake cast doubt on all global climate data because the United States was considered the best at taking analyzing temperatures. “If the U.S. doesn’t get this right what might be happening in other places and why did this error persist so long?” he said. In an August 13 Newsweek cover story, “The Truth About Denial,” Kuerter’s organization was labeled as part of the “denial machine” in cahoots with Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt Walton said Exxon had no comment regarding NASA’s climate change revisions.
Even though the data has been corrected, McIntyre is not satisfied. “They claim that they’re adjustment methodology was capable of fixing bad data, I mean, that’s the point I want people to take home from this,” he said. “What they’ve done now is inserted a patch into an error that I identified for them but they haven’t established that the rest of their adjustment methodology is any good.” He recommended that NASA begin archiving the codes they use to make calculations and subject data to public scrutiny or peer-review.
This isn’t the first time McIntyre has caused a stir by questioning global warming data. The Toronto-based McIntyre joined forces with Canadian economist Ross McKitrick to refute data put forth by United Nations in 2001 that said use of fossil fuels was causing global warming. Included in the report was a graphic that showed 20th century temperatures sharply rising as time went on in the form of a hockey stick, which later became the name of the graph. McIntyre and McKitrick found an error in the mathematical calculation used to construct the “hockey stick.” Their findings led to a congressional investigation led by then-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Joe Barton (R.-Tex.).
Peter
from:
GCB Stokes
Message #109/14/07 02:10 PM
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/08/17/nasa_blocked_climate_change_blogger_from_data?page=full&comments=true
Despite the fact that NASA tried to block him from accessing U.S. temperature data, persistent efforts by a climate change blogger forced the government to amend U.S. temperature data. Because of the blogger’s efforts, NASA now recognizes 1934 as the hottest year in U.S. history, not 1998. Steven McIntyre, a former mineral exploration executive and policy analyst for the governments of Ontario and Canada who blogs at ClimateAudit.org, wrote to NASA on August 4. He had found miscalculations in the NASA’s U.S. temperature recordings made after January 2000. “For Detroit Lakes, Minnesota,” McIntyre wrote “this introduced an error of 0.8 **** C.” NASA responded on August 7 to tell McIntyre data was “changed correspondingly with an acknowledgement of your contribution.”
Without any fanfare, the changes were made on the NASA website. The recalculations resulted in an overall decrease in U.S. temperatures since 2000 by 0.15 degrees centigrade. In a phone interview McIntyre said, “That doesn’t necessarily seem that much, but when the entire increase in temperature in the United States had been previously reported to be about half a degree, this .15 degree is not a small number when you are measuring half degree numbers.”
Now, the ten hottest years on record in the U.S., beginning with the hottest year, are: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939. Before the revision, that list read: 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921, 1931, 1999, 1953, 2001, 1990 and 1938. The re-ranking completely knocked 2001 off the top 10 list.
This U.S. temperature revision could cause problems for former Vice President Al Gore. Assisted by Hansen, Gore asserted in his global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth” that nine of the ten hottest years in U.S. history occurred since 1995.
McIntyre said he began looking at the data because he questioned the reliability of NASA’s U.S. weather stations that recorded temperature data. He said, “Some of them were in places they weren’t supposed to be….one of them was in a parking lot and the trend for the station in a parking lot was way up and a nearby station that was in a proper location in a rural area was relatively flat.” Chris Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, said McIntyre was able to catch the mistake because he “knew that our surface measuring stations are suspect.”
Horner said the polling stations could be affected by things like the construction nearby asphalt parking lots, tar roofs, AC vents, chimneys, or even a grill restaurant. McIntyre said, “Defenders of the weather station system argued that NASA had software that could fix that data…And, so I wrote to NASA in May and asked them for the source code for the adjustment software that they used to fix these stations and they refused to provide it.”
But, “the adjustments are not small,” McIntyre said. “The adjustments that they make are fully equal the total amount of warming in the United States the past century.” According to McIntyre, when he began downloading data from NASA’s website to compare the adjusted and the raw data from the polling stations, “this led to a bit of a fight with NASA in May. As I started downloading the data in sequence they cut off my access to the data.” “They blocked my IP address,” McIntyre said.
When contacted by phone to verify the computer block NASA spokeswoman Leslie McCarthy said, “This is the first I’ve heard of this.” McCarthy had not yet responded to the full transcript at the time of publication.
“After I was blocked and I explained myself they still didn’t want to let me have access to the data,” McIntyre lamented. He continued: “They just said go look at the original data. And I said no, I want to see the data you used. I know what the original data looks like. I want to see the data that you used. But one of the nice things about having a blog that gets a million and half hits a month is that I then was able to publicize this block in real-time and they very quickly withdrew their position and allowed me to have access.” When he got the data, McIntyre then compared the raw and adjusted data sets for all 1200 U.S. weather stations. “Probably 75 percent of the stations had jumps of at least a quarter degree in the year 2000,” he said. Conservative media personalities like talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and blogger Michelle Malkin blasted the revision that was made quietly.
The Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen responded to the critics on the left-wing blog DailyKos. He said that U.S. temperature data change is inconsequential to overall global climate data.. He wrote a diary on their site on August 11 that said, “The effect on global temperature was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves [on global data] are indistinguishable.”
Jeff Kuerter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, said NASA’s mistake cast doubt on all global climate data because the United States was considered the best at taking analyzing temperatures. “If the U.S. doesn’t get this right what might be happening in other places and why did this error persist so long?” he said. In an August 13 Newsweek cover story, “The Truth About Denial,” Kuerter’s organization was labeled as part of the “denial machine” in cahoots with Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt Walton said Exxon had no comment regarding NASA’s climate change revisions.
Even though the data has been corrected, McIntyre is not satisfied. “They claim that they’re adjustment methodology was capable of fixing bad data, I mean, that’s the point I want people to take home from this,” he said. “What they’ve done now is inserted a patch into an error that I identified for them but they haven’t established that the rest of their adjustment methodology is any good.” He recommended that NASA begin archiving the codes they use to make calculations and subject data to public scrutiny or peer-review.
This isn’t the first time McIntyre has caused a stir by questioning global warming data. The Toronto-based McIntyre joined forces with Canadian economist Ross McKitrick to refute data put forth by United Nations in 2001 that said use of fossil fuels was causing global warming. Included in the report was a graphic that showed 20th century temperatures sharply rising as time went on in the form of a hockey stick, which later became the name of the graph. McIntyre and McKitrick found an error in the mathematical calculation used to construct the “hockey stick.” Their findings led to a congressional investigation led by then-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Joe Barton (R.-Tex.).
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