theothermy

The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment.

June 12, 2008

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking nonsense.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems—from ocean currents to cloud formation—that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate to be over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown by Einstein and leading physicists, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming—infinitely more untested, complex, and speculative—is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, that is, of Exxon, Cheney, and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class—social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies—arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation—environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but—even better—in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek.) Having proclaimed the ultimate commandment—carbon chastity—they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

On May 26, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane, or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. Other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research—untainted and reliable—to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of humanity is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing? &

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for the Washington Post.

http://www.bwcitypaper.com/Articles-i-2008-06-12-221657.112112_Carbon_Chastity.html Read more on this article...

"Kids across America are being victimized by global warming hysteria," according to Holly Fretwell, author of The Sky’s Not Falling: Why It’s OK to Chill About Global Warming.

"I wanted to know what kids just like mine are hearing in their classrooms," Fretwell said. "Running a contest was a fun way to go about it."

"All of us, and our children in particular, are being confronted daily with half-truths and falsehoods about global warming," noted Fretwell. "It's just plain wrong."

She said that was or inspiration for the book in the first place.

In the video competition, the DiMarias from South Carolina submitted the winning entry, which is available through this link,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF8a3O-FHNA

or by watching the following:



The second place goes to:

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Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Update 2/27: The graph for HadCRUT (above), as well as the linked graphs for RSS and UAH are generated month-to-month; the temperature declines span a full 12 months of data. The linked GISS graph was graphed for the months of January only, due to a limitation in the plotting program. Anthony Watts, who kindly provided the graphics, otherwise has no connection with the column. The views and comments are those of the author only.

From:
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

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NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) - A drama-filled 190-nation conference on Saturday set a 2009 deadline for a landmark pact to fight global warming after an isolated United States backed down on last-ditch objections.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the so-called Bali Roadmap as a "pivotal first step" towards a new agreement for tackling the peril of climate change, after he had appealed to delegates to show flexibility.

Following gruelling all-night talks the conference launched a process to negotiate a new treaty that will take effect when the UN Kyoto Protocol's commitments expire in 2012.

The deal comes after a year of stark warnings from Nobel-winning scientists, who say that millions of people will be at risk of hunger, homelessness and disease by 2100 if temperatures keep rising at current rates.

The United States, the only major industrial nation to reject the Kyoto treaty, reached a compromise with the European Union (EU) to avoid mentioning any figures as a target for slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

The agreement instead only makes an indirect reference to scientists' warnings that the world must sharply cut back emissions to prevent what could be a catastrophic rise in temperatures.

But on an unscheduled 13th day of talks, the United States said it would not accept the statement as it wanted developing countries such as fast-growing China to make tougher commitments.

Senior US negotiator Paula Dobriansky said she had heard "many strong statements from many major developing country leaders on a greater role in helping to address urgently this global problem."

It "doesn't seem it's going to be reflected in our outcome here in the declaration," she said, telling the conference that the United States would reject the draft.

Dobriansky was loudly booed by other delegations. A US environmental activist representing Papua New Guinea said on the floor to rousing cheers: "If you're not willing to lead, please get out of the way."

After repeated verbal lashings, Dobriansky again took the microphone and said that Washington would "go forward and join consensus," to the cheers of the conference.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush's climate policy, said he was ready to ask through his mobile telephone for Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene with the White House.

"I had already typed the SMS after Dobriansky's first statement but then I was able to cancel it," Gabriel said.

"In the end, nobody wanted to have a failure," including the United States, Gabriel said. "We have achieved more than we could have expected previously, but it is less than what is needed to meet the urgency of the problem."

The agreement came after extraordinary scenes in which the head of the United Nations jetted in to make a last-ditch appeal, the UN's exhausted climate chief nearly broke down in tears and chairman Indonesia apologised abjectly for a disastrous procedural mix-up.

"The Bali Roadmap that has been agreed is a pivotal first step toward an agreement that can address the threat of climate change, the defining challenge of our time," a statement from the UN chief said.

Alden Meyer of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists welcomed the deal.

"What we witnessed today was an incredible drama," he said "I've been following these negotiations for 20 years and I've never seen anything like it."

Hans Verolme of conservation group WWF accused the world of bowing to US pressure and removing a scientific punch needed to fight global warming.

But he also said the Bali talks would inspire environmentalists and activist nations for climate-change negotiations until the end of President George W. Bush's mandate in January 2009.

"We have learned a historic lesson. If you expose to the world the dealings of the United States, they will ultimately back down," he said.

As activists speculated on whether the US U-turn was premeditated, US delegates said they believed from the reaction to their initial statement that developed countries would be serious about climate change.

"There is no question that we have opened a new phase in moving forward together," said senior White House aide James Connaughton. "The time had come to start a new chapter."

Bush has argued that the Kyoto Protocol is unfair as it does not require fast-growing emerging economies such as China, the second largest emitter after the United States, to meet targeted emissions curbs.

In a bid to break the deadlock, the proposed document ditched European calls for an "ambition" of the rich world to cut its emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

And there was no mention of a target of halving global levels of greenhouse gases by 2050 -- a goal that scientists say is essential to limiting the warming to around two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071215/wl_asia_afp/unclimatewarming_071215103717

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40% don't give a damn.

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By Christopher Booker and Richard North

"Mann's hockey stick was just what the IPCC wanted. When its 2001 report came out it was given pride of place at the top of page 1. The Mediaeval Warming, the Little Ice Age, the 20th century Little Cooling, when CO2 had already been rising, all had been wiped away.

But then a growing number of academics began to raise doubts about Mann and his graph. This culminated in 2003 with a devastating study by two Canadians showing how Mann had not only ignored most of the evidence before him but had used an algorithm that would produce a hockey stick graph whatever evidence was fed into the computer. When this was removed, the graph re-emerged just as it had looked before, showing the Middle Ages as hotter than today.

It is hard to recall any scientific thesis ever being so comprehensively discredited as the "hockey stick". Yet the global warming juggernaut rolled on regardless, now led by the European Union. In 2004, thanks to a highly dubious deal between the EU and Putin's Russia, stage four of the story began when the Kyoto treaty was finally ratified."

"If global warming does turn out to have been a scare like all the others, it will certainly represent as great a collective flight from reality as history has ever recorded. The evidence of the next 10 years will be very interesting." End of Post

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/04/eaclimate104.xml
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India: be the party pooper (Editorial)
By Sunita Narain

US President George Bush played host to a party of the top polluters of
the world called to discuss climate change. He exhorted his guests that
the world needed to act and called for a "new approach" to reduce
emissions. But if you think that he has changed his mind about the
science which has established the reality and urgency of climate change,
think again. Or if you think he has changed his position that his
country will not take on commitments to cut emissions because the
American lifestyle is not open to negotiation, think yet again and again.



The Bush meeting was strategic: first, it was an attempt (and a
successful one) to club the rich countries, who have been old and big
polluters, with the emerging countries-China and India. The meeting was
to remove the difference between the two categories-those who need to
make deep cuts in their emissions and those who need the space to grow.
If the Indians (and the Chinese) were looking for a place at this high
table of polluters, they certainly got their wish.

There is nothing new about Bush's position on climate change. In fact, I
would go so far as to say that there is nothing different about his
position from that of the previous Democratic government led by Bill
Clinton and Al Gore.

This is nothing more than recent history repeating itself. It is
predictable and it is dangerous for the climate and for our common future.

What Bush did should not surprise us. The US has been steadfast: it will
take action (whatever that means) only when it includes all big
polluters, including China and India.

I remember clearly the events in Kyoto in 1997, when the emissions
treaty was being finalised to set legally binding targets on
industrialized countries. That week all the stops were pulled out. The
phones buzzed between the White House and the prime minister's office.

The US made it clear that it wanted "meaningful participation" from
India and China. Its intransigence meant that all other governments
(those of the European Union to Japan) had to work hard to play
matchmaker to get the Chinese and Indians to bend so the US could sign
up to the treaty.

But what the Indian government did by accepting the Bush party invite
now should surprise us. I do accept that its position also remained
steadfast at the recent meeting. It did inform its host that the world
needed to act on the basis of historical contributions to the stock of
greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. And that India's per capita
emissions are negligible compared to those of the flatulent US or the
developed European countries. But believe me when I say this is nothing
other than posturing: rhetoric without any substance.

The fact is that we have agreed tacitly to join the membership of the
polluters-only club. In this way we have blurred (if not altogether
removed) the distinction-followed in all global agreements-between
countries which need to take action first and those who need the
ecological space to grow. But this is just one part of a much bigger
problem.

We have also asserted our right to development without insisting that
the US should take on deep and obligatory emission targets, for all our
sake. We have agreed to this ultimate marriage of convenience-not to ask
the us to commit so that we can get off the hook. We will all take on
"aspirational" targets, Bush said at the meeting. Let us understand this.

This is the ultimate and deadly bribe to seduce India and China: we will
not allow the Europeans and others to push us into legally binding
targets. This way is better: voluntary commitments and no targets.

Just think. This is a way in which we will all go to hell together. The
fact is that the world needs to act. It needs to act decisively and
urgently. We can already see the repercussions of a mere 0.7°c increase
in global temperatures in terms of melting glaciers and extreme weather
and rain events. Just think what it will be like when the world sees, on
average, an increase of 1.5°c, which is now inevitable because of the
stock of emissions already in the atmosphere, or 2°c, which is the best
we can get if we are responsible. The Bush way is disastrous. It must
not be acceptable.

But we are hypocrites. We laid the foundation stone for this Bush
conclave when we agreed to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean
Development and Climate, which was launched by the US administration
just under two years ago. This partnership had just one aim: to break
the multilateral processes built around legally binding commitments by
proving that voluntary action agreed by the major polluting nations
would be effective. Many meetings down the line, the partnership has led
to nothing concrete on the ground. But then who cares?

But we have to care. Climate is too serious a business to be made a joke
out of, as is done by the US president and his administration. We need
to explain to the rich world why it needs to act decisively and cut its
emissions and how it needs to change its lifestyle. We need to show how
we can participate meaningfully in a strategy to avoid future emissions.

We also need to say how this can be done through providing emission
rights for all; effective technology transfer and hard funds to pay for
transition into low-carbon growth options.

We must make it clear that we are not unwilling and reluctant partners
in this climate endgame. We are players and we are serious. Bush's party
is not ours to enjoy.

Read editorial online >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=2

To comment, write to >> editor[AT]downtoearth[DOT]org[DOT]in

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Ted has a very interesting podcast on R-22 and related refrigerants, and selecting a new refrigerant for home use and general climate change topics.

http://mediacloud.libsyn.com/tedg332/CI5.mp3

You can near more of Ted's wonderfully modulated podcasts at :

Carbon issues podcasts

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Owner of one car, working from home, producing less that 400 kilograms of carbon dioxide, during his live confessions on global warming.

Are air-conditioners a necessary evil today?