Sunday - October 12, 2008
EU instructions on climate change. The sky is falling and only the stupid don’t believe.
Ed Miliband will follow EU instructions on climate change
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 12/10/2008Have your say Read comments
For all the acres of newsprint devoted to the return to the Cabinet of Peter Mandelson, by far the most important and potentially damaging move in Gordon Brown’s recent Government reorganisation could well be his setting up of a wholly new ministry, laughably called the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Under a new Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, the new department merges two groups of officials who, over the past year, have been ever more obviously at war with each other; and on the outcome of that battle hangs nothing less than whether, within a few years, Britain can still continue to operate as an economically viable nation.
On the one hand have been the civil servants charged with running Britain’s energy policy at the former DTI, now known as BERR (Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform). As became increasingly evident from speeches by John Hutton, our former business secretary now moved to Defence, his officials had become acutely aware that Britain is fast approaching an unprecedented energy crisis.
Within seven years, or even much sooner, we stand to lose nearly 40 per cent of the generating capacity which meets our current peak electricity needs. All but one of the 10 nuclear power stations which provide a fifth of our electricity are due to close and, as we were warned last week, they are all now so decrepit that much of that capacity may not be available even this winter.
Also due to close, under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants directive, are nine more large power stations, six coal-fired, which will soon be running out of the remaining quota of hours Brussels has allowed them.
This was why, as “realists”, the BERR officials recognised that our only hope of keeping our lights on and Britain’s economy functioning was to make it a top national priority to build, as fast as possible, at least a dozen new nuclear and coal-fired power stations, such as that planned at Kingsnorth. As Mr Hutton told the recent Labour Party conference, “no coal, plus no nuclear, equals no lights, no power, no future”.
On the other hand, totally opposed to them at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) down the road, have been the climate change fanatics, obsessed with global warming, for whom the highest national priority, as expressed in their recent Climate Change Act, is for Britain to lead the world by cutting its carbon emissions by 60 per cent in the next 40 years.
(HERE COME THE SCARIEST PART)
The most influential of these officials, as Defra’s chief scientific adviser, has been Dr Robert Watson, until 2002 chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a man so passionately committed to fighting climate change that he was once hailed by Al Gore as “the hero of the planet”.
For the rest of the article, link below.
Posted by peiper
on 10/12/2008 at 12:15 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - September 13, 2008
Oil Down, Gas Up: Global Economy vs Hurricane Ike
Gasoline prices jumped at the wholesale level Friday as Hurricane Ike swept through Gulf of Mexico, prompting companies along the Texas coast to shut down refining and drilling operations.
Crude oil on the futures market, however, briefly sank below the psychologically important $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since April 2—showing that investors believe a worsening global economy will continue to drive down demand for some time in the United States and elsewhere.
The fact that U.S. fuel demand is so weak right now might mean the recent surge in the wholesale price of gasoline—which rose to about $4.85 a gallon in the Gulf Coast market Friday—might not be passed along to consumers unless Ike’s impact is severe and long-lasting.
“Major oil companies are sensitive to raising prices in this environment,” said Ben Brockwell, director of data pricing and information services at the Oil Price Information Service.
“Hopefully it’s a temporary phenomenon, but we won’t know until next week,” Brockwell said.
...
The average U.S. retail price for gasoline edged up less than a penny to $3.675 Friday from Thursday, according to auto club AAA, OPIS and Wright Express.On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude for October delivery rose 31 cents to settle at $101.18 a barrel, after briefly sinking to $99.99.
October gasoline futures climbed 2.08 cents to settle at $2.7696 a gallon on Nymex.
“All week long, it’s been a gasoline story more than anything. If you just looked at the crude market independently, you wouldn’t know that we had a couple of hurricanes,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates, referring to Ike and last week’s Gustav.
“This dichotomy could persist for a few more days next week,” he said. But “once the storm factor subsides, we’ll see a much higher correlation between gasoline and crude oil.”
Gas prices in my part of NJ jumped 10 cents a gallon overnight. I’m hoping this is really really temporary because I’ve only got half a tank right now. Ike is making a big mess in Texas. It looks like as many as 100,000 people did not head the evacuation orders, even though Texas made a huge effort to assist folks who couldn’t evacuate themselves. Now I’m hearing that some of the rescue efforts are being suspended because the risk is too high to the rescue crews. So there are going to be some fatalities. Say a prayer for Texas and her soggy citizens.
The storm flooded Galveton’s historic district with 7 feet of water, which has since subsided to 4 feet, according to Galveston County official Margaret Bunch. A foot of water flooded the city’s main courthouse, where many people rode out the storm, she said.
A fire broke out at a Galveston yacht basin, where boats are stored and fixed, said Galveston Fire Chief Michael Varela Sr., and firefighters were unable to reach it because the area was flooded with about 8 feet of water.
Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc said about 40 percent of the city’s 57,523 residents chose to stay despite evacuation orders. “It’s unfortunate that the warnings that we sent out were not heeded,” he said.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/13/2008 at 11:28 AM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • News-Briefs • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •
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Permalink • Thursday - September 11, 2008
Our one left leaning reader gets some post time too
We have a reader who leans a bit to the left, and not because one of his shoes is thinner on that side. I’ll call him “LI” because he always emails me about conversations he is having with folks online and changes their names to some initials. So he sends me this one ... and it sure sounds to me like he fully approves of the outcome. Um, you did take you blood pressure meds today, right?
The story: some UK Gaia folks broke into a power station to paint graffitti on the smokestack. They got caught. Busted. Went to trial. Claimed their actions were legal. Guess what happened then?
here’s the whole email. Only the initials have been changed to protect the liberal.
Subject: Wow! UK Jury Decides That Threat of Global Warming Justifies Breaking The Law
Cleared! Jury Decides That Threat of Global Warming Justifies Breaking The Law
by Michael McCarthy
September 11, 2008http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/11-6
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.htmlThis looks hopeful for real progress. This is not legal advice. If you’re interested, check with your attorney. The statute involved was a UK statute, but there might be something similar in the law where you are.
“LI”
Excerpt
“The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage....
“[Defendant Ben Stewart] added: “This verdict marks a tipping point for the climate change movement. When a jury of normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet, then where does that leave Government energy policy? We have the clean technologies at hand to power our economy. It’s time we turned to them instead of coal.”
“Defendant [Emily] Hall [from New Zealand] said: “The jury heard from [James Hansen,] the most distinguished climate scientist in the world. How could they ignore his warnings and reject his leading scientific arguments?”
Geez, putting this post up is like throwing raw meat to starving wolves. Duck and Cover, Drew!
Posted by Drew458
on 09/11/2008 at 03:58 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - August 27, 2008
Bobby Jindal is no fool
Unlike his predecessor, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal went ahead and declared a state of emergency for his state before hurricane Gustav arrives. Just in case, you know. Four or more days before the storm might even arrive.
Tropical Storm Gustav’s impending arrival in the Gulf of Mexico, potentially as a major hurricane, has prompted Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to declare an emergency for the state.
“We are going to hope for the best, but we’re preparing for the worst,” Jindal said Wednesday.The move puts Louisiana in position to receive federal disaster assistance. Jindal also said 3,000 National Guard members will be deployed to vulnerable areas in Louisiana on Thursday to assist with securing shelters and preparing for possible evacuations.
Jindal cited forecasts that Gustav, which killed 22 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic this week, could become a Category 3 hurricane in the coming days and hit the Gulf Coast by late Monday morning.
I wonder if he’s making sure the school buses are all tuned up and ready to go?
Alluding to Katrina’s disastrous aftermath, Jindal said Louisiana is “better prepared than before” and has hundreds of buses and thousands of shelter beds lined up in preparation for another storm.
He urged residents to fill up their cars, stockpile three days’ worth of food and water, and refill prescriptions in case evacuations become necessary.
The state has requested a “pre-landfall” declaration from President Bush, asking the federal government to release personnel, ambulances and other assistance to prepare for the storm.
Still, Jindal stressed that “our people also have personal responsibility” to prepare for the storm.
Damn, I guess he is!
Mayor Ray Nagin said he planned to cut short his trip to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, to return to New Orleans by Wednesday night.
Is that idiot still around? Oy vey. Well Ray-ray, get out your sack and start packing up yo chocolate, it soon be steppin time agin.
I read through almost the whole article and didn’t see any mention of what political party Jindal might belong too ... and you know what that means!
Jindal is scheduled to speak next week at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, but he said Tuesday that he’ll change his plans if the storm warrants it.
“As long as there’s a chance that we’ll be in this storm’s path, I’ll be here in Louisiana,” he said. “I’m going to make sure I’m here personally to help lead the preparation efforts and, if necessary, any recovery efforts that are necessary after the fact.”
Yup, there ya go. Preparedness, responsibility, a usable plan, some pro-active measures ... sounds like a Republican to me. Let’s hope the storm clobbers central Mexico instead.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/27/2008 at 09:08 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Republicans •
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Permalink • Sunday - August 24, 2008
STAND BY FOR AMERICA’S LIGHTS TO GO OUT. (NO, IT ISN’T AN ANTI-USA RANT)
This guy is really good. He writes every week on this subject. He lectures about the falshood re. gorebal warming.
I’ve been light on the posting this wkend for which I always feel guilty. Working on something and not even certain if I’ll end up blogging it. Although I think I might.
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/08/2008
From The Sunday TelegraphCorrection: things are worse than I thought.
Last week I reported on the dangerous unreality overtaking US energy policy, as television commercials for both presidential candidates focus on the need to build more wind turbines. To highlight its absurdity I said that the 10,000 US turbines already built generate only 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, little more than one big coal-fired power station.The reality, it turns out, is even worse.
The notional “capacity” of America’s turbines is 19GW, but their actual output, as shown by an Amherst University study, is less than 17 per cent of that - even less than that of a large coal-fired plant.
So the two men vying for the White House are centring their policy on an energy source that currently provides barely 1 per cent of America’s electricity. Some 50 per cent of it comes from coal.
Yet such is the power of the “green” lobby that of 151 new coal-fired power stations proposed last year, 59 were vetoed by state governments, while the rest face court challenges. Whether it is McCain or Obama, stand by for America’s lights to go out.
Now this part of the same column in Sunday Telegraph, shows ya just one tiny example of a country tossing away it’s sovereignty and how it impacts on England. The EU declares and the UK says yes, oh yes. Screw me again! And they do. Crude I guess but it sure does seem that way these days. Here,read it for yourself.
Lords produce waste paper on waste policy
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/08/2008There was a time when, if a Lords committee had been asked to investigate a massive policy failure, a scandal which continues to make daily headlines in the press, it might have made some effort to ask why things had gone so horrendously wrong.
But when 12 peers last week reported on the shambles engulfing the way that Britain disposes of its rubbish, the result was 127 pages of such anodyne verbiage that no one ploughing through it would have any idea that we have a national crisis on our hands.
In fact the headlines about the disintegration of Britain’s system of waste disposal - from householders being fined for putting rubbish in the wrong bin to the epidemic of flytipping - reflect only a small part of the disaster.
Even more outrageous is the fact that, wherever one looks at it, our waste handling system is in breakdown, so that, for instance, millions of tons of rubbish supposedly collected for recycling must be shipped out to China or the Third World because we no longer have any way to deal with it.
The reason why this has happened - and why it was ignored by those 12 dutiful little apparatchiks from the House of Lords - is that we have handed over direction of our waste policy to Brussels, which requires us to implement a strategy wholly inappropriate to our needs.
Until recently we still had a waste system as efficient as any in Europe. We had a fast-growing recycling industry, mainly reliant on private enterprise. But we also used much more of our rubbish than other countries for the ultimately beneficial purpose of reclaiming otherwise unproductive land by landfill.
What has thrown all this into chaos has been the imposition of a wholly different EU policy which seeks to eliminate landfilling (originally because some countries, such as Holland and Denmark were running out of land to fill). The EU puts recycling at the top of its priority list, followed by incineration. Only then can what remains be buried.
To conform with the Euro-model, we have therefore been required to discourage landfilling by closing down our rubbish tips and imposing ever higher “landfill taxes”, to build hugely expensive incinerators and to collect far more waste for “recycling” than we can actually recycle.
Instead of all this being admitted, it has become shrouded in propagandist humbug.
We are repeatedly told we are “running out of sites for landfill”, when every year we quarry out 110 million cubic metres of soil and rock, more than the refuse we produce. We are told that incineration is cheaper than landfill, when in fact it can cost as much as £190 a ton, as opposed to a maximum landfill cost of only £62.
To please the EU we claim to be collecting millions of tons of rubbish for recycling which is then either shipped abroad or just landfilled regardless.
We have created a shambles of a system which is failing in every way - so that we still face the prospect of massive fines from Brussels for failing to conform - while the once-friendly relations between binmen and the public are reduced to open war.
And what is the response of those noble lords? They babble on about the need for “waste prevention to be integrated into sustainable business models”. They “welcome the establishment of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement”.
They suggest the Government should lower VAT rates to “promote the development of sustainable products”. They don’t even seem to know that VAT rates cannot be lowered without permission from our real government in Brussels - the one which set all this disaster in train in the first place.
Posted by peiper
on 08/24/2008 at 10:37 AM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Editorials • Environment • UK •
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Permalink • Saturday - August 23, 2008
Meanwhile, Down Under
I’ve been busy trying hard to find a job this past week, so I haven’t posted a whole lot. I thought you might enjoy this one. Sure, it’s winter down there, but come on. It’s Australia, where the temps never drop below 130 or something awful like that.
reached Hassans Walls Lookout on Friday on its way to Canberra.
Climate change may be THE hot international issue of the moment but enthusiasm for the cause clearly wanes on a freezing Friday afternoon when the campaign moves to a mountain top where the wind chill factor is below zero.
This was perhaps the predictably disappointing outcome when the GetUp! climate change lobby group organised an enviro torch relay from Hassans Walls Lookout to Queen Elizabeth Park to focus public attention on the issue.
Ironically, global warming would probably have been welcomed by the handful of hardy souls who turned up to lend their support to the campaign on one of the coldest Lithgow days of this or any other year.
The wind and solar powered torch — created by the designers of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Torch — was carried to The Walls by two pedal cyclists.
There it was handed over to the small group of supporters who stuck to their task and ignored the big chill while on their way to Elizabeth Park.
The climate change torch continued its journey around Bathurst on Saturday where it was greeted by a big crowd at a schoolboy Rugby Union carnival at St Stanislaus College oval.
After speeches and several laps of the oval it was handed over to a representative from Mudgee to continue through the Central West.
The torch relay was simultaneously launched from several locations around Australia early last week and is scheduled to finish in Canberra on September 21.
No word on whether Al Gore had been in the neighborhood ahead of time, but it’s likely. God has a sense of humor too.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/23/2008 at 11:40 AM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Humor •
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Permalink • Monday - August 04, 2008
Early August Arctic Ice Check
In support of Peiper’s bit on Glueball Worming, here’s the daily pic from The Cryosphere Today.
DON’T PANIC ! They have changed the color scheme. It used to be that red and purple meant lots of ice. Now they’ve changed it ... probably to more easily alarm stupid people who can’t or won’t read a color scale ...
To the untrained, or to the lazy, this looks like the polar ice is GONE. Ice is white, water is blue, grass is green. No. White is really thick ice. Blue is fairly thick ice. Pale blue is thinner ice, but still at the 80% level. It’s not until you get down to the light green level that you’re even looking at 50% ice concentration. Here’s the same pic using the older, less alarmist colors, and comparing today’s ice level to one of the colder summers available, 1980:
While the Arctic Ice is not at an all-time high level, it is fairly normal, and there is a whole lot more of it than there was last year. And we’re still having a very low level of sunspots, not that there’s any kind of connection at all ... yeah right.
This is the high point of summer up by the North Pole. In another 4 to 6 weeks the ice pack will start growing again. I’ll check again around the end of the month, but I think this is about as “bad” as it’s going to get this year. In other words, perfectly normal.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/04/2008 at 03:38 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - July 31, 2008
Ok, Now I’ve Heard Everything
Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue. It’s now an issue of race, according to global warming activists and policy makers.
“It is critical our community be an integral and active part of the debate because African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change economically, socially and through our health and well-being,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said July 29.
The launch came on the heels of a separate report by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), which claims African-Americans are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. EJCC describes itself as a “climate justice” advocacy group.
“Though far less responsible for climate change, African-Americans are significantly more vulnerable to its effects than non-Hispanic whites,” the report says. “Health, housing, economic well-being, culture, and social stability are harmed from such manifestations of climate change as storms, floods, and climate variability.
Horry Clap, the sun is shining, therefore blacks are victims and it’s whiteys fault. And this is from one of the top elected officials in Washington DC. And if we were having Global Cooling they’d be victims because they are more suited to warmer climates. We can’t win folks. Anything. Everything. No matter what ... blacks are victimized by it.
“African-Americans are also more vulnerable to higher energy bills, unemployment, recessions caused by global energy price shocks, and a greater economic burden from military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S,” it (the report) says.
Right, because, don’t you know, all the white folks is secret millionaires. Because we get funding on the down-low from the zionists who actually run the world. There are no white people without jobs, on welfare, or doing low paying work. Nope, we all are wealthy trust fund babies. And what’s with this “and a greater economic burden from military operations” claptrap? Is he still trying to flog the worn out bullshit leftover from Vietnam that the black man is unjustly overrepresented in the military ... that wars are fought just to get rid of extra black men? That dog didn’t hunt in 1968, and it sure as hell won’t fly today in an all volunteer military. So just what are these “military operations” you’re talking about here, horseface?
The commission Clyburn helped launch claims Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans was a preview of how global warming will affect African-Americans.
“[W]hile individual storms cannot be linked specifically to climate change, scientists warn that warmer waters may foster-more intense storms,” the background paper on the commission’s efforts, authored by Michel Gelobter, Carla Peterman and Azebuilke Akaba said. “The flooding of New Orleans still highlights the vulnerability of the African-American community to types of extreme weather events expected with global climate change.”
Oh don’t get me started on that one again. I guess this statement means that we can expect looting every time it snows? Or maybe if Tuscon Arizona elects a black mayor he’ll stand outside the front door of the CopperTone factory and cry to the federal government to get some damn sunblock over here right now because the sun is shining? This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all week. But wait, there’s more!
But the goals of environmental and race activists don’t include allowing investors to earn the benefits of putting their money into proposed solutions. J. Andrew Hoerner, director of the sustainable economics program at Redefining Progress and a co-author of the EJCC report, told the Business & Media Institute that solutions to climate change should be designed in a way so investors don’t reap all the benefits.
The report suggested implementing a “fee, tax or allowance auction on polluters,” which was meant to “eliminate the financial burden on low-income and moderate-income households.This would pay for efforts to reduce global warming. Hoerner said that although it would cause product costs to increase, under his policy, the revenue from the “fee, tax, or allowance auction payment” would be redistributed to consumers to offset the higher costs.
Just as I thought. Another Socialist Robin Hood scheme. Take your money and give it to others. Empty the wallet of industry and give it away to the Pore ‘N Starvintm. Funny how the race baiters, the enviro-whackjobs, and the Dems all play from the same handbook. Well, sure, that’s because those three groups are often the same people, but still. Take your money: it’s the only thing they know, and they’ll use anything as an excuse to do it again.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/31/2008 at 03:30 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Politics • Racism •
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Permalink • Saturday - July 12, 2008
The Sea Ice Seems Just Fine, Thanks For Asking
You can compare the Arctic ice levels for any two days from 1979 to today at The Crysosphere Today. They love to blow the alarmist horn of
It does not look to me that the fabled Northwest Passage will open up at all this year, as it did for a few weeks last year. And down at the South Pole it’s the dead of winter, and the ice pack is solid. If you run the 30 day animation you can see that the Antarctic ice is actually growing a bit, towards Argentina.
All in all it looks pretty normal for me, north and south. Not a drowning polar bear or starving penguin in sight. Give Al Gore a bitch slap if you see him, m’kay?
Posted by Drew458
on 07/12/2008 at 05:21 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - July 10, 2008
Our leaders are in carbon-cloud cuckoo land.
leaders are in carbon-cloud cuckoo land. Leaders? What leaders? We don’t got no stinkin’ leaders. oops. wrong movie.
I read this guy in The Telegraph a lot. He writes on this subject quite a bit and naturally takes bricksNbats due to his anti gorebal warming opinions.
And as well all know, only the tree huggers and gorebals have a right to opinions.
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/07/2008For a perfect example of what is meant by “gesture politics” - an empty pledge given solely for effect, which the politician has no hope of honouring - one could not do better than this week’s commitment by the G8 leaders on how they want us to fight climate change.
Sitting on their cloud-wreathed Japanese mountain top, they solemnly agreed that, to halt global warming, their countries would aim by 2050 to halve their emissions of carbon dioxide.
A tiny indication of the fact that they didn’t really have a clue what they were talking about was a slip by Japan’s prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, when he had to be corrected for announcing that the CO2 cut would be measured from “1990 levels”.
Even when he amended this to “present-day levels”, he was merely spouting empty words into the oriental air.
Three things make this aspiration by the leaders of the world’s “eight richest countries” not just vainglorious grandstanding, but positively dangerous.
The first is that, as well as having no idea how they could achieve such an absurdly ambitious target, they may inflict immeasurable damage on their economies just by trying to do so.
One after another, it is becoming clear that all the costly measures so far proposed to cut carbon emissions are pie-in-the-sky.
The drive for “renewable” sources of energy, such as building thousands of wind turbines, is turning out to be little more than self-deception (the combined output of all the 2,000 wind turbines so far built in Britain is less than that of a single, medium-sized, gas-fired power station).
Even the environmentalists have realised that biofuels are a farce, needing more CO2 to produce than they save. The EU’s much-vaunted “emissions trading scheme”, so far costing us all an estimated £40 billion, has not resulted in any reductions of CO2 emissions whatever.
If the G8’s leaders genuinely wanted to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent over the next 40 years, this would mean taking steps they haven’t even begun to contemplate. It would require such a drastic cut in our energy use and standard of living that their peoples would have risen up in mass revolt long before the target was reached.
And nothing better shows up the unreality of all this - as President Bush tried to point out in the summit’s only flash of honesty - than the fact that China (not represented at the G8, although it now has the world’s fourth largest economy) is already putting out more CO2 than anyone else.
As it builds two new coal-fired power stations a week, China has no more intention than India of joining the Western economic suicide club.
The second reason why this infatuation with cutting carbon emissions is beginning to look extraordinarily reckless is that the whole scientific theory on which it is based now appears distinctly questionable.
The orthodox global-warming thesis, accepted by pretty well every politician in the Western world, but not by a growing number of scientists, is that, as CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, so too should global temperatures. Unless we can drastically reduce those CO2 levels, the world is thus threatened with catastrophe.
In the past year or two, however, evidence has been piling up to suggest that there may be a fundamental flaw in this theory. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise to levels not seen since the distant geological past, temperatures have not been following suit.
After 2000 the global temperature curve flattened out at a level significantly lower than the freak year 1998, and in recent months temperatures have dropped to levels not seen since the early 1980s.
Despite the best efforts of the global-warming lobby to keep the scare going, the northern hemisphere enjoyed its coldest winter for decades, and this summer has shown the curve sinking even lower.
Even the warmists are having to find excuses for the fact that their theory doesn’t exactly seem to be holding up, conceding that the next 10 years may see a period of global cooling, before the “underlying warming trend” returns worse than ever.
Other scientists point out that, rather than look to CO2 for an explanation of global temperatures, a much more convincing link can be seen in the activity of the sun, with current sunspot levels having dramatically fallen to levels associated with historic periods of global cooling recorded in the past.
Yet just when such huge question marks are being raised over the “CO2 equals warming” theory, our politicians have swallowed it whole, as an act of blind faith - using it to justify such massive costs to our economy that our whole way of life seems destined to change significantly for the worse.
The third respect in which all this is becoming seriously dangerous applies specifically to us here in Britain. While Gordon Brown prattles about wind turbines, and plays silly games for the cameras with electric cars, Britain within a few years is facing the near certainty of a massive shortfall in our electricity supplies.
By 2015, thanks to the obsolescence of our nuclear power plants and the forced closure of nine of our major coal and oil-fired power stations under EU anti-pollution rules, we are due to lose 40 per cent of our current generating capacity - and Mr Brown hasn’t the slightest practical idea of how to fill the gap.
Forget the nonsense about a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. Our Government has already committed Britain to go even further, by imposing a statutory cut of 60 per cent through its Climate Change Bill.
But long before that, unless those who rule us come down out of cloud cuckoo land very fast, our lights will go out, our computers will shut down, our economy will judder to a halt and we shall face a national catastrophe. We may well be meeting that 60 per cent target sooner than we think - but not for reasons that reflect well on our politicians, of any party.
Posted by peiper
on 07/10/2008 at 01:11 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Environment • International • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •
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Permalink • Thursday - June 19, 2008
Will Cold Solar Storm Chill the Earth?
Don from over at The Further Adventures of Indigo Red emails me that the brainiacs over at NASA have come up with an amazing theory: Solar Activity and Earth’s Temperature are linked! But not exactly in the way you might think.
When the sun has lots of sunspots, there are lots of solar flares. Properly called Solar Coronas, these flares are hundreds, perhaps thousands of times hotter than the surface of the sun itself. They also give off tremendous amounts of X-ray and UV radiation. Pointed straight at us. Oh noes!!!
X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the solar corona affect Earth and its atmosphere. For satellites, this can be a real drag--literally. As Earth’s atmosphere gets hotter, it expands and becomes denser at high altitudes. When this happens, satellites experience more drag, which changes their orbits. Accurately predicting this “space weather” gives satellite operators more time to respond to or avert problems that could potentially cause interruptions and outages.
In order for scientists to build realistic models of the corona, they “must understand coronal heating. It’s the root cause of all this radiation,” says Klimchuk.
Naturally, as scientists, they are required to say “But more study is necessary!!” which translates into Normal as “We want more grant money!!”
Interestingly, at this very moment in time, the sun has but one little sunspot. BUT, and this might be significant, instead of a Coronal Loop, right now the sun has a Coronal Hole. Which is the exact opposite kind of thing. And that thing is pointed right at us! Oh noes? No, oh yesss!!!
coronal hole
A region of the Sun’s corona that appears dark in pictures taken with a coronagraph or during a total solar eclipse, and that shows up as a void in X-ray and extreme ultraviolet images. Coronal holes are of very low density (typically 100 times lower than the rest of the corona) and have an open magnetic field structure; in other words, magnetic field lines emerging from the holes extend indefinitely into space rather than looping back into the photosphere. This open structure allows charged particles to escape from the Sun and results in coronal holes being the primary source of the solar wind and the exclusive source of its high-speed component.
Why could this be good news? Because right now the Earth is caught up in the solar wind from this, but it’s a COLD wind. And one very very low in X-rays and UV, far lower than the sun’s normal output.
So, does that mean the weather will be a bit colder for the next couple of weeks? Beats me. But it’s nearly chilly here today.
Credit: Hinode X-ray Telescope
Posted by Drew458
on 06/19/2008 at 06:47 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Space •
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Permalink • Climate Change Theory: Could it all be up in the air?
How clouds respond to global warming poses a huge challenge for climate scientists, since clouds are far more changeable in real life than models can predict. However, experts do agree that the level of future global warming greatly depends on clouds.
A new study finds that natural variations in how clouds form could actually be causing temperature changes, rather than the other way around, and could also lead to overestimates of how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to greenhouse gas emissions.
“Since the cloud changes could conceivably be caused by known long-term modes of climate variability, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or El Niño and La Niña, some, or even most, of the global warming seen in the last century could simply be due to natural fluctuations in the climate system,” says lead author Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Spencer and his co-author William Braswell point out that the paper doesn’t disprove the theory that humans are causing global warming. Instead, they report that “it offers an alternative explanation for what we see in the climate system which has the potential for greatly reducing estimates of mankind’s impact on Earth’s climate.”
“But we really won’t know until much more work is done,” he added. In addition to this article, Spencer has published several others that question the scientific consensus about climate change, which states that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are causing global warming.
Spencer has been taking the Earth’s temperature for 20 years now, and feels that if the temps are rising, then they are rising at a much lower rate than some alarmists believe.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/19/2008 at 02:32 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •
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Permalink • Tuesday - June 03, 2008
All your air are belong to us
Remember the Fairness Doctrine? The one that the libtards in and out of Washington want to resurrect? The theory behind the Fairness Doctrine is:
Source: Wikipedia. The airwaves are held, by government, in trust for the public.radio stations could be regulated in this way due to the limited spectrum of the public airwaves.
It was, in other words, a government-created scarcity that justified government regulation. Much like the government-created gasoline scarcities under Nixon and Carter.
Now a whacko Goremon named Mary Wood is asserting that the air is held in trust by the government.
University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood is tired of waiting for government officials to take action on global warming. So she’s devised a new legal tool to hurry them up.
Drawing on her background in both natural resources and property law, Wood has developed a theory that claims the atmosphere is an asset that belongs to all but is held in trust by the government. The government has a legal obligation to protect that trust from harm, she argues, just as financial managers have a legal obligation to protect the monetary assets in their care.
I’m sure that BMEWS readers have figured where this is going…
“The main problem with climate is that no government is taking responsibility for it and our government is sitting idle while this catastrophe is unfolding,” Wood said.
“There’s no other body of law that requires the government to act. But a trustee has to act to protect the body of the trust.”
Yep. And the laws are already on the books. No need to debate!
From theory to practice
Greg Costello is one of the public interest attorneys evaluating Wood’s proposal as the basis for potential lawsuits. He thinks it could be a successful legal strategy because it’s grounded in a widely accepted principle of common law.
“Public trust doctrine is a doctrine everybody learns in law school. It goes back to Roman times,” said Costello, executive director of the Eugene-based Western Environmental Law Center.
“It’s a theory that seems well-suited and perhaps ideal when you’re talking about who owns the atmosphere.”
Be afraid. Be very afraid. 
Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers and environmentalists.
Cade: Nay, that I mean to do.
* William Shakespeare, Henry the Sixth, Part II
HT: Neal’s Nuze
cross-posted at my blog Something’s Rotten
Posted by Christopher
on 06/03/2008 at 10:13 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Colleges-Professors • Government • Insanity • Lawyers • Liberals • Nanny State • Outrageous • Scary Stuff • Stoopid-People •
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Permalink • Sunday - June 01, 2008
My Friend Mr. Sun
Explanation: Ten Earths could easily fit in the “claw” of this seemingly solar monster. The monster, though, visible on the lower left, is a huge eruptive prominence seen moving out from our Sun. The above dramatic image taken early in the year 2000 by the Sun-orbiting SOHO satellite. This large prominence, though, is significant not only for its size, but its shape. The twisted figure eight shape indicates that a complex magnetic field threads through the emerging solar particles. Differential rotation inside the Sun might help account for the surface explosion. Although large prominences and energetic Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are relatively rare, they are occurred more frequently near Solar Maximum, the time of peak sunspot and solar activity in the eleven-year solar cycle.
This is not the Sun as it is right now. This is:
I’m sure you notice the difference. And if you were wondering about sunspots, we’re still pretty much at ZERO:
The Maunder Minimum Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715 (38 kb JPEG image). Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.
Which could have just a little to do with the recent Gorebot’s whine that Glowball Worming is still with us, but might be taking a 10 year break. But, um, wouldn’t that break be considered Glowball Cooling?
Still, if you’re out in it working, wear a hat and some sunblock. Or else.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/01/2008 at 09:21 AM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Environment •
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