Carbon Taxes & Cow Patties

Because carbon is produced by virtually all human activities, the ability to punish carbon production is the ability to impact, if not control, all economic activity. A tax on carbon "pollution" would provide an inexhaustible source of revenue for the government. Thus the far left, the radical greens and the watermelons - to the extent that those three classifications have any distinguishing features from one another - have been seeking a carbon tax in the U.S. for decades.

The sole and ostensible justification given for a carbon tax is the dire threat of global warming - a threat that has little if any basis in reality. This from Paul Driessen at WUWT:

Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, Arctic ice is nearly normal, and the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and alleged “scientific consensus.”

Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders have struck first, introducing a so called "fee and dividend" carbon tax. This from SF Gate:

The Sanders-Boxer bill would impose a $20 per ton tax on carbon or methane equivalent, rising 5.6 percent each year for 10 years, on the nation's largest fossil fuel producers. Imported fossil fuels from countries that do not impose a similar tax would also pay.

The tax would raise an estimated $1.2 trillion over a decade and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels. Three-fifths of the tax would be rebated to "every legal U.S. resident," which might make it more politically feasible than if it went to the government.

The rest of the money would go to incentives for clean energy and research.

The give back to the legal resident - note, not U.S. citizens - is a nice touch. The problem of course is that, while these people would get back three fifths of the tax, they would be paying for all of it. Moreover, the havoc such a tax would work on the economy and jobs would be substantial and regressive.

Moreover, this would leave $480 billion to permanently fund the world's biggest slush fund for far left and green causes. The record of Obama green energy "investments" to date has been, to put it kindly, a failure. It is rife with cronyism, waste, and fraud. And yet, Obama and the left want to "double down." I use the term figuratively because Obama spent, if I recall correctly, $100 billion over his first four years on "green energy investments." This would more than doubling down.

So there you have it. If the left succeeds in imposing a carbon tax, they will get their mitts on the biggest potential cash cow in our nation. The rest of us will get the cow patties.

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A Short Summary Of Why The Theory Of Man Made Global Warming Has Failed

Prof. Bob Carter, an Aussie scientist, gives a very good summary of why the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has failed. That theory has at its heart the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the biggest driver of our climate and that, as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, our temperatures will warm proportionately. This from a post by Prof. Carter at WUWT:

Though you wouldn’t know it from the antagonistic nature of public discussions about global warming, a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst nearly all scientists who consider the issue. The common ground . . . includes:

· that climate has always changed and always will,

· that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere,

· that human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,

· that a global warming of around 0.5OC occurred in the 20th century, but

· that global warming has ceased over the last 15 years.

The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:

· the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,

· whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and

· whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.

. . . My answers would be: insignificant, none and no.

What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?

. . . Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.

It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.

What hypothesis do we wish to test?

. . . The DAGW hypothesis that I want to test here is precisely and only “that dangerous global warming is being caused, or will be, by human-related carbon dioxide emissions”. To be “dangerous”, at a minimum the change must exceed the magnitude or rate of warmings that are known to be associated with normal weather and climatic variability.

What evidence can we use to test the DAGW hypothesis?

Many different lines of evidence can be used to test the DAGW hypothesis. Here I have space to present just five, all of which are based upon real world empirical data. For more information, please read both Dr. Hayhoe’s and my book.

Consider the following tests:

(i) Over the last 16 years, global average temperature, as measured by both thermometers and satellite sensors, has displayed no statistically significant warming; over the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 10%.

Large increases in carbon dioxide have therefore not only failed to produce dangerous warming, but failed to produce any warming at all. Hypothesis fails.

(ii) During the 20th century, a global warming of between 0.4O C and 0.7O C occurred, at a maximum rate, in the early decades of the century, of about 1.7O C/century. In comparison, our best regional climate records show that over the last 10,000 years natural climate cycling has resulted in temperature highs up to at least 1O C warmer than today, at rates of warming up to 2.5O C/century.

In other words, both the rate and magnitude of 20th century warming falls well within the envelope of natural climate change. Hypothesis fails, twice.

(iii) If global temperature is controlled primarily by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, then changes in carbon dioxide should precede parallel changes in temperature.

In fact, the opposite relationship applies at all time scales. Temperature change precedes carbon dioxide change by about 5 months during the annual seasonal cycle, and by about 700-1000 years during ice age climatic cycling. Hypothesis fails.

(iv) The IPCC’s computer general circulation models, which factor in the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, project that global warming should be occurring at a rate of +2.0O C/century.

In fact, no warming at all has occurred in either the atmosphere or the ocean for more than the last decade. The models are clearly faulty, and allocate too great a warming effect for the extra carbon dioxide (technically, they are said to overestimate the climate sensitivity). Hypothesis fails.

(v) The same computer models predict that a fingerprint of greenhouse-gas-induced warming will be the creation of an atmospheric hot spot at heights of 8-10 km in equatorial regions, and enhanced warming also near both poles.

Given that we already know that the models are faulty, it shouldn’t surprise us to discover that direct measurements by both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite sensors show the absence of surface warming in Antarctica, and a complete absence of the predicted low latitude atmospheric hot spot. Hypothesis fails, twice.

. . . .

Summary

The current scientific reality is that the IPCC’s hypothesis of dangerous global warming has been repeatedly tested, and fails. Despite the expenditure of large sums of money over the last 25 years (more than $100 billion), and great research effort by IPCC-related and other (independent) scientists, to date no scientific study has established a certain link between changes in any significant environmental parameter and human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. . . .

My one caveat to Dr. Carter's summary would be that I have zero trust in the assertion that any warming has occurred in the 20th century, simply because I do not trust the temperature records maintained by global warming theories high priest, James Hansen. Hansen has modified our temperature records on more than one occasion, always reducing older temperatures from the early and mid 20th century while increasing modern temperatures. He should be in jail.

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New MET Numbers: No Global Warming For Sixteen Years, Yet The War On CO2 Continues

As reported in the Daily Mail, according to the UK's MET office, based on data collected from 3,000 land and sea measuring points worldwide:

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

Every computer model relied on by the warmies to forecast global warming has as its fundamental premise that, as atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise, so will temperatures. We should have seen temperatures skyrocketing over the past 16 years, as the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere has gone from about 357 ppm to over 391 ppm. And yet:

Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’. . .

‘Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete. Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse warming effect.

‘It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.’

The EPA unilaterally declared carbon dioxide a pollutant on Dec. 7, 2009 based in large measure on those fundamentally flawed computer models. And the EPA has used that finding to justify a war on our energy resources, oil, gas, and in particular, coal. The ACCCE recently estimated that draconian EPA regulations will force "241 coal generators producing 36,000 megawatts (MW)" to be decommissioned "during the next three to five years." That accounts for 11% of our total electricity production. Gaius, at Blue Crab Boulevard, puts that into perspective:

Look, folks, I am in this field. I have been for more than 30 years. Losing 36,000 MWs of the most cost-efficient generation capacity in the US is a disaster. You have no idea how bad the increases are going to be. They will be disastrous to the individual energy consumers and apocalyptic to large users – those who create jobs.

I shudder to think of what this is going to do to grid reliability as well. A lot of those coal plants help support the grid during disruptions. They regularly provide both energy and MVARs (Mega Volt-Ampere Reactive) that keep the grid from collapsing when large loads are added or lost. (That’s about as simple as I can make it and still be understood.) Losing these stabilizers will make it very hard to hold the grid. I pity the load dispatchers.

Trust me, people, this is a very big, very bad thing that is happening as a direct result of Barack Obama’s war on coal.

It would seem that casting CO2 as a pollutant has far more to do with amassing money and power than it does with protecting us from any actual harm caused by CO2. The government gains power to regulate, and those with an in to government get to feed off of the money from our wallet. Because the truth is that none of these green energy boondoggles could survive in the open market. And together, they will cost us ever more dearly in the future - a time when some are projecting global cooling.

Update: Al Gore is the face of green parasites, getting rich off the public dime. But he is the tip of the green ice berg. The Washington Examiner has the story of another today, "leading Obama donor and subsidy recipient Elon Musk."

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IPCC Reviewer - "There Is Not A Scrap Of Evidence" Supporting Anthropogenic Global Warming

From Dr. Vincent Gray:

I have been an Expert Reviewer on every one of the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and I can tell you that there is not a scrap of evidence in any of them that human emissions of carbon dioxide have any harmful effect on the climate.

How have they got away with it?

Attempts to "simulate" their unreliable and manipulated past climate "data" have been failures, yet are claimed as successes, But even if the "data" were genuine and the simulation successful it does not prove anything. Correlation, however convincing is not evidence of causation. The only way you can demonstrate the success of any theory is successful prediction of future climate over the whole range it is intended to be used, to a satisfactory level of accuracy. This has already been done with Newton's Laws of motion and Darwin's theories of evolution. It has not been done with the "global warming" theory. There has been no successful attempt to predict any future climate event. They do not even pretend they can do it, as they only provide "projections" from their models, not "predictions": .

How have they persuaded us that they are able to predict future climate?

They operate a system called "attribution". This is a combination of "simulation" (correlation), and "assessment" by "experts". The "experts" are all paid to provide the models that they are assessing. These assessments are therefore an elaborate and comprehensive conflict of interest.

They apply a whole series of "likelihoods" to each "assessment" and apply a fake "statistical significance" which, unlike those normally applied to genuine science, have no background of actual experimental observations.

(H/T Counting Cats)

Dr. Gray's stinging criticism of the IPCC for their computer model antics goes hand in glove with similar criticism by IPCC Reviewer Alec Rawls and Dr. David Evans. AGW theory is on its last legs. With no global warming for the past 15 years, virtually the entire theory of AGW now rests on Kevin Trenberth's untested hypothisis - generated by a computer model of course - that all of the missing global surface warming has transferred to the ocean deeps. AGW cannot be allowed to die a quiet death. There needs to be an accounting when all is said and done.

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Warmie Models Versus Reality

Dr. David Evans of Australia has written what amounts to a primer for non-scientists on the failure of warmie computer modeling. Warmie models are all predicated on the basic assumption that as CO2 increases, temperatures will increase. More specifically, it is not just the increasing CO2, but how other natural systems of our earth - referred to in the warmie world as "feedbacks" - react to the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere that are supposed to cause the warming. The warmies make these feedbacks a threefold multiplier in attempting to project global warming. As Dr. Evan's explains:

Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models. The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.

So, how have the warmie models held up against the data?  For full and detailed explanations, see Dr. Evan's post.  But the quick down and dirty from the graphs:

1. Jim Hansen's 1998 Projections

2. IPCC 1990 Computer Model Projections

3. ARGO Sea Temperature Data vs. Models

4, Atmospheric "Hot Spot"

This one requires a little explanation. If the warmie models were accurate, data should show a hot spot in mid to upper atmosphere centered over the equator.

5.  Outgoing radiation versus ocean temperatures.

This is another one that requires some explaination:

The top left graph shows what has actually happened - as oceans warm, more heat is radiated into space. All of the rest of the graphs are from climate models.  As you can tell from the slope, they each project that the opposite will occur, that as ocean temperatures increase, more of the heat will be trapped on earth and less radiated into space.

As Dr. Evan's concludes:

The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases.

Therefore:

1. The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.

2. The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.

The skeptical view is compatible with the data.

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CO2 . . . The World's Savior?

Well this is interesting. It turns out that pushing CO2 into our atmosphere could well be the key to feeding our growing population.

 A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Botany by Fereres, Orgaz, and Gonzalez-Dugo looks at the effect of CO2 on food production in a world increasing in population even as water is becoming increasingly scarce. So what major efficiencies need to be introduced to allow food production to match population growth in this scenario?

 The authors posit that our world has become much more efficient in food production in large measure because of the release of carbon dioxide - i.e., plant food - into the air since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

It has significantly increased the leaf photosynthetic rates of our crops, while it has significantly reduced their transpiration rates, which has led to significant increases in leaf water use efficiency, or the amount of biomass produced per unit of water transpired in the process.

The experiments conducted by Fereres, Orgaz and Dugo ultimately verified that CO2 has a significant positive effect on crop production, while showing that theories of negative effects on world crop production from CO2 did not manifest in "real world" tests. So what does this mean?

Mankind's CO2 emissions may ultimately prove a godsend to humanity, as they just might make the difference between our being able to adequately [feed] . . . our expanding population in the very near future or our failing to do so in a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

Apparently, we need more coal plants for the good of the environment. Al Gore's head set to explode in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Actually, I have been waiting for years for some scientists to confirm this hypothesis, as there had been some limited research a few years ago that showed higher agricultural yields in the presence of increased CO2 concentrations. In a world without the politicized science of Anthropogenic Global Warming, this study would be the impetus for a great deal more research to disprove or prove and extend the findings of the above study. But what I suspect will happen is that this study will be at best ignored, or at worst suppressed, and that we will learn of a conspiracy to delegitimize this study in a decade when the Climategate 7.0 e-mails are released.

Welcome Larwyn's Linx readers.

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To The Warmies - "Sorry, but you’ve been had"

Climate scientist David Evans recently gave the speech below at a rally in Australia. Evans has gone from being a proponent of the theory of antrhopogenic globabl warming, to now, acknowledging that the science is not merely in doubt, but false. And he explains why. This from Mr. Evans:

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.

They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.” These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.

One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.

The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.

Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?

The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!

Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.

(H/T Hot Air)

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EPA & The Second Battle Of The Alamo.

The EPA is making good on Obama's threat to force control of carbon on America through the back door if Congress refused to act. It is doing so with an extremely heavy hand as it tries to skate around the sytemic problems of regulating greenhouse gasses within the legal framework of the Clean Air Act - a law ill designed for such a purpose.

Responding to the EPA's heavy handed approach, the Texas Attorney General has forwarded a caustic and detailed letter that, as AJ Strata points out, reads almost like a declaration of war. The AG repeatedly points out how the EPA is vastly overstepping its authority and takes extreme umbrage at the EPA's attempts to steamroll Texas into submission. Read the whole story at The Stratasphere.

Update: Dr. Melissa Clouthier, posting at Liberty Pundit, sees this as another manifestaton of push back by states and individuals against the vast overreach of the Obama administration. I would have to agree.

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Dr. North's One Man Crusade To Expose Corruption (Updated & Bumped)

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is very powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

----------------------------------------------------

The UN's Intergorvenmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body expressly dedicated to informing us about the reality of climate science in a "comprehensive, objective, open and transparent" fashion. Don't laugh.

Please stop laughing, I am trying to make an important point . . .

My question is this . . . should the person who then is appointed Chairman of the IPCC be neutral, without any financial stake in the theory of anthropogenic global warming? That answer is clearly yes. If it were otherwise, it would be a massive conflict of interest the likes of which would be tortious were the IPCC a U.S. corporation. And were the IPCC a U.S. governmental organization, acting under such a pecuniary conflict of interest would likely be a crime under 18 U.S.C § 208. As bad as Al Gore is - he has made over $100 million if not much, much more in the past decade shilling for global warming - at least he holds no official position by which he can directly effect how AGW (anthropogenic global warming) science is portrayed and how it is pursued at the international level. But what if the Chairman of the UN's IPCC held every bit as much a stake in pushing the theory of AGW as Al Gore? Something would really stink in Denmark then. And that something would be Rajendra Pachauri, the UN's IPCC Chairman.

One would not know this from a casual look through the MSM. But some of the best investigative journalism on this issue is going on across the pond on a blog - EU Referendum. The blog's proprietor, Dr. North, has spent the better part of the last few weeks digging through the public record to paint a picture of an IPCC Chairman with massive financial conflicts of interest - and indeed, a purveyor of hypocrisy on a Gorian scale. This story is developing with time. It is getting some play in the newspapers and some play in the blogs - it deserves far, far more in terms of both publicity and in terms of rattling the cages of our elected representatives.

This from one of the earlier posts on this issue by Dr. North:

No one but the utterly naïve greenies believe that the Mann-made global warming hype is anything to do with climate – much less saving the planet. It is, as always, about power, influence - and money.

Out of literally thin air, the money-men have been able to conjure up a brand new product on which to increase their riches, the fabulous "carbon" which in less than a decade will – they hope – underpin an "industry" worth more than $2 trillion a year.

That alone justified the enormous effort which is being made to cement global warming as an issue in the public consciousness and, more importantly, in the legislative systems of the world. And it is the latter which is most important. Once the elimination of "carbon" is locked into enough legislative systems, it does not matter what people think – the revenue stream will be secure.

Bearing in mind that the issue is based on the central deception that the life-giving gas carbon dioxide is a "pollutant", behind the push to create this multi-trillion dollar industry is a vast nexus of influence, at or near the heart of which – it is emerging – is the chairman of the UN's IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

Carefully cultivating the image of the concerned "scientist", he has on the back of the global warming hype not only been able to amass a considerable personal fortune (about which he is extraordinarily shy) but has also built a powerful global organisation under the brand-name "TERI", as the front for his lobbying and power-broking activities

That Pachauri heads the UN's IPCC while having a vast conflict of interest is pure corruption. And the bottom line is that until people like Pachauri are exposed and made to step down, if not locked down (which would be appropriate, since we are talking about theft that would make Bernie Madoff look like a mere pick pocket), then the science of AGW will always remain politicized and there is little chance of stopping this world record scam from reaching into our pockets.

Here, in order, are the posts (earliest to most recent in descending order) on this issue from EU Referendum. You should read them. Then you should be calling your elected representatives to ask why we are allowing such a massive conflict of interest at the UN IPCC and what they are going to do about it? You might want to cc Senator James Inhofe on this also. Unless you own massive amounts of stock in GE, Kleiner Perkins,or TERI, it is in the financial interests of you, your children, your grandchildren, and this nation to make those calls.

- Big Carbon
- We Woz Not Wrong
- All Roads Lead To Pachauri
- A Busy Man
- A Vast Nexus of Influence
- Corus In The EU Parliament
- Global Warming - An Economic War
- Conflict of Interest
- High Noon For Pachauri
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Protecting Big Carbon
- It's All Lies
- Indian Style
- The Power Of The Internet
- Slow Burn
- Eating Away At Civilization
- Pachauri In An Expenses Scam
- What Is With The Media?
- A Hypocrite As Well As A Liar
- Pachauri: Another Tata Link
- Pachauri: They've All Got It In For Me
- Pachauri: Moving The Goalposts
- Pachauri: Hornet's Nest Stirred
- Pachauri: Admits To $300,000 In Payments
- Pachauri: The Deutsche Bank Connection
- Pachauri: More Lucerative By The Day
- Pachauri: Not $300,000, But $800,000 Admitted
- Pachauri And Big Oil
- Pachauri And Hidden Subsidies
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part I
- Pachauri: Friend of Friends
- Nothing Is Ever What It Seems
Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part II
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part III
- Pachauri: How Much Is This Man Getting (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: Follow The Money (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: Nose In The Honey Jar (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: "No Leeway For Delay Or Denial" (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: The Cover Up Begins (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pauchauri: Teri-Europe - The Enigma Part IV (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: The Smoking Gun (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Work In Progress (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)


I will update and bump this post as new information comes to light.

There are also other blogs out there that have dealt with the topic of IPCC / Pachauri corruption. They include:

- The Daily Stirrer: The Copenhagen Climate Conference - The Stink of Shit & Corruption
- Doug Ross: The UN's IPCC Global-Warming Bunko Scam

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Dr. North's One Man Crusade To Expose Corruption

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is immensely powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

----------------------------------------------------

The UN's Intergorvenmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body expressly dedicated to informing us about the reality of climate science in an honest and unbiased fashion. Don't laugh.

Please stop laughing, I am trying to make an important point . . .

My question is this . . . should the person who then is appointed Chairman of the IPCC be neutral, without any financial stake in the theory of anthropogenic global warming? That answer is clearly yes. If it were otherwise, it would be a massive conflict of interest the likes of which would be tortious were the IPCC a U.S. corporation. And were it a U.S. governmental organization, acting under such a pecuniary conflict would be a crime under 18 U.S.C § 208. As bad as Al Gore is - he has made over $100 million if not much, much more in the past decade shilling for global warming - at least he holds no official position by which he can directly effect how AGW science is portrayed and how it is pursued at the international level. But what if the Chairman of the UN's IPCC held every bit as much a stake in pushing AGW as Al Gore? Something would really stink in Denmark then. And that something would be Rajendra Pachauri, the UN's IPCC Chairman.

One would not know this from a casual look through the MSM. But some of the best investigative journalism on this issue is going on across the pond on a blog - EU Referendum. It is a blog which is, for my money, the most consistently intelligent blog on either side of the Atlantic. The proprietor, Dr. North, has spent the better part of the last few weeks digging through the public record to paint a picture of an IPCC Chairman with massive financial conflicts of interest - and indeed, a purveyor of hypocrisy on a Gorian scale. Dr. North has bitten into this story, and like a dog with a bone, is not letting go. It is getting some play in the newspapers and some play in the blogs - it deserves far, far more in terms of both publicity and in terms of rattling the cages of our elected representatives.

This from one of the earlier posts on this issue by Dr. North:

No one but the utterly naïve greenies believe that the Mann-made global warming hype is anything to do with climate – much less saving the planet. It is, as always, about power, influence - and money.

Out of literally thin air, the money-men have been able to conjure up a brand new product on which to increase their riches, the fabulous "carbon" which in less than a decade will – they hope – underpin an "industry" worth more than $2 trillion a year.

That alone justified the enormous effort which is being made to cement global warming as an issue in the public consciousness and, more importantly, in the legislative systems of the world. And it is the latter which is most important. Once the elimination of "carbon" is locked into enough legislative systems, it does not matter what people think – the revenue stream will be secure.

Bearing in mind that the issue is based on the central deception that the life-giving gas carbon dioxide is a "pollutant", behind the push to create this multi-trillion dollar industry is a vast nexus of influence, at or near the heart of which – it is emerging – is the chairman of the UN's IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

Carefully cultivating the image of the concerned "scientist", he has on the back of the global warming hype not only been able to amass a considerable personal fortune (about which he is extraordinarily shy) but has also built a powerful global organisation under the brand-name "TERI", as the front for his lobbying and power-broking activities

That Pachauri heads the UN's IPCC while having a vast conflict of interest is pure corruption. And the bottom line is that until people like Pachauri are exposed and made to step down, if not locked down (which would be appropriate, since we are talking about theft that would make Bernie Madoff look like a mere pick pocket), then the science of AGW will always remain politicized and there is little chance of stopping this world record scam from reaching into our pockets.

Here, in order, are the posts (earliest to most recent in descending order) on this issue from EU Referendum. You should read them. Then you should be calling your elected representatives to ask why we are allowing such a massive conflict of interest at the UN IPCC and what they are going to do about it? You might want to cc Senator James Inhofe on this also. Unless you own massive amounts of stock in GE, Kleiner Perkins,or TERI, it is in the financial interests of you, your children, your grandchildren, and this nation to make those calls.

- Big Carbon
- We Woz Not Wrong
- All Roads Lead To Pachauri
- A Busy Man
- A Vast Nexus of Influence
- Corus In The EU Parliament
- Global Warming - An Economic War
- Conflict of Interest
- High Noon For Pachauri
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Protecting Big Carbon
- It's All Lies
- Indian Style
- The Power Of The Internet
- Slow Burn
- Eating Away At Civilization
- Pachauri In An Expenses Scam
- What Is With The Media?
- A Hypocrite As Well As A Liar
- Pachauri: Another Tata Link
- Pachauri: They've All Got It In For Me
- Pachauri: Moving The Goalposts
- Pachauri: Hornet's Nest Stirred
- Pachauri: Admits To $300,000 In Payments
- Pachauri: The Deutsche Bank Connection
- Pachauri: More Lucerative By The Day
- Pachauri: Not $300,000, But $800,000 Admitted
- Pachauri And Big Oil
- Pachauri And Hidden Subsidies
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part I
- Pachauri: Friend of Friends
- Nothing Is Ever What It Seems

I will update and bump this post as new information comes to light.

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Courts, Environmental Policy & An End Run Around Democracy

The greeenies are determined to punish our economy and means of energy production. If they cannot do it through the ballot box, they learned long ago that the Courts, staffed by many an activist judge, provide an equally good venue. And with the push to declare carbon a pollutant, things are primed to get much worse. This from the WSJ:

. . . Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups—if that's not redundant—are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws.

A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.

What unites these cases is the creativity of their legal chain of causation and their naked attempts at political intimidation. "My hope is that the court case will provide a powerful incentive for polluters to be reasonable and come to the table and seek affordable and reasonable reductions," Mr. Blumenthal told the trade publication Carbon Control News. "We're trying to compel measures that will stem global warming regardless of what happens in the legislature."

Mull over that one for a moment. Mr. Blumenthal isn't suing to right a wrong. He admits that he's suing to coerce a change in policy no matter what the public's elected representatives choose.

Cap and trade or a global treaty like the one that collapsed in Copenhagen would be destructive—but at least either would need the assent of a politically accountable Congress. The Obama Administration's antidemocratic decision to impose carbon regulation via the Environmental Protection Agency would be even more destructive—but at least it would be grounded in an existing law, the 1977 Clean Air Act, however misinterpreted. The nuisance suits ask the courts to make such fundamentally political decisions themselves, with judges substituting their views for those of the elected branches.

And now that you mention it, the U.S. appeals courts seem more than ready to arrogate to themselves this power. In September, the Second Circuit allowed Mr. Blumenthal's suit to proceed, while a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court's dismissal of the Katrina case in October. An en banc hearing is now under consideration.

But global warming is, well, global: It doesn't matter whether ubiquitous CO2 emissions come from American Electric Power or Exxon—or China. "There is no logical reason to draw the line at 30 defendants as opposed to 150, or 500, or even 10,000 defendants," says David Rivkin, an attorney at Baker Hostetler and a contributor to our pages, in an amicus brief in the Katrina case. "These plaintiffs—and any others alleging injury by climatic phenomena—would have standing to assert a damages claim against virtually every entity and individual on the planet, since each 'contributes' to global concentrations of carbon dioxide."

In other words, the courts would become a venue for a carbon war of all against all. Not only might businesses sue to shackle their competitors—could we sue the New York Times for deforestation?—but judges would decide the remedies against specific defendants. In practice this would mean ad hoc command-and-control regulation against any industries that happen to catch the green lobby's eye.

Carbon litigation without legislation is one more way to harm the economy, and the rule of law. We hope the Fifth Circuit will have the good sense to deflect this damaging legal theory before it crash-lands at the Supreme Court

(emphasis added)

I have long been a vociferous advocate of changing the rules of standing (those rules limiting who may sue) under our environmental laws and under common law claims based on environmental issues. And under the same rubric, I have long been for taking decisions on environmental policy completely out of our court system. It is clear that environmental laws are being abused both to harrass and to act as an end run around the democratic process. It is further clear that our environmentally conscious far left have found fertile ground to work their destructive acts with liberal judges. Indeed, the absolutey worst case of this came when five noted climate scientists on the Supreme Court held, in the 2007 case of Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency, that the EPA had "improperly failed to determine that “greenhouse gas emissions” are dangerous and within its jurisdiction." In his opinion for the Court, Justice Stevens observed:

A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species — the most important species — of a “greenhouse gas.”

That, from a non-scientist, non-elected official who, on that date, all but decided America's future environmental policy. That is Exhibit A in why activist judges, unable to control themselves and refuse to decide issues of social policy generally, environmental policy in particular, have no business hearing such cases.

To quote once again from Dr. North at EU Referendum:

In the end, there are going to be two groups of people in this world: the greenies and the people who shoot greenies. It's kill or be killed, and the greenies will be the death of us all if this madness continues.

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Facts Of Climate Science From An IPCC Reviewer

This from Lee C. Gerhard, writing at LJ World:

I have been a reviewer of the last two IPCC reports, one of the several thousand scientists who purportedly are supporters of the IPCC view that humans control global temperature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of us try to bring better and more current science to the IPCC, but we usually fail. Recently we found out why. The whistleblower release of e-mails and files from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University has demonstrated scientific malfeasance and a sickening violation of scientific ethics.

Gerhard gives us a short primer facts of climate science.

Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know
• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.

• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.

We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:

• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.

• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.

• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the “hockey stick” graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.

• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.

Contrary to many public statements:

• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years — extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.

• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.

• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.

The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.

Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word “ever” is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean “in the last 20 years,“ or “the last 70 years.” “Ever” means the last 4.5 billion years.

For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, “How long is ever?” The answer is since 1979. And then ask, “Is it still warming?” The answer is unequivocally “No.” Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word “unprecedented” cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.

There is not an unlimited supply of liquid fuels. At some point, sooner or later, global oil production will decline, and transportation costs will become insurmountable if we do not develop alternative energy sources. However, those alternative energy sources do not now exist.

A legislated reduction in energy use or significant increase in cost will severely harm the global economy and force a reduction in the standard of living in the United States. It is time we spent the research dollars to invent an order-of-magnitude better solar converter and an order-of-magnitude better battery. Once we learn how to store electrical energy, we can electrify transportation. But these are separate issues. Energy conversion is not related to climate change science. . . .

If the game of Russian roulette with the environment that Adrian Melott contends is going on, is it how will we feed all the people when the cold of the inevitable Little Ice Age returns? It will return. We just don’t know when.

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Things Heat Up In The Anti-Capitalist Church Of Global Warming But Cool Down Everywhere Else

Science is only tangential to the orthodoxy of the Church Global Warming, the new religion of modern socialists and communists who have as their holy Trinity High Priest Goracle, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the European Union. Its interesting to note that the real religions are not too happy with this increasingly apocalyptic secular one. The Pope weighed in the other day "on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology."

But that will not stop the socialist acolytes of the Goracle. The new religion is beloved by socialists because they can use it to justify those things they hold most precious - centralizing power, regulating people's lives, redistributing wealth - and lastly because its a very rich gravy train for its clerics.

Indeed, the EU has now gone so far as to make global warming a part of their new Constitution created by the Treaty of Lisbon yesterday. By Article 4 of the new Constitution, the EU takes primacy to pass laws on the "environment." The Constitution amends Article 179 to explicitly recognize the problem of "climate change" as an "environmental" problem and provides the EU with a constitutional mandate to take appropriate measures to "deal with" it. What mischief can the EU do with this new constitutional mandate? Europeans are already choking from massive over-regulation by the EU as described in this article by Der Spiegel. Something tells me they haven't seen anything yet.

And now, the holy trinity is holding their Holy Mass in Bali. And its no surprise that the homily at the Bali Conference was a call for a massive transfer of wealth from the US and rich capitalist nations to the UN for redistribution:

A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent "a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations." "Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs," Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled "A Global CO2 Tax."

Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm Schwank said at least "$10-$40 billion dollars per year" could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the "polluters pay principle." The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to "contribute significantly more to this global fund," Schwank explained. He also added, "It is very essential to tax coal."

The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled "Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation." The report stated there was an "urgent need" for a global tax in order for "damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world." The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would "flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund" to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.

There’s an economy buster for you - not to mention an invitation to fraud and graft on an unheard of scale. Yet High Priest Goracle has given such taxes his personal blessing. And lest you think this anything other than an anti-capitalist, socialist movement . . .

A common theme [at the Bali Conference] was that the "solutions" to climate change that are being posed by many governments, such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and biofuels are false and are not rooted in justice. Another point was that as this current economic system got us here in the first place, a climate change response must . . . [provide for] a redistribution of wealth and resources.

And here . . .

The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday. "A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources," said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

One can almost hear their slogans now. No doubt it would be a mixing a bit of the Goracle with classical Karl Marx - say . . . "Global Warming Victims of the World Unite."

But while there are a lot of things heating up inside the Church of Global Warming, one of them is not the temperature. "The latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level. . . [Further] the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934."

And remember the melting of the Greenland Ice Cap. That has long been a centerpiece of the "proof" of global warming. Yet now, it seems the problem is not CO2 from above causing the problem, it magma seeping up through the earth’s crust underneath Greenland.

To believe in global warming, one has to accept the climate models used to predict the coming catastrophe as accurate. But it appears that might be a bit of a problem.

. . . [R]esearchers compared predictions of 22 widely used climate "models" — elaborate schematics that try to forecast how the global weather system will behave — with actual readings gathered by surface stations, weather balloons and orbiting satellites over the past three decades.

The study, published online this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that while most of the models predicted that the middle and upper parts of the troposphere —1 to 6 miles above the Earth’s surface — would have warmed drastically over the past 30 years, actual observations showed only a little warming, especially over tropical regions. . .

Indeed, these and a host of similar facts led a lot of heretical scientists who dissent from the global warming orthodoxy to attend the service at Bali where, in the spirit science, they were welcomed into the nave and asked to air their disagreements to the participants so that a searching discussion could ensue, all in the names of scientific advancement and intellectual honesty.

HAH

These scientists were less welcome at the IPCC's Bali Conference than an infestation of crab lice. The IPCC censored all "dissenting voices at Bali," preventing dissenting scientists from addressing the press and "from participating in panel discussions, side events, and exhibits." This from the (Senator) Inhofe EPW Press Blog (a font of global warming heresty):

An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.

"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.

"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added.

Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.

"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.

"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. . .

Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies.

"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.

Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." . . .

"Most of the people here [at the UN conference] have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.

And there is more. A group of 100 scientists sent the following letter to the UN Secretary General yesterday, raising concerns both about the faulty "science" underlying global warming and the manner in which it is politicized and edited by the IPCC:

Dec. 13, 2007
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon Secretary-General,
United Nations
New York, N.Y.

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, . . .

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts. . . .

Do read the entire letter. The High Church of Global Warming is the penultimate socialist scam. While it is very wise to conserve energy and to look for cheaper and replenishable fuel sources, that is not what is driving the socialists of global warming. We have to keep a close eye on this religion. They are passing the collection plate and demanding far more than a tithe. But, then again, what’s a little questionable science when there is world socialism, the destruction of capitalism and the redistribution of American wealth to be had. Let us all bow our heads and regulate.

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Interesting News From Around The Web

Amir Taheri takes a detailed look at the good and bad in Iraq beyond the security situation itself. He has harsh words for the government of Iraq.

Iran is hosting its own Middle East peace summit with all of the attendees being those whose invites to Annapolis were apparently lost in the mail. The participants are expected to unanimously agree to a final solution.

Iraqis are returning to Baghdad in large numbers.

Don Surber is celebrating V-I Day. It is a bit early for that – there still seems to be a lot of fighting to do, and Iran is going to be something between a significant and a huge problem until the Khomeinist theocracy is no longer.

There is the Stop the ACLU Roundup at Miss Beth’s Victory Dance. I am not reflexively anti-ACLU at least to the extent that I will listen to what they have to say before making my decision that its bad for America. Its just happens to be that decision is the one at which I invariably arrive.

We knew that President Bush welcomed the Goracle to the White House to honor his Nobel Prize, but did anyone realize that it was a low carbon event in Gore’s honor?

A 17th century book believed to be bound in the skin of a priest hung, drawn and quartered for treason as part of the famous Gunpowder Plot is up for auction in the UK.

Posterizing Democrats over at TNOY. Hilarious.

Hate America bias amongst our friends at Der Spiegel? I do hope they enjoy the good life they are going to have in the EU.

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