Showing posts with label global cooling. Show all posts

Sunday, October 14, 2012

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."

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

In Germany, A New AGW Heretic Is Born

In Germany, the warmie community is reeling from the defection of one its major players, Fritz Vahrenholt. Venderholt is a prominent Social Democrat, a former German Environment Minister, the outgoing CEO of the renewable energy group RWE Innogy, the author of a book soon to be released, "The Cold Sun," in which he writes that the "climate catastrophe is not occurring." Recently, he was questioned about his turn to AGW heresy in Der Spiegel

SPIEGEL: You are an electric utility executive by profession. What prompted you to get involved in climatology?

Vahrenholt: In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC. In one case, a Greenpeace activist's absurd claim that 80 percent of the world's energy supply could soon be coming from renewable sources was assumed without scrutiny. This prompted me to examine the IPCC report more carefully.

SPIEGEL: And what was your conclusion?

Vahrenholt: The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news.

SPIEGEL: You make concrete statements on how much human activity contributes to climatic events and how much of a role natural factors play. Why don't you publish your prognoses in a professional journal?

Vahrenholt: Because I don't engage in my own climate research. Besides, I don't have a supercomputer in my basement. For the most part, my co-author, geologist Sebastian Lüning, and I merely summarize what scientists have published in professional journals -- just as the IPCC does. The book is also a platform for scientists who apply good arguments in diverging from the views of the IPCC. The established climate models have failed across the board because they cannot cogently explain the absence of warming.

SPIEGEL: You claim that the standstill has to do with the sun. What makes you so sure?

Vahrenholt: In terms of the climate, we have seen a cyclical up and down for the last 7,000 years, long before man began emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. There has been a warming phase every 1,000 years, including the Roman, the Medieval and the current warm periods. All of these warm periods consistently coincided with strong solar activity. In addition to this large fluctuation in activity, there is also a 210-year and an 87-year natural cycle of the sun. Ignoring these would be a serious mistake …

. . . In the second half of the 20th century, the sun was more active than it had been in more than 2,000 years. This "large solar maximum," as astronomers call it, has contributed at least as much to global warming as the greenhouse gas CO2. But the sun has been getting weaker since 2005, and it will continue to do so in the next few decades. Consequently, we can only expect cooling from the sun for now.

. . . Many scientists assume that the temperature changes by more than 1 degree Celsius for the 1,000-year cycle and by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius for the smaller cycles. Climatologists should be putting a far greater effort into finding ways to more accurately determine the effects of the sun on climate. For the IPCC and the politicians it influences, CO2 is practically the only factor. The importance of the sun for the climate is systematically underestimated, and the importance of CO2 is systematically overestimated. As a result, all climate predictions are based on the wrong underlying facts.

I don't claim that I know precisely whether the sun is responsible for a 40, 50 or 60 percent share of global warming. But it's nonsense for the IPCC to claim that the sun has nothing to do with it.

SPIEGEL: You claim that the standstill in global warming since 2000 has been caused in large part by a simultaneous decline in solar activity. But, in fact, the sun behaved relatively normally until the middle of the century, only becoming noticeably quieter after that. How does this fit together?

Vahrenholt: There are two effects: the declining solar activity, as well as the fluctuations in ocean currents, such as the 60-year Pacific oscillation, which was in a positive warm phase from 1977 to 2000 and, since 2000, has led to cooling as a result of its decline. Their contribution to the change in temperature has also been wrongly attributed to CO2. Most of all, however, the last sunspot cycle was weaker than the one before it. This is why the sun's magnetic field has continued to weaken since 2000. As a result, this magnetic field doesn't shield us against cosmic radiation quite as well, which in turn leads to stronger cloud formation and, therefore, cooling. What else has to happen before the IPCC at least mentions these relationships in its reports?

SPIEGEL: What you neglect to mention is that it hasn't been proven yet that cosmic radiation, which is shielded by the sun at varying degrees of effectiveness, truly leads to more cooling clouds on Earth. So far, it is only a hypothesis.

Vahrenholt: It's more than that. The Cloud Experiment, headed by physicist Jasper Kirkby, has been underway at the CERN particle research center near Geneva since 2006. The initial results of tests conducted in a chamber in which the earth's atmosphere was simulated showed that cosmic particles do indeed lead to the formation of aerosol particles for clouds.

SPIEGEL: But the aerosols demonstrated in the Cloud Experiment are much too small. They would have to grow before they could actually serve as condensation germs for clouds. Whether this happens in nature is still an open question. You present this as a fact.

Vahrenholt: You will find many correlations between cloud cover and cosmic radiation in the book. I'd like to know why the IPCC doesn't thoroughly examine this mechanism. My guess is that the answer to this question would jeopardize the entire foundation of the IPCC predictions.

The solar cycle is everything but normal. NASA scientists predict that this cycle will indeed be the weakest of the last 80 years. Not only did it start two years too late, but it's also very weak. And, besides, you can't just count sunspots. Cosmic particles continue to rain down on us because the sun's magnetic field is hardly shielding us.

Various American and British solar research groups believe that weak solar cycles are ahead. I take this seriously and expect only cooling from the sun until 2050.

SPIEGEL: Do you seriously believe that all 2,000 scientists involved in the IPCC are deluded or staying true to the official line?

Vahrenholt: It's not like that. However, I am critical of the role played by the handful of lead authors who take on the final editing of the report. They claim that they are using 18,000 publications evaluated by their peers. But 5,000 of them are so-called gray literature, which are not peer-reviewed sources. These mistakes come out in the end, just like the absurd claim that there will no longer be any glaciers in the Himalayas in 30 years. Such exaggerations don't surprise me. Of the 34 supposedly independent members who write the synthesis report for politicians, almost a third are associated with environmental organizations like Greenpeace or the WWF. Strange, isn't it?

SPIEGEL: Why are you taking on the role of the climate rebel with such passion? Where does this rage come from?

Vahrenholt: For years, I disseminated the hypotheses of the IPCC, and I feel duped. . . .

SPIEGEL: So, is it a mistake to concentrate exclusively on the reduction of carbon dioxide?

Vahrenholt: Yes. In addition to carbon dioxide, we also have black soot, for example. It creates 55 percent of the warming effect of CO2, but it could be filtered out with little effort within a few years, especially in emerging and developing countries. And, in doing so, we would achieve huge benefits for human health. . . .

SPIEGEL: Surveys show that fear of the climate catastrophe has declined. Are you preaching to the choir with your all-clear?

Vahrenholt: The fear mongers are still shaping the political debate. According to the German Advisory Council on Global Change, environmentally minded countries should forcibly bring about reduced consumption for the sake of protecting the climate. This takes us in the direction of an environmental dictatorship. And the fearmongering is also beginning to take effect. When I was in a restaurant recently, I overheard a woman at the next table telling her children that it's wrong to eat an Argentine steak -- because of the climate. That's when I ask myself: How could we have come to this point?

Monday, January 30, 2012

Are We About To See The Death Of The Global Warming Scam?

The article in today's Daily Mail

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

- Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

So what is the biggest bombshell in this article?

Is it that the MET and the University of East Anglia have confirmed that there has been no global warming for the past 15 years (contrary to NASA numbers from the despicable James Hansen?)

Is it that all of the IPCC computer models - predicated on the theory that the world will warm in direct proportion to increases in atmospheric CO2 - have failed utterly?

Is it that we seem to be heading into a lull in sunspot activity last seen during periods of intense global cooling - (in particular that period known as the little Ice Age that Michael Mann wiped from the historic records with his hockey stick graph?)

Or is it that we are about to see the heretical theory of Henrick Svensmark - that solar activity, not CO2, is the primary determinant of our globe's warming and cooling through cloud formation - finally given a real world trial? Note that the same theory passed its first test at CERN last year.

This from the Daily Mail:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C. However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Interestingly, the MET is still taking the position that there will be no global cooling because it will all be offset by increasing carbon dioxide. Cue Henrick Svensmark:

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

Talk about your deadenders. The MET is hanging onto their AGW CO2-centric models with the very edges of their bloody fingernails at this point. They won't be able to do it much longer.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

So is tar and feathering serious enough for these world's greatest scam artists, or is something more serious warranted? Perhaps it is for Al Gore, Michael Mann and James Hansen. What do you think, maybe permanent deportation to Siberia where they can live out their lives with a zero carbon footprint?

The real crime with all of this is that, while our governments still push global warming, the reality is that global cooling may soon be upon us - and the effects could be devastating. Unfortunately, our world will not be able to prepare for this eventuality until the AGW gravy train is brought to its final, bitter end. And given that the global warming scam is not about science, but rather about political power, patronage and money, we will be well into global cooling before that will ever happen.

Update: Linked by Paul in Houston

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Carbon Dioxide, The Wonder Gas -- Will It Save Us From The Next Ice Age?

CO2 - is there anything it can't do. A few weeks ago, we learned from a peer reviewed study that increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Age had played a primary role in increasing agricultural output, and that such higher CO2 concentrations - it is plant food after all - will be the key to feeding the world's expanding population into the future. Today, we learn that CO2 may well be the key to preventing the next catastrophic Ice Age.

Amazingly, this latest study is being reported by the BBC's Richard Black, a true IPCC-loving, Climategate-denying, scare-mongering uber-warmie. To say that I am surprised is putting it mildly.

To give some background, our world cyclically passes through major and minor ice ages - and by that I mean long-term reductions in the earth's temperature giving rise to advancing polar ice sheets and glaciers. There have been five major ice ages in our earth's history. The worst occurred between 850 to 630 million years ago during the Cryogenian period, when the entire earth was covered in ice, even to the equator. The periods in between ice ages have been categorized by a near complete absence of ice on our planet. Technically, we are today still in an ice age that began 2.5 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene period because "the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist." Fortunately for humanity, we are living in an interglacial period of the ice age known as the Holocene.

With that said, according to the BBC's Mr. Black, a team of scientists headed by Cambridge University researcher Luke Skinner published a study in Nature Geoscience, positing that the next devastating ice age could be expected sometime in the next 1,500 years. Such an event would "cover much of the northern hemisphere, many species would face extinction and the productivity of the biosphere would diminish as fertile farmlands went under the ice." Indeed, the reality has always been that we as a species have exponentially more to fear from global cooling than global warming.

But according to the Cambridge research team, carbon dioxide is our savior. Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is currently at 390 ppm (parts per million). So long as we keep carbon concentrations above 240 to 280 ppm, glaciation will not begin, and the next cyclical ice age will be put off.

Not surprisingly, nobody is loving life more than Marc Morano at Climate Depot at the moment:

Rev your SUVs! Global Warming To Save The Planet?: Will rising levels of CO2 prevent a new Ice Age & save civilization?

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Meteorologists Attack Global Warming, NYT Recommends Reeducation Camps

Meteorologist Joe Bistrardi, a vocal and articulate critic of antrhopogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW), has done a recent video (see here - unfortunately cannot embed it) wherein he points to a fundamental disconnect between Goddard's map showing massive warming in the polar regions this past winter while other measurments show a significant rise in polar sea ice. As Bastardi points out, those two events are mutually exclusive and, thus, the people at Goddard are making adjustments to the polar temperature data that logically cannot be true.

That leads in to a NYT article today, Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming. The NYT admits that there may not be quite a consensus on anthropogenic global warming [AGW], particularly among meteorologists, a very significant number of whom openly describe AGW as a "scam." That said, the NYT does nothing to hide its own bias, and in the end, quotes from several anthropogenic global warming [AGW] proponents who assure us that it is all a simple case of misunderstanding, nothing that a few months in reeducation camps for dissident meteorologists won't solve.

This from the NYT:

The debate over global warming has created . . . tensions between two groups that might be expected to agree on the issue: climate scientists and meteorologists, especially those who serve as television weather forecasters.

Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns.

That last paragraph is incredibly misleading. One, as to a generalized warming trend over the past two centuries, not a single meteorologist would contest that. We have been slowly warming up since the last Little Ice Age. The seminal issue is whether the warming is part of a natural cycle and, if not, then to what extent it is being driven by man. Two, meteorologists looking at the unadjusted temperatures over the last decade can clearly see that temperatures have gotten a bit cooler. They are in good company. Some of the top members of the AGW community happen to have admitted to the same thing. Three, this grossly overstates the "consensus" in AGW among climate scientists. To continue from the NYT:

. . . Joe Bastardi, for example, a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.

“There is a great deal of consternation among a lot of us over the readjustment of data that is going on and some of the portrayals that we are seeing,” Mr. Bastardi said in a video segment posted recently on AccuWeather’s Web site.

Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology.

A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.”

More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” the researchers found.

The NYT fails to note an important fact. Unlike academics competing for grants or the vast enviro-industrial complex - i.e., all of those from Al Gore to GE to Goldman Sachs and others who stand to reap a windfall from government mandates concerning AGW - meteorologists are unique in having no vested interest in either proving or disproving AGW theory.

. . . climate scientists use very different scientific methods from the meteorologists. Heidi Cullen, a climatologist who straddled the two worlds when she worked at the Weather Channel, noted that meteorologists used models that were intensely sensitive to small changes in the atmosphere but had little accuracy more than seven days out. Dr. Cullen said meteorologists are often dubious about the work of climate scientists, who use complex models to estimate the effects of climate trends decades in the future.

But the cynicism, said Dr. Cullen, who now works for Climate Central, a nonprofit group that works to bring the science of climate change to the public, is in her opinion unwarranted.

“They are not trying to predict the weather for 2050, just generally say that it will be hotter,” Dr. Cullen said of climatologists. “And just like I can predict August will be warmer than January, I can predict that.”

To the NYT credit, they do point out later in the article that Cullen is the radical who advocated that the Meteorological Society withhold accreditation from any meteorologist who did not first swear fealty to AGW theory. But the NYT quoted Cullen without challenging any of her ridiculous assertions. The Times authors fail to note that all of the "complex models" that the AGW theorists relied upon to show catastrophe in 50 to 100 years predict that temperatures will rise in concert with and because of increases in carbon dioxide. Not a single one of these "complex models" predicted the last decade of cooling, even as humans pumped ever more CO2 into the atmosphere. In other words, the computer models are fatally flawed and of no predictive value. And for the NYT to let Cullen get away with saying she can predict that it will be hotter in 2050 than today with the same assurance that she can predict warmer weather in August than January is just jaw dropping. That is utterly ridiulous.

Resentment may also play a role in the divide. Climatologists are almost always affiliated with universities or research institutions where a doctoral degree is required. Most meteorologists, however, can get jobs as weather forecasters with a college degree.

Ahhh, here we go. The problem is one of [a] degree, so to speak. Climatoligists should be believed because they, as a group, are smarter than meteorologists, who as a group are also driven by jealousy and envy.

The problem with that theory is you do not have to have a PhD in climatology to be able to evaluate the work produced by the AGW proponents. There are many intelligent people from other walks of life who can look at the work of climate scientists and say, whoa, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. There are more that can understand that there is a problem when the IPCC substitutes peer review in place of the scientific method as the gold standard for reliability. And all people should be able to understand that there is a problem when the IPCC does not even live up to that standard - relying on non-peer reviewed sources for claims of oncomoing and inevitable doom from global warming.

As to meteorologist angst with global warming, a classic example is the link at the top of this post, with Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi pointing out the disconnect between adjusted temperature data showing torid temperatures in the poles while other data shows the growth in polar sea ice. Sceptical meteorologists like Bastardi and Anthony Watts key on unjustifiable adjustments being made to raw data and an even more fundamental concern about how the raw data is collected.

For Steve McIntyre, a retired mining engineer, his problems with AGW theory have come from looking at the methodology and statistics used by Climatologists - when he could get the data. Much of the stonewalling of climate scientists over the past decade has been their refusal to provide their raw data and methodology to Mr. McIntyre. For example, it was only recently that McIntyre finally got a hold of Kevin Briffa's dataset for Yamal - after a decade of stone-walling - and pointed out that Briffa manipulated his findings by using tree rings from a single outlier.

For historians, their problems are with the AGW alarmists who claim that the earth today is the hottest in history. We know that it was hotter at other times, including most recently during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). Parts of Greenland today frozen over were being farmed during the MWP, and the British had a thriving wine industry as far north as Hadrian's Wall. In other words, claims that we are in an unprecedented cycle of warming simply because we are in a general warming trend do not flow from the historical record. That coupled with ridiculous efforts of Michael Mann and the IPCC to wipe the MWP and the Little Ice Age from the historical record have left many of us with the firm conviction that climate scientists are advocates, not scientists, and indeed, the worst sort of scam artists.

And then of course there are numerous other scientists who are agnostic as to AGW, but who, in the wake of Climategate, look at how the scientific method has been bastardized by AGW proponents to produce a "consensus." These scientists recoil in disgust of their own.

The NYT blithely ignores all of that, expounding ever more on their hypothesis that the only reason for the split between climate scientists and meteorologists is because the latter simply don't understand. Thus, the NYT tells us, meteorologists themselves need to be reeducated. This is arrogance unbound. It is of an ilk displayed by Obama and the left when telling us that the only reason we don't support Obamacare is because we don't understand it. It is rather breath-taking - but not surprising.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Climategate Update 20: Snowing Around The World, But Warming In Antarctica?

It's snowing down under. Well, it is December so nothing unusual about that . . . except that its actually Australia's summertime.

In Europe - its snow everywhere. This from EU Referendum:

"This is wild stuff ... this is astounding looking. This is something that I don't recall seeing where fully 80 percent of the Continent is covered by snow ... this is getting started earlier than I thought. Europe's in for a very cold period."
Joe Bastardi on the weather forecast for Europe.

Ontario just had one of the worst snow storms they have ever recorded. Across the U.S., this past week saw a significant number of new records set for cold and snow. And there are many more such reports from around the world - not to mention locally where we saw the earliest snow fall in my memory about my humble abode. But all of that is mere anecdotal evidence.

There is far more evidence to suggest warming should not be our major concern. There is, for instance, this from EU Referendum:

The official record - interpreted by Dr Lucia Liljegren, an atmospheric researcher with the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University, current temperature levels are even now below the "best-case scenario" postulated by the IPCC (see graph below - the lower of the lines).

According to Peter Taylor, in his new book "Chill", this is just the start. He maintains the world is cooling. Magnetic activity of the sun – which many to believe to be the real driver of the climate – is at an all-time low. There is a possibility of a repeat of the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century when the Thames froze every winter and famine spread through Europe and China.

Even with the benefit of the recent warming period – and higher recorded CO2 levels which improve plant productivity – the world is already on the brink although the pessimistic forecasts earlier this year did not transpire. Stock levels have sharply rebounded from the 2007-08 record low and are forecast to climb even higher by the end of 2009-10 to stand at around 160 million tons. . . .

Perhaps the most fundamental issue in "climate science" is the inaccuracy - or maleability - of data on surface temperatures. With the thermometer only a few centuries old, accurate surface data readings from various spots on the globe have been spotty over time, and quite often, our AGW scientists will use a single locations reading to extrapolate surface temperatures for a vast area. Sometimes that is warranted, other times it amounts to deliberate fraud, such as in the recent case discussed at Watts Up With That, where "Steig, et. al. published their recent finding in a paper entitled "Antarctica is Warming."

To achieve their desired result, the AGW scientists, rather than aggregating the data from all of the weather stations throughout Antarctica, chose a single outlier, Rothra Station, which is a "heat island." The term "heat island" means that, because of artificially created heat, such as in an urban area or by an airport, the measurements will inevitably be inaccurate and higher than would other nearby temperature gauges not effected by artificial heat. In this case:

GHCN Antarctic, 8X Actual Trend – Uses Single Warmest Station

Excerpt:

The red circle is surrounding Rothera Point station.

So as we can see, of all the stations available in the antarctic, GHCN has chosen to use a single station on the Antarctic Peninsula to represent an entire continent of the earth for the past 17 years (red circle). But it’s not just any station, it’s a special one. Rothera Point has the single highest trend of any of the adjusted station data.

So much for the trustworthiness of that particular study. But even when there is not a deliberate attempt to perpetrate fraud by cherry-picking data, as EU Referendum points out in an exceptional post, attempting to tease small truths from data that is, even at this point and with modern equipment, still subject to interpretation is probably impossible. Dr. North has written at some length on this, referring to internal studies from various sources, including the US Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, who very frankly conclude in their report that "all is not well with atmospheric and related environmental observations." You can read Dr. North's reasoning and his citations here. His conclusions, I think well warranted, are:

As we noted earlier, however, climate researchers are basing their predictions of doom not on gross observable changes but on minuscule differences in temperature amounting to a fraction of one degree, to the accuracy of two places of decimals.

Of the situation in the US – one of the best and most comprehensive in the world – we see errors of the order of several magnitudes greater than the differences the researchers purport to be able to measure. And that is without factoring in the rest of the world, huge gaps in data and massive discontinuities in the historical record.

In what is acknowledged to be a chaotic system, there is, as one commentator observes, a situation where the precision exceeds the accuracy – this is false precision.

Where the activists are clamouring to keep the supposed rise in global temperature to below 2°C, it must be highly questionable whether the monitoring system is actually capable of detecting a change that small. The climate figures are a sick joke.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

War Profiteer Makes Ridiculous War Analogy

Al Gore, the man who has increased his net worth by 5000% in less than a decade by shilling for global warming and taking an interest in corporations set to profit wildly from the institution of global warming legislation, appeared in Oxford today and "compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis." This is not merely a ludicrous analogy, it is incredibly offensive. Moreover, this from the same man who refuses to debate global warming and who has argued that the media should not give any airtime to scientists and others who believe global warming a dangerous hoax. This scurrilous man becomes ever more of a parody of himself as the theories used to support global warming become ever more discredited. More at Hot Air.

Monday, July 6, 2009

A Really Inconvenient Truth

From Marc Morano at the Climate Depot:

The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveals yet another drop in the Earth's temperature. This latest drop in global temperatures means despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled .74°F since former Vice President Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006.

According to the latest global satellite data courtesy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and made into an easy to read graph by algorelied.com: "For the record, this month's Al Gore / 'An Inconvenient Truth' Index indicates that global temperatures have plunged approximately .74°F (.39°C) since Gore's film was released," noted algorelied.com. (See satellite temperature chart here with key dates noted, courtesy of http://www.algorelied.com/ - Also see: 8 Year Downtrend Continues in Global Temps) . . .

Friday, June 12, 2009

Reason To Be Concerned About Food Supplies

I blogged in the post "Fiddling While Rome Freezes . . . And Crop Production Falls," on the reality of that we have seen seven years of cooling, that we are seeing unusual cold and snow across the globe, that none of IPCC computer models forecast this, and that this weather is having an appreciable negative effect on agricultural production. This was in part based on an earlier post by Dr. North of EU Referendum.

Dr. North has another post on this topic today. As he points out, a combination of factors, the most important of which is cold weather, are effecting agricultural production world-wide, with demand outstripping production. Another major factor is the use of agricultural products for bio-fuel, with all of this "exacerbated by the stresses in the energy, financial and currency markets, which makes food commodities 'increasingly vulnerable to external shocks.'" And as he concludes:

Against this obvious fragility of the global food production and supply system, a continuation of the current cooling trend could have catastrophic effects. We are very much on the brink, and only the slightest lurch will send us hurtling over the precipice.

A very worrying note indeed. Do see his entire post.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Looming Crisis In Energy Costs

Our economy, already in serious trouble, faces yet another crisis waiting in the wings - energy prices. They are going to rise and rise sharply. How high they will get is anyone's guess. The causes will be multiple - and most of our own making. They are:

1. Obama's war on fossil fuels through cap and trade.

2. The alternative energy Obama is pushing on America is untried at scale and considerably more expensive than fossil fuels.

3. Rising global demand for oil.

4. Obama's decision to renege on his campaign promise to allow exploitation of our extensive domestic resources.

5. The expected rise in cost of shipping foreign oil to U.S. ports because of a new proposed UN tax on CO2 produced by ships.

6. Oil is priced in dollars. The devaluation of the dollar through inflation will cause a rise in prices.

7. Investment in repair and replacement or our existing energy infrastructure.

8. A wild card - global cooling?

To discuss these in some detail:

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1. Obama's War On Fossil Fuels:

The direct effects of Obama's war need little elaboration. I've covered them in detail in the post, "Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire." He intends to introduce a cap and trade system that will punish the use of fossil fuels for power generation, imposing a massive regressive tax that will touch every aspect of our economy and that is estimated to cost every American family just under $4,000 annually. This is completely in line with his plans, articulated in a January, 2008 interview: "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

The cap and trade plan will also directly effect energy production in a way I did not anticipate. Obama's cap and trade legislation seems designed to directly attack our refineries. This from testimony before the House Energy Committee the other day:

If climate-change legislation passes Congress in its current form, Lion Oil Co., an El Dorado refinery, will have to shutter operations within a year and lay off 1,200 workers, a company executive told a congressional panel Tuesday.

Passage of the bill "will make our survival impossible," Steve Cousins, vice president of refining, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.

. . . "This bill's treatment of domestic refiners with respect to the allocation of allowances is simply a thinly veiled attack on crude oil as an energy source and domestic refiners as a provider of energy to consumers, farmers and truckers," Cousins said.

This will be bad news indeed. We already have insufficient refining capacity in the U.S. as it is, and thanks to the left, we haven't been able to build a new refinery in the U.S. since 1976. It cap and trade marks a major attack on our domestic refineries, then this alone could have a major impact on energy prices.

2. Alternative Energy

It bears repeating that none of the Obama desired replacements for fossil fuels are cost effective or proven to scale. For example, the costs of solar power per kilowatt hour in the U.S. are 26 cents to 35 cents. That compares to about 5 cents for coal. It is one thing to move off one form of energy to another that is proven equally as reliable and cost effective. It is another thing entirely to do so when that movement is made without any such proof - but a profound belief, as Obama demonstrates - that they can be made more cost effective than fossil fuels at some point down the road. It is quite literally gambling with America's future. And, as Prince Turki al Faisal recently noted:

The U.S. has rising energy needs despite the economic downturn," Prince Turki said. "If you are going to be paying for wind, electric and solar energy equivalents that cost five or 10 times more than it costs to use oil, you are going to price yourself out of the market. You are going to lose whatever competitiveness you have in your products."

It's not like we can't see this freight train bearing down on us.

3. Supply and Demand are still with us.

The fall in energy prices since November has occurred because world wide demand has fallen in the face of a contracting world economy. Contrary to the claims of the left during the energy crisis of last year, they did not successfully repeal the laws of supply and demand. China, India, and the rest of the developing world are going to become ever more voracious consumers of oil and other fossil fuels - as will we - once we start to move again from a bear to a bull economy. As I documented in an earlier post, it was their increasing demand for oil that caused the spike in oil prices over the past two years. Even if we were to do absolutely nothing to proactively cause a rise in oil prices, we can still forecast with near certainty that oil prices will again skyrocket based on global supply and demand.

4. Obama has reneged on his campaign promises to allow exploitation of our own natural resources.

We have extensive domestic resources. Our coal reserves are the largest in the world. And as to oil, estimates are that we have: oil shale – 800,000,000,000 – 2,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil; continental shelf (East & West Coast) – 115,000,000,000 barrels of oil; ANWR – 10,000,000,000 barrels of oil.

The oil sits untouched.

During the campaign, at the height of the energy crisis and with gas topping $4 a gallon, Obama promised that he would allow for greater exploitation of our domestic energy resources. That promise did not last long after the inaguration. Indeed, within two weeks of taking office, Obama "shelv[ed] a plan announced in the final days of the Bush presidency to open much of the U.S. coast to oil and gas drilling, including 130 million acres off California's shores from Mendocino to San Diego."

All of this means that we will become ever more dependent on foreign oil to power the engine of America. Our dependence on foreign oil, already at 70%, will continue to rise, with implications for both our economy and our national security. That means $250 a barrel oil within a few years, if one Gazprom executive is correct, and $300 a barrel oil within a decade if T. Boone Pickens is right. Those types of numbers would put a stake into our economy.

5. Shipping Costs

The cost of shipping foreign oil to U.S. ports - and the costs to ship all of the other 80% of world trade that is shipped - are set to rise dramatically as the UN pushes through an international CO2 tax on shipping. We rely on foreign sources for 70% of our oil. Of that, on a typical day, we get from Canada and Mexico about 3,403,000 barrels of oil. The rest must be shipped considerable distances. This includes:

Saudi Arabia - 1,530,000 barrels
Venezuela - 1,227,000 barrels
Nigeria - 1,215,000 barrels
Iraq - 508,000
Angola 408,000

A typical supertanker carries two million barrels of oil. I do not have the figures yet to tell just how much this rise in shipping costs will be, but according to David Smick, writing at the Washington Post, "[t]he U.N. agreement last October on sulfur-burning levels for ships . . . are expected to send shipping costs skyrocketing."

6. Oil and devaluation of the dollar

Four months ago, oil was at $30 a barrel. It has already climbed to $72 a barrel, in part because of a weakening dollar, and looks to climb higher quickly. With oil priced in dollars, a weakening dollar means rising prices for oil. That said, Obama seems to be doing his best to devalue the dollar. He has created a mountain of debt and the Fed has turned on the money supply spigots like never before seen outside of the Weimar Republic:

As Q&O points out, quoting economist Arthur Laffer:

It’s difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed’s actions because, frankly, we haven’t ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what’s happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits. . . .

The bottom line is that we may well see the collapse of the dollar. As that happens, the price of oil will be forced drastically upwards.

7. Repair and replacement of our energy infrastructure.

Our energy infrastructure needs to be constantly repaired and replaced. But from where will the money come to repair and replace fossil fuel burning plants if Obama is threatening them with massive taxes and refusing to grant permits for the creation of new plants? For example, only a few months ago, Obama's EPA took the extraordinary step of recalling a permit issued under the Bush administration for the building of a coal fueled generator plant in a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. According to Hot Air:

The EPA . . . said that the Navajos should have proposed using a gasification process that’s still in the experimental phase and hasn’t been proven at all. In fact, Al Gore called it a myth just this month, so apparently the EPA expected the Navajos to include a mythical system in order to retroactively justify the permit they had in their hand.

If that is what is required to build or improve our fossil fuel based energy infrastructure, we will see our nation in serous trouble in just a few years. Lest there be any doubt as to Obama's ideological stance on coal, he said in a January 2008 interview, "if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted." Hot Air has the video.

This is not yet a problem, but it can quickly become one and add appreciably to the cost of energy in America. And Obama is leading us on the exact same path as Britain in that regard, where the failure to repair the fossil fuel based infrastructure is bringing that nation ever closer to a severe energy crisis. EU Referendum has the details.

8. Global Cooling

Here is a real bit of irony - and a wild card. What if, instead of global warming, we stand on the cusp of another "Little Ice Age." The sun's near total inactivity and the seven year decline in average temperatures point to that far more than they do to global warming. If that is so, if we see a drop in average temperature of 3 degrees Fahrenheit equal to the Little Ice Age during the medieval period, than we can expect a sustained increase in the need for energy - not to mention a sustained increase in the need for CO2 to improve crop yields, but I digress.

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The bottom line is that we face, with near certainty, an energy crisis in the coming years, if not in the fairly near future. This is a situation that demands we act and act now to minimize the effect on our economy. But Obama and the left are so bound up in their ideology and so invested in the belief of anthropogenci global warming that, not only do they refuse to acknowledge the signs, but they are all set to compound the problem exponentially. It is the same sort of dysfunctional psychology you can see at work here. This will get much worse before it gets better.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Fiddling While Rome Freezes . . . And Crop Production Falls (Updated)

And in the same year, after Candlemas, came the strong winter, with frost and with snow, and with all kinds of bad weather; so that there was no man then alive who could remember so severe a winter as this was, both through loss of men and through loss of cattle; yea, fowls and fishes through much cold and hunger perished.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle, entry for the year 1046

[A]ll the accepted measures of global temperatures show that their trend has been downwards since 2002, declining at a rate that averages to about 0.25 degree per decade. Yet such a fall was predicted by none of those 25 computer models on which the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the rest of the Great and the Good rely for their theory of runaway global warming. Their computers are programmed to assume that as CO2 goes up, temperatures inevitably follow. But the graph below, where the variation of global temperatures from a 30-year mean is plotted against CO2 levels, shows the two lines clearly diverging, contrary to the theory. In this century, temperatures have fallen as CO2 has risen.

Christopher Booker, Global Warming & A Tale Of Two Planets, The Telegraph, 6 June 2009

The reality is that neither "anthropogenic global warming" nor the dangers of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are proven. What we can say, beyond doubt, is that, as noted by Mr. Booker, all of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC to push the concept of global warming have failed and are diverging ever more from reality.

Two, we are in a cooling trend that has reversed any claimed increases in global temperatures over the past century. And indeed, we are seeing anecdotal evidence of this cooling quite literally across the planet, be it from increasing sea ice in the poles to unusual winter weather from North Dakota to Saudi Arabia, from Greece to South Africa, and all points in between.

Three, we know that solar activity is at its lowest ebb in living memory. We know that such inactivity has been historically associated with periods of global cooling, including most notably the coldest patch of the Little Ice Age between 1639 and 1700, a period known as the Maunder Minimum.

But most seriously we are now seeing global cooling having a significant impact on food production. It is a trend that Dr. North at EU Referendum noted last year and that has gained momentum this year. This from Dr. North:

Just one report from the Mississippi basin tells us that weather related problems have curtailed spring time planting for corn. Growers have reduced yield per acre prospects for the 2009 crop and projected end stocks to use for 2009/10 corn working toward a record low level dating back to 1999.

We see the same effect further north, where cool weather has pushed growth of Western Canada's wheat and barley crop at least 10 days behind schedule. Late-spring frost has hit and continues to strike the Prairie canola (rapeseed). One pocket of western Manitoba dipped to -4°C and some farmers are considering reseeding. Similar weather effects are being reported in Brazil, which is considering cutting this year's corn output forecast for a third consecutive time as a frost in central southern states damaged crops. A drop of as much as nine million tons against last year is being expected.

What is extremely disturbing is that we are seeing the beginnings of a trend and, in fact, we were reporting similar woes this time last year. At the time, the message was don't panic … yet. Despite this the global warming industry ploughs on regardless, continuing its ludicrous propaganda, heedless of the political implications of a prolonged cooling cycle.

And, of course, on this side of the pond we have had the Obama EPA declare carbon dioxide a pollutant that, they tell us, is a direct cause of global warming. This was soon followed by the Waxman Cap and Trade bill, written behind closed doors by the far left and pushed out of committee with barely a hearing. There is complete investiture in the theory of anthropogenic global warming and the need to control carbon dioxide as a prime mover of global warming, yet there is a complete refusal to take account of the failed computer models of the IPCC and the reality of what is going on about us. Indeed, this mindless push of the global warming agenda comes at a time when agricultural production - already under threat because of the insane push for biofuels - is, as Dr. North points out, is now under ever-growing threat from global cooling. It has the potential to become a true crisis for which our political class is doing not the slightest bit of planning. As Dr. North opines:

[I]f a global shortage of food is a distinct possibility, the really disturbing thing is that the political classes – including our own – are so fixated with their global warming myth that there is no recognition of or planning for the travails that may well come.

That, above all, may well be the greatest political betrayal of them all, when the world starves because our fatuous politicians cannot even being to deal with reality and remain firmly embedded in their own fool's paradise.

Do read his entire post.

Art: Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape

Update: Professor Dr. Doug L. Hoffman is a mathematician, computer programmer, and engineer who worked on environmental models and conducted research in molecular dynamics simulations. He teaches at Hendrix College and the University of Central Arkansas. Hoffman co-authored the 2009 book, The Resilient Earth. Dr. Hoffman is featured on page 91 of the 2009 U.S. Senate report of 700 plus dissenting scientists, wherein he asks the question, "Are we about to start a new Little Ice Age?"

References:

Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire
A Bit Of Honesty From Speaker Pelosi
The Wages Of Green
Higher CO2 Levels Mean Higher Plant Yields
A Global Cooling Update
Cold Questions About Climate Change
Global Warming Under Threat

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire

With the decision of the Obama EPA to declare carbon dioxide a green house gas that threatens public health, Obama has set us squarely on the road to economic chaos.

A sea change, in the long run of far more import than the mountain of debt Obama has placed us under, occurred on Friday. On that day, Obama's EPA:

. . . issued a proposed finding ... that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.

"This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President (Barack) Obama's call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

"This pollution problem has a solution -- one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil.

"As the proposed endangerment finding states, 'In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act,'" she added.

This finiding comes as ever more evidence mounts that antrhopogenic global warming is a canard. Objective evidence - as opposed to computer models - shows quite plainly that we are getting cooler. [Update: See this from Big Lizards, discussing the current global cooling trend in the context of continuing denial by the greenies] Indeed, the EPA's decision came on the same day that the British Antarctic Survey released word that actual testing of sea ice in Antarctica, home to 80% of the world's ice, shows that it has significantly expanded over the past thirty years. Indeed, as author Dr. Richard North points out in his blog EU Referendum today:

. . . [W]e are no longer seeing a warming trend and, over the last seven years there has in fact been a distinct cooling trend. With the climate models sharply diverging from reality and an ominous quiet sun, there is now real, observable evidence to suggests that we are going to have severe global stress on crop production.

And to add a real bit of irony to that thought, any student of 7th grade science can tell you, carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas necessary for life. We breathe and exhale the stuff. Plants have to have it for photosynthesis. Not surprisingly, recent tests confirm that plants, including agricultural crops, thrive in environments with higher carbon dioxide concentrations, showing significant expansion in crop yields. This would all be comical if the the stakes in getting this issue right were not near existential.

At any rate, in another bit of irony, on the same day the Obama EPA announced its new finding, Rasmussen released a poll showing that belief in man made global warming, as opposed to natural planetary trends, is down to 34% among Americans.

Regardless, we now face with absolute certainty the reality that the left is going to use the canard of saving the planet through reducing carbon emissions as the lever to vastly expand intrusion into our lives and drive upwards the costs of energy exponentially. Those costs, both direct and indirect, will be paid to the penny by individual Americans. For example, this from the WSJ:

American Electric Power, a utility giant with 5.2 million customers in states from Texas to Michigan to Virginia, is already considering what coal plants would have to be shuttered and how high rates would have to go to comply with either a regulatory or legislative mandates to curb carbon dioxide. AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp said rate increases stretch from 25% to 50% and beyond, depending on the climate change strategy that finally emerges from Washington.

[Update: According to this post at Hot Air, estimates now are that the cap and trade policies of Obama are estimated to cost each family in America nearly $4,000 annually. If that is correct, it will work untold mischief on our economy and be an absolute disaster for the lower class and lower middle class]

This is all part of the Obama / radical left plan to take our economy off coal and oil and into green energy that, at the moment, does not exist in the real world. Yet according to the left's dogma, not only will we enter this brave new world of green energy, but it will create "millions of new green jobs." This from Dominic Lawson today, writing in the London Times:

. . . Barack Obama . . . recently defended a vast package of subsidies for renewable energy on the grounds that it would “create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries”.
. . .
There is a . . . serious misconception behind the idea that ploughing subsidies into the “green economy” is a sure-fire way of boosting domestic employment. At best it will move people from one economic activity to another. . . .

The key to a successful, wealth-generating economy is productivity. Saving energy is what businesses have done already, because it lowers their production costs. The problem with any form of subsidy is that it makes the consumer (through hidden taxes) pay to keep inherently uneconomic businesses “profitable”.

And that payment portends to be severe if the left has their way. The odious Henry Waxman (D-Cal.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, plans to mandate a massive twenty percent reduction in carbon emissions and, at least equally if not more ominously, to give a true skeleton key to the courthouse to the radical left.

The left long ago discovered its most effective blueprint - resorting to courts to get what it could not through the ballot box. (And as an aside, it is the activist wing of the Supreme Court that in essence paved the way for this EPA ruling in a decision two years ago.) This has already cost us untold billions, if not trillions, over the past near four decades since the Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation was passed, most of which gave standing to individuals to bring law suits to enforce the provisions of the acts. This is not to suggest that the Clean Air Act was unnecessary or that it has not done some good. That said, its abuse by the left has been wide ranging, making the cure itself more insidious than the harm it was designed to overcome. Now with carbon listed as a dangerous gas, the potential for lawsuits to vastly slow down and increase costs to every aspect of our economy has grown exponentially. And yet Waxman would grow it even more to unprecedented / economy busting / insane levels. This from the Washington Times:

Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it - from beachfront property owners to asthmatics - for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.

Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers.

"You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm's risk," said Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

. . . The measure sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring."

It would allow citizens to seek up to $75,000 in damages from the government each year, but would cap the total amount paid out each year at $1.5 million, committee staff said. It is unclear whether the provision would actually cap damages at $75,000 per person, because the U.S. law referenced does not establish payouts by the government.

Coming on top of the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, all of this really does have the potential to bring our economy to its knees. In fact, is widely believed that the Great Depression of the 1930's was made far worse when our government actually raised taxes in the face of declining revenues and engaged in protectionism, setting off a trade war. That seems precisely what this portends. This will add a massive hidden tax within our economy, it will surely drive more production overseas, and it will hurt our remaining domestic production by making it less competitive with goods from the giants of Asia, India and China, both of whom refuse to join us in this madness. With that in mind, there is this:

Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, had some soothing words for US manufacturing companies that complained that the new policy will make them even less competitive with Chinese exporters . . . [Chu] suggested that America might have to introduce some sort of “carbon-intensive” tariff on Chinese goods. One of China’s envoys, Li Gao, immediately retorted that such a carbon tariff would be a “disaster”, since it could lead to global trade war.

If our economy rebounds in full before massive inflation kicks in, then we can eventually pay off the mountain of debt Obama has just saddled us with - though it may be in the lifetime of our grandchildren. Up until Thursday last, we could maintain a realistic hope of that outcome. The chance of that outcome is fast diminishing. What we are looking at is something that will make us pine for the days of the Jimmy Carter economy. Perhaps summing up the likely future best is Dr. Richard North:

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.

Update: Thanks to Vinny, author of the blog Vinny's Rants, for pointing out this from a CNS News article excerpted at Michelle Malkin's site on the green jobs canard:

Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.

President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama’s economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.

But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:

“Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.

This just gets worse and worse.