Wolf Howling: green energy

Showing posts with label green energy. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Twenty Two Climate Truths & One Rant (Updated)

From WUWT, a particularly good summary of the gaping holes in Anthropogenic Global Warming theory (hereinafter, "AGW"):

The 22 Inconvenient Truths

1. The Mean Global Temperature has been stable since 1997, despite a continuous increase of the CO2 content of the air: how could one say that the increase of the CO2 content of the air is the cause of the increase of the temperature? (discussion: p. 4)

2. 57% of the cumulative anthropic emissions since the beginning of the Industrial revolution have been emitted since 1997, but the temperature has been stable. How to uphold that anthropic CO2 emissions (or anthropic cumulative emissions) cause an increase of the Mean Global Temperature?

[Note 1: since 1880 the only one period where Global Mean Temperature and CO2 content of the air increased simultaneously has been 1978-1997. From 1910 to 1940, the Global Mean Temperature increased at about the same rate as over 1978-1997, while CO2 anthropic emissions were almost negligible. Over 1950-1978 while CO2 anthropic emissions increased rapidly the Global Mean Temperature dropped. From Vostok and other ice cores we know that it’s the increase of the temperature that drives the subsequent increase of the CO2 content of the air, thanks to ocean out-gassing, and not the opposite. The same process is still at work nowadays] (discussion: p. 7)

3. The amount of CO2 of the air from anthropic emissions is today no more than 6% of the total CO2 in the air (as shown by the isotopic ratios 13C/12C) instead of the 25% to 30% said by IPCC. (discussion: p. 9)

4. The lifetime of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere is about 5 years instead of the 100 years said by IPCC. (discussion: p. 10)

5. The changes of the Mean Global Temperature are more or less sinusoidal with a well defined 60 year period. We are at a maximum of the sinusoid(s) and hence the next years should be cooler as has been observed after 1950. (discussion: p. 12)

6. The absorption of the radiation from the surface by the CO2 of the air is nearly saturated. Measuring with a spectrometer what is left from the radiation of a broadband infrared source (say a black body heated at 1000°C) after crossing the equivalent of some tens or hundreds of meters of the air, shows that the main CO2 bands (4.3 µm and 15 µm) have been replaced by the emission spectrum of the CO2 which is radiated at the temperature of the trace-gas. (discussion: p. 14)

7. In some geological periods the CO2 content of the air has been up to 20 times today’s content, and there has been no runaway temperature increase! Why would our CO2 emissions have a cataclysmic impact? The laws of Nature are the same whatever the place and the time. (discussion: p. 17)

8. The sea level is increasing by about 1.3 mm/year according to the data of the tide-gauges (after correction of the emergence or subsidence of the rock to which the tide gauge is attached, nowadays precisely known thanks to high precision GPS instrumentation); no acceleration has been observed during the last decades; the raw measurements at Brest since 1846 and at Marseille since the 1880s are slightly less than 1.3 mm/year. (discussion: p. 18)

9. The “hot spot” in the inter-tropical high troposphere is, according to all “models” and to the IPCC reports, the indubitable proof of the water vapour feedback amplification of the warming: it has not been observed and does not exist. (discussion: p. 20)

10. The water vapour content of the air has been roughly constant since more than 50 years but the humidity of the upper layers of the troposphere has been decreasing: the IPCC foretold the opposite to assert its “positive water vapour feedback” with increasing CO2. The observed “feedback” is negative. (discussion: p.22)

11. The maximum surface of the Antarctic ice-pack has been increasing every year since we have satellite observations. (discussion: p. 24)

12. The sum of the surfaces of the Arctic and Antarctic icepacks is about constant, their trends are phase-opposite; hence their total albedo is about constant. (discussion: p. 25)

13. The measurements from the 3000 oceanic ARGO buoys since 2003 may suggest a slight decrease of the oceanic heat content between the surface and a depth 700 m with very significant regional differences. (discussion: p. 27)

14. The observed outgoing longwave emission (or thermal infrared) of the globe is increasing, contrary to what models say on a would-be “radiative imbalance”; the “blanket” effect of CO2 or CH4 “greenhouse gases” is not seen. (discussion:p. 29)

15. The Stefan Boltzmann formula does not apply to gases, as they are neither black bodies, nor grey bodies: why does the IPCC community use it for gases ? (discussion: p. 30)

16. The trace gases absorb the radiation of the surface and radiate at the temperature of the air which is, at some height, most of the time slightly lower that of the surface. The trace-gases cannot “heat the surface“, according to the second principle of thermodynamics which prohibits heat transfer from a cooler body to a warmer body. (discussion: p. 32)

17. The temperatures have always driven the CO2 content of the air, never the reverse. Nowadays the net increment of the CO2 content of the air follows very closely the inter-tropical temperature anomaly. (discussion: p. 33)

18. The CLOUD project at the European Center for Nuclear Research is probing the Svensmark-Shaviv hypothesis on the role of cosmic rays modulated by the solar magnetic field on the low cloud coverage; the first and encouraging results have been published in Nature. (discussion: p. 36)

19. Numerical “Climate models” are not consistent regarding cloud coverage which is the main driver of the surface temperatures. Project Earthshine (Earthshine is the ghostly glow of the dark side of the Moon) has been measuring changes of the terrestrial albedo in relation to cloud coverage data; according to cloud coverage data available since 1983, the albedo of the Earth has decreased from 1984 to 1998, then increased up to 2004 in sync with the Mean Global Temperature. (discussion: p. 37)

20. The forecasts of the “climate models” are diverging more and more from the observations. A model is not a scientific proof of a fact and if proven false by observations (or falsified) it must be discarded, or audited and corrected. We are still waiting for the IPCC models to be discarded or revised; but alas IPCC uses the models financed by the taxpayers both to “prove” attributions to greenhouse gas and to support forecasts of doom. (discussion: p. 40)

21. As said by IPCC in its TAR (2001) “we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” Has this state of affairs changed since 2001? Surely not for scientific reasons. (discussion: p. 43)

22. Last but not least the IPCC is neither a scientific organization nor an independent organization: the summary for policy makers, the only part of the report read by international organizations, politicians and media is written under the very close supervision of the representative of the countries and of the non-governmental pressure groups.

The governing body of the IPCC is made of a minority of scientists almost all of them promoters of the environmentalist ideology, and a majority of state representatives and of non-governmental green organizations. (discussion: p. 46)

Do read the entire post along with the explanatory appendix. This is as good a summary as I've seen in some time. The first two facts noted by the author are really the meat of it all. The foundational theory of AGW is that, as more CO2 is pumped into our atmosphere, temperatures will rise proportionately. There is no support for this theory in the historical record predating modern temperature records, nor does the theory find any empirical support in the modern records, given that we have been pumping large amounts of CO2 into the air since 1997 with NO corresponding rise in temperature.

I am always amazed when the left, most of whom seem to embrace the AGW theory, accuse the right of being "anti-science" or "science deniers." It stands reality on its head. In a sane world, the gaping holes in AGW theory would lead scientists to discard the theory and start anew. The reality is that, as more facts show the fatal flaws with AGW theory, the left just becomes more strident in trying to shut down debate and in their claims that "the science is settled."

The truth is that there is much more than science at stake for the AGW crowd. For a very significant number of players, there are hundreds of billions of dollars at play in this scam, whether from carbon credits, renewable energy scams, cushy jobs at foundations, or even outright transfers of wealth from wealthy countries to third world nations (all to be administered by the UN, of course). And there seem to be more than a few watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) pushing this AGW canard for whom the thought of saving Gaia comes with an underlying motivation to do away with capitalism and democracy. Then there are the scientists riding the gravy train of grants and recognition who have, in some cases, falsified or presented deeply misleading research, as well as attempted to severely restrict the voices of any who would raise questions about AGW. And lastly, there are the useful idiots at the bottom who unthinkingly embrace AGW and go to bed thinking themselves not only morally superior for doing so, but as they are constantly told by AGW cheerleaders, much smarter than those on the right who object to AGW on the basis of unreliable and contrary data.

No area of science is more bastardized than "climate science." I have no problems following science experiments wherever they might lead, so long as the scientific method is practiced. But all too often in climate science, there is a complete failure in this regards. It is criminal the number of climate scientists who fail to adhere to the scientific method, trying to claim peer review as the gold standard of reliability rather than a complete posting of their experiment in such detail as to allow for reproduction and verification by other scientists. Even as I write this, the EPA is preparing to issue regulations that will cost our economy tens of billions of dollars, and which regulations are based on "secret science" that has never been made public so as to subject it to reproduction or verification. It is a mockery to call it "science." It is faith being sold as science.

Yet another significant concern I have is with the numerous unexplained changes to the historical record of our temperature data, something that Jim Hansen, then at NASA, started doing in the late 90's and which continues to this day. As it stands, I have no faith whatsoever in the historical temperature record relied upon by the UN IPCC. Though, it should be noted, those records only begin about the 1880's, with the first relatively reliable efforts to collect data from thermometers.

This is not an academic debate about AGW. People's lives across the world are being effected by this scam. Hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used productively are being wasted in this fraud. Economies are being strangled by regulations designed to drive out a trace gas necessary for life on this planet. It is a travesty and, indeed, criminal. A very large number of people need to be jailed over this fraud.

Update: A perfect illustration of why such green energy scams are unforgivable in their impacts on people's lives comes from Germany:

According to EU data, Germany’s average residential electricity rate is 29.8 cents per kilowatt hour. This is approximately double the 14.2 cents and 15.9 cents per kWh paid by residents of Germany’s neighbors Poland and France, respectively, and almost two and a half times the U.S. average of 12 cents per kWh. Germany’s industrial electricity rate of 16 cents per kWh is also much higher than France’s 9.6 cents or Poland’s 8.3 cents. The average German per capita electricity consumption is 0.8 kilowatts. At a composite rate of 24 cents per kWh, this works out to a yearly bill of $1,700 per person, experienced either directly in utility bills or indirectly through increased costs of goods and services. The median household income in Germany is $33,000, so if we assume an average of two people per household, the electricity cost would amount to more than 10 percent of available income. And that is for the median-income household. The amount of electricity that people need does not scale in proportion to their paychecks. For the rich, $1,700 per year in electric bills might be a pittance, or at most a nuisance. But for the poor who are just scraping by, such a burden is simply brutal.

HT: Instapundit

While here at home, we are but a half step behind Germany:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to finalize its Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce power plant carbon dioxide emissions by 30% from 2005 levels over the next 15 years. Looking at some of the best-case scenarios for CO2 reductions, the plan could potentially cut roughly 300 million tons of CO2 annually. Because global man-made CO2 emissions reach roughly 30 billion tons annually, it’s estimated that the EPA plan could result in a possible 1% reduction in annual man-made CO2. Overall, man-made CO2 accounts for only 4% of total atmospheric CO2. So the true atmospheric reduction in CO2 from the EPA plan would be approximately 0.04%. The cost for this plan is estimated at $50 billion annually, with the loss of roughly 15,000 U.S. jobs each year. Increases in household utility bills could reach $100 billion annually.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

"It's A Business We Can Live On" - Fraud, Cronyism & The Green Energy Scam

From WaPo:

Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.

“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.”

And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

This story is not unique to Europe of today. It is merely an example of a universal, historical truth - combine government mandates with government subsidies and what you get is a prescription for the worst of fraud, crony capitalism and abuse, all at taxpayer expense.

Solyndra, now almost forgotten by the public, was a poster child for such abuses under Obama. It combined an untenable decision to fund an investment a business that could not survive in the free market, at least some of the private owners had ties to the Obama administration, and the administration violated the law when they renegotiated the contract to provide that any private investors would stand ahead of the government in the event of a bankruptcy. Solyndra was the very small tip of the iceberg.

Earlier in the month, Powerline posted a complaint, filed in Federal Court, that gives a birds eye view of cronyism, corruption and fraud in a government program to provide subsidized loans to corporations involved in green energy:

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of XP Vehicles, Inc. and Limnia, Inc., companies that competed for Department of Energy loans under a Congressionally-authorized program. The owners of XP eventually realized that there was no real competition, and that the whole Department of Energy program was a scam intended to funnel money to Obama and Democratic Party campaign contributors and political allies. They allege in addition that DOE misappropriated proprietary technology that they submitted in connection with their loan applications, and gave that technology to Obama administration cronies.

Go to Powerline and read the highlighted portions of the Complaint. It makes for a fascinating read.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Hope, Change, & Lies About Green Energy Jobs

Anyone remember those green energy jobs promises . . .

First came the hope - Obama would create 5 million green energy jobs in the U.S.

Then came the pocket change - Obama promised to spend up to $150 billion to subsidize this new sector.

Now hope and change meet reality. This from the USA Today:

House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration's energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.

The program's goal was to train 124,893 people and put 79,854 in jobs. But 17 months later, 52,762 were trained and 8,035, or roughly 1 in 10, had jobs. Those numbers come from an audit by the Department of Labor's inspector general, which recommended that the administration end the program and return unspent money.

President Obama has made green jobs a cornerstone of his economic agenda. In his first 2012 campaign ad this month, he said clean energy industries created 2.7 million jobs and were "expanding rapidly." . . .

The Green energy jobs revolution has been a monstrously expensive left wing fantasy from day one. Obama's attempt to turn this epic failure into a positive just defies reality - and all of the facts.

To the extent Obama is claiming that 2.7 million jobs exist in the "clean energy industries," that is an out and out lie. There are 2.7 million jobs in America that can nominally be defined as "green collar" - but only if you interpret "green" broadly enough to encompass things such as Mass Transit bus drivers, waste water treatment workers, and virtually any job associated with reclamation or recycling. The vast majority of those positions predated Obama. Today, "[o]nly 138,000 jobs . . . - roughly 5 percent of jobs identified - are green energy jobs that actually produce energy (like wind, solar, hydro)" That's a bit short of the 5 million new green energy jobs that Obama promised.

The reality is that Obama's push for green energy jobs has been every bit the disaster for our nation that his push for green energy itself has been. For Obama now to claim this epic failure as positive marks him as not merely as a facile liar, but as an utterly shameless one.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Pelosi: We Need Green Socialism For Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Nancy Pelosi, speaking in Copenhagen before taking an early flight home to beat a blizzard bearing down on Washington, spoke of the need to pass the utter abortion that is the Waxman Markey climate change legislation, stating "Our legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs for Americans, . . ." This is her common refrain as she attempts to support by repeition what cannot be supported by fact.

The idea that "green jobs" is the wave of the future is a proven canard. Where that idea has already been embraced, in Spain, and to a lesser extent, in Germany, it has been a significant economic drain. This today from Ronald Bailey in Reason Magazine, highlighting Germany's experience:

. . . Given the array of government energy mandates and billions in subsidies poured into cleantech, there is no doubt that those sectors will see increased jobs. The effect on overall employment is far less clear. Cleantech energy is currently more expensive than conventional sources of energy. Many argue that the price difference simply reflects the fact that conventional sources—chiefly fossil fuels—are cheaper because no one is being forced to pay for their externalities, e.g., damaging the climate and health. Once people have to pay for their externalities through, say, a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme, then renewable energy sources become more competitive. Fair enough. But either way, the price of energy is going to go up. If people and businesses are paying more for energy that means that they have less left over to buy other products and services, a fact that would tend to reduce employment downstream.

Yet green energy proponents have produced reams of studies that show that carbon rationing leads to more jobs. For example, Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told The New York Times, “We found that you get four times the number of jobs from investing in efficiency and renewables than you get from investing in oil and natural gas.” This is largely because renewable technologies “are more local and they’re more labor-intensive.” . . .

Other countries have tried to use energy policy to produce jobs. Germany is often cited as an example of how government policy can drive the adoption of renewable energy and produce scads of green jobs. For example, in his opening statement at a May 2009 climate change hearing, Sen. Kerry praised Germany for putting “in place strong policy mechanisms to drive investment in solar power and other renewable energy sources. As a result, renewable energy usage has tripled to 16 percent, creating 1.7 million jobs. By 2020, Germany's clean energy sector will be the biggest contributor to the nation's economy.”

However, a study released in October finds that the German green job miracle is largely a mirage, and an expensive mirage at that. The report, published by the nonprofit German think tank Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI), notes that as a result of the German government's energy policies, Germany leads the world in solar panel installation and is second only to the U.S. in wind power generation. Great, right? Actually terrible, says the report. Let me quote some of the report’s sobering conclusions at length:

While employment projections in the renewable sector convey seemingly impressive prospects for gross job growth, they typically obscure the broader implications for economic welfare by omitting any accounting of off-setting impacts. These impacts include, but are not limited to, job losses from crowding out of cheaper forms of conventional energy generation, indirect impacts on upstream industries, additional job losses from the drain on economic activity precipitated by higher electricity prices, private consumers’ overall loss of purchasing power due to higher electricity prices, and diverting funds from other, possibly more beneficial investment.

Proponents of renewable energies often regard the requirement for more workers to produce a given amount of energy as a benefit, failing to recognize that this lowers the output potential of the economy and is hence counterproductive to net job creation. Significant research shows that initial employment benefits from renewable policies soon turn negative as additional costs are incurred. Trade and other assumptions in those studies claiming positive employment turn out to be unsupportable.

In the end, Germany’s PV promotion has become a subsidization regime that, on a per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per worker subsidies as high as 175,000 € (US $ 240,000). …

Although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a “shining example in providing a harvest for the world” (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits. . . .

Read the entire article. This comports with the experience of Spain where a study found that "[e]very “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." In short, the canrd of "green jobs" is yet another massive market distortion proposed by the far left that will do grave damage to our country and to the rank and file of America. It is being sold by Pelosi as a pancea for job creation. The reality is that it is another push by the left to cripple capitalism and establish socialism on a grand scale in America.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Climatega Update 23: Hadley-Russian Surface Temp Fraud, Solar Activity & AGW, Driving Motivations At Copenhagen, Green Energy, & The Goracle's Prayer

In yet another major revelation, Russia's IEA is asserting that the UK's Hadley Center for Climate Research cherry picked - on a grand scale - Russian climatological data to show anthropogenic global warming (AGW) where none existed. This from a Russian news translation:

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

(emphasis added)

It further appears that Michael Mann was aware of this fraud and intervened to see that it went unreported. This from Watts Up With That, quoting one of the CRU e-mails from Mr. Mann:

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.

And as Watts Up With That further comments on the Russian revelations:

Again the accusation is completely believable, yet is completely unverifiable because CRU has refused to release the data. This data and code release is the subject of illegal blocking of FOIA’s is one of the keys in the Climategate emials. We need to know the list of stations used and we must have copies of the raw data.

This is a very powerful accusation, which if true could change much about the climate science debate. Many papers are based on this dataset which has the highest trend of the major ground datasets.

As ever more revelations come out relating to Climategate, the goings on in Copenhagen seem ever more surreal. Stripped of trustworthy scientific underpinnings for AGW, both the machinations of the third world attendees to engineer a massive transfer of wealth, and the machinations of Gore and other rent seekers - not the least of them being multi-millionaire IPCC Chairman Rajendra Kumar Pachauri - to ride the carbon gravy train to massive wealth, are all laid bare. More on this from No Oil For Pacifists and EU Referendum, here, here and here.

I have blogged before that many believe that the sun is the 800 lbs gorilla when it comes to determining the earth's climate. We know from multiple sources that all of the IPCC computer models have proven fatally flawed. All predicted future warming concomitant with a rise in carbon. None predicted our current decade long period of global cooling that has occurred even as carbon levels have risen. In a recent article, a South African physicist, Dr. Kevin Kemm, expounded upon a Danish model programmed to vary the climate estimate based on solar activity - or lack thereof. This from Dr. Kemm:

a Danish research group led by Henrik Svensmark has found an exact match with the level of sun spot activity on our sun. What is more, the match is spot on over the period of the last 1 500 years.

This scientific mechanism actually fits the evidence!

What happens is that cosmic rays impinge on the Earth from outer space, and these rays produce clouds much like high-flying jets leaving contrails behind their engines.

More cloud means global cooling because not as much sunlight reaches the ground to warm it. Less cloud leads to global warming. The sun creates a magnetic bubble around the Earth, which acts as a shield to incoming cosmic rays, preventing some of them from reaching the Earth.

Many sun spots mean a stronger shield, thus less cloud cover and so global warming. Currently our sun is passing through a record period of no sun spot activity.

Politicians are suppressing this information. In Newsweek of November 16, in an interview promoting the use of renewable energy, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "But none of this (renewable energy use) is possible if the forces of climate change scepticism are allowed to undermine the prospect of global (carbon dioxide emissions) agreement." So Rudd wants a political agreement no matter what the scientific truth may be.

Emma Brindal, the climate justice campaigner for the green organisation Friends of the Earth, put the NGO in the same camp when she said: "A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources."

If you google "henrik svensmark sun" you will come up with a number of hits, such as this Discover interview with Mr. Svensmark discussing his theories and how he has been blacklisted by the AGW cabal. Isn't that a surprise. Here is an excerpt:

If the scientists at CLOUD are able to prove that cosmic rays can change Earth’s cloud cover, would that force climate scientists to reevaluate their ideas about global warming?

Definitely, because in the standard view of climate change, you think of clouds as a result of the climate that you have. Our idea reverses that, turns things completely upside down, saying that the climate is a result of how the clouds are.

How do you see your work fitting into the grand debates about the causes of global warming and the considerations of what ought to be done about it?

I think—no, I believe—that the sun has had an influence in the past and is changing climate at the present, and it most certainly will do so in the future. We live in a unique time in history, because this period has the highest solar activity we have had in 1,000 years, and maybe even in 8,000 years. And we know that changes in solar activity have made significant changes in climate. For instance, we had the little ice age about 300 years ago. You had very few sunspots [markings on the face of the sun that indicate heightened solar activity] between 1650 and 1715, and for example, in Sweden in 1696, it caused the harvest to go wrong. People were starving—100,000 people died—and it was very desperate times, all coinciding with this very low solar activity. The last time we had high solar activity was during the medieval warming, which was when all of the cathedrals were built in Europe. And if you go 1,000 years back, you also had high solar activity, and that was when Rome was at its height. So I think there’s good evidence that these are significant changes that are happening naturally. If we are talking about the next century, there might be a human effect on climate change on top of that, but the natural effect from solar effect will be important. This should be recognized in the models and calculations that are being used to make predictions.

Why is there such resistance to doing that? Is the science that conflicted or confusing? Or is politics intervening?

I think it’s the latter, and I think it’s both. And I think there’s a fear that it will turn out, or that it would be suggested, that the man-made contribution is smaller than what you would expect if you look at CO2 alone.

Interestingly, while Mr. Svensmark's theories and work have been blacklisted by the AGW cabal, there is the below e-mail, appended as part of a larger e-mail dated 2 Oct. 2009 that was among the CRU tranche of e-mails made public two weeks ago:

Rodney Chilton maberrd@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Dear Benny:

Recently, there has been considerable discussion concerning the slight cooling of the earth's overall climate since about 2005. The result of the cooling has brought some scientists into the forefront to be openly critical of the still prominent view that climate changes over the century or so have predominately been man caused. The proponents of human initiated climate changes are of the opinion that the recent cooling is but a temporary interruption in what soon again will be a rapid climate warming.

I think one of the keys to alleviate some of this discussion is to attempt to determine the triggers for two other climate shifts in earlier times. The first of these, the "Little Ice Age" is generally regarded by most scientists as resulting from a reduced output of energy from the sun. Coinciding as it did with an interval of very little to almost no sunspot activity, a time known as the "Maunder Minimum", many solar scientists suggest that as little as 0.25% decrease in solar output initiated this cold climate period. Similarily, during the mid 20th Century during the years from the end of the 1940's to about the mid 1970's, the sun was in one of its quiet modes (very few sunspots).

The cause for what was a slightly cooler interval could logically be linked to decreased energy from the sun. However, the quite recent thirty year period is more commonly linked to increased dust in the earth's atmosphere. Consistent with this view is the idea that perhaps the Little Ice Age too, was forced not by a decrease in the sun's output, but by an increase in dust, not that produced by man, but by extraterrestrial dust from a comet encounter. More details of this particular scenario can be seen at the following website:

http://www.bcclimate.com

All of this raises the questions, what drove both the Little Ice Age and the thirty year interval in the middle of the last century? It is possible that they were driven by the two different causes outlined. It is vital I think that the reason(s) for the two climate shifts be determined. This would go along way to settle the recent debate as to the importance of solar minima in initiating climate changes over more than just a few years. Further to this, the picture of the future will be clarified. If for example, decreases in solar output is proven to be of less importance during the past, then surely the present climate downturn will be likely only a temporary respite from the inexorable upward trend in temperatures worldwide. If on the other hand the solar cycles accompanied by low sun activity over decades and even longer can be proven as significant, then I believe we must re-examine the increased carbon dioxide scenario.

Rodney Chilton

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Climategate Update 16: Copenhagen'$ Goal$, Palin Weighs In, As Do Scientists,

The goals of the post modern left - virtually all of whom can be found in the middle of the AGW movement or acting in full support thereof - are the accretion of power that will allow them to exercise near complete control over the lives of their subjects and the redistribution of wealth from "corrupt" capitalist countries. They make no real effort to hide their goals, though they frame it in the words of benevolent Kings acting wholly in the best interests of their ignorant subjects. As the IPCC's Chairman Mao said not long ago, the West is "corrupt" and must be made to "change its ways." A column in the NYT today is instructive. This from John Broder:

If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production, dislocations in how and where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits.

So what is all this going to cost?

The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world’s total economic output. In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions that delegates to the United Nations climate change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.

As scary as that number sounds, the agency said that the costs would ramp up relatively slowly and be largely offset by economic benefits in new jobs, improved lives, more secure energy supplies and a reduced danger of climate catastrophe. Most of the investment will come from private rather than public funds, the agency contends.

“People often ask about the costs,” said Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate policy for the bank. “But the figures people tend to cite don’t take into account conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And they don’t look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race. Period.” . . .

Read the entire article.

We really are in an existential struggle at the moment. The plans of the AGW socialists will have us making a massive transfer of wealth and a vast expansion of the power of governments to regulate the economy and our lives, all based on unproven science. They ask this of us so that they may "save us from extinction."

Their plans will have us destroy our energy infrastructure and move into reliance on "green energy which, other than nuclear power, is both far more costly and unproven at scale. While the reality of green energy's inefficiencies will keep us dependant upon fossil fuels, our own fossil fuel industries will be attacked and dismantled - as the Obama administration is well on its way to doing with the coal industry in America. To quote from Don Suber, the "Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has not only stopped future [coal mining] permits but she went back and retroactively pulled 79 existing mine permits, including 23 in West Virginia." Similarly, recall that Obama promised to allow greater domestic oil exploration during the campaign. That promise did not survive the swearing in. Thus, it is a virtual certainty that we will become ever more dependant upon foreign oil, and that the cost of that oil will rise exponentially once world wide demand reaches and surpasses 2007 levels.

The "cost savings and efficiencies" claimed by the individual quoted in the above NYT article are wholly illusory. The new "green jobs" foisted upon us would create a market distortion and come at the cost of a loss of "old jobs." Indeed, a Spanish study found that "[e]very “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."

Likewise is the massive market distortion of cap and trade. There is no better example than that discussed in a post at EU Referendum. It concerns the decision made last week to close a seemingly cost efficient steel plant employing 1700 workers in Britain. As Dr. North writes, "[t]he EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) may have been the deciding factor in the closure of the Corus Redcar steel-making plant – . . . giving the company a windfall bonus of up to £1.2 billion from the plant closure – on top of other savings." In other words, the value of carbon credits exceeded the profit from actually producing steel with an otherwise viable profit margin for the industry. Dr. North explains the nuances of how this works, and further tells us that the slack in the companies steel production will be "off shored" to India, where the cost of carbon credits is significantly lower. Thus, through the perverse incentives of Europe's carbon trading scheme, 1700 British jobs were lost, no global carbon reduction was realized, manufacturing jobs were moved to a developing country, and the company that took these acts made a windfall profit in carbon credits. If that is not market distortion, nothing is. And the ones who bear the brunt - those sacrificed on the dual alter of greed and green - are the rank and file who likely stand no chance of finding work for similar wages.

It does get worse though. The carbon trading scheme has proven in Europe to be ineffective in reducing carbon, it is corrupt and it is an invitation to large scale fraud. To quote again from Dr. North, "I don't think the majority of people even begin to realise quite what how big a scam the "carbon" market really is."

As to "improved lives," you can ask the now unemployed British steel workers about that. The reality is that the only lives that stand any chance of being improved by this insanity are the lives of politicians and their "rent seeking" cronies. The average American struggling to make ends meet would see his costs of living going up significantly while Gore and his profiteering ilk would be enriched beyond their wildest dreams. The only way to make the average person sign up for this madness is, one, threaten them with the ultimate in dire consequences if they don't accept it, two, do not allow any dissent to creep in (thus making this a political, not a scientific issue) and "hide the decline," and three, if you cannot institute it by democratic means, then do it otherwise and present it as a fait accompli. That is what the far left has now managed in America through an activist Supreme Court and Obama's EPA. When someone as serious as Charles Krauthammer bandies about words such as "revolution" as a response to such an act - at least should the EPA begin unilaterally carbon regulation - it is a marker as to how existential this whole matter truly is.

As Daniel Henninger points out in today's WSJ, one of the significant ramifications for Climategate is to the perceived credibility of all hard sciences:

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. . . .

As Henninger points out, the reality is that left wing post modernism has crept into the hard sciences. I blogged a few days ago on the politicization of anthropology to further the ends of our post modern left. Who knew that anthropologists who helped our military were demeaning their discipline, or that anthropology research leads directly to the conclusion that we should enact card check to resuscitate the ever shrinking unions. But that said, there are also signs that many highly respected academics are waking up to the dangers to their professions exposed by Climategate. One such example is memorialized in an article by CBS's Declan McCullagh - a journalist rapidly approaching, in my estimation, the rarified ground of an honest reporter in the MSM - a ground heretofore occupied by only Jake Tapper. Mr. McCullagh reports on the fallout from Climategate and how it has effected the American Physics Society. This from Mr. McCullah:

The professional association for physicists is facing internal pressure from some of its most distinguished members, who say the burgeoning ClimateGate scandal means the group should rescind its 2007 statement declaring that global warming represents a dire international emergency.

. . . Pressure on this venerable society of physicists, which was founded in 1899 at Columbia University, is coming from members who are squarely in the scientific mainstream and are alarmed at the state of climate science revealed in the leaked e-mail messages and program files from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Those files show that prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data, plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing, and discussed how to conceal apparently buggy computer code from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information law. Internal investigations are now underway at East Anglia, Penn State, and the British government's weather forecasting unit.

One APS dissenting member is William Happer, a physicist who runs the Happer Lab at Princeton University. Another is Hal Lewis, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A third is Robert Austin, another Princeton physics professor and head of a biophysics research group.

They've been circulating a letter saying: "By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen... We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done."

Some of the same scientists had asked the APS, pre-ClimateGate, to revise its climate policy statement. To the applause of like-minded bloggers who dubbed the petition "a silly distraction," the APS shot down that idea on November 10.

In the aftermath of the embarrassing data leaks, however, Princeton's Happer says that about half of the APS members they've contacted now support the petition (which, after all, is only asking for an independent analysis of the science involved).

Of the signatories so far, Happer says, 77 are fellows of major scientific societies, 14 members of the National Academies, one is a Nobel laureate, and there is a large number of authors of major scientific books and recipients of prizes and awards for scientific research. He adds: "Some have accepted a career risk by signing the petition. The 230 odd signatories can hardly be dismissed as lightweights compared to those who spread the message of impending climate disaster."

This has become a common refrain: Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research, calls the climate change axis a "cartel." A colleague, Eduardo Zorita, went further and said the scientists implicated in the e-mails "should be barred" from future United Nations proceedings and warned that "the scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas." One estimate from a free-market group says that 12 of the 26 scientists who wrote the relevant section of a U.N. global warming report are "up to their necks in ClimateGate."

Below are excerpts from e-mail messages that the scientists behind the petition to the APS sent me on Monday:

Princeton University's Robert Austin:
I view it as science fraud, pure and simple, and that we should completely distance ourselves from such unethical behavior by CRU, and that data files be opened to the public and examined in the full light of day. We as taxpayers pay for that work -- we are owed examination of the analysis.
. . . Hal Lewis of the University of California, Santa Barbara:
I think it behooves us to be careful about how we state the science. I know of nobody who denies that the Earth has been warming for thousands of years without our help (and specifically since the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago), and is most likely to continue to do so in its own sweet time. The important question is how much warming does the future hold, is it good or bad, and if bad is it too much for normal adaptation to handle. The real answer to the first is that no one knows, the real answer to the second is more likely good than bad (people and plants die from cold, not warmth), and the answer to the third is almost certainly not. And nobody doubts that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for the better part of a century, but the disobedient temperature seems not to care very much. And nobody denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, along with other gases like water vapor, but despite the claims of those who are profiting by this craze, no one knows whether the temperature affects the CO2 or vice versa. The weight of the evidence is the former.

So the tragedy is that the serious questions are quantitative, and it's easy to fool people with slogans. If you say that the Earth is warming you are telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and if you say it is due to the burning of fossil fuels you are on thin ice. If you say that the Earth is warming and therefore catastrophe lies ahead, you are pulling an ordinary bait and switch scam. If you are a demagogue, of course, these distinctions don't bother you -- you have little interest in that quaint concept called truth.

So it isn't simple, and the catastrophe mongers are playing a very lucrative
game.

I vastly over-quoted that entire article, but it is so good I wanted to preserve it on this blog.

In the same vein is an open letter sent to the UN's Secretary General by 141 scientists calling upon the UN to require climate scientists to answer some basic questions before the UN enacts any additional agreements regarding "climate change:"

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

1.Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

2.Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

3.Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

4.Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

5.The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

6.Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

7.Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

8.Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;

9.Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;

10.Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

In a surprising move, CNN has apparently taken a very fair and balanced look at Climategate. I did not see it, but Media Matters is effuse in their praise of CNN's work:

CNN made a real, day-long effort on Monday to address the climate-change debate as a debate, giving skeptics of manmade climate change a series of chances to match the leftist view, especially during its evening programming. CNN is also the only U.S. TV news outlet so far to send an anchor to the Climate Research Unit at the center of the ClimateGate controversy . . .

Read the entire post for all of the details.

Lastly, Sarah Palin weighs in on Climategate in the pages of the Washington Post, where she reminds the President of his promises regarding science and calls for him to boycott the Copenhagen conference. This from Ms. Palin:

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue. . . .

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development. . . .

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The "Green Jobs" Canard - Devolving America

Green job advocates all make a fundamental error when they view the creation of jobs as the benefit arising from their green plans. Jobs are a cost. The services a job provides are the benefit. Green job advocates believe that greener technology for power generation, transport or food production will require more labor per unit of output than non-green or conventional methods. The fact that more workers will have to be hired to produce less energy is a cost not a benefit as they claim. Decreased labor productivity is the make-work path to poverty.

Green job subsidization will do nothing to help the United States recover from the current recession. It will only lower living standards by promoting inefficient technologies and artificially keeping labor and capital in construction and related industries that were the most over inflated during the bubble. These are the very industries that need to contract.

Beacon Hill Institute, Green Collar" Job Creation, A Critical Analysis, June 2009

*************************************************************

The BHI, a think tank at Suffolk University in Boston, just released its analysis of "green jobs." Therein, they analyze three influential studies, a UN study, a study by the The Center for American Progress, and a study by the The U.S. Conference of Mayors, all of which promote the creation of "green jobs" and a fundamental alteration to the energy sector. The BHI authors find the logic of these studies fundamentally flawed and the assumptions underlying them unsupported. This from their press release:

“Contrary to the claims made in these studies, we found that the green job initiatives reviewed in each actually causes greater harm than good to the American economy and will cause growth to slow,” reported Paul Bachman, Director of Research at the Beacon Hill Institute, one of the report’s authors. . .

The executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute and co-author, David G. Tuerck, . . . [notes] that “these studies are based on arbitrary assumptions and use faulty methodologies to create an unreliable forecast for the future of green jobs.

“It appears these numbers are based more on wishful thinking than the appropriate economic models, and that must be taken into consideration when the government is trying to turn the economy around based on political studies and the wrong numbers,” Tuerck said. . . .

The authors concluded by noting that further economic analysis is needed before governments move forward on green job initiatives. “All three green jobs studies we reviewed are riddled with economic errors, incorrect methods, and dubious assumptions. Economic policy should not be based on such faulty analysis. Serious economic studies of costs and benefits are desperately needed before the adoption of any green jobs proposal.”

You can find their report here. A final snippet from the report on the UN's push for a world-wide green economy is worth a read:

The U.N.’s report [Green Jobs: Towards Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World] contains the most serious economic errors of the three reports we review. It argues for radical changes in industrial and agricultural policy that would have disastrous economic consequences and would likely result in widespread impoverishment and mass starvation. It mistakenly claims that increased labor productivity results in unemployment. As a result it advocates moving to less productive modes of transport, farming, and energy production. Taking people out of taxies and putting them into rickshaws, forcing people to use more labor to produce fewer crops, and doing more work to produce the same amount of energy would plunge society back to pre-modern standards of living. Humanity has advanced as productivity has increased. As the labor force has expanded so have the number of jobs to be done. The U.N. report amounts to a call for a return to the stone-age.

So, don't you feel better now about yesterday's vote to take us down this road.

(H/T EU Referendum)

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Depressing (& Depression) News

The Great Depression began in June, 1929 and lasted until the early 1941. FDR didn't solve it with his "New Deal", WWII did. By 1933, unemployment had risen to 24.9%, average incomes contracted by 40%, global trade fell by half in volume, and millions lost their homes and farms. How do we compare to the Great Depression?

We are now running a budget deficit closing in on two trillion dollars. Unemployment is at 9.4% and seems headed only upward. Our bond rating is on the cusp of being downgraded - an occurrence that promises a whole host of problems. The fed is printing money as never before:

Even with no new deficit spending, new and heavy taxes seem inevitable to service this debt. Plus, with such an increase in the money supply, massive inflation and devaluation of the dollar seems inevitable.

But much more is waiting in the wings to hit, some sooner rather than later. Obama is doing nothing to rein in spending or to avoid taxation. Indeed, to the contrary, Obama has not even begun to tax and spend. In an Orwellian move, he is calling for institution of "pay as you go" legislation that will make future tax cuts next to impossible but will not apply to any of the massive new deficit spending he has planned in his pet projects.

Social Security - a massive ponzi scheme that the left utterly refused to attempt to reform during the Bush years, is now running in the red. Medicare isn't being fixed, its being subsumed in a plan that will only expand care to 1/3 of the uninsured, yet cost us trillions in extra dollars. Cap and Trade is another massive regressive tax.

We are on the cusp of an energy crisis that Obama is ignoring. The price of oil is set to skyrocket from a host of contributing causes. The green energy Obama has promised us is not even cost effective, nor can it possibly be scaled up as quickly as it would need to be to provide a realistic alternative to oil and coal.

Global trade, already under extreme stress, is set to experience far more stress. Some 80% of all goods traded internationally are shipped. David Smick, writing at the Washington Post, notes "[t]he U.N. agreement last October on sulfur-burning levels for ships . . . is expected to send shipping costs skyrocketing." Thus the price of the vast majority of goods traded internationally will be effected, all in the name of global warming.

Then to top it off, we have Obama, instead of fixing the issues that led to this global economic meltdown, proposing a massive new regulatory regime for our financial sector. This is precisely what the respected Harvard economist Niall Ferguson warned against a few weeks ago.

Could this news get any more dire? Well, . . . yes. We now have sufficient data to make a reasonable comparison of where we are as compared to the same time frame after the start of the Great Depression. And the news is depressing indeed. Even without this next round of price increases, massive spending and high taxation, we are at or below the same economic indicators in the same time frame as existed during the Great Depression. This from the Financial Times:

Green shoots are bursting out. Or so we are told. But before concluding that the recession will soon be over, we must ask what history tells us. It is one of the guides we have to our present predicament. Fortunately, we do have the data. Unfortunately, the story they tell is an unhappy one.

Two economic historians, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley . . . [document] that this recession fully matches the early part of the Great Depression. . . .

First, global industrial output tracks the decline in industrial output during the Great Depression horrifyingly closely. Within Europe, the decline in the industrial output of France and Italy has been worse than at this point in the 1930s, while that of the UK and Germany is much the same. The declines in the US and Canada are also close to those in the 1930s. But Japan’s industrial collapse has been far worse than in the 1930s, despite a very recent recovery.

Second, the collapse in the volume of world trade has been far worse than during the first year of the Great Depression. Indeed, the decline in world trade in the first year is equal to that in the first two years of the Great Depression. This is not because of protection, but because of collapsing demand for manufactures.

Third, despite the recent bounce, the decline in world stock markets is far bigger than in the corresponding period of the Great Depression.

The two authors sum up starkly: “Globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression ... This is a Depression-sized event.” . . .

You can read the rest of the article here. The authors go on to discuss the fact that Obama is attempting to rely on both Keynes and Friedman to guide his acts. Keynes theorized that massive public spending could be used to stimulate an economy while Friedman concentrated on monetary supply. The authors conclude hopefully that this will stop the full spiral into depression.

What gives me great pause is that these authors give no consideration to all of the additional taxes and the rising costs that we are about to have imposed upon us, plus what looks like new draconian regulation of our financial sector. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned a few weeks ago that we needed to taking steps now to rein in spending and borrowing or we face severe problems in the foreseeable future. Obama is doing anything but that. I have never been so pessimistic about America's future. This could easilly go from bad to castrophically bad.

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.