The Seattle Times today:
“...wet northern winters in the West typically come amid dry Southern ones, and vice versa. This year, for example, while snowpack in parts of the north are double or more above normal, the Southwest is scratch-dry and seeing record spring wildfires.”
Mark Albright of the University of Washington writes “If it is so dry it the Southwest then how did the Sierras in California become laden with a record breaking snowpack this year? I just checked the primary 1st order climate station in southern Utah: Cedar City. They have accumulated 14.0 inches of precipitation (170% of normal) since the beginning of the water year (1 Oct 2010) while normal is 8.2 inches over the past 8+ months (current water year). At the same time temperature has averaged nearly 2 deg F below normal at Cedar City UT. Precipitation above Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona has averaged 128% of normal in the Colorado Basin. All this seems to indicate a rather wet drought this current water year in the Southwest. It is true that southern Arizona and New Mexico have been dry, but averaged over the entire Southwest, simply not true. The Southwest is certainly NOT “scratch-dry”, whatever that means. And in particular the Colorado Basin has seen above normal precipitation and current snowpack is above 200% of normal for early June.”
Colorado Basin data here. :
BIG YEAR IN MOST OF COLORADO
Snowfall across northern Colorado during May was one for the record books. The snowpack measurements, conducted by the USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), show record levels of snowpack at many measuring sites throughout the Yampa, Colorado, and North and South Platte basins in Colorado.
Of particular interest is a new all-time record snowpack at the Tower SNOTEL site which, on average, receives the greatest snowfall of any location in the state measured by the NRCS. This site, located on Buffalo Pass in the Park Range northeast of Steamboat Springs, reached a total accumulation for this season over 200 inches deep, with 72.6 inches of water content. This exceeds the previous record reading of 71.1 inches of water equivalent measured in 1978, according to Allen Green, State Conservationist with the NRCS. This sets an all-time state record for total snowpack at any individual site in Colorado.
Other sites across the northern tier of the state saw long-time records fall. For example the snow course on Cameron Pass, west of Fort Collins, shattered the old record this month with 48.0 inches of water content. The old record was measured back in 1971 with 42.5 inches of water. This site has been measured since 1936 and is one of the oldest snow course sites in the state.
“Even many of the old-timers have never seen some of the depths measured across northern Colorado this month”, said Green.
CALIFORNIA
A monster snowpack is keeping skiers and snowboarders on the slopes longer than usual in the Sierra Nevada. Ski resorts, which typically shut down for the season in April as warmer weather approaches, extended the season to take advantage of one of the snowiest winters since 1950.
Squaw Valley USA, just north of Lake Tahoe received 57 feet of snow this season, surpassing its previous record of 55 feet of snow set in the 1994-95. Andy Wirth, its CEO, said with the amount of snowfall, the resort will consider opening on Independence Day.
The Boreal resort atop Donner Summit extended its daily operations to April 24 and its Friday-to-Sunday operations through May as conditions permit. The resort received 64 feet of snow this season, surpassing its record of 55 feet set in 1994-95. We are really excited to head into this spring with so much snow,” spokesman Jon Slaughter said.
Farther south, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area said it could stay open until the Fourth of July after receiving 17 feet of snow in March, a record for the month.
Another example of lazy biased journalism and bad science drawing on an advocacy driven scientist.
UTAH
Update: Tom Nelson reports this morning
Thing of the past, Utah edition: “The snowpack we have right now is 525 percent of normal”
What’s to Be Done With 15 Feet of Snow in June? Utah Knows - NYTimes.com
At this northern Utah resort, it is still winter. There is hardly a bare spot on the mountain. Piles of snow line the vast parking lot. With much of the country in the grip of record-high temperatures, it was 31 degrees here Friday morning. Snowbird has announced that it will be open for snow sports three days a week until July 4. And it could stay open even later.
...
“We even got 20 inches of powder over Memorial Day weekend, and our current average base is more than 15 feet,” Bonar said. “The holiday may not even be the end. We may stay open a few weekends longer if the snow stays good.”
“I have skied for 72 years, and I’ve never skied snow like this in June,” said Eric Jucker, 75, a Swiss citizen who travels back and forth from Laguna Beach, Calif., to Salt Lake City.
“The snowpack we have right now is 525 percent of normal,” said Brian McInerney, the hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Utah.
And Verity Jones in a guest post on Watts Up With That provides much more detail on the record late snowpack.
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One more, Mark Albright reports the Denver Post does a similar report with verification.
“The U.S. Geological Survey found Rocky Mountain snowpacks have declined 30 to 60 percent in parts of the Rockies over the past three decades, bucking a centuries-long trend.”
Here is the 1 April snowpack over western North America over the past 3 decades compositing all 448 sites with a complete record from Arizona to Alaska. And this does not even include 2011, a big snow year across the West.
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Tom Nelson Overheated planet update, June 13 edition: “Northern California search and rescue teams have recovered five people reported missing on and around Mount Shasta after a weekend snow storm”
Rescue Teams Find 5 On, Around Snowy Mt. Shasta - News Story - KTVU San Francisco
MOUNT SHASTA, Calif.—Northern California search and rescue teams have recovered five people reported missing on and around Mount Shasta after a weekend snow storm.
Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey says two men became separated from their climbing partners Saturday at different locations on the upper slopes of the mountain, where an afternoon storm had created whiteout conditions. While searching for the climbers, authorities received reports of two other individuals who went missing while snowshoeing and a motorist who was immobilized in deep snow in an area northeast of the mountain.
By Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Here is a good example of how government functions in the Pacific Northwest. Democratic Washington State Senator Phil Rockefeller resigns/retires from his elected seat and is appointed by Governor Gregoire to a $95,000/year job managing the Global Warming agenda on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council funded by the Bonneville Power Administration.
Does Senator Rockefeller have any technical background that might help him understand our power grid or our climate? No.
Does Senator Rockefeller have an open mind that might permit him to make wise decisions on matters of energy, environment, or climate? No.
Does Senator Rockefeller at least respond thoughtfully to inquiries regarding these topics, since he has been the Chairman of the Washington State Senate’s Environment, Water, & Energy Committee? Never!
What then qualifies Senator Rockefeller to serve on the Northwest Power and Planning Council? Political reliability!
Is there any doubt as to why this region is squandering our enormous natural advantages with hydroelectric generation by pairing it with extremely costly and inefficient wind power? No.
What are the inevitable results? Much higher electric rates that will drive more industries out of our region, substantially increased cost of living, and reduced reliability of our electric grid. That is a lose, lose, lose situation.
How can this be prevented in the future? Cronyism survives over merit where there is one-party rule. People have to recognize the high price they pay for supporting this type of bad behavior.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon and La Center, WA USA
P.S. Phil Rockefeller will be joining another notable political appointee, Oregon’s former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. He does not even have a college degree but according to his official biography here was “personally trained by Al Gore” to teach Global Warming!
by John McLean, Quadrant On-Line
On Wednesday, May 25, 2GB’s Alan Jones interviewed climate change scientist Professor David Karoly and discussed various comments Karoly had made on climate matters.
Three issues in particular stood out, not so much for their information as the manner in which Karoly slid around the questions or made comments that were incorrect or incomplete. Karoly is frequently cited as an authority on the subject and has advised the Australian government on climate change.
The first of the three issues dealt with Karoly’s comments in 2003 about the Australian drought at that time:
JONES: In 2003 why did you say quote this drought has had a more severe impact than any other drought since at least 1950? This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed. Now the Bureau of Meteorology’s national rainfall data contradicts your statement. There is no overall change in trend, just a continuing cycle of drought and flood and these are similar to the past, no worse, no better. Why did you say that? To frighten people?
KAROLY: So I said that because there is clear evidence that the temperatures in 2003 in Australia were hotter than in any other drought period in Australia. So the temperatures were hotter and most of your listeners would know that when it’s hot - you know, on a hot day - you get more evaporation. Water on your path, the water on your gardens dries out. So the reason I said that that drought [in 2003] was worse was because of the hotter temperatures. ... When it’s hotter that has a greater impact in a umm than when it’s cooler in a dry period and so your listeners would know absolutely when it’s hotter the droughts and the conditions are worse. That’s why I said it. Because there is clear evidence that in that drought in 2003, up to that period, the hotter temperatures made the conditions in the drought worse. Your listeners know that when it’s hot and it’s dry the conditions are worse than when it’s dry and it’s cool.
This is not the first occasion that Karoly has said or implied that higher temperatures drive drought. This has raised the ire of hydrologist Professor Stewart Franks more than once, and I am aware that Franks has contacted Karoly in an attempt to stop him repeating this fallacy.
According to Franks, the situation is the reverse - drought drives higher temperatures. The reasoning is simple. A drought means that there is little or no moisture on or just under the surface of the ground and very little available moisture held in vegetation. In this situation heat energy from solar radiation will not be used to evaporate that moisture and take it high into the atmosphere, as would be the case if plenty of moisture was available, but all of the heat will be used to warm the ground surface, which in turn will warm the air.
It’s not only Franks who make such statements. In their analysis of the European heatwave of 2003, Black et al mention that the ground surface was abnormally dry, and state in their conclusions “...the temperature increase at the surface was exacerbated by the inability of latent heat fluxes to transfer heat upwards due to the lack of moisture availability.” The IPCC’s 2007 report commented “An exacerbating factor for the temperature extremes was the lack of precipitation in many parts of western and central Europe, leading to much-reduced soil moisture and surface evaporation and evapotranspiration, and thus to a strong positive feedback effect (Beniston and Diaz, 2004)”.
Franks has, quite understandably, questioned the meteorological competence of Karoly on this matter.
The second disturbing matter in the interview is how Karoly handles a question that relates directly to his work for the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (4AR). Late in the conversation Jones comments on my analysis of the review process for the IPCC 4AR of 2007:
JONES: Well the UN’s data, the UN’s own data, shows only five of its reviewers, only five, this is the UN’s own data, endorsed the claim that carbon dioxide caused global warming and there’s doubt that they were even scientists. And these are your people, the reviewers. You were the review editor. It’s your chapter.
KAROLY: Alan. You’re wrong and John McLean is wrong. The number that he’s referring to, I don’t know where they come from but there were more than 2000 review comments from more than 100 different authors [sic!] providing independent peer-review of chapter nine. And those data and the authors and the review comments they are available from the IPCC.
It is difficult to imagine that Karoly is not well aware of my document seeing how it has been widely cited, even on the floor of the US senate, and it relates directly to his work for the IPCC. More than that, I know for a fact, because I was sent a copy of emails sent to Karoly by Malcolm Roberts. In his e-mails Roberts explicitly drew Karoly’s attention to the document title and provided the URL so that he might access it over the Internet. In checking with Roberts he advises that Karoly was further advised of my numerous presentations of UN IPCC data on chapter 9 by e-mail and by Registered Post with Delivery Confirmation, apparently sent to Karoly as part of Roberts’ complaint to the University of Melbourne over various statements by Karoly.
The document to which Jones and Roberts referred was based on information supplied by the IPCC, to wit the reviewers’ comments, so it can hardly be disputed. In it I state very clearly how the data was processed and how I arrived at the conclusion that only five reviewers expressed explicit support, and I quote the comments that I regard as providing that endorsement.
It is true that more than 100 reviewers (not authors!) made over 2000 review comments - actually 117 and 2603 respectively - but Karoly is talking about total numbers, not about the number of reviewers who expressed support, and that’s a very different matter.
He has avoided answering the direct question by claiming ignorance and giving an answer to a very different question.
The third and most important issue in the Jones and Karoly interview relates to the question of empirical evidence in the 9th chapter of IPCC 4AR. Jones begins by asking Karoly for empirical evidence, that is, evidence obtained by observation and experimentation.
JONES: Is there any empirical evidence proving human production of carbon dioxide - as distinct from nature’s production - caused global warming? Is there? In these reports? Yes or No?
KAROLY: Yes.
JONES: Now where would I find that in chapter 9 [of the 2007 IPCC report] - that’s your chapter.
KAROLY: Sure. You would find that evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific studies and in the data ...
Note Karoly’s response here. He doesn’t say that empirical evidence can be found anywhere within the chapter itself but says that it’s in the cited papers and the data.
The consequences of an absence of empirical evidence are staggering. If it’s not in the chapter then it can hardly be in the IPCC Summary for Policy-makers, and if it is not in that document then it looks like government representatives approved a document that contained no empirical justification for its claims.
Jones’ interview with Karoly goes on:
JONES: But where in chapter 9?
KAROLY: So ...
JONES: Where in chapter 9? Where can I open chapter 9, because I looked at it, where if I open chapter 9 is that evidence? Where is it?
KAROLY: It’s ... I can’t tell you the page number because I don’t ...
JONES: No, no. It’s not there. It’s not there.
KAROLY: What. No, Alan.
JONES: It’s not there. You, the chapter review editor. It’s not there! That’s why you can’t tell me the page number. The evidence is not there.
KAROLY: That’s not true Alan.
JONES: Well I’ve got scientists on stand-by who are going to listen to all this so your reputation’s on the line when you say that. I’m telling you chapter 9 is your chapter. You were in fact the chapter’s review editor and you can’t tell me where the evidence is.
KAROLY: Yeah, I can. Would you like me to tell you where the evidence is? The evidence is in the spatial patterns and the time variations of temperature changes in the observations ...
JONES: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chapter nine, chapter nine, David, is the chapter. It was originally chapter 12 in the 2001 report. In the 2007 report you were the review editor of this chapter on the direction ... on the detection of climate change. It’s now called “Understanding and attributing climate change”. Now to understand climate change you need to know what evidence there was for all of this. In chapter 9 it’s not there.
And now look closely at what Karoly claims is evidence - an “evaluation”, a simulation of “what we’d expect”.
KAROLY: No Alan it is there. So would you like me to tell you which figure in particular in chapter 9 shows that evidence? It looks at the patterns of climate variations over the last 50 and the last 100 years and what it does is it makes an evaluation or an assessment. It talks about how climate has changed compared with what we’d expect from greenhouse gas variations, it also looks at other factors. Factors like change in sunlight from the sun, changes in the effect of volcanoes, natural variations like El Nino’s, natural variations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and what it shows, what it clearly shows, is that the patterns of change are outside the range of natural variability, aren’t due to changes in sunlight from the sun and we can see that because sunlight from the sun would cause more warming in the daytime when the sun’s really important but we’ve actually observed more warming at night. We’ve seen changes in the temperatures in the lower atmosphere and the upper atmosphere which clearly show that the changes are due to the increases in greenhouse gases and aren’t due to natural variability and aren’t due to other factors. And we’ve ...
JONES: Chapter nine, chapter nine, doesn’t contain any of that detail. Can I go on?
KAROLY: Yes, it does.
Karoly is correct in that the information that he mentions is contained within the chapter, but Jones requested empirical evidence and Karoly has failed to provide it.
In his response Karoly does not tell the full story. He incorrectly claims that temperatures since 1950 were outside the range of natural variability when its variation and trend were almost identical to that of 1918-43; the magnitude of the temperature is of little significance because the accuracy of the IPCC temperature is highly suspect, many factors related to its gathering and processing being very inconsistent over the last 150 years.
He fails to mention urban heat island effects that might account for warmer night-time temperatures, and he implies that only one interpretation is possible for the change in tropospheric temperatures. He also omits the fact that the observed temperatures higher in the stratosphere are not in agreement with climate models that presume that carbon dioxide has a significant influence. Further, the climate models on which several inferences are based are, according to the IPC, flawed and invalidated. He also fails to state that since 1977 the Southern Oscillation Index, the proxy measure of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, has been largely on the El Nino side of the scale and that warmer weather is therefore to be expected.
None of this is surprising to me. Malcolm Roberts stated during our discussion that Karoly has failed to satisfactorily respond to a request for specific, scientifically measured real-world evidence that would support his claims, and that the request was first raised almost 18 months ago.
My overall impression from Karoly’s comments are firstly that he is lacking in fundamental understanding of an important meteorological concept; secondly that if his statements about my document are correct he is curiously incurious about some trenchant criticism of the IPCC review process in which he played a vital part; and thirdly that when asking about empirical evidence he made a rapid shift to “derived” material of dubious origin and then was highly selective about the issues that he mentioned.
I see Karoly as less of an impartial and knowledgeable scientist and more of an advocate who carefully selects his data in order to present a certain view and seemingly has no empirical evidence to support his fundamental claim. That’s a very disquieting thought given his involvement with the IPCC and his role of government advisor.
NOTE BY JOHN McLEAN:
While completing this article I was advised of Professor Karoly’s appearance before a parliamentary committee in 2000:
JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON TREATIES,
Reference: Kyoto Protocol,
WEDNESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2000, MELBOURNE [v]
Senator LUDWIG: Do you have a view about whether Australia should ratify the Kyoto Protocol?
Prof. KAROLY: I have a strong personal opinion that Australia should sign for two reasons: first of all, to provide a first step to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, and as an indicator of commitment to mitigating - reducing - global climate change. Developing countries are unlikely to believe that developed countries have any commitment to this until they sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and make some first steps. Again, this is a personal opinion not to do with my scientific expertise.
It would therefore seem that eleven years ago, in 2000, Karoly was already expressing an opinion “not to do with [his] scientific expertise”, and he was advocating certain action. “Impartial advisor” doesn’t exactly seem to be the appropriate description.
By Rosslyn Beebe, Science and Environment Reporter
Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.
The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety.
Scientists at universities in NSW and Queensland have told of being moved to high security buildings, where their names do not appear on staff directory lists or on their office door.
‘“If you want to find me, it’s impossible unless you make an appointment, sign in with some form of photo identification, and are personally escorted to my door,” one scientist said.
“That’s directly as a result of threats made against me.”
More than 30 researchers across Australia ranging from ecologists and environmental policy experts to meteorologists and atmospheric physicists told The Canberra Times they are receiving a stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.
Among the scientists being targeted is Australian National University climate institute director Professor Will Steffen.
Others include University of NSW climate change research co-director Professor Andy Pitman and University of Melbourne meteorology professor and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author Professor David Karoly.
Many scientists spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared the email attacks would escalate if they were identified. Several scientists have installed upgraded home security systems and switched to unlisted phone numbers after receiving threats that their homes and cars would be damaged.
One scientist said he was advised by police to install a “panic button” security alarm in his university office after receiving death threats. Others have removed all contact numbers from their work websites, and deleted social media sites after these were defaced with abusive comments and obscene photographs. One researcher told of receiving threats of sexual assault and violence against her children after her photograph appeared in a newspaper article promoting a community tree-planting day as a local action to mitigate climate change.
Australia’s new chief scientist, former ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb has condemned these email threats as “an outrageous attack” on open and public debate.
“These hurtful attacks are intended to intimidate scientists, to scare them off and stop them from participating in public discussions on climate change. They are the antithesis of democratic debate,” Professor Chubb said.
Federal Climate Change Minster Greg Combet said harassment of scientists or other researchers was unacceptable. “There is nothing wrong with having a genuine debate but there is no
place for harassment or bullying. People whipping up anxiety over a carbon price should temper their language and engage in rational debate rather than irrational scare mongering,” Mr Combet said.
Australian Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said the emails were “an orchestrated, extremist anti-science campaign attempting to threaten and intimidate people into silence.”
Outspoken climate science critic, Queensland Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce also condemned the attacks as malicious and counter-productive. “No one deserves that kind of behaviour,” Senator Joyce said.
University of NSW senior psychology lecturer Jason Mazanov said the emails were indicative of a “closed room” mentality where people have lost all sense of what is normal. “They send a threatening email with no thought of the social cost or consequences,” he said.
The AFP have advised that if an individual receives death threats and/or violently abusive emails, they should contact their state or territory police.
No one advocates threats but can you blame the people who know the scientists who have for years ridden to grant gravy train at the public’s expense are threatening their livelihoods and prosperity with bad science and complicit with their toadies in the media are shutting our alternative viewpoints. When has a true debate that these scientists say is acceptable been allowed. The alarmists control the message and media. By the way skeptics have been subject to this same kind of abuse for years. There is no media outcry to protect their rights to speak out or invited to debate of comment. Scptt Pelley of CBS news and Blakemore of ABC said they refused to speak to skeptics because that made the public think there might be another side to a settled issue. Who are they to decide?
Leading Free-Market Group Says Google’s Green Energy Investments Align with Board Member John Doerr and not with Company’s Core Business
Washington, D.C. - The National Center For Public Policy Research will attend Google’s annual shareholder meeting in Mountain View, California, today to challenge CEO Larry Page over apparent conflicts between his company and its board of directors.
National Center General Counsel Justin Danhof will present a Conflict of Interest Report shareholder proposal (#8 in the proxy statement). The proposal asks the company to issue a report that discloses any board member investments that represent a financial conflict of interest for Google. The proposal also asks Google to specify how it determines when conflicts arise and to detail any actual conflicts that have violated the company’s Code of Conduct Policy.
“Google has failed to disclose an apparent conflict of interest with one of its board members related to the company’s new foray into green energy investments. Shareholders have a right to know if board members are exerting undue influence or personally benefiting from questionable investments that may damage Google’s bottom line,” said Danhof.
News reports indicate that Google board member John Dorr may financially benefit from Google’s green energy investments. Dorr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that is heavily invested in alternative energy. Google is also spending millions of shareholder dollars in the unstable green energy marketplace. One geothermal company, AltaRock, has received millions from Dorr’s firm and Google.org. Google’s investment in AltaRock presents the appearance that it is for Dorr’s financial benefit.
“Google’s Code of Conduct is very clear. Googlers, as they refer to themselves, must ask whether a financial situation could be perceived to create an incentive for the employee, and if so, they must avoid the conflict,” said Danhof. “The board of directors has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to their own wallets. Dorr and Google need to explain how this apparent conflict arose and how it may affect Google’s shareholders.”
Additionally, in October 2010, Reuters reported that Google invested an untold amount in a $5 billion offshore wind energy project.
“Google is in the technology and Internet business; its sortie into wind and geothermal energy projects certainly seems arbitrary and begs for an explanation. Green energy markets are completely artificial. Without massive government subsidies these companies would disappear from the market, and Google shareholders will end up blowing in the wind,” said Danhof. “Google should return to its technology roots and start working to increase shareholder value rather than lining its board members’ pockets.”
The National Center For Public Policy Research is a Google shareholder.
The National Center For Public Policy Research is a conservative, free-market, non-profit think-tank established in 1982. Its 2010 revenues were over $12 million. It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters, receiving less than one percent of its revenue from corporate sources.
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Editorial
THE MAY 21 apocalypse foretold by the fundamentalist minister Harold Camping never materialized, but end-of-the-world doomsaying goes on as usual among the global warmists.
“Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink,” a story in The Guardian was breathlessly headlined over the weekend. It reported - hyperventilated might be a better verb - that greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2010 “to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach.” The Guardian attributed word of this “shock rise” to the International Energy Agency, whose chief economist is “very worried” because “this is the worst news on emissions” and the climate outlook “is getting bleaker.” It cites another expert’s “dire” warning that if carbon dioxide isn’t drastically reduced, global warming will “disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict.”
All that is nothing, however, to the climate fearmongering in Newsweek, which insists the global-warming Rapture is already underway.
“Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions,” Newsweek intones, pointing to tornadoes in the United States, floods in Australia and Pakistan, and drought in China. “From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.” This is what comes of burning fossil fuels for energy, which has increased atmospheric CO2 levels by 40 percent above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Newsweek preaches. “Batten down the hatches.”
By now, of course, few things are more familiar than predictions of the environmental catastrophe to which the use of carbon-based energy has supposedly condemned us. In 1992, Al Gore claimed that “evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin;” nearly 20 years later he is still warning of “an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” Like Camping, Gore and other climate alarmists keep forecasting a Day of Doom that never arrives. And like Camping - who now says the world will end on Oct. 21 - they continue to be sure that disaster is just around the corner.
But hyperbolic climate rhetoric doesn’t scare as many people as it used to. Gallup reported in March that of nine leading environmental issues, global warming is the one Americans worry about least. In Britain too, as The New York Times noted last spring, fear of climate change has receded, as more and more people conclude that the dangers have been over-hyped.
Take the recent increase in global CO2 emissions. Is the Guardian’s panicked anxiety - “Climate on the brink” - really a sensible response? Writing in the journal First Things, the distinguished Princeton physicist William Happer makes a compelling case that rising carbon-dioxide levels are neither unprecedented nor anything to fear.
“Carbon is the stuff of life,” he points out. “Our bodies are made of carbon.” Yes, atmospheric CO2 is higher today than it was before the industrial age - 390 parts per million now vs. 270 ppm then - but there was a time when “CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.” Indeed, greenhouse operators artificially boost CO2 concentrations in order to grow better flowers and fruit.
So why recoil from the modest increase in carbon emissions caused by fossil-fuel use? Because more CO2 means more climate change? Happer shoots down that idea. The earth’s climate is always changing, sometimes dramatically. During the medieval warming of a thousand years ago, temperatures were much higher than they are now; during the Little Ice Age six centuries later they were much lower. “Yet there is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age.”
Newsweek’s “stable climate of the last 12,000 years” is a myth. So is the notion that higher carbon emissions are a prescription for disaster. Carbon dioxide is only one of several factors that influence the earth’s temperature, Happer writes, and “seldom the dominant one.”
The global-warming alarmists have had a good run, as the global-cooling alarmists did before them, but fewer people find the doomsday prophecies persuasive. Scaremongering wins headlines; fact-based skepticism eventually wins arguments.
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com
By Penny Starr
John Felmy, chief economist with the American Petroleum Institute, spoke to economists on May 26, 2011 in Washington, D.C. about the oil and natural gas industry.
(CNSNews.com)—Armed with a Power Point presentation to illustrate the state of American energy, John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said the majority of “big oil” and natural gas ownership is in good hands - the hands of the American people.
According to a report published in 2007 by Sonecon, an economic advisory firm that analyses U.S. markets and public policy, corporate management owns only 1.5 percent of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.
The rest is owned by tens of millions of Americans through retirement accounts (14 percent) and pension funds (26 percent). Mutual funds or other firms account for 29.5 percent ownership and individual investors own 23 percent of oil stock holdings.
Institutional investors hold the remaining 5 percent.
Felmy spoke on Thursday to the National Economists Club in Washington, D.C., about the range of conditions that affect the cost of gasoline at the pump. Some of those include decisions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, geo-political conditions, speculation, inventories, exchange rates and inflation and even the weather.
As for the profits made by U.S. oil and natural gas companies that have been cited by congressional Democrats as reason to end tax incentives for the industry, Felmy put those earnings in perspective when it comes to high gasoline prices.
“If you took 100 percent of the earnings of the oil industry, you’d save 30 cents on the gallon,” Felmy said.
Moreover, compared to other American industries, the oil and natural gas industry’s profit margin are mid-range compared to other industries - 5.7 percent for each dollar, according to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data.
Those industries making much higher net income/sales percentages on the dollar include beverage and tobacco products (21.7 percent), pharmaceuticals (19.4 percent), computer and peripheral equipment (17.3 percent) and chemicals (14.7 percent).
Felmy’s Power Point presentation included an image of a one dollar bill showing what American consumers are paying for with that dollar at the pump: 68 percent for crude oil and 18 percent on refining and retailing. Fourteen percent of each dollar Americans spend at the pump goes to the federal government in the form of excise taxes.
By James Taylor
While Harold Camping spends this week trying to wipe egg off his face after real-world events spectacularly falsified his prediction that the Christian rapture would occur on May 21, global warming alarmists are similarly trying to wipe egg off their faces after real-world events spectacularly falsified their predictions of an imminent polar ice rapture.
This week, a 1979 Palm Beach Post article resurfaced in which Steven Schneider, who for the past 30 years was one of the most prominent global warming alarmists, claimed the west Antarctic ice sheet could melt before the year 2000 and inundate American coastlines with up to 25 feet of sea level rise. Obviously, the west Antarctic ice sheet was not raptured away last century, and New Yorkers can still drive rather than swim to work.
If Steven Schneider was the only alarmist making spectacular - and spectacularly wrong - predictions about global warming and polar ice melt, then perhaps we could simply write it off as a single person who walked a little too far off the deep end. But spectacularly wrong global warming predictions, about polar ice and many other global warming-related issues, is par for the course for global warming alarmists.
Mark Serreze, a researcher with the federally funded National Snow and Ice Data Center, frightened the masses in June 2008 by claiming there was a 50-50 chance the North Pole would be ice-free in the upcoming summer. The media reported Serreze’s prediction with a frenzy rarely equaled even among media-created global warming scares. Adding fuel to the fire, global warming alarmists lined up in droves to add their John Hancock to Serreze’s claim. Many prominent alarmists even claimed Serreze was too conservative with his prediction.
For example, Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at England’s Cambridge University, told the June 27, 2008, London Independent, “People are expecting this [Arctic ice melt] to continue this year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer - it’s not happened before.”
As it turned out, the North Pole never came close to melting, with the Arctic Ocean containing 1.65 million square miles of sea ice at its 2008 minimum.
Much like Camping is now claiming his May 21 Christian rapture prediction was essentially accurate, but that he was merely a few months off regarding the timetable (news alert: beware October 21, 2011!), the alarmists are now claiming their failed North Pole predictions were essentially accurate, but merely a few years off regarding the timetable. They now claim the Arctic Ocean will be essentially ice free by the year 2020 or 2030. Don’t bet on it.
Speaking of bets, I have contacted some of the people making such claims about an imminent polar ice rapture, asking them if they would like to place a wager with me regarding their prediction. It’s funny how they all seem to have misplaced their wallets.
The alarmists, moreover, have not confined their rapture predictions to polar ice.
The Star Chamber of global warming cartels, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), claimed in its most recent report that global warming is likely to rapture away the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. When investigators discovered there was no scientific evidence to support the claim, and a good deal of scientific evidence countering the claim, the rapture prediction was canceled.
The media spent much of the past decade parroting alarmist claims that global warming was shutting down the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean Conveyor Belt. That rapture alarm has been canceled, too.
David Viner, a researcher at the University of East Anglia (UK) climatic research unit claimed in the year 2000 that within just a few years, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” and snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.” Here on this side of the pond, prominent alarmist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said essentially the same thing in 2008. The past two winters, however, were two of the snowiest in history. Real-world climate data, moreover, show annual snow extent is trending up, rather than down, in recent decades. So much for that predicted rapture, too.
The list of failed predictions regarding global warming raptures is no less extensive than the list of failed predictions regarding Christian church raptures. There is one important difference, however. The Harold Campings of the world reside outside the Christian mainstream. Among global warming alarmists, the serially wrong rapturists define the mainstream.
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.