Charles Battig, MD
Virginia has attracted much attention recently not only because of its status as a swing state, but also as a sinking state. Within the same week, two remarkably similar articles were published featuring the nexus between political belief systems and coastal sea level impacts. The June 5, 2012 BBC News Magazine article by Daniel Nasaw “Virginia’s dying marshes and climate change denial” was soon followed by the June 10, 2012 PilotOnline “Lawmakers avoid buzzwords on climate change bills” by Scott Harper.
Mr. Nasaw paints a dismal picture of the Virginia coastline with trees withering away and vital marsh lands sinking, victims of a “rising sea level,” linked to “climate change denial.” Amongst those quoted in his two-page article is Carl Hershner who “studies coastal resources management at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).” Mr. Hershner dutifully laments that, “Here in Virginia there is very little political will to address the mitigation side of things-reducing our carbon footprint, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Perhaps Hershner has some unique insight into the nature and magnitude of such mitigations needed to achieve a measurable impact on “the climate.” To date, the human contribution to global temperature change remains an ill-defined, minor contribution to natural forces. The link to “climate change” is just plain un-defined. Global temperatures have not increased for the past 15 years even as atmospheric carbon dioxide (carbon footprint) has continued to rise.
Neither Mr. Hershner nor reporter Nasaw seems aware of Professor John Boon, also of the same VIMS. Boon has studied the geology and sea level interactions of the Chesapeake area. His December 2010 report, “Sea-Level study brings good and bad news to Hampton Roads,” states that the good news is that “absolute sea level in Chesapeake Bay is rising only about half as fast as the global average rise rate. The bad news, says Boon, is that local subsidence more than makes up for it.” His report notes that, “Data from NOAA satellites and tide gauges show that absolute sea level is rising at a rate of about 1.8 millimeters per year in Chesapeake Bay. That’s only about half of the globally averaged 3.1-mm per year rate of absolute sea-level rise, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Boon concludes that, “on average, about 50% of the relative sea level rise measured at Bay water level stations is due to local subsidence. The mid-
Atlantic region is slowly sinking in response to land movements associated with melting of the polar ice caps following the last Ice Age, faulting associated with the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, local groundwater withdrawals, and other factors.”
A November 2010 report to the U.S. Corps of Engineers by Boon and his co-authors, “Chesapeake Bay Subsidence and Sea Level Change,” provides a more in depth analysis of the land subsidence/land sinking and absolute sea-level interaction.
The best that the Nasaw BBC article can do is a single sentence “ancient geological forces are causing the land literally to sink...” Nowhere does he define his headlined “climate change denial.” He cites not one source which is denying “climate change,” an undeniable fact of Earth’s history at all time scales.
Scott Harper in his Virginia-Pilot editorial engages in a pre-occupation with “buzzwords,” and Republican vs. Democratic word-games at the expense of scientific clarity. Is it “sea level rise,” “climate change,” or “land subsidence/sinking”? The actual phenomenon of “recurrent flooding” is described as a political work-around. It is not, but is the just plain-common-sense term which accurately describes what the local citizens see and understandably fear.
“The semantics dance harkens to the days when ‘global warming’ was commonly uttered. But after conservatives criticized and ridiculed Al Gore and others, ‘climate change’ became the kinder, gentler way to communicate the same thing” according to Harper, who is unaware that an international community of scientists have also criticized Mr. Gore’s climate claims. No, kindness had nothing to do with the re-labeling: the continuing lack of global warming for the past 15 years made the term ineffective and an embarrassment. Less kind terms, including “climate weirding” are now in use by environmentalists.
Harper’s article notes, “It also shows how climate skeptics, through their political connections and organization, are forcing state and local government to stay clear of certain buzzwords in quietly pursuing a strategy, else they risk unleashing a brawl.” He obviously feels that open
scientific debate engenders a “brawl.” The political connections and organizations supporting the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its dogma of dangerous, man-made climate change are given a pass. In spite of the four IPCC reports of 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007, they have failed to provide scientific proof for their founding assumption that man-made carbon dioxide has made a clearly identifiable and significant impact on global temperature. The IPCC excels in producing computer model “scenarios” of future climate states based on their parameterization of Nature; their track record and the reality of Nature have been at odds for some time.
By all means, let us get the political speech out of the local flooding discussion, and put in some scientific clarity as Harper quotes State Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, “who insisted on changing the ‘sea level rise’ study in the General Assembly to one on ‘recurrent flooding,’ said he wants to get political speech out of the mix altogether.”
Harper fails to provide that clarity by including such comments as, “According to scientific tide measurements at Sewells Point in Norfolk, the sea level has risen by 14.5 inches in the past 100 years. The trend is projected to continue for at least the next century, and some scientists predict that the rate could accelerate, with the level rising an additional 2 to 3 feet by 2100, and perhaps higher.” The inclusion of “could” and “some scientists predict” qualifiers indicate that these are unsubstantiated computer modeling exercises. Harper states, “Scientists are not sure at what rate the soft, marshy region is sinking, only that it plays a significant role in calculating “relative sea level rise.” He is apparently unaware of the before-mentioned VIMS report by Professor Boon on Chesapeake Bay subsidence when he clearly states that “about 50% of the relative sea level rise measured at Bay water level stations is due to local subsidence.”
Clarity would be the less sloppy use of undefined terminology in these political writings. When the water is lapping up at your back yard, it could be because the land you are standing on is sinking, or because there is more water entering your yard, or because there is a combination of the two, as in the Chesapeake Bay area. The combination effect is properly known as “relative sea rise.”
Clarity would be abandoning the catch-all, and undefined term “climate change” as the universal “explanation” for these observations, and justification for political action. Satellite data from the University of Colorado shows a relatively constant rate of sea level rise for the past ten years, and a more recent negative sea-level-rise trend. Fifteen years of global cooling debunk any simplistic cause-and-effect link to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Yes, it is time to deal with reality.
Charles Battig, MD , Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.wordpress.com
By Dr. Willie Soon
On May 24, the Environmental Assessment and Restoration Division of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) issued a draft report proposing much stricter limits for mercury in Florida’s river, stream, lake and coastal waters. The FDEP claims the rules are based on sound science and will improve public health.
However, my studies of mercury and its biologically toxic form, methylmercury, over the past 10 years make it clear that the report is seriously flawed and the new limits are not scientifically defensible. Florida’s actions should raise red flags for Sunshine State residents, other states, the United States as a whole and even other countries.
Not only would they drive up emission-mitigation costs for utilities and raise electricity costs for Floridians - with no subsequent health or environmental benefits - the FDEP actions actually would harm people’s health.
First, the FDEP is incorrect in claiming that mercury pollution is a new, man-made phenomenon.
The department cites a 2008 paper that found average mercury levels of 0.25 parts per million (ppm) in the hair of Florida Panhandle women of childbearing age (16 to 49). However, a 2002 study of 550-year-old Alaskan mummified bodies found hair mercury levels five to 18 times higher: an average of 1.2 ppm for four adults and 1.44 ppm for four infants - and 4.6 ppm in one mummy.
The FDEP draft report also failed to mention other recent studies that found no significant increase in mercury levels for tuna caught between 1971 and 1998, demonstrating that mercury in fish is not related to human emissions, which continue to decline steadily in the United States.
The draft report also ignored a 17-year-long Seychelles Islands study that found no harm from mercury in children whose mothers ate five to 12 servings of fish per week - far more than most Floridians consume. In establishing methylmercury exposure risks from fish consumption, the researchers concluded that no consistent patterns exist between prenatal methylmercury exposure and detailed neurological and behavioral testing.
They also emphasized that “ocean fish consumption during pregnancy is important for the health and development of children, and the benefits are long-lasting.”
Moreover, the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show blood mercury levels for U.S. women and children are already below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “safe” levels for mercury - the most restrictive standards in the world. In addition, selenium in nearly all fish is strongly attracted to mercury molecules and thus protects people against buildups of methylmercury.
By scaring women and children into eating less fish, and thus getting fewer Omega 3 fatty acids, FDEP’s misleading literature on “dangerous mercury levels’ in fish actually will impair their health.
Second, the FDEP failed to note that natural sources dwarf human mercury emissions.
Forest fires in Florida alone emitted an estimated 4,170 pounds of mercury annually between 2002 and 2006. This single source of local mercury emissions is significantly higher than mercury emitted in 2009 from all man-made mercury sources in Florida, including coal-fired power plants, which emit less than 1,500 pounds per year. Other recent studies calculated that volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other natural sources emit up to 2 million pounds of mercury per year.
These natural sources explain why it is unsurprising to find high levels of mercury in samples taken years ago in Florida fish, panthers and raccoons. Mercury has long been part of our environment, in ocean and terrestrial waters and in the earth’s rocks and soils.
Today, mercury from natural sources represents the vast bulk of all the mercury in our atmosphere. Even eliminating all mercury from Florida’s power plants would bring trifling environmental and health benefits - while raising electricity rates for the state’s families, retirees, schools, hospitals and businesses and adversely affecting human health and welfare.
Third, the FDEP is wrong when it says mercury “pollution” is increasing in Florida’s watersheds and fish.
Since the 1970s, contaminants in fish have been monitored increasingly each year. More advisories are being issued because of increased sampling, the EPA says, and “not necessarily due to increased levels or frequency of contamination.”
Finally, FDEP’s proposed new mercury limit for Florida’s inland and coastal waters is an unjustifiably low 1.25 parts per trillion. The Department also assumes mercury levels in water are directly related to mercury levels in fish tissue. In fact, no such relationship exists, as even the FDEP draft report admits on Page 58.
One has to wonder why the FDEP is so intent on setting mercury levels below those existing in nature - and why it is so reluctant to disclose, explain or discuss publicly available information from the scientific literature so that all concerned Florida residents can study it themselves.
Scientific inquiry must be above political pressure and partisan advocacy. Good decisions can arise only if the scientific evidence and knowledge are examined fully, without selective bias.
The FDEP needs to reconsider its mercury rule-making, and this time base it on actual science. So do the Environmental Protection Agency and any other states or countries considering similar actions.
Willie Soon is an independent scientist who for the past 10 years has studied the biogeochemical nature of mercury in our environment and its effects on human health.
Ronald Bailey | June 5, 2012
An environmentalist lobbying group claims corporations pay vast sums to misrepresent climate science.
Last week the environmental lobbying group the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a new report entitled “A Climate of Corporate Control: How Corporations Have Influenced the U.S. Dialogue on Climate Science and Policy” [PDF]. Among other things, the report claims to trace corporate donations in 2008 and 2009 to think tanks and politicians as a way to uncover the true corporate attitudes and intentions toward climate change science and policy. According to the UCS, its analysis reveals that some corporations are climate-change science hypocrites, claiming to support the climate-change “consensus” in some venues but not in others. This climate hypocrisy allegedly produces confusion among both the public and policymakers, resulting in the defeat or delay of urgent policies needed to address climate change.
Several prominent news outlets swallowed these assertions from the UCS study. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Some major U.S. corporations that support climate science in their public relations materials actively work to derail regulations and laws addressing global warming through lobbying, campaign donations and support of various advocacy groups.” In line with the findings of the UCS, the L.A. Times specifically declared, “General Electric has backed six environmental and non-partisan research groups that accept the scientific consensus on climate change, including the Brookings Institution and the Nature Conservancy. At the same time, it has funded four organizations that reject or question the consensus, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.” Based on the UCS report, The Guardian (U.K.) stated, “Some of America’s top companies are spending heavily to block action on climate change or discredit climate science, despite public commitments to sustainable and green values.” The Guardian specifically mentioned that UCS had identified General Electric as being two-faced about climate change. According to the UCS report, among the four GE-supported organizations that “misrepresent” climate-change science is the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.
So what vast sums of money did the duplicitous executives at General Electric lavish on the Reason Foundation in 2008 and 2009 to support an implied campaign to traduce climate science? Exactly $325. How much did GE spend on matching and direct grants on the six think tanks identified by the UCS as being pro-climate consensus? That would be $497,744. At least with regard to General Electric’s contributions, it appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists has salted a follow-the-money trail with pieces of fool’s gold, which certain unwary news outlets obligingly picked up and reported as real bullion.
Let’s take a deeper look at just how much “support” General Electric has funneled into the Reason Foundation’s coffers. The UCS report notes it identified this “support” by mining General Electric’s two most recent IRS 990 forms, which report charitable giving by the GE Foundation. I asked Reason’s development people how much GE has contributed to the Reason Foundation during those two years. The grand total in our files and confirmed by the 990 forms investigated by the UCS researchers: $100 in 2009, and $225 in 2008.
Puzzled, I called up Dr. Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and director of its Scientific Integrity Program. She put me on speakerphone with her and the author of the report, Gretchen Goldman. I asked them if these minuscule donations were why GE was listed as a corporate supporter of the Reason Foundation. They answered yes. Seriously? Yes. They added that GE’s 990 forms did not disclose what the funds would be used for, darkly implying that the money might be directed to what the UCS might regard as climate disinformation campaigns.
In a memo (pdf) sent to me the next day (at my request), Grifo explained that the UCS did not have a threshold dollar amount for funds in their analysis. She added that GE’s 990 forms do not provide further information on the nature of these payments. But that is simply not true. The 990 forms clearly indicate to even the casual investigator that the payments are matching funds for employees’ donations, meaning that individual GE employees gave money, and the company matched it. (GE matching fund donations to the Union of Concerned Scientists for those same two years totaled $6,980, or 21 times more than was donated to the Reason Foundation.) Grifo’s memo does note that the UCS report admits “that because the details of these affiliations are not publicly available, we cannot directly link specific donations to climate-related activities.” Indeed not. But it appears that UCS nonetheless wanted credulous reporters to uncritically accept these vaguely-referenced payments as evidence of underhanded corporate influence.
Digging further into GE’s 990 forms one finds that with just a few significant exceptions, all of the money donated to the various groups is in fact corporate matching funds for employee donations. In other words, GE executives had no hand in directing these donations.
Now consider the actual amounts contributed by GE employees (through GE’s matching funds program), as well the several directed donations from the GE Foundation. With regard to matching funds, the think tanks identified by UCS as climate science “supporters” are the Brookings Institution, Earthwatch, the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the Woods Hole Research Center, the Worldwatch Institute, and the World Resources Institute. The UCS’ climate “misrepresenters” are the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the Reason Foundation. The UCS report puts together an
“anti-climate: pro-climate ratio” which is based on funding allocated between the organizations identified as anti- and pro- by UCS researchers. Much of the report focuses on political giving, but let’s restrict this analysis to just the money that individual GE employees donated to think tanks and see what that might tell us about how careful and rigorous the UCS researchers were in putting their report together.
In 2009, the think tanks identified as pro-climate received matching funds from GE amounting to $5,216.40 for Brookings; $150 for Earthwatch; $44,000 for the Nature Conservancy; $30 for Conservation International; $185 for the Woods Hole Center; $150 for Worldwatch; plus a directed grant of $95,000 to the World Resources Institute; all for a grand total of $144,731.40. The think tanks categorized as anti-climate garnered $32,765 for Heritage; $750 for Cato; $50 for CEI; and $100 for Reason; for a grand total of $33,665.
In 2008, Brookings once again received $5,216.40, plus a directed grant from the GE Foundation of $100,000; Conservation International, $250; Earthwatch, $1,035; the Nature Conservancy, $173,677.03; the Woods Hole Research Center, $120; and Worldwatch, $250; plus a directed grant to the World Resources Institute of $73,500; yielding a grand total $353,013.43. GE matching funds for the opposing nonprofit think tanks came to $5,830 for Heritage; $2,450 for Cato; $25 for CEI; and $225 for Reason; amounting to a grand total of $8,530.
When you add up the allegedly pro-climate matching funds, the total is $497,744, while the total for the purportedly anti-climate funds from GE employees amounts to $42,195. Applying the UCS’s “methodology” to the think tank world, this yields a pro/anti-climate ratio of nearly 12 to 1. As for Reason Foundation, when you compare the total GE funding that went to pro-climate groups, that figure is more than 1,500 times greater than the paltry, but nevertheless much appreciated, matching funds Reason received. I do note that GE employees were uncommonly generous to Heritage in 2009, but I suspect that such giving might have more to do with growing Republican opposition to the Obama administration’s economic policies than anything to do with concerns about climate-change science. (I also asked Reason’s development team about any past GE contributions to the Reason Foundation and I am unhappy to report that the corporation last contributed in 1993 in the amount of $10,000. This is just one year after the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change had been negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.)
But there’s more. Just combing through the GE 990 forms, it appears that lots of non-profits that work on climate change issues that were “supported” by the company were unaccountably overlooked by the UCS researchers. Among those missed are Greenpeace, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club. All of these non-profits were mentioned in connection with climate change hundreds of times in the Nexis database, whereas the Reason Foundation turned up only 37 times.
Adding up the funds from the 990 forms contributed in 2008 and 2009 by means of matching grants to these additional groups, the total comes to $131,086. Adjusting the pro/anti ratio to take these funds into account now finds the UCS approved funding is nearly 15 times that attributed by the UCS researchers to disapproved groups. It bears noting that the direct grants (as distinct from employee matching grants) amounting to $100,000 for the Brookings Institution and $168,500 for the World Resources Institute are chosen by executives at the head of the GE Foundation.
I also asked Grifo on what basis did the Union of Concerned Scientists determine that the Reason Foundation “misrepresented” climate change science. Grifo and Goldman could not recall during our phone conversation, but said they would get back to me the next day with their analysis in a memo. This memo cites one specific example of alleged misrepresentation, a blog post by one of Reason Foundation’s policy analysts that linked to a Daily Mail article that interpreted recent temperature data released by researchers at the U.K’s Met Office Hadley Centre as showing “no warming in the past 15 years.” As Grifo points out in her memo, the Met Office hotly disputed the Daily Mail’s interpretation of its temperature data.
I will just note that other research groups who have been monitoring the Earth’s temperature trends for decades have a different view. For example, University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologists who have been measuring the Earth’s atmospheric temperature for more than 30 years reported last year: “While Earth’s climate has warmed in the last 33 years, the climb has been irregular. There was little or no warming for the first 19 years of satellite data. Clear net warming did not occur until the El Nino Pacific Ocean ‘warming event of the century’ in late 1997. Since that upward jump, there has been little or no additional warming.”
By Bruce Henderson - bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com
State lawmakers are considering a measure that would limit how North Carolina prepares for sea-level rise, which many scientists consider one of the surest results of climate change.
Federal authorities say the North Carolina coast is vulnerable because of its low, flat land and thin fringe of barrier islands. A state-appointed science panel has reported that a 1-meter rise in sea level is likely by 2100.
The calculation, prepared for the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, was intended to help the state plan for rising water that could threaten 2,000 square miles. Critics say it could thwart economic development on just as large a scale.
A coastal economic development group called NC-20 attacked the report, insisting the scientific research it cited is flawed. The science panel last month confirmed its findings, recommending that they be reassessed every five years.
But NC-20, named for the 20 coastal counties, appears to be winning its campaign to undermine them.
The Coastal Resources Commission agreed to delete references to planning benchmarks - such as the 1-meter prediction - and new development standards for areas likely to be inundated.
The N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which is using a $5 million federal grant to analyze the impact of rising water, lowered its worst-case scenario prediction from 1 meter (about 39 inches) to 15 inches by 2100.
Politics and economics in play
Several local governments on the coast have passed resolutions against sea-level rise policies.
When the General Assembly convened this month, Republican legislators went further.
They circulated a bill that authorizes only the coastal commission to calculate how fast the sea is rising. It said the calculations must be based only on historic trends - leaving out the accelerated rise that climate scientists widely expect this century if warming increases and glaciers melt.
The bill, a substitute for an unrelated measure the N.C. House passed last year, has not been introduced. State legislative officials say they can’t predict how it might be changed, or when or whether it will emerge.
Longtime East Carolina University geologist clueless Stan Riggs, a science panel member who studies the evolution of the coast, said the 1-meter estimate is squarely within the mainstream of research.
“We’re throwing this science out completely, and what’s proposed is just crazy for a state that used to be a leader in marine science,” he said of the proposed legislation. “You can’t legislate the ocean, and you can’t legislate storms.”
NC-20 Chairman Tom Thompson, economic development director in Beaufort County, said his members - many of them county managers and other economic development officials - are convinced that climate changes and sea-level rises are part of natural cycles. Climate scientists who say otherwise, he believes, are wrong.
The group’s critiques quote scientists who believe the rate of sea-level rise is actually slowing. NC-20 says the state should rely on historical trends until acceleration is detected. The computer models that predict a quickening rate could be inaccurate, it says.
“If you’re wrong and you start planning today at 39 inches, you could lose millions of dollars in development and 2,000 square miles would be condemned as a flood zone,” Thompson said. “Is it really a risk to wait five years and see?”
State planners concerned
State officials say the land below the 1-meter elevation would not be zoned as a flood zone and off-limits to development. Planners say it’s crucial to allow for rising water when designing bridges, roads, and sewer lines that will be in use for decades.
“We’re concerned about it,” said Philip Prete, an environmental planner in Wilmington, which will soon analyze the potential effects of rising water on infrastructure. “For the state to tie our hands and not let us use the information that the state science panel has come up with makes it overly restrictive.”
Other states, he said, are “certainly embracing planning.”
Maine is preparing for a rise of up to 2 meters by 2100, Delaware 1.5 meters, Louisiana 1 meter and California 1.4 meters. Southeastern Florida projects up to a 2-foot rise by 2060.
Dueling studies
NC-20 says the state should plan for 8 inches of rise by 2100, based on the historical trend in Wilmington.
The science panel based its projections on records at the northern coast town of Duck, where the rate is twice as fast, and factored in the accelerated rise expected to come later. Duck was chosen, the panel said, because of the quality of its record and site on the open ocean.
The panel cites seven studies that project global sea level will rise as much as 1 meter, or more, by 2100. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in 2007 a rise of no more than 23 inches, but did not factor in the melting land ice that many scientists now expect.
NC-20’s science adviser, Morehead City physicist John Droz, says he consulted with 30 sea-level experts, most of them not named in his latest critique of the panel’s work. He says the 13-member panel failed to do a balanced review of scientific literature, didn’t use the best available science and made unsupported assumptions.
“I’m not saying these people are liars,” Thompson said. “I’m saying they have a passion for sea-level rise and they can’t give it up.”
John Dorman of the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which is preparing a study of sea-level impact, said an “intense push” by the group and state legislators led to key alterations.
Instead of assuming a 1-meter, worst-case rise, he said, the study will report the impact of seas that rise only 3.9, 7.8, 11.7 and 15.6 inches by 2100. The 1-meter analysis will be available to local governments that request it.
“It’s not the product we had put the grant out for,” Dorman said, referring to the $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that’s paying for the study. Coastal communities will still find the work useful, he predicts.
The backlash on the coast centers on the question of whether sea-level rise will accelerate, said Bob Emory, chairman of the Coastal Resources Commission.
Emory, who lives in New Bern, said the commission deleted wording from its proposed sea-level rise policy that hinted at new regulations in order to find common ground. “Any remaining unnecessarily inflammatory language that’s still in there, we want to get out,” he said.
New information will be incorporated as it comes out, he said.
“There are people who disagree on the science. There are people who worry about what impact even talking about sea-level rise will have on development,” Emory said. “It’s my objective to have a policy that makes so much sense that people would have trouble picking at it.”
In written comments, the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the legislation that circulated earlier this month appeared consistent with the coastal commission’s policy changes.
But the department warned of the “unintended impacts” of not allowing agencies other than the coastal commission to develop sea-level rise policies. The restriction could undermine the Division of Emergency Management’s study, it said, and the ability of transportation and emergency-management planners to address rising waters.
The N.C. Coastal Federation, the region’s largest environmental group, said the bill could hurt local governments in winning federal planning grants. Insurance rates could go up, it says.
Relying solely on historical trends, the group said, is like “being told to make investment decisions strictly on past performance and not being able to consider market trends and research.”
Noel Sheppard
Last year New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called for space aliens to invade earth so that the government would spend money to mount a defense thereby stimulating the economy.
As aliens have yet to comply with Krugman’s wishes, he advocated on HBO’s Real Time Friday that scientists should get together and lie about an imminent attack to boost federal spending (video here with transcript and commentary).
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: This is hard to get people to do, much better, obviously, to build bridges and roads and healthcare clinics and schools. But my proposed, I actually have a serious proposal which is that we have to get a bunch of scientists to tell us that we’re facing a threatened alien invasion, and in order to be prepared for that alien invasion we have to do things like build high-speed rail. And the, once we’ve recovered, we can say, “Look, there were no aliens.”
But look, I mean, whatever it takes because right now we need somebody to spend, and that somebody has to be the U.S. government.
High-speed rail to defend ourselves against space invaders?
As absurd as this seems, folks should realize that to a certain extent, scientists are already doing this.
Consider those in the scientific community on Al Gore’s side of the anthropogenic global warming debate.
They have indeed fabricated a doomsday scenario related to carbon dioxide emissions with the expressed intent of getting governments around the world to spend what could end up being trillions of dollars fending off a phantom just as fictitious as Krugman’s aliens.
As the Nobel laureate said, “Whatever it takes.” This is the Machiavellian way zealots view their causes.
And this man not only has a column in the New York Times from which to publicize such nonsense, people actually give him awards for it.
When you think about it, that’s scarier than an actual alien invasion - unless it’s already happened!
By Kenneth Green
An article in the New York Times paints a somewhat sad picture regarding the government’s execution of what both left and right agree is a legitimate function: Funding basic science research that has little or no direct market potential, but which could expand the frontiers of human understanding.
Dennis Overbye points out that while American physicists won the Nobel last year with a discovery re-affirming the idea of dark matter, the U.S. won’t be launching a mission to try and actually measure it until 2024: Seven years after the European Space Agency launches an exploratory space mission. Oh, the U.S. is a partner—we’ve ponied up $20 million - but we’re junior partners in the enterprise.
Overbye points out other areas where the U.S. is walking away from hard physics research:
...the United States’ flagship lab for high-energy physics, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known as Fermilab, had to close down its accelerator, the Tevatron, last fall, and learned from the Energy Department in March that the agency could not afford to follow through for now on a $1.3 billion underground experiment to study the spooky shape-shifting properties of particles known as neutrinos in an effort to investigate why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter.
At the same time, the department also canceled money for studies for the world’s next big physics machine, the International Linear Collider, which would be the successor to CERN’s giant collider. American scientists are resigned to the likelihood that it will not be built in the United States.
Surprisingly (heh), the New York Times article doesn’t discuss one area of science that seems to be very well funded, that being climate change. However, as a blogger at Climatequotes.com documents, we seem to have plenty of money to spend on that:
According to my calculator, that’s about $2.5 billion for climate change science and technology research in 2011 alone. And while that’s largely representative of a spending pulse under the American Recovery and Reinvestement Act of 2009 (ARRA, aka, “the stimulus"), it’s only tip of a very big iceberg. According to the CBO:
From 1998 to 2009, appropriations for agencies’ work related to climate change totaled about $99 billion (in 2009 dollars); more than a third of that sum was provided in fiscal year 2009.
So we don’t have enough money to explore the fundamental nature of the universe these days, but CBO says we have billions for:
…three primary areas of federal concern:
• Development of technologies to reduce GHG emissions;
• Study and monitoring of the global climate; and
• Support for efforts of other countries to reduce GHG emissions.
As Mr. Spock might say..."fascinating."
Joanne Nova
The litany chants “The Debate is over”, but hey where was that debate?
Could the Nova Glikson “GreaaSt Debate” be it? Surely not, you think, but debates in “climate science” are high stakes affairs, where branded climate scientists will not publicly debate well known skeptics. They know they can’t win. Instead, the closest thing we get to a real debate is a kind of debate by proxy. The heavyweights on the establishment side pretend to be above it all, but of course, they are only an email away from the man on the front line.
What started as a single pair of “Yes”, then “No” articles that started on Quadrant become a five part saga lasting more than a month. I’ve compiled it all into a PDF which can be printed or read from start to finish, and might be just the thing for fence sitters who like to read. Some people really hanker after the “back-and-forwards” answer and question format. For those that missed it, two years on, the Great Debate still remains a rare example where two opponents actually drilled down to the points that matter.
To Andrew Glickson’s credit, he did not knock back the challenge with the usual “I only debate real climate scientists” - which automatically rules out most of the competition and leaves them debating other government funded establishment “thinkers” who also haven’t disagreed with the meme and been sacked, sabotaged or retired out of frustration.
Dr Glikson is a paleoclimatologist who works at Australian National University along with Will Steffen and the Climate Institute. I’m a blogger with questions he can’t answer. He’s connected via email with most of the team of so called expert climate scientists in Australia. I’m widely read and networked with people who don’t take anyone’s word for it.
When a science theory is monopolistically funded, the normal competition in science is hobbled. So the internet becomes the front line: where the ruling establishment meets free wits.
As it happens the online format is arguably the most powerful method for getting to the truth. There are no limits on space or time, both sides can use as many graphs and references as they want, and can “phone a friend” ad lib. It doesn’t depend on “showmanship”, nor on an ambush, and everyone has infinite right of reply.
It came about because Dr Andrew Glikson requested space for a one off article on Quadrant and the editor, Michael Connor, agreed, and then approached me to write a reply. The debate went through five rounds (one round, possibly the key point, came out in comments). Dr Glikson asked to reply the sixth time. I welcomed it, but two years later, it still hasn’t arrived.
Glikson Vs Nova: The Great Climate Debate PDF.
If I can only post one exchange to sum it up - this was in my final reply, summing up the paleoclimatic evidence Dr Glikson had put forwards.
Dr Andrew Glikson: Studies from 3 million to 500 million years ago show that when volcanoes blow up or asteroids hit, CO2 levels rise and animals die
Jo Nova: Yes. That’d be because both those events are God-awful, destructive things that dump mountains of ash in the atmosphere. The ash cools the planet. Cold times are horrid for life on earth. Animals die en masse. Tsunamis, dust and lava are none too friendly either. The CO2 effect is a mere rider of correlation, and correlation is not causation.
We know (as I’ve said before) that colder oceans suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. We would be shocked (shocked!) if the geological record didn’t show a correlation between temperature and CO2. Temperature drives CO2.
Read the caption on Figure 1. “Dating errors are typically less than plus/minus 1 Myr.” We’re hunting for an effect that ought to happen in days, weeks and months, with some result within decades, and the graph we’re looking at resolves things to plus or minus one million years. We’re searching for nanotubes in a hay stack, and we’ve only got our bifocals.
By Jennifer Marohasy
IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]
But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.
Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.
But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.
Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.
Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.
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See also this post in the UK telegraph about this Hansen like climate fairy tale leader.
FIVE years ago, Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted that the nation’s dams would never be full again and major Australian cities would need desalination plants to cater for our water needs.
Yesterday, in his latest report, he said “climate change cannot be ruled out” as a factor in recent two year flooding rains, which led to some of those dams overflowing. Sounds like the UK Met Office.