It’s hard to find a voice outside the Midwest or Archer Daniels Midland buildings that support the use of biofuels and ethanol as a means for filling gas tanks. Environmentalists and especially world hunger groups are adamantly expressing their concern about the unintended consequences of biofuels policy.

Christopher Booker and Richard North have a terrific piece in the Telegraph discussing the unique story of biofuels and how this policy went from pipedream to absolute disaster. It chronicles the history of biofuel policy and how its implementation has led to rising food prices. They note that “According to the World Bank’s top economist, Don Mitchell, biofuels had been responsible for three-quarters of the 140 per cent rise in world food prices between 2002 and 2008.”

Oxfam International says that these policies have pushed 30 million people into poverty. Even the head of Britain’s Renewable Fuels Agency is calling for a change: “So devastating has been this onslaught on biofuels that last Monday, Ed Gallagher, chairman of our new Renewable Fuels Agency, published a report recommending that Britain should drastically review its policy, slowing the introduction of biofuels and concentrating on “second-generation biofuels”, such as crop wastes and wood chips, that do not compete with food production.” It’s time politicians here at home seriously consider changing its biofuel policy and repeal the ethanol mandate along with any tariffs that discourage imports.

Read more here.

Also see this posting on Time Wasting on Nuclear Waste. The Heritage Foundation recently released the chart called, U.S. a Nonstarter in Nuclear Power. The point of the chart was to show those that continue to question the value of nuclear power that other countries are making concrete decisions and moving forward in earnest. The bottom line is that nuclear energy has strong opponents that have made careers out of being anti-nuclear and their propaganda continues to permeate the national debate. So long as this dynamic manifests itself as fence sitting elected officials that will not take the right steps on nuclear energy policy, America’s nuclear renaissance remains in doubt. And it is these reluctant lawmakers that, despite this country’s thirst for new energy, continue to deny U.S. citizens access to nuclear energy and assure that to date, when it comes to building new nuclear plants, the U.S. unfortunately, is a nonstarter.

In Al Gore’s Nobel-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, hurricanes became symbols of the danger of global warming. The reality is more complicated. Scientists are locked in debate about whether global warming is spiking the intensity of hurricanes. Even those who agree that humans are causing global warming disagree about whether it is making hurricanes worse.

Leading experts are changing their findings. Climatologists desperate for clues are boring holes along Florida’s coastline, trying to discern from grains of sand how many tropical storms pounded our shores in past centuries. Amid the whirlwind of debate, most scientists agree on the most urgent hurricane threat. And it’s not global warming. Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor of atmospheric science, was named by Time magazine in 2006 as one of “100 people who shape our world.” The reason? Just before Hurricane Katrina smashed into New Orleans in 2005, he published a scientific paper in the journal Nature saying the power of hurricanes had nearly doubled in recent decades.

To test the theory, Emanuel and other scientists recently loaded tons of data into computer models, hoping to learn how bad it could get if global warming keeps pushing up sea temperatures. The results were surprising: Hurricanes didn’t increase dramatically in the projections, even after decades of simulated global warming. Emanuel was not disappointed that the research seemed to undercut his old results. “One gets used to being mistaken, and we follow the evidence and sometimes the evidence is contradictory and then we have to sort it out.” He’s uncertain whether the recent results are correct or the outcome of faulty models. “There is a real conundrum here.” Read more here.

As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate.  I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up.  Even if every single IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule were magically transformed into purely thermal translational modes , the pitifully small quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t add up to much additional heat.  And if the aforementioned magical 100% transformation from radiation into “heat” were true, then all arguments concerning re-emission ( source of all the wonderful “greenhouse effect” cartoons with their arrows flying in all directions ) are out the window.

More and more, I am becoming convinced that atmospheric heating is primarily by thermal conduction from the surface, whose temperature is determined primarily by solar absorption.  I get a lot of email from laymen seeking simple answers.  My simple reply goes like this:

1.  The sun heats the earth.
2.  The earth heats the atmosphere
3.  After the sun sets, the atmosphere cools back down

With a parting comment:  “If we were to have 96 continuous hours without sunlight, temperatures would likely be below freezing over all the world’s land masses.  The warmest place you could find would be to take a swim in the nearest ocean.  There is no physical process in the atmosphere which “traps” heat.  The so-called “greenhouse effect “ is a myth.

See Jim’s editorial on the Global warming Hoax here.

James A. Peden, Editor of the Middlebury Community Network, spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere.  As a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was President of the Student Section of the American Institute of Physics.  He was a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

After more than year’s intensive research for a book on the bizarre distortions that make up the global warming issue, I now wonder how anyone in the “consensus” climate scientist community sleeps at night. And yet, individually, I’m certain that 99 per cent of them are highly principled human beings. If more climate scientists spoke out about what they really believe, here’s what I think the silent minority (majority?) might say:Hello. I am a “consensus” climate scientist, and I must confess that I and many of my fellow climate scientists haven’t been entirely honest with the public over the last 20 years or so on the issue of global warming, what causes it, and what damage it is likely to cause. Therefore, I have decided to come clean and tell the public honestly what “consensus” climate science is really all about.

First, many of us are genuinely afraid that human beings are the main cause of the planetary warming of the past century and that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be a serious problem, maybe even catastrophic. That’s why we’ve felt it necessary to lie to you. We’re afraid you won’t take the threat seriously if we tell you the truth - that there may not be a threat because we have absolutely no scientific evidence to back up our beliefs. None. I know we’ve told you that the science is “settled” and “certain” and that anyone who dares question it is either senile or crazy or in the pay of the oil companies. But it’s not true. There is only circumstantial evidence that human activities are the main cause of warming, and there’s no scientific evidence at all that warming will be disastrous. There is just speculation.

For one thing, the carbon cycle is just one of dozens, maybe hundreds of factors affecting the planet’s climate. It isn’t the “principal” driver of climate. And that means humans can’t be the “principal” driver of climate, either, as Al Gore charges, since our contribution to the carbon cycle is only 5 per cent a year; nature supplies 95 per cent.

Most of my colleagues know this, but because of our fears of what could happen, we’ve tried to keep the public in the dark about our doubts. We’ve done this by claiming there is, in Al Gore’s words, a “100 per cent” consensus among climate scientists that the issue of the cause of global warming is settled, that it’s caused by humans, and that it’s going to be a catastrophe. And anyone who says otherwise is a heretic. The ‘100 per cent consensus’ is a myth. Well, I’m exposing another lie: there is no “consensus.” There are thousands of scientists who don’t believe in the human-caused, catastrophic global warming theory. However, many are afraid to speak out because they will lose research grants -the U.S. alone spends an estimated $4 billion a year on climate research - and possibly have their careers ruined by their “consensus” colleagues. My “consensus” colleagues accuse global warming skeptics of being in the pay of the oil companies. If so, they’re either highly principled or really dumb: the oil companies don’t pay nearly as well for skeptical research as governments do for research confirming global warming. Even if it’s not warming.

Because, finally, that’s the most blatant fib of all: that the planet is currently warming. It hasn’t warmed since either 1998 or 2001, depending on how you do your calculations. Yet, so far, the “consensus” climate community has not come out and officially told the public that the planet isn’t warming. If asked, they just say it’s an interlude, a plateau, only an “apparent” warming, and that warming will resume again soon. Even though ten years of no warming is more than an interlude, and not just “apparent,” they’d prefer the public not know that. If carbon dioxide is increasing but the planet isn’t warming, even if only for 10 years, then clearly carbon dioxide isn’t driving the climate.

Unfortunately, I’m only a “fictional” climate scientist. Until a few more “real” climate scientists break the “consensus” to come out with the truth, the public will continue to believe that they, not nature, are to blame for warming, that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” when, in fact, it’s essential for life, and that the solution is taxing themselves into poverty - all based on a consensus climate science whose “consensus” and “science” are, alas, as “fictional” as I am. Read more here.

The Washington Post reported on July 9 that India was “balking” at the U.S approach to addressing CO2 emissions. India joined four other nations to call for “much steeper reductions” for developed nations. 

Fact: India issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008 disputing man-made global warming fears and declared the country of one billion people had no intention of stopping its energy growth or cutting back its CO2 emissions. 

An article in the Australian Herald on July 9 by Andrew Bolt, noted: “The plan’s authors, the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.”

The report declared: “No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.” The report made clear that India has no plans to cut back energy usage. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries.” The Australian Herald article noted that this declaration “means India won’t stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes).”

The Australian Herald article continued: “What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our (Australia’s) Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why. Their conclusion? They couldn’t actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming. In fact, they couldn’t find much change in the climate at all. Yes, India’s surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts, floods, or rain: ‘The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . .’ It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: ‘While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses.”

In addition, in January 2008, Indian engineer and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who is the UN IPCC Chairman, announced that he was going “to look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.” [Note: Global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to UN data. See: ‘Global Warming Will Stop,’ New Peer-Reviewed Study Says ]

UPDATE: Roger Pielke Jr. reported here that Rajendra Pachauri has supported the Indian Government plan. 

We do know that, due to the earth’s orbit and the tilt and wobble of the axis of the earth’s spin, global warming is occurring as it has many times in the past; and it will continue for some years before the cooling cycle begins and the glaciers take over, also as they have in the past. We are trying very hard to develop computer simulations to predict the contribution our activities are making to the warming, and the going has been difficult. These models can’t be tested experimentally (unless we can find another planet on which to conduct our experiments) and are tested mostly by fitting them to past behavior, pretty much the same approach as handicapping horse races. Clearly, these are not “facts.” They are computer models. They may be correct or at least lead us to the correct answer, but the earliest model appears to be incorrect. We have also not examined the consequences - human, economic or environmental - of reversing our contribution (whatever it is) to global warming. The unintended consequences of corn-based ethanol on our economy (and even more important on our shrinking water supply) is a good case in point. In any case, it is not helpful for clergy to condemn those with whom they disagree as immoral or untruthful. (Galileo had that problem - one we don’t need a repeat, thank you.)

Robert Rose is an emeritus professor of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT with approximately 50 years of experience teaching various scientific disciplines at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Professor Rose, now retired from DMSE, directs MIT’s Concourse Program

Universal and two partners said Sunday they have reached a deal to buy The Weather Channel from Landmark Communications Inc., ending a drawn-out process that had attracted interest from several major media companies. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity said the purchase price was $3.5 billion in cash. NBC was joined in the deal by the private equity firms The Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital LLC.

In addition to The Weather Channel, which can be seen by 97 percent of U.S. cable subscribers, the deal also includes several related assets such as weather services for newspapers and radio stations and the widely used Web site Weather.com. NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., became the sole bidder for The Weather Channel last month after Time Warner Inc. dropped out. CBS Corp. and cable industry leader Comcast Corp. had also expressed interest earlier.

NBC already operates a digital weather and news service called NBC Weather Plus that was launched in 2004 and would make a logical fit with The Weather Channel. NBC Weather Plus is owned by NBC and its affiliated TV stations and can be seen on digital cable services and digital subchannels operated by NBC stations. NBC and Landmark said in a statement that The Weather Channel would be operated as a separate entity out of its base in Atlanta. They said they expected the transaction to close by year-end, pending regulatory approvals. Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., GE Commercial Finance, GSO Capital Partners and Sankaty Advisors LLC will provide debt financing for the transaction. The Weather Channel was launched in 1982. Its Web site has about 37 million monthly unique visitors, putting it in the top 15 Web sites, according to the company. The Weather Channel has 1,300 employees and estimated annual revenues of $550 million. Read more here.

While guest hosting Wednesday’s “Morning Joe”, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch condemned global warming, the very theory MSNBC has been peddling for years. GE, of course, owns MSNBC; the rebuke of MSNBC’s favorite alarmist hypothesis came in a segment where hosts share noteworthy editorials. Welch decided to share an opinion piece from Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal aptly titled “Global Warming As Mass Neurosis.” Welch informed the audience that the article has “a lot of technical numbers here to show you that NASA overstated what’s happening.” Welch summarized the article by saying “And they got an argument that states that global warming is the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn’t bring”

After Jack’s synopsis, co- host Pat Buchanan interjects his belief that global warming is “a neo-Marxist idea for the transfer of wealth and power.” Jack Welch jumps in to agree saying “Right” Pat Buchanan then decides to carry his rebuke even further by saying “And at the end global elites, and they’re, you know they’re gonna to dictate to all of us because of this phony idea that we’re all in some eminent danger. I agree with that 100 %.” Welch, the former GE CEO enthusiastically jumped in to agree saying “Absolutely!”

Later in the segment Mika Brzezinski did her best to put pressure on her former boss by saying “Alright, but I just want to say at some point this [global warming] is going to come back and haunt us if we don’t address it, Jack.” However ‘Neutron Jack’ refused to cede his ground and sarcastically responded “We’ll see.” What makes this vivacious segment so amusing is that as the former Chief Executive Officer of General Electric, Jack Welch, was once the head of a company that owns MSNBC. MSNBC is a network that hawks global warming mythology on a regular basis. Just two months ago Newsbusters profiled how MSNBC firebrand Chris Matthews was shocked by global warming skepticism. Apparently, Matthews never talked to his old boss about the subject. Read more including transcript here.