It is unfortunate that on the day when President Barack Obama said perhaps one of the most noteworthy things during his entire Administration, the ridiculous birther issue hijacked the news. On that day he was quoted: “We are in a lot of conversations with the major oil producers like Saudi Arabia to let them know that it’s not going to be good for them if our economy is hobbled because of high oil prices.” He certainly would like more oil to get into the market.

After oil topped $110 per barrel, after gasoline prices have been flirting with $4 per gallon and after a relentless climb which lasted for weeks, the President felt compelled to do or, at least say, something. Obama can be the subject of criticism for a lot of things but as a campaigner he is almost impeccable. He is campaigning officially and he knows too well that virtually nothing removes votes from an American candidate better than higher gasoline prices.

Of course, it is hard to be the President of wind mills and solar panels and now try to implore foreign countries, raking it in from higher oil prices, to commit financial sacrifice. They are asked to increase the supply of the commodity, which has been labeled by Obama as the “energy source of the past”, and against which his Administration has gleefully declared war in both words and action from the time of the previous presidential campaign to today. One would think that higher oil prices would force people to use solar and wind to drive their cars. Yes, I know this is not possible and it is sarcastic but many of the President’s supporters, behind the public consumption headlines of feeling the consumers’ pain, think that what is happening is good for the energy future they would like to see.

The President, like many of his predecessors of both parties, is missing the opportunity to level with the American people: There are no alternatives to hydrocarbon (oil, gas and coal) energy sources in the foreseeable future. The entire twenty first century will still be dominated by them. Solar and wind are unrealistic today, they are thermodynamically deficient, and they will most likely never amount for much more than one percent of the world energy mix without massive government subsidies.

Ideological environmentalism has trumped economic development and has thwarted economic freedom, which was, ostensibly, the motive of the Cold War which America won but certainly does not act like it did. Al Gore, a precursor to Obama even before the Nobel Prize for the “Inconvenient Truth” wrote that the “internal combustion engine is the biggest threat to humankind.”

Tell that to the Chinese who are buying at least 40,000 new cars per day.

Breaking even the lowest standards of credulity on the same day of the President’s Saudi plea, Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator said rising gasoline prices were not her agency’s fault. Upward pressure on gas prices was “not coming from any environmental or health regulation.” Really? This from an agency that even its more ardent supporters think as the most intrusive and recalcitrant, ever, an agency that has attempted to regulate by government edict rather than legislative fiat.

Make no mistake: global climate change rhetoric—fully espoused by the Obama Administration—is a frontal attack on the US and the lifestyle that emanates from its economy and system. The Europeans who adopted it in the first place are not averse to admit that they are jealous of America. The Chinese, who are all too aware of the ramifications of mandatory carbon restrictions on both the world and, in particular, their economy, simply will not play along. They are, at best, bemused. Does anybody really believe there would be economically extractable hydrocarbons in this world that would not be produced because we pass legislation in the US? Isn’t the atmosphere the same for all?

To crown a day that surely even Don Quixote would question the credibility of Obama’s adversaries, a third jewel was added to the news menu. Senator Harry Reid said the “Senate will turn as early as next week to Obama’s proposal to repeal tax breaks for the oil and gas industry.” This is the answer. Let’s turn on Big Oil. That will solve the problem.

What are we really talking about? The “subsidies” amount to just $4 billion per year. It may sound a lot of money but here is a quick calculation. The United States is using about 400 million gallons of gasoline per day. At $4 per gallon this translates to $1.6 billion per day, which means that the yearly subsidies to the dreaded oil companies account for less than three days of just the US gasoline bill. The US total oil bill at today’s prices is about $2.3 billion per day. Using a modest multiplier in economic activity, that would make the US oil industry, not counting natural gas, a $10 billion per day economic activity. The “subsidies” trumpeted by the government headlines amount to a few hours of the industry’s size.

Last year the Chinese spanned the globe and spent $200 billion in buying oil properties. I am often in China and my colleagues there are actually bewildered. After a few drinks and when words become looser and in some ways, more lucid, they have two questions: “What is the energy policy of the United States? and “If you are not going to produce your own oil and gas why are you letting us have a free ride in accessing oil supplies everywhere in the world with no resistance and no competition?” I have no answer to either but I do know that the Chinese understand that energy means power and better economics. We no longer seem to get it.

Global warming is a myth perpetrated by scientists and politicians with a vested interest, claimed an Arctic explorer presenting in Fort Smith last week.

Laurie Dexter, a former Anglican minister in Fort Smith who has hiked to the North Pole and now works on eco-tourism trips around the Arctic, said his personal experience has shown him that Arctic sea ice is not melting nearly as fast as many scientists and world leaders claim.

Dexter told an audience at Aurora College’s Thebacha Campus that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result of global temperatures, not a cause.

He said scientific data on how carbon in the atmosphere relates to temperature has been skewed by scientists who profit from global warming, and repeated by world leaders using global warming for political gain.

“There is an industry of global warming,” Dexter said. “There has been a deliberate deception.”

Arctic explorer Laurie Dexter says the plight of polar bears has been greatly exaggerated, as has man-made climate change, by people with a vested interest in the ‘global warming industry’.

“The World Wildlife Fund is one of the most dishonest organizations,” Dexter said. “This is the first time in history a species has been declared endangered when its population is so high.”

http://srj.ca/

From Politico’s “Morning Energy”:

TOTAL RECALL - If environmentalists are going to get results in their push for clean energy, they need to pipe down about climate change and speak up about national security and job creation, Arnold Schwarzenegger told college energy clubs on a recent conference call [with Energy Secretary Steven Chu].

Er, that’s not even selective memory. More like amnesia. I understand the part about running from your Plan A—after all, this very marching order first came from pollster Stanley Greenberg and led to John Kerry saying of his cap-and-trade bill “This is not an environment bill” (oddly, it amended the Clean Air Act, granted power to EPA, mentions ‘environment’ 97 times, ‘climate’ 220 times, ‘greenhouse’ 650 more times...but, hey, the pollster said say something else!).

But the Secretary and Governator are also forgetting that the damage these policies wreak has been specifically, thoroughly and professionally exposed as regards the very countries Obama used to tell us to look because they were his models ( Spain, Denmark, Germany; the sole exception not receiving the full review is Japan).

He no longer cites them, obviously due to said exposés, but he still pushes the costly schemes (he knows, and cares not. That is disturbing).

Now they’re going to say ‘China!’. Which was not their first choice, but fifth, for a reason: to compare us with them is absurd.

And so about that ‘security’ thing.

Recall the recent ‘gathering storm’ (yes, Germans actually wrote that) and ‘it gets dark in Germany’ headlines. Now those headlines are popping up here, and for the same reason. Consider Climate Wire today (subscription required):

“RENEWABLE ENERGY: Fickle winds, intermittent sunshine start to stress U.S. power system”.

Keep that one handy for in the event O repeats his German example, which he seems to be holding on to in reserve, having whipped it out when he though no one was listening (in a Saturday radio address in December), but has otherwise avoided after Spain, Denmark and Germany were exposed. Such praise went the way praise for transport model, China, may now go (thanks to WaPo!)...though, as with renewables, the rail agenda itself will surely hang on, with only the rhetorical hints about where to look for how the story ends abandoned.

More on the importance of WaPo debunking the ‘China’s doing it!’ TP on high-speed rail later. But do bear in mind the relevance of one story to the other. The truth is that the president, like the movement he represents, opposes automobility and abundant energy because both liberate you. Just as George Will wrote about why liberals love trains, freedom of movement like abundant energy is “subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends [and . . .] encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.”

As regards their ‘say anything’ approach to create the world they seek to create, just remember as Mr. Alinsky taught them, the issue isn’t the issue. The reason (excuse) for doing what they demand is always changing, and this is because ere is no good reason for doing it. But if they told you what they really longed for it would be a non-starter. Which, in itself, is reason enough to stop this madness now.

A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC.

The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims. One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called “Climategate emails”, producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.

Another scientific expert linked to the group came forward to praise a second independent investigation into the Climategate affair which also exonerated researchers.

Set up with the backing of Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, and run by a group of British MPs and peers the organisation, Globe International, started life as an All Party Group based in the House of Commons. It is now run as an international climate change lobbying group flying its supporters and experts club class to international summits to push its agenda. Last year, it said, it spent around 500,000 pounds flying its supporters to these meetings.

It has also paid out at least 75,000 pounds on travel for prominent UK politicians, including for its former presidents Elliot Morley, the ex-Labour environment minister now facing jail for expenses fraud, and Stephen Byers, the former Labour cabinet minister who was suspended from the Commons after he was filmed describing himself a “cab for hire” when offering to lobby his parliamentary contacts for cash.

Now Globe is planning a mass lobby of the United Nations Rio 2012 summit in Brazil, where world leaders will discuss climate change, by holding a World Summit of Legislators in the city to coincided with the event.

Next week the group’s current President Lord Deben, the former Tory Cabinet Minister John Gummer, is due to launch a major report on climate change policy alongside Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary.

Globe has also recently held behind-closed-doors meetings with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and other senior Coalition ministers.

Last year two prominent experts linked to Globe were drawn into the controversy over emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

Lord Oxburgh, the organisation’s director, was called in to head an internal inquiry into the leaked emails which included one infamous message referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. The peer’s investigation cleared the scientists of malpractice. But critics claimed the report was a whitewash and Lord Oxburgh also failed to declare his involvement with Globe before he began his investigation.

Meanwhile Bob Ward, from the Grantham Institute, which works alongside Globe, praised a second inquiry by former civil servant Muir Russell, which also cleared the climate researchers. He said it had “lifted the cloud of suspicion” and demonstrated that “the integrity of climate science is intact.”

Globe International’s work is paid for with donations from multi-millionaire backers and through partnerships with other environmental groups. Globe also confirmed last night that it received direct funding from the Department of Energy and the Department of International Development (DfID). including a grant of 91,240 pounds provided by DfID since the Coalition came to power last year.

More cash from DfID is filtered through the Complus Alliance - a “sustainable development communications alliance” of broadcasters based in Costa Rica which is also supported by the BBC World Service Trust, the Corporation’s independent charity. Complus, which was awarded DfID cash last year and in 2006, says it has an “ongoing relationship with Globe” helping it run “shadow negotiation” teams at international summits of world leaders. A spokeswoman for Complus said: “The BBC is a founding member not a funding member. They can make in-kind contributions, like organising events, supporting logistics, sharing content.” She added that Complus did not fund Globe but work with them on “convergent objectives”.

Last night a DfID spokesman confirmed the department had given Complus 250,000 pounds in total to provide research, advocacy and communications work on the impact of climate change.
The spokesman said: ‘These contributions were awarded under the previous Government. The current Government has not given them any funding. ‘We only support projects that meet our strict conditions of delivering value for money and can prove their ability to reduce global poverty.’

The BBC trust’s money is drawn from the 15.2 million-a-year it gets from the Foreign Office and DFID and £800,000 from licence payers. The BBC charity failed to respond to questions about its relationship with the project and how much this involvement was costing. The Zoological Society of London, the world famous charity behind London Zoo, also provides Globe with scientific advice “providing high level input” from its top conservationists and zoologists. Globe said it paid ZSL for its expertise.

Last night Globe’s general secretary Adam Matthews said: “Globe is not a lobbying organisation. It is an international group of legislators. It was set up by the legislators themselves. “We facilitate them coming together to discuss environmental issues. Our members have multiple views - some quite sceptical on some aspects of the climate change debate.” “We are funded by the World Bank, the EU, international parliaments and Governments, including the UK Government. The coalition Government contributes to our work through DFID.”

Lord Deben declares his work for Globe as a “non-financial interest” to the House of Lords. He is also yet to declare any foreign travel funded by the organisation, although Globe confirmed last night that it had contributed to his travel and accommodation costs in the role. Lord Deben also runs an environmental consultancy company, Sandcroft International, which declared a turnover of almost 2 million in its last accounts. He is also chairman of Forewind, which has won the rights to build a controversial offshore wind farm in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast.

Among Globe’s principle backers are a charity set up by the Swedish multi-millionaire Niklas Zennstrom, founder of the internet phone service Skype, and British-born wealth fund manager Jeremy Grantham, whose personal clients include Dick Cheney and John Kerry. Mr Grantham bankrolls the Grantham Institute at the LSE, which works alongside Globe. He believes “weather instability” is the world’s biggest “investment problem” and his $107 billion fund pushes alternative assets including a massive portfolio of forestry.

Environmental groups spent nearly as much as their opponents to lobby for cap-and-trade legislation, but still lost.

In the fight over cap and trade, environmental groups were not quite the financial underdogs they are often assumed to be.

Environmental groups and their supporters spend more money on climate-change and clean-energy activities and campaigns than sceptical right-wing groups and their industry supporters, according to a report by a US social scientist, who questions some of the most common reasons given for US political inaction on global warming.

According to the report, conservative think-tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations raised some US$907 million during 2009, and spent a total of $787 million on their activities, with $259 million of that devoted specifically to climate and energy policy issues. Over the same period, national environmental groups had revenues of $1.7 billion and spent $1.4 billion on their programmes, which included $394 million devoted to climate and energy issues.

“Propelled by an ultra wealthy donor base and key alliances with corporations and other organizations, the environmental movement appears to have closed the financial gap with its opponents,” says Matthew Nisbet, associate professor of communication at American University in Washington DC, who wrote the report.

Closing the gap

This became obvious in the almost equal amounts spent by each side on political lobbying in 2009, when cap-and-trade legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions was moving through the US Congress. Whereas the opponents of the legislation, including Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, spent a total of $272 million on all their political lobbying in 2009, the report says, environmental groups forged a network of organizations that spent a total of $229 million on lobbying in the same period. The legislation was eventually defeated in the Senate in 2010.

Tax rules limit spending by not-for-profit organisations on direct attempts to steer legislation, but the environmentalists were able to mobilize additional financial support from commercial companies, which are not subject to these rules. In all, six of the world’s fifteen largest publicly traded companies supported cap-and-trade legislation, including General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, Shell and Walmart. “The effort to pass cap and trade legislation may have been the best-financed political cause in American history,” Nesbit says.

The finding is significant, he says, because many environmental leaders blamed the failure of the cap-and-trade legislation on the financial advantages of the conservative movement and its industrial allies. “Many scientists similarly view themselves in a battle with conservatives and their industry patrons.”

Media balance

The report, Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate, published by American University, also analysed another common complaint of climate scientists, that attempts at ‘balance’ in the media gives too much coverage to the small minority of climate-change sceptics. In fact, the report finds that during 2009 and 2010, some nine out of ten news and opinion articles at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.com reflected the consensus scientific position. The Wall Street Journal carried significantly more sceptical articles, but mostly in the comment section.

The failure of US cap-and-trade legislation, Nisbet concludes, was not due to a problem in communicating the message on global warming, but to the framing of global warming as a problem that could be solved by a single specific policy. More useful, he says, would be to present climate change as an issue that needs addressing at many levels, similar to public health and poverty.

“Belief in the reality and risks of climate change are linked to the proposed policy solutions. Polling experts assert it is wrong to assume that questions asking about the causes and impacts of climate change are in fact measuring knowledge,” Nisbet says. “Answers to these questions are much more likely to be indirect opinions about cap-and-trade policy and an international agreement, explaining why even highly educated Republicans appear in polling to doubt human-caused climate change.”

Scientists like to remind us not to confuse cause and effect. But they’re not immune from making that mistake themselves. Last week, for example, a flurry of sociological headlines emanating from a conference included the claim that elderly Taiwanese people who shop every day are 27% less likely to die over 10 years than those who shop once a week; and the claim that 16-year-olds who read books at least once a month are more likely to be in managerial jobs at 33 than those who read no books at 16.

It would be tempting but rash to conclude that shopping prevents death, rather than that ill health prevents shopping; or that reading causes career success rather than that a scholarly aptitude causes both reading and career success.

The nature-nurture debate has long been bedeviled by cause-effect confusion, as exemplified by the old joke: I’m not surprised that Johnny comes from a broken home; he would be enough to break any home.

Whole districts of Freudian theory are confused about cause and effect. For example, the incest taboo, forbidding people from mating with close relatives, turned out on closer investigation to be a codified expression of, rather than a cause of, incest avoidance. As Freud’s rival Edward Westermarck argued, there’s an innate tendency to develop revulsion at the idea of sex with close childhood contemporaries (who usually are siblings). A taboo turns this into a rule.

Nor is medicine immune. Some years ago epidemiologists found that women taking hormone replacement therapy had fewer heart attacks, but controlled trials found that HRT caused more heart attacks. It turned out that the women taking HRT in the epidemiological study were from higher socio-economic classes, so they ate and exercised better. Class caused both HRT and fewer heart attacks.

Even climate science has encountered cause-effect confusion. When in 1999 Antarctic ice cores revealed carbon-dioxide concentrations and temperature marching in lockstep over 400,000 years, many - including me - found this a convincing argument for attributing past climate change to carbon dioxide. (About 95% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is natural, coming from the exhalations of living things. In the past, carbon-dioxide levels rose as the earth warmed at the end of ice ages and fell as it cooled at the end of interglacial periods.)

Then four years later came clear evidence from finer-grained analysis of ice cores that temperature changes preceded carbon-dioxide changes by at least 800 years. Effects cannot precede their causes by eight centuries, so temperatures must drive carbon dioxide, chiefly by warming the sea and causing carbon dioxide dissolved in water to “out-gas” into the air.

Climate scientists fell back on a “feedback” hypothesis, arguing that an initial change, probably caused by variations in the earth’s orbit that affect the warmth of the sun, was then amplified by changes in carbon-dioxide levels. But this made the attribution argument circular and left the reversal of the trend after a period of warming (when amplification should be at its strongest) still harder to explain. If carbon dioxide is still driving the temperature upward but it falls instead, then other factors must be stronger than expected.

Some climate scientists see cause-effect confusion at the heart of climate modeling. Roy Spencer of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration argues from satellite data that the conventional view has one thing backward. Changes in cloud cover are often seen as consequences of changes in temperature. But what if the amount of cloud cover changes spontaneously, for reasons still unclear, and then alters the temperature of the world by reflecting or absorbing sunlight? That is to say, the clouds would be more cause than consequence. Not many agree with Mr. Spencer, but it is an intriguing idea.

A new analysis of floods around the world has been called to my attention.  The new analysis is contrary to conventional wisdom but consistent with the scientific literature on global trends in peak streamflows.  Is it possible that floods are not increasing or even in decline while most people have come to believe the opposite?

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

This finding is largely consistent with Kundzewicz et al. (2005) who find:

Out of more than a thousand long time series made available by the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) in Koblenz, Germany, a worldwide data set consisting of 195 long series of daily mean flow records was selected, based on such criteria as length of series, currency, lack of gaps and missing values, adequate geographical distribution, and priority to smaller catchments. The analysis of annual maximum flows does not support the hypothesis of ubiquitous growth of high flows. Although 27 cases of strong, statistically significant increase were identified by the Mann-Kendall test, there are 31 decreases as well, and most (137) time series do not show any significant changes (at the 10% level). Caution is advised in interpreting these results as flooding is a complex phenomenon, caused by a number of factors that can be associated with local, regional, and hemispheric climatic processes. Moreover, river flow has strong natural variability and exhibits long-term persistence which can confound the results of trend and significance tests.

They conclude (emphasis added):

Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour.

References:

Bouziotas, D., G. Deskos, N. Mastrantonas, D. Tsaknias, G. Vangelidis, S.M. Papalexiou, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Long-term properties of annual maximum daily river discharge worldwide, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2011, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 13, Vienna, EGU2011-1439, European Geosciences Union, 2011.

Kundzewicz, Z.W., D. Graczyk, T. Maurer, I. Przymusińska, M. Radziejewski, C. Svensson and M. Szwed, 2005(a):Trend detection in river flow time-series: 1. annual maximum flow. Hydrol. Sci. J., 50(5): 797-810.

Inside the National Center for Environmental Economics, analysts scurried to finish the vital technical support document to fulfill President Obama’s most draconian campaign pledge: “Implement an economywide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.”

The NCEE was ready to cement the case for the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” the official declaration that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels poses a threat to human health and welfare. Thousands of government careers, academic contracts, and Big Green grants hung in the balance, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson needed to release it within days.

But senior research analyst Alan Carlin, Ph.D., a 38-year EPA veteran never known as an ideologue, submitted his unlikely critique that the agency’s case was full of predetermined, politically mandated, cherry-picked scientific garbage.

Carlin criticized as many details as possible in the four days before the finding’s release: EPA had relied on outdated research and ignored major new developments, including declines in global temperatures, projections that hurricanes won’t get worse, and findings that ocean cycles best explain temperature fluctuations.

“I did the reasonable thing,” said Carlin. “I applied the scientific method to every study used in EPA’s technical support document,” as you’d expect from a man with a physics degree from CalTech and a Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alarmingly, he found more computerized guesswork and editing by advocates than observable results. Carlin urgently requested that his report be forwarded immediately to top decision makers.

The director refused. In an email to Carlin, he said, “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”

Imperiling his career, Carlin explained that he knew where his duty lay concerning scientific truth and the administration, and got these appalling replies: “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change,” and, “Do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of NCEE on endangerment. There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls etc.”

The message: Dr. Carlin, hush your mouth. EPA Administrator Jackson and President Obama have made up their minds. Don’t bother them with facts. And don’t you dare tell the American public. Hush!

An outraged source in EPA who was not Carlin passed the whistleblower documents and emails to Sam Kazman, general counsel of Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington free-market think tank.

Kazman was astounded by the “Hush” emails, accepted the case, and began a successful campaign to make the suppression of Carlin’s report a cause celebre. A few days later, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill barely passed the Democrat-held House and the Senate warily let the measure die.

But EPA released its endangerment finding, which immediately faced an appeals court challenge.

As Obama’s much-touted “science-based policy” rotted into “policy-based science,” Big Green sycophants praised the administration in a quarter-page Washington Post ad.

And so we got Hushgate. That was two years ago. Two weeks ago, Carlin’s report, updated, expanded, and peer-reviewed, was published in the respected International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Carlin’s 47-page, no-nonsense report rips computer modeling, false comparisons between hypotheses and real-world data, and efforts to manipulate climate measurements.

Main points: The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions are vastly lower than EPA estimates, and the costs are vastly higher. Conclusion: “the risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming appears to be so low that it is not currently worth doing anything to try to control it.”

That will sorely test the influence of Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, who recently called for disdainful green groups to recognize their waning clout and “adopt a less arrogant approach that takes into account all sides of the global warming debate.”

Fat chance.