“We have at most ten years - not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.’ - James Hansen, “The Threat to the Planet,” New York Review of Books, July 13, 2006.

“Desperation is setting in among climate alarmists who by their own math can see that the window is rapidly closing on ‘saving the planet’.” - Kenneth Green, “A Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism, Redux?” MasterResource, September 30, 2009.

As I have written in a previous post, the trend toward abject panic over climate change seems to have reversed course. For all intents and purposes, climate alarmism - which I define as the reflexive tendency to assume worst-case scenarios generated by climate models are automatically true (and to enact public policy based on that belief) - is locked into a death spiral. The public policy implication is profound: substituting adaptation and wealth creating strategies for tears-in-the-ocean mitigation policies in the U.S. and abroad.

On the political front:

The IPCC’s reputation as a serious scientific institution continues to hemorrhage as a nearly endless string of errors and/or bad practices relating to the Fourth Assessment Report come to light.

As Newsweek put it recently, “Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles, and corporate reports - including claims of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising costs of warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been refuted by academic studies.”

Further, Newsweek opines, the case for policy-development based on climate alarmism is also off the rails: “There are excellent reasons to limit emissions and switch to cleaner fuels - including an estimated 750,000 annual pollution deaths in China, the potential to create jobs at home instead of enriching nasty regimes sitting on oil wells, the need to provide cheap sources of power to the world’s poorest regions, and the still-probable threat that global warming is underway. At the moment, however, certainty about how fast - and how much - global warming changes the earth’s climate does not appear to be one of those reasons.

Internationally, things are not much better for the alarmists. The negotiations in Copenhagen were a complete shambles, resulting only in a non-binding, let’s-meet-again memorandum that the various participating countries “recognized” having seen.

Greenpeace activist, and Independent Commentator Joss Garman characterized the “Copenhagen Accord” thus: “This “deal” is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they will come about. There is not even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 C. Instead, leaders merely recognise the science behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it.

The only part of this deal that anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now apparent that even this is largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so that poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.

In the EU, the vaunted European Trading System continues to come apart at the seams. According to James Kanter at the NYT: “Carbon traders, for example, have been arrested for tax fraud; evidence has emerged of lucrative projects that may do nothing to curb climate change; and steel and cement companies have booked huge profits selling surplus permits they received for free.”

And the EU is backing away from previous plans to tighten its carbon reduction targets. According to Greenwire, “For months, Europe has mulled whether to increase to 30 percent its current commitment to reduce CO2 emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. E.U. leaders in Brussels, including the bloc’s climate chief, Connie Hedegaard, have seemed to favor such a commitment, while influential member states like Germany and France have expressed skepticism of such a pledge without binding support from other major industrial powers like the United States.”

A study, released today by the European Commission, expresses concern that Europe’s trading system for limiting emissions will remain less effective than planned without reductions in carbon allowances over the next decade. But addressing that problem may have to take a back seat for now, Hedegaard said.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., climate alarmism has sunk so low that Senator John Kerry risks choking himself to death as he ties his tongue into knots to pretend that his climate bill, the misleadingly named “American Power Act,” is not a climate bill. Depending on the date, Senator Kerry disingenuously characterizes as a job creation bill, or a bill to end dependency on foreign oil, or as a bill to rejuvenate the moribund US nuclear energy sector....or anything but what it is, which is a bill full of direct and indirect taxes on carbon: that is, on coal, natural gas, oil, and gasoline.

Pundits give the bill little chance of passage in this Congress, and if Democrats take anything like the whuppin’ they’re expected to get in November, I wouldn’t look for a reprise of the “American Power Act” any time soon. [Personal note to Senator Kerry: Dear Senator, will you please stop perpetuating the fiction that you can create jobs by forcing up the cost of power (and making it less reliable) in the United States. All you’re going to do with your fraudulently titled climate bill is kill jobs, reduce economic growth, export more of America’s industrial base to other countries, and perpetuate the misery of this lackluster economy. Even worse, you’ll hurt the people you claim as your primary constituency - the poor - more than the wealthy, as the poor spend more of their budget on energy than those with greater wealth.]

On the regulatory front: EPA continues to face opposition to regulation of the greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. On June 10, a resolution authored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (and co-sponsored by 38 others including 3 Democrats) will be voted on. The resolution concludes that it is:

“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to the endangerment finding and the cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (published at 74 Fed. Reg. 66496 (December 15, 2009)), and such rule shall have no force or effect.”

Finally, on the public opinion front: Poll numbers continue to decline when it comes to people expressing serious concern about climate change, or willingness to pay anything to remedy it. The New York Times points out that public belief levels are plummeting even in Jolly Old Britain, (and not-so-jolly old Germany) both of which have been, until recently, a seething hotbed of climate alarmism:

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated. A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

Our “paper of record,” also observes that “The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Conclusion

My colleague, Steve Hayward, thinks that future historians will peg 2008 as the year that climate alarmism jumped the shark. If so, it’s clear that in 2010, the Fonz is on the sharp declining phase of the jump, headed back down to the water. On every front, climate alarmists are losing, from international negotiations, to domestic legislation, to public opinion. Even the UK’s Royal Society is being forced to reconsider their position on climate change.

We can hope that climate alarmism will be replaced by a new era of climate realism, where the focus is on fostering resilience: building institutions, and helping other countries build institutions that would give them resilience in the face of any sort of climate change, manmade or natural, modest or major. Instead, however, my guess is this won’t happen. The alarmists are unable to give up the sense of panic they need to preserve to promote radical policies. And, to be fair, there is such polarization on the part of climate skeptics that even we climate moderates come in for some slapping around when we admit a vague possibility that humans could cause even modest harm via our influence on the climate. There is little appetite on either side for moderation or realism.

Instead, what I suspect will happen is that the entire issue of climate change will go sub rosa, and be embedded in discussions of energy, sustainability, energy security, renewable energy, protecting biodiversity, or anything that lacks the words “climate change” in the title. See post here.

Britain’s Royal Society, the UK’s preeminent scientific body, has joined national science bodies in India and France in validating the views of global warming sceptics.

The Royal Society’s decision, which follows a revolt by 43 Fellows of the Royal Society, will see it rewrite its position on climate change in a tacit admission that it and in particular its previous president, Lord May, had been acting more as lobbyists for a cause than as agents for scientific reason. Without canvassing his membership, May had famously stated that “The debate on climate change is over” and that “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.”

Following the revolt over the society’s recent history of alarmism and hyperbole, the current president, Lord Rees, by no means a sceptic, has nevertheless decided to take a more balanced view:  “Climate change is a hugely important issue but the public debate has all too often been clouded by exaggeration and misleading information,” he said. “We aim to provide the public with a clear indication of what is known about the climate system, what we think we know about it and, just as importantly, the aspects we still do not understand very well.”

The Royal Society review of its position, expected this summer, comes at the same time that France’s National Academy of Sciences has asserted that it has taken no position on climate science, that it respects the views of both camps, and that, in the interests of furthering understanding, it will sponsor a high-profile debate this fall. This decision by the National Academy of Sciences has distressed the country’s manmade global warming camp, which had lobbied the Academy and the French government to denounce and even expel the sceptics.

India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change, published in 2008, was the first official national study to deny that the science was settled on climate change. “No firm link between the changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established,” the scientific report stated, before proceeding to list the many areas in which the science is not settled.

High scientific bodies in other countries, such as the National Academies of Sciences in the U.S., have also taken positions on global warming without canvassing their memberships to ensure that they reflected their memberships’ views. The decisions by these academies were typically made at the executive level, on a non-scientific basis. The case of Britain’s Royal Society has been especially egregious, given the organization’s long tradition of being above the fray, as seen in a statement that for two centuries graced its house journal, Philosophical Transactions: “...it is an established rule of the Society, to which they will always adhere, never to give their opinion, as a Body, upon any subject, either of Nature or Art, that comes before them.”

To see the extent to which the Royal Society departed from its love of truth, see its notorious 2005 document, “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change.”

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Copper Mountain
Re. “Save our ski resorts from climate change,” by Baxter Pharr, letters, May 24

Scientists with a theory search diligently for data that might contradict the theory so that they can test its validity or refine it. Propagandists with a theory carefully select only the data that agrees with the theory and dutifully ignore any data that might contradict it. How else to explain Baxter Pharr’s claim for “overwhelming and simple” evidence for human-caused global warming? He states: “Over the past 600,000 years, every time the fossil record shows an increase in CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere there is a corresponding increase in global temperatures.” The record he cites is the Vostok ice-core data, but he fails to ask the obvious question. When global temperatures increased and the CO2 concentration increased, where did all that CO2 come from during the hundreds of thousands of years before any significant human emission of CO2? That is a question dutifully ignored by the propagandists Pharr cites. The same data also show that temperature changes preceded CO2 changes by 600 to 1,000 years indicating that it was the temperature changes that caused the CO2 changes, not the reverse. That is another critical piece of data the propagandists ignore: As oceans cool during glacial cooling, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. As oceans warm during interglacial warmings, they emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The ocean contains 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere and it is its average temperature and the solubility of CO2 in sea water that controls the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Current human emission of CO2 is of trivial significance in determining its atmospheric concentration.

It has been known for almost a hundred years that the cause of those long-term cycles of cooling and warming are the variations in the Earth;s orbital parameters: changes in its orbital ellipticity around the Sun, changes in its obliquity, and the precession of its axis of rotation. Shorter term variations over hundreds of years such as the Medieval Warm Period (considerably warmer than today) and the Little Ice Age, are caused by variations in Solar activity. Changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations are about as significant for weather as a few farts in a hurricane!

Pharr’s also regurgitates the claim that CO2 concentration at 390 parts per million “are at their highest level in over 1 million years.” That claim is a fraudulent concoction of the IPCC. For example, direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 from 1936 to 1944 averaged over 410 parts per million.

In our current system for generating electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear energy, we have absolutely no dependence on foreign sources. Our problem is imported petroleum for the transportation sector of our economy. Despite the commercials of environmental lobbyists, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar will not produce a single drop of the petroleum currently needed for that sector. Our present system for the production of electricity “ain’t broke, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The nation has real problems such as the tragic explosion at the Upper Big Branch Coal mine in West Virginia and the recent explosion and oil spill in the Gulf. Coal mine safety and pollution of the Gulf are critical problems that need to be addressed and solved. The Kerry-Lieberman proposal of carbon emission control, on the other hand, is chasing a phantom: the entirely non-existent problem of human caused global warming/climate change. Implementation of such legislation will waste hundreds of billions of dollars and do serious damage to the nation’s infrastructure and its economy. The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence shows that it will have absolutely no effect on the world’s weather, which is well beyond human influence or control. See more here.

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No global warming processes in Antarctic: Explorer
PTI

ST PETERSBURG: Allegations about global warming processes in the Antarctic have nothing to do with real facts, a Russian polar explorer has said.

“They are of opportunistic and time-serving character, and have nothing to do with the real weather and climate on the southern continent,” Head of Russia’s 54th Antarctic expedition Viktor Venderovich told Itar-Tass.

“The past summer on the south pole was cold and windy, and ice floes in the offshore water failed to melt over the entire season.

“The atmospheric air temperature near the Vostok station deep on the continent reached the customary minus 70 degrees Centigrade in the summer, and near the Novolazarevskaya station it never exceeded minus 6-8 degrees,” he said after staying at the Novolazarevskaya station for a year.

The previous winter in the Antarctic, he said, “was remarkable for its unusual severity, with blizzards and snowstorms.”

Little Sisters of the Ice

The average air temperature was 0.5 degrees lower than usual, and there were too much snow, he said, adding that a “slight warming was registered only on the Antarctic peninsula, while the rest of the continent has not been affected by the global warning and is not going to be.”

Vostok holds the world record for the lowest reliably measured temperature on Earth of -89.2 C (−128.6 F).

An “active to extremely active” hurricane season is expected for the Atlantic Basin this year, according to the seasonal outlook issued today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center - a division of the National Weather Service. As with every hurricane season, this outlook underscores the importance of having a hurricane preparedness plan in place.

Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is projecting a 70 percent probability of the following ranges:

14 to 23 named storms (top winds of 39 mph or higher), including:
8 to 14 hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or higher), of which:
3 to 7 could be major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; winds of at least 111 mph)

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

The outlook ranges exceed the seasonal average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. Expected factors supporting this outlook are:

Upper atmospheric winds conducive for storms. Wind shear, which can tear apart storms, will be weaker since El Nino in the eastern Pacific has dissipated. Strong wind shear helped suppress storm development during the 2009 hurricane season.

Warm Atlantic Ocean water. Sea surface temperatures are expected to remain above average where storms often develop and move across the Atlantic. Record warm temperatures - up to four degrees Fahrenheit above average - are now present in this region.

High activity era continues. Since 1995, the tropical multi-decadal signal has brought favorable ocean and atmospheric conditions in sync, leading to more active hurricane seasons. Eight of the last 15 seasons rank in the top ten for the most named storms with 2005 in first place with 28 named storms.
“The main uncertainty in this outlook is how much above normal the season will be. Whether or not we approach the high end of the predicted ranges depends partly on whether or not La Nina develops this summer,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “At present we are in a neutral state, but conditions are becoming increasingly favorable for La Nina to develop.”

“FEMA is working across the administration and with our state and local partners to ensure we’re prepared for hurricane season,” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. “But we can only be as prepared as the public, so it’s important that families and businesses in coastal communities take steps now to be ready. These include developing a communications plan, putting together a kit, and staying informed of the latest forecasts and local emergency plans. You can’t control when a hurricane or other emergency may happen, but you can make sure you’re ready.”

The President recently designated May 23 through 29 as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. NOAA and FEMA encourage those living in hurricane-prone states to use this time to review their overall preparedness. More information on individual and family preparedness can be found here and here.

NOAA scientists will continue to monitor evolving conditions in the tropics and will issue an updated hurricane outlook in early August, just prior to what is historically the peak period for hurricane activity.

NOAA Predicts Below Normal Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season

NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center today announced that projected climate conditions point to a below normal hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific this year. The outlook calls for a 75 percent probability of a below normal season, a 20 percent probability of a near normal season and a five percent probability of an above normal season.

Allowing for forecast uncertainties, seasonal hurricane forecasters estimate a 70 percent chance of 9 to 15 named storms, which includes 4 to 8 hurricanes, of which 1 to 3 are expected to become major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale).

An average Eastern Pacific hurricane season produces 15 to 16 named storms, with nine becoming hurricanes and four to five becoming major hurricanes. The Eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through Nov. 30, with peak activity from July through September.

The main climate factors influencing this year’s Eastern Pacific outlook are the atmospheric conditions that have decreased hurricane activity over the Eastern Pacific Ocean since 1995 - and the fact that El Nino has faded.

“La Nina is becoming increasingly likely, which further raises the chance of a below-normal season for the Eastern Pacific region,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The outlook is a general guide to the overall seasonal hurricane activity. It does not predict whether, where or when any of these storms may hit land.

Eastern Pacific tropical storms most often track westward over open waters, sometimes reaching Hawaii and beyond. However, some occasionally head toward the northeast and may bring rainfall to the arid southwestern United States during the summer months. Also, during any given season, two to three tropical storms can affect western Mexico or Central America. Residents, businesses and government agencies of coastal and near-coastal regions should always prepare prior to each and every hurricane season regardless of the seasonal hurricane outlook.

Introduction

We’ve been told that the earth’s surface is quite a bit warmer than calculations predict. Theory has it that heat-trapping “greenhouse gases’ account for a 33 Celsius disparity. But it turns out that our airless moon is also quite a bit warmer than predicted. Might something be wrong with the prediction method itself, then? It’s a natural question to ask, so let’s look into it.

The Theory

Climate science’s method of deriving a surface temperature from incoming radiant energy (whose intensity is measured in watts per square meter) is based on the Stefan-Boltzmann formula [1], which in turn refers to a theoretical surface known as a blackbody - something that absorbs and emits all of the radiance it’s exposed to. Since by definition a blackbody cannot emit less than 100% of what it absorbs, this fictional entity has no option of drawing heat into itself, for that would compromise its temperature response and thus its thermal emission. Its 100% thermal emission effectively means that a blackbody is a two dimensional surface with no depth.

The pictures above illustrate how strange an actual blackbody would be. The purple balloon has been converted to a blackbody, which is just as smooth as the real balloon yet reflects no light from its surroundings - which is impossible because it’s nearly as smooth as glass. Logically, then, this absolutely non-reflective balloon must be infinitely rough - but once again it can’t be, because it is so smooth! In point of fact, a real-life blackbody can only be approximated by a hole, a dark cavity [2] that you can’t see into, which is not something we normally regard as a “surface” to begin with. Treating the earth’s surface as a blackbody thus seems very problematic from the start, yet this is the first assumption climate science makes when predicting the earth’s temperature [3].

Moreover, the principal method for predicting a planet’s temperature is surprisingly arbitrary and simplistic. On the premise that a sphere has 4 times the surface area of a flat blackbody disc, the power of solar radiance on a sphere is assigned a value 4 times weaker [4]. In other words, if data indicate that one spot on your earth model receives 956 watts per square meter at solar zenith, you just divide 956 by 4 to get 239, plug that into the Stefan-Boltzmann formula and obtain minus 18C, which supposedly gives you an average temperature for the earth’s entire surface, regardless of whether this model rotates or not. [5]

Is it any surprise, then, that even a relatively simple body like the moon would refuse to conform to such a method?

Empirical reality

Since an “average temperature” method provides no information about day and night temperatures within a particular zone, NASA scientists working on the Apollo project had to employ a blackbody sun-angle model to chart the lunar surface temperatures astronauts might encounter. Remember, a blackbody’s temperature always agrees with the radiance it’s being exposed to. So, after taking albedo (reflectance) into account, the temperature profile for a blackbody moon would look much like this (enlarged here).

As you see, with the first glimpse of sunlight as lunar day commences, the blackbody’s surface temperature rises and keeps rising till solar noon, after which the temperature decline mirrors the rise. Having emitted 100% of its thermal energy at every step, however, this imaginary surface has nothing in reserve to last the night, meaning that a rotating blackbody surface theoretically remains at absolute zero for half of the time.

But now let’s look at what really happens(enlarged here). [6]

The filled-in blue and orange zones depict the deviation between observed and predicted temperatures in the NASA experiments. Notice that the peak temperature actually occurs sometime after solar noon. The projected low temperature didn’t plummet to zero in this case because the radiative contribution of a “full earth” in the moon’s night-time sky had been anticipated. As the chart and the study indicate, actual daytime lunar temperatures were lower than expected because the real moon also conducts heat to the inside rather than radiating all of it to space. Conversely, actual surface temperatures throughout its two-week night were higher than expected because the moon “feeds on” the heat it had previously absorbed. Thus (within the zone in question) the surface of the real moon is roughly 20C cooler than predicted by day and 60C warmer by night, the net result being a surface that is 40C warmer than predicted.

To quote NASA’s analysis, During lunar day, the lunar regolith absorbs the radiation from the sun and transports it inward and is stored in a layer approximately 50cm thick. As the moon passes into night, the radiation from the sun quickly approaches zero (there is still a bit of radiation from the earth) and, in contrast with a precipitous drop in temperature if it was a simple black body, the regolith then proceeds to transport the stored heat back onto the surface, thus warming it up significantly over the black body approximation. All without greenhouse gases.

In other words, the components of a planet’s mass itself, rather than an atmosphere, bring about an appreciable difference between its calculated temperature and its actual temperature [7]. Three dimensions count. Not only do solid surfaces challenge the blackbody premise, however, but gases too. The atmosphere of every planet in our solar system is also ‘warmer than predicted’. [8]

Venus

In brief, notice that a cooling atmospheric trend reverses at around 100 millibars for every planet except Venus, which shows a similar reversal except that it begins to warm at a lower pressure (enlarged here).  [9]

The red circles indicate the temperature assigned to each planet by a blackbody formula [10]. In every case, as pressure mounts the air temperature exceeds the planet’s blackbody estimate. A blackbody calculation, then, doesn’t prepare us for atmospheric temperatures either, let alone inert solids.

Conclusion

The Earth is not “unusually” warm. It is the application of the predictive equation that is faulty. The ability of common substances to store heat makes a mockery of blackbody estimates. The belief that radiating trace gases explain why earth’s surface temperature deviates from a simple mathematical formula is based on deeply erroneous assumptions about theoretical vs. real bodies. These faulty assumptions are discussed in detail elsewhere, where they are shown to lead to the ‘cold earth fallacy’ [11].

Martin Hertzberg, PhD, Consultant in Science and Technology
Hans Schreuder, retired analytical chemist
Alan Siddons, former radiochemist

Reference in the PDF here.

See review of this excellent paper here. See how the “greenhouse theory” doesn’t work in models for Mars no matter what modellers try here.

President Obama’s announcement last Friday that his Administration is contemplating fuel economy standards beyond 2016 resurrected a familiar canard in the debate on the Murkowski disapproval resolution.  To wit: the resolution would overturn the “historic” auto emissions deal struck last May between the Obama Administration (EPA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, and Carol Browner), auto executives, and the state of California.  By overturning EPA’s endangerment finding, Murkowski’s detractors say, the administration’s new fuel economy standards will vanish into thin air. 

The one problem with this view is that it’s wrong.  Just ask the Obama Administration.  “As a strictly legal matter,” according to a February 19 letter by Kevin Vincent, NHTSA’s general counsel, “the Murkowski resolution does not directly impact NHTSA’s statutory authority to set fuel economy standards under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), as amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007(EISA).” [Emphasis added] We recognize the varied opinions on increasing corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, but we need not delve into them here.  Congress gave explicit authority to NHTSA to regulate fuel economy under the EPCA and that authority was amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The main point is that, as Vincent conceded, if Murkowski became law, NHTSA’s work would continue unimpeded because the resolution would only affect EPA’s new administratively-created GHG authority, and not NHTSA’s CAFE authority rooted in statute.

And NHTSA’s work represents the lion’s share of the auto deal.  As EPA explained, “The CAFE standards address most, but not all, of the real world CO2 emissions.” In the end, EPA’s rule amounts to about 4 percent of the program’s emissions reductions.  Also of note is the fact that EPA and NHTSA established a “single national program” for cars and light duty trucks.  In other words, there is little difference between the respective agencies’ rules.  As EPA explained:

[EPA and NHTSA] have harmonized many elements of program design, such as the form of the standard (the footprint-based attribute curves), and the definitions used for cars and trucks. They have developed the same or similar compliance flexibilities, to the extent allowed and appropriate under their respective statutes, such as averaging, banking, and trading of credits, and have harmonized the compliance testing and test protocols used for purposes of the fleet average standards each agency is finalizing. Finally, under their respective statutes, each agency is called upon to exercise its judgment and determine standards that are an appropriate balance of various relevant statutory factors. Given the common technical issues before each agency, the similarity of the factors each agency is to consider and balance, and the authority of each agency to take into consideration the standards of the other agency, both EPA and NHTSA are establishing standards that result in a harmonized National Program.

Not only is there little difference between the two rules, but when it comes to reducing global warming, EPA’s rule is utterly meaningless.  EPA has disputed the view that the rule’s climate impacts “are small and therefore not meaningful.” Yet EPA shortly thereafter quantifies what the impact of the rule will be. To put it mildly, it is less than impressive: “Based on the reanalysis the results for projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to be reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm (previously 3.0 ppm), global mean temperature is estimated to be reduced by 0.006 to 0.0015 C by 2100.” This amount is so miniscule it can’t even be measured by a ground-based thermometer.  Oh, and for good measure, EPA says that sea level rise is “projected to be reduced by approximately 0.06-0.14 cm by 2100.”

What the foregoing shows is that the “auto deal” defense fails to measure up.  What does measure up is the Murkowski resolution overturning the endangerment finding fiasco along with EPA’s costly and environmentally futile greenhouse gas regulatory regime. 

See blog here.

As a novel study reveals that warming up of earth’s temperature might not be the cause of malaria as the disease has seemingly lost ground in recent years.

Researchers from University of Oxford, UK, contradicted the known fact that increasing global temperatures multiplies vector-borne population, saying that the incidences of malaria have reduced in the twentieth century owing to better medications and awareness among people.

The Times of India quoted lead researcher, Dr. Pete Gething, Oxford’s Department of Zoology as saying, “We know that warming can boost malaria transmission but the major declines we’ve measured have happened during a century of rising temperatures, so clearly a changing climate doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Research details
Researchers conducted a study called ‘Malaria Atlas Project’ wherein they gathered data on malaria-occurrence between 1900 and 2007 and measured transformation in the disease-risk.

They found that in the face of increasing temperatures in the recent decades, incidences of the disease have reduced.

Researchers attributed the lowered rate of malaria to the increase in anti-malarial drugs over the last century.

In addition, there have been control measures ranging from marsh drainage to insecticides to bed-nets.

These measures were found to be highly efficient in restraining the disease across Asia, North America and Europe.

Experts speak
Gething was cited in Nature News as saying, “Malaria is still a huge problem. But climate change per se is not something that should be central to the discussion.”

Nature News further quoted Paul Reiter, entomologist, Pasteur Institute, Paris as stating, “The complexity of malaria and the other vector-borne diseases is astonishing. To bring it down to just one factor--climate change--is totally unjustifiable.”

Reiter also called the predictions of climate change-based malaria epidemics as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘based on intuition and misapplication of elementary models’.

“Malaria remains a huge public health problem, and the international community has an unprecedented opportunity to relieve this burden with existing interventions,” Hindu quoted study-collaborator Simon Hay as saying.

“Any failure in meeting this challenge will be very difficult to attribute to climate change,” added Hay.

Study limitations
According to researchers, the data used to generate a worldwide-map of malaria in the year 1900 looked into all malarial-infections, including the parasite Plasmodium vivax, whereas the 2007-data observed mere one parasite--Plasmodium falciparum.

Furthermore, the analysis did not consider factors like rainfall patterns and human migrations, which are liable to change owing to global warming. The study appears in the journal Nature. Story is here.

Meanwhile Michael Mann is co-investigator on $1.8 million grant to study influence of environmental temps on transmission of vector-borne diseases here. Taxpayers should demand their money back. Also see here in the Tom Fuller story how Joe Romm attempts to respond in yet another illogical post he has become infamous for.

The Kerry-Lieberman global warming bill was introduced May 12th in the Senate, and it may very well be debated and passed later this summer or fall about one year after the House of Representative’s version, the Waxman - Markey bill - the American Clean Energy and Security Act, was passed last summer. It was gratifying, however, to see that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is no longer a co-sponsor of the senate legislation, which should reduce the chances that it will receive bi-partisan support.

Of course the national media has portrayed the Kerry - Lieberman bill as providing us with energy independence and producing a lot of “green” jobs [1], [2]. Additionally, there is an attempt to use the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as club in order to show that Kerry - Lieberman is one instrument that will “hold polluters accountable” for making a mess of our environment.

But as Senators consider how they will vote on Kerry-Lieberman, they should consider how they might answer their constituents who should ask them, what is it about the science of global climate change that convinces them wholesale regulation of the economy is necessary? Do we need to reduce greenhouse emissions substantially in order to save us from catastrophic human induced global warming?

Maybe it is the “hockey stick” graph that is convincing. The same one that has attempted to demonstrate that climate was relatively stationary for about 1000 years until the 20th century. This is the same graph that has been exposed as a fraud starting with Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in 2003 [3],[4]. The same graph that, to some, is still accepted as solid science in spite of the fact that there are nearly two thousand journal papers which confirm that climate during the last millennium was more variable than the ‘hockey stick’ showed[5]. These papers confirm that there was a medieval warm period and a “little ice age”, and that these phenomena were likely global in reach.

Maybe it is the climate models which predict that global temperatures will rise anywhere from 2 F to 14 F or more over the next century [6]. These same models that have many technical issues that should cast doubt on their ability to forecast climate for the year 2100, issues that have been detailed by many authors (e.g., [7],[8]). What about the predictions of devastating 10 meter or more sea-level rises by some, which have also proved to be exaggerated or fabricated. 

Maybe it is the fact that greenhouse gas concentrations are still rising, in spite of the fact that temperatures in the last decade have shown little or no change. Possibly it is the so-called “consensus” among scientists that dangerous climate warming is occurring or about to occur? There are a host of issues that could be discussed here which should cast doubt on the proposition that radical changes in the climate will occur unless humans make drastic changes in our lifestyles in order to fight these changes.

So before the Senate votes to impose far-reaching regulation on our economy and the burdensome costs on their constituents that would certainly follow [9], they should be ready to explain to their constituents what it is about the science of climate change makes this legislation so necessary for our future. 

[1] Daly, M.: Bill aimed to stem global warming, create jobs.

[2] Samuelsohn, D., Study: Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill Would Prompt Decade of Job Growth.

[3] Corcoran, T., 2009: Trouble over tree rings.

[4] McIntyre, S., and R. McKitrick, 2003: Corrections to the Mann et al 1998 Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series.

[5] Morano, M., 2010: Geologist declares “global warming is over” - warns U.S. Climate Conference of ‘Looming’ threat of global warming. 

[6] Union of Concerned Scientists report ”Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Midwest - Missouri.”

[7] Lupo, A, 2007: The complexity of atmospheric modeling.

[8] Lupo, A, 2007: The complexity of Atmospheric and Climate Models: Assumptions and Feedbacks.

[9] Kruetzer, D., and N. Loris, 2009:  Questions on EPA’s Cost Estimates for Waxman-Markey climate Change Legislation.