Climate Science: Noted scientists at a Chicago climate conference declare that global warming is not only dead, but that the planet faces a big chill for decades to come. What about those frozen wind turbines?

It’s not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own in the most liberal sense.

“Global warming is over - at least for a few decades,” Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. “However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for greater concern.”

Easterbrook and 74 other presenters at the conference said what everyone already knows, having shoveled record amounts of global warming off our sidewalks and driveways last winter.

We don’t need computer models to tell us, baby, it’s getting cold outside. Of course, the doomsayers will claim that global warming causes global warming. Right.

“Rather than global warming at a rate of about 1 (degree) Fahrenheit per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” Easterbrook said.

He spoke of natural cycles that have been occurring since the discovery of fire and mankind’s first carbon emissions, long before the invention of the wheel and the SUV.

Easterbrook and the other scientists reported on sudden and natural climate fluctuations documented in the geologic record, all before 1945. Two big climate changes occurred in the past 15,000 years, and another 60 smaller changes in the last 5,000 years.

Another presenter, James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is happening now.

He pointed to data provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab showing snow records from the last 10 years exceeding the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.

Based on new analysis of ice cores from Greenland to Antarctica, Easterbrook said global temperatures rose and fell from 9 to 15 degrees in a single century or less, a natural phenomenon he called “astonishing.”

We see a bit of irony in an early February report that 11, 115-foot-tall wind turbines installed to provide power to 11 Minnesota towns were not functioning because they couldn’t handle the record cold temperatures of a harsh winter.

Global cooling, it seems, stalled their fight against global warming.

They should be thawed out by now but Dan Geiger, electrical director for Chaska, Minn., said at the time the city had been receiving inquiries as to why its 160-kilowatt $300,000 turbine wasn’t working.

He told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune it had not worked since mid-November. That’s what we call a green energy no-spin zone.

Yes, it’s warmer today than it was a century ago, but it was even warmer when Eric the Red settled on Greenland in 986.

The climate there supported the Viking way of life based upon cattle, hay, grain and herring for about 300 years, predating the Industrial Revolution.

By 1100, a colony of about 3,000 was thriving there. But then came the Little Ice Age, and by 1400, average temperatures had declined by about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and the advancing glaciers doomed the Viking colony in Greenland.

They were doomed by global cooling.

In testimony before Congress on May 6, Britain’s Lord Monckton noted that “neither global mean surface temperature nor its rates of change in recent decades have been exceptional, unusual, inexplicable, or unprecedented.”

He also advised: “There are many urgent priorities that need the attention of Congress, and it is not for me as an invited guest in your country to say what they are. Yet I can say this much: On any view, ‘global warming’ is not one of them.”

We just hope the polar bears don’t catch their death of cold. Read story here.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out one of the biggest power grabs in American history. The agency has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate policy for the nation and amend the Clean Air Act--powers never delegated to it by Congress. It has done this by declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, in a proceeding known as the “endangerment finding.”

On Tuesday the U.S. Senate will debate and vote on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval to overturn the endangerment finding. The resolution is absolutely necessary to restore democratic accountability in climate policymaking.

If allowed to stand, the EPA’s endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade through multiple provisions of the Act. America could be burdened with a regulatory regime more costly than any climate bill Congress has rejected or declined to pass, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it.

Consider how the endangerment finding will expand the EPA’s power beyond any plausible congressional mandate.

To begin with, the finding compels the EPA to establish greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles. About 95% of all vehicular greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor fuel combustion. Because there is no commercially proven technology to capture CO2 tailpipe emissions, the principal way to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted per mile is to reduce the amount of fuel consumed per mile. In other words, greenhouse gas emission standards for automobiles are basically fuel economy standards by another name. By empowering the EPA to set greenhouse gas emission standards, the endangerment finding also empowers the EPA to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards, even though the Clean Air Act gives the EPA no such authority.

Once the greenhouse gas emission standards go into effect, CO2 becomes a “regulated air pollutant” and, thus, automatically subject to additional regulation under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. Under the Act, a firm must obtain a PSD permit before it can build or modify a “major stationary source” of regulated air pollutants, and obtain a Title V permit before it can operate such a source. The problem is that an immense number and variety of previously non-regulated entities--big box stores, office buildings, apartment complexes, small manufacturers, even commercial kitchens--emit enough CO2 to qualify as “major” sources.

By the EPA’s own admission, applying PSD and Title V to CO2 leads to “absurd results.” The EPA and its state counterparts will have to process approximately 41,000 PSD permit applications per year (instead of 280), and 6.1 million Title V permit applications per year (instead of 14,700). Agencies’ administrative resources will be overwhelmed, producing ever-growing backlogs that slam the brakes on new construction and force millions of firms to operate in legal limbo. A more potent anti-stimulus package would be hard to imagine.

To avert a red ink nightmare, the EPA proposes to “tailor” the permitting programs so that they exempt for six years all sources emitting less than 50,000 tons per year (TPY) of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. But the Act plainly states that a source is subject to PSD if it has the potential to emit 250 TPY of a regulated air pollutant and Title V if it has a potential to emit 100 TPY. In reality, the EPA proposes to amend the statute. This breach of the separation of powers only compounds the constitutional crisis inherent in the EPA’s bid to hijack fuel economy regulation and climate policymaking.

Even if courts uphold EPA’s tailoring rule, it’s anybody’s guess how many smaller sources EPA will try to regulate after 2016. Government burdens have a habit of ratcheting up over time.

The tailoring rule also provides no protection from the endangerment finding’s most absurd result--rulemakings to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), set below current atmospheric concentrations, for greenhouse gases. Environmental litigation groups are only acting on the obvious implication of the EPA’s assertion that the root cause of endangerment is the “elevated concentration” of greenhouse gases when they demand that the EPA initiate such rulemakings.

The economic consequences would be devastating. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to lower CO2 concentrations from today’s level--roughly 390 parts per million--to 350 ppm, the new politically correct “stabilization” target advocated by former Vice President Al Gore, the Center for Biological Diversity and numerous other environmental groups. Yet under the Clean Air Act, states are obligated to attain NAAQS within five years or, at most, 10 years. The endangerment finding thus sets the stage for environmental activists to transform the Act into a deindustrialization mandate via litigation. The Murkowski resolution would nip all this mischief in the bud.

A strong case can be made that the EPA’s endangerment finding is scientifically flawed. However, the Murkowski resolution is a referendum not about climate science but about the constitutional propriety of the EPA exercising powers not delegated by Congress. The resolution would overturn the “legal force and effect” of the EPA’s endangerment finding, not the EPA’s scientific reasoning or conclusions.

Who should make climate policy--the people’s representatives or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers and unelected activist judges appointed for life? That is the sole question raised by the Murkowski resolution. The U.S. Constitution permits only one answer.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., warns that if the public has to wait for Congress to pass legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions, “that might not happen, in a year or two, or five or six or eight or 10.” Yes, but that is representative democracy. And the democratic process is more valuable than any result that the EPA might obtain by doing an end run around it. Of all people, U.S. senators should understand this basic precept of our constitutional system.

George Allen is a former U.S. senator and governor from Virginia. He is also chairman of the American Energy Freedom Center. Marlo Lewis is a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The EU is in the midst of multiple crises, some immediate, others more long term. At times like these, what is likely to happen to climate change policy?

The immediate Greek debt crisis seems to have been solved by Eurozone and IMF pledges of many billions of euros. In turn, this has renewed confidence that any similar crises in Spain, Portugal, Ireland or other member states would be tackled similarly and controlled. Markets have pulled back from the brink of panic, but the longer-term outcome may still be serious. German voters are already displeased by their government’s decision to bail out Greece and, in the absence of effective structural change to the indebted economies, the regular flow of funds could be necessary for many years to come.

An alternative would be for Greece and countries with similar problems to leave the Eurozone and devalue their currencies sufficiently to regain their competitiveness, but the end of monetary union would be a difficult political pill to swallow. In the meantime, the UK is experimenting with a fully-fledged coalition for the first time since the Second World War. Maybe this will be part of a major reform of their political system, but first the new government has to prove itself by getting a grip on the horrendous debt problem it has also inherited. Markets may stop worrying about the Eurozone, but could turn their attention again to the crisis across the Channel, with who knows what consequences. Confidence is a fragile thing.

The recession caused by the banking crisis has itself exposed the underlying weakness in the economic models of many developed countries. Fixing this will require a period of relative austerity of a kind which many Europeans have never experienced. But at the end, this does not mean that Europe will regain its international competitiveness, let alone meet the high aspirations of the EU as a bloc. China and other large emerging economies have accumulated large trade surpluses, while growing much faster than the currently industrialised world. European countries, while continuing to offer their citizens a very comfortable way of life, will almost certainly become much smaller players on the world stage.

This uncomfortable situation will hardly be improved by adhering to current plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2020, and by a much greater extent thereafter. Despite the relatively minor costs (about 1% of GDP) predicted by Stern and others, there are many economists who think that the cost of the current policy direction to curb carbon dioxide emissions is understated. And that is without considering whether or not the carbon market approach will even be effective at both reducing emissions and keeping the lights on.

The problem is that the currently favoured solutions to the climate change problem are not in themselves economically viable. They need government subsidy, which means they have to be paid for by taxpayers, via increased taxation (direct or indirect), cuts in public services, or in higher energy prices. Governments would prefer to see increases in energy prices rather than taxation but, although the link is less direct than for tax rises, voters will still know who is to blame for this.

In prosperous times, we might grumble and carry on, although this might become increasingly untenable unless public scepticism on the climate change issue was to be reversed. But the situation now is different, very different. To use the UK example, total government debt in 2009 was £950 billion, and the annual budget deficit was £159bn, equivalent to 11.4% of GDP. The new government is committed to cutting the deficit and debt by reducing public expenditure in real terms, but there will also inevitably be tax rises. Unemployment is high, which reduces the overall tax take while increasing benefit payments. Does this government - any government - really think it can convince the electorate that a policy which leads to significantly higher energy prices is justified at a time when there will need to be considerable belt-tightening for other reasons?

Although nearly all politicians across the EU talk the talk on climate change policy, they have yet to convert this into really significant action. Could it be that they recognise the political realities and are reluctant to push voters too far? After all, the Bank of England governor is reported to have said that the austerity measures needed to reduce the UK debt mountain would make the party in power ‘unelectable for a generation’. Increasing the pain will not make them more popular.

On a broader stage, we have seen Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, refuse to make climate change the focus of the forthcoming G20 meeting, and Australian PM Kevin Rudd has had to put the country’s emissions trading scheme on hold following defeat in the Senate. After the damp squib of Copenhagen, few are now talking up the chances of significant progress in Cancun in December.

Against this backdrop, then, comes a timely new report, the Hartwell Paper, written by an international team of 14 experts, including Professors Gwyn Prins of the LSE and Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia. In the context of the Kyoto protocol and efforts to negotiate its successor, their conclusions are radical, given that they agree that climate change is a real threat which needs to be addressed.

Professor Hulme has written a piece on the BBC’s Green Room web page and, to quote from this: “It is not possible to have a ‘climate policy’ that has emissions reduction as the all-encompassing and driving goal. . . . We advocate inverting and fragmenting the conventional approach: accepting that taming climate change will only be achieved successfully as a benefit contingent upon other goals that are politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic.”

The authors propose three goals. The first is to ensure the basic needs of all the world’s population are met, which would include giving access to electricity for the first time to an estimated 1.5bn people. The second goal is to achieve this sustainably; although the concept is somewhat woolly and prone to capture by different interests, the idea of looking at longer term consequences of actions is certainly not a bad one. Thirdly, the report has a goal of resilience, ensuring that societies can cope with extreme weather or other events. This is where more prosperous societies score highly, as they have the resources to protect their citizens.

Putting access to electricity before dealing with emissions will seem to many to be heretical. Compounding the heresy is this line of thought: “If energy access is to be expanded to include those without access today while meeting expected growth in global energy demand in the rest of the world, the unit costs of energy will necessarily have to come down.” Rather than forcing the price of energy up by dictating the use of uneconomic renewable technologies such as wind and solar, the report proposes a flat carbon tax which would fund a large research effort aimed at developing alternative energy sources which can compete directly with fossil fuels.

This is a refreshing take on the issue, and one which sensible politicians will think long and hard about. It puts the needs of people - particularly the poorest - first, it shows confidence in human innovative capacity, and it proposes a simple and transparent way to fund the efforts and signal the need to move away from fossil fuel use in the longer term. It will, of course, produce howls of protest from those hitched to the global emissions reduction juggernaut and philosophically wedded to the ‘polluter pays’ concept.

Translating this into action would mean, in the short term, no more investment in expensive, intermittent off-shore wind around the UK, no repeat of Germany’s costly encouragement of solar power, and a further step away from Spain’s highly subsidised boom in renewables. Instead, the focus would be on developing generation systems which would compete directly with fossil fuels. They would begin to replace conventional power generation because they offer benefits and lower costs rather than because governments use taxpayers’ money to subsidise them. The renewable energy revolution would not be stopped forever, just delayed. The first European politicians to back this approach are likely to have their courage rewarded by strong public support.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS

This news story about Taiwan has been making the rounds with the usual alarming news outlets. My view is clearly on subsidence, caused by poor land use practice. See below the Continue Reading line for the easily found reasons.

File picture of rescuers searching for residents trapped by the rising flood waters sparked by typhoon Morakot in Pingtung, southern Taiwan last year

Excerpts: from AFP via Yahoo News “Rising sea levels threaten Taiwan”

TUNGSHIH, Taiwan (AFP) – When worshippers built a temple for the goddess Matsu in south Taiwan 300 years ago, they chose a spot they thought would be at a safe remove from the ocean. They did not count on global warming. Now, as the island faces rising sea levels, the Tungshih township is forced to set up a new temple nearby, elevated by three metres (10 feet) compared with the original site.

“Right now, the temple is flooded pretty much every year,” said Tsai Chu-wu, the temple’s chief secretary, explaining why the 63-million-dollar project is necessary. “Once the new temple is completed, we should be able to avoid floods and the threat of the rising sea, at least for many, many years,” he said.

The temple of Matsu, ironically often described as the Goddess of the Sea, is only one example of how global warming is slowly, almost imperceptibly piling pressure on Taiwan....

And unlike the temple, none of these crucial economic establishments can possibly be lifted, leaving them exposed to the elements. “If the sea levels keep rising, part of Taiwan’s low-lying western part could be submerged,” said Wang Chung-ho, an earth scientist at Taiwan’s top academic body Academia Sinica…

Still, environmentalists consider the risk too high to ignore, and they point out that it is compounded by the overpumping of groundwater both for traditional agriculture and for fish farming. This has caused the groundwater level to fall and land to subside below sea level in some coastal areas, experts warn. The greatest extent of seawater encroachment has been estimated to be as far as 8.5 kilometres inland with an affected area of about 104 square kilometres (40 square miles) in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung county, according to a study co-written by Wang. Once low-lying areas are routinely invaded by sea water, it is very hard to turn back the tide, analysts warned…

In its 2007 assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations said that due to the global warming, the world’s sea level is projected to rise by up to 0.59 metres before the end of this century. However, Wang was more pessimistic, citing recent findings that greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than previously believed.

Read the rest of the story here: AFP via Yahoo News

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And where is Pingtung County in Taiwain?

But that is not where the Matsu temple that is the focus of the story is, it is a misdirection. Read on.

Now consider this news story about a hi-speed rail system in Taiwan from China Daily that says:

Safety concerns were raised after according to the Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) figures revealed that at its worst, the land at one site along the stretch in Yunlin County has sunk 55 centimeters over the past seven years.

Over-pumping of underground water for irrigation has been blamed for the subsidence, and the Water Resources Agency (WRA) has identified 1,115 wells in the area that need to be sealed to stop the sinking.

Seems pretty clear that subsidence is happening quickly in that county. Here’s a paper studying the Yuanlin area, Changhua County. PDF here. Note the mention of Yunlin County, save that for later.

Using Radar Interferometry to Observe Land Subsidence in Yuanlin area, Changhua County, Taiwan

Abstract: The behavior of land subsidence in Yuanlin area, Changhua County, Taiwan has been monitored by the two-pass method of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) during the period from 1995 to 2002. Our interferometric result has shown that the subsidence behavior is unusual right before and after the Chi-Chi earthquake. Two-month before the earthquake, the pre-seismic differential interferogram detects a substantial increase in land subsidence with a prominent U-shaped pattern of groundwater level change. Two days after the devastating earthquake, our one-month image-pair shows a five-fold increase in land subsidence and an apparent shift of subsidence center. In this study, we suggest mechanisms that contribute to land subsidence in pre-seismic, co-seismic and post-seismic. We tend to believe that the circular/elongated pattern shown in our interferograms are caused by a point-source deformation. Besides, strain also plays a very important role in accelerating land subsidence shown in the post-seismic differential interferogram. It causes a very sudden, step-like surge in groundwater. The shaking of the earthquake as well as the increase of groundwater trigger the occurrence of soil liquefaction, in return, accelerating land subsidence. We propose there are two center of land subsidence right after the Chi-Chi earthquake though only one subsidence center can be observed in our differential interferogram.

Here’s what the Taipei Times shows happening as a result of land subsidence:

Land subsidence causes damage to a house in Tungan village, Kaohsiung County. PHOTO: HSU PAI-YING, TAIPEI TIMES

Here’s an interesting passage from the Geography Department at NTU titled The Hazards of Taiwan:

The fish-farming industry in western and northeastern Taiwan requires several times more ground water than is needed for irrigation. This kind of over-pumping of ground water results in serious land subsidence or sinking in the coastal areas. According to a recent survey, an area of up to 1,097 square kilometers suffers from subsidence: this is 3% of the island’s total land area and 9% of its flat area. This problem obviously needs an immediate and effective solution.

So even though there is plentiful evidence that local land use abuse resulting in subsidence is the primary cause of seawater incursions, the reporter, Benjamin Yeh, chooses instead to make “global warming” the primary culprit.

His paragraph says it all:

The temple of Matsu, ironically often described as the Goddess of the Sea, is only one example of how global warming is slowly, almost imperceptibly piling pressure on Taiwan.

Religion and global warming, a match made in heaven.

From this Taiwan Government Report on Water Resources we find this paragraph:

Land Subsidence

Lured by profits, many farmers in the coastal areas of Yunlin, Changhua, Pingtung, Chiayi, and Ilan have expanded into aquaculture. Aquaculturalists have dug 170,000 illegal wells and pumped excessive amounts of groundwater, because it is cheap and stable in temperature. In addition to being used in aquaculture, groundwater is also pumped for industrial, residential, and standard agricultural uses. Recent data shows that while 5.94 billion cubic meters of groundwater is being pumped annually, only four billion cubic meters is being replaced. This deficit has caused land in many areas to subside, especially along the southwestern coast and on the Ilan Plain. Overall, almost 865 square kilometers of Taiwan’s plains, or a full 8 percent, tend to subside. The most serious subsidence has occurred around Chiatung in Pingtung County, where sites have sunk by as much as 3.06 meters. The average rate of subsidence in the coastal areas is between five and 15 centimeters each year.

The Temple of Matsu is in Yunlin County which is located on this map:

Another study on groundwater and subsidence from the Department of Geomatics, National Cheng Kung University says:

For example, the overall amount of subsidence in Yunlin area in the past 30 years reaches about 2 meters, and the total affected area of subsidence is about 516 km2. Land subsidence has increased the vulnerability in this area, and a large portion of which lies below the mean sea level.

When badly flawed articles like this one from AFP’s Benjamin Yeh appear, blaming global warming for flooding clearly caused by land subsidence as a result of poor land use practice, we need to complain loudly to editors.

See Anthony’s post and comments here.

I have just been reading a Reuter’s report from India, about the suffering endured by poor, honest, hard-working climate scientists, as they seek to warn a careless world of looming climate disaster, only to be attacked, threatened and vilified by the “climate deniers”.  My heart bleeds.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that “climate deniers” do not exist - or if they do, I’ve yet to meet one.  It is a self-evident fact that the earth’s climate has changed, often rapidly and substantially, over geological time.  It is well-known that we have had a series of warm and cool cycles over the last two thousand years.  We have all seen the paintings of Ice Fairs on the frozen Thames in the seventeenth century, when oxen were roasted on great fires on the ice.  Anyone who denies the clear fact that the climate changes is either ignorant or mad.

There is of course a legitimate debate to be had about why the climate changes.  Until recent years, everyone understood that climate was multifactorial, and it was clear that the primary drivers were solar activity and astronomical cycles.  It is only in recent years that the good and the great have decided we were wrong, and that the only significant cause of climate change is atmospheric CO2 (which is merely a trace gas in the atmosphere, and is not even the most significant greenhouse gas - which is water vapour).  They seem to have lost sight of the fact that there is almost zero correlation over time between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature, or that over geological time CO2 levels have sometimes been well over ten times higher than today.  Or that the highest concentrations of atmospheric CO2 occurred during a major Ice Age.

Two lines from the Reuters report caught my eye.  The first was from Michael Mann: “The attacks against climate science represent the most highly coordinated, heavily financed, attack against science that we have ever witnessed”.  Michael Mann was, of course, the progenitor of the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph, one of the most discredited artefacts in the history of science.  He is the man who resisted scrutiny of his data and his methods, and fought tooth and nail against releasing details of his work, which might have enabled others to check it.  He was the man who (in effect) relied on a few rather atypical trees in California to construct climate scenarios that defied reason.  He was the man who grafted together two wholly unrelated data series to support his case, because neither series alone supported his hypothesis. But he failed to make it clear that he had done so.  He was also a close associate of those splendid guys at the University of East Anglia, those of the e-mails scandal, who worked so hard to “hide the decline” in late twentieth century data.  Then he seems hurt when people challenge his findings.

But “heavily financed”?  Reuters mention a Greenpeace report released last month, saying that “ExxonMobil gave nearly $9 million to entities linked to the climate denialist camp between 2005 and 2008”.  Wow. $9 million.  How does that compare to the literally Billions of dollars that have been poured into the Warmist cause?  The research funding for people like Michael Mann, and the UEA’s CRU, from governments and foundations and institutions?  The vast market created in trading carbon credits, which is being fraudulently used and abused to generate profits on the back of imaginary trades in a virtual commodity, and which is siphoning off vast sums from developed countries to Russia and China and India and developing countries through the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism”?  What about the millions that Al Gore has personally made through his espousal of the Warmist cause?

Look at the companies (including major oil companies) who are profiting from green hysteria, whether through emissions trading schemes, or by becoming rent seekers in heavily-subsidised green energy programmes.  In the UK alone climate mitigation measures put in place by this Labour government (which pray heaven will be gone between my typing these words and publishing the piece) will cost tens of billions of pounds.  Look at the businesses and scientists and researchers whose jobs depend on Warmism.  Look at the environmental journalists, like the odious Geoffrey Lean at the Daily Telegraph, who depend on Warmism for their pay-cheque - never mind the Climate Change Managers and Global Warming Awareness Officers on every local council, that you pay for through your council tax, and the DEFRA advertising campaigns, and the massive propaganda programmes designed to terrify the children in our schools.

The truth is that climate alarmism has become the most expensive, and the most wasteful, project in the history of the world.  It is junk economics built on junk science.  It amounts to no more than hot air, yet it looks set to beggar our grandchildren.

See Roger’s post and site here.

Electricity will cost twice as much as power plants. The controversial Cape Wind project will cost taxpayers and ratepayers more than $2 billion to build - three times its original estimate. That colossal cost is the driving force behind the sky-high electric rates it plans to charge Massachusetts customers in coming years.

Cape Wind, which wants to build 130 wind turbines off the coast of Cape Cod, and National Grid announced yesterday that they’ve reached an agreement to start charging customers 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour in 2013 - more than double the current rate of electricity from conventional power plants and land-based wind farms.

Under the 15-year National Grid contract, the price of Cape Wind’s electricity would increase 3.5 percent each year, pushing the kilowatt price to about 34.7 cents by the time the contract ends.

The current price of National Grid’s non-wind electricity is now about 9 cents per kilowatt. That means the cost of fossil-fuel generated electricity would have to increase nearly four-fold just to keep pace with Cape Wind’s prices over the next 15 years.

“I’m glad it’s your electric bills and not mine,” said Robert McCullough, president of McCullough Research, an Oregon energy consulting firm, referring to Cape Wind’s prices.

He said Massachusetts would have been better off going with less costly land-based wind farms.

“Why are you spending billions (on offshore wind) when you can pay half that with traditional wind?” he asked.

The release of the Cape Wind-National Grid rate numbers, which still must be approved by the Department of Public Utilities, allowed experts for the first time to calculate Cape Wind’s construction costs.

Experts now project it will cost at least $2 billion, and possibly in excess of $2.5 billion. Three sources familiar with the Cape Wind-National Grid negotiations confirmed yesterday that Cape Wind’s final price tag will be above $2 billion.

Because of available federal tax credits, Cape Wind could reap about $600 million in taxpayer subsidies if the final cost is $2 billion, in addition to its higher power rates.

Cape Wind president Jim Gordon yesterday again refused to say how much construction will cost, citing competitive talks he’s now in with construction companies.

Cape Wind and National Grid, which is planning to buy half the energy the wind farm will produce, said their rate deal will add about $1.59 a month, or about 5 cents a day, to the current ratepayer’s bill in 2013.

“The question is whether folks are prepared to pay five cents a day for a better energy future,” said Gordon.

Ian Bowles, Gov. Deval Patrick’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said the National Grid prices are competitive if renewable energy credits are deducted.

But energy experts said the proposed National Grid rates, especially with the annual inflation adjustments, add up to a very high price.

“This would seem to me to be a most unwelcome additional energy tax” on customers, said Peter Beutel, an energy analyst at Cameron Hanover in Connecticut. See more here.

The Department of Energy yesterday reported a sharp drop last year in emissions of carbon dioxide, and a steeper decline than what was anticipated through the impacts of the recession alone. The graph above shows one particularly notable disconnect - a drop in emissions far steeper than the drop in gross domestic product. The report uses well-designed graphics to break down the trend sector by sector and every page is worth exploring.

Enlarged here.

Another notable finding is the influence of a big switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation, as gas prices fell nearly 50 percent while coal prices rose 6.8 percent relative to 2008. For anyone who cares about the climate, the bottom line there - because natural gas emits nearly half the carbon dioxide as coal for the same amount of produced heat - is finding a way to manage risks from harvesting vast deposits of gas without rejecting that resource altogether.

The findings have cheered environmentalists and climate campaigners, who see signs that the country could hit proposed targets for emissions in 2020 without too much cost or disruption. It’s conceivable, some seasoned experts on energy and the economy say, but way too soon to celebrate. One reason simply is that the underlying data tracked by the government are notoriously “foggy,” according to Lee Schipper, a specialist in energy use with appointments at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Schipper, who has spent many years sifting data on home size, heating bills, appliance purchases, driving habits, freight shipments and other activities that indirectly gauge the use of different fuels, sent me a note about the challenge of gauging trends during turbulent economic times. One big issue, he said, is that the Department of Energy has stopped tracking many lines of data that matter. Here’s his note:

“If there is one lesson, it is that in times of rapid growth or recession, different parts of the economy change at different rates, and that differential alone can cause significant changes in the ratio of energy to G.D.P. Since a big recession might hit coal-burning utilities’ customers more than other utility customers (to name one example) or hit coal-using industries like cement and steel more than others, one has to look carefully not only at CO2 emissions changes but at underlying economic activity or personal activity changes and how those are tied to emissions in a disaggregated way.

It’s hard to imagine how the U.S. will enact any sensible policies in this foggy atmosphere.”

See post and comments here.

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Available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

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The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

Americans are being inundated with claims about renewable and alternative energy. Advocates for these technologies say that if we jettison fossil fuels, we’ll breathe easier, stop global warming and revolutionize our economy. Yes, “green” energy has great emotional and political appeal. But before we wrap all our hopes—and subsidies—in it, let’s take a hard look at some common misconceptions about what “green” means.

1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. Even an aging natural gas well producing 60,000 cubic feet per day generates more than 20 times the watts per square meter of a wind turbine. A nuclear power plant cranks out about 56 watts per square meter, eight times as much as is derived from solar photovoltaic installations. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of “energy sprawl,” including tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities.

Nor does wind energy substantially reduce CO2 emissions. Since the wind doesn’t always blow, utilities must use gas- or coal-fired generators to offset wind’s unreliability. The result is minimal—or no—carbon dioxide reduction.

Denmark, the poster child for wind energy boosters, more than doubled its production of wind energy between 1999 and 2007. Yet data from Energinet.dk, the operator of Denmark’s natural gas and electricity grids, show that carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2007 were at about the same level as they were back in 1990, before the country began its frenzied construction of turbines. Denmark has done a good job of keeping its overall carbon dioxide emissions flat, but that is in large part because of near-zero population growth and exorbitant energy taxes, not wind energy. And through 2017, the Danes foresee no decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation.

2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.

In the new green economy, batteries are not included. Neither are many of the “rare earth” elements that are essential ingredients in most alternative energy technologies. Instead of relying on the diversity of the global oil market—about 20 countries each produce at least 1 million barrels of crude per day—the United States will be increasingly reliant on just one supplier, China, for elements known as lanthanides. Lanthanum, neodymium, dysprosium and other rare earth elements are used in products from high-capacity batteries and hybrid-electric vehicles to wind turbines and oil refinery catalysts.

China controls between 95 and 100 percent of the global market in these elements. And the Chinese government is reducing its exports of lanthanides to ensure an adequate supply for its domestic manufacturers. Politicians love to demonize oil-exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, but adopting the technologies needed to drastically cut U.S. oil consumption will dramatically increase America’s dependence on China.

3. A green American economy will create green American jobs.

In a global market, American wind turbine manufacturers face the same problem as American shoe manufacturers: high domestic labor costs. If U.S. companies want to make turbines, they will have to compete with China, which not only controls the market for neodymium, a critical ingredient in turbine magnets, but has access to very cheap employees.

The Chinese have also signaled their willingness to lose money on solar panels in order to gain market share. China’s share of the world’s solar module business has grown from about 7 percent in 2005 to about 25 percent in 2009.

Meanwhile, the very concept of a green job is not well defined. Is a job still green if it’s created not by the market, but by subsidy or mandate? Consider the claims being made by the subsidy-dependent corn ethanol industry. Growth Energy, an industry lobby group, says increasing the percentage of ethanol blended into the U.S. gasoline supply would create 136,000 jobs. But an analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that no more than 27,000 jobs would be created, and each one could cost taxpayers as much as $446,000 per year. Sure, the government can create more green jobs. But at what cost?

4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.

Nissan and Tesla are just two of the manufacturers that are increasing production of all-electric cars. But in the electric car’s century-long history, failure tailgates failure. In 1911, the New York Times declared that the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical” than its gasoline-fueled cousins. But the same unreliability of electric car batteries that flummoxed Thomas Edison persists today.

Those who believe that Detroit unplugged the electric car are mistaken. Electric cars haven’t been sidelined by a cabal to sell internal combustion engines or a lack of political will, but by physics and math. Gasoline contains about 80 times as much energy, by weight, as the best lithium-ion battery. Sure, the electric motor is more efficient than the internal combustion engine, but can we depend on batteries that are notoriously finicky, short-lived and take hours to recharge? Speaking of recharging, last June, the Government Accountability Office reported that about 40 percent of consumers do not have access to an outlet near their vehicle at home. The electric car is the next big thing—and it always will be.

5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.

Over the past three decades, the United States has improved its energy efficiency as much as or more than other developed countries. According to data from the Energy Information Administration, average per capita energy consumption in the United States fell by 2.5 percent from 1980 through 2006. That reduction was greater than in any other developed country except Switzerland and Denmark, and the United States achieved it without participating in the Kyoto Protocol or creating an emissions trading system like the one employed in Europe. EIA data also show that the United States has been among the best at reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per $1 of GDP and the amount of energy consumed per $1 of GDP.

America’s move toward a more service-based economy that is less dependent on heavy industry and manufacturing is driving this improvement. In addition, the proliferation of computer chips in everything from automobiles to programmable thermostats is wringing more useful work out of each unit of energy consumed. The United States will continue going green by simply allowing engineers and entrepreneurs to do what they do best: make products that are faster, cheaper and more efficient than the ones they made the year before. Read more here.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His fourth book, “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future,” will be out Tuesday, April 27.