In honor of Earth Day 2011, here are the Top 10 Environmental Scams:

1.  Global warming alarmism:  Predictions from the early global warming alarmists that the Earth was rapidly heating, and would suffer untold damage as this trend continued, have already failed to come true.  There has been no discernible warming since the mid-1990s.  Coupled with Climategate’s disclosures showing bias among key scientists, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s laughable report predicting melting Himalayan glaciers, with no evidence to back it up, it is hard to accept the global warming alarmists’ constantly changing theories as anything other than hysteria.

2.  Earth Day:  Earth Day’s solutions to save the planet often include calls for stricter government environmental regulations that would strangle the economy.  The Washington Times was right when it editorialized several years ago that Earth Day has “anti-business overtones and [a] message of guilt and limits....Earth Day is a global guilt-fest that views the future with a sense of dread....Rather than increasing their productivity, people are told to decrease their carbon footprints.”

3.  Cap and trade:  The cap-and-trade legislation that failed last year in a Democratic-controlled Congress was a maze of environmental regulations that would have resulted in lost jobs and an energy tax for the American people.  The Heritage Foundation estimated the cap-and-trade bill would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020 - $1,870 for a family of four, rising to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

4.  Green jobs:  By giving czar status to Van Jones, Obama chose an ex-Communist to come up with a plan to create green jobs.  That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the economic viability of such a government-subsidized enterprise.  Spain’s attempt at actualizing a green jobs revolution ended up costing the country more than $774,000 for each green job created, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

5.  Environment activism:  Many environmental activists are as eager to denounce capitalism as they are to save the planet.  Their activities are often aimed at preventing the development of abundant energy resources in the United States that would help the nation move toward energy independence.

6.  Hollywood hypocrisy:  The Lords of Malibu love to preach about saving Planet Earth from the evils of corporate America even while they dump tons of pollutants into the atmosphere from their high-octane cars and opulent mansions.  Memo to Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, and James Cameron:  No more lectures about reducing our carbon footprint until you ground your private jets.

7.  Wind power hypocrisy:  Wind power is another environmental dream that has proven to be too expensive to be effective on a massive scale.  And even environmentalists can’t agree on where wind projects should be located when it soils a pristine scene.  Members of the Kennedy clan opposed Cape Wind, a wind energy project in Massachusetts, because it threatens the view of Nantucket Sound.

8.  Carbon trading:  The attempt to set up a system for trading carbon emission allowances to thwart global warming gave purveyors of alarmism a way to cash in on their hysterical ranting.  Former Vice President and global warming guru Al Gore founded a private equity firm, Generation Investment Management, which trades in carbon offsets, and he made a fortune.  He even purchases carbon credits from the company for his own personal use, which comes to $30,000 a year just for his posh Belle Meade mansion in Nashville, Tenn.

9.  Greenwashing:  Greenwashing is a term used to describe companies that use marketing to portray false claims that they are turning green.  Usually these companies spend more on advertising than any real effort to save energy.  The next time you see a hotel room sign promoting the reuse of towels to save the environment, recognize that it is just spin.

10.  Al Gore:  Al Gore transformed his movie An Inconvenient Truth into a mega-money maker (see No. 8).  What is truly inconvenient about his Nobel Prize-winning film were the 11 falsehoods that it contained, as determined by a British court, including the misleading suggestion that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming.

See the report. In this analysis we take a look at the failings of IPCC based science.

On his blog, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. writes:

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.”

Note the phrase “despite common perception.” I was very pleased to see that in context with a conclusion from real data.

That “common perception” is central to the theme of “global climate disruption,” started by John P. Holdren in this presentation, which is one of the new buzzword phrases being used in the place of “global warming” and “climate change” to convey alarm.

Like Holdren, many people who ascribe to doomsday scenarios related to AGW seem to think that severe weather is happening more frequently. From a perception not steeped in the history of television technology, web technology, and mass media, which has been my domain of avocation and business, I can see how some people might think this. I’ve touched on this subject before, but it bears repeating again.

In recent years, the reach of communications technology has expanded and the speed with which natural disasters are reported has increased. With global news coverage, instant messaging, and Internet-enabled phones with cameras, is it any wonder that nothing related to severe weather or disaster escapes our notice anymore? This improved reporting makes it seem as if severe weather events and disasters are becoming much more frequent.

Using this Wikipedia timeline as a start, I created a timeline that tracks the earliest communications to the present, adding severe weather events of note and weather and news technology improvements for context. Here’s an excerpt of it (to see the full timeline, click here).

1450 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type.

1812 - The Aug. 19, 1812 New Orleans hurricane that didn’t appear in Washington, D.C.’s Daily National Intelligencer until September 22.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston.

1914 - Teletype introduced as a news tool. The Associated Press introduced the “telegraph typewriter” into newsrooms in 1914, making transmission of entire ready-to-read news stories available worldwide.

1946 - The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called “the country’s first permanent commercial television network” on August 15, 1946.

1963 - First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched.

1982 - The Weather Channel (TWC) is launched by John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo with 24-hour broadcasts of computerized weather forecasts and weather-related news.

1992 - Hurricane Andrew, spotted at sea with weather satellites, is given nearly continuous coverage on CNN and other network news outlets as it approaches Florida. Live TV news via satellite coverage as well as some Internet coverage is offered. It was the first Category 5 hurricane imaged on NEXRAD.

2011 - Notice of an earthquake off the coast of Japan was blogged near real-time thanks to a USGS email message alert before TV news media picked up the story, followed by a tsunami warning. A Japanese TV news helicopter with live feed was dispatched and showed the tsunami live as it approached the coast of Japan and hit the beaches. Carried by every major global news outlet and live-streamed on the Internet, it was the first time a tsunami of this magnitude was seen live on global television before it impacted land.

To borrow and modify a famous phrase from James Carville: It’s the technology, stupid.

Here’s the truth:

1. There have been relatively few tornadoes in the USA in recent years:

Source: National Climatic Data Center (enlarged)

2. Global tropical cyclone activity, as measured by frequency and ACE, is at the lowest level in 30 years, despite 2010 being claimed as the warmest year ever:

Global Tropical Cyclone ACE (Dr. Ryan N. Maue, FSU) (enlarged)

3. And there is no evidence that the frequency of flooding has increased in recent years:

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 behavior.

Finally, this parting note: While our world has seen the explosion of TV news networks, Internet news websites, personal cameras and recording technology, smartphones with cameras, and the ability to submit a photo or movie or live video feed virtually anywhere, anytime, giving us instant reporting of disasters, there’s one set of elusive phenomena that still hasn’t seen an increase in credible reporting and documentation: UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot.

We still haven’t seen anything credible from the millions of extra electronic eyes and ears out there, and people still marvel over old, grainy images. You’d think that if they were on the increase, we’d know about it.

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Editorial: Don’t Look Now, But C02 Output Is Falling
IBD Editorial

Environment: Two years ago, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell to their lowest levels since 1995. The list of reasons carbon dioxide emissions should not be regulated continues to grow.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s data show that emissions of what are considered the six main greenhouses gases fell 6.1% in 2009 from their 2008 levels.

Yes, levels increased by 7.3% from 1990 to 2009. But the average annual rate of increase since 1990 has been a mere 0.4%, a data point that doesn’t seem worthy of the high-intensity hysteria that’s been spread by the alarmists.

In the same year greenhouse emissions fell, the EPA, which should be an acronym for Eternally Panicked and Alarmed, determined “that climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases threatens the public’s health and the environment.” Regarding politics to be more important than science, it has taken it upon itself to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant.”

“Climate change is happening now,” the EPA has claimed, “and humans are contributing to it.”

This is the same EPA, it was revealed in congressional testimony last week, that ignores the negative impact its regulations have on jobs, even though an executive order requires EPA rule makers to protect job creation. And it’s the same EPA that plans to regulate CO2 without congressional approval.

If the agency is so keen on regulating carbon dioxide, maybe it should turn its attention to China, which has surpassed the U.S. in CO2 emissions. While U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased 7.3% from 1990 to 2009, China’s carbon dioxide emissions have soared roughly 175% since 1999. If CO2 emissions must be cut, then China is where the cutting has to start.

If not, it doesn’t matter what the U.S. does. For every part per million of carbon dioxide that Americans cut, China, and its ever-burgeoning population and growing economy, will be pumping out even more.

Fortunately, there’s no reason for any nation to cut its carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant in the usual sense. It is, in the words of John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Alabama, “a plant food.”

“The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric CO2,” Christy says.

“These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times what it is today,” he adds. “Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2.”

It is because of its presence in everything from breathing to driving to manufacturing to reading at home under the lights that CO2 makes a strong leverage point for those who want bureaucratic control over the rest of us, says Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And if CO2 continues to fall, or remains nearly flat, what will the alarmists do? Will environmentalists find a new bogeyman? They will. But they better hurry. The time they have left to demonize CO2 is running short.

This is an interesting article. The gist of it is that ‘recent’ warming in the 20th century was not out of range of normal as compared to other times. Has a couple of nice graphs, too:

The claim is often made that the rate of temperature change the Earth has experienced over the last 40 years is ‘unprecedented’, and is therefore likely to be man-made.

A quick look at the Vostok[1], EPICA[2] and GISP2[3] ice core records do not appear to support this claim, even within the stable part of the Holocene:

At that point there are some nice graphs showing trendless jiggly wigglies. Well worth hitting the link to take a look.

Then in a comment:

Juraj V. says:

This is the rate of warming/cooling calculated between the individual decades from the CET record.