Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing. (Hat tips: Will/NoIdea/Ozboy)

At its June meeting in Sitges, Spain (unreported and held in camera, as is Bilderberg’s way), some of the world’s most powerful CEOs rubbed shoulders with notable academics and leading politicians. They included: the chairman of Fiat, the Irish Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Dick Perle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the editor of the Economist… Definitely not Z-list, in other words.

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 - 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

Let me explain briefly why this is a bombshell waiting to explode.

Almost every government in the Western world from the USA to Britain to all the other EU states to Australia and New Zealand is currently committed to a policy of “decarbonisation.” This in turn is justified to (increasingly sceptical) electorates on the grounds that man-made CO2 is a prime driver of dangerous global warming and must therefore be reduced drastically, at no matter what social, economic and environmental cost. In the Eighties and Nineties, the global elite had a nice run of hot weather to support their (scientifically dubious) claims. But now they don’t. Winters are getting colder. Fuel bills are rising (in the name of combating climate change, natch). The wheels are starting to come off the AGW bandwagon. Ordinary people, resisting two decades of concerted brainwashing, are starting to notice.

All this, of course, spells big trouble for the global power elite. As well as leading to food shortages (as, for example, it becomes harder to grow wheat in northerly latitudes; adding, of course, to such already-present disasters as biofuels and the rejection of GM), global cooling is going to find electorates increasingly angry that they have been sold a pup.

Our fuel bills have risen inexorably; our countryside, our views and our property values have been ravaged by hideous wind farms; our holidays have been made more expensive; our cost of living has been driven up by green taxes; our freedoms have been curtailed in any number of pettily irritating ways from what kind of light bulbs we are permitted to use to how we dispose of our rubbish. And to what end? If man-made global warming was really happening and really a problem we might possibly have carried on putting up with all these constraints on our liberty and assaults on our income. But if it turns out to have been a myth....

Well then, all bets are off.

The next few years are going to be very interesting. Watch the global power elite squirming to reposition itself as it slowly distances itself from Anthropogenic Global Warming ("Who? Us? No. We never thought of it as more than a quaint theory..."), and tries to find new ways of justifying green taxation and control. (Ocean acidification; biodiversity; et al). You’ll notice sly shifts in policy spin. In Britain, for example, Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne’s suicidal “dash for wind” will be re-invented as a vital step towards “energy security.” There will be less talk of “combatting climate change” and more talk of “mitigation”. You’ll hear enviro-Nazis like Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren avoid reference to “global warming” like the plague, preferring the more reliably vague phrase “global climate disruption.”

And you know what the worst thing is? If we allow them to, they’re going to get away with it.

Our duty as free citizens over the next few years is to make sure that they don’t.

Al Gore, George Soros, Bill Gates, Carol Browner, John Holdren, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Tim Yeo, Michael Mann, Ted Turner, Robert Redford, Phil Jones, Chris Huhne, John Howard (yes really, he was supposed to be a conservative, but he was the man who kicked off Australia’s ETS), Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Yvo de Boer, Rajendra Pachauri….The list of the guilty goes on and on. Each in his own way - and whether through ignorance, naivety idealism or cynicism, it really doesn’t matter for the result has been the same - has done his bit to push the greatest con-trick in the history of science, forcing on global consumers the biggest bill in the history taxation, using “global warming” as an excuse to extend the reach of government further than it has ever gone before.

It is time we put a stop to this. In the US, the Tea Party movement is showing us the way. We need to punish these dodgy politicians at the ballot box. We need to ensure that those scientists guilty of malfeasance are, at the very least thrown out of the jobs which we taxpayers have been funding these last decades. We need to ensure that corporatist profiteers are no longer able to benefit from the distortion and corruption of the markets which result from green regulation.

We need a “Global Warming” Nuremberg. Read post here.

ICECAP NOTE: In addition to this excellent summary below, see a very extensive guest post on WUWT by Juraj Vanovcan “A MUST READ: European climate, Alpine glaciers and Arctic ice in relation to North Atlantic SST record”.

The scientific rationale behind the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed massive intrusion into American life in the name of fighting climate change has no scientific or constitutional justification. This hard left excursion into socialism, fully supported by the Congressional Leadership and the President, has no basis in observational science, as has been discussed previously relative to climate history, temperature, and carbon dioxide.

In addition, oceans of the Earth play the dominant role in the perpetuation and mediation of naturally induced change of global climate.[1] Density variations linking the Northern and Southern Hemisphere portions of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Southern Ocean drive the primary circulation system that controls hemispheric and global climate. Differences in temperature and salt concentration produce these density variations that circulate heat around the planet. For the last several years in this circulating environment, the sea surface temperature of the oceans appears to be leveling off or decreasing[2] with no net heat increase for the last 58 years[3] and particularly since 2003[4] and possibly since 1990[5]. The long-term climatic implications of this recent broad scale cooling are not known.

Density increase due to evaporation in the North Atlantic creates a salt-rich, cold, deepwater current that flows south to join the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Upwelling from that Circumpolar Current brings nutrient and carbon dioxide-rich deep seawater into the upper Southern Ocean. This Southern Ocean water then moves north toward the equator where it joins a warm water current flowing from the North Pacific, through the tropics and the Indian Ocean, and then northward through the Atlantic to become the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream flows into the North Atlantic where, as part of a continuous process, wind-driven evaporation increases salt concentration and density and feeds the deepwater flow back to the south. Natural interference in the normal functioning of the ocean conveyor can occur. For example, melting of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, accumulation of melt-water behind ice dams, and abrupt fresh water inputs into the North Atlantic cause major disruptions in global ocean circulation. [6]

The oceans both moderate and intensify weather and decadal climate trends due to their great capacity to store solar heat as well as their global current structure, slow mixing, salinity variations, wind interactions, and oscillatory changes in heat distribution over large volumes. [7] The Northern Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), [8] the El Nino-La Nina Southern Pacific Oscillation (ENSO), [9] the long period anchovy-sardine Southern Pacific Oscillation, [10] the Gulf Stream Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), [11] the Indonesian Through-Flow (ITF), [12v the Agulhas Current[13], and other related ocean currents and cycles have demonstrably large, decadal scale effects on regional as well as global climate. [14]

Possibly the greatest oceanic influence on global climate results from the full hemispheric reach and scale of the Southern Ocean’s Circumpolar Current as it circulates around Antarctica and between the continents of the Southern Hemisphere. [15] In particular, the northward migration of the cold to warm water front off South Africa during ice ages may restrict warm, salty water of the western Indian Ocean’s Agulhas Current from entering the South Atlantic and eventually amplify ice age cooling in North America and Europe. [16]

In several major portions of the global ocean heat conveyor, natural variations in heating, evaporation, freshwater input, [17] atmospheric convection, surface winds, and cloud cover can influence the position and strengths of related, but local ocean currents near the continents. This variation in current positioning, therefore, modifies carbon dioxide uptake and release, storm patterns, tropical cyclone frequency, [18] phytoplankton abundance, [19] drought conditions, and sea level rise that drive the reality of, as well as our perceptions of climate change.

For example, since about 7000 years ago, sea level rise has averaged about eight inches (20cm) per century for a total of about 55 feet (16m). [20] This same approximate rate appears to have held from 1842 to the mid-1980s. [21] The trend in sea level rise between the early 1900s and 1940 showed no observable acceleration attributable to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. [22] Satellite data show an apparent 50% increase of this rate after 1992, but this presumably will slow again soon due to the effects of the current period of global cooling. If the current slow rate of long-term global warming should continue for 100 years, the total sea level rise attributable to worldwide glacier melting and ocean thermal expansion would be no more that about four inches (10cm). [23]

Greenland’s ice sheet also plays a cyclic role in sea level changes. In the 1950s, Greenland’s glaciers retreated significantly only to advance again between 1970 and 1995, [24] a pattern of retreat and then advance repeated again between 1995 and 2006[25]. Predicting future sea level rise from short-term observation of Greenland’s glaciers would seem to have little validity, particularly as there appears to be a half a decade lag in observable melting and accretion responses relative to global temperature variations[26]. The same conclusion now can be made relative to Himalayan glaciers. [27]

There also seems to be little danger of a catastrophic melting of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that would cause a major rise in sea level. [28] Great uncertainty also exists relative to the natural dynamics and history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with Ross Sea sedimentary cores suggesting that major cycles of ice cover changes have occurred over the last five million years. [29] Overall, short-term sea level changes relate more to local geological dynamics that to glacial variations. [30]

Compilations of temperature changes in the oceans and seas, as preserved by oxygen isotope variations in shells from cores of bottom sediments, provide a record of natural oceanic reactions to cycles of major climate change back for 1.8 million years. [31] For example, geological analysis of sea level changes over the last 500,000 years show a remarkable correlation with major natural climate change. [32] These data further indicate that the Earth probably is approaching the peak of the warming portion of a normal climate cycle that began with the end of the last Ice Age, about 10, 000 years ago. [33]

The oceans play the major role in removing carbon from the atmosphere. Seawater calcium and various inorganic and organic processes in the oceans fix carbon from dissolved carbon dioxide as calcium carbonate, [34] planktonic and benthic organisms, and inedible forms of suspended carbon[35]. In so doing, these processes constitute major factors in global cycles of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Calcium availability in the oceans, in turn, relates to major geological dynamics, including mountain building, volcanism, river flows, and the growth, alteration, and destruction of crustal plates beneath the oceans.

Over the last 28 million years, marked variations in precipitated seawater calcium isotopes, particularly beginning about 13 million years ago, indicate major changes in sources of calcium rather than major variations in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide. [36] This change in seawater calcium isotopic makeup may relate to events that included the partial deglaciation of Antarctica[37]. As most plant activity requires carbon dioxide, low atmospheric carbon dioxide values would reduce the rate of biologically assisted rock weathering. A limit on such weathering may buffer minimum atmospheric carbon dioxide to between 150 and 250ppm by limiting levels of seawater calcium. [38]

Significant introductions of calcium into the oceans from any source would be expected to result in a drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide to maintain chemical balances in local as well as global seawater. Ultimately, the history of seawater calcium concentrations may explain many of the long-term variations in carbon dioxide levels shown in various studies; however, correlations between calcium dynamics and carbon dioxide levels are not at sufficient geological resolution to make firm, dated correlations.

Slightly increased acidification of the local environments of sea dwelling organisms in the oceans may occur related to the absorption of new emissions of carbon dioxide. On the other hand, in spite of extreme alarmist hand wringing to the contrary[39], loss of ocean carbon dioxide due to naturally rising temperature works to mitigate this trend as will the broad chemical buffering of ocean acidity by both organic and inorganic processes[40].

Iron ion and iron complex concentrations in seawater, mediated by oxidation potential (Eh) and hydrogen ion concentration (pH or acidity), play an additional role in organic carbon fixation. Relatively simple laboratory experiments suggest that increases in ocean acidity might reduce availability of chelated iron in the life cycle of phytoplankton. [41] The complexity of this process in nature, however, and the many other variables that potentially would play a role in iron metabolism, indicate a need for a much more comprehensive experimental analysis before conclusions can be drawn.

Exactly what may happen in specific ecosystems remains uncertain relative to small increases or decreases in the acidity of ocean habitats or the change in the ratios of dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide. Coral reefs, for example, have been very adaptable over geologic time and extensive research strongly suggests that they adapt well, on a global scale, to climatic changes and the small associated chemical changes in the oceans. [42] So far, research indicates that some organisms benefit and some do not, as might be expected. [43] Indeed, this interplay between losses and gains has occurred many times in the geologic past as nature has continuously adjusted to climatic changes much greater than the slow warming occurring at present. The Earth’s vast layers of carbonate rocks derived from carbon fixing organisms, including ancient, now dead coral reefs, as well as deeply submerged coral reefs on existing sea mounts, [44] show that the production and evolution of such organisms remains a continuous, if possibly, locally or regionally punctuated process.

In the face of the overwhelming dominance of the oceans on climate variability, it would appear foolish in the extreme to give up liberties and incomes to politicians in Washington and at the United Nations in the name of “doing something” about slow climate change.

The President, regulators, and Congress have chosen to try to push Americans along an extraordinarily dangerous path. That path includes unconstitutional usurpation of the rights of the people and the constitutionally reserved powers of the States as well as the ruin of economic stagnation. The Congress that takes office in 2011 absolutely must get this right!

Read more here. ICECAP NOTE: Since inception, stories on the role of the sun and oceans on climate have been posted on Icecap in the “About Climate Change” Section.  These factors taken together with contamination of temperatures (30%-70% of the changes since 1900 have been found in numerous peer review papers to be the result of urbanization and land use changes) and volcanism can explain most of the longer term trends and extremes and cyclical behavior of temperatures regionally and globally.

Dr. Don Easterbrook and I have just had a paper published (SPPI reprint here) on the ocean factors in E&E: Multidecadal Tendencies in ENSO and Global Temperatures Related to Multidecadal Oscillations, Energy & Environment, Volume 21, Numbers 5, pp. 437-460, September 2010, Joseph D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook.

Whatever we hear about the Arctic these days we should keep in mind that most information is based on satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice since 1979. With a little over thirty years of data many scientists and environmentalists use decreases in Arctic sea ice as a sure sign of man-made global warming. A little over thirty years of data is hardly a blink of an eyelid in terms of geological time. As Richard Lindzen, a prominent global warming skeptic and professor at MIT puts it, “this is a primitive field where nobody has much idea of anything.” (1)

There are some other issues that cloud the temperature data from the Arctic. They include an expanded definition of ‘Arctic,’ extrapolations rather than accurate temperature measurements, and the simple fact that the Arctic has been warmer in previous times.

First, let’s look at the expanded definition of ‘Arctic.’ If you headed south from the Arctic toward the equator would you expect the weather to change? Well, you don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to know that the further you got away from the Arctic Circle the more likely the weather wouldn’t be as severe. One unreported fact about the Arctic is that its geographical boundaries have been expanded. Several years ago the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) decided to expand the Arctic by about 50% or approximately 4 million square miles. (2) Have you seen or heard about this from the media?

What about temperature extrapolations? James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute (GISS) analysis has reached a new record in 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than in the long-term mean. Yet, as Dennis Avery reports, “Here’s what Hansen doesn’t report. GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic. It has hardly any thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle. How do they determine the temperature? GISS estimates its Arctic temperatures from land-based thermometers that each supposedly represents the temperatures over 1200 square kilometers.” (3) Art Horn observes, “You must be asking how can GISS show any temperature readings at all north of eighty degrees if they don’t have any data? The answer is simple, they make it up. In broadcasting there is an old saying that says, “Why let the truth stand in the way of a good story.” Apparently GISS and NOAA have borrowed that storyline to make the case that the world is warming dangerously due to the way we make energy.” (4)

In 2007 you probably heard about the most expansive Arctic ice melt ever, but were you told of the record refreeze that autumn? During a ten-day period in November, a NASA eye-in-the-sky recorded sea ice in the Arctic Ocean growing 58,000 square miles per day - about the same size as Illinois or Georgia. (5)

Arctic Was Warmer Before

The Arctic was warmer between 1920 and 1940 than it is now. (6) Here’s a familiar-sounding report about a Norwegian scientific expedition to the Arctic (in 1922), courtesy of Steven Hayward (7):

“The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic all point to a radical change in climate conditions, and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface...Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted...Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable. Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they may have entirely disappeared. The change in temperature has also brought about great changes in the flora and fauna of the Arctic.”...Monthly Weather Review, November 1922

Ian Plimer adds, “Arctic climate has always been complex yet we are constantly bombarded with glib explanations of Arctic climate variability. We often hear in the media about unprecedented warming of the Arctic. A good way to test this claim is to go to Baffin Island, Canada, one of the coldest parts of the world, and measure pollen, fossils and oxygen isotopes. Pollen from some of the Baffin Island lakes shows that it was some 5 C warmer 10,000 and 8,500 years ago than now.” (8)

Intrepid Trekkers

Some folks have decided to trek across the Arctic to highlight global warming. Paul Driessen and Willie Soon describe their efforts. “First American Ann Bancroft and Norwegian Liv Arnesen trekked off across the Arctic in the dead of the 2007 winter “to raise awareness about global warming,” by showcasing the wide expanses of open water they were certain they would encounter. Instead, icy blasts drove temperatures inside their tents to -58F, while outside the nighttime air plunged to -103F. Facing frostbite, amputated toes and even death, the two were airlifted out 18 miles into their 530 mile expedition. Next winter it was British swimmer and ecologist Lewis Gordon Pugh, who planned to breast-stroke open Arctic seas. Same story, Then fellow Brit Pen Hadow gave it a go, but it was another no-go. This year (2010), Aussie Tom Smitheringale set off to demonstrate ‘the effect that global warming is having on the polar ice caps.’ He was rescued and flown out, after coming ‘very close to the grave,’ he confessed.” (9)

Al Gore ought to join one of these treks for a reality check. In 2008 he predicted that “the entire north polar ice cap will be completely gone in five years.” (2)

Summary

The Arctic shows no signs of warming, according to the latest data from the Danish Meteorological Institute’s Center for Ocean and Ice. During June 2010, in fact, virtually every single day saw temperatures below the mean experienced over the last half-century. The data which is taken daily casts doubt on climate models that had predicted a steady warming of the Arctic. The Danish Institute has tracked mean temperatures above the 80th northern parallel since 1958. (10) By contrast, the record most folks cite, ‘the satellite record’, as mentioned earlier is only a little over thirty years long.

Christopher Horner sums this up quite well, “There’s something about the upper northern latitudes that causes reporters and editors to completely abandon perspective. One factor could be that the predicted global warming is largely limited to the northern hemisphere. In fact, despite the radio silence in the face of inconvenient research, the Arctic gets disproportionate attention from the media given that it contains less than 3 percent of the world’s ice compared to the cooling Antarctic whose growing ice mass represents approximately 90 percent.” (11)

References

Michael Goldfarb, “The Polar Bears Are All Right,” The Weekly Standard, Volume 013, Issue 29
Brian Sussman, Climategate, (New York, WND Books, 2010), 114
Dennis T. Avery, “Probably Not the Hottest Year,” www.cfgi.org, August 9, 2010
Art Horn, “Last June Was Hottest Ever?”, energytribune.com, August 5, 2010
“Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace,” Associated Press, December 12, 2007
Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth, (New York, Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009), 237
Steven F. Hayward, “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2009”, Pacific Research Institute, April 2009
Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth, 257
Paul Driessen and Willie Soon, “(Desperately) Looking for Arctic Warming,” townhall.com, May 1, 2010
Lawrence Solomon, “Arctic chills down,” financialpost.com, July 6, 2010
Christopher C. Horner, Red Hot Lies, (Washington, DC, Regnery Publishing, 2008), 13

On Labor Day in Milwaukee, President Obama vowed to “keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American Dream.” Stirring rhetoric, no doubt; but to the employees at Thilmany Papers, a company that employs 850 people in two specialty paper mills in Wisconsin, it means little.

That’s because the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is threatening their livelihoods. The threat comes from EPA’s proposal to regulate industrial boilers, the Boiler MACT rule. As with most EPA rules, the Boiler MACT (maximum achievable control technology standards) sounds arcane, and seems to be the remote province of federal technocrats. This is certainly true, but its impact will be pervasive and damaging. Here’s what Thilmany had to say about it: “Our business, like many others, encounters many challenges. However, none threaten the continued existence of our business like this [proposed rule].”

The United Steelworkers (USW) union emphatically opposes the Boiler MACT proposal. As the USW sees it, the proposal “will be sufficient to imperil the operating status of many industrial plants.” The USW represents hundreds of thousands of workers, “in the most heavily impacted industries, among them pulp & paper, steel, and rubber.” In the union’s view, “Tens of thousands of these jobs will be imperiled. In addition, many more tens of thousands of jobs in the supply chains and in the communities where these plants are located also will be at risk.”

The Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), which represents major manufacturers with more than 750,000 employees, couldn’t have been more adamant: “We cannot emphasize more forcefully the need to the EPA to completely rethink this rule.” That’s because IECA’s member companies “are enormously concerned that the high costs of this proposed rule will leave companies no recourse but to shut down the entire facility, not just the boiler.”

It would be one thing if the Boiler MACT were an isolated instance of a flawed policy. But this flawed policy is part of a larger Obama EPA agenda to set industrial policy for the nation. EPA’s industrial policy should frighten those who hold jobs in factories across America - indeed, for those who aspire to live the American dream. For EPA’s policy sees a growing, thriving, job-creating manufacturing sector as incompatible with its unique brand of environmentalism.

The most prominent manifestation of EPA’s anti-industrial policy is the agency’s pending regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. EPA’s rules will extend the federal bureaucracy into every corner of American life. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council believes EPA’s global warming regulations will cause “a cessation of expansion, hiring, investment, construction and new business start-up activity.” EPA’s new rules will require, among many other things, businesses of all kinds - from cement and steel plants to auto parts manufacturers to Wal-Marts - to obtain from EPA costly and time-consuming permits for construction and expansion.

On top of this, EPA is planning to revise the current ozone standard under the Clean Air Act. This standard was lowered during the Bush administration in 2008 - yet apparently not far enough for Obama’s EPA. Despite the fact that no new compelling public health studies have emerged to justify a lower standard, the Obama EPA supports ozone levels approaching, in some areas, what’s present in the air naturally, absent any human contribution. 

EPA’s expected new ozone standard will mar several hundred counties across the country with a scarlet “non-attainment” designation. This means more than just failing to meet the new standard: Such a designation severely constrains the ability of local communities to expand and create jobs. 

EPA estimates the new ozone standard could cost the economy as much as $90 billion. Unions for Jobs and the Environment, a coalition of unions that includes, among others, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the IBEW and the United Mine Workers, says the potential new standards “will lead to significant jobs losses across the country.”

President Obama speaks grandiosely about restoring the American dream. Yet, all the while, his EPA churns out rules that will crush America’s industries and the manufacturing jobs they support. It’s time to stop EPA’s impending nightmare of shuttered factories and tradesmen with pink slips. And it’s time to restore the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic growth.  See op ed here.

Sen. Inhofe is ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session.  It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia.

First, when exactly is something not sustainable? When known deposits (proven reserves) may be depleted in ten years? 50? 100? What if looming depletion results from government policies that forbid access to lands that might contain new deposits - as with US onshore and offshore prospects for oil, gas, coal, uranium, rare earth minerals and other vital resources?

Rising prices, new theories about mineral formation, and improved discovery and extraction technologies and techniques typically expand energy and mineral reserves - postponing depletion by years or decades, as in the case of oil and natural gas. But legislation, regulation, taxation and litigation prevent these processes from working properly, hasten depletion, and make “sustainability” an even more politicized, manipulated and meaningless concept.

Second, should the quest for mandated “sustainable” technologies be based on real, immediate threats - or will imaginary or exaggerated crises suffice? Dangerous manmade global cooling morphed into dangerous manmade global warming, then into “global climate disruption” - driven by computer models and disaster scenarios, doctored temperature data, manipulated peer reviews, and bogus claims about melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Shouldn’t policies that replace reliable, affordable energy with expensive, intermittent, land-intensive, subsidized sources be based on solid, replicable science?

Enlarged here.

Third, shouldn’t inconvenient sustainability issues be resolved before we proceed any further, by applying the same guidelines to renewable energy as courts, regulators and eco-activists apply to petroleum?

Most oil, gas, coal and uranium operations impact limited acreage for limited times - and affected areas must be restored to natural conditions when production ends. Effects on air and water quality, habitats and protected species are addressed through regulations, lease restrictions and fines. The operations generate vast amounts of affordable, reliable energy from relatively small tracts of land, and substantial revenues.

Wind turbines generate small amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity from gargantuan installations on thousands of acres. Turbines and their associated transmission lines dominate scenic vistas, disrupt habitats and migratory routes, affect water drainage patterns, impede crop dusting and other activities, and kill bats, raptors and other birds, including endangered species that would bring major fines if the corporate killers were oil or mining companies. And yet, wind operators receive exemptions from environmental review, biodiversity and endangered species laws that traditional energy companies must follow - on the ground that such rules would raise costs and delay construction of “eco-friendly” projects.

Kentucky’s Cardinal coal mine alone produces 75% of the Btu energy generated by all the wind turbines and solar panels in the USA, Power Hungry author Robert Bryce calculates. Unspoiled vistas, rural and maritime tranquility, and bald eagles will all be endangered if 20% wind power mandates are enacted.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station near Phoenix generates nearly 900 times more electricity than Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base photovoltaic panels, on less land, for 1/15 the cost per kWh - and does it 90% of the time, versus 30% of the time for the Nellis array. Generating Palo Verde’s electrical output via Nellis technology would require solar arrays across an area ten times larger than Washington, DC.

Building enough photovoltaic arrays to power greater Los Angeles would mean blanketing thousands of square miles of desert habitat. Once built, solar and wind systems will be there just this side of forever, since there will be no energy production if we let them decay, after shutting down whatever hydrocarbon operations aren’t needed to fuel backup generators that keep wind and solar facilities operational.

Wind and solar power also mean there is a sudden demand for tons of rare earth elements that weren’t terribly important a decade ago. They exist in very low concentrations, require mining and milling massive amounts of rock and ore to get the needed minerals, and thus impose huge ecological impacts.

If mountaintop removal to extract high quality coal at reduced risk to miners is unacceptable and unsustainable - how is it eco-friendly and sustainable to clear-cut mountain vistas for wind turbines? Blanket thousands of square miles with habitat-suffocating solar panels? Or remove mountains of rock to mine low-grade rare earth mineral deposits for solar panel films, hybrid batteries and turbine magnets?

Since any undiscovered US rare earth deposits are likely locked up in wilderness and other restricted land use areas, virtually no exploration or development will take place here. We will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers, like China, which are using them in their own manufacturing operations - and selling us finished wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries. The United States will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers for renewable energy, just as we rely on foreign countries for oil and uranium.

To claim any of this is ecologically or economically sustainable strains credulity.

Green jobs will mostly be overseas, subsidized by US tax and energy dollars - other people’s money (OPM). Indeed, Americans have already spent over $20 billion in stimulus money on “green” energy projects. However, 80% of the funding for some of them went to China, India, South Korea and Spain, and three-fourth of the turbines for eleven US wind projects were made overseas. This is intolerable, indefensible and unsustainable. But it gets worse.

Denver’s Nature and Science Museum used $720,000 in stimulus money to install photovoltaic panels and reduce its electricity bills by 20 percent. The panels may last 25 years, whereas it will take 110 years to save enough on those bills to pay for the panels - and by then four more sets of panels will be needed.

As to biofuels, the US Navy recently waxed ecstatic over its success with camellia-based eco-fuel in fighter jets. But the PC biofuel costs $67.50 per gallon, versus $5.00 per gallon for commercial jet fuel.

To meet the 36-billion-gallons-a-year-by-2022 federal ethanol diktat, we would have to grow corn on cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, to get 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol - plus switchgrass on farmlands and habitats the size of South Carolina, to produce 21 billion gallons of “advanced biofuel.” By contrast, we could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from frozen tundra equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge weren’t off limits.

OPM-subsidized ethanol also means a few corn growers and ethanol refiners make hefty profits. But chicken and beef producers, manufacturers that need corn syrup, and families of all stripes get pounded by soaring costs, to generate a fuel that gets one-third less mileage per tank than gasoline.

Hydrocarbons fueled the most amazing and sustained progress in human history. Rejecting further progress - in the name of sustainability or climate protection - requires solid evidence that we face catastrophes if we don’t switch to “sustainable” alternatives. Computer-generated disaster scenarios and bald assertions by Al Gore, Harry Reid, John Holdren and President Obama just don’t make the grade.

We need to improve energy efficiency and conserve resources. Science and technology will continue the great strides we have made in that regard. Politically motivated mandates will impose huge costs for few benefits. Sustainability claims will simply redistribute smaller shares of a shrinking economic pie.

“Renewable” energy subsidies may sustain the jobs of lobbyists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats and politically connected companies. But they will kill millions of other people’s jobs.

Let’s be sure to remind our elected officials of this along their campaign trails - and on November 2. PDF

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.