By Mark Newgent, Red Maryland

Last week I attended a PR event for the new movie Cool It featuring the Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. Cool It based on Lomborg’s book by the same name, is an antidote to Al Gore’s fallacy riddled scare mongering film, An Inconvenient Truth. The film accepts that global warming or climate change (the alarmists are using climate crisis now) is real and it should be dealt with, but that it’s not the apocalyptic event Gore makes it out to be, and that the current Kyoto-style cap and trade approach is not working.

Lomborg argues - correctly - that spending trillions of dollars on carbon mitigation schemes (cap and trade) for a negligible return on investment - literally less than a degree of temperature reduction - is waste of money, which could be used to address more pressing issues like poverty and healthcare

I asked Lomborg what he thought about Martin O’Malley’s plan to reduce Maryland’s greenhouse gasses by 25% of 2006 levels by 2020. Lomborg’s replied “good luck with that.”

The snarky bluntness of Lomborg’s criticism may offend Maryland’s green zealots, but it has the virtue of being true.

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act introduced and signed into law by O’Malley states that reaching the 25% reduction target must have a “positive impact on Maryland’s economy.” The state’s manufacturing industry is exempted while the state’s energy production and transportation sectors are specifically targeted. The law tasks the Maryland Department of the Environment with preparing a plan by the end of 2011, to reach the goal

Reading the text of the law it appears that it’s architects (it was written by environmental special interest groups) believed they could overcome economic reality simply through legislative fiat.

Consider these three provisions:

ENSURE THAT THE PLAN DOES NOT DECREASE THE LIKELIHOOD OF RELIABLE AND AFFORDABLE ELECTRICAL SERVICE AND STATEWIDE FUEL SUPPLIES

Carbon reduction schemes do exactly the opposite. They increase the likelihood of unreliable and unaffordable energy. The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade scheme showed that it would raise an average family’s energy bill by $1,241. By what alchemy would a state level plan not increase our energy costs?

DO NOT DISPROPORTIONATELY IMPACT LOW-INCOME, LOW-TO MODERATE-INCOME, OR MINORITY COMMUNITIES OR ANY OTHER PARTICULAR CLASS OF ELECTRICITY RATEPAYERS;

Unfortunately, the poorest of Marylanders would be hit the hardest by increases in energy costs.

PRODUCE A NET ECONOMIC BENEFIT TO THE STATE’S ECONOMY AND A NET INCREASE IN JOBS IN THE STATE; AND ENCOURAGE NEW EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN THE STATE RELATED TO ENERGY CONSERVATION, ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SUPPLY, AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS REDUCTION TECHNOLOGIES.

As Europe’s experience shows us, this is pure fantasy. In Spain two jobs are destroyed for every one green job created and all of Germany’s vaunted renewable energy production hasn’t stopped any carbon emissions.

This law is the result of the “findings” of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change, a body formed by O’Malley and whose work he farmed out to a global warming advocacy group, the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS). The commission produced a pre-determined climate action report - paid for and written by environmental special interests - calling for all manner of economy killing policy prescriptions.

The commission’s findings and methodology were so absurd it led to this summary by the Beacon Hill Institute

1. CCS failed to quantify benefits in a way that they can be meaningfully compared to costs;

2. When estimating economic impacts, CCS often misinterpreted costs to be benefits;

3. The estimates of costs left out important factors, causing CCS to understate the true costs of its recommendations.

And

For policymakers, the CAP report offers no worthwhile guidance. The report fails to quantify the monetary benefits of reduced GHG emissions rendering its cost savings estimates implausible if not downright unbelievable.

Reading through the commission’s policy menu, Martin O’Malley has foisted upon Maryland a prescription for tax increases and regulatory burdens in the pursuit of an unattainable goal.

The Science and Public Policy Institute studied Maryland’s climate history and found that even if Maryland ceased all carbon emissions it would result in a meaningless two thousandths of a degree reduction in global temperature by the end of the century. Keep in mind, O’Malley’s plan calls for a 25% reduction of 2006 levels, meaning he has set Maryland up to bear a great deal of economic pain for no climate gain.

How is that “moving Maryland forward?”

See post here.

Dr. Hal Lewis on Watts Up with That

WUWT previously covered the APS here, when I wrote:

While Copenhagen and its excesses rage, a quiet revolution is starting. Indeed, not so quiet now. It looks like it is getting ugly inside with the public airing of the resignation of a very prominent member who writes:

I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.- Hal Lewis

Below is his resignation letter made public today, via the GWPF.

This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

What I would really like to see though, is this public resignation letter given the same editorial space as Michael Mann in the Washington Post.

Readers, we can do this. Here’s the place at WaPo to ask for it.  For anyone writing to the WaPo, the national@washpost.com, is the national news editorial desk. The Post’s Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, is the readers’ representative within the newspaper. E-mail him at ombudsman@washpost.com or call 202-334-7582.

Spread the word on other blogs. Let’s see if they have enough integrity to provide a counterpoint. - Anthony

-------

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence - it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’etre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It’s not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind - simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

See post and comments here.

By Steven Goddard, Real Science

Note from Michael Potts to Marc Morano:

I read that Holdren has argued that in his works he doesn’t actually advocate a position, but merely documents possible approaches. However, in this article he is quite emphatic in claiming that without “population control” all the technology in the world won’t be enough to prevent world-wide famine:

“Indeed, after a far more thorough survey of the prospects than we have attempted here, the President’s Science Advisory Committee Panel on the world food supply concluded (PSAC,1967): “The solution of the problem that will exist after about 1985 demands that programs of population control be initiated now.” We most emphatically agree, noting that “now” was 2 years ago!”

“. . . it cannot be emphasized enough that if the population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come. Therefore, confronted as we are with limited resources of time and money, we must consider carefully what fraction of our effort should be applied to the cure of the disease itself instead of to the temporary relief of the symptoms. We should ask, for example, how many vasectomies could be performed by a program funded with the 1.8 billion dollars required to build a single nuclear agro-industrial complex, and what the relative impact on the problem would be in both the short and long terms.”

Population and Panaceas A Technological Perspective Paul R. Ehrlich, John P. Holdren - BioScience, Vol. 19, No. 12 (Dec., 1969), pp. 1065-1071

See post here.

See Paul Lennon take on the overpopulation myth to the chagrin of interviewer Dick Cavett. In it, John and Yoko dissemble Holdren’s core belief system.