By Paul Chesser

Scientists see no temperature increase (on average) in the oceans or on the surface of the Earth over the last decade. That hasn’t stopped an activist group from infiltrating high schools with the panicky message that we are on the verge of a “planetary emergency” due to global warming.

These alarmists are the recently formed Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit created by wealthy wind energy entrepreneur Michael Haas. The organization has targeted five metropolitan areas and now is opening a Washington office.

Haas, who donated $24,600 to President Obama’s campaign and victory funds last year, stands to reap millions of dollars in government subsidies that climate change-driven energy policies would bring.

Meanwhile the teenagers targeted by ACE are treated to hip presentations with slick animation to propagate the idea that they and everyone in their spheres of influence must modify their behaviors so as to stop global warming. This is achieved by cutbacks in their energy use, which ACE believes produces too many greenhouse gases (from fossil fuel combustion like coal and oil) that warm the planet.

The mostly undiscerning kids love it. ACE, which lobbies school boards and administrators to get invited to give presentations, delivers its propaganda to hundreds of students at a time in assemblies. Getting out of class to watch an amusing talk highlighted by flatulent animated cows (to emphasize their methane emissions, another greenhouse gas) is good for plenty of laughs and scores big with the teens.

But ACE’s talks are infected with falsehoods, like telling the students they’ve “lived through the 10 hottest years on record” (1934 was the hottest) and that greenhouse gas emissions are cranking up the global thermostat “way too high”. Talk about one-sided hyperbole to shape impressionable minds. Meanwhile, scientific studies like those that reveal we may be entering a prolonged cooling period, due to an inactive sun, are left out of climate discussion.

ACE has also targeted the San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Boston areas, and aims to reach 140,000 students by the end of this year. Its goal is simple: Get students active in the name of dubious (at best) global warming alarmism, demonize fossil fuels and push solutions such as alternative energy - like wind.

Unfortunately, many teachers and administrators are all too willing to let this biased bunch extract students from classes and force-feed them its pap. Parents should be aware that their kids might be the targets of this political recruitment effort during valuable class time.

Paul Chesser is a special correspondent for The Heartland Institute.

Center for Biodiversity

The Arctic sea ice has reached the third-lowest level ever recorded, and up to 200 walruses, which appear to be mostly new calves and yearlings, have been reported dead near Icy Cape on the north coast of Alaska - further evidence of global warming’s brutal transformation of the Arctic. Although the cause of the walruses’ death has not been confirmed, young walruses are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when disappearing sea ice forces walruses to come ashore in large numbers.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center announced today that the Arctic summer sea-ice reached a minimum of 5.10 million square kilometers (1.97 million square miles) on September 12, making 2009 the third-lowest year on record behind 2007 (1.65 million square miles) and 2008 (1.74 million square miles). 

“The deaths of these walruses is another wake-up call that we will lose the Arctic if we continue on our current course,” said Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Every moment that Washington delays in taking strong action on climate change, it robs the walrus, the Arctic, and Arctic people of a future.”

The rapid melting of sea ice due to climate change is forcing the Pacific walrus, a well-known resident of the Arctic seas between Alaska and Siberia, into a land-based existence for which it is not adapted. In 2007, the early and extensive disappearance of summer sea ice pushed females and calves onto the Russian and Alaskan coasts in abnormally dense herds. Russian biologists reported that 3,000 to 4,000 walruses, mostly young animals, died in 2007 after being crushed to death in stampedes. Last week, U.S. Geological Survey researchers reported a large herd of 3,500 walruses on shore near Icy Cape, as sea ice disappeared over their foraging grounds. 

The walrus, whose scientific name means “tooth-walking sea horse,” uses the ice as a platform from which to forage for clams and mussels in the relatively shallow waters over the continental shelf. Female walruses and their calves follow the sea ice year-round and rely on the safety of ice floes for nursing their calves and as essential resting platforms between foraging bouts, since they cannot continually swim. All Pacific walruses are dependent on sea ice for breeding activities in winter.

On September 8, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would conduct a full status review to determine whether the Pacific walrus warrants the protections of the Endangered Species Act.  The review must be completed by September 10, 2010 under a court-ordered settlement in a case brought by the Center for Biological Diversity to compel a response to its scientific petition to protect the walrus.

The polar bear has also become an icon of global warming as the melting of its sea-ice habitat causes individual bears to drown, starve, and even resort to cannibalism.  The Polar Bear Specialist Group now classifies eight of the world’s polar bear populations, including both of Alaska’s populations, as declining. 

In May 2008, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear throughout its range as “threatened,” also in response to a petition and lawsuit from the Center.  The Center is currently challenging the failure to list the polar bear as “endangered” based in part on U.S. government studies showing a more than 77-percent chance of extinction for two-thirds of the world’s polar bears by mid-century, even under sea-ice projections that underestimate the rate of sea-ice loss.  In 2007, there was less ice in the Arctic than more than half the world’s leading climate models project will occur in 2050.

This summer, as the sea ice melted, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act or ACES. Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., are scheduled to introduce the Senate version of this legislation later this month. 

“The climate bill needs to be significantly strengthened,” said Wolf. “The House legislation would not save the polar bear and the walrus and would give us less than a 50/50 chance of achieving the greenhouse gas reductions scientists say are necessary to head off devastating climate change. We can’t flip a coin with the fate of the planet.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is advocating for a bill that sets an overall cap on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of no more than 350 parts per million, consistent with the best available science; works with, rather than replaces, the Clean Air Act, which has successfully reduced air pollution for 40 years and is one of our most powerful tools in fighting global warming; and that eliminates or greatly reduces offsets and other loopholes.

“The Arctic is the Earth’s early warning system,” said Wolf.  “If Congress and the Obama administration begin deep and rapid greenhouse pollution reductions now, we can still avert some of the most serious global warming impacts.  But the rapid change underway in the Arctic shows that time is running perilously short.” Read more on ice here.

Icecap Notes:  As the above shows (enlarged here) the ice has recovered over 23% from the lows of 2007 that were result in the peak of the Atlantic natural 60-70 year warming cycle (also as evidenced by most active tropics).

The ice melts as warm water from the Atlantic and Pacific enters the arctic and melts the ice from below as it did last in the 1930s to 1950s and before that in the mid 1800s. The satellites used to measure sea ice extent did not exist prior to 1979, the start of the ocean warming period. See more here. There is no sense of history in these self serving releases timed to try and pressure congress to act. The Climate Bill needs to be scraped.

By Chris Horner, Planet Gore

Uh oh. First President Obama pointed to Spain and Germany as models for how the U.S. could create a robust “green jobs” economy that even would lift us out of our current - an increasingly approriate term - malaise.

Confronted by meddling academics who analyzed the Spanish situation and laid out the monitory lesson of its green-jobs regime, the White House quickly pivoted and said, uh, look to Denmark and Germany, yeah, that’s it, Denmark.

OK. That’s been done - by the establishment think tank CEPOS, and you can read it here. The answer is that the president’s (repeat) claim that “Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power” is false. Denmark actually produces much less of its own electricity from wind, as low as 4 percent depending on the year, with the recent average of 9.7 percent. This despite a massive buildout of what they flatteringly call the “wind carpet,” on some of the most hospitable terrain for wind power in the world.

It is also in return for its households paying the highest eletricity rates in Europe. With a substantially lower per-capita energy use. That means, to get half of what Obama seeks, the U.S. would have to carpet itself twice over - which means lots of windmills where birds fly and Kennedys live - and pay Danish-style rates.

Oh. Wait. That still won’t do it. Apparently Denmark’s experience isn’t even scalable to Scanadanavia. It turns out that, if the Norwegians and Swedes tried to replicate Denmark’s expensive folly, well, it would blow the system up. Here’s why. Denmark took advantage of long-since-paid-for interconnectors between Jutland and Norway, and the island on which Copenhagen sits and Sweden. It made a political decision that windmills would be their “national champion” industry, and as you will hear to no end throughout the Copenhagen COP, a big part of their national identity. So they built a lot of windmills, and started a mythology.

This buildout was only possible because the Norwegians and Swedes use enormous percentages of hydropower and nuclear, both of which can be dialed up or down according to the whimsy of the wind. When the wind does deign to blow, Denmark sends fully half of its very expensive, ratepayer subsidized wind power to its neighbors at cut rates, in return for said neighbors indulging Denmark’s wind mill image-making by dialing up or down its hydro power or nukes at other times (which, most of the time, means “up").
When the wind picks up, the story gets worse. On top of subsidizing their neighbors’ electricity and allowing them to go without building more of their own, it turns out that increases in wind generation, under the current buildout, are shipped nearly 100 percent and at a considerable below-cost discount right out of the country. With its politicians now vowing to massively increase installed wind ("50 percent of our elecricity” - how about getting to 20 percent first?), that means Denmark will be sending even more domestic wealth to its neighbors.

Because it is displacing carbon-neutral electricity - as a condition precedent even to deploying the machines, mind you, so this is not something that can be changed - you can kiss claims to massive CO2 reductions (or reduced fuel use) goodbye.

When it comes to Obama’s claim that Denmark, not discredited Spain, is the model to follow: waiter, the food was horrible, and the portions too small. You can’t replicate Denmark’s model - and its a good thing, too.

Although, I’m informed that the Danish wind industry admitted the problems to the media this morning before muttering about needing further (ratepayer) investment, expect the American wind power industry to spin wildly in coming days. Which, incidentally, is more than we can say about their products.

Read full story here.