By Christopher Booker, London Daily Telegraph
If the holder of the most powerful office in the world proposed a policy guaranteed to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies, we might well be concerned. The relevance of this is not to President Bush, as some might imagine, but to a recent policy statement by President-elect Obama.
Tomorrow, delegates from 190 countries will meet in Poznan, Poland, to pave the way for next year’s UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to “save the planet” from global warming. Mr. Obama begins by saying that “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear”. “Sea levels,” he claims, “are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we’ve seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”
Far from the science being “beyond dispute”, we can only deduce from this that Mr Obama has believed all he was told by Al Gore’s wondrously batty film An Inconvenient Truth without bothering to check the facts. Each of these four statements is so wildly at odds with the truth that on this score alone we should be seriously worried. It is true that average sea levels are modestly rising, but no faster than they have been doing for three centuries. Gore’s film may predict a rise this century of 20 feet, but even the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches. The main focus of alarm here has been the fate of low-lying coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. Around each of these tiny countries, according to the international Commission on Sea Level Changes and other studies, sea levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since. Satellite measurements show that since 1993 the sea level around Tuvalu has gone down by four inches.
Coastlines are not “shrinking” except where land is subsiding, as on the east coast of England, where it has been doing so for thousands of years. Gore became particularly muddled by this, pointing to how many times the Thames Barrier has had to be closed in recent years, unaware that this was more often to keep river water in during droughts than to stop the sea coming in. Far from global warming having increased the number of droughts, the very opposite is the case. The most comprehensive study (Narisma et al, 2007) showed that, of the 20th century’s 30 major drought episodes, 22 were in the first six decades, with only five between 1961 and 1980. The most recent two decades produced just three.
Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008’s North Atlantic hurricane season “set records”, even its own release later admits that it only tied as “the fifth most active” since 1944. NOAA’s own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world shows a steady reduction over the past four years.
Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a “federal cap and trade system”, a massive “carbon tax”, designed to reduce America’s CO2 emissions “to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050”. Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy. Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage “clean energy” sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing “18 gigawatts of installed capacity”, only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.
He talks blithely of allowing only “clean” coal-fired power plants, using “carbon capture” - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn’t even yet been developed. He then babbles on about “generating five million new green jobs”. This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those “dirty” coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity. If this sounds like an elaborate economic suicide note, for what is still the earth’s richest nation, it is still not enough for many environmentalists. Positively foaming at the mouth in The Guardian last week, George Monbiot claimed that the plight of the planet is now so grave that even “sensible programmes of the kind Obama proposes are now irrelevant”. The only way to avert the “collapse of human civilisation”, according to the Great Moonbat, would be “the complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050”.
For 300 years science helped to turn Western civilisation into the richest and most comfortable the world has ever seen. Now it seems we have suddenly been plunged into a new age of superstition, where scientific evidence no longer counts for anything. The fact that America will soon be ruled by a man wholly under the spell of this post-scientific hysteria may leave us in wondering despair.
Read more here.
By Chris Horner on Planet Gore
My colleague William informs me that Joe Romm has squealed like a stuck pig about my calling him out for his most recent tantrum - over a Politico reporter daring to write about climate science as if a debate exists. His immediate concern - before trailing off into a stream of reflexive ad hominem - is that I describe him as an “aspiring Obama administration thug” in the course of deriding his ritual name-calling. Apparently in Romm’s world, describing someone as wanting to work for the Obama administration is “libel.”
Oooh. Let’s leave that little spat for the comrades to sort out. I assure you, my intention was not to claim that Romm could make it through the vetting questionnaire about embarrassing statements or actions. I was suggesting that those who follow climate issues watch him in the next few months - as the alarmism that Team Obama forgot about during the campaign comes roaring down the pike as they try to get a global-warming regime in place - and decide for yourself whether it serves the interests of the Obama administration’s effort.
But consider Romm’s rant. Remember: His complaint about the Politico item consisted of sniveling dependence on the accusation “denier”; he resorted to calling the reporter a “pimp” for skeptics, guilty of professional “malpractice,” “amateurish,” and “a pseudo-serious new media journalist.” He likewise goes ad hom on meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, whom he also accuses of “mak[ing] stuff up,” and otherwise takes out personally after anyone who disagrees with him - including a center-left political publication that failed to toe his line . . . then he demands an apology from me as being “beyond the pale” - twice.
He disparages meteorologists as unqualified to speak to the issue of climate change (selectively, of course), though he has a long history of saying that about anyone who disagrees with his prophesying, including mere physicists like Freeman Dyson and particularly economists and engineers ["For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?"]. Mere economists and engineers - like IPCC “chief climate scientist” Rajendra Pachauri. Sheesh. The guy’s not even a meteorologist.
Other than that, he’s thoroughly measured and adult about it all - and then whines that he’s been libeled and demands apologies. At least some people were rational, anyway.
All of this venom, by the way, is directed at those who dare to dismiss the notion of “consensus” - and comes from a man who has written, in a calmer moment, “I do think the scientific community, the progressive community, environmentalists and media are making a serious mistake by using the word ‘consensus’ “ to describe the state of climate science. Well, the holidays tend to bring a particular segment of the population down.
As Romm clearly is a Planet Gore reader, let me state here the nuance that escaped him: I of course did think about, and appreciated the humor of, calling him a thug for his name-calling and other full-throated unhingedness. My thinking is that he long ago sacrificed any immunity from being called what he demonstrably is: someone dedicated to shouting down, seeking to smear, demean, or otherwise intimidate dissenters. He merely proved that today - which, amusingly, seems to have eluded him in his froth. I note that thuggishness is his one move, as opposed to simply calling him corrupt or incompetent - as he reminds us again today is his preferred style. We’ll leave him to that, and good luck with it. Mr. Soros doesn’t seem to mind.
Remember, dear PG readers, Romm is the fellow who embarrassed himself publicly when claiming that the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2007 was due to global warming (see a debunking of that notion here). So he does have a habit of shooting from the lip. I’m told by the subject of one of his complaints that Romm has gone to the Department of Energy and voiced concern about a particular scientist there expressing climate skepticism. Search Roger Pielke Jr.’s site for a sober and otherwise serious discourse on some of Romm’s public stunts. His overreaches are a gift of some magnitude to our team, helping to discredit his own movement and - I would venture to guess - a key reason that people like Pielke Jr. have turned away from them. Keep up the good work, Romm. And stay classy. See post here.
By Julia Roberts Goad, Williamson Daily News
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country, blasted politics and the press, comparing Charleston Gazette Editor James. A. Haught to Osama Bin Laden Thursday evening when he addressed the Tug Valley Mining Institute in Williamson. “It is as great a pleasure for me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the Charleston Gazette as to be applauded by my best friends,"` he said. “Because I know they are wrong. People are cowering away from being criticized by people that are our enemies. Would we be upset if Osama Bin Laden was critical of us?” he asked.
“Totally wrong. Nonsense. Absolutely crazy.” Those are the words Blankenship used to describe Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as well as environmental groups. He said he felt simple terms were the only ones the country could understand, that more sophisticated language was over the head of the general public. “When we talk about it in more articulate ways, the American public doesn’t get it,” he said. Blankenship told the crowd, which overflowed the room, spilling over to fill the Brass Tree Restaurant, that coal is getting a lot of undeserved bad press. The coal business, he said, needs to start standing up for itself in the face of the negative image being portrayed by politicians, special interests and the press.
Blankenship said the business community should put their business interests first, not environmental interests. “They can say what they want about climate change,” he said. “But the only thing melting in this country that matters is our financial system and our economy.” Many people would give support to groups who work to disprove global warming if it was not so politically incorrect, Blankenship said. “How many times have the people in this room heard, at the US Chamber of Commerce or at the National Mining Association, “I don’t believe in climate change, but I’m afraid to say that because it is a political reality.” The greeniacs are taking over the world.” Blankenship said politicians misrepresent facts when it comes to the environment. “Politicians occasionally trip over the truth,” he said, “but they get up and go on as if nothing happened.”
He said the amount of pollution produced by American coal is negligible compared to the environmental damage done by other countries. “Its nonsensical, its idiotic. And yet, we call it two different sides, partisan, Democrat or Republican,” he said. “If Pelosi thinks that decreasing CO2 in this country is going to save the polar bears, she’s crazy. If CO2 emissions are going to kill the polar bears, it’s going to happen.” “But coal produces electricity, he argued, and that improves the quality of life. “Anywhere you go, low cost electricity, the creation of energy, of jobs, of an economy, ultimately leads to an improvement in the environment. There is no place in the world that has a good environment where people live on two dollars a day with no electricity,” he said. “If you are really believe that the world is going to overheat from the use of carbon, then whatever you do in the United States to reduce carbon emissions is wrong, because all that it will do is increase CO2 emissions in China. All the things the environmentalists told us were important, sulfur and particulates, everything they have talked about and badgered this industry about are still being polluted throughout most of the world without any controls.” Blankenship said the industry needs to be as outspoken as those who oppose the use of carbon fuels.
“Its not only important for the greeniacs and environmentalists to change their views, but there is also a real need for business people to change their views. We have to challenge everything, and we need to get more bold. When business people act like politicians instead of expressing what the truth is, we will have people making decisions on what they call political reality.” Blankenship said energy policies put forth by the government have not worked in the past, and they are not the answer to today’s energy crisis.
Unless we get people to think positively about coal, we are in trouble not only as an industry, but also as a country.” “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if you have that much energy in the ground, you shouldn’t have thousands of troops in Iraq, spending $10 billion a month, you shouldn’t by trying to patrol the world. Let the world fight over the oil. Liquify the coal.” “Coal has to be important,” Blankenship said. “We have to stand up for coal and for energy independence. Sooner or later, we are going to have to start saying something, because if we don’t, the other side is going to start taking over.” Read more here.