By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

In the 1980s and 1990s, before the media’s favorite weather topic was climate change or global warming, it was all El Nino. It was blamed for virtually any weather event that occurred in El Nino years. It is true that El Ninos when strong are capable of producing losses that can total in the billions of dollars. El Ninos are feared in places like Indonesia, Australia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and parts of Africa where devastating droughts are possible. In the United States, southern states from California to Florida are vulnerable to damage from a barrage of strong winter storms.

Here in the United States, the El Nino of 1997/98 played a role in 18 President declared disasters with a total damage exceeding $4 billion. However, the patterns of weather associated with strong El Nino events also produce many very positive effects and benefits. See here how even in the super El Nino of 1997/98 the benefits offset the losses to the US economy. For example, the milder temperatures of strong El Nino winters in the interior northern United States reduces heating costs for both homes and industry and the operating costs for transportation both by air and on land. Less snowfall in the north lowers the costs of snow removal for government and industry, and enables the construction industry to work more during the winter months. Shoppers are able to get to and from stores more easily and often and retail sales benefit. El Nino also typically results in less flooding during the spring and fewer hurricanes in the summer.

La Ninas on the other hand produce more winter cold and snows, more severe weather from fall through spring, enhanced landfall hurricane threats, more springtime flooding and summer droughts and heat waves with greater economic impact. Given the apparent flip of the Pacific mode to the cold PDO (see here and here) which favors more La Ninas like this one, we may be looking back at recent decades as the good old days when weather was unusually benign and favorable. See full story here.

By Scott Whitlock, Newsbusters

“Good Morning America” weatherman and resident environmental alarmist Sam Champion wondered on Friday if global warming could cause “the ultimate climate disaster” and force humanity to abandon Earth and live in space. Champion used the segment to preview a new documentary called “Six Degrees” that will air on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday. He failed to inform viewers that the author upon which the special is based on, Mark Lynas, is a hard-left environmentalist who once threw a pie in the face of Bjorn Lomborg at a reading of Lomborg’s book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist.”

Lynas also predicted the end of civilization if global warming isn’t reversed: “If temperatures soar by six degrees within less than a century, that we are going to face nothing less than a global wipe out.” Lynas is not only an alarmist, he’s an alarmist who doesn’t even believe such events, that are so frighteningly used in his special, are “even likely.” A February 5, 2008 report by the Business and Media Institute noted the real intent of the documentary: it’s one thing to portray a doomsday scenario as it would happen unless drastic action is taken when it comes to global warming. It’s been done over and over. But Mark Lynas, author of “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet,” took a different approach. Lynas, who is actively campaigning for government “solutions” to combat global warming, presented what he acknowledged were unlikely scenarios in his book and movie to create a sense of climate change panic.

It’s hard to believe that Champion could top previous hyperbolic segments. (This is the same person who in early 2007 hosted a piece which wondered if “billions” could die from global warming.) But by speculating about the need to abandon Earth, he has indeed raised the bar. Note: Champion also stood on top of a snowmound after a record blizzard in upstate New York and proclaimed it the result of global warming.

Read more here.

By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded. The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development. The destruction of natural ecosystems - whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America - not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. Read more here.