By Ed Rogers, Washington Post Updated: April 11, 2013
As I said last week, fewer Americans view global warming as a “very serious problem” today than just six months ago. In October, 39 percent of Americans viewed global warming as a very serious problem, compared with 33 percent who believe that to be true today. Carter is the pollster, but by my back-of-the-envelope math, if you exclude partisan Democrats who will follow President Obama on everything, you’re left with about 25 percent of Americans who think that global warming is a very serious problem.
Even worse for Carter and the Democrats who are hoping to make real progress in the 2014 elections, the Huffington Post/YouGov poll conducted the week that Hurricane Sandy hit asked the question, “If it meant we could stop climate change, would you personally be willing to pay 50 percent more on your gas and electricity bills?” 54 percent of respondents - a clear majority - said that they would not be willing (including 52.5 percent of independents and 80 percent of Republicans). Only 21 percent said they would be willing to pay more.
The ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ party attempted to use Sandy to push its green agenda and crony capitalism. They did not know or acknowledge Sandy was a weak CAT1 storm and the last time the oceans were in this mode in the middle of the last century 8 major hurricanes made landfall on the east coast. Hurricanes made a direct hit on NYC in 1815, 1821 and 1893. The worst in 1821 at the end of the mini-ice age was a CAT3 storm but it came ashore at low tide while Sandy came in at a more problematic angle, at high tide and with a full moon. 155,000 people lived in NYC in 1821 and there were no subways or tunnels to flood. That compares to 8.2 million at risk today and much development on barrier beaches and even landfill. Had the 1821 storm hit today, the storm surge would be 5 feet higher and devastation would be far worse than Sandy.
So even when using a question that leads those polled to think they could “stop climate change” once and for all, a majority of Americans still says no to paying more out of pocket to do so. Again, I would defer to Carter, but it seems that those most likely to vote in the 2014 elections would be heavily against the increased costs that the Democrats favor, even for doing even less than “stopping climate change.”
Higher energy prices and the Democrats’ pointless follies on global warming, when combined with our fragile, discouraging economy, means that climate change is probably leaving the stage as a political issue - just as President Obama is trying to gather momentum for a major push. It’ll be interesting to see whether the White House gracefully goes quiet on the issue.
The Democrats are increasingly preaching to the choir about climate change, partially because of the state of the economy but also because of the hypocrisy that surrounds the issue. People notice that those who preach the loudest seem disproportionately to fly in private jets, sleep in mansions, float on yachts and otherwise (have ? BB) lifestyles that produce high levels of carbon emissions - the occasional pious Prius puttering along in Hollywood or elsewhere notwithstanding.
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Desparation science
“Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.” - Tom Wigley, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
In the never ending quest for alarmists to one up their incompetent friends they continue to seek out new ways to demonstrate their own computer illiteracy (as per Oreskes). Enter James Powell who in a meaningless analysis is apparently ignorant that the ‘Web of Science’ database does not have a “peer-reviewed” only filter and the existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine it’s context. Thus, all that can be claimed is there were 13,950 meaningless search results no “peer-reviewed scientific articles” for a query of the ‘Web of Science’ database - 24 of which support his strawman arguments.
Conclusion
In a true sense of irony Powell uses his meaningless analysis as a defense of Oreskes (2004) which is considered useless by world renowned climate experts,
He then attempts to smear skeptics as “global warming deniers”. This is a dishonest ad hominem as skeptics believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.
Powell’s pie chart is simply propaganda for those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading about actual skeptic arguments or the over 1100 peer-reviewed papers that support them.
Read Popular Technology’s full analysis here.
By Seth Borenstein WASHINGTON (AP)—Last year’s huge drought was a freak of nature that wasn’t caused by man-made global warming, a new federal science study finds.
Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the nation’s midsection.
Thursday’s report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn’t see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn’t have been forecast.
“This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years,” said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event.”
Researchers focused on six states - Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Iowa - but the drought spread much farther and eventually included nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states. For the six states, the drought was the worst four-month period for lack of rainfall since records started being kept in 1895, Hoerling said. He said the jet stream that draws moisture north from the Gulf was stuck unusually north in Canada.
Other scientists have linked recent changes in the jet stream to shrinking Arctic sea ice, but Hoerling and study co-author Richard Seager of Columbia University said those global warming connections are not valid.
Hoerling used computer simulations to see if he could replicate the drought using man-made global warming conditions. He couldn’t. So that means it was a random event, he said.
Using similar methods, Hoerling has been able to attribute increasing droughts in the Mediterranean Sea region to climate change and found that greenhouse gases could be linked to a small portion of the 2011 Texas heat wave.
Another scientist though, blasted the report.
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally funded university-run research center, said the report didn’t take into account the lack of snowfall in the Rockies the previous winter and how that affected overall moisture in the air. Nor did the study look at the how global warming exacerbated the high pressure system that kept the jet stream north and the rainfall away, he said.
“This was natural variability exacerbated by global warming,” Trenberth said in an email. “That is true of all such events from the Russian heat wave of 2010, to the drought and heat waves in Australia.”
(which could be easily renamed the Trenberth NCAR button)
Hoerling noted that in the past 20 years, the world is seeing more La Ninas, the occasional cooling of the central Pacific Ocean that is the flip side of El Nino. Hoerling said that factor, not part of global warming but part of a natural cycle, increases the chances of such droughts.
Some regions should see more droughts as the world warms because of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, he said. But the six state area is’’t expected to get an increase of droughts from global warming - unlike parts of the Southwest - Hoerling said.
by Viv Forbes
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition
Politicians are continually increasing the risks of electricity blackouts with their dangerous climate policies. It is foolish in the extreme to believe that humans can change the future climate by collecting carbon taxes and covering the hills with wind turbines.
We should ask them: which is worse - gradual man-made global warming or sudden electricity blackout?
Alarmists try to scare us by claiming that man’s activities are causing global warming. Whether and when we may see new man-made warming is disputed and uncertain. If it does appear, the world will be slightly warmer, with more evaporation and rainfall; plants will grow better and colonise some areas currently too cold or too dry; fewer old people will die in winter and sea levels may continue the gradual rise we have seen since the end of the last ice age. There may even be a bit more “green” in Greenland. There is no evidence that man’s production of carbon dioxide is causing more extreme weather events. Any change caused by man will be gradual and there will be plenty of time to adapt, as humans have always done. Most people will hardly notice it.
What is certain, however, is that global warming policies are greatly increasing the chances of electricity blackouts, and here the effects can be predicted confidently - they will be sudden and severe.
Localized short-term blackouts can be caused by sudden failure of supply caused by cyclones, storms, fires, floods, accidents, equipment failure or overloading. People will cope with them. The more widespread blackouts, caused for example by network collapse or insufficient generating capacity, will have severe effects.
All modern human activities are heavily dependent on electricity. Blackouts will stop lifts, trains, traffic lights, tools, appliances, factories, mines, refineries, communications and pumps for fuel, water and sewerage. People will be trapped or stranded in trains, ports, airports, lifts, hotels, hospitals and traffic jams. ATM’s, credit cards and supermarket checkouts will not work. Cash, cheques, IOU’s and pocket calculators will be required to buy anything.
Immediately a blackout occurs, those with emergency generators, fuel or batteries will start using them.
But within a very few days, batteries will run flat, emergency fuel supplies will be exhausted, food supplies will disappear from stores and pumped water will not be available. Intensive dairies, hatcheries, piggeries and feedlots will all face critical problems in keeping their animals alive and cared for.
If the blackout is extensive and prolonged, looting will infect the big cities and then spread to country areas. People who are old, sick, incapacitated or alone will be forgotten as able-bodied people focus on feeding and protecting their own.
The real threat to humanity today is not the theoretical dangers from gradual man-made global warming. A far bigger real danger is the growing threat to reliable electricity supplies from deep-green climate policies.
The most reliable electricity supplies come from coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, geothermal or oil. Misguided politicians and uncompromising nature are conspiring to ensure that few of these will be available to generate Australia’s future electricity.
The carbon tax and renewable energy targets threaten the financial viability of using coal, gas or oil to generate electricity. Banks and investors will not risk their capital on new carbon-powered stations dependent on an unstable and polarised political environment. And the declining profitability of existing stations under the carbon tax and mandated market sharing makes it risky and uneconomic to spend money maintaining existing aging stations.
The same green zealots who plot to destroy carbon energy will also work to prevent the construction of new nuclear or hydro plants in Australia. And Australia’s geothermal resources, being generally deep and remote, are unlikely to provide significant electricity for decades.
We are thus being forced to rely on fickle breezes and peek-a-boo sunbeams to generate expensive and intermittent electricity. And it will not be economic to continue building backup gas plants that are run below capacity or sit idle, earning insufficient income as they try to fill the unpredictable production gaps in the supply of green energy. The margin of supply safety will disappear.
Therefore, if we continue to allow green zealots to dictate our electricity generation, blackouts are inevitable. Britain and Germany already face this grim prospect.
All actions have consequences. We cannot continue pouring billions of dollars of community savings down the climate-change sink-hole, without starving our essential infrastructure. We cannot keep adding taxes and political risk to traditional electricity generators without reducing new investment in real base-load generating capacity. And we cannot keep adding unstable solar and wind elements to our electricity network without adding greatly to electricity costs and the risks of network failure.
When the lights fail, and the supermarket shelves are cleaned out, we will return, at great cost and after much misery, to cheap reliable continuous electricity using coal, gas or nuclear fuels.
Gaia worshippers will find that “Earth Hour” will not be such fun when it becomes “Earth Week”
Disclosure: Viv Forbes has no vested interest in electricity generation, except as a consumer. And he gets no funds from the government Climate Change Industry. He holds shares in a small Australian coal exploration company which will benefit by exporting coal if expensive unreliable electricity in Australia forces more power-using industries overseas.