"I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”
Not much to quibble with Texas Governor Rick Perry about there. Except if you’re the Washington Post which, like Politico, cannot countenance Perry’s refusal to bow at the altar of what has been decided. So for his apostasy WaPo gives Perry a whopping “four Pinocchios” in a sneering, nasty and intellectually dishonest piece, “Rick Perry’s made-up ‘facts’ about climate change”, rife with straw men, heavy on double standards, and otherwise mixing and matching errors of omission and commission.”
First, an editorial note. WaPo reveals its delirium on the issue by citing polls as its apparent evidence for man-made climate change, concluding with “After all, it was first established in 1896 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could help create a ‘greenhouse effect.”’ Apple, meet orange.
This non-sequitor misreads WaPo’s own cited source and is more confused than the ritual confusion of climate change with man-made climate change, then conflated with the alleged catastrophic climate change (which WaPo also then offers). So, Mr. Kessler, the greenhouse effect, in existence somewhat longer than man, enables life on earth. Man does not help create it. It’s here with us, or without us. On WaPo’s relative scale, this scolding of another for supposed ignorance, clueless about that of which it scolds, merits at least five Pinocchios.
Perry’s camp referred ‘something called’ the Washington Post to “something called the Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 ‘American scientists’ on a petition that says there is ‘no convincing scientific evidence’ that human release of greenhouse gasses will ‘cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate’. The petition is a bit old, having been started in opposition to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming.”
WaPo, using a week’s worth of sneer quotes if still citing ‘no convincing evidence’ of catastrophic heating, just polls of other people not addressing ‘catastrophic climate change’, didn’t like that.
“Only 9,000 of the signers actually have PhDs, and the list of signers’ qualifications shows only a relatively small percentage with expertise on climate research.”
Remember, WaPo cites no evidence at all or even the ritual appeal to authority for man-made climate change (catastrophic or otherwise), but just assumes it without even the courtesy of an ‘arguendo’.
So let’s turn to the evidence WaPo generally cites, in its coverage, as supporting its faith, ‘something called’ the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now, the IPCC ‘is a bit old’, having been started expressly to ‘support a possible future climate treaty’ in 1988. And seek to support such a thing, it does. If with increasing hilarity.
Who are these people, regularly cited either as “2,500” or “2,000” of the “world’s leading climate scientists” (later downgraded to 400 after a little scrutiny)? Are they that? Do The Four Hundred hold up against thirty-plus thousand including 9,000 PhDs? (and why does WaPo need to distinguish PhDs from the rest, as more credible? The man running the federal government’s climate effort has long claimed a PhD, even in a CV submitted to get a federal grant many years ago, but it turns out he only possesses an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from a different university than the one he used to claim an academic PhD from? Is he unqualified? Sort of like, well, WaPo’s writer. President Obama. Al Gore. And the rest? Again with the flexible standards).
No. The IPCC’s ‘chief climate expert’ is a railroad engineer. The 2,000 are anthropology teaching assistants, transport policy instructors, socialist economists and other climate luminaries.
And the IPCC’s Dr. William Schlesinger admitted that only 20% of UN IPCC scientists deal with climate: “Something on the order of 20 percent [of UN scientists] have had some dealing with climate.” Meaning by his own admission, 80% of the UN IPCC membership has no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.
Then there was this odd example of diligence. “Judging from news reports, the number of signers has barely budged from 2008, further undercutting Perry’s claim of a groundswell of opposition.”
Sure, on a relative scale the pace slowed from the original 19,000. And, well, a few other things have emerged since 2008 (if not evidence to support WaPo’s assumed theory). Speaking of ClimateGate, WaPo then goes on to dismiss the affirmations from that leak by an apparent internal whistleblower with “five investigations have since been conducted into the allegations - and each one exonerated the half-dozen or so scientists involved.” (I say affirmations as they weren’t revelations to some of us; I wrote a book detailing what was affirmed in those emails, naming names and explaining what was known about, e.g., their ‘trick to hide the decline’, a year prior).
This merits a handful of Pinocchios, principally because these panels did not actually inquire in any sense into wrongdoing, and when they edged near the subject they largely limited their pursuit to asking the accused and people who know them, who (surprise!) concluded there was none. As Steve McIntyre, Bishop Hill and others - including one non-cheerleader who was interviewed, and ignored in strange fashion - have separately noted.
WaPo has sniveled about me, personally, for daring to look a little deeper than these supposed investigations did. Apparently anxious, transparency for thee, not for me is the order of the day at this FOIA-using enterprise outraged that others would use FOIA.
Political candidates choose the path of least resistance, seeking to avoid the noise machine dedicated to intimidating debate on an issue they then disingenuously waive as away with ‘the debate is over’. When did we have it? What won it? I don’t know. And you won’t know from reading WaPo.
But this has gotten us where we are. WaPo knows this, and is trying to make an object lesson out of Rick Perry, after Iowa voters and nationwide poll-respondents made one of former climate activist Tim Pawlenty. Someone needs to have Perry’s back on this or the alarmists who seek to cow the brave into submission will win.
By Marlo Lewis
Yesterday’s Greenwire (subscription required) reports that 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are working on a plan, modeled on California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program, to cut the carbon intensitity (CI) of motor fuels by 5%-15% over the next 15 years. The Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), the association of Northeast air regulatory agencies, could release the framework for the plan “as early as this month,” writes Greenwire reporter Jason Plautz.
Plautz links to a NESCAUM-authored discussion draft for “stakeholders.” After a short introductory paragraph, the document states in bold italics: “This document is not intended for distribution beyond the participating agencies and should not be cited or quoted.” Hey, I just did - so sue me!
The document never mentions the potential impact of the LCFS on fuel prices. But what else did you expect? In the “trust us, we know what’s best for the planet” world of carbon politics, affordable energy is despised, not prized.
Mandated reductions in motor fuel CI are bound to increase fuel prices. To comply with an LCFS, blenders must either modify the mix of the fuels they sell, modify their production processes, or both. If lower-carbon fuels were cheaper than gasoline, government wouldn’t need to mandate their sale, because consumers would demand them, and competition would drive energy companies to supply them. Alternative fuels must be mandated precisely because they are more expensive to produce than gasoline, reduce auto fuel economy, or face market barriers such as the massive investments required to build natural gas fueling infrastructure.
As a regional standard, the proposed LCFS would create another category of “boutique” fuels - fuel blends that vary by state and region based on regulatory specifications. Reformulating gasoline or diesel fuel to comply with such specifications increases production costs, some of which get passed on to consumers. Boutique fuels also have smaller economies of scale than standard blends. As the American Trucking Assocations says of California’s boutique diesel fuel:
California was the first state in the nation to mandate a boutique diesel fuel. Although California diesel costs only 4-5 cents extra to refine, the fuel typically sells for a 14 cent premium compared to neighboring states. This price differential is the result of higher distribution costs and reduced competition, as only a handful of refineries produce California’s boutique diesel fuel.
So would nationalizing California’s or NESCAUM’s LCFS fix the problem? Only if U.S. refineries could actually make upwards of 135 billion gallons annually of affordable low-carbon fuel. A June 2010 Charles River Associates (CRA) report analyzed the economic repercussions of a national LCFS requiring a 10% reduction in motor fuel CI from 2015 to 2025. The problem, argues CRA, is that achieving a 10% overall reduction in U.S. motor fuel CI is “beyond the reach of foreseeable technology.” Unable to comply, blenders would sell less fuel. The drop in fuel supply would drive up fuel prices by 30% to 80%, which in turn would have severe negative impacts on GDP, household purchasing power, and job creation.
Who would benefit from a Northeast LCFS? Why, the bureaucrats who design and run the program, of course. NESCAUM’s discussion draft contemplates the creation of a new “regional organization” to administer the LCFS. The program would also effectively raise taxes via “surcharges” on the sale of low-carbon credits, “alternative compliance payments,” and “transaction fees.”
So more pain at the pump, more bureaucracy, and more boodle for the “participating agencies.” Any resemblance to cap-and-trade programs living or dead is not coincidental.
By Alan Siddons
Clicking an embedded link in Discover Magazine’s polemic against Joe Bastardi will take you to Scientific American’s polemic.
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Icecap Note: Joe Bastardi has written this follow up to his brief Fox News interview that got under the skin of the church of global warming, now meeting in New Zealand.
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Here’s where Bastardi goes wrong, according to SA:
What climate science says is not that CO2 carries energy into the atmosphere or somehow magically generates it out of nowhere. Instead, it says that CO2 and other gases acts as a blanket, keeping heat from escaping into space. This, as Bastardi should know, is called the greenhouse effect.
Remember that: “keeping heat from escaping into space.”
But this is what else “climate science” will tell you:
Earth’s thermal emission with a greenhouse effect = 239 W/m²
Earth’s thermal emission without a greenhouse effect = 239 W/m²
The same.
For in greater detail, as this “science” purports to explain, the greenhouse blanket reduces the heat spilling out to space but in doing so makes the earth so hot that it spills out what it did before. In other words, the evidence we have of a blanketing effect is that there is no evidence. A blanketing effect is unobservable because the earth releases the same amount of heat with or without a blanket on. Indeed, Scientific American admits this in the very next sentence.
The Earth radiates into space roughly the same amount of energy that it receives from the sun.
So how can SA say that heat is kept from escaping? Or are we to imagine that the greenhouse effect doesn’t yet exist because it is understood to trap heat?
I don’t know why, but apparently it never occurs to a lot of people that real blankets don’t work the way they do in “climate science.” In the real world, a heated object emits infrared radiation according to its temperature. The temperature of this object will naturally be less than optimum if it’s also heating its surroundings, however. Insulation reduces such heat loss. Instead of warming the world around it, an insulated object reserves more heat for itself and thereby reaches a higher temperature. Its relative heat gain is the direct result of less heat lost to the environment.
Insulation isn’t a heat source, then; it’s merely a passive barrier that reduces the rate of loss. An insulator can only make something warmer by making something else cooler. As such, a blanketed object necessarily emits less heat than it did before. But the greenhouse blanket is obviously a different kind of blanket, for the earth radiates the same magnitude of heat with it as without, which can only mean that this blanket IS a heat source.
Those who argue for a passive greenhouse “blanket” are just kidding themselves. The real theory of the greenhouse effect can be found on many university websites. One just has to look. The actual theory makes the atmosphere a second source of heat, the first source being the sun. Here is Derek Alker’s very nice depiction of how this process is supposed to play out.
Sun-induced warmth on the earth’s surface heats up “greenhouse gases,” which thereafter turn around to heat the surface that’s heating them. In other words, if these gases absorb 239 watts per square meter from the surface, they send back the same, and increase the surface’s temperature till it’s emitting 478 watts per square meter, double the energy it got from the sun. It hardly needs saying, of course, but no laboratory experiment has ever demonstrated the existence of such a heating mechanism. No device has ever been invented to show us how this works. For such a device would defy the laws of physics.
So who is more in error - the formerly distinguished Scientific American, which clumsily contradicts itself in the gap between two sentences, proposing that the earth’s heat is simultaneously trapped and released, a queer sort of process that does indeed “magically generate energy out of nowhere”? Or Joe Bastardi for reminding us that extra energy CANNOT come out of nowhere?
This post by Dr William Happer -The Truth about Greenhouse Gases is timely response to SCIAM and Bad Astronomy/Discovery. It appears, once my favorite magazine, SCIAM has morphed to SCAM.