By HendrikTennekes Guest Blog on Climate Science
My weblogs of 28 October and 7 November, and a incisive two-page centerfold article by Karel Knip in the November 8 issue of NRC/ Handelsblad, Rotterdam’s counterpart to the New York Times, finally received a clear response from KNMI, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
In a November 10 message to the director-in-chief of KNMI, I suggested that the Institute should contemplate issuing a low-end estimate for sea-level rise, in order to balance the alarmist furor sweeping the country. This is exactly what KNMI decided to do. In an op-ed piece in the December 11 issue of NRC/Handelsblad, Wilco Hazeleger, a senior scientist in the global climate research group at KNMI, writes:
“In the past century the sea level has risen twenty centimeters. There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise. It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures. It is wise to adopt a flexible, step-by-step adaptation strategy. By all means, let us not respond precipitously.”
This opinion, of course, chimes with the statement by Professor Marcel Stive that I quoted earlier:
“Fortunately, the time rate of climate change is slow compared to the life span of the defense structures along our coast. There is enough time for adaptation. We should monitor the situation carefully, but up to now climate change does not cause severe problems for our coastal defense system. IPCC has given lower estimates for the expected sea level rise in four successive reports.”
As far as I am concerned, this settles the matter. KNMI has spoken. It has spoken clearly. There is no imminent danger of accelerated sea-level rise.
Source: University of Colorado, Boulder
By Teddy Davis, ABC News
One of Barack Obama’s closest allies in the Senate said Tuesday that she hopes the economic downturn can induce the incoming president to delay the centerpiece of his plan for reducing carbon emissions. “Let me speak for me here because I think this is very dangerous,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. “I would like to keep my relationship with Barack at this point. Let me speak for me.”
McCaskill said she hoped Obama would delay a plan to institute a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. “I think a delay may be necessary,” she continued. “Yes, we’ve got to do something. Yes, we have to move forward. But we can’t kill the business climate at the same time. I’m from a state where most of the people who turn on the lights in the state get it from utility companies that depend on coal. And the cost of switching all that to clean coal technology or to alternative sources is going to be borne by them—by regular folks who are trying to figure out how to pay their mortgages right now.”
McCaskill cemented her ties to Obama during the Democratic presidential primary campaign by becoming the first female senator to endorse him over Hillary Clinton. She made her cap-and-trade comments to Ron Brownstein, the political director of Atlantic Media, during a National Journal discussion of Obama’s “First 100 Days” held in Washington, D.C.
Under the Obama plan, the federal government would set a ceiling on carbon emissions and require companies to bid for permits to emit greenhouse gases through an auction. The government would gradually lower the amount of credits available. Firms that reduced their emissions below the required level could sell leftover credits to other polluters. Obama would take a small portion of the auction receipts, $15 billion per year, and use it on energy efficiency, alternative fuels, and what his campaign promise book, “Change We Can Believe In,” refers to as “other measures to help the economy adjust.”
Raising concerns about cap-and-trade is nothing new for McCaskill. In June she was one of 10 Democratic senators to sign a letter criticizing a cap-and-trade proposal sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. The letter said that a federal cap-and-trade program must ensure that consumers and workers in all regions of the country are protected from “undue hardship.” Opponents of the Boxer plan worried that it would raise the cost for electricity generated from fossil fuels.
“I’m one of the senators that signed a letter on cap-and-trade,” McCaskill said Tuesday. “We’ve got to find a more moderate middle here because you’re playing with fire.” Read more here.
Investor’s Business Daily
Barack Obama meets with Al Gore to discuss global warming, green jobs and his energy team. Did they also discuss how their policies will put America’s ailing economy in a deep freeze? In advance of the naming of an energy secretary, an EPA administrator and a new climate czar, the president-elect consulted Tuesday in Chicago with the oracle of climate change. “How policies in this area can stimulate the economy and create jobs” was the topic, according to a transition team spokesperson.
Which reminded us that seven months ago, Obama promised that “Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem.” That’s what we’re afraid of. In a video presentation to a U.N. conference held to revive the Kyoto Treaty approach, Obama concurred with Gore that warming science is “beyond dispute and the facts are clear.” “Sea levels are rising,” he asserted, “coastlines are shrinking, we’ve seen drought spreading famine, and storms are growing stronger with each passing season.” Problem is, none of it’s true.
The Gore-Obama meeting followed an announcement by researchers at Florida State University that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years. Then there was a report in November on cyclone activity showing storm durations and wind speeds in 2007 and 2008 were among the lowest since reliable global satellite data became available three decades ago.
As for those coastlines, studies by the International Commission on Sea Level Changes and others show ocean levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.
Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth is cooling, and has been since 1998. A peer-reviewed study published in April by Nature predicted the world will continue cooling at least through 2015. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.
Meteorologist and Weather Channel founder John Coleman notes that a significant natural warming trend peaked in 1998 with lots of sunspots and solar flares. Now the sun has gone quiet with fewer sunspots, and global temperatures have gone into decline. “Earth,” he says, “has cooled for almost 10 straight years.”
So why in an economy reeling from a market collapse are we still considering emission controls certain to kill both jobs and economic growth? The EPA said the cap-and-trade lunacy of the recently stalled Lieberman-Warner bill would have caused a loss of $3 trillion in GDP in a $14 trillion economy. An analysis by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation concluded that passage of Lieberman-Warner would by 2030 cost the average American household $6,752 a year, with job losses as much as four million. The Earth is cooling. So is the economy. It’s time to step on the gas, not regulate it. See post here.