The 411 on Global Warming Article

Source: Sydney Morning Herald ()

It was hilarious seeing Kevin Rudd give a press conference on renewable energy at a Townsville school on Tuesday, when the wind and solar batteries failed and plunged the room into darkness. The media questioning continued, but under the thin light of the battery-operated TV cameras.

Rudd had the wit to laugh about the mishap but it is an omen of things to come if climate-change hysteria continues and the desire to drastically slash carbon emissions overrides reality.

In their rush to embarrass the Prime Minister, John Howard, over his refusal to ratify the Kyoto treaty to cut global carbon emissions, Rudd and his environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, this week revealed the shallowness of their thinking on climate change.

The aim of the Kyoto treaty was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 per cent by 2012 compared with 1990 levels.

But Kyoto has proven to be nothing but a feel-good gimmick which has done little to reduce carbon emissions and places no obligation on some of the world’s biggest emitters. The developing world is responsible for 50 per cent of carbon emissions, tipped to rise to 75 per cent in the next 40 years, when China and India will account for one-third of global emissions. Australia emits a mere 1.4 per cent. Even if we ratified Kyoto and cut our emissions by 100 per cent tomorrow, we would have a negligible impact.

Kyoto has backfired on well-meaning countries who signed up, such as New Zealand and Canada, which will have to spend a fortune buying foreign carbon credits to get anywhere near their targets.

The world is moving on from Kyoto, but Garrett appeared oblivious to that this week when he declared to the ABC and The Australian Financial Review that Labor would sign a new Kyoto treaty after 2012 that did not include developing nations such as China and India - move the Prime Minister soon pointed out would mean exporting Australian jobs and industry.

Rudd happily endorsed …

Source: Globe and Mail ()

WASHINGTON — They may not agree on what to do about Iraq, health care or global warming.But every candidate with a shot at becoming the next U.S. president - Democrat and Republican alike - loves ethanol.
Even avowed ethanol skeptics Hillary Clinton and John McCain are converts.
"I have a glass of ethanol every morning before breakfast," Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican senator, joked during a recent swing through Iowa, the corn-growing heart of the country’s booming ethanol industry.

Ms. Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate, says she would divert oil subsidies to ethanol and other renewable fuels.
That there is no serious political debate about the merits of ethanol, even as the price of oil gushes toward $100 (U.S.) a barrel, speaks volumes about the quirky U.S. electoral process.
By tradition, Iowa holds the critical first test of the candidates’ staying power, with its January caucus votes. And so to remain in the hunt, every hopeful has to suck up to the corn farmers and ethanol producers of Iowa.
That’s great for Iowa, but not necessarily for the rest of us.
Simply put, ethanol, at least the kind made from corn, isn’t the answer to North America’s energy needs. It’s not even a 10-per-cent solution.
Ethanol proponents have held up ethanol has a clean, renewable, secure and homegrown alternative to gasoline.
True, it’s pretty green. But it isn’t clear that it’s any more secure or reliable than gasoline, according to new research by James Eaves, a finance professor at the University of Laval in Quebec City, and engineer Stephen Eaves.
Making too big a bet on ethanol would leave the United States exposed to weather-induced crop swings and tied to a fuel that at best can meet only a tiny fraction demand, the pair concluded in a recent article in the Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine.
"By displacing …

Source: Chicago Daily Herald ()

Peter Roskam has made it clear that he is not in favor of renewable energy by his votes on the Clean Energy Act and the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act, as discussed in Marni Pyke’s Oct. 8 article covering Greenpeace’s rally asking Congressman Roskam to co-sponsor the Safe Climate Act.

While the residents of District 6 wait for Congressman Roskam to find a global-warming measure he can support, several DuPage mayors have stepped forward and met the global warming challenge by signing on to the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Act. Elmhurst’s Mayor Tom Marcucci joined Carol Stream and Westmont when he signed the agreement on Oct. 4.

By agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, these mayors have become leaders in the search for clean, efficient, energy solutions that avert the predicted climate crisis, save taxpayers money and create green jobs.

The window of opportunity to commit to a course of action on global warming is narrowing. It’s time for Congressman to let us know which solutions he supports and not the ones he rejects.

Lonnie Morris

Illinois Sierra Club Chapter

Cool Cities Chair

Lombard

Source: NewsBusters ()

In March, Sports Illustrated published a lengthy cover-story dealing with how global warming was changing the face of sports including World Cup skiing which was forced to cancel one of seven events in Europe last season due to the absence of snow.

Also that month, the New York Times published an article addressing how "the chaos of their calendar this season changed many [World Cup skiers] to climate-change activists."

Deliciously, just seven months later, a new World Cup season began this weekend in Solden, Austria, with absolutely marvelous ski conditions.

Think SI and the Times will be reporting the postponement of the end of skiing as we know it?

While you ponder, the International Herald Tribune reported Friday (emphasis added):

For skiers growing scared by all this hysteria that their favorite sport is about to disappear, Timberline Ski Resort on Oregon’s Mt. Hood opened for business this weekend: "Fresh snow up high on the mountain has produced excellent Fall season conditions on the Palmer Snowfield, located at the 8500 foot level of the ski area."

Further east, a ski resort in Colorado opened more than two weeks ago: "An October 10th opening; the earliest ever in the resorts 61 year history." Loveland Ski Area opened on October 16.

To be sure, none of this means that global warming isn’t happening. However, neither does one bad World Cup season, or even two.

Yet, every weather-related event that has happened in this nation or around the world since Al Gore’s schlockumentary was released last year has been attributed to his unproven and fallacious theories.

With that in mind, an honest media would report occurrences suggesting the hysteria is a little overdone if it is at important for them to appear impartial concerning this matter.

—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

Source: New Zealand Herald ()

In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore says three times that climate change is foremost a moral issue. Why so? The public debate is all about scientific, economic, political and, yes, environmental issues. But morality?

What more could be said than stating the obvious, namely that each of us need to do more to reduce greenhouse gases. There wouldn’t be a single New Zealander who disagrees with the need to do something. Likewise, we expect Government to do “something” about climate change.

It did not take David Skilling to remind us that the Government “lacks strategic clarity” and that New Zealand is facing a huge bill for not meeting its Kyoto target. The New Zealand Institute offers an overly convenient solution to an inconvenient truth: let’s just forget about legal obligations, see what other countries are doing and be a follower (”fast” mind you) rather than a leader.

That fits nicely with John Key’s formula of “balancing economic opportunities with environmental responsibilities” and Fran O’Sullivan’s fears that “hard-nosed reality” will be overlooked by politics.

What do David Skilling (New Zealand Institute), Fran O’Sullivan (Herald) and John Key (National) have in common? They all promote economic realpolitik that can only be described as a morality of denial.

Climate change is going to force us to radically rethink moral norms and legal norms, domestically and internationally. As a reminder, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change stated in its preamble that climate change is a “common concern of humankind”, that the “largest share of historical and current greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries”. In Article 3 it confirmed that “developed countries parties should take a lead in combating climate change” and that “Parties should take precautionary measures”.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol merely specified such obligations by setting targets and timetables. The entire international …

Source: Chicago Daily Herald ()

It was so nice to see Al Gore’s beaming face taking up most of your Saturday Oct. 13 front page. The Nobel Peace Prize selection committee has a history of following an anti-American, liberal agenda and you played right into their hands. Jimmy Carter’s selection was another prime example.

The global warming controversy has become a political, not a scientific, issue. Perhaps all reporting on the subject should be relegated to the editorial page. If you wanted to report the news fairly, how about printing (right next to the Nobel article) the recent report out of London regarding the High Court judge who ruled that Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” contained nine assertions that are “not supported by current mainstream scientific consensus.”

Or perhaps you could do a feature on the recent book, “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years”, which debunks the Gore camp’s “Convenient Lies.” The book presents well-sourced, detailed data collected by scientists working independently, demonstrating the 1,500-year cycle that was discovered in the early 1980s and confirmed by measurements in tree rings (living, preserved and fossilized), pollen, coral, glaciers, boreholes, stalagmites, tree lines and sea sediments.

Paul Radzicki

Naperville

Source: Economic Times ()

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Source: Globe and Mail ()

WASHINGTON — The world is not just getting hotter from man-made global warming, it is getting stickier. It really is the humidity.

The amount of moisture in the air near the surface – the stuff that makes hot weather unbearable – has increased 2.2 per cent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday’s journal Nature.

“This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming,” said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study.

Mr. Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002. Increases in humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research.

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A soldier sweats as he takes part in an independence day parade in Santo Domingo in February. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

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Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University, said. In a few regions, however, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia, the air has grown drier.

The finding is not surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Mr. Gillett’s study shows that the increase in humidity is already significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that the effect is man-made, Mr. …

Source: Science Daily (press release) ()

SYDNEY, Oct. 8 (UPI) — Top Australian conservation scientist Tim Flannery says the global level of greenhouse gases is now far worse than predicted.

Speaking on an Australian Broadcasting Corp. TV program, Flannery warned that huge industrial and economic changes had to be made quickly to slow the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Flannery, the “Australian of the Year,” revealed some details of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, due for release next month.

He said the report will show that by mid-2005 greenhouse gas levels had already reached levels deemed to be dangerous,.

“We’ve really seen an unexpected acceleration in the rate of accumulation of CO2 (carbon dioxide) itself,” he said.

“I mean it’s beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001 and some other gases also have been produced on a larger scale than had been imagined.”

Flannery said the IPCC report ” establishes that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that could potentially cause dangerous climate change.”

“What it says is that we already stand an unacceptable risk of dangerous climate change and that the need for action is ever more urgent,” he said.

Source: Christian Science Monitor ()

from the October 4, 2007 edition

While governments in Australia and Britain are mandating a changeover to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), the United States
appears to be doing it free-market style. Wal-Mart just announced it will sell its own low-cost house brand of CFL lights,
while also trumpeting that it had already reached its goal of selling 100 million of the swirly, energy-efficient bulbs this
year.

But that’s just the beginning: From laundry detergent to DVDs, toothpaste to vacuum cleaners, the world’s biggest retailer
seems committed to “going green” product by product. In the process, it’s beginning to reverse some of the bad publicity it
has received over selling cheap goods from China and allegations of labor abuses.

It’s won plaudits from global-warming activist Al Gore and former President Bill Clinton, who invited Wal-Mart’s CEO to the
high-profile Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York last week. The speculation now centers on whether Wal-Mart’s massive buying influence on suppliers will
spread the fight against global warming beyond the granola-crunching set to the minivan masses.

Environmental groups are expressing cautious optimism, according to a story in BusinessWeek. Many remain suspicious that the move is no more than a public-relations ploy. But even the “greenest of the greens,” the
article reports, concede that with $350 billion in yearly sales, Wal-Mart has the potential to change the marketplace. But will it be willing to cut off suppliers that refuse to cooperate? That remains to be seen.

Says Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace:

In promoting its CFL program, Wal-Mart offered some eye-popping statistics last year: Nearly 20 percent of all home electric costs stem from lighting, it said, and changing a single conventional 60-watt bulb
to a 13-watt CFL saves an average of $30 in electric costs over its lifetime. Because it will last so much longer than …