Climate Change

This is just too good to pass up:

BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

Where to begin? First off - how many “grams of CO2″ will be emitted by those helicopters buzzing around to ensure compliance?

[Update 04/04/07:  This is apparently a hoax - thanks to reader Mike for commenting.  It goes without saying that the rest of the post (below) is still relevant.  Furthermore, I think it speaks volumes that the (hoax)story posted above didn’t generate more buzz than it did - it is exactly what people have come to expect from the global warming alarmist culture]

This isn’t the first time a global warming tax has been proposed or legislated. Some energy companies have even caved to the idea of a global warming tax. And in New Zealand, an initiative set to go into affect this month adds 6-9% to household energy prices as a global warming tax. These taxes are apparently intended to lower energy consumption. But where does the money go? That question never gets answered.

Just this week, Time magazine published a list of 51 things you can do as part of its “Global Warming Survival Guide“. Number 5 was pay more taxes:

A 10% flat carbon tax might reduce the demand for carbon about 5% or less, according to an analysis by the Carbon Tax Center, an environmental advocacy group. That may not be enough. Businesses and governments haven’t figured out how the two competing regimes can work together, but in the end, the world may need both.

But again, where will the millions/billions in revenue go? The article doesn’t say.

An editorial recently published in a Vermont newspaper (Warming will be excuse for new taxes) examines the real motivation behind such taxes:

Here is how it could work. Our actions are blamed for global warming. That’s when guilt will take over. The pronounced dire consequences of global warming will allow fear to overtake us. As victims we will then comply with whatever lawmakers require, which could mean new taxes, fines or punishments.

[…]

Our homes will be prime targets. Square footage will see a new tax. Heating oil will be additionally taxed. Emissions spewing lawn mowers could require a costly new permit.

All vehicles will be taxed or fined. So will recreational vehicles such as snowmobiles, ATVs and travel trailers.

Everything, absolutely everything, will be tied to global warming. That means virtually everything could see a new Vermont tax, fine or punishment.

The Vermont Legislature may follow Al Gore’s suggestion to impose a new “carbon tax” on all Americans.

If we thought the Patriot Act took away some of our freedoms, just wait until this plan kicks in.

Get ready to see many more taxes, fees, charges, and other limitations enacted in the name of “global warming”; this is just the beginning.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Global Warming Skeptic, Climate Change, Global Warming Tax

This time, for debunking incorrect, alarmist statistics: widely-publicized data on the reduction in the snowpack of the Cascades. This isn’t the first time a state climatologist has been rebuked for his views on climate change. This time, it’s the state of Washington that has stripped a climatologist of his title for failing to fall in line. But this time, it was after the climatologist actually corrected bad data (emphasis mine throughout):

The snowpack in the Cascades, it was said, shrank by 50 percent in the last half-century. It’s been presented as glaring evidence of the cost exacted by global warming — the drying up of a vital water source.

That statistic has been repeated in a government report, on environmental-advocacy Web sites and in media coverage. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently mentioned it in a guest column in The Seattle Times.

Here’s the problem: The number is dead wrong.

Bogus data used to support global warming alarmist claims. You don’t say? I wonder how many of those press reports, web sites, and politicians will publish a correction?

Well, that’s beside the point. If I was only writing about this story to highlight the publication of a bogus alarmist stat, understandably, few would read past the first lines since those stories are a dime a dozen. That’d be like writing about a teacher that raped a student or congressional spending bill with pork. But I digress…back to the story:

On Monday, it escalated further when University of Washington researcher and State Climatologist Philip Mote stripped a colleague of his title as associate state climatologist, triggering concerns that scientific dissent is being quashed. Losing the title doesn’t affect the man’s employment at the UW.

Why would Mote strip him of his title? Surely, it must be some grievous offense such being the source of that bogus data, right? Not so fast - the colleague, Mark Albright, is actually the one who debunked the bogus stats about snowpack:

The debate in Seattle started with Mark Albright, a part-time UW meteorologist and, until this week, the associate state climatologist.

After reading Nickels’ February essay in The Times, Albright sent an e-mail to colleagues saying he didn’t see evidence that snowpack was steadily shrinking, much less by 50 percent.

A debate ensued, with all sides quickly fessing up that the assistant, Albright, was right:

“No one believes in this 50 percent number anymore,” Mass said.

The group finally settled on a 30% reduction in snowpack (read their summary statement). They were off by nearly half. So why fire the man who revealed this grievous error?

Mote, upset that Albright was broadly distributing e-mails about the issue, last week told Albright that he would have to let Mote preview any e-mails before sending them out, if he was tying his work to the state climatologist’s office.

…When Albright refused Mote’s ultimatum, Mote barred him from associating himself with the state climatologist’s office.

Some of Albright’s colleagues are insisting he shouldn’t have lost the title:

But Mass said Albright was doing nothing wrong — simply airing his analysis and seeking feedback as he researched further.

“In all my years of doing science, I’ve never seen this sort of gag-order approach to doing science,” he said.

So they all agree the stat was bogus; Albright’s bringing it to the forefront was beneficial in that it revealed an error in the data set. Yet Albright gets the ax. Debunking the artificially inflated alarmist stats such as a “50% reduction in snowpack” isn’t going to get you very far when those publishing such stats are part of the Climate Impacts Group - a research group that relies on federal grants for their research.

Back to Philip Mote, the state climatologist that stripped Albright of his “assistant climatologist” title. What might his motivation be, you ask? We can get a hint from his views on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, as published by the Seattle Times in February:

Still, it’s tempting to compare Mote’s work with Gore’s crusade.

Both travel a lot, armed with Macintosh computers filled with photos of shrinking glaciers and graphs of the buildup of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Both attended Harvard; Gore studied government, Mote physics. Both are clean-cut, with Boy Scout earnestness…

But the underlying message is clear: Climate change is happening, and humans are the biggest cause. It’s a conclusion most scientists now share.

Mote gives Gore’s presentation, featured in the hit movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” an A-minus on the science.

In a debate with George Taylor, the head of Oregon’s Climate Service, a scientist who doubts doubts humans are the primary cause of climate change, Mote rejected peer-reviewed scientific research connecting solar variability with terrestrial climate change:

Taylor said too many unanswered questions remain about the influence of things such as unusual solar activity on the climate. He questioned whether there really was a problem at all.

Mote responded that the idea that the current warming was caused by such solar activity had been debunked.

Mote’s motivation in publicizing alarmist figures runs deep: he is also a lead author of the global warming alarmist’s favorite tome: the recently published IPCC report on climate change. But he’s not just any lead author, he’s lead author of Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice, and Frozen Ground. Observations of changes in snow and ice? That’s the very subject on which his data had to be corrected by the assistant now stripped of his title!

Furthermore, the “state climatologist” title may not just be for show any longer:

Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposed budget includes $168,000 for the office over the next two years, which would provide Mote an assistant. And the Governor’s Office is asking the Legislature to make it an official, appointed position.

I guess that $168K goes a lot further when you fire the assistant.
________________________________

See Previous:

• Another Global Warming Skeptic Rebuked (February 27, 2007)
• Silencing the Skeptics (January 19, 2007)

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming, Global Warming Skeptic, Climatologist, Philip Mote, Mark Albright

When you’re a NASA scientist who has repeatedly ignored policies you agreed to upon employment with said agency and you’d like to gain more headlines by claiming you’ve been muzzled.

The name James Hansen was splashed across headlines worldwide last month when he claimed to have been muzzled by the Bush administration. After being denied the opportunity to complete an interview with NPR (such limitations are apparently standard practice by NASA) Hansen claimed the Bush administration was attempting to silence his alarmist viewpoint. But upon questioning yesterday in Washington DC, it was revealed that the NASA employee had already completed over a thousand media interviews prior to the NPR request (emphasis mine throughout):

But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced.

“We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

And furthermore, Hansen had already violated NASA policy by failing to inform his employer of such interviews:

Mr. Deutsch, who was 23 at the time, said Mr. Hansen was prohibited from doing the interview because of his prior refusal to notify NASA officials when he was granting interviews, not for political reasons.

Citing what he called his “constitutional right” to give interviews, Mr. Hansen admitted violating NASA’s press policy but defended his actions.

And following the “muzzling” by the Bush administration, somehow Hansen did more than a dozen more interviews:

Citing what he called a “growth of political interference,” Mr. Hansen said he was forced by NASA officials to deny an interview request from NPR because press officials believed the network to have a liberal bias.

But Mr. Issa noted that Mr. Hansen conducted 15 interviews in the month after accusing the Bush administration of censorship.

Another minor detail that was no where to be found in earlier revelations about this scientist:

Mr. Hansen received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz foundation, which is controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. Mr. Hansen was a vocal supporter of Mr. Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

How many media outlets that pushed this “censorship” story will cover this revealing follow-up?

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, James Hansen, Climate Change

The “stranded polar bear” photo continues to grab headlines, even after yet another thorough debunking. In what has become the furry, cuddly symbol of all that is wrong with the climate change debate, the now ubiquitous photo was splashed across news pages worldwide, with captions such as this from the Daily Mail (click for article and image):

They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.

The news wires were alive with the bogus story claiming the loss of arctic sea ice (due to man-made global warming) was threatening the sustainability of the cute, cuddly polar bear (see articles with the same specious claims here, here, and the NYTimes version with photo caption correction appended here).

There was just one problem: the photograph was taken not of polar bears “stranded” on ice - far from it. Rather, the bears wondering around their natural environment as they do every day. Read the first-round debunking here and here.

But now there is more. Spiked.com has investigated further by going straight to the source to get the full story from the original photographer. As explained in Rob Lyons’ The bear necessities of climate change politics on Friday (emphasis mine):

The student who took the photograph, however, gives a slightly different account: ‘They were on the ice when we found them and on the ice when we left. They were healthy, fat and seemed comfortable on their iceberg.’

Amanda Byrd, an Australian graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), says she took the picture around three years ago - in the summer. The photograph was not ‘taken by environmentalists’ but as part of a field trip with the university.

Furthermore, the photographer wasn’t even asked permission:

Byrd is clearly a little miffed that ‘the image you have seen around the world was distributed without my consent, and [with] the wrong byline’.

And logic and reason (aka science) is all but lost when cuddly polar bears are brought into this debate:

For all the polar bear stories, it is far from clear that these bears are an endangered species. Even if a warming world did make things more difficult for them, Arctic temperatures have been considerably warmer in the past – and polar bears survived those periods. It’s not even clear that polar bear numbers are in decline.

How many of the mainstream media outlets that used this photograph in stories on the new IPCC report or other climate change stories will publish a correction? How many will reveal that the photograph was not only incorrectly captioned, but also incorrectly attributed as portraying yet another direct impact of man-made global warming? I’m not holding my breath.

So why is this important? After all, it is just a photo, right? Not quite. It just so happens that it is a photo that has been viewed by thousands of people worldwide who now (incorrectly) associate it with global warming. It is part of a larger picture of alarmism that is continually supported by the mainstream media.

Even with this most recent thorough debunking, the myth carries on. The polar bear is now the mascot of yet another global warming alarmist website. Al Gore couldn’t find any struggling polar bears, so he had to animate them. The US government is now researching their status as an endangered species. But they are not doing so based on the usual protocol set by the endangered species legislation, but instead in response to a lawsuit by environmentalists such as Greenpeace alleging as much. This story is far from over.

Technorati Tags: Polar Bears, Global Warming, Climate Change, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

I never thought I’d see the day. The New York Times - the paper that traditionally has helped espouse all of the tactics of the global warming alarmists - has published an article calling on Gore to stop the hype (h/t Drudge):

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

Wait…what was that? It bears repeating: “In talks and blog entries…scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated…” Stop the presses!

It gets better - some of those actual scientists (of which Gore is not one) weigh in:

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

That consensus claim is one of my favorites. He even claims, in his documentary, to have surveyed the scientific literature and to have found not a single prominent scientist that disputed the alarmist claims of anthropogenic global warming. Well, what about these 89 scientists (pdf), Mr. Gore?

The article continues and restates the obvious:

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

That’s where I thought they were going to say “Although he’s not a scientist, he did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night…”

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

The alarmists will run to opensecrets.org and other sites to try to paint as Dr. Easterbrook as a shill for big oil, but such claims won’t hold water:

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

The word is getting out that Al Gore ignored years of scientific study on specific claims:

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

The anti-alarmist viewpoints are picking up steam and getting heard. At last.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Climate Change, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth