Acclaimed Polar Bear Researcher Has "Integrity Issues"

Who'd have thunk it? The guy who wrote up the report of dead polar polar bears in the water that was cited extensively by Al Gore and used by enviro wackos everywhere to pressure the planet to panic over global warming seems to have some integrity issues.

A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.

Charles Monnett, an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, was told July 18 that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into "integrity issues."

There was another scientist that accompanied Monnett on the study which was conducted in 2004 named Gleason. While he doesn't dispute the 4 dead polar bears he does dispute the cause.

According to a transcript, investigator Eric May asked Gleason his thoughts on Gore referencing the dead polar bears. Gleason said none of the polar bear papers he has written or co-authored has said "anything really" about global warming.

"It's something along the lines of the changing environment in the Arctic," he said.

Gleason said others put their own spin on research or observations.

Yes folks, four dead polar bears is all it takes for environmental zealots to shut down all the energy production in this country. Well that and some little guppies and lizards.

Obama Signals Full Speed Ahead on Cap and Trade

Today's big announcement out of the Barry O White House is the appointment of yet another environmental radical to his team, this time with the fancy title environmental economist. The man selected to this position is Nat Keohane, who has a long track record of arguing for a cap and trade policy as well as being a fellow traveler on the global warming crazy train, along with all the other members of Obama's energy and environmental team.

Keohane has participated in a number of expert workshops and panels on key issues such as the design of cap-and-trade programs and the regulation of carbon markets. He also presented a paper at the NYU climate finance conference in Abu Dhabi in May.

Keohane attended the international climate negotiations in Bonn as part of the EDF delegation. He was also one of roughly 100 experts from around the world invited to participate in the Scoping Meeting for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which took place in Venice in July.

In the video below he explains how a cap and trade policy would work, leaving out the fact that it has contributed significantly to Europe's financial woes.

The Facts of Cap-and-Trade from Clean Energy Works on Vimeo.

He also seems to have some issues with Hummers. The same engine that is in a Hummer is also in dozens of other models of cars, but you know how the image of a Hummer works, and for this reason this makes him a very good propagandist.

In 2007, he had a post on Yahoo Green where he lays out exactly what kind of environmental economist he is.

This is where we part company. Technological innovation is not most quickly and efficiently implemented by government programs. Markets are much more nimble and able to respond in real time to what works and what doesn't. Our best hope is to get the power of markets working for us through a cap-and-trade system.

Global warming is a classic example of market failure. The pollution that causes global warming has skyrocketed because the environmental costs are hidden, and we don't factor them into our decisions. Factories and power plants pay for the fuel they burn, but not for the pollution they emit. The solution is to harness the power of market forces by establishing firm caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

Gird your loins, America. What Obama couldn't accomplish through a Democrat-controlled congress, he will now attempt to achieve through executive action.

I wonder if any press reports will contain information on this guy's positions or will it be like everything else liberal related: something to be ignored since they back such policies.

Good News - World May Not End in 2012

The bad news is we only got 16 million years to figure out how to stop the next planet wide extinction.

From Technology Review via our friends at Instapundit.

But the data indicates that the extinctions occur every 27 million years, as regular as clockwork. "Fossil data, which motivated the idea of Nemesis, now militate against it," say Melott and Bambuch.

NBC To Air Environmental Special With Extremist Nutcase

Surely you were expecting Al Gore, right? Well, NBC has found someone even more daft to highlight in some propaganda film coming this fall.

Britain's Prince Charles will be featured on NBC later this year in a film about his environmental work.

The network said Tuesday it will show "Harmony," a movie about the prince and his view that people have lost the understanding of how to live in harmony with the natural world. It features business and environmental leaders working for a better balance.

Paul Telegdy, head of alternative programming at NBC, said Prince Charles was mocked as the "tree-hugging prince" when he first started talking about many of these issues. Telegdy knows - he's a Brit who worked for the BBC.

"I always thought of him as one of the leading environmental activists on the planet," he said.

The film also includes clips from an interview Prince Charles did about the environment in 1988 with future Nobel Prize winner Al Gore.

The special will air in November, part of NBC Universal's fourth annual week of programming promoting green lifestyles.

Of course this freeloader has one of the more massive carbon footprints known to man, a fact sure to be overlooked in this schlockumentary.

Goodall made use of publicly available records to estimate the prince’s travel and utility bills. He found that Charles was responsible for nearly 1,600 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of more than 600 cars on Britain’s roads for a year.

Flights taken by Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall generated more than 800. They flew more tons of CO2 than 70,000 miles last year, including frequent visits to Scotland and tours of the United States, the Gulf, Pakistan and Africa.

The prince’s foreign air travel has been controversial. In January he travelled first class to the United States with Camilla and 14 aides, where he picked up an environmental awareness award. The two-day tour cost up to £120,000 and generated 54 tons of CO2. In February he hired an Airbus A319, which can seat 140 people, to carry him, Camilla and 23 aides to the Gulf at taxpayers’ expense. The tour, which generated 380 tons of CO2 four press advisers, an equerry, a dresser for the duchess, a hairdresser, two valets, a butler, a doctor, three staff in charge of logistics and travel, and a personal assistant.

When Chuckles jaunts off to the Caribbean, he and his wife really walk the walk, economizing to save the taxpayers unnecessary expense by using a small boat just for two.

Last year this conscientious guardian of the planet embarked on a South American eco-tour and racked up an astounding 322-ton carbon footprint. Meanwhile, last December this oaf jetted in style to meet with the beautiful people in Copenhagen.

PRINCE Charles used up seven months’ worth of the average British person’s “carbon footprint” yesterday flying to Copenhagen on an executive jet to make a speech on climate change.

The heir to the throne, who prides himself on his green credentials, cost taxpayers an estimated £12,000 and racked up a 6.486-ton carbon footprint in one day by taking a seven-seater RAF Royal Flight HS125 jet to the summit in the Danish capital.

This is who NBC deems appropriate to lecture the rest of us about being green.

Maybe they can have Giselle Bundchen come on for a guest appearance.

By the time this chump shows up on NBC, according to his estimate the planet will only have six years left.

PRINCE CHARLES warned world leaders last night they had just seven years to save the world.

In a passionate speech at the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, Charles described the event as "historic".

He said: "Our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control."

The prince said mankind had the power to push the planet to the brink but also the ability to bring it back into balance.

He added: "This is an historic moment. I can only appeal to you to listen to the cries of those who are already suffering from the impact of climate change.

"The eyes of the world are upon you and it is no understatement to say that, with your signatures, you can write our future."

Prince Charles said humankind seemed "intent on consuming the planet".

He's sure done more than his share.

Green Police Coming to Cambridge

Here you thought that Audi commercial from Super Sunday was just a gag. Well, the folks in Cambridge, Massachusetts will soon be under the jurisdiction of the Green Police.

Going green will not be optional in Cambridge, Mass., if the Cambridge Climate Congress has its way. It will be mandatory.

There will be congestion pricing to reduce car travel. Curbside parking will be eliminated. There will be a carbon tax "of some kind," not to mention taxes on plastic and paper bags. And the Massachusetts city, home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will advocate vegetarianism and veganism, complete with "Meatless or Vegan Mondays."

So now you'll have these liberal Nazis coming into your home to see what you're eating every Monday? Good grief. Where does this lunacy end?

"This emergency is created by the growth of local greenhouse gas emissions despite the urgent warnings of climate scientists that substantial reductions are needed in order to reduce the risk of disastrous changes to our climate," the Climate Congress reported in proposals issued on Jan. 23. "This proposal is made in the belief that an effective local response is, if anything, made more urgent by so far inadequate global agreements and federal policies for emissions reductions. It is made in the belief that our City should lead by example."

Does anyone have the heart to tell these wackos that this mythical "climate change" is a hoax?

While the group's proposals remain a work in a progress, some experts say the potential measures it advocates are "heavy-handed" and incongruous. But others say the city just might be onto something, particularly if the taxes associated with the plan are used to make buildings and transportation more efficient.

Dr. Ken Green, a resident scholar on environment and energy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said he found an "overall redundancy" in the proposals, specifically regarding a carbon-based tax coupled with congestion pricing, increased parking meter rates and parking tickets.

"That's just a revenue-raiser for the city," said Green. "There's an overall incoherence of having a carbon tax and three or four indirect taxes."

Thanks to Hot Air for the link. A commenter there pointed to an item in the American Thinker. Get a load of this nonsense.

The veneration of all things "local" continues: "Cambridge should move in the direction of economic change, creating a locally based economy." (Notes 8.) We might "[c]onsider a local currency." (Notes 76.) And "[e]ncourage businesses to hire local people who will not have to commute." (Notes 77.) Wow, trade barriers with Somerville?

Since automobiles generate greenhouse gases, numerous ideas were put forth to limit or eliminate cars from Cambridge. My favorite is the dictum: "Cars should be shared rather than privately owned." (Notes 75.) Pol Pot would be on board with that one.

Elsewhere we read: "Eliminate streetside parking in the city." (Proposal 15.) And: "To decrease the number of Cambridge residents or employees who depend on cars, we could decrease the number of on‐street parking spaces." (Notes 76.)

Got that? If you depend on your car to buy groceries, then the city will solve your dependence problem by taking away your on-street parking. If you're elderly or have teenage sons who drink milk by the half-gallon, then the problem would be solved by immediately moving to Belmont -- that is, if you could still sell a house without a driveway in mid-Cambridge.

Obama: The Science Is Settled

President Obama spoke at the Copenhagen Socialist Wealth Redistribution Conference also known as the climate conference, and in essence threw America under the bus. In his short speech he said the science on climate change is settled, thereby ignoring all of the recent information that indicates how the data used to arrive at that conclusion is being called into serious doubt.

For somebody who constantly chastises his critics as using the "tactic of fear" to question his policies he was sure using it in his short little speech this morning. He said the time to act is now, with not a moment to spare. Anybody who thinks he will not do an end run around the Congress using his energy and environmental czars, along with the supreme imperial power of the EPA, are deluding themselves.

In his words this morning he proved himself to be a hardcore man-made climate change truther.

In true liberal fashion, he begged those attending to give up their citizen's wealth to those less "fortunate" countries, which is exactly what countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela want to hear. Since they have driven their countries into the ground, why not have the rest of the world join them there?

His strong support of the junk science related to climate change leaves no doubt however that his faith in this false religion will not be shaken.

Obama, addressing his counterparts at Copenhagen, reiterated the U.S. offers, called for transparency from other countries in how their emissions curbs are checked, and said the United States would continue to fight global warming regardless of what happened at the summit in Denmark.

"The time for talk is over," he said.

A video will follow when available.

And here it is.

"It's not fiction, it's science."

There Go The Jobs In The Energy Sector

The EPA led by Lisa Jackson, a big global warming acolyte, is prepared to announce next week that CO2 is a dangerous gas. That's right, everytime you exhale according to our imperial federal government you will be emitting a dangerous gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an "endangerment" decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

I guess this another case of where the science is settled.

In the past activist judges have used previous reports citing CO2 as a dangerous gas as a reason to bar the construction of clean coal plants and to restrict the building of refineries, even though there was no official stamp on that line of reasoning. With the EPA making it official, it will be yet another blow to manufacturing and the energy sectors of our economy.

There won't any recovery anytime soon at the rate this is going. Without jobs and entire sections of our business world being handcuffed with everything from salary caps to ridiculous rulings like this, there simply won't be any where to hire people.

No, I am not putting much stock in those November unemployment numbers. Businesses just weren't up to laying off more people at the end of the year. Keep an eye on the numbers for January, which will of course take all the experts once again by surprise.

Just 'Plane Stupid': Environmental Wackos Slaughter Polar Bears

Really helping their cause.

Airline pollution activists Plane Stupid are on a collision course with the advertising regulator after launching a graphic cinema campaign that sees CGI polar bears falling to bloody deaths to highlight the impact of carbon emissions.

Plane Stupid's ad, which breaks in cinemas and online today, features dozens of animated polar bears falling from the sky onto a city centre, bouncing off skyscrapers and landing in the street and on the roof of a car, accompanied by blood-spurting special effects.

The only sound, apart from the bone-crunching thump of the impacts, is the steadily increasing whine of a jet airliner's engines.

I guess since the polar bear population has increased so much in recent years they felt the need to kill some off.

Via Tim Blair.

Cap and Trade Headed Our Way For Energy

Everybody knows that Barry O was up in Iowa, er Ottawa yesterday. What most people are not aware of is what the President in Training Pants said in response to a question posed to the 2 leaders, President Obama and Prime Minister Harper, in regards to energy policy.

The whole exchange was captured but unfortunately it is spread between 2 separate videos. The question is here along with Mr Harper's response starting about 4:25 mark. I am putting up the video that contains Obama's response which contains a portion which ought to scare you. In it he advocates for the United States to pursue a "Cap and Trade" policy in regards to coal power. Of course nobody in the news is reporting this little revelation.

Cap and trade is a policy which is designed to devastate an industry. Essentially it makes the price of doing business too prohibitive to be viable.

These measures would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use. The effect of such a cap would be to impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Each covered utility, oil company, and manufacturing facility would be given allowances based on past emissions or some other formula. Those companies that emit less carbon dioxide than permitted by their allowances could sell the excess to those that do not; this is the trade part of cap and trade. Over time, the cap would be ratcheted down, requiring greater cuts in emissions.

In the video you will find Baracks' response starting at about the 2:19 mark. The environmental and energy team that Obama has are all big advocates of this sort of approach along with all the environmental progressive weenies. It was tried in Europe and it has failed. Of course if there is one thing this new administration has shown us they are not about to let failed policies of the past stop them from adopting or proposing them again. Whether those policies belonged to FDR, Jimmy Carter, or the Europeans.



For somebody who everyday is regaling with dire warnings of how bad our economy is he sure seems to be doing everything in his power to make sure it soon rivals countries such as Zimbabwe.

"Most of the models couldn't predict the past"

al-Goracle, line one, please.

Global Con-sensus
December 21, 2007: 08:05 PM EST

Dec. 24, 2007 (Investor's Business Daily delivered by Newstex) --

Climate Change: A Senate minority report lists 400 reputable scientists who think the only melting ice we should really fear was in the cocktail glasses of attendees at the recent global warming conference in Bali.

In the wake of the Dec. 3-14 conference, where delegates worked to draft a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol on global warming, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has released a report that lists scientists who challenge both Al Gore's assertion that the debate is over and the Bali conclusion that the planet is in imminent danger.

Many of the 400 scientists have taken part in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose climate change reports tout consensus but which critics charge are heavily edited to support pre-defined conclusions.

Among the IPCC's warming "deniers" is atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute.

"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting -- a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number -- entirely without merit," he said. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: Just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."

Physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing tools for clients like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says: "Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling -- all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by cyclical variations in solar output."

Brosnahan says he has "not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case." Those models, he says, leave out too many variables.

Indeed, a study in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology looked at 22 computer models used by the IPCC. Most of the models couldn't even predict the past.

Predictably, after a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 to 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), though she didn't name which scientists she thinks were bribed to distort the truth. Wise move.

This is not like Al Gore getting 75 hours of free airtime on NBC, a unit of General Electric (NYSE:GE) , which stands to make wads of cash on things like solar panels and wind turbines. Or Gore being involved with a company that sells carbon offsets.

Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor has noted that more than 600 scientists at the Bali gathering could have debunked Gore's warming theories, but the U.N. "censored" them.

By the way, Gore and his statist friends in Europe repeatedly have criticized the U.S. for its "failure to act" on warming. But new data show the U.S. in 2006 slashed output of greenhouse gases by 1.3%, while Europe's output continued to grow. So who's failing to act?

Here an idea: How about NBC hosting 75 hours of debate between some of Inhofe's 400 scientists and any one of Gore's choosing, including himself? Afraid of some inconvenient truths, Al?

Via CNN

Also at Also at A Tangled Web

"We are creating a new currency."

There will be dancing in the streets of the parallel universe for sure.

Ministers ordered to assess climate cost of all decisions
Coal-fired power stations, airport expansions and new road schemes could all be put on hold following a decision by (British Prime Minister ed.) Gordon Brown that ministers must in future take account of the true economic cost of climate change damage.

Ministers have been instructed to factor into their calculations a notional "carbon price" when making all policy and investment decisions covering transport, construction, housing, planning and energy.

That price - which will increase annually - is intended to frame all day-to-day policy and investment decisions for the next 30 years.

As a result carbon-free or clean technologies, including nuclear power, have been given a significant boost as they will now become relatively less expensive than polluting technologies.

The "shadow price for carbon", representing the cost to society of the environmental damage, has already been agreed for every year up to 2050 by government economists. It will be set at £25.50 (£1=US$0.50 ed.) a carbon tonne for 2007, rising annually to £59.60 a tonne by 2050.

The climate change minister, Phil Woolas, said: "This will have huge implications for [the] government. If for instance a new power station is due to cost £1bn, but it will add £200m worth of carbon emissions, we will decide that the cost of the power station is £1.2bn, even though its cash price is £1bn. We are creating a new currency."

In theory the carbon price will create a bias against roads and carbon-emitting coal stations and make new "zero carbon" building regulations appear more economic.

In other words, they won't.

Decisions about investments in new nuclear power stations will be made exclusively by the private sector, but the social carbon price is likely to affect the role of regulators and make them more willing to back nuclear as opposed to other more carbon emitting energy technologies.

It has also been agreed that every major Whitehall policy and investment decision will be monitored over the next year to check that policymakers are actually incorporating the shadow price of carbon.

Woolas said: "This is far bigger than people realise. It is intellectually thought-through and very tough. Gordon Brown may not ride a bike, but by god he is showing a lead."

My ass. Comrade Brown and his commissars have done nothing but create a cash cow for the government.

Tony Juniper, the head of Friends of the Earth, said the "carbon price" could change economic calculations around issues such as a third runway at Heathrow. He added: "At the moment there are gaping holes in government policy with them professing concern for climate change on one hand, and rushing to expand airports and widen roads on the other. If this helps to fill in that gap then it has to be a step in the right direction. Whether it works or not will depend on whether they have set the carbon price high enough."

The price has been set at a level calculated to ensure the government can meet its major policy target of stabilising carbon emissions at between 450 and 550 parts per million carbon, the figure recommended by the review conducted for the Treasury by Sir Nicholas Stern.

The review found that the costs of addressing climate change now will be cheaper than the costs of doing so later.

The shadow price is partly drawn from new modelling on the scale of the threat posed by climate change and partly by economic work undertaken by McKinseys and the Stern review on behalf of the Treasury on the economic costs of failing to address climate change.

The price is intended to take into account the full global costs of the damage carbon causes over the whole of its time in the atmosphere.

Equivalent values will be used for other greenhouse gases.

A note setting out the government's thinking prepared in part by the chief economist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Richard Price, says ministers must refer to the shadow price. It states: "It is important that the shadow price for carbon is applied consistently and universally across decisions in government with significant implications for emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases."

Via the The Guardian

Also at A Tangled Web

Global Baloney

'Polars bears on the brink?
Don't you believe it'
[...]

... wealthy tourists discovered the thrill of nature-watching breaks and Churchill, home to the most easily accessible polar bear population, became a fashionable - and newly prosperous - adventure holiday destination.

Although the town is still accessible only by train or light aircraft, its guesthouses are packed during late summer and autumn, when the vast ice-sheet over the bay melts, forcing around 1,000 bears to lollop around for months on the shore.

Lately, however, it is not only polar bear watchers who come flocking.

With the clamour over global warming, it has become a magnet for an army of environmentalists and climatologists who have given Churchill an air of impending doom.

The Arctic ice-cap is shrinking fast, is their message, and as it disappears, so too will the polar bears.

Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).

Yet, we are repeatedly warned, if the planet continues to overheat at the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.

"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.

To some Churchill residents, who base their opinions on personal experience rather than fancy charts and computer models, this is so much nonsense put about by scaremongers for their own dubious ends.

When outsiders question whether anyone would be so cynical, they are reminded of that now-famous photograph of a polar bear which appears to be teetering precariously on an Arctic ice-floe, melting faster than ice-cream, in the depths of winter.

For a while, it became a powerful symbol of the perils of global warming - until it was revealed to have been taken three years ago and during the height of summer.

Oops.

Representatives from the 'global warming' conference in Bali were unavailable for comment.

Read it all at The Daily Mail

Calling On All Good Danes (And Other Folks, Too)

Denmark to Hold New Referendum on Euro

Denmark will hold a referendum on whether to adopt the euro and drop exemptions to closer cooperation with the EU on defense and law enforcement, the prime minister said Thursday.

Danish voters rejected the European common currency in a 2000 referendum. The Scandinavian country has also opted out of other key areas of EU cooperation.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a news conference it was time to reassess those exemptions, which Denmark was granted in the early 1990s.

"A lot has changed since," he said. "It is the right time to take a decision."

No date was set for a vote but it would be held during the next four years, said the prime minister, whose center-right government was re-elected last week.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be a separate vote for each of the exemptions.

Danes stunned fellow EU nations in 1992 by rejecting the Maastricht treaty on closer European cooperation.

A year later, Danish voters approved a revised treaty with clauses letting the Scandinavian country stay outside a single currency and banking system and refrain from joining a European defense structure or conform to EU citizenship laws and common law enforcement.

"We have always said that the Danish exemptions are a hindrance for Denmark," said Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark's prime minister since 2001.

He said the referendum would be held after Denmark had ratified the new EU reform treaty, which includes changes in decision-making rules designed to make the union function more effectively. The treaty replaces the failed EU constitution, which was rejected two years ago.

Fogh Rasmussen's Liberal-Conservative coalition won the Nov. 13 snap election with support from its nationalist ally, the Danish People's Party, and a smaller centrist group.

Denmark, a country of 5.4 million people, has held five referendums on EU-related issues since it joined the bloc in 1973.

In the latest one, on Sept. 28, 2000, Danes voted 53.1 percent to 46.9 percent against replacing the Danish krone with the euro. Recent opinion polls have shown a narrow majority of Danes now favor switching to the euro.

Via the AP

It appears that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is afflicted with a serious case of -isms. To better understand that from which Rasmussen and many Old Europe politicians suffer, clarity is found in New Europe, as demonstrated by President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic.

[...]
Ten-fifteen years ago I spoke many times in this country about this process of transition, about its non-zero costs, about its benefits, tenets and pitfalls. Now, when it’s over, we face a different problem.

As I said, we already succeeded in getting rid of communism. But – along with the predominant view at home and elsewhere – we erroneously hoped that the attempts to suppress freedom and to centrally organize, mastermind, regulate, control the whole society (and economy) were already matters of the past, an almost forgotten historic relic. They are, to our great disappointment, still there. I see more examples of them in Europe and in most of international organizations than in America itself, but they can be found here as well.

The reason is that there are new, very popular and fashionable “isms” which again put various issues, visions, plans and projects ahead of individual freedom and liberty. It is social-democratism (which is nothing else than a milder and softer version of communism), it is human-rightism (based on the idea of mostly positive rights applicable all over the world), it is internationalism, multiculturalism, europeism, feminism, environmentalism and other similar ideologies.

Communism is over, but attempts to rule from above, are still, or perhaps again, here.

The second main challenge I see is connected with our experience with the EU, but goes beyond it because it is part of a broader tendency towards denationalization of countries and towards world-wide supranationalism and global governance.

The special sensitivity, that I (and many of my countrymen) have, makes me view many current trends in Europe rather critically. My opponents do not seem to hear my arguments and a priori keep rejecting the views they don’t like. To understand my criticism requires familiar knowledge of the developments in the EU, its gradual metamorphosis from a community of cooperating nations to the union of non-sovereign nations and prevailing supranationalistic tendencies. This is not the standard knowledge in America.

I have always been in favor of friendly, peaceful, and for all of us enriching cooperation and collaboration of European countries. However, I have many times pointed out that the move towards an ever-closer Europe, the so-called deepening of EU, the rapid political integration, and the supranational tendencies without an authentic European identity and an European demos are not only necessary for the freedom and democracy in Europe, but damaging.

Freedom and democracy, these two, for us so precious values, cannot be secured without the parliamentary democracy within a clearly defined state territory. This is exactly what the current European political elites and their fellow-travelers are attempting to eliminate. And it bothers me.

This is from a speech Klaus delivered before the CATO Institute earlier this year and his ranking of the Religion of Environmentalism™ as the third main threat to individual freedom is a great read.

Or, kick back and see for yourself.



Writing in the Financial Times June 13th, Klaus stated that,

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:

• Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
  
• Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
  
• Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
  
• Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
  
• Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
  
• Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
  
• Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Amen, brother!


Also at A Tangled Web

'Global warming' and you

Price hikes for German beer as costs rise
Nuremberg - A worldwide scarcity of malt and hops means price rises are on the way for German beer, both in Germany and in its principal export market, Italy, a national breweries leader warned Tuesday.

In all, about 15 per cent of German-brewed beer is drunk abroad, with export growth partly making up for declining sales in Germany.

Gerhard Ilgenfritz, president of the private brewer's federation, said the brewery-gate price of a 24-bottle crate was likely to rise 1.00 to 1.10 euros (1.46 to 1.60 dollars) at the start of 2008.

Speaking in the southern city of Nuremberg just before the November 14-16 beer trade fair Beviale, he said the world price of aromatic hops had doubled in the past two years and the price of brewers' barley had tripled.

World barley reserves had been run right down as world demand for grain soared, harvests contracted and pressure grew on farmers to grow for energy sales rather than food.

But the Religion of Environmentalism demands that we go green, starting with increased ethanol production.

Energy was also costing more.

China has become the world's biggest brewer, making 35.1 billion litres annually, followed by the United States (23.2 billion) and Germany (10.7 billion).

First-nine-month domestic sales of 8 billion litres were down 2.3 per cent, whereas exports of German beer gained by 5.2 per cent.

Via Expatica

'Global warming'.

Get it?

UPDATE: Also at Protein Wisdom and Ft. Hard Knox

On Energy Independence

Then there's the Pelosi Plan

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

More junk science from the Church Cult of Environmental Extremism.

Global warming: Met Office predicts plateau then record temperatures

British scientists are predicting a succession of record-breaking high temperatures in the most detailed forecast of global warming's impact on weather around the world.

Powerful computer simulations used to create the world's first global warming forecast suggests temperature rises will stall in the next two years, before rising sharply at the end of the decade.

Powerful computer simulations predicted 2006 would be a record hurricane year for the Southeast. And how many tore through Florida and the Gulf Coast? Yep, you got it.

From 2010, they warn, every year has at least a 50% chance of exceeding the record year of 1998 when average global temperatures reached 14.54C.

Which means that every year has at least a 50% chance of not exceeding 1998's average temps.

Junk science.

al-Goracle was too busy counting his carbon credit profits, thus making him unavailable for comment.

There's more.

It Just Ain't Fair

Poor al-Goracle.

Once again, a respected scientist truths 'global warming'. Can't we all just get along after understanding the why of The Goracle's concerns?

Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Hey! You're being kind of harsh. WTF, it's just taxpayer's money.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

Uh-oh! Inconvenient truth alert! Inconvenient truth alert!

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
------ ker-snip ------
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.

Read all of Professor Patterson's commentary. Thou shalt not be disappointed.

Koslings notwithstanding, of course.

Klaus Answers Public's Questions

One week ago we made mention of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic and his views regarding 'global warming'. Within that post was a link via the Financial Times for those interested in submitting questions to President Klaus.

Today, The Finanial Times has published the answers provided by President Klaus.

Enjoy.

H/T the JammieWearingFool

A Tax By Any Other Name . . . .

This will surely be music to Progressive ears.

Thousands of motorists with large cars will soon have to pay hundreds of pounds to park outside their house.

Councils across London are pressing ahead with a sliding scale of charges for residential parking permits that penalises owners of fuel-hungry vehicles.

Horse crap. It's a tax except for electric cars.

Richmond was the first to push through a swingeing £300 levy on gas-guzzlers and 4x4s earlier this year.

Now other authorities are planning to do the same as the green lobby piles on the pressure for tougher measures against motorists.

From the beginning of next month, Hackney residents with cars that have engines bigger than four litres (producing around 350g/km of carbon dioxide emissions) will have to pay £207.50 a year - compared with £80 now.

Yes!! 'Global warming'. Be sure to get your carbon credits.

These include the BMW 745 and Hummer.

Cars with engines over three litres, including the BMW 735 and some models of the Land Rover Discovery and Isuzu Trooper, will attract an annual charge of £166, while anyone who wants to park a Mercedes E-Class or Porsche Boxster, at over two litres, in a controlled parking zone (CPZ) will get a bill for £124.50.

Owners of smaller cars under 1200cc - such as some models of Volkswagen Polo, Ford Focus and Nissan Micra - and hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, much loved by environmentally conscious MPs, will be charged only £41.50.

And permits will be free for electric vehicles such as the Mega City and Piaggio Porter van.

Islington, meanwhile, is carrying out a borough-wide referendum on a proposed increase from £95 to £200 for cars over 2500cc.

It claims about a third of motorists would pay more, and two-thirds would either pay less or see no change in the cost of a parking permit.

In a message to residents, the council's Lib Dem leader James Kempton said: "Cars dirty our air. They emit carbon dioxide, along with other pollutants, so reducing their emissions will be a step in the right direction."

Similar charging structures are being considered by Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea, Barking & Dagenham, Haringey, Southwark and Brent.

Well, they do have to cover the spiraling costs of providing council estates and social benefits for the easily offended portion of their populace.

------ ker-snip ------"But this policy is not just window-dressing. . . . "There is clear evidence that it will have a significant impact on air quality and climate change."

And I'm the high rabbi of the Magic Kingdom.

Note: At current exchange rates, £1 equals US$1.97.

Freedom, Not Climate, Is At Risk

Just as we had the panic of global freezing in the '70s, global warming is the hue and cry of the alarmists now.

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

[....]

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

Read it all. You will not be disappointed.

The Goracle; newly-minted environmental expert Jean-Pierre Kerry; and leading presidential candidate Ron Paul were unavailable for comment.


Note: Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus will be answering your questions.

President Klaus spoke before the CATO Institute March 9, 2007.