Les Jones

Aliens Cause Global Warming

Via Clayton Cramer comes a link to this Michael Crichton lecture, Aliens Cause Global Warming. His thesis: soft-heading thinking about scientific issues has become rampant, and we'd be better off if we were more rigorous about science, and its application to public policy.

ANWR

Bill Hobbs has a good post on ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and a proposal by Alaska's governor to begin offshore drilling.

ANWR is a litmus test. A proxy war. Drilling in ANWR involves two questions - why? and why not?

Why not is usually answered by the environmentalists, who portray ANWR as part of the last great American wilderness. ANWR is, in general, a beautiful place, but it's also a big place - 19 million acres. The 1.5 million acre part of ANWR where oil exploration would take place (designated the 1002 area) is pretty awful territory, as the pictures linked above demonstrate. It's hardly a scenic vista for backpackers, who prefer the mountainous regions to the flat, featureless stretch of tundra. Furthermore, it's adjacent to an area with considerable drilling activity that contains the Alaska pipeline, as shown on this map:

There's some concern about the caribou that calves in the area, but they seem unaffected by oil platforms in Canada. The scenic part of the park that's valued by backpackers and wildlife is in the park's remaining 17.5 million acres, which would still be protected. This division between the 1002 area and the rest of the reserve was spelled out in the legislation that created ANWR in 1980.

The why question is answered by businesses and unions: oil and jobs. The big question is how much oil is in ANWR. Estimates range from a few billion barrels to as much as in all of Saudi Arabia. (As of 2002, U.S. usage was about 20 million barrels per day.) From exploration to production would take seven to 10 years. Clearly, this isn't a quick fix for this season's high gas prices, but it could insulate the U.S. from an embargo from the Middle East, which is the biggest regional provider of our oil. And the sooner we start exploring, the sooner we get the oil.

Drilling in ANWR mostly comes up at election time, and during periods of high gas prices. It's a good boogeyman to use against Middle Eastern states when they cut their production quotas, as Saudi Arabia has recently done.

I can see two good reasons not to drill in ANWR right now. One is that the oil becomes more valuable the longer it stays in the ground. The obvious problem with this argument is that it applies equally well to all natural resource deposits. The other is that if we drill and don't find much, it puts us in a worse position for negotiating with foreign oil-producing states.

There's little doubt that the U.S. will eventually extract oil in ANWR. As time goes by, the value of the oil there will likely increase, and eventually it will be too valuable to resist.

Environmentalism as a Religion

Michael Crichton:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.

James Taranto:

On the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian island region of Aceh, the "highly influential Islamic clerics have explained the giant wave that devastated this overwhelmingly Muslim region as a warning to the faithful that they must more strictly observe their religion, including a ban on Muslims killing Muslims":

We suppose it's human nature to seek meaning in nature's horrors, and this isn't limited to Muslims or even to theists. Some followers of the godless religion of environmentalism have theorized that this is the Earth striking back against humans, who've despoiled the environment, but it's unclear in that case why the waves wouldn't have hit b�te noire America.

Senator James Inhofe:

For these groups, the issue of catastrophic global warming is not just a favored fundraising tool. In truth, it's more fundamental than that. Put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith. Therefore contending that its central tenets are flawed is, to them, heresy of the most despicable kind.

I do think some people's environmentalism is a form of religion. It may have been that for me at one time. Inhofe's remarks are spot-on: questioning anthropogenic global warming around some people really is heresy. It's amazing how many people believe statements like "all climatologists agree that mankind is causing global warming." That's not science, that's catechism.

Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science, and Global Warming

Feynman.com is a site devoted to the late, great Richard Feynman. There's more content on the site than first meets the eye. A lot of it is hidden behind drop-down menus.

Who's Richard Feynman?

Richard Feynman is as close as physics will ever get to a cult hero, even moreso than Albert Einstein, whom Feynman met when he was still a young student and Einstein was an important man. People respect Einstein, but they love Feynman.

Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, later won the Nobel Prize in physics, invented a way of representing events in quantum field theory now known as Feynman diagrams, and served on the president's committee (the Roger Commission) to investigate the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. He told the history of his experience on the Rogers Commission in his book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? Feynman was the guy on TV dropping the O-rings into a pitcher of ice water to demonstrate what happened when the O-rings sealing the booster rocket's sections got too cold and could no longer form a seal.

His personal interests included playing the drums, sketching, getting women to sleep with him, cracking safes, and hanging out at topless bars. He's probably best known because of his book, Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman. He's also the subject of a James Gleick biography, Genius, that I need to read one day. If anyone at work is reading this and wants to read the other two books, stop by my office. They're on my bookshelf.

Cargo Cult Science and Global Warming

If you don't read anything else of his, read his best-known essay, Cargo Cult Science, about the difficulty of doing science well, and the temptation to take shortcuts and engage in things that look like science, but that don't advance the body of scientific knowledge.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

I have to disagree with Feynman here. We still have the disease and always will. I think of Feynman's example of Millikan and the oil drop experiments whenever someone talks about computer models of global warming.

If you've ever programmed computers you can imagine the development of those models. You write a program to simulate the climate. You run it the first time and it shows that the Earth is a frozen ball of ice right now. "Oops. That's not right." Then you fiddle with it so it's warmer and run it again. This time it predicts the planet will get so hot the oceans boil away next week. "Oops. Now it's too hot." And so you tweak it until it gives you the answer you expect, the answer that conforms to your current set of prejudices and the current publishing environment. That's not science.

And if you think that sort of mistake-by-expectation can't be made with today's all-new state of the art modern space age computerized superscience, read this, which appears to invalidate the hockey stick model of global warming that's been part of the environmentalist catechism for years. The disease will always be with us.

Global Warming

Allegations that papers that dispute anthropogenic global warming are being unfairly and systematically kept out of Science and Nature. I'm not sure if the charges have any merit, but I'm passing it along.

In other news, No Oil for Pacifists puts the question of Kyoto Protocols in a way I had never thought of it:

Kyoto emission caps are justified only if all five of the following are true:

1. global warming exists
2. global warming would be harmful
3. global warming is man-made, as a result of increased CO2 emissions
4. Kyoto caps would significantly reduce emissions
5. the costs of imposing Kyoto caps are less than the benefits

That first point is almost certainly true in that we're pretty confident warming did occur in the last century. (Though there's no telling if the warming trend will continue, which would be another pre-condition). The others seem far less certain. Even Kyoto advocates tend to admit that #4 won't happen. Kyoto is at best a delaying tactic (assuming #3 is true).

European Countries to Exceed Kyoto's CO2 Emission Standards

Via Marginal Revolutions.

Netherlands 10% over
Belgium 16% over
France 19% over
Italy 13 to 21% over
Finland 26% over
Luxembourg 31% over
Ireland 41% over
Greece 51% over
Spain 61% over
Portugal 77% over

Not all the European countries are over their limits, but quite a few are, despite faltering economies. What's more, even if Kyoto was fully enacted it would only slow global warming, not stop it. And the ssumption underlying Kyoto is that global warming is ongoing, has net negative consequences, and is caused by CO2. (More assumptions here.) It's really hard to see how Kyoto can go on.

Climate Change Wrongly Blamed for Food Shortages

From the Gruniad:

One in six countries in the world face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists warned yesterday.

[...]

"It's going to get rapidly worse and we will have to move substantial amounts of food very fast," said one non-governmental group working in the worst-hit southern region of Malawi.

In Zimbabwe, where the effects of drought have been exacerbated by a deteriorating political situation, 4 million people may need help this year, the US government's famine early warning system showed.

"In all rural districts of Zimbabwe, crop production was poor and well below normal," said a report last week.

I call bull-fucking-shit.

Zimbabwe is not an environmental disaster. Zimbabwe is a political and economic disaster. Corrupt Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe and his so-called "land reform" kicked productive white farmers off their land and rewarded Mugabe's unproductive thugs with same. Result: Zimbabwe went from being a net food exporter to a net food importer in much less than half a generation, much faster than any environmental change could have happened. See here, here, and here.

The solution for these countries' food shortages is to become constitutional democracies with property rights and free market capitalism. The long-term economic consequences of climate change and other hypothetical environmental armageddons are as nothing compared to the very real short-term consequences of re-distributionist socialism and outright communism. For reference, see Korea (North vs. South) and Germany (East vs. West).

New Zealand's $500 Million Kyoto Bill

New Zealand is facing the prospect of buying $500 million in pollution credits to comply with Kyoto in the 2008-2012 timeframe. New Zealand politicians originally sold voters on Kyoto by saying that they would be able sell $500 million in pollution credits.

To put that into perspective, New Zealand's 2004 GDP was $92.51 billion. To put that further into perspective, that 0.1% of annual GDP won't actually help the environment a bit. It will just pay off the environmental protection racket by purchasing pollution credits from some country whose economy went into the toilet after the 1990 baseline year. Via Tim Blair.

Climate Change Wager

From The Gruniad via Jim Miller.

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.

The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.

The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

I'm still betting - based mostly on guesswork, and also on a certain amount of hope - that solar activity will be found to be the cause of the global warming that was seen in the last century. If global warming really is caused by greenhouse gases, and if the net effect is negative, we're going to be in trouble unless we have an awfully big advance in energy production technology.

Global Warming on Mars

OR,

Evidence of life on Mars. Republican life on Mars

Says the Beeb:

New images of Mars suggest the red planet's surface is more active than previously thought, the U.S. space agency Nasa has announced. New photographs from Nasa's orbiting spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor, show new impact craters and gullies.

The agency's scientists also say that deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet's south pole have shrunk for three summers in a row.

Must be all those Republican Martians driving their gas-hogging SUVs on Mars. Those Mars-hating greedheads!

If Earth and Mars are both heating up, and since human activity can't be blamed for higher temperatures on Mars, this may be additional evidence for solar-induced warming.

Environmentalism as a Religion, Part 2

From Steven E. Landsburg's Why I Am Not An Environmentalist:

Perhaps that same sort of honest na�vet� is what underlies the problems we've had at the JCC this year. Just as Cayley's teachers in Colorado were honestly oblivious to the fact that there is diversity in religion, it may be that her teachers at the JCC have been honestly oblivious that there is diversity in politics.

Let me then make that diversity clear. We are not environmentalists. We ardently oppose environmentalists. We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs. We do not recycle. We teach our daughter not to recycle. We teach her that people who try to convince her to recycle, or who try to force her to recycle, are intruding on her rights.

[...]

I view the current situation as far more serious than what we encountered in Colorado for several reasons. First, in Colorado we were dealing with a few isolated remarks here and there, whereas at the JCC we have been dealing with a systematic attempt to inculcate a doctrine and to quite literally put words in children's mouths. Second, I do not sense on your part any acknowledgment that there may be people in the world who do not share your views. Third, I am frankly a lot more worried about my daughter's becoming an environmentalist than about her becoming a Christian. Fourth, we face no current threat of having Christianity imposed on us by petty tyrants; the same can not be said of environmentalism. My county government never tried to send me a New Testament, but it did send me a recycling bin.

Incidentally, I don't agree with everything Landsburg says. For instance, I think he has an insufficient counterargument to the environmentalist argument that some forms of development are irreversible and we should proceed with caution. I also think his reverence for the science of economics (as he likes to phrase it) is a bit inflated. I gather there's quite a lot that economists haven't figured out. More, even, than in the physical sciences. I also think his attitude to at least a little environmentalism is antagonistic.

I do think it's true that environmentalism serves the purpose of a secular religion for some people. Through the good works of recycling and the abstension of not using disposable items the environmentalist hopes to achieve something like a state of grace. Furthermore, unsettled scientific topics like anthropogenic global warming are treated with absolute certainty as a sign of the true believer's faith.

See also:
- Environmentalism as a Religion, Part 1

More Evidence for Solar Influence of Global Warming

Study: Sun's Changes to Blame for Part of Global Warming

Increased output from the Sun might be to blame for 10 to 30 percent of global warming that has been measured in the past 20 years, according to a new report.

Increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases still play a role, the scientists say.

But climate models of global warming should be corrected to better account for changes in solar activity, according to Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West of Duke University.

The findings were published online this week by the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Scientists agree the planet is warming. Effects are evident in melting glaciers and reductions in the amount of frozen ground around the planet.

So these scientists think solar is part of the picture, others think it's all of the picture, and others think it's none of the picture. That's a far cry from the monolithic it's-the-CO2-stupid view you'll hear in the mainstream media.

UPDATE: Here's the study.

Michael Fumento Factchecks Erin Brockovich's Ass

In light of an award bestowed on her by the Harvard School of Public Health, Michael Fumento recalls some of Erin Brockovich's untruths over her legal career. Sample:

Brockovich also insisted that air samplings collected by a lab she'd hired showed massive levels of benzene, a human carcinogen. "When they came back I said, 'I can't believe this.' So we went four times, five times, six times," Brockovich claimed. "And each time we were getting the same results."

But the regional air quality authority conducted its own tests and found no high levels of any toxic pollutant. As it happens, neither had she. Her lab's data, which the city was forced to subpoena, showed benzene levels ranging from low to unmeasurable.

This isn't the first criticism of Brockovich or the case that made her famous. The science in that case was without basis.

Earlier, a panel evaluating exposed residents near a New Jersey landfill "estimated that the plausible incremental cancer risk to individuals at residential sites would be substantially less than one in 1,000,000." In a town like Hinkley, with fewer than 1,000 residents, that's less than a tenth of one percent of a tumour. In a town like Hinkley with fewer than a 1,000 residents, the odds are astronomical that even one chromium-6 cancer would show up.

Coincidentally, a study by Blot and others just published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine evaluated almost 52,000 workers who worked at three PG&E plants over a quarter of a century. One was the Hinkley plant, another is near Kettleman, Calif., where Miss Brockovich's firm is also rounding up plaintiffs. The researchers found that not only was there no excess of cancer when compared to the general California population, but that the overall PG&E worker death rate was significantly much lower than those of other Californians.

The relationship between the plaintiff's lawyers and the arbitration judges who made the 333 million dollar settlement was ethically questionable

Additionally, it later developed that the two L.A. lawyers who teamed with Brockovich�s firm to handle the case, Thomas Girardi and Walter Lack, were on unusually friendly terms with some of the judges in the arbitration, who had joined the arbitration firm JAMS after retiring from the regular California bench. One judge had officiated at Girardi�s second wedding, another had flown in Girardi�s Gulfstream to attend the World Series, and so forth. Laurence Janssen, a partner in the L.A. office of the Washington law firm Steptoe &Johnson, told Sharp: "I became aware that I should absolutely stay away from JAMS or its retired judges when it came to any dealing with Tom Girardi �The common lore imparted to me was that it would be crazy to get in front of any JAMS arbitration with Girardi."

Not long after the case was settled, generating $133 million in lawyers� fees, Girardi and Lack just happened to invite the three Hinkley case arbitrators to join a week-long Mediterranean cruise for 90 guests, including 11 public and private judges, on a chartered ship. "One judge," reports Sharp, "called it �absolutely incredible.�" A luxury yacht floated on azure waters; tuxedoed butlers balanced silver trays of free champagne; young bikini-clad ladies frolicked on the sun-splashed deck, according to retired Judge [William] Schoettler, who was a guest. As another bare-chested judge remarked at the time: �This gives decadence a bad name.�"

The distribution of the settlement between the plaintiff's lawyers and the plaintiffs was heavily contested.

Now, many of the townspeople who sued complain their awards were smaller than they deserved. Some have even hired lawyers to get back excessive legal fees charged to children. They say the attorneys kept their awards for six months after the settlement money was delivered, and that they didn't receive interest on it. They complain that there was little or no apparent logic behind the varying amounts of money individual plaintiffs received; some claim that the arbitrators never even looked at their medical records.

Brockovich seems an unlikely candidate for an award from Harvard.

Trends in Seafood Harvesting, Economics, and Depletion

Marginal Revolutions points to this history of seafood trends based on restaurant menus. As one species is fished out, other species - often previously considered "trash fish" - replace them until they, too, are fished out. (And at one time lobster was considered a trash fish that was fit only for servants.)

"In the 1970s and 1980s, orange roughie starts showing up on menus," Jones said. "But it's a very slow-growing species and they were harvesting it much faster than the species could replace itself so it's becoming commercially extinct"

Fishing boats simply shifted from chasing roughie in waters around New Zealand and Australia to pursuing Chilean sea bass in the southern Pacific and southern Indian oceans.

"They just moved on to another species," Jones said, citing catch statistics. "Now, the same thing is happening with the Chilean sea bass"

The Wildlife Conservation Society has a printable wallet card showing which fish are endangered and which aren't. These are the threatened species in increasing order:

• Yellowfin and bigeye tuna steak (Ahi), longline-caught
• Atlantic flounders and soles (incl. grey sole)
• Atlantic cod
• Groupers
• Shrimp
• Skate
• Monkfish
• Sharks
• Farmed salmon (incl. Atlantic)
• Chilean seabass (toothfish)
• Snappers
• Caspian Sea caviar (beluga, osetra, sevruga)

Biodiesel for Home Heating Fuel

Fuel oil companies are starting to offer heating oils made partially or entirely from biodiesel.

s a result, the National Biodiesel Board's website now lists 19 companies that supply biodiesel-blended heating oil, known as BioHeat, to residential customers, and the list is growing. Most companies provide BioHeat blends that contain 5 percent, 10 percent or 20 percent of biodiesel (known as B5, B10 or B20, respectively) mixed with conventional heating oil, all of which can be used in existing oil-burning furnaces.

BioHeat has several advantages over conventional heating oil: The fuel burns cleaner and releases fewer harmful emissions, and it relies on domestic sources of renewable energy -- mostly soybeans. That means BioHeat is less harmful to the environment and reduces national dependence on foreign oil. Switching all heating-oil customers to 5-percent biodiesel could reduce oil consumption by more than 330 million gallons a year; changing to 100-percent biodiesel (B100) would decrease it by 6.7 billion gallons a year.

[...]

And eco-friendly fuels don't come cheap. A 5-percent biodiesel blend costs about 5 cents more per gallon than regular heating oil, even at today's higher prices. Higher-percentage blends are even more expensive. Since most residential homes burn between 800 and 1,000 gallons a year, this translates into an annual cost increase of $50 for B5 and $750 for B100.

Some people are willing to pay the extra cost, so it's one more option. Biodiesel is small step towards efficiency, but it's a good one. It takes what was a waste product and turns it into fuel. I do think the days of free french fry oil from the local restaurant are going to be short-lived, though. Restaurants will inevitably start charging for their oil instead of giving it away, and the emergence of companies selling BioHeat will accelerate that process. Still, as a society we're becoming more efficient, and that's a good thing.

Not in My Back Yard

Bob Krumm catches some U.S. senators from both parties talking out of both sides of their mouths with regards to oil drilling and wind turbines.

Wesley Denton, spokesman for Sen. Jim DeMint [R-SC], said although the senator has promoted building oil refineries around the country, he has not pushed for South Carolina to have drilling close to its shores.

Funny, neither Senator thought that about drilling in ANWR.

And there's a quote regarding Ted Kennedy's well-known opposition to interrupting his view from the yacht club by placing wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts. One reason I think ANWR is going to wind up getting drilled is that it's the least worst option for the politicians. Alaska is politically weak, and while some Alaskans are against it, others are for it because of the oil boom it will provide. The only views to be spoiled belong to caribou, and caribou don't vote.

The Hockey Stick Graph of Global Warming Hysteria

From Alarming News:

Today- Climate risk 'worse than thought'

January 8, 2004- Global Warming 'far, far worse than we thought'

April 18, 2002- Climate change worse than predicted

July 12, 2001- Global warming 'worse than feared'

An Alcohol Energy Economy?

AEI is touting the potential of alcohol as an automotive fuel to supplement oil.

The largest producers of both ethanol and methanol are all in the western hemisphere, with the United States having by far the greatest production potential for both. Ethanol is made from agricultural products. Methanol can also be made from biomass, as well as from natural gas or coal. American coal reserves alone are sufficient to power every car in the country on methanol for more than 500 years.

Ethanol can currently be produced for about $1.50 per gallon, and methanol is selling for $0.90 per gallon. With gasoline having roughly doubled in price recently, and with little likelihood of a substantial price retreat in the future, high alcohol-to-gasoline fuel mixtures are suddenly practical. Cars capable of burning such fuel are no futuristic dream. This year, Detroit will offer some two dozen models of standard cars with a flex-fuel option available for purchase. The engineering difference is in one sensor and a computer chip that controls the fuel-air mixture, and the employment of a corrosion-resistant fuel system. The difference in price from standard units ranges from $100 to $800.

(To clarify those numbers a bit: later in the article the author notes that "Ethanol contains about 75 percent of the energy of gasoline per gallon, compared to 67 percent for methanol. Both thus achieve fewer miles per gallon than gasoline, but about as many miles per dollar at current prices, and probably many more miles per dollar at future prices.")

There's some question as to whether producing ethanol from biological materials is energy-efficient, but producing methanol from coal could work, and the U.S. has plenty of coal. The path to an alcohol economy is a lot easier than the path to a hydrogen economy. Is there some downside or barrier not mentioned in the AEI article?

Peak Oil Happened in December?

Lots of people are willing to predict that Peak Oil will happen some time in the future, but Kenneth Deffeyes is the only guy I've seen willing to stake a claim that it happened in the past. He thinks it happened in December, 2005. You gotta love testable hypotheses.

Global Warming: Proven Fact or Conventional Wisdom

Ron Bailey has a a roundup of the latest research.

Via Tim Blair,who also points to this Canadian research on the solar influence on global warming.

Big Day on the Global Warming Question

You've probably seen this by now, but I wanted it for the archives.

An editorial in the U.K. Telegraph notes that there's been no sign of warming since 1998. Since global CO2 has continued to increase since 1998, that raises a pretty big question about the anthropogenic theory of global warming and all of those computer models.

PeakTalk says that Canada's new conservative government plans to drop out of Kyoto. Look for Italy, New Zealand, and others to follow in the next few years.

Sixty scientists have sent an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper warning him that climate change is poorly understood, and cautioning him against trusting today's computer models. Contents of the letter and a list of signatories below.

Dear Prime Minister:

As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government's climate-change plans. This would be entirely consistent with your recent commitment to conduct a review of the Kyoto Protocol. Although many of us made the same suggestion to then-prime ministers Martin and Chretien, neither responded, and, to date, no formal, independent climate-science review has been conducted in Canada. Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science.

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based. Even if the climate models were realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most prudent and responsible course of action.

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formulation. The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

We appreciate the difficulty any government has formulating sensible science-based policy when the loudest voices always seem to be pushing in the opposite direction. However, by convening open, unbiased consultations, Canadians will be permitted to hear from experts on both sides of the debate in the climate-science community. When the public comes to understand that there is no "consensus" among climate scientists about the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, the government will be in a far better position to develop plans that reflect reality and so benefit both the environment and the economy.

"Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next.

We believe the Canadian public and government decision-makers need and deserve to hear the whole story concerning this very complex issue. It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas.

We hope that you will examine our proposal carefully and we stand willing and able to furnish you with more information on this crucially important topic.

CC: The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment, and the Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources

- - -

Sincerely,

Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, former director of Australia's National Tidal Facility and professor of earth sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide; currently adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Dr. R. Timothy Patterson, professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa

Dr. Fred Michel, director, Institute of Environmental Science and associate professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa

Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former research scientist, Environment Canada. Member of editorial board of Climate Research and Natural Hazards

Energy Return on Energy Investment (Energy Net Yield)

The recent spike in gas prices has people talking about alternative energy again. Here's a concept I was vaguely aware of: energy return on investment - the ratio of energy outputs to entergy inputs. For oil, the ratio is around 10 to to 1, meaning it takes the energy in 1 barrel of oil to pump, transport, and refine 10 barrels of oil.

Any energy source with a EROEI of less than one isn't an energy source at all, since it taks more energy to produce the fuel than the fuel can deliver. See the link for an explanation of the "emergy" thing. I'm not sure how windmills and solar cells can have EROEIs of less than one. Is he really saying they produce less energy than they make to manufacture?

Some researchers find that ethanol produced from corn has en EROEI below one, others think it's slightly more than one. Even with the free energy input from photosynthesis, it takes energy to raise the corn, harvest it, transport it, and ferment it into ethanol. Industrially-produced ethanol using coal as an energy source may make more sense as a gasoline adjunct. You lose energy in the process, but it converts abundant coal into something you can put in your gas tank.

UPDATE: Related Popular Mechanics story on alternative fuels. Via Instapundit.

Reason Magazine Looks at Peak Oil

I tend to trust Ronald Bailey's science reporting for "Reason," so I find his latest on peak oil reassuring.

Instead of preparing for an energy war, the best policy is to let markets have free rein. Even if, say, the Iranians make the political decision to disrupt the flow of oil to world markets, those markets left to themselves will eventually discipline them. The temporarily higher prices will encourage more exploration and technological advances, which will bring energy prices back down. On the day of his inauguration in 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted oil price controls. Five years later oil prices fell below $10 a barrel.

One day, the oil age will end. As with all resources, there is ultimately a finite supply of oil. So it is not yet clear how the world will power itself for the bulk of the coming century. But we have at least another three decades to find alternatives to petroleum. “Trusting markets is the only way we can assure energy abundance in the future,” notes the University of Houston’s Economides. “It’s also the only way that we will ever transition to something other than oil and gas.”

A Critique of Agricultural Ethanol

Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts, in Business Week, takes a critical look at the history of using agriculturally-derived ethanol as a fuel adjunct in the U.S. Via Instapundit.

Shortly thereafter, in yet another attempt to broaden the product's usage, Congress enacted a law that allowed car manufacturers to take excess mileage credits on any vehicle they built that was capable of burning an 85% blend of ethanol, better known as E85. General Motors (GM ) took advantage of the credits, building relatively large volumes of the Suburban as a certified E85 vehicle. Although in real life that generation of the Suburban got less than 15 mpg, the credits it earned GM against its Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) ratings meant that on paper, the Suburban delivered more than 29 mpg.

Other manufacturers also built E85-capable vehicles -- one such car was the Ford (F) Taurus. Congress may have intended simply to create a market for this particular fuel by having these vehicles available for sale. But what the excess mileage credits actually did was save Detroit millions each year in penalties it would have owed for not meeting the CAFE regulations' mileage standards.

WSJ Cals for Congress to Eliminate Ethanol Tariff

Big discussion over at Slashdot. Editorial here.

One irony of the current gas panic is that big oil companies are being pilloried for their profits, but domestic ethanol producers get a pass. Yet the ethanol makers receive more government subsidies and are responsible for far more of the current gasoline price spike. Congress doesn't have to bash ethanol makers; all it has to do is allow more foreign supply, which will do more to reduce gasoline prices more quickly than any other single idea.

As you probably know, oil companies were using MTBE for reformulated gasoline that reduced smog and complied with EPA regulations. It was discovered that MTBE from underground gasoline storage tanks was showing up in groundwater, and MTBE was pulled. Ethanol is now being used as a reformulant to comply with emissions rules, but domestic ethanol producers are having a hard time keeping up with demand during the transition, and that's apparently one reason for higher gas prices.

Supposed CAFE Proponents Win; Fail to Notice Victory

Atrios has proposed a liberal field test. Via Instapundit, who has his answers and links to other bloggers on the libertarian end of the spectrum. One of the questions leapt out:

4) Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation.*

Thing is, the CAFE standards were increased just a few months ago. From the DOT Web site:

3/29/06: Light Truck Fuel Economy Standard Rulemaking (Model Years 2008-2011) This final rule reforms the structure of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program for light trucks and establishes higher CAFE standards for model year (MY) 2008-2011 light trucks. Manufacturers may comply with CAFE standards established under the reformed structure (Reformed CAFE) or with standards established in the traditional way (Unreformed CAFE) during a transition period of MYs 2008-2010. In MY 2011, all manufacturers will be required to comply with a Reformed CAFE standard. Under Reformed CAFE, fuel economy standards are restructured so that they are based on a measure of vehicle size called "footprint," the product of multiplying a vehicle's wheelbase by its track width. A target level of fuel economy is established for each increment in footprint. Smaller footprint light trucks have higher targets and larger ones, lower targets.

Here's Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announcing the new standards:

It is of course our President who set the goal of reducing our dependence on foreign sources of oil to make America more secure. So I am here today to announce the Department of Transportation is doing its part – with tough new fuel economy standards designed to make the eight and a half million light trucks sold each year in this country more fuel efficient.

These new standards, which are called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE), represent the second time that the Bush Administration has increased the mileage requirements for light trucks and the first complete reform of this program since it was created in 1979.

How is that people for whom stricter CAFE standards are a political litmus test aren't aware of the changes? They got what they wanted. When's the celebration?

Now it's possible that Atrios meant supporting the idea of increasing CAFE standards generally, but so many of his other tests - "undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration, repeal the estate tax repeal, increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI" - are forward-looking that I'm not sure he was aware of the changes. Checking the many dozens of comments on his post, none of his readers seem to have noticed, either.

A cynic might suggest that the media and environmentalists haven't been willing to give the Bush administration credit for advancing CAFE standards. Further, the media blackout has been so effective that environmentalists and progressives were completely unaware of the changes.

Some people have theorized that a liberally-biased media has done more damage to liberals than conservatives by putting liberals in an information vacuum. Unless I've missed something fundamental, this seems to be one more datapoint to support that idea.

* Boy, that "other environmental-related regulation" line feels a wee bit like a throwaway, dunnit? It's like a conservative saying "make the country more Godly or somethin'" or a libertarian beseeching us to "be more decentralized 'n' stuff."

Climate Change Killed Mammoths?

"Climate, not humans, said to have killed off mammoths". Darned SUV-driving cavemen.

One hypothesis suggested a virulent disease was responsible for the extinctions. Another theory was that by killing grazing animals, humans triggered changes in vegetation that resulted in the mass deaths.

The Blitzkrieg, or overkill theory, said human hunters devastated most large mammal species and drove some to extinction.

"But contrary to that theory, my dates show numbers of bison and wapiti (elk) were expanding both before and during human colonisation," Guthrie explained.

His radiocarbon research, reported in the journal Nature, shows there was a 1,000-year different between the demise of the wild horse and the woolly mammoth which Guthrie said is inconsistent with other theories.

Instead, he suggests climate shifts transformed the dry, arid and cold region. The wetter, warmer summers led to changes in vegetation to which mammoths and wild horses could not adapt.

Buying Environmental Indulgences

Definition of indulgences, via Merriam-Webster:

1 : remission of part or all of the temporal and especially purgatorial punishment that according to Roman Catholicism is due for sins whose eternal punishment has been remitted and whose guilt has been pardoned (as through the sacrament of reconciliation)

And during the reign of more corrupt popes, one could outright buy indulgences in lieu of repenting or avoiding sin.

Which brings us to the latest from the press surrounding Gore's new climate change movie, An Inconvenient Fact. From The Corner:

Gore's representatives also stress that they are making the film "carbon neutral," which is done by sponsoring tree planting and other projects that offset carbon emissions in some way. All very well for the rich like Paramount Pictures or Al Gore for that matter. They can afford to make things carbon neutral. The ordinary worker who needs his car to get to his job generally can't afford to offset his emissions. Think about the implications for a moment - Al Gore, Laurie David et al can continue to use the benefits of fossil fuels because they can afford to offset them. The rest of us can't. Welcome to the new aristocracy, ladies and gentlemen.

Kudos to Gore for planting trees, but isn't this just buying environmental indulgences?

Well, I Guess *That* Settles the Global Warming Question

Gregg Easterbrook writes "As someone who has come to the view that greenhouse-effect science is now persuasive" ...

Whoa! Stop the presses! Gregg Easterbrook says that artificial global warming is a fact!

That's all I need to know. If Gregg Easterbrook says it's true, I'm pretty sure it's false. Black/white, salty/sweet, wet/dry. Whatever side Easterbrook takes, there's a good chance the opposite side is the correct one. I take scientific advice from him the way I take marriage advice from Liz Taylor - as an example of what not to do.

See also:
- Quick Links - The Jewish Incident, and Saddam Hussein's "Humiliation"
- Review of Gregg Easterbrook's New Book
- In This Corner, Stephen Hawking, In This Corner... Gregg Easterbrook?
- Easterbrook Has a Job, Why?

The Hockey Stick Graph of Global Warming Hysteria, Part 2

From that Gaia-hating nogoodnik Tim Blair:

January 2006 - Australian scientist Tim Flannery said the world still had “one to two decades” to take action to reduce global warming.

June 2006 - Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11—and all directly due to global warming.

See also:
- The Hockey Stick Graph of Global Warming Hysteria, Part 1

Give That Man a "Heh"

Via Instapundit:

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1950, no tornadoes in Kansas/Nebraska. Reader Matt Crandall emails: "Hey, isn't it obvious that this must be the result of Global Warming?"

No. Global warming only causes bad weather.

UPDATE: See?

From that last link:

Datum: There is a storm in DC, with heavy flooding.

Conclusion: The storm is the direct result of global warming. Specifically, it is the result of human-caused global warming. And the only reasonable response to the storm is massive government action to reverse climate change.

Supporting evidence: Enron! Halliburton! Katherine Harris! Manbearpig! Look, a monkey!

Slow Hurricane Season So Far

Knock on wood, but it's been a slow hurricane season so far, and Hog on Ice doesn't think we'll catch up.

There is absolutely no way the 2006 season will be like 2005. In order for that to happen, we would have to have the same number of August, September, October, November, and December hurricanes and storms as last year, PLUS the three hurricanes that failed to form this July, PLUS the tropical storms that failed to form. Ain't going to happen, people.

Some people were positive that global warming increased the number and severity of last year's hurricanes, especially that big one that you may remember.

The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

To their credit, RealClimate didn't try to attribute Katrina or other hurricanes on global warming.

The correct answer--the one we have indeed provided in previous posts (Storms &Global Warming II, Some recent updates and Storms and Climate Change) --is that there is no way to prove that Katrina either was, or was not, affected by global warming. For a single event, regardless of how extreme, such attribution is fundamentally impossible. We only have one Earth, and it will follow only one of an infinite number of possible weather sequences. It is impossible to know whether or not this event would have taken place if we had not increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as much as we have. Weather events will always result from a combination of deterministic factors (including greenhouse gas forcing or slow natural climate cycles) and stochastic factors (pure chance).

Gore's Environmental Hypocrisy

USA Today: Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

...

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

According to the article Gore also owns stock in Occidental Petroleum and leases zinc mining rights on his land. (The article mentions that the company leasing the mining rights has had environmental problems, but I don't read that as meaning they came from Gore's property.)

You may also remember Gore's tobacco problem from back in the day. He made money from his family's tobacco interests, then railed against the tobacco industry following his sister's death from lung cancer, yet still accepted money from the tobacco industry for four years afterward.

When it comes to hypocrisy, it's hard to match Bush talking about how we must reduce our dependence on oil when he and the vice president made their fortune in oil. It's just that no one is silly enough to treat Bush as an environmental saint as they do with Gore.

"The Massive Land Costs of U.S. Ethanol"

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Here's the introduction and here's the whole report in .pdf.

There are significant trade-offs, however, involved in the massive expansion of the production of corn and other crops for fuel. Chief among these would be a shift of major amounts of the world’s food supply to fuel use when significant elements of the human population remains ill-fed.

Even without ethanol, the world is facing a clash between food and forests. Food and feed demands on farmlands will more than double by 2050. Unfortunately, the American public does not yet understand the massive land requirements of U.S. corn ethanol nor the unique conditions that have allowed sugar cane ethanol to make a modest energy contribution in Brazil.

The United States might well have to clear an additional 50 million acres of forest—or more—to produce economically significant amounts of liquid transport fuels. Despite the legend of past U.S farm surpluses, the only large reservoir of underused cropland in America is about 30 million acres of land—too dry for corn—enrolled in the Conservation Reserve. Ethanol mandates may force the local loss of many wildlife species, and perhaps trigger some species extinctions. Soil erosion will increase radically as large quantities of low-quality land are put into fuel crops on steep slopes and in drought-prone regions.

And this:

"In the early 1980s, ethanol subsidies were used to prop up America’s struggling corn farmers. Unfortunately, the ‘trickle down’ effect of agricultural subsidies is clearly evident. Beef and dairy farmers, for example, have to pay a higher price for feed corn, which is then passed on in the form of higher prices for meat and milk. The average consumer ends up paying the cost of ethanol subsidies in the grocery store..."-John McCain

And this, via Instapundit, on Brazil's independence from foreign oil:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva didn't celebrate the oil independence milestone out in an Amazon sugar field. No, he smashed a champagne bottle on the spaceship-like deck of Brazil's vast P-50 oil rig in the Albacora Leste field in the deep blue Atlantic. Why? Brazil's oil independence had virtually nothing to do with its ethanol development. It came from drilling oil.

Hydrogen Car Challenges

Technology Review piece on the hydrogen-powered BMW:

Still, the company has gone further than any other in regulating the combustion of hydrogen. Just three years ago, the engine would run for several minutes and then break down with a big bang, says Melcher. "Boom. We love explosions!" he laughs. It turned out that a little bit of hydrogen was leaking past the pistons, mixing with oil, and exploding. That problem was solved by modifying the piston rings to prevent leakage. Engine control systems also had to be modified to deal with the far faster combustion of hydrogen--it burns 100 times faster than gasoline--and to regulate it in such a way as to keep emissions of combustion byproducts like nitrogen oxides to trace levels.

Via FuturePundit, who writes:

Hydrogen has 3 big problems as an automotive power source, the first two of which are illustrated in this car:

• Hydrogen fuel cells are not ready yet. Hydrogen internal combustion engines have downsides as substitutes.
• Liquid hydrogen storage does not make the grade due to losses from evaporation while sitting and the need to use energy while operating to cool the remaining hydrogen back down again. Solid room temperature hydrogen storage is needed. But the physicists and materials scientists still haven't solved that problem.
• Hydrogen is currently made using hydrocarbons and the net result is probably less energy efficient than just burning the hydrocarbons directly.

Consumer Reports Disses Smart ForTwo

From this month's issue:

The Smart ForTwo is a tiny urban runabout that's considered fashionable in large European cities. After testing one that we bought in Canada for nine months, we've concluded it's not worth the hype. The Smart has two strong points: its cute looks and ease of parking. Otherwise, it's slow, it's noisy, it handles reluctantly, and it has the worst transmission shift quality we've ever experienced. Fuel economy, while good, is no better than that of the Toyota Prius--a larger, quicker, cleaner-emissions car.

The 0-60 time is 23 seconds. (That's terrible - it's less than 10 seconds for most cars.)

Note that the review was of the diesel Smart, not the electric, though it doesn't bode well for the electric version. It sounds like the Prius is still the way to go for environmentally-friendly cars.

Lord Monckton's Letter to Senators Rockefeller and Snow

Via Breitbart:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists. (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf).

Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: "You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to 'senior elected and appointed government officials' who disagree with your opinion."

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers." Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

When the energy industry funds a study you'll naturally take it with a grain of salt, but they certainly have a right to fund such studies.

The "global warming denier" tag really bugs me, too. In part because it likens skeptics to Nazis, but also because it arrogantly takes AWG as an unvarnished scientific fact with no qualifiers after it or asterisks beside it. It seems like the current strategy among the anthropogenic global warming set is to keep raising the level of hysteria.

Summary of my opinion on global warming

I accept as a fact that the Earth has gotten warmer over the last century, but I'm not convinced it's entirely or even mostly due to man-made (anthropogenic) causes. Other causes, such as solar influence, are probably also responsible. Even if global warming is primarily caused by mankind, there's the policy questions of whether things will be better or worse with a warmer climate, whether CO2 caps would be effective, and then whether tax money could be spent more effectively elsewhere to effect greater good.

Many countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol have exceeded their C02 reduction goals. In fact, the best way to comply with Kyoto is to do what Russia did under Putin and sign the agreement when your economy is terrible compared to the 1990 CO2 production baseline. That allowed Russia to take half a billion dollars from New Zealand in carbon credits.

It's also worth noting global warming is never credited for good weather. There was some speculation that the 2005 hurricanse season was worsened by global warming. Yet the 2006 hurricane season was incredibly mild with not one hurricane making landfall in the U.S. Only bad weather is attributed to global warming.

NY Times: More Oil Can Be Found Than Ever Before

Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells:

Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world’s reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before.

In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled abo