Climate Archives

(Courtesy of Indur Goklany)

Although the SPM has some useful and apt things to say about the need for adaptation, it is flawed by the fact that it:
-- Overstates negative impacts and understates positive impacts of climate change
-- Overstates the level of confidence that should be attached to the impacts on both human systems as well as "natural" systems (because the latter are also affected by human actions)
-- Fails to examine the impacts of climate change in the wider context of other stresses affecting humanity and the rest of nature, which would allow us to gauge the importance of climate change relative to other stresses.
-- Fails to examine the relationship between climate change and sustainable economic development more fully, which could mislead policymakers into opting for policies that would divert scarce resources from dealing with today's urgent problems in favor of policies to pursue longer term, and more uncertain, problems.

Among the several problems regarding the SPM are the following:

(courtesy Indur Goklany)

In a recent column Ellen Goodman says, "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." See http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

In so doing, she reveals that she doesn't comprehend the issues. More important, she trivializes the Holocaust.

First, the Holocaust is a part of history and, notwithstanding Ahmadinejad, can be verified as a fact. Similarly whether the present is warmer than the recent past is also verifiable, and no one, including so-called 'deniers' like Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen, denies that today is not warmer than, say, 150 years ago. What they dispute is the amount of warming, the extent to which humanity is responsible for that warming, and the portion of the human-induced warming that can be ascribed to well-mixed greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane and nitrous oxides as opposed to other anthropogenic factors -- all critical questions if one wants to design effective policies to slow climate change, which presumably Ms. Goodman would also want. Regarding the globally-warmed future, its consequences can be modeled but not verified, except after the fact. The best that can be done is to hazard an educated guess about its impacts. We do this using "models", so-called because they are not reality. And where does Ellen Goodman get the notion that global warming will parallel the Holocaust? Will the toll from global warming rival that of the Holocaust? Is that written in the just-published IPCC summary for policy makers, which only addresses the science, but not the socioeconomic impacts of climate change?

Finally, lest we forget, remember that the Holocaust was enabled in part by the passive acquiescence of a population too cowed by authority to dissent from the orthodoxies of time and place. Perhaps more dissenting voices might have saved more lives from the Holocaust.

More power to the dissenters -- 'deniers' to Ellen Goodman -- of today, who refuse to march lock step with -- and dare dissent from -- today's orthodoxies.

I won't let the week end without a fisking of the Washington Post's silly global warming op-ed Monday by in-house writer Sebastian Mallaby.

Mallaby says: "While the White House was sorting out its message, the rest of Washington was busy. Over at the Reagan building, a conference on carbon trading sold 600 tickets at $595 a pop and turned away 150 executives hungry to study the intricacies of permit allocation."

Response: Hungry to study the green -- or to reap the green? People who understand the global warming debate more than superficially have long known there is a constituency among profit-seekers to impose cap and trade. There is money to be made, even though cap and trade would hurt the economy, and especially harm low-income individuals and families and small businesses operating at the margin. There's a reason Enron pushed so hard for Kyoto and other limits on carbon -- that reason is money. We now speak of Enron's green-fingered successors.

Mallaby says: "Meanwhile, multiple climate bills were floating around Congress, and the House leadership promised to create a special climate committee to force legislation past the auto lobby."

Response: It appears Mr. Mallaby is implying that the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is synonymous with "the auto lobby." Since mere months ago the enviromentalist slur against said committee was that it supposedly was controlled by the oil industry, one looks to see what might have changed. Oh, yes, the new Chairman, Rep. John Dingell, is married to an auto industry lobbyist. I guess Mallaby believes Mrs. Dingell wears the pants in the family. Do you think Mallaby would be willing to say that to Mr. Dingell's face?

That amusing picture aside, Mallaby apparently is unfamilar with Pelosi's proposal. The new global warming committee is to have have no powers to move legislation. Score one for the UAW.

Mallaby says: "Team Bush appears to believe that a cap-and-trade system would burden business, but business leaders are saying they want cap-and-trade enacted."

Response: #1: See profit motive, above. #2: It is dishonest writing to say "business leaders" when it is just a few business leaders. #3: Wasn't Mallaby's propaganda rant against the Dingell family based on Mallaby's belief that the auto industry opposes draconian global warming measures? Mallaby has business leaders cast as both the heroes and the villians of his piece. (Pick a theme, sir!)

Mallaby says: "Chortling climate-deniers, expecting an easy propaganda victory over the man whose energy-tax proposal they killed in 1993, greeted Gore's movie with glee."

Response: Citation, please. I don't recall any glee. I have to think I'm a member of what Mallaby calls the "climate-denier" club, so I think I'd know, although the phrase "climate-denier" is unusually ludicrous, even for the anti-skeptic "all-we-will-ever-know-about-climate-science-we-know-already-but-send-your-research-grant-money-now-please" crowd. Who denies we have a climate? (I ask again: Does the Washington Post edit its "edit"orial pages?)

Mallaby says: "A House Republican hearing ridiculed a graph that features prominently in Gore's movie showing the world's temperature puttering along in a steady state before shooting upward like the handle of a hockey stick."

Response: Two full hearings of House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, not a single rump "show trial" hearing featuring only Republicans, as Mallaby implies, heard from expert witnesses who demonstrated significant, fatal weaknesses in the so-called 'hockey stick' graph. In fact, the hockey stick was badly broken -- most notably at the first hearing by the eminent statistician, Dr. Edward Wegman, who has described himself as a Gore voter, and by a Canadian, Steve McIntyre, neither of whom were likely to have been motivated by a zeal to aid the Republican Party. More than the hockey stick broke: In unmasking "peer review" as cronyism, the hearing dealt what appears to be a significant blow to the reputation of the science community generally, at least for folks who get their news from a broader series of sources than does the Washington Post, and who like their science journal writing to be more reliable than, say, a Bob Woodward deathbed report about Bill Casey.

One should be unsurprised to find ignorance about the hockey stick hearings among Post personnel, as the Post declined to cover the hearings as they took place. The Post deems the hockey stick hearings important enough to warrant multiple critical editorial pieces while simultaneously too insignificant to cover as news.

But credit should be given where credit is due. Sebastian Mallaby is correct in noting that Al Gore, like other climate alarmists and associated government-grant receivers, has used the discredited hockey stick graph as a proof of his theories.

Tomorrow the Supreme Court here's oral arguments in Massachusetts v. EPA, a case in which several states and environmentalist groups are seeking to force the federal regulation of greenhouse gases. I've blogged several posts on the case and related commentary at the Volokh Conspiracy. My posts can be found here. My response to the NYT's editorial may be of particular interest.

Also on the subject of cliamte change, I've rounded up some of the critiques of the Stren Review on Volokh as well. These posts (and a related post by Jim Lindgren) can be found here.

I have not seen this blog before, but it nails the case for Gore's hypocrisy: "It was Mr. Global Warming himself who first tried to kill off the Kyoto Protocol."

I've written a very long piece analyzing the similarities between Al Gore and Martin Heidegger, now up on the AEI website. Ought to be a conversation starter--or stopper.

California has announced that it intends to sell credits for greenhouse gas emission reductions created under its new "cap and trade" scheme to the European Union. In this extended treatment, Chris Horner, Counsel for the Cooler Heads Coalition, examines the ramifications of this announcement.

Yes, it would seem a stretch. Yet Al Gore enlists Churchill as a witness on behalf of his case in An Inconvenient Truth. I go through what is profoundly wrong with this my address to the Churchill Centre's annual dinner at the American Political Science Association meeting Philadelphia earlier this month, entitled "The Use and Abuse of Churchill in History." You can read the whole thing here.

I was recently related a story of a prominent historian—a liberal Democrat—who visited with President Bush at some length at the White House, where in the course of conversation Bush said that he had changed his mind about some things (though not the Middle East), including the environment. Our interlocutor didn't pursue this topic, being more interested in larger matters. Then, too, there have been rumors the last several days that the Administration might do something to "take global warming off the table" in the 2008 presidential election. Why they would want to do such a thing is beyond me, but there it is.

Comes today this report from Mike Allen in Time:

Previewing the final quarter of Bush's presidency, officials disclosed to TIME that the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed to "change the whole nature of the discussion" and challenge the G.O.P., Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists. An adviser said Bush's views about global warming have evolved. "Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and Cheney--two oilmen--can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table," the adviser said.

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold its second hearing in two weeks on the so-called "hockey stick" temperature studies at 2 PM Eastern today. A live feed is promised.

The hearing has attracted considerable interest among those who follow global warming, as the hearing will feature Dr. Michael Mann, father of the hockey stick, facing off against Steve McIntyre, breaker of said stick, and Dr. Edward Wegman, the eminent statistician who demonstrated significant statistical weaknesses in the hockey stick study in last week's hearing (archived webcast available here).

According to Congressmen at last week's hearing, Dr. Mann had been invited to participate last week, but declined, reportedly because he was on "vacation." More than a few observers supposed Dr. Mann preferred not to appear at a hearing with Steve McIntyre and/or Dr. Wegman (who is said to be an Al Gore voter, ironically), but that rumor, while plausible, is unconfirmed.

Other scheduled witnesses (according to a ClimateAudit report here) are to include president of the National Academy of Sciences/atmospheric scientist Ralph J. Cicerone and a biological scientist, Jay Gulledge, from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (which calls global warming "the most pressing global environmental problem"). Dr. Gulledge will not, presumably, be sitting in the skeptics' chair.

Dr. James Hansen is not on the witness list. Could that be because Dr. Dr. John Christy is?

Scientists will tell you there's no "facing off" in science, but don't believe a word of it. These guys just use bigger words than most of us when they argue. (In my experience, the best two places to find a truly artful insult is in 1) the pages of a Jane Austen novel, or 2) an argument on a scientists' blog.)

The main protaganists in this debate have blogs. RealClimate is Michael Mann's; ClimateAudit is Steve McIntyre's. Don't skip the comments sections. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Prometheus blog will offer a more neutral view.

The mainstream press has been ignoring the demise of the hockey stick, preferring to cover stories like the predicted impact of global warming on poison ivy (darn critical, to be sure), but this is an important conversation. Not only was the hockey stick theory held up as substantial evidence of the global warming theory among pro-Kyoto cataclysmic-warming-is-upon-us lobbyists, but it has been promoted by quite a few oft-quoted scientists in non-peer reviewed (whatever peer review really means) articles as well. Furthermore, there are a few issues -- hence the hearing being held by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- of interest to taxpayers who don't give a fig about global warming that may come up today as well.

Cross-posted on the National Center Blog.

Next time you hear U.S. government physicist James Hansen claim the government is trying to censor him, consider this (paid subscription required) from Environment & Energy Daily (7/21/06):

A chronic illness only partly explains why James Hansen decided to skip the House Government Reform Committee's on global warming in seven years. The embattled NASA scientist also passed on yesterday's event because lawmakers are "still in denial" about the reasons for dramatic changes in the Earth's climate, he said last night in an e-mail.

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday's hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma... But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.

"I would get out of my sickbed to testify to Congress on global warming, if they were ready to deal responsibly with the matter," Hansen wrote. "But obviously they are still in denial, inviting contrarians to 'balance' the science of global warming."

Hansen apparently was objecting to the House panel's late addition of John Christy, a professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his testimony yesterday, Christy told lawmakers that scientists "cannot reliably project the trajectory of the climate" for large regions of the United States.

Christy also said it would be a "far more difficult task" to predict the effects should the United States adopt a mandatory greenhouse gas policy.

Hansen's e-mail said skeptical points of view cloud the climate debate rather than enlighten it. "The function of the contrarians is to obfuscate what is known, so as to keep the public confused and allow special interests to continue to reap short-term profits, to the detriment of the long-term economic well-being of the nation," he said.

Hansen said Congress should direct the National Academy of Sciences to update its 2001 report to President Bush on the state of the science surrounding global warming. "Until then, it is just a charade," he wrote...

Science is supposed to be about considering all points of view and then rejecting those that cannot be proven valid, not about throwing hissy fits because alternative points of view are under consideration.

Had the House Government Reform Committee taken a page from Dr. Hansen's playbook and refused to invite Dr. Christy solely because of Christy's views, it would have been censorship.

Cross-posted at National Center for Public Policy Research blog

Don't miss this story in today's New York Times about potential technologies to modify the climate in the event of severe global warming. When I mentioned this idea in a recent National Review article, I received a bunch of outraged e-mails from environmentalists.

In so many ways does the mainstream press demean conservatives who work on environmental issues.

In this Los Angeles Times piece by Jim Puzzanghera, conservatives wary of the Henry Paulson nomination are described as "causing problems" for Paulson because Paulson likes to watch birds.

Here's how the article begins:

WASHINGTON - As a three-decade Wall Street veteran and chairman of one of the nation's premiere investment banks, Henry M. Paulson Jr. makes a living watching markets.

But it's his hobby of watching birds that is already causing problems for his nomination as the nation's next Treasury secretary.

An ardent environmentalist, Paulson is expected to be questioned during confirmation hearings about his role as chairman of the Nature Conservancy, and whether he adequately cleaned up the organization's questionable land sale and tax break practices. Another potential sticky issue: a decision by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank Paulson heads as chairman and chief executive, to donate 680,000 acres of land in a remote section of Chile to an environmental group with ties to his son...

If only we really were as petty as the Times paints us. The actual concerns of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center are here and here, the concerns of the Free Enterprise Action Fund are here, the Competititve Enterprise Institute's are here and the National Center for Public Policy Research's concerns are detailed here.

Birds don't seem to be the theme.

Following up my post about the Weekly Standard's green praise of Treasury Secretary-designate Henry Paulson, I'm recommending this Grist article about Paulson, which says "Paulson also worked with environmental groups including the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council to develop a comprehensive environmental policy framework for Goldman Sachs, unveiled last November..."

Click on the link Grist kindly provides and you read what Paulson, the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council came up with.

An excerpt, as relating to global warming:

Goldman Sachs acknowledges the scientific consensus, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that climate change is a reality and that human activities are largely responsible for increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. We believe that climate change is one of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century and is linked to other important issues such as economic growth and development, poverty alleviation, access to clean water, and adequate energy supplies. How governments and societies choose to address climate change will fundamentally affect the way present and future generations live their lives. Goldman Sachs is very concerned by the threat to our natural environment, to humans and to the economy presented by climate change and believes that it requires the urgent attention of and action by governments, business, consumers and civil society to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

...As an institution that brings providers and users of capital together, we believe that capital markets can and should play an important role in creating opportunities to address today’s environmental challenges. Markets are particularly efficient at allocating capital and determining the appropriate prices for goods and services we purchase. The government can help the markets in this regard by establishing a strong policy framework that creates long-term value for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and consistently supports and incentivizes the development of new technologies that lead to a less carbon-intensive economy. Working with governments, the private sector can then take the lead in further developing these markets, establishing better price transparency, creating incentives for innovation, and finding cost-effective alternatives. (Emphasis added) To that extent, we believe the following principles should guide public policy development:

* Policies and actions should be based firmly on science and rational economics.

* Policy frameworks should be based on market-based mechanisms to set clear, transparent and consistent price signals.

* Voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate change problem.

* Policies should encourage conservation and efficient use of energy as an important part of a comprehensive solution.

* Solutions must be global in scope.

* Climate change should be viewed in conjunction with other major challenges, e.g. conservation of ecosystems, access to water, poverty alleviation and economic growth.

* Implementation requires an integrated approach to identify where there is the greatest
leverage to help mitigate potential problems.

It is a bit worrisome that a Bush cabinet official to-be believes scientific "consensus" comes from a U.N. agency. (For more on the merits of scientific consensus as a goal even when scientists are seeking it, go here.)

The Grist article, by the way, quotes an environmentalist vaguely implying that White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten may have some environmental views similar to Paulson's. Bolten worked for Goldman Sachs from 1994-99. I have no idea, but I would not advise assuming that's true. For one thing, as this Washington Post article notes, Bolten has been known for his willingness to hear from dissenters; his proximity to someone holding a particular opinion should be be confused with his willingness to hold it himself.

Quick on the heels of its recommendation that conservatives support the Senate pro-amnesty immigration bill (for political rather than principled reasons, yet), the Weekly Standard is apparently laying the groundwork for a change in the conservative position on global warming.

From the June 12 issue, in an article by Contributing Editor Irwin M. Stelzer praising Treasury Secretary-designate Hank Paulson with all the enthusiasm usually reserved for people named Bush, comes this:

Then there is the environment, a policy area in which the Bush administration is in something of a time warp. No honest person can with certainty assert that global warming is a threat. But any responsible person can see that the evidence is sufficient to suggest that it might be, and that some action to contain emissions of greenhouse gases is an insurance policy worth having. Paulson is Wall Street's greenest titan, chairman of the Nature Conservancy, a bird-watcher, an advocate of a greenhouse gas emissions trading system for the United States and of mandatory curbs on emissions if voluntary action proves inadequate. At Goldman, he allocated $1 billion for investment in renewable energy and energy-saving projects. He is likely to make his voice heard in an administration that is said to be ready to move from its justifiable opposition to the Kyoto treaty to more positive proposals for emissions reduction.

Will we soon see the Weekly Standard join the New Republic in name-calling skeptics of the notion that slowing the U.S. economy would have a notably beneficial impact on the world's weather?

(A longer version of this blog entry appears on the National Center Blog.)

Media Matters is criticizing the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner for saying, on the Fox New Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto, that ratification of the Kyoto global warming treaty was not a high profile for President Bill Clinton during the Clinton Administration. The Media Matters headline reads: "On Fox's Your World, CEI's Horner Misled on Kyoto, Global Warming."

Media Matters says, in part:

On the June 13 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, Chris Horner, counsel for the oil industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), claimed falsely that the Clinton administration chose not to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification because it did not consider global warming a "high-profile issue." In fact, Senate Republicans made clear at the time that Clinton would not be able to garner enough votes in the Senate to ratify the treaty...

Objecting to former President Bill Clinton taking credit for efforts to curb global warming during his presidency, Horner claimed that Clinton "set the U.S. policy, which was [that] for the final three years of his presidency, the U.S. would not seek participation in -- that is ratification of -- Kyoto." Horner made the claim to advance his suggestion that the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty mandating that countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, "was not a high-profile issue or a priority issue for the Clinton administration, like, say, school uniforms. It was not even a low-priority issue, like, say, finding Osama bin Laden."

But, contrary to Horner's assertion, it was in fact Senate Republicans who made clear that they would not ratify the Kyoto treaty. As The Washington Post reported on December 11, 1997, just before the Kyoto agreement was reached, key Senate Republicans declared the treaty "dead on arrival..."

The "doing of the thing" occurred July 25, 1997 with passage of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98). Byrd-Hagel "express[ed] the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," that is, told the Clinton-Gore Administration what 95 out of 95 Senators present and voting were prepared to vote to ratify in a global warming treaty expected to emerge at the then-upcoming December 1997 global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan.

Byrd-Hagel was approved 95-0. It says, in part:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--

(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or

(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States...

It seems to me that Chris Horner is right and Media Matters is wrong to criticize him. Senate Republicans may well have told Clinton Kyoto couldn't be ratified, but Senate Democrats -- indeed, 95 out of 95 Senators present at voting in July 1997 -- told Clinton the very same thing. And, if Clinton disagreed, he didn't do much to fight them.

Another noteworthy global warming article appears in Canada's National Post.

By Terence Corcoran, this one says, in part:

It is now firmly established, repeated ad nauseam in the media and elsewhere, that the debate over global warming has been settled by scientific consensus. The subject is closed...

Back when modern science was born, the battle between consensus and new science worked the other way around. More often than not, the consensus of the time -- dictated by religion, prejudice, mysticism and wild speculation, false premises -- was wrong. The role of science, from Galileo to Newton and through the centuries, has been to debunk the consensus and move us forward. But now science has been stripped of its basis in experiment, knowledge, reason and the scientific method and made subject to the consensus created by politics and bureaucrats.

As a mass phenomenon, repeated appeals to consensus to support a scientific claim are relatively new. But it is not new to science. For more than a century, various philosophical troublemakers have been trying to undermine science and the scientific method. These range from Marxists who saw science as a product of class warfare and historical materialism -- Newton was a lackey of the ruling classes and pawn of history -- to scores of sociological theorists and philosophers who spent much of the 20th century attempting to subvert the first principles of modern, Enlightenment science...

Global warming science by consensus, with appeals to United Nations panels and other agencies as authorities, is the apotheosis of the century-long crusade to overthrow the foundations of modern science and replace them with collectivist social theories of science...

In short, under the new authoritarian science based on consensus, science doesn't matter much any more. If one scientist's 1,000-year chart showing rising global temperatures is based on bad data, it doesn't matter because we still otherwise have a consensus. If a polar bear expert says polar bears appear to be thriving, thus disproving a popular climate theory, the expert and his numbers are dismissed as being outside the consensus. If studies show solar fluctuations rather than carbon emissions may be causing climate change, these are damned as relics of the old scientific method. If ice caps are not all melting, with some even getting larger, the evidence is ridiculed and condemned. We have a consensus, and this contradictory science is just noise from the skeptical fringe...

Rob Bradley has this in the Houston Chronicle today. Rob dismantles the major themes of Mr. Gore's latest scare tactics and his never ending fatal conceit. The history of malthusian politics is summarized along with the failure of government responses.

Gregory Arnold, managing partner of CE2 Capital Partners, made the case for tradable emission credits and other market-based approaches to environmental policy.

Noted physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford talked about potential policies to achieve climate stabilization. His proposals ranged fro the sensible to the sensational, and he concluded with an enthusiastic call for human control of the climate, so it was n interesting talk.

Archaeologist Brian Fagan, emeritus professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, next spoke about the effects of past climate changes on ancient societies. In particular, he focused on the vulnerability of prior societies to environmental changes, and the lessons they offer for our own. Like Jared Diamond, he sought to suggest that the failures of prior societies were harbringers of our own current vulnerability.

After lunch, Dr. Donald Prothero of Occidental College talked about various catastrophes from the planet's past.

CalTech's Dr. Tapio Schneider gives a fairly standard talk on what we do and don't know about global climate change:

Dr. Michael Shermer, organizer of the Skeptics Society "Environmental Wars" conference opens the proceedings noting (coincidentally?) that the conference is being held on what looks to be the warmest day of the year in Pasadena thus far. We really need skepticism about nature – and especially in southern California, he explains.

Gregg Easterbrook writes in yesterday's New York Times that "As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."

This claim seems somewhat disingenuous. While Easterbrook initially (in his 1995 book, One Moment on the Earth) elicited some scepticism about climate change, he certainly isn't a new convert to the cause for the US taking action on global warming: in September 2004, in a Washington Monthly feature he said: "The sooner the United States puts its shoulder against the global warming threat, the better for the world."

Meanwhile, way back in November 26, 2000, in an interview on PBS Easterbrook described carbon trading as a "practical economic tool" that has "a much greater potential for reducing greenhouse gasses in the world." Later in the interview he says, "Carbon trading would have the effect of transferring American capital and technology to the developing world to make energy use more efficient there."

Another angle on the story - Prometheus "welcomes Easterbrook to the NSH Club"

Update (Tuesday 30 May 2006): A response to Easterbrook's article written by AEI scholar Kenneth Green was published in today's NYT (copied below in case the letter goes offline):

New York Times science writer Andy Revkin has an interesting piece on today's "Week in Review" section on the state of the global warming issue. (Hopefully this link will work, but you can never tell with the Times.) A close reading of this article suggests that Revkin, who usually tilts toward the alarmists, sees that the current campaign is perhaps going overboard, and the piece includes openness to ideas that are heresy to the conventional wisdom right now, such as the possibility that the alarmists are overstating what is not known, and that adaptation may be a better strategy than near-term GHG emissions cuts.

Eminent climate contrarian Richard Lindzen in the WSJ:

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

One of the articles in the "green" issue of Vanity Fair tries to tar former National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz as a former stoolie for tobacco companies. It's a vicious smear, as Nick Schulz details here.

Mario Sechi and I have a paper arguing that Europe must find a way out of the Kyoto failure. A country such as Italy, that faces higher costs than most EU members, might lead a step forward by joining the Asian & Pacific Partnership on Clean Energy and Climate. However unlikely, should such a path be followed all Europeans would be better off.

Over at Prometheus, Roger Pielke has an interesting post on the nature of scientific "consensus."

Today we were subjected to breathless news reports that — to quote the Washington Post’s page one headline — the “Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting Rapidly: New Study Warns Of Rising Sea Levels”. Its author, Juliet Eilperin, goes on to state that the ice sheet “is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper ...”

So what is this "trend" based upon? The trend, reported in a paper in yesterday’s Sciencexpress [1], which offers previews of coming attractions in Science magazine, is based on data collected over a 34-month period!

Sorry, Juliet, 34 months does not a “trend” make, unless you are 3-year old, in which case you can be forgiven for thinking that’s a truly long time. like ... almost forever.

Juliet, however, does go on to restore some balance to her story by quoting Richard Alley, “One person's trend is another person's fluctuation.” Bravo!

Let’s now look at the second part of the two-punch headline, namely, the warning regarding rising sea levels. It turns out that the resulting ice melt would raise sea level by 0.4 millimeters per year. Well, that works out to 1.6 inches per century. I guess I better hurry and relocate to higher ground — I have heard you can drown in a thimble-full of water (and I don’t swim).

That also means 1.3 feet in a 1,000 years. Seems I have to live longer than Methuselah to enjoy that beachfront property. Damn!

This is the second time in a month that there has been much ado about short term trends. In mid-February, another paper in Science reported that the glaciers in Greenland were melting more rapidly than previously thought [2]. That paper estimated that Greenland ice sheet was losing 224 cubic kilometers per year. That means it will take another 5,400 years to melt the remaining 1,200,000 cubic km, which might raise sea level by 23 feet (7 meters), or so I am told. That is a sea level rise of 0.05 inches per year.

Now this second paper was based on as much as 9-years worth of data.

Phenomenal by comparison — but is this long enough?

To get an idea as to the answer, nearby I have two plots of temperature “anomalies’ (i.e., fluctuations around the long term means) from 1880 through 2005 for the Antarctic (actually everything south of 60 degrees S). The top curve provides trends for land surface temperatures. The bottom curve is a composite for land and sea temperatures, hence the difference between the magnitude of the trend (0.12 degrees C per decade vs. 0.01 degrees C per decade).

What this shows is that you can get any kind of trend you want depending on when you start your 3- or 9-year period. Ditto, if you want to work with a 50- or 60-year period.

In other words, beware long term policies based on short term data [3].

Nevertheless, the Washington Post reports that based partly on these studies, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) said yesterday that the “United States must act quickly to impose mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”

Perhaps, from the point of view of these two gentlemen, any “fluctuation” that lasts for 2 or 6 years is sufficiently long to base robust policy on.

Noting that some Christians now are claiming -- literally -- to speak in the name of Jesus Christ ("In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, we urge all who read this declaration to join us in this effort") when they make pronouncements on global warming, I thought I would direct blog readers to this excellent paper by Samuel Casey Carter, "What Scriptures Tell Us About Environmental Stewardship."

Some excerpts:

Now that secular liberalism has all but driven orthodox religion out of public life, it should come as no surprise that heterodox spirituality has become the latest battering ram of the left. In a time when the Bible has been expunged from schoolrooms as an icon of Western bigotry, biblical arguments are now oddly on the comeback, recast as a fashionable means of pushing a leftist agenda. What is not to be expected is the degree to which well-meaning Christians have become the spokesmen of these distortions. Embracing the tenets of radical environmentalism without an eye to the manner in which these teachings are fundamentally hostile to Christian tradition, a new brand of Christian is out to save the earth, but in so doing he may well flip his faith upon its head...

...A number of Evangelical organizations have recently risen to prominence by popularizing what they take to be biblical mandates for their activist brand of environmentalism. With names like the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Christian Environmental Association, and the Christian Society of the Green Cross, a whole swarm of seemingly mainstream Protestant organizations conjures support for their activist programs through specious readings of disconnected biblical texts...

...But regardless of anyone's support for the Endangered Species Act, Superfund, or any of the programs initiated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the specific manipulation of biblical passages in order to achieve certain political goals is an abuse that must be met head on. If the Bible says anything about man's sound management of natural resources, it does so only in the setting of man's relationship with God...

...The [Evangelical Environmental Network's Declaration on the Care of Creation] sums up this state of affairs with the odd formulation, "because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation." As it turns out, the material world is suffering for man's spiritual deficiencies. Make no mistake about it, this way of talking subordinates religious belief to a materialist view of the world... Throughout the Declaration all of the appeals to scriptural authority are a ruse. All of the pious inflections are a sham. The only concern here is for how the genius of human science will overcome the finite limits of God's creation. Interestingly, one of the chief expressions of that genius are the contraceptive methods necessary to "insure thoughtful procreation."

The reference to extending Christ's healing is particularly telling. In the same way Christ redeemed man, now man has to redeem the Earth. Needless to say, in all of man's saving activity, God is made redundant...

...Earth is not the proper object of man's religious longings. But when a man is taught to care for the Earth with a zeal reserved for the love of God, a few things are sure to be misplaced: God and man, for starters...

...Christian environmentalists have turned the world on its head. In using language reserved for God to show their concern for the Earth, they have only bred contempt for man and made a mockery of real religion. What they have not done is to make the Earth a proper object of worship. It can't be. But more to the point, theirs is not a genuine religious concern. They have simply invoked religious rhetoric to give new urgency to their worldly agenda. Sadly, for those who don't discern this agenda, this manner of speaking will make an idol of the Earth...

...When the Lord God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, he commanded all of Israel to have no false gods before him. In their fidelity to the Lord God, the people Israel kept the Lord's words in their hearts, on their wrists, before their eyes, and upon their door posts. When later they crossed the Jordan to take possession of the land that the Lord God had given them, they were careful to observe all the statutes and decrees that he had set before them.

Should they ever follow false gods, they would lose the land that the Lord God had given to them for their benefit...

Cross-posted at Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog.

'Twill be a Famous Victory

"They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene."
"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.
"Nay... nay... my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

From “The Battle of Blenheim” by Robert Southey

Having sown global hysteria on global warming, environmentalists are on the verge of tasting the fruits of their labor. These will include:

Nuclear power, rescued from an imminent death. In the U.S., Progress Energy announced last month that it has selected its Shearon Harris power plant site near Raleigh, N.C., as the potential site of a new nuclear power reactor. In Europe, Finland last year started construction on a new reactor, the first Western European country to do so in 15 years. According to a news report, “most recent polls show a majority of Germans now opposing the closure of nuclear power plants, whereas two of three were against nuclear power after Chernobyl.” Similarly, in Italy, which shut down its last reactor in 1990, “a growing number of people now believe this was a tragic mistake …47 percent of Italians are now in favour of nuclear energy, with 44 percent against.” And in the Ukraine, home to Chernobyl, more than a dozen new reactors are planned.

Ethanol, made from corn, which may well reverse the decades-long trend toward reforestation and afforestation both in the US and the EU. And — surprise! — in the U.S., at least, the feedstock won’t be just any corn. It will be GM corn.

Windmills, just one more hazard for birds and bats, not to mention an eyesore for those who prefer an unobstructed landscape.

Hydropower, another environmentally friendly energy source.

Although some of this fruit might have a bitter aftertaste, the important thing is: don't sweat it, and stay cool.

John Kerry and Al Gore both attended an Aspen, Colorado conference of 120 leaders in government, religion, media, and science over the weekend of October 6 to 8 with the goal of setting an agenda to address a perceived gap between the science on climate change and action on climate change. The conference was sponsored by the Yale School of Forestry and details can be found on pages 24-25 of the document here. The other participants were a who's who of the environmental community. Among the most controversial of the recommendations that I found from the conference was the following:

The Education group recommended incorporation of climate-change content into K-12 curricula and teacher-certification standards (using the occasion of the 2007 review of the National Science Education Standards), as well as into instructional technologies, devices, and software products, including video games and educational simulations such as SimCity.

I am concerned about how balanced the curricula approach to climate-change can be, given the general black-white treatment of "truth" in K-12 education. But I am even more concerned about what requirements would need to be met for teacher-certification on the issue. Would science teachers merely be required to attend educational seminars on the topic or would they be required to agree with portions of the climate change agenda that remain in question?

Finally, given that the conference is focussed on the gap between science and action, will the Education Group's recommended curricula also include "action" as part of the educational curricula? And will a variety of action agendas be included in such curricula or is the appropriate action list confined to accepting the Kyoto Protocol or an analogous international mechanism?

Yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore showed up at the weekly, off-the-record Wednesday morning conservative coalition meeting hosted by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Gore sought the meeting because he is making a sincnere effort to convert more conservatives to environmental causes. Apparently this willingness to exchange views with his political opponents impressed many in attendance -- and suggests that many in the environmental community who prefer to demonize conservatives could learn from him. Steve Hayward offers this report.

In apparent reaction to the heat some have felt for their "do as I say, not as I do" behavior, TourJet America, a private aircraft broker catering to the entertainment industry, has pledged to offset all of the carbon emissions associated with its operations. As the newest "Zero Carbon" partner of the nonprofit Carbonfund, the company will offset its entire corporate carbon emissions, from office energy use to jet fuel expenditures. Carbonfund will offset the carbon by supporting reforestation projects in fire stricken areas of California.

I suspect the forests near Malibu will take priority.

"TourJet's Zero Carbon initiative is a significant step for an industry member that must rely heavily upon carbon fuels," said Carbonfund president Lesley Marcus Carlson. He didn't explain why the entertainment business has to rely on carbon fuels anymore than the next guy--I suppose it's because EVERYBODY has to rely on carbon based fuels (ne: fossil) as there is no viable rational alternative, and it just isn't necessary. Same holds for airtransport industry if that was the point of Mr. Carlson's remark. The airtransport industry had tried hot air ballons and hydrogen derigibles in the past but they just didn't quite work out the way intended.

"TourJet going Zero Carbon demonstrates what our foundation has always maintained - incorporating carbon offsets is simple and quite manageable within any successful business endeavor." The company says it will look into expanded support of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in the coming year. Of course, a company can go from successful to not-so-much fairly quickly when it embraces bad or silly ideas.

Source: GreenBiz.com, 12/19/2005

The dean of the Yale School of Forestry, of which I am a graduate, has apparently been engaged in some serious scholarly reading as of late. Check out his endorsement of a book straight from the mind of a second grader.

Thanks to my friend Sean for the link.

The Hertfordshire oil depot explosion here in the UK seems to provide great fodder for The Guardian to rant yet again against modern society, affluence and technology: "Millions of us have to accept we must live duller lives", a columnist writes today. "Without being forced to change our habits, very few of us will do our bit. The job of government is to lead, and to insist..."

This reminds me of an article a while back in The Onion, "America's Finest News Source", concerning a "report" by the "American Public Transportation Association" (APTA).

The headline reads "98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others". Here is an excerpt:

In conjunction with its release, the APTA is kicking off a campaign to promote mass transit with the slogan, "Take The Bus... I'll Be Glad You Did."

The campaign is intended to de-emphasize the inconvenience and social stigma associated with using public transportation, focusing instead on the positives. Among these positives: the health benefits of getting fresh air while waiting at the bus stop, the chance to meet interesting people from a diverse array of low-paying service-sector jobs, and the opportunity to learn new languages by reading subway ads written in Spanish.

"People need to realize that public transportation isn't just for some poor sucker to take to work," Collier said. "He should also be taking it to the shopping mall, the supermarket, and the laundromat."

Mark Steyn writes brilliantly as usual in today's Daily Telegraph about the increasing shrillness of environmental groups who advocate global climate control.

According to one member of Greenpeace who Steyn quotes:

"Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with."

Got that? [asks Steyn] If it's hot, that's a sign of global warming, and, if it's cold, that's a sign of global warming.

Steyn notes that a strong economy is a prerequisite for a clean environment -- and "even the poseurs of the European chancelleries are having second thoughts. Which is why, in their efforts to flog some life back into the dead Kyoto horse, the eco-cultists have to come up with ever scarier horrors, such as that 'New Ice Age'."

Heads up on a new book published on Tuesday, 6 December by the Sustainable Development Network:

Carrots, Sticks and Climate Change: A primer on down-to-earth ideas for climate policy

Policymakers are being pressured to`address the threat of climate change. Most of the focus so far has been on ‘sticks’, in the form of government restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. This book argues that ‘carrots’ are a more humane and cost-effective way for policymakers to address climate-sensitive problems.

Like it or not,we live in a world characterised by scarce resources. All decisions have costs and tradeoffs, and people make decisions about what costs to bear and which tradeoffs to make, and how, in response to incentives. It is here that social science – specifically, economics – can make an important contribution to the climate debate.

'If a shifty salesman in a blue suit adorned with yellow stars appeared on your doorstep flogging a life insurance policy with high, high costs and low, low returns, would you turn over your hard-earned cash? Most likely you would shut the door in his face. This is effectively what some non-government organisations and governments are asking us to do when they call for drastic restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the name of saving us from climate change.'

This is from an article I wrote - originally titled "Kyoto's shady salesmen" - which ran in The Australian on Monday.

A report by the European Environment Agency claims that the EU will be able to meet its Kyoto targets thanks to "additional measures being planned" as well as "the use of Kyoto mechanisms by various Member States". This may be exciting for the Kyoto-ists - yet it is not convincing. First, it is not clear what "additional measures" is the EEA talking about. Of course there are additional measures that may work - for example, just impose a cap to emissions (at what cost? is the relevant question then, that the EEA doesn't address at all). Secondly, it is not clear how the Kyoto mechanisms may work as long as most EU Member States are missing their national targets. Of course there is a way for the Kyoto mechanisms to work: just allow EU countries to buy hot air from developing countries - that is, pursue a reduction on paper with no effect on the actual level of global emissions. The EEA is cheating: that's fine, they are paid for it. What is not fine is that most of those who are in Montreal will take such "projections" seriously, and European policies that will affect the Old Continent's development will be designed accordingly.

This week, various energy and environment ministers met in London as part of the G8 effort to gather consensus on climate policy.

The consensus which seems to be evolving is that 1) some EU countries, including the UK, are failing to meet their existing targets under Kyoto and 2) poor countries do not want to negotiate to reduce binding emissions targets for themselves after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol ends. Negotiations for post-2012 were due to take place at COP-11 of the Framework Convention on Climate Change next month in Montreal.

It is worth remembering that Article 3.3 of the Framework Convention obliges its signatories (including the USA) to undertake "cost-effective" policies and measures to cope with climate change. Emissions controls are probably the least cost-effective way to address climate change.

I have an article in the Bangkok Post today which argues that it is climate, not climate change, which poses the most risk to the world's poorest people, and that economic development is the most effective way to reduce their vulnerability to climate.

Writing in yesterday's The Observer British Prime Minister Tony Blair speculates on what may be the correct climate policies after the Kyoto Protocol first commitment period ends in 2012. Despite his belief that science is settled (while it is not), Mr Blair sets forth a number of challenging points:

• "[E]ven if the US did sign up to Kyoto, it wouldn't affect the huge growth in energy consumption we will see in India and China."

• "There are huge opportunities in environmental technology and huge possibilities in sustainable development, if the right framework for low carbon energy generation can be stimulated."

• "We need to create the right market conditions to increase the necessary investment to develop and install new low carbon energy generation - and to ensure it is shared with emerging economies."

In a Parthian shot at President Bush, soon to be (thankfully) ex-Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is quoted as saying in a speech to trade unionists, "I can think of a recent disaster that shows what happens when a country neglects its duties of state towards its people... My post as chancellor, which I still hold, does not allow me to name that country but you all know that I am talking about America." Schroeder's remarks were reportedly greeted with laughter and applause (perhaps tinged with Schadenfreude?).

I too "can think of a recent disaster that shows what happens when a country neglects its duties of state towards its people." Specifically, during the 2003 European heat wave, there were 5,250 deaths in Germany.^1,2 These were eminently avoidable, especially if the German government had spent a fraction of the time, resources and energy -- yes, energy -- to help its population cope with the extreme heat as it seems to spend on cheerleading for the ineffective, not to mention wholly wasteful, Kyoto Protocol. [Click here for an analysis of how (in)effective and wasteful the Protocol would be.]³

If global warming is real and its effects will one day be as devastating as some believe is likely, then greater economic growth would, by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sooner or later lead to greater damages from climate change. On the other hand, by increasing wealth, technological development and human capital, economic growth would broadly increase human well-being, and society’s capacity to reduce climate change damages via adaptation or mitigation. Hence, the conundrum: at what point in the future would the benefits of a richer and more technologically advanced world be cancelled out by the costs of a warmer world?

Indur Goklany attempted to shed light on this conundrum in a recent paper presented at the 25th Annual North American Conference of the US Association for Energy Economics, in Denver (Sept. 21, 2005). His paper — "Is a richer-but-warmer world better than poorer-but-cooler worlds?” — which can be found here, draws upon the results of a series of UK Government-sponsored studies which employed the IPCC’s emissions scenarios to project future climate change between 1990 and 2100 and its global impacts on various climate-sensitive determinants of human and environmental well-being (such as malaria, hunger, water shortage, coastal flooding, and habitat loss). The results indicate that notwithstanding climate change, through much of this century, human well-being is likely to be highest in the richest-but-warmest world and lower in poorer-but-cooler worlds. With respect to environmental well-being, matters may be best under the former world for some critical environmental indicators through 2085-2100, but not necessarily for others.

This conclusion casts doubt on a key premise implicit in all calls to take actions now that would go beyond “no-regret” policies in order to reduce GHG emissions in the near term, namely, a richer-but-warmer world will, before too long, necessarily be worse for the globe than a poorer-but-cooler world. But the above analysis suggests this is unlikely to happen, at least until after the 2085-2100 period. Assuming that it takes 50 years to replace the energy infrastructure, that means we have at least 30 years (= 2085-50-2005) before embarking on a greenhouse gas emission reduction program that goes beyond “no-regrets” provided, in the interim, we use this time wisely by specifically focusing on:

by

Indur M. Goklany

We are constantly bombarded with claims that weather-related events will get worse over time, at least in part because of global warming. So one should expect that aggregate deaths and death rates due to weather-related extreme events worldwide would have trended upward in recent decades.

But do they?

The following bar chart shows (approximate) aggregate trends in these critical measures between 1900 and 2004 for "weather-related extreme events", namely, droughts, extreme temperatures (both extreme heat and extreme cold), floods, landslides, waves and surges, wild fires and wind storms of different types.[1]

Yes, there is a trend here, but is it upward?

This, of course, begs the question as to why, if the globe is warming, matters aren't getting worse?

Curves like this illustrate that due diligence requires that analyses and/or claims of future impacts should be accompanied, at a minimum, by checks of whether their future projections match with past reality. Of course, as your mutual fund advisor will tell you, "past results are not necessarily indicative of future performance." True, but one should have to reconcile the two, matching the past and the present with the future. And this goes not just for impacts (e.g., deaths and death rates) but also assumptions that feed into impacts assessments. For example, how reasonable is an assumption of 1 percent growth per year in carbon dioxide concentrations when historically it has averaged 0.40 percent per year from 1959 to 2004, during which period it only once exceeded 0.75 percent (year-to-year increase)?

by

Indur M. Goklany

Since hurricanes are in rage -- are they ever not! -- here are trends in deaths, death rates, and property losses due to hurricanes in the United States from 1900 to 2004.[1]

The first bar chart provides deaths per year and death rates per year for each decade starting in 1900. Note that the last period only covers 2000 through 2004.

This indicates that both deaths and death rates have declined quite significantly (and substantially over this period). The bars for the first period, 1900-1909, are much larger than subsequent ones because of the hurricane in 1900 that killed anywhere between 8,000 and 12,000 people in Galveston, Texas.

If I remove the first set of bars, the declining trends from 1910 to 2004 are still significant (and substantial), as your eyeballs will confirm.

The declines result from the fact that as a society we are more resilient than we used to be because we are wealthier and have the ability to obtain and implement more effective technologies to cope with adversity in general and extreme weather events in particular. Such resilience is more important than whether hurricanes have strengthened or whether there are more of them hitting the US. In other words, wealth, technology and human capital trump meteorology and climate, as has been noted elsewhere.[2]

The second bar chart provides trends from 1929-2004 for property losses from hurricanes in terms of the “wealth” in the 19 Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic states that have received at least one direct hit from a hurricane between 1850 and 2004.[3] I weighted each state’s “wealth” by the frequency with which hurricanes scored a direct hit on them over this period. This helps account for the fact that if a hurricane hits a rich state, one should expect damages to be higher. Also measuring property damage in terms of “wealth” allows for the fact that with time as society becomes richer, it probably has more assets at risk. In developing this figure, I use state income as a proxy for wealth, hence the quotes around “wealth”.[4] [This was done because although I could not locate data on wealth and/or fixed assets and consumer durables for each state, I did find data on each state’s income going back to 1929.]

The second bar chart shows that through 2004 at least, there has been no significant trend in property losses in terms of weighted wealth, although there should be an upward trend if one looks at losses in constant dollars.[5] These findings essentially re-affirm what other researchers have found.[6]

So here is a paradox: As we get wealthier, we are safer and healthier, but we also have more physical assets (homes and “stuff”) at risk. Also, I suspect, we become more cavalier about putting property at risk. Insurance — and Uncle Sam’s largesse — also help mould this mindset. But I’d rather be safer and healthier, even if that means I have more stuff at risk. All things considered, richer is indeed more resilient.[7]

It was only a matter of time, but RFK Jr. blames Republican opposition to the Kyoto Protocol for the destructiveness of Hurricane Katrina. Declaring that "the science is clear" Kennedy writes:

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

UPDATE: I should also have noted this NYT piece.

SECOND UPDATE: Some readers are curious about the recent article in Nature purporting to show an increase in hurricane intensity linked to ocean temperatures. This study is very controversial, as this report makes clear, and has not distrubed the reigning consensus on the question (at least not yet). Indeed, one prominent hurricane researcher commented ''It's a terrible paper, one of the worst I've ever looked at." As I understand it, Nature is already reviewing one or more critical commentaries on the recent study. While a hurricane-warming link may one day be shown, it is very misleading to suggest that any such thing has been scientifically established.

THIRD UPDATE: The author of the Nature study himself, Kerry Emanuel, told the press there is no connection between global warming and Hurricane Katrina: "I don't think you can put this down to global warming."

Can we blame the severity of Hurricane Katrina on human-induced climate change? Don't bet on it. NR editor Rich Lowry summarizes the arguments here. He also responds to some reader e-mail here. This Pat Michaels piece is also worth a look.

There's also an interesting exchange between Grist's Dave Roberts and Roger Pielke Jr. on the subject. Roberts begins by posing these "tough questions":

In the end, greens concerned about global warming face a choice. Do they stick to scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy, with all the hedging and qualifying that entails, at the risk of being boring and losing an opportunity to galvanize action? Or do they fudge a bit, propagandize a bit, indulge in a little bit of theater and showmanship?

Roberts suggests that the question of fudging science is a tough one. Not for me. I'm pretty much all for scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy. Fudging science can certainly lead to some short term political gains, but in the end it is not good for science and certainly not good for democracy.

Another prominent scientist has resigned from an important governmental panel looking at climate change, charging politicization of climate science. Roger Pielke Sr., Colorado state climatologist and professor at Colorado State University Fort Collins, last Saturday resigned from the U.S. government’s Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), where he was a lead author of a chapter of the program's synthesis and assessment product committee. This event has been fairly widely publicized and is described in more detail at Pielke's website and with commentary at the CRC's GreenWatch.
What is also interesting is the following quote from today's NY Times in an article regarding religion and science.
"...these scientists also embrace science as it has been defined for centuries. That is, they look to the natural world for explanations of what happens in the natural world and they recognize that scientific ideas must be provisional - capable of being overturned by evidence from experimentation and observation. "
So, Pielke is the one, in this case who remains true to what science is about--NOT the CSPP. Perhaps CCSP needs to change their name.

John Tierney ponders polar bears and the arctic climate.

(Reminds me of a an old joke: "So the baby polar bear comes home and asks "Mommy, am I a real polar bear? . . . . ")

The new climate initiative that the US and five Asian countries, including the major emerging economies (namely India and China), have unveiled is putting the Kyoto Protocol and its supporters under pressure. Both for its language and scope, the "Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate" follows closely the recent action plan released at the G8 in Gleneagles, Scotland. The agreement is focused on (a) long term actions aimed at (b) developing cleaner, more efficient technologies without (c) harming economic growth; especially as far as developing countries are concerned, the parties agree that (d) the creation of wealth is by far the most effective, if not the only, way to address environmental problems. President Bush and his colleagues from Australia, Japan, India, and China have set forth a new framework that is much more flexible and long-sighted than the Kyoto Protocol. In fact the Republican Administration has been able to coagulate the consensus from a number of countries that account for roughly half of global GHGs emissions today, a figure that is likely to grow with time.

I was quite disappointed, then, when I first saw a comment from Friends of Earth's Tony Juniper: "this is another attempt to undermine Kyoto and a message to the developing world to buy US technology and not to worry about targets and timetables." In fact there is no need to undermine Kyoto, as the Protocol is - in a way - self-undermining. Its most vocal supporter, the European Union, will fail in meeting the targets as the European Environmental Agency openly tells.

Apparently some climate fundamentalists, as well as some political actors (it seems that neither London nor Brussels took very well the Partnership), value their opposition to the White House more than a move that might well help to reduce future emissions.

At the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, the 8 most industrialized countries issued a joint statement on climate. There President Bush's focus on energy efficiency as well as search for long-term solutions (as opposed to "cap & trade" schemes for greenhouse gases) is largely endorsed by, among others, leading European nations. Consequently political debate on climate has moved towards a more science-based, long-sighted, truly global approach - at least this is what I claim in a TCS article.

If that is true the European Union might take the opportunity to revise its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the tool it adopted in order to make it cheaper the pursuit of the Kyoto targets. In fact it is pretty clear that the EU will not be able to meet its goals through actual reduction or intra-European trade of allowances: the European Environment Agency's data show that European emissions are far too high. Moreover since most European countries are emitting well above the 1990 levels - whereas they would be supposed to be on track to emit 8% less than 1990 by 2008-12 - the ETS will likely not work for the very fact that... there will be little quotas to sell in the first place. We are going to have a very low supply vis-à-vis a very high demand. The scarcity is reflected in the rising price of quotas themselves.

When the process began on January 1st, 2005 Kyoto-optimists guessed that the price would be around 10 euros per tonne, yet it is today as high as 30 euros per tonne and it will likely increase to less than 40 euros per tonne (which is the cost of sanctions for non-complying countries). The only way Europe has to meet the targets is to buy "hot air" from Russia and other emerging economies - however, if that is the case, no actual reduction in emissions is achieved. What we would have is simply a wealth transfer from the EU to other countries.

I do hope that European policy-makers, as well as industry and the general public, are realizing the ineffectiveness of EU climate policies and regard Gleneagles as a new starting point. After all it is easier to get from Brussels to Gleneagles then from Brussels to Kyoto.

The D.c. Circuit ruled today that the U.S. EPA is not required to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This is a huge victory for the Bush Administration (and yet another big loss for environmentalists in Clean Air Act litigation). Here's what I'm posting about the decision on NRO's The Corner:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit just ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency is not required to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The splintered opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which three judges issued three competing opinions, is available here. This is a big victory for the Bush Administration as well as for common sense. (I've addressed some of the relevant legal claims here.) This case is not going away, however, as a petition for en banc and/or Supreme Court review is a near certainty.

UPDATE: The three opinions in the case are quite interesting. Judge Randolph believes the petitioners have standing, but believes the EPA properly exercised its discretion in refusing to regulate greenhouse gases. Judge Sentelle beleives there is no standing, but accepts Randolph's conclusion for the purposes of entering a judgment. Neither judge addresses the underlying question of whether the EPA even has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Judge Tatel dissents. He believes the petitioners have standing, believes the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and believes they are required to do so. While I disagree with his conclusions, his thorough arguments (combined with the lack of a panel majority) increase the likelihood that this case will be reheard en banc or go up to the Supremes.

GMU law prof Todd Zywicki has a thoughtful post on climate change policy on the Volokh Conspiracy. An excerpt:

the real question to ask here is whether on net, the costs of doing something about global climate change outweigh the benefits of doing it. This is the same question we ask (or should ask) about every other intervention into nature--should we kill the parasites in water so that we can drink it, should we drain a mosquito-infested swamp to eliminate the risk of malaria, should we provide a vaccine to kill naturally-occurring smallpox. To imply that if the science shows we are changing the climate we must do something about it is as wrongheaded as it would be to say that if we are not contributing to global warming we should not do anything about it.

Nuclear physicist Gerald Marsh, a science advisor at the National Center for Public Policy Research, has a letter in the UK's Financial Times responding to a June 9 FT editorial buying in to the "humans cause climate change" theory.

Marsh says, in part:

While the majority of climate scientists may believe there has been some slight warming of the globe, there is no consensus that the primary cause is due to emissions of carbon dioxide by human activity.

To claim that the status of the science has now exposed "the remaining sceptics as an extremist rearguard" is unjustified and insulting.

For those who believe that cost-effective steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are justified in the current climate of scientific uncertainty, there is a cheap insurance policy: vastly increase the use of nuclear power to replace coal-fired electricity generating plants...

Contrary to popular misconceptions, nuclear power is safe, environmentally benign and sustainable for many thousands of years.

Roger Pielke has co-authored a new paper on hurricanes and global warming. The paper itself is here, though it's also worth reading his comments on Prometheus. There's an excerpt below:

Once again we are told – this time by former President Clinton -- that “global warming is the biggest challenge the world faces, but too many people don't take it seriously.” [See here.] This assertion, of course, is never accompanied by any showing that of all the problems in the world, this one is paramount. The only analyses that I know of that has actually bothered to compare climate change against other problems facing humanity or the environment finds that at least through the foreseeable future, the problems due to climate change for the most part are relatively small compared to existing problems such as malaria, hunger, water shortages and threats to biodiversity. The most recent of these analyses – Indur Goklany’s Is Climate Change the 21st Century’s Most Urgent Environmental Problem? – can be found here.

The NYT reports on the growing number of environmentalists reconsidering the merits of nuclear power in the face of climate change. "It's not that something new and important and good had happened with nuclear, it's that something new and important and bad has happened with climate change," says Whole Earth catalog founder Stewart Brand (whose previous remarks on the subject I blogged here). Among others slowly reconsidering nuclear's merits, according to the story, are Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense, Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute, and Gus Speth of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Others hold out hope that modern civilization's energy needs can be met by wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy.

An article from the Telegraph explains that notable scientists are worried that a desire to get political action on the climate change front has led to the expunging of any climate change skepticism from the two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature. The scientists rightly worry that expunging valid scientific research from the debate just because it contradicts the climate change "consensus" undermines the whole bedrock on which the scientific process is built.

Roger Pielke Jr. has written some interesting observations (be sure to read the follow-up comments) about an interview on Democracy Now, which was based on the Mother Jones feature story on climate change ("some like it hot").

The post concerns statements made by the IPCC, or attributed to key IPCC figures, in the interview.

In the follow-up comments on Pielke's post, it becomes apparent that Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, indeed made the statement in question -- that if humanity is to survive, it has a ten-year window to cut the use of hydrocarbon fuels [my paraphrase].

Says Pielke

I am less troubled by the fact that Dr. Pauchuri made these remarks (I am sure that he sincerely believes in their substance) than I am about the overall silence about the way that IPCC science has become transformed into issue advocacy among the rank and file in the broader community of IPCC scientists. Any reactions from IPCC scientists?

[Posting on behalf of Indur Goklany, environmental policy analyst and author of The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment (Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2001).]

My apologies for the late entry into the discussion on climate change and property rights. Nevertheless, here are a few thoughts.

Before anyone gets compensated one has to first figure out who is “responsible” and for what. On that score, while it is possible to assign greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to nations based on where the act of burning a ton of coal, for instance, physically occurs, we should be cognizant that GHG emissions are the effluvia of civilization and all its activities. It is not only energy consumption that contributes to it, but land clearance, crop production, animal husbandry, trade, tourism, and so forth. Moreover, because of the globalized economy, which sustains today’s civilization, economic activity in one country helps provide livelihoods and incomes for many inhabitants of other countries, and vice versa. In fact, a substantial portion of economic growth in developing countries is attributable to trade (Goklany 1995), and remittances and tourism from developed countries. Without such economic activities, U.S. emissions, for example, might be lower, but so would jobs and incomes elsewhere (e.g., in India or Bangladesh). Thus, the improvements in human well-being that have occurred in many developing countries (particularly since World War II) are partly due to the GHG-fueled economic growth in developed countries.

The PERC Reports exchange on property rights and climate change noted below, prompted a response from Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. With his permission, I've posted his letter below. My comments follow.

There is much to celebrate and a mite to mourn in PERC's dialogue on whether the victims of global warming are, by free market principles, entitled to compensation. That the dialogue took place is the big celebration -- a sign perhaps, and not the only sign, that the right is emerging from its long vegetative, state on the ethical and policy issues involved in global warming. (Others include Richard Posner's recent treatment of the extreme climate change as an example of low-probability, disastrous consequence events that society should, in fact, guard against; the rising chorus of concern about the foreign policy consequences of reliance on oil; and the suggestion in the Weekly Standard on whether part of the problem with social security is that it rests upon a tax on work, a good thing, and wouldn't a tax on pollution and importing oil, less good things, be desirable.)

The scientific debate over global warming is not so much over whether anthropogenic emissions will affect the climate. Rather it is over the nature and magnitude of the likely effects. Even the most ardent global warming skeptics within the scientific community believe that the increased accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will have some effect. The policy question, then, is what (if any) measures are justified to prevent or mitigate such effects.

An article from Wired.com discusses the potential benefits of global warming.

Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University, says that humanity has flourished in warmer periods.

But an activist takes issue with Peiser's claim, saying that a heat wave in 2003 killed thousands of people in Europe.

Dr. William Keatinge, an emeritus professor at Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, cast doubt on that assertion in the British Medical Journal, saying that "few of these deaths are recognisable clinically as being due to heat." Simple interventions are the best way to prevent the deaths of vulnerable people, such as the elderly, in hot weather. Moreover, Keatinge points out elsewhere that deaths from cold far exceed those from heat.

Here's a recent column I wrote for our local paper inspired, in part, by an article (may require subscription) by Pielke and Daniel Sarewitz in the January 17 New Republic.

Roger Pielke demonstrates again why the Prometheus blog is must reading for those interested in the intersection of science and public policy. I don't always agree with Pielke, but he's very thoughtful, insightful and provocative. Here's an excerpt from his latest post:

efforts to justify greenhouse gas mitigation policies on preventing human impacts run up against the reality that if it is human lives that you really care about, then there are obvious, straightforward and comparatively inexpensive ways to reduce human death and suffering that do not involve first reordering the global energy system. . . .

. . . adaptation to climate change by focusing on reducing societal vulnerability to climate-related impacts deserves a much more prominent role in discussion of climate change. At the same time, advocates of climate mitigation should think carefully about the use of human death and suffering as a justification for adoption of greenhouse gas emissions -- the numbers don’t make a strong case.

From Wednesday's Washington Post:

The [Kyoto] treaty is aimed at controlling global warming linked to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Although the United States helped shape it, President Bush pulled the United States out as soon as he took office.

The first is inaccurate by omission, as it fails to address even the possibility of economic and/or strategic motives for the treaty. (More details here and here.)

The second is correct only insofar as there was a conference in Kyoto in 1997 in which some of the negotiations took place. There were other official conferences and many negotiations in many places. (The U.S. actually signed the treaty at the Buenos Aires, Argentina conference in November, 1998.)

The third is flatly false. The U.S. has never withdrawn from Kyoto. President Bush, like President Clinton, has declined to send the Kyoto Treaty to the Senate, but the U.S. remains a party to international treaty conferences and the Bush Administration has not removed the U.S. as a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty. (More details here.)

I'd fisk this article more, but I have a life.

Cross-posted on The National Center for Public Policy Research blog.

The February 16 Washington Post has this quote about the Kyoto global warming treaty:

"The greatest value is symbolic," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Nothing like losing your job or paying more for necessities in service of a symbol.

Cross-posted on The National Center for Public Policy Research blog.

This U.S. government report says Italian environmentalists are protesting because the U.S. has declined to ratify the Kyoto agreement.

Meanwhile, this European Union report says Italy ratified Kyoto, but is not complying with it.

Cross-posted on The National Center for Public Policy Research blog.

The Associated Press seems determined to spin global warming, even at the cost of its own reputation.

On The National Center's website I have analyzed several recent AP wire stories on global warming, all of which are breathtakingly biased in favor of the global warming theory.

Bias, however, is standard fare for global warming reporting. What is striking is that objective facts are missreported in the service of that bias. (Dan Rather, call your office).

For example, readers are told that "greenhouse gases" are in the atmosphere "mostly from fossil-fuel burning."

Actually, the major greenhouse gas is water vapor, but in the interest of charity, we'll put that aside and focus on carbon dioxide. "Most" of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come from burning fossil fuels -- only about 14 percent of it does. Furthermore, carbon dioxide accounts for less than ten percent of the greenhouse effect, as carbon dioxide's ability to absorb heat is quite limited.

There's more.

A year ago, I wrote a similar piece about the AP's global warming coverage, correcting the same errors and several others. It looks like the AP couldn't be bothered with fact-checkers a year ago and it still can't.

In addition to criticizing these AP wire stories, I also criticized a different AP wire story that gave the world the impression that a panel of qualified experts had just - stop the presses! - determined that the world has only a short time left to act on global warming, as the world is "approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible."

But the experts turned out to be led by politicians, not climate scientists, and the groups that assembled them turned out to be former Clinton Administration Chief-of-Staff John Podesta's Center for American Progress and two self-described liberal activist outfits located abroad.

Cross-posted on The National Center for Public Policy Research blog.

...global warming theory advocates seek their vaunted "scientific consensus" that their theories are right and the data will catch up eventually...

Illarionov Criticizes Censorship Bias at Climatic Conference

LONDON, February 2 (RIA Novosti's Alexander Smotrov) - Presidential economic aide Andrei Illarionov criticizes the policy of censorship practiced at the British Climate Change Conference.

The scientific conference of G8 experts is held in Exeter in the south of Britain on February 1 through 3.

"Its organizers have not accepted reports from many participants whose views are different from that of the organizers,'" Mr. Illarionov told RIA Novosti in the interview.

Asked by the RIA Novosti correspondent why his name is not in the list of speakers, Mr. Illarionov said: "Making a report here is impossible because organizers practice a policy of censorship against people having different points of view."

Mr. Illarionov is against the Kyoto Protocol, which intends the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions.

He draws a parallel between the refusal of organizers of the British conference to allow a number of reports to be made to the similar situation prevailing on eve of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. "The situation is the same here as well as in Davos and in the organization called the IPCC (Interparliamentary Panel on Climate Change)," the presidential economic aide said.

Last week he refused to participate in the Davos forum because he was not allowed to speak up at the sessions on climate change...

-From the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti, February 2, 2005

Daniel Sarewitz and Roger A. Pielke Jr. offer some common sense commentary in the wake of others' absurd statements connecting the tsunami and climate change. Writing in the Jan. 17 New Republic, they say: "Such assertions may have short-term political benefits in the global warming debate, but they detract from serious efforts to prepare for disasters." (The full article is available only to subscribers.)

The authors, at the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado, recommend more research into disaster preparedness, which includes things such as "better building codes and code enforcement, land-use standards, and emergency preparedness plans."

They point out that even poor countries benefit from preparedness. The Dominican Republic lost fewer than ten people during the 2004 hurricane season, apparently because of hurricane shelters and emergency evacuation networks. (Haiti lost 2000 people.)

They also note that in 2003 U.S. funding of disaster preparedness research amounted to $127 million, which was 7 percent of the amount devoted to climate change research (and they say the 15-year, inflation-adjusted total for global warming research is $30 billion.)

Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Ok.) gave a speech on the Senate floor yesterday in which he mentioned various recent scientific findings that are problematic for the alarmist position on climate change (of which more later).

Sen. Inhofe praises State of Fear, comments on developments at the recent Buenos Aires meeting, talks about the recent science from within the paleoclimatology community that casts severe doubt on the validity of the "hockey stick" graph of historic global temperature, summarizes a substantial body of science that contradicts the recent Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and condemns attempts to link the disastrous hurricanes and tsunami of last year to global warming alarmism.

The speech is available as a PDF document though the Senate Environment and Public Works committee site.

Ark placed by Greenpeace outside the La Rural convention center in Buenos Aires during COP 10, with gasoline-powered generator leading a line in.

Picture and caption provided by our man on the scene, Ivan Osorio.

According to Science magazine (Dec. 24), the new global warming science site realclimate was set up partly in order to "counter industry-supported sites such as www.CO2science.org."

Here's the reality behind CO2science.org's supposedly lavish industry funding:

For the past seven years...we have provided everything we produce free of charge to everyone, sustaining ourselves with grants and donations from numerous sources. Over the past three years, however, income from these sources has declined dramatically, and additional cuts are on the horizon. We have tried to adjust to these changes by sequentially eliminating one full-time staff position and three part-time positions, by reducing the salaries of two of us by 50% and one of us by 100%, and by one of us selling the house in which he and his family lived to move into a smaller and less expensive home. All of these actions, however, have been insufficient to compensate for our monetary losses, and have failed to stave off the inevitable. Consequently, to continue to simply survive (which one cannot do for very long with a negative income), and to continue publishing CO2 Science, we have no choice but to limit its access to those who contribute an annual donation of $7.95, which gives them access to everything on our website except our U.S. Climate and World Temperatures and Plant Growth data bases. To also receive access to these materials, we request an extra $5.00, or a total annual donation of $12.95 or more (for those for whom this minor amount proves no problem).

The Science article says that Realclimate.org is hosted by Environmental Media Services, the communications arm of rich PR firm Fenton Communications, although this fact was unmentioned on the website when last I checked.

This guy needs to calm down for the sake of his own health.

How does the Electronic Privacy Information Center know Michael Crichton's on the take from Murdoch, anyway? Do they have Crichton and Murdoch under surveillance?

Physicist Gerald Marsh, who kindly advises The National Center on science issues, has a letter in the December 29 Financial Times:

Sir, While it is becoming increasingly fashionable to maintain that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, it was rather shocking to see the Financial Times buy into what can at best be charitably characterised as a form of "political correctness" ("The price of carbon emissions," December 27).

Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in the atmosphere and helps to maintain the earth at a temperature suitable for life - the principal greenhouse gas is water vapour. Carbon dioxide is essential to the growth of all plants. Without it plants could not grow and all animal life would die. In no way is this gas a pollutant. To call it one is misleading.

Calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is a political statement, not a scientific one. Behind the politics is the claim that the small observed global warming trend is due to the burning of fossil fuels rather than being of natural origin.

Despite popular perception, the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not show that human activities were responsible for global warming. Its conclusions were based on computer models of the earth's climate. However, the problem is so complex that the art of constructing such models is still in its infancy. The uncertainties are so great that the claim by the IPCC that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" is "likely" to be unfounded. We do not yet understand the earth's climate well enough to be able to assess the long-term effect of the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels.

The earth has been warming erratically for 10,000 years. That has been good, up to now, because it is what made the non-equatorial latitudes habitable. We can expect that warming trend to continue, no matter what we do about carbon dioxide.

Gerald E. Marsh, Chicago, IL 60615, US

Following this week's tragic Asian earthquake and tsunami, the Independent - one of the UK's newspapers spun this into a story about climate change and the various natural disasters of 2004, where one of Britain's leading environmental activists is quoted as saying that ""Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions".

Whatever the original intention of this quote, the way it is written suggests an immoral attitude towards those struck by the tsunami, and indeed other disasters. Likewise, the idea that emissions controls might help anyone to cope with natural disasters, or prevent them, is preposterous, as I write today in the Wall Street Journal Asia.

Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker and polymath Judge Richard Posner comment on climate change policy on The Becker-Posner Blog. In short, Judge Posner supports Kyoto due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, Becker does not. While Becker agrees that "it is prudent to take actions to reduce the build-up of carbon gases in the atmosphere," he is skeptical about many government policies, including subsidies for less carbon-intensive fuels, and suggests that Judge Posner's own work on catastrophic risks suggests that climatic change may be the least of our worries.

A press release at the closure of COP-10 - explains that while the aim of the Framework Convention on Climate Change is to protect humanity from 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system', the policies it pursues to do so must be done in a manner that is cost effective.

It is clear that the Kyoto Protocol is not a cost-effective policy to address climate change -- it will harm everyone (not just the wealthy) yet provides a negligible effect on the earth's climate. Such policies would make humanity even more vulnerable to problems which do result in the future - whether they are caused by climate change, or some other unforseen cause.

As in all other climate conferences, the major environmental pressure groups are making their presence felt here. Friends of the Earth International (FoE) is pushing bans on genetically modified trees, promotion of hydroelectric projects by international bodies like the U.N., and climate change litigation against business and governments.

FoE are pursuing these efforts through various coalitions. It is pushing the GM tree ban alongside the World Rainforest Movement. Especially significant for the United States, however, is FoE´s efforts on behalf of climate change litigation, which it is promoting in conjunction with fellow environmentalist giants Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace. The three groups are sponsoring an event--to occur minutes from now--featuring Ken Alex from the California State Attorney General´s office. The event announcement states that the speakers, "will explain the recent legal actions around the world against governments and companies, highlighting their scientific backing, and warning that there will be more to come unless deep cuts are made in emissions are victims are compensated."

Tonight, WWF also co-hosts a reception on "Bringing Climate Change Home - How People Witness Climate Change," at which "WWF will thank our Climate Witnesses from Nepal, India, Fiji, and Argentina, for their willingness to come to COP 10 and for their hard work in testifying about the impacts of climate change on their communities." The event will feature "cultural perfomances," which "will be supported with films and statements."

So global warming is now a crime for which there are culprits and victims and that occurs within a short period of time with immediately observable effects?

CEI's Myron Ebell, Chris Horner and Ivan Osorio (a native Spanish speaker) are currently braving the crowd in Buenos Aires. Myron and Ivan are sending back regular updates. Here's Ivan's first:

Wednesday, December 15.

Ironically the COP 10 meeting is being held at the Argentine Rural Society (La Rural, for short), an agriculture promotion body. Next to the convention hall is an amphitheater that looks like it could be used for equestrian or cattle shows. When we first got to La Rural, which is quite huge, I asked a police officer where we could find the entrance. He directd us to look for "the arc that says Greenpeace." Word had it that Myron was being denounced at various events by leftist environmentalists.

Myron and I arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday, December 12, after some travel delays and searching for lost luggage. That night, I appeared on the Armando Ribas show, a live hour of weekly political commentary. I focused on the fact that many of the biggest country supporters of Kyoto--mainly Europe--are projected to decline in population, while developing countries´ population is projected to expand. Greater population means greater energy demand. Thus, Kyoto, by leading to energy rationing, would be a disaster for the developing world.

On Monday, we attended Bjorn Lomborg´s Copenhagen Consensus talk, which was happily not disrupted by environmental radicals.

Tuesday Myron and I spoke at a forum at Fundacion Atlas. We got a large crowd, most of whom stayed through what turned out to be a fairly long event. Myron made a concise presentation on the bad science beind Kyoto, while I concluded with the economic argument against it, once again citing population. The event was in Spanish; and I translated for Myron.

On Wednesday, we participated in a lunch discussion with local media, academic, and business leaders, also arranged by Fundacion Atlas, to whom we owe a great deal of thanks.

Today, I attempted to attend an open event on "French action on climate change," but found no translation facilities for non-French speakers.

Dennis Kucinich is speaking right now at a press conference open to press only.

The Greenpeace arc is still out in front of the convention center.

At the event to publicize a report on the impact of global warming on the Arctic, and the Inuit people specifically, the following remarkable assertion was made by Dr. Robert Corell of the U.S. It seems that the Inuits, who he says have lived a subsistence lifestyle (that's a good thing?) just as their ancestors have done for 9000 years, and now have that cold, hand-to-mouth bliss threatened by global warming. Apparently their snowmobiles are falling through the ice. On Wednesday night more of these usual suspects are unveiling their human rights complaint against the U.S. "for causing global warming", on behalf of Inuit peoples. They might want to rehearse a little more.

A study in Germany investigated the climate change views of theater goers before seeing The Day After Tomorrow and after seeing the film. The ridiculous picture of abrupt and sudden climate change portrayed by the film apparently lowered viewers' beliefs in the likelihood of climate change. It did not, however, significantly lower their beliefs that something needs to be done to deal with climate change.

Perhaps if Michael Moore did a documentary.

The full study can be found here.

While I truly appreciate Iain and Kendra for reporting from Buenos Aires, apparently the rest of us need not travel so far to learn about global warming. We can find all the evidence we need in our own backyards, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

At the weekend I took part in a remarkably civilized debate over global warming on the BBC's Talking Points program. You can view the program here. My thanks to Tony Grayling for being a very decent opponent who never stooped to the ad hominem attacks that characterize too much of the global warming debate these days.

As COP-10 in Buenos Aires draws to a close with a ministerial meeting from 15-17 December, environmental activists are pressuring developing countries such as India, Brazil and China to agree to emissions controls - whether under Kyoto, or some other mechanism altogether. On Monday, the Union of Concerned Scientists went as far as saying that "If India, China and Brazil replicate our pattern of fossil-intensive development, the game is over" (see news story)

The Sustainable Development Network issued a press release today to suggest that "Imposing Kyoto-style emissions restrictions on poor countries would be 'immoral".

The last Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto protocol before the agreement comes into effect is currently taking place in Buenos Aires. COP-10 so far seems to be no different from the previous COPs, consisting mainly of bleatings from Europe about America not facing up to its responsibilities, despite Europe being way off target to meet its obligations under Kyoto, developing world governments demanding vast hand-outs from developed nations, China, India and Brazil refusing point-blank to consider cutting back their greenhouse gas emissions in any way and the whole thing being an exercise in futility anyway as Kyoto will do virtually nothing to reduce global temperature even if you believe the alarmist case for global warming.

In any event, here are some of the more interesting reports so far:

The background to the meeting from Reason science writer Ron Bailey.

Bjorn Lomborg puts the problem in context.

China sets out its uncompromising stance.

COP-10 compared to popular sitcom.

Commentary on the Arctic controversy.

CEI fellow Chris Horner sums up: "The denominator among these proposals remains that developed countries should develop much more slowly if at all, and the others should only do so via the elites' preferred methods."

We'll try to keep the Commons updated with more news from the BA boondoggle as it progresses (if that word is at all applicable).

The major automakers have filed suit to challenge California's aggressive new carbon dioxide emission rules for new automobiles. Joining the suit are BMW, Daimler Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen -- all nine automakers represented by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Nissan and Honda reportedly oppose the regulations as well, but have not yet elected to join the suit, accordin to thisNYT' report. The Sierra Club's response is here.

Michael Crichton's new techno-thriller, State of Fear, warns of a terrible threat. This time, however, it's not a horrible new technology. There's no deadly virus, genetically engineered monster, or nanotech horror invented by a well-intentioned, yet hubristic and short-sighted, modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. No, according to press reports the threat in State of Fear is apocalyptic enviornmentalists who are diabolically scheming to perpetuate the myth of apocalyptic global warming. Somehow, I don't think all of the environmentalists who praised the anti-technology theme of Crichton's prior works, such as Jurassic Park and Prey, will celebrate this one.

One of the most extraordinary statements from a green lobbyist I've seen in a long time comes in this BBC story about HSBC bank going "carbon neutral". Greenpeace UK's Chief Scientist says:

"But planting trees is of questionable benefit: what if there is a forest fire?"

Woodchippers: your environmentally friendly alternative.

Historically, the greatest scientists are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. Remember this when discussing global warming and other environmental issues.

Such issues are always contentious, for they share two characteristics: They are technically complex and highly emotional. Can you think of a single environmental issue that isn’t both? Global warming tops the scale.

Advocates for dramatic action on climate change often base their appeal on the authority of scientific “consensus.” For example, “A majority of climate scientists including 99 of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, have signed a petition for the world’s leaders to act immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Tyler Cowen ponders the costs of adapting to sea-level rise in India, over at Marginal Revolution.

Thanks to Rob Bradley for pointing out this Technology Review (MIT) article. Recently, suspicions have been brewing over a possible cover-up of flawed data in original IPCC reports on climate change...

Apparently, the flaws occured in executing the simulation that ended up making the term "anthropogenic" a household word - well, sort of. (If the extent of your Monte Carlo knowledge is the Super Sport, then you may find the mathematics sections a little confusing). In any case, one can easily glean that the maths, which produced the famous 'hockey stick' of global warming, were wrong.

While finding such mistakes may not disprove climate change, they suggest we may do well to get back to the drawing board before signing economically crippling global treaties.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see whether any scandals will emerge from the cloister of climate scientists that have relied on false data for their claims (and the magazines who shelter them).

National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen is attempting to decipher Vladimir's Putin's strategy on Kyoto. He's just written a piece for newspapers nationwide. The Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel is the first paper to publish it.

Money quote:

The wily former spymaster may well be setting Kyoto's proponents up for one of history's grandest double-crosses by signing the treaty and grabbing the billions of dollars in promised payoffs with no intention of ever living up to its terms.

After all, the only way for the European Union or the United Nations to really determine if Russia is complying with Kyoto is to site thousands of monitors on the ground in a vast territory that spans six time zones - or to rely on Russian self-certification.

The first option is not likely to be granted by the xenophobic Russians, while the statistics generated by the second are likely to be doctored beyond all credibility.

Today's New York Times contains an article noting that new research undermines the claim that historical climate trends are shaped like a "hockey stick" -- that is a long period of relative climate stability followed by an large upswing in temperature in the 20th century. The story, "New Research Questions Uniqueness of Recent Warming" by Andrew Revkin, is here. Some excerpts:

A new analysis has challenged the accuracy of a climate timeline showing that recent global warming is unmatched for a thousand years.

That timeline, generated by stitching together hints of past temperatures embedded in tree rings, corals, ice layers and other sources, is one strut supporting the widely accepted view that the current warm spell is being caused mainly by accumulating heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions.

The authors of the study, published in the current issue of the online journal ScienceExpress, said they did not dispute that a sharp warming was under way and that its pace could signal a human influence. But they said their test of the methods used to mesh recent temperature records with centuries-old evidence showed that past natural climate shifts were most likely sharply underestimated.

* * *

The significance of the new analysis comes partly because the record it challenges is a central icon in the debate over whether heat-trapping emissions should be curbed. The hallmark of the original method is a graph widely called the "hockey stick" because of its shape: a long, relatively unwavering line crossing the last millennium and then a sharp, upward-turning "blade" of warming over the last century.

The new study essentially says the shaft of the stick could well be profoundly warped and the old statistical method would not notice.

During what time period did the annual mean temperature increase from about 7 degrees C to over 10 degrees C?

A. As the last ice age ended
B. The early 1700s
C. The late 1900s
D. A and C
E. It has never happened

Answer: B. From 1695-1733, the annual mean temperature as measured in central England rose from 7.25 degrees C to 10.47 degrees C.

I'll leave it to my environmentalist friends to explain how such a thing could happen prior to the Industrial Revolution.

It is because of things like this...

To many, this suggests a global warming fingerprint: The accumulation of greenhouse gases -- principally carbon dioxide -- has driven world temperatures to new heights (2002 and 2003 tied for second place after 1998 as the warmest years ever).

The data quality, or information quality, act required OMB and federal agencies to establish guidelines for the data that they data they disseminate in order to maximize quality, utility, objectivity and integrity of information. The goal was to limit the practice of "regulation by publication," or using the governmental impramatur to, e.g., scare Alar off the shelves, or provide trial lawyers fodder for the rash of pending "global warming" lawsuits to require U.S. industry to pay for Third World weather.

Although every single request for correction has been rejected, as has every appeal, even the potential threat of information quality guidelines is apparently just too much for global warming alarmists. See the following e-mail received from Hill staff in the know. It looks like someone -- whom the author speculates to be Senator McCain -- has sneakily inserted an exemption for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to make it the only executive agency excluded (de jure) from informtaion quality requirements.

Sorry Florida, says Reuters. The hurricanes are normal.

In fact, says the report, given its location, Florida has been very lucky not to have had more hurricanes over the last forty years.

Today I participated in a live chat on globalwarming.org on the state AGs' suit against several utilities alleging that they are contributing to the "public nuisance" of global warming. The text is here.

Some weather reports from around the globe:

Nebraska farmers are worried that one of the coolest summers on record will harm the state's corn and soybean crops. Minnesota and Wisconsin farmers are among the others who have worried about cool temperatures.

Iowans are seeing tourism revenues fall because of low temperatures.

Winnipeg is on track to have its coolest summer since at least 1872.

Chicago trees are shedding leaves too soon because of the cold.

St. Louis is having its coolest summer since 1985.

New Zealand doctors are complaining that record low temperatures there are causing a spike in influenza cases and other medical problems.

South Africa is seeing some record low temperatures.

This past Sunday, Al Gore tried to defend his failure to mention the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, or the Clinton Administration's relative inaction on climate change, in a review of Ross Gelbspan's Boiling Point. (I commented on the review here). Gore writes:

The ''Sense of the Senate'' resolution that Ed Koch refers to actually took place five months before the Kyoto Protocol was even written, and was aimed at providing guidance to the negotiators on general principles. During the political give-and-take over its wording, that resolution was eventually stated so broadly that even the strongest supporters of a tough treaty ended up supporting it. Indeed, the author of the resolution, Senator Robert Byrd, has publicly criticized the subsequent misrepresentation of its meaning by opponents of Kyoto.

The fact that the protocol was not ratified by the Senate during the two years between its signing and the end of the last administration is evidence of the vigorous opposition by the Republican Congress to confronting the global climate crisis. But the record certainly does not support the allegation in Lewis Regenstein's letter that President Clinton and I ''did almost nothing'' to overcome that opposition or to promote public awareness of what is at stake. There are way too many examples to list here, but anyone interested can go to www.environment2004.org to find lots of them.

On the topic of the politicization of National Geographic, I recommend this post and also this post on the excellent "Bill's Comments" blog.

Our own Jonathan Adler has written a strong piece about the significance of Russia to the fate of Kyoto. Implicit in this story is the reality of the nation's opportunity costs... In other words, if Russia were to hobble its economy to meet Kyoto targets, it would have less to spend on other local and regional environmental problems that have continued to linger since the collapse of the USSR.

The Europeans et al seem to be blind to the contradiction: that is, coaxing Russia to join Kyoto by teasing it with EU Superstatists' aspirations (read: trade concessions with Europe) only hamstrings the nation as it tries to distance itself from its socialist past and fully embrace a market system.

Mother Russia, while growing, is not yet on the downslide of her Kuznets curve - so she can ill-afford the luxuries of global treaties with only nominal environmental effects. Adler makes a point of saying that perhaps Russia and other developing nations will do better to get richer, so they can afford to adopt newer, cleaner technologies across the board. As FMEs are fond of saying: "wealthier is healthier." But it bears repeating, as the mantra doesn't seem to have broken out of the Commons enclave.

Iain has a good post on extreme weather events, below.

Back in 1998, my husband David wrote a paper for The National Center for Public Policy Research on this topic. Titled Don't Like the Weather? Don't Blame it on Global Warming, the paper examined charges that mid-90s forest fires, heat waves, blizzards and hurricanes were indicators of global warming. Because the paper reviews a century's worth of trends on these extreme weather events, it remains one of the most popular downloads on the National Center's website even now, six years later. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the topic.

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson critiques the state Attorneys General nuisance suit against utilities for emitting greenhouse gases. For more Commons Blog commentary on this litigation, see here and here.

On a day when the Union of Concerned Scientists makes headlines with a study on Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California that predicts harm to the California wine industry, the Hoover Institute's Henry Miller points out a much more direct threat to the wine industry there: execessive regulation.

An infestation of Pierce's disease threatens severe damage to the state's vines:

"Counting only grapes, the disease now threatens a crop production value of $3.2 billion and associated economic activity in excess of $33 billion. Other crop and ornamental plant resources such as almonds ($897 million) and susceptible species of citrus ($1.07 billion), stone fruits ($905 million), and shade trees are also at risk."

The EPA discriminates against gene-spliced varieties, by regulating even more stringently than chemical pesticides any plant that has been modified with gene-splicing techniques to enhance its pest- or disease-resistance. This policy, which has been attacked repeatedly by the scientific community as unscientific and irrational, has badly damaged agricultural research and development. It flouts the widespread scientific consensus that gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other techniques. New gene-spliced varieties can not only increase yields, make better use of existing farmland and conserve water, but -- especially for grains and nuts -- are a potential boon to public health, because the harvest will have lower levels of contamination with toxic fungi and insect parts than conventional varieties. Moreover, by reducing the need for spraying crops with chemical pesticides, they are environmentally and occupationally friendly.

Agbiotech's potential is proven. A decade ago, an epidemic of papaya ringspot virus had virtually destroyed Hawaii's $64 million a year papaya crop, but by 1998 biotech researchers provided virus-resistant varieties that have preserved the industry.

Yet, the EPA holds gene-spliced plants to an inappropriate, extraordinary standard, requiring hugely expensive testing as though these plants were highly toxic chemicals. In effect, these policies impose a hugely punitive tax on a superior, and badly needed, technology.

In today's New York Times Book Review section, Al Gore reviews Boiling Point by climate alarmist Ross Gelbspan. Gore cottons to the book's thesis that a sinister cabal is distorting climate science and frustrating sound global warming policies. Andrew Stuttaford comments on the review here.

The Providence Journal was kind enough to publish an op-ed I wrote. It addresses the eight state attorneys general who are attempting to run a coup on Congress by taking over our national global warming policy.

Rhode Island's AG is one of the offenders.

Addendum: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has now printed it as well. Wisconsin's AG also is one of the eight. The paper also printed an opposing view in favor of legislation by litigation by John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.

We protect the environment because we care about clean air and preserving other species, not mainly for financial reasons. But we also value inexpensive supplies of power and fast and convenient transportation.

All interesting and important policy questions involve choosing among competing values. Consider climate change. How does human action influence future climates? How willing are we to give up inexpensive fossil fuel energy? Does climate change demand drastic and dramatic action now? If so, at what cost? However well intended, it is naïve and irresponsible to ignore the unavoidable trade-offs.

My latest Tech Central Station column, Finding the Truth about Kyoto in a Lie by Bill Clinton, looks at how both sides in the upcoming Presidential election seem confused over their stance towards the Kyoto treaty.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, in another piece over on National Review Online, my colleague Zack Klein and I look at the measured conclusion of three Nobel Laureate economists and some of their peers in the analysis game that the measures suggested to combat global warming, including Kyoto, represent very bad value for money.

In a new article on Climatology on National Review Online, I point out an interesting difference in the way global climate modelers approach their work from the way other scientific modelers approach theirs.

I sometimes wonder whether a laager mentality is developing among climate modelers in that they are becoming resistant to genuine challenges to their models because they view them all as politicized. It is certainly depressing that many of them are still defending the outlier models chosen as the basis for the US National Assessment on Climate Change which, even the study authors admitted, are no better at reproducing past climate than tables of random numbers.

If reality and the models continue to diverge, this debate is simply going to get even more polarized.

I generally support the use of common law nuisance actions to address environmental problems. Where a given property owner is infringing upon the ability of another property owner to enjoy his or her property, I much prefer reliance upon the common law -- or at least common law principles -- than reliance upon regulatory mandates. But the common law, as we know it, is not applicable to every environmental situation. One area where it is certainly not applicable is climate change -- at least as advanced by several state attorneys general last week. As I explain in this TCS column, the state AGs' case is based upon dubious legal analysis and would not abate the "public nuisance" it purports to address. I believe the suit is more about political posturing and trying to force a negotiated settlement with utilities than it is about climate change.

Even if I thought public nuisance principles were applicable to climate change, I don't believe state AGs should be able to use nuisance law to impose burdens on other states that they are not willing to impose within their own state. (Think of this as an equitable "clean hands" principle, or as Thomas Merrill put it in a seminal law review article a "golden rule" for transboundary pollution.) Basically, if state A wants to use nuisance law to impose emission cuts on utilities in state B, state A should be willing to impose the same reductions on itself. This is easy to do where state B is upwind and is primarily responsible for polluton in downwind state B. But in the case of climate change, there is no "upwind and "downwind." Emissions in Wisconsin are as relevant as those in New York as those in Ohio, and so on, and there is no a priori reason to assume that the burden of emission reductions should fall upon one state's industry rather than another.

Of course, if the state AGs were serious about climate change as a policy matter, they would not be posturing and litigating over ecologically insignificant emission reducitons in other states. Instead they would be seeking policies that encourage technological devleopment, improved societal resilience, and the like. Several years ago, when I was still at CEI, I was lead author on this study that outlines some of the steps of this sort that could be taken. It's a sign of the state AGs sincerity (or lack thereof), that they are more interested in the political theater of these nuisance suits than in considering serious policy proposals.

I have an article in National Review Online today looking at the extraordinary lengths the British scientific establishment is going to in order to stifle dissent in global warming science. Sir David King's Queenie Fit details some Stalinesque tactics used by Sir David, Chief Scientific Adviser to Her Majesty's Government, at a recent conference in Moscow. The scientists he attempted to have silenced are not cranks; Paul Reiter, for instance, is one of the world's most respected malariologists and represents the scientific consensus that climate has played a minor role in the resurgence of malaria and other 'vector-borne' diseases.

The French newspaper Le Figaro covered the fracas on July 16, saying,

The clash was more than a minor diplomatic incident because it revealed a form of intellectual bullying that is beginning to dominate the scientific community on the question of climate change.

Eight state attorneys general and the city of New York will have a press conference at noon Eastern Wednesday to announce that, despite not being scientists, they are wise enough to set a good portion of our national global warming policy.

Attorneys general are elected to enforce laws, not to create them.

The Separation of Powers concept was enshrined in our governmental bodies by our Founding Fathers for a reason: When too much power is congregated in one source, dictatorship is inevitable. If these state politicians wish to set national environmental policies they should lobby Congress or run for Congress themselves.

In this case, the politicians are expected to announce they will file a lawsuit to change policies regulating power plants in states other than their own, and supervise the federal Tennesse Valley Authority as well.

It must be quite something to believe oneself smarter than entire legislatures -- from long distance, no less.

I write more about all this in "Now They Want to Be Caesar: Eight State Attorneys General Decide to End-Run Legislatures, Set National Global Warming Policies Themselves."

If viewing "The Day After Tomorrow" inspires you to take action, let it be this:

Go to the Envirotruth website and use the handy form to conveniently encourage Putin's Russia to stay out of the Kyoto Treaty.

The Hollywood left wants to spur us to take action. Let's listen to them -- this time.

Check out the tremendously straightforward remarks by Russian economist and top Putin Advisor Andrei Illarionov on the Adam Smith Institute Blog.

The guy's a Russian Michael Crichton.

I'm getting a kick out of May 24 articles in the British newspaper the Independent.

It seems that the prominent Greenie James Lovelock has called upon his fellow members of the environmental left to abandon their opposition to nuclear power. Lovelock believes that global warming fears are understated and fears of nuclear power are exaggerated.

I'm enjoying the fact that a leading environmentalist is echoing something we've said many times before: If you truly believe carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm and that this warming would have dire results, you presently have two choices: nuclear power or shutting down much of the world's economic activity.

On this latter, narrow point, Lovelock apparently agrees with us. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, according to the Independent, don't.

We, of course, believe that the theory that human beings are causing dangerous global warming is vastly overstated, but we like nuclear power's environmentally-friendly attributes nonetheless.

Lovelock, by the way, is a self-described "outstanding scientist" and "pioneer in the development of environmental awareness." He is credited by himself and others with creating the "Gaia Theory," the notion that, as Lovelock puts it on his website, "the planet Earth [is] a self-regulated living being."

The notion has been adapted by neo-paganists and New Agers, some of whom now worship "Gaia," regarding the planet Earth as a "goddess."

National Center for Public Policy Research executive director David W. Almasi is critical of "The Day After Tomorrow" director's muse:

In an interview with SCI FI Wire, "The Day After Tomorrow" director Roland Emmerich admits he previously pledged never to make another disaster movie, but "when you find something that you can give people [a] message, but still make it an exciting movie... you kind of get very, very, kind of excited about something." What got Emmerich so excited? He read the book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber.

Yes, it's that Art Bell. Bell used to host "Coast to Coast AM" from his trailer located near Area 51 in Nevada, pumping out stories about aliens, monsters and government conspiracies to insomniacs nationwide. And, according to reviews of the book posted on Amazon, the factual basis of his book -- Emmerich's muse -- leaves much to be desired.

Interestingly, many reviews, though written years ago, suggest the book is more movie fodder than textbook.

It certainly doesn't sound like something to which Al Gore should be hitching his political reputation, but he seems to be doing so.

Here's what Amazon's layman critics said:

The Hanged Man from Fairfax: "I bought this expecting some science, some facts, some hard information. Instead, I got 'lost' civilizations, fuzzy facts, and (this was probably Strieber's contribution) a passable bit of science fiction. Pass on the book and stick to Weekly World News."

Charles D. Johnston from Atlanta, Georgia: "This book takes yelling 'Fire!' in a crowd to a new level. Using a combination of vague references to unknown writers, clearly slanted style, and half-science, this book is clearly commercial in intent and seeks to capitalize on the 'sky is falling' mentality that was so evident before Y2K. The authors are more interested in making money than real science..."

Jerald R. Lovell from Clinton Township, Michigan: "It's distressing to know that Barnum was right about one being born each minute... Anyone with the slightest knowledge of weather knows the scenario of ten feet of ice and all that other glop is impossible under the laws of physics... The book has its value, though, in that it does show the Dark Ages, where superstition reigned and truth hid, are never that far away. The authors should go back to tossing burnt sheep bones and reading tea leaves, and not masquarade as scientific seers... What a commentary on our educational system! I weep for the future."

A reader from Denver, Colorado: "...Superstorm is not even good science fiction. It is laughable, speculative, junk science and urban legends all thrown together..."

A reader from Ohio: "Great fun to read... but scientifically it's all hot gas."

A reader from Wooster, Ohio: "Before I read this book I had never heard of Art Bell or Whitley Strieber. Therefore, as a scientist, I read this book with an open mind... In my opinion, Strieber and Bell have hijacked the topic of potential weather-related global cataclysm, and used it as a vehicle to persuade the reader that advanced civilizations once existed on our planet and were lost in a violent climatic upheaval. They present legitimate scientific observations and as-yet unexplained phenomena (much of it unrelated to the topic of global climate) and casually link them to some of the more fantastic claims of pseudoscience. This book is worth reading for entertainment, but the reader should definitely keep in mind the saying 'you shouldn't believe everything you read.' The bottom line is this book is long on pseudoscience and speculations (more than a few of them outrageous) and short on substantial scientific information."

rb_748 from Brooklyn, New York: "This book contains all the hallmarks of the worst pseudoscience: no references or clear citations, misnomers galore..."

Jim Green from Torquay, Devon, United Kingdom: "This book reads like a poorly-edited screenplay for a crummy disaster movie. If it's that kind of entertainment you want, then fine. If, however, you're after a credible treatment of an important issue, then steer clear of these authors. The style is sloppy and repetitive, and it seems sensationalism is valued over serious research. A quote from p. 216 says it all: 'The two of us are amateurs.'"

Joel Foss from Lakewood, California: "If you're like a lot of readers, and you've been watching the news headlines about north pole ice melting, and increasingly harsh weather conditions, then you're looking for a book on global warming and it's possible effects. You're looking for a book that will tell you what scientists are saying; what tests they're doing; what indications they're looking at. You're looking for a book that will educate you a little without putting you to sleep. Well, THIS AIN'T THE BOOK! The author is a radio talk show host, not a science writer, and the book is about as educational as... a radio talk show! There is no attempt to explain; only to scare the reader..."

A reader from Rochester, New York: "Bell once again rehashes kindergarten-level scientific mumbo-jumbo to exploit current topics of interest, in order to capitalize on his fame and make a few extra bucks. Save your money and buy a book with some science content."

A reader from Olympia, Washington: "Baloney does not stick to paper very well. Not since Joseph Goebbels and the 'big lie' has there been such a gaseous expulsion of fairy tales masquerading as science..."

A reader from San Jose, California: "This authors mix wild and implausible speculation with pseudo-science to produce a book that, if anybody read it, would set the environmentalists back ten years. We just have to hope that few fall into the trap of reading it, like I did."

A reader from Troy, New York: "I enjoy a good 'wacko' theory book as much as the next person, but this book is a travesty. Arguments and assertions are made and never followed up. Veiled hints are made but never proven. Planetary cycles are alluded to but never stated succinctly. The writing is slack and there is no intellectual rigor..."

Dan Allison from Sunset Beach, Florida: "These two are QUITE the piece of work. America's most irresponsible broadcaster has teamed up with a guy whose career as a horror novelist was in the dumpster before he grabbed onto the UFO thing. The result is fear-mongering pseudoscience... Listen to their 'Coast to Coast AM' radio broadcast. Strieber is incessantly blaming capitalism for problems that, frankly, do not even exist. His calls for 'government action' are barely-disguised paeans for government control, collectivism, and restrictions on individual freedom. Bell, while slightly more conservative, will put ANY crackpot on the radio -- aliens, time travelers, you name it..."

Gary L. Scott from Aloha, Oregon: "The Coming Global Superstorm is science fiction pap. Light on fact and heavy on speculation extrapolated from junk science mixed with just enough facts to add some credibility to the book. Bell and Strieber have collected mountains of urban legends, folk tales and junk science, mixed it together and created yet another great book for the doomsday crowd."