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:

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(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.

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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...

Perhaps he meant it to be perceived differently, but Dr. Hansen's actions fit the description of a hissy fit. If Hansen disagrees with Dr. John Christy (whose testimony to the commitee can be found in pdf form here), why not participate in the hearing and explain why?

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...

Nice mental image the Times paints: Critics so extreme on environmental issues we find even bird-watching threatening.

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.

In addition to the call for cap and trade, which I placed in italics for emphasis, I direct attention to the claim that "voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate change problem" and the notion that "scientific consensus" can be "led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

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.

No word from the Weekly Standard on the price tag of the "insurance policy worth having" (known as 'cap and trade' to those of us speaking plainly) as if 1) the cost wasn't billions, to be borne mostly by those who can least afford it, and 2) the "insurance policy" would actually lessen global warming IF (a big IF) the environmental left's position on global warming is accurate.

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 Washington Post on December 11, 1997 may indeed have said, as Media Matters later demonstrates, that "key Senate Republicans declared the accord 'dead on arrival,' and a leading Democratic supporter urged that the Senate delay a vote in light of its bleak prospects." However, the saying of a thing is less important than the doing of the thing.

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...

President Clinton approved a Kyoto Treaty that violated two out of two of these bi-partisan Senate requirements. Then Clinton declined to put up a fight to get the Senate to change its mind.

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...

Please read the whole thing.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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):

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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.

Roger Pielke responds to some of Lindzen's claims here.

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.

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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...

These excerpts do not do the paper justice. Please read it all here.

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