What could possibly be wrong with this?

It's not a climate bill, it's a full employment opportunity for trial lawyers:

Climate bill could trigger lawsuit landslide

Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it - from beachfront property owners to asthmatics - for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.

Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers.

"You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm's risk," said Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

This is NOT unintended.

And those computer models of climate-change have been so darn accurate, too. /sarc


(h/t Hot Air)

Yeah, that'll work.

I see in today's news that President Obama is going to push to have the automakers produce more cars that American's will not buy. (Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars)

Starting his second week in office, Obama took a major step toward allowing California and other states to target greenhouse gases through more stringent auto emission standards, and he ordered new federal rules directing automakers to start making more fuel-efficient cars as required by law.

The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, carmakers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.

And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, "greener" cars.

Here's a better idea. Why doesn't the federal government step away from the drawing board and let the automakers produce vehicles that people want to purchase at a price the people can afford.

Or is this a deep rooted plan to keep people off the road? Might work in cities but rural American will cling stubbornly (and correctly) to their workhorses--the larger, four wheel drive SUVs and pickups.

Hey, I'm all for reducing the emissions and raising the MPG, but not at the hands of a government mandate. If I can get a vehicle that will haul and tote the materials I need to haul and tote, one that will have four wheel drive so I can safely and successfully maneuver over and up snow covered roads and hills, one that will have an MPG rating that will make a difference in my wallet, one that is not going to cost me an arm and a leg above the current level, then I'll consider buying it and the automakers may have found a winning formula.

Until then, it seems to me that the government is forcing the manufacturers to produce something that will cost more than I can afford and will, at best be marginally better in the MPG and emissions area while sacrificing the hauling, toting and safety issues. If they continue along this course, I'll be looking for a reliable used vehicle instead of one with all the mandated bells and whistles and they (government and manufacturers) can suck eggs.

"It is not about climatology. It is about freedom."

Climate alarmists pose real threat to freedom, so says a man who knows about threats to and restraints of freedom, Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.

Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical: the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality. What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its present strongest version, climate alarmism.

Speaking of the individuals and groups pushing the Global Climate Change agenda and the need to radically change current lifestyles and ambitions to improve human conditions throughout the world, President Klaus had this to say: (emphasis added)

I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries. This ambition goes very much against past human experience which has always been connected with a strong motivation to better human conditions. There is no reason to make the change just now, especially with arguments based on such incomplete and faulty science. Human wants are unlimited and should stay so. Asceticism is a respectable individual attitude but should not be forcefully imposed upon the rest of us.

I am also afraid that the same people, imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniacal ambitions, want to regulate and constrain demographic development, which is something only the totalitarian regimes have until now dared to experiment with. Without resisting it we would find ourselves on the slippery road to serfdom. The freedom to have children without regulation and control is one of the undisputable human rights.

A man who is very familiar with the tenants of totalitarian regimes, President Klaus draws upon his experiences in identifying the dangers inherent in the current hysterical push to adopt rules and regulations based upon questionable science and even more dubious models of the future. (Again, emphasis is mine.)

This brings me to politics. As a politician who personally experienced communist central planning of all kinds of human activities, I feel obliged to bring back the already almost forgotten arguments used in the famous plan-versus-market debate in the 1930s in economic theory (between Mises and Hayek on the one side and Lange and Lerner on the other), the arguments we had been using for decades until the moment of the fall of communism. The innocence with which climate alarmists and their fellow-travellers in politics and media now present and justify their ambitions to mastermind human society belongs to the same fatal conceit. To my great despair, this is not sufficiently challenged, neither in the field of social sciences, nor in the field of climatology.

The climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotency, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong. They believe in their own ability to assemble all relevant data into their Central Climate Change Regulatory Office equipped with huge supercomputers, in the possibility of giving adequate instructions to hundreds of millions of individuals and institutions.

In conclusion, President Klaus warns:

It is not about climatology. It is about freedom.

Paper or plastic?

It’s a question we used to hear often at the grocery store. (Shopping at Wally World, we have little choice...but lots of plastic bags.) Now folks like Australia’s Environment Minister Peter Garret want to ban plastic bags because of their environmental impact on wildlife. But wait a minute, don’t jump on his bandwagon just yet. Not everything you’ve heard about plastic shopping bags is true, even if Mr. Garret believes them to be.

Andrew Bolt (Plastic bags choke Garrett) takes a closer look at the common plastic shopping bag and suggests it may actually be better for the environment than the alternatives. (And far less dangerous to wildlife than ordinary litter in the form of packaging materials or than discarded fishing nets.)

Even representatives from Greenpeace are aghast at the hyperbole being used.

It's this kind of scaremongering -- now seen with global warming -- that dismays even a Greenpeace marine biologist in Britain, David Santillo.

"It's very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags," he said last week. "It doesn't do the Government's case any favours if you've got statements being made that aren't supported by the scientific literature that's out there."

So what is likely to happen if plastic shopping bags are banned?

Fact: Ban these bags and people will probably switch to stuff even worse for the environment, such as paper bags, said the Productivity Commission. A study by Allen Consulting agreed, adding that it took five times more greenhouse gases to make paper bags than it did plastic ones.

Fact: Switching to biodegradable plastic bags could be worse still, said the 2002 Nolan-ITU report. People would probably litter more, thinking it didn't matter, and their bags would release chemicals in breaking down.

Fact: People love plastic bags too much to give them up even if made to pay. Ask Ireland, which imposed a levy on bags only to find more than ever were being used, with only a small cut in the number turning up as litter.

And the Productivity Commission warned a levy or ban wouldn't work any better here: "A cost-benefit study commissioned by the governments shows that the benefits of a phase out or a per-unit charge would be significantly outweighed by the costs."

Keep those last facts in mind when someone starts mounting their high horse and advocates for banning the plastic shopping bag.

Common sense energy plan

This makes so much sense that it will never get through congress.

Ross bill calls for energy 'independence' on back of oil drilling

A plan introduced Thursday by U.S. Rep. Mike Ross to encourage alternative and renewable energy relies on oil drilling in Arctic wildlife lands and the Gulf of Mexico to meet its goals.


Ross' bill, the "American-Made Energy Act of 2008," also would create tax credits to build new nuclear power plants throughout the United States, with an aim of having 40 percent of the nation's power come from nuclear sources.

Drill for oil on our own shores, build non-CO2 producing nuclear power plants, distance the US from dependence upon foreign energy sources…it all makes great sense. But you know that the environmental weenies will stall every aspect of this plan, will lobby and rail against it as “raping the earth,” and will likely win against a bunch of spineless politicians who see the money (and the votes) raised by the Birkenstock crowd as more important the health and safety of the USA.

"We're not just trying to suck the oil out of the ground for no reason," said Ross, D-Ark. We're trying "to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and take the revenue from the sale of that oil and invest in all of these environmentally friendly and job-creating emerging technologies."

Even as a source of funding for alternative energy sources (and that’s what nuclear power is) drilling along the Florida coast and in places people never go to—and on only a tiny little fraction of ANWAR, at that—will be a difficult sell.

Ross said the drilling in the Arctic and off the Florida coast called for in his bill would raise about $80 billion over 30 years. He said that money would be "more than enough" to fund efforts to expand tax credits to fight global warming, encourage renewable energy operations and help consumers buy plug-in electric and flex-fuel cars.

Ross said the bill's tax credits for nuclear power plants would help wean the U.S. off of fossil fuels as well, though his bill includes subsidies to encourage liquid fuel production of coal. He said that could encourage further exploration of Arkansas' own coal reserves, bringing more jobs and industry to the state.

However, Ross acknowledged encouraging nuclear power and drilling in the Arctic might be a tough sale to Congress.

And that last sentence is just plain sad. Our political class—our leaders on virtually all levels from town council to the president—has lost its vision, its innovative get up and go, for the ability of Americans to achieve anything when presented with a challenge. Instead members of the political class have aligned themselves with those who build obstacles against achievement. As a result problems that are identified are seldom if ever solved but are allowed to ferment until a crisis arises and then either a patch of little or no significance is applied or a particular practice is banned outright.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!

UN Warns of Biofuels' Environmental Risk

The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday

And here in the US we are seeing a rise in food prices and fuel costs created by the sale of corn as an ethanol source. You’d almost think the politicians rushing to making these decisions didn’t anticipate the consequences.

Idiots.

Farts for a healthier world!

Eco-friendly kangaroo farts could help global warming: scientists

Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, researchers say.

Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.

Now, wouldn’t that require something akin to genetic manipulation? There’s got to be some sort of quid pro quo between the bacteria and the ‘roo for them to coexist. If the cattle and sheep that were brought to the continent had the same stomach environment as the ‘roo, wouldn’t they have the same bacteria by now? Just asking.

We NEED a huge volcanic eruption(or two)

My wife reported that she saw this story on Anak Krakatoa creep across the bottom of the screen on one of this morning’s news shows. I couldn’t help but think that should the “Son of Krakatoa” live up to its Dad’s performance of 1883, some of the concerns of Global Warming might be put on the back burner for a decade or so. The ash of the 1883 eruption, spewed into the upper atmosphere, has been credited with a drop in the global temperatures in 1.2 degrees Celsius.

While not quite as impressive as the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora which created the “Year Without a Summer,” it (Krakatoa) is still indicative of the power of nature.

[On a side note: I wonder if people of the St. Lawrence Valley wondered if they had pissed off Mother Nature in 1816? Or did they go about trying to figure out what they had done to cause the drop in temperature?]

I would be interested in seeing what affect the smoke and ash of the wildfires out west have on temperatures. On one hand you have a tremendous amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere and on the other there’s all the reflective surface of the atmospheric dust sending sunlight back to space.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

It’s events like this that should make people stop and think before they leap to “do something for the environment.” Seems all too often those acts come back to bite you in the a**.

It took only days to create what was touted as the world's largest artificial reef in 1972, when a well-intentioned group dumped hundreds of thousands of old tires into the ocean. Now divers expect to spend years hauling them to the surface.

The tires turned out to be a reef killer, turning a swath of ocean floor the size of 31 football fields into a dead zone.

Military crews began retrieving the tires this week from about 70 feet underwater, where they had broken loose from bundles and wedged along a natural reef. As of Thursday, they had pulled up about 1,600 of the estimated 700,000 tires that must be hauled to the surface.

The idea was sound but the materials and method of implementation—well, not so good.

The dumping of nearly 2 million tires began in 1972 with much fanfare by a group called Broward Artificial Reef Inc., which had the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, support from Goodyear and help from hordes of volunteer boaters.

The project was intended to attract a rich variety of marine life while disposing of tires that were clogging landfills.

But hurricanes, tropical storms and cold fronts created wave action that loosened the tires and moved them around, killing part of one of three coral reefs off Fort Lauderdale, said Broward County marine biologist Kenneth Banks. Hundreds of tires have also washed up on beaches over the years.

If left unchecked, the tires could kill acres of coral and eventually start destroying other nearby reefs.

Divers from the Army, Navy and Coast Guard are cleaning up the mess, which already has proven to be much trickier than making it. The teams have been hampered by thunderstorms, wind-whipped waves and a balky crane that brought operations to a halt Thursday.

Weather permitting, divers will spend the summer months for the next three years bringing up the 700,000 tires while leaving behind the ones that seem to have remained in place — at least for now.

The tires will be trucked to a Georgia facility where they will be burned to power a paper recycling plant at a cost to Florida of $2 million.

I read last week about how one New Jersey shore-town has forbidden digging in the sand beyond a few inches. Sand replenishment activity has brought unexploded ordinance to the Jersey Shore.

Enjoy your summer.

Endangered? Or an Excuse?

U.S. to Study Protection for Alaska Loon

A petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for a rare loon that breeds in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve has been accepted for review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Conservationists hope an eventual listing of the yellow-billed loon will curb petroleum development in the 23-million acre reserve that covers much of Alaska's western North Slope.

The petition was filed three years ago by the Center for Biological Diversity. , the National Resource Defense Council , Pacific Environment and other U.S. and Russian scientific and conservation organizations.

This is an environmental story of an alleged endangered species with a “must stop oil drilling” mantra in the background. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be another Spotted Owl episode.

From Cornell Labs All About Birds: Spotted Owl

Conservation Status
Because of its preference for old-growth forests, it is heavily affected by clear-cut logging. The northern form is considered Endangered in Canada and Threatened in the United States. The California form is a species of special concern in California, and the Mexican form is considered as Threatened in the United States and Mexico. Listed on the Audubon Watchlist.

(Here’s the 2007 Draft Recovery Plan for the Spotted Owl: 2007 Draft Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl Now Available for Public Comment)

During the heated debate about the Spotted Owl, claims of incredibly small populations were circulated making one think they were as rare as Whopping Cranes or California Condors. People chained themselves to trees to prevent loggers in the Pacific Northwest from doing their jobs. Eventually, the spotted owl was listed as either Endangered or Threatened in much of coastal Canada and the US. Afterwards, studies of the real population indicated they may very well be far more numerous than thought. Much of the action on the Owl’s behalf was from those who opposed logging. They just shopped for a species that would serve their purpose and created a firestorm f hyperbole to push the Endangered and Threatened labels. And these preservationists won the day to some extent. Logging operations were shut down, some mills had to close and lots of people lost jobs.

If the same thing is going on here, environmentalists using the yellow-billed loon as a means of halting oil exploration in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve…. Well, you can only cry wolf so many times before people start to catch on.

The yellow-billed loon breeds in tundra wetlands in Alaska, Canada and Russia, and winters along the west coasts of Canada and the United States.

Petroleum development through leasing ordered by President Bush could reduce its numbers, said Brendan Cummings, ocean program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

"The yellow-billed loon is one of the rarest and most vulnerable birds in the United States, yet the Bush administration's plan to 'protect' it is to approve oil drilling in its habitat," Cummings said.

Of course! It’s all Bush’s fault. Don’t suppose you fly to any conferences or even drive anywhere do you Mr. Cummings? And you live in a very small, environmentally friendly, super-duper efficient home. Right?

Just how rare is the yellow-billed loon?

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are 16,500 yellow-billed loons in the world, including 3,700 to 4,900 that breed in Alaska. More than 75 percent of the Alaska breeders nest in the petroleum reserve. Smaller numbers breed on the Seward Peninsula and on St. Lawrence Island.

Approximately one-third of the yellow-billed loon population nests in Alaska. And they are notoriously poor at raising a family.

The large-bodied birds have low reproductive success and depend on high annual adult survival to maintain population levels. Individual birds must live many years before they can reliably replace themselves with offspring that survive long enough to breed, according to the agency.[Fish and Wildlife Service]

So if the drilling does occur, it could have a substantial impact on yellow-billed loon survival according to these numbers. Right?

But, let’s go back a few years when oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was first discussed. Environmentalists were up in arms about how this activity would affect the caribou in the area being opened for drilling. After all the hollering was done and people pointed to the maps of the drilling area, Area 1002 which consisted of 1.5 million acres, was an area bordered the Prudhoe Bay area that has been in production for years. The remaining 19 million acre ANWR was to be left untouched. That left a whole lot of habitat for the caribou to roam.

Check out the maps from the Sierra Club via the link in the given here. The "1002" Area

The area to be drilled this time around, consists of 4.6 million acres within the 22 million acre National Petroleum Reserve. Granted, 4.6 million acres sounds llike a lot of land to someone who might live on a ¼ acre in a typical suburban setting or maybe a 5 acre lot in some more swanky development, but let’s put the numbers in perspective. Alaska measures 424,490,880 acres (663,267 sq. miles). They don’t mention where in Alaska the loon nests, but even if all of the NPR were open to drilling, the loon would still have over 400 million acres in which to find suitable habitat. Let’s say there are 500 yellow-billed loons that nest in Alaska. The loons, of course pair up to mate (their not that looney)so there are 2,500 pairs of loons, each pair looking for that perfect hideaway. Take the 424,490,880 acres of Alaska and subtract the 4,600,000 acres in the proposed drilling area and that leaves each pair of loons over 167,950 acres in which to find a lake that contains some fish for food and a suitable nest site.

The agency's finding, called a 90-day finding despite the filing of the original petition in March 2004, is based on scientific information provided by the conservation groups.

They cite threats including destruction and modification of habitat due to development and pollution and lack of regulatory protection.

Birds that breed in Alaska spend winters off the coast of Russia and face drowning in fishing nets, plus threats from petroleum development in the Sea of Okhotsk, Cummings said.

Yellow-billed loons do not recover easily from population declines, are susceptible to disturbance and may be vulnerable to habitat loss, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Inundation of their freshwater breeding areas by saltwater levels rising because of global warming is another threat, Cummings said. However, oil and gas development in nesting areas is foremost in the petitioners' minds.
"Industrializing the Arctic is not the way to protect a rare bird," he said.

Of course, global warming threats are to be considered as well.

(All emphasis is mine.)The information being provided is that of the environmental groups who have apparently already decided they drill should not be permitted. I wonder just how independent the researchers were or if any research that is not along the lines of the "no drilling" crowd will make it to the Fish and Wildlife Service's desk.

If this turns out to be a case built on hyperbole, something that may be difficult to determine considering the location of the yellow-billed loons habitat--the area in question is so remote that there are NOT a lot of people in the area to take measurements and make observations--the entire environmental movement will receive another mark against its reputation. Enough of those and it will be difficult to pay attention to warnings when they are real.

Record Snows on Pikes Peak

Colorado Springs is nestled at the base of Pikes Peak. The mountain scenery is gorgeous. Two years ago there wasn’t a bit of snow on the Peak on the Fourth of July. This year there will probably be quite a bit.

Climbers get the cold shoulder

This is the snowiest spring on Pikes Peak in more than a decade. Barr Camp recorded 231 inches of snow this winter. (It only saw 50 inches in 2006.)
…
Hikers venturing above treeline will find that the peak is more wintry this May than it usually is in January, and they should be prepared.

“The snow is still waist-deep in places, and we just got more today,” Taylor, the caretaker at Barr Camp, said Wednesday. Every day, she warns people that the trail is buried.

A couple of Air Force cadets had to be rescued when they couldn’t make the last five miles from Barr Camp to the summit. They started early in the morning expecting to make it long before the last train left at 4:00 PM. They didn’t. They did get down safely, however, with the help of a helicopter rescue team.

Temperatures at the summit have hovered around freezing for days. Snow will likely last into June or July.

“It’s been warm in town, and people think, ‘How much snow can there be?’ There’s a lot,” Taylor said. “And it’s wet, deep snow. You’re going to sink in and get soaked through.”

Succession = Diversity

When Lava Flows And Glaciers Recede, Predicting How Species Take Over

Whenever an event such as a fire, clear cut, or lava flow creates an empty habitat, species arrive, interact, and assemble to form a new ecological community--a process known as "succession." How quickly does succession proceed" Most ecologists might expect change to be rapid at first and then decline as the community ages, but there was no systematic analysis of this idea until recently.

It’s only a “disaster” if you want it to be. Otherwise, it’s a natural process that is clearly poorly understood in some ways. Change (succession) is natural and necessary for diversity. It does end in mature ecosystems that are devoid of the diversity succession experiences. Luckily there are man-made and natural events that can bring things full cycle back to the beginning (or nearly so).

Anderson's study provides a framework to understand why communities mature at different rates. According to the author, "Understanding how quickly new ecological communities develop is fundamental to numerous ecological questions ranging from, 'How often should fires or clear cuts be allowed on landscapes?" to 'What determines how many species are found on an island?" yet we were unable to make many generalizations about succession rate. That is what motivated this study."

The “forever wild” clause in the creation of the Adirondack Park and various national parks has created an environment in which little change takes place and, therefore, reduced the diversity of the forested park lands owned by the state of New York and the United States. Succession has seen to it that the forest will grow to large trees that mature, die and rot where they stand or fall. The gap created by the fallen giant may make for a temporary tiny hole in the forest that undergoes some form of succession, but it’s not much on the grand scale of things. Thank goodness for the few large timber companies still operating within the Blue Line, the occasional wildfire, and the beaver, nature’s little diversity machine (chop it, dam it, flood it, abandon it once it fills in).

If you want examples, go look at the explosion of life in the forests of Yellowstone that burned in the late 80s, or at the burgeoning growth on the flanks of Mount St. Helens, or at the Hawaiian Islands once formed (and still forming) from molten rock.

When we see film of forest fires or volcanic lava and ash burying a forest, we mourn the loss of all those stately trees. We forget that in a few years time, the land will sprout anew with different species of plants and animals often far more diverse than the monoculture forest that was lost. It all takes time. And patience. Something that we humans seem to have in short supply.

Global Warming?

Somebody might want to tell South Africa about this Global Warming thing.

Weather breaks record

The South African Weather Service said 34 new records were set on Monday and another 20 yesterday. Almost all records were for the lowest maximum and minimum daily temperatures in towns across the country.

And it’s not WINTER there yet!

There was snow on all high-lying areas of the Eastern Cape, and on some of the low-lying areas, said Weather SA's regional manager for the province, Hugh van Niekerk.

Meanwhile, out near Denver, Summer has been delayed.

Snow kidding! Weather wacky

Light snow has been falling along Interstate 70 on both sides of the Eisenhower Tunnel and along some mountain passes, with 3 to 7 inches expected in some of the higher elevations.
…
The National Weather Service says rain or thundershowers are likely through this evening with snowshowers expected by midnight in the Castle Rock area. Temperatures are expected to drop into the high 30s tonight in the metro area.
The southwestern mountains of Colorado are under a snow advisory, with up to 8 inches of accumulation possible. A freeze watch is in effect for tonight in the San Luis Valley region and much of southeastern Colorado is under a flash flood watch.

From the Drudge Report

Carbon Debits

Man! I wish I had thought of this. Between the trees at the Bolt Hole and those here at the Aerie, I could have picked up some serious cash. (Of course, I don’t have to cut them down so as to NOT scare any antelope as these guys claim. Mine would have been pure Carbon Debit.

CarbonCreditKillers.com
Your Carbon Credit Reduction Source
Reducing the threat of Carbon Credits one Debit (and one Tree) at a time.

Click on this link to see them at work: How We Make a Carbon Debit

Hey! Turn up the thermostat!

A cold front swept southward late yesterday bringing some light rain and much colder temperatures. Last week overnight lows hovered around 50 degrees. This morning, in the shade of the mountain and despite an outdoor thermometer reading of 35 degrees, some of yesterday’s rain remained on the deck in the form of sheet ice.

I could use a bit more “global warming” right about now. But something tells me this report needs to be held on to for a few years, you know, just like all those made back in the early 1970s that forecast the coming ice age (*snigger*).
Sizzling summers in the forecast

Supposed to get down around 30 degrees tonight. Cover up those plants.

This word, “Consensus,” I do not think it means what you think it means.

And “Peer review”---pffft.

Peer Review, Publication In Top Journals, Scientific Consensus, And So Forth by Robert Higgs from the History News Network of George Mason University

Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from important, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to a complete farce, where they are not.
…
As I have always counseled young people whose work was rejected, seemingly on improper or insufficient grounds, the system is a crap shoot. Personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion and a great deal of plain incompetence and irresponsibility are no strangers to the scientific world; indeed, that world is rife with these all-too-human attributes. In no event can peer review ensure that research is correct in its procedures or its conclusions.

It is always dangerous to talk about consensus as if it proves anything in science. Remember, there was a consensus at one time that the Earth was the center of the Universe and the Sun, Moon and stars revolved about little old Terra Firma.

At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about the enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.

So, how did we get so many Chicken Littles screaching about the latest coming catastrophe? (Doesn’t there seem to be a new one every six months or so? Sometimes they over lap—like avian flu and Climate Change As Caused by Man.)

Research worlds, in their upper reaches, are pretty small. Leading researchers know all the major players and what everybody else is doing. They attend the same conferences, belong to the same societies, send their grad students to be postdocs in the other people's labs, review one another's work for the NSF, NIH, or other government funding organizations, and so forth. If you do not belong to this tight fraternity, it will prove very, very difficult for you to gain a hearing for your work, to publish in a "top" journal, to acquire a government grant, to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific-conference panel discussion, or to place your grad students in decent positions. The whole setup is tremendously incestuous; the interconnections are numerous, tight, and close.

So it’s a little daisy chain of folks working up to a feeding frenzy. It’s publish or perish time.

…these two contexts are themselves tightly linked: if you don't get funding, you'll never produce publishable work, and if you don't land good publications, you won't continue to receive funding.

But, what are they to feed upon? Where is the funding going to come from? Why government grants, of course! Ah, but how to insure the much needed cash will flow your way?

When your research implies a "need" for drastic government action to avert a looming disaster or to allay some dire existing problem, government bureaucrats and legislators (can you say "earmarks"?) are more likely to approve it. If the managers at the NSF, NIH, and other government funding agencies gave great amounts of money to scientists whose research implies that no disaster looms or no dire problem now exists or even that although a problem exists, no currently feasible government policy can do anything to solve it without creating even greater problems in the process, members of Congress would be much less inclined to throw money at the agency, with all the consequences that an appropriations cutback implies for bureaucratic thriving. No one has to explain all these things to the parties involved; they are not idiots, and they understand how the wheels are greased in their tight little worlds.

But don’t these scientists know what they are talking about? Maybe, maybe not. There are limits to their knowledge. No one is qualified or knowledgeable enough to hold forth on everything at once. Although they will try.

Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that "we must act now" by imposing government "solutions" of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it's a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a genuine scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking―worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists― nevertheless.

But the UN issued a report and countries around the world are listening to it. Shouldn’t we?

In this connection, we might well bear in mind that the United Nations (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees) is no more a scientific organization than the U.S. Congress (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees). When decisions and pronouncements come forth from these political organizations, it makes sense to treat them as essentially political in origin and purpose.

So, is the current hysteria science or politics? And if it is science, is it good science or just a lot of folks looking for a gravy train to ride? (Politicians are always looking for that gravy train.)

Properly Planned Wind Farms Won't Harm Birds (as a population)

A congressionally mandated study released by the National Research Council (NRC) says: Wind Turbines Not a Threat to U.S. Bird Population

The last few meetings of the local Audubon Club included discussions as to what position the club should take vis-à-vis wind turbines. There are several locations here in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania being studied for potential wind turbine sites. The mountain ridges run east west and the winds coming from the north or northwest could generate tremendous amounts of energy. Our club’s concern is with the birds, of course, but also with the need for clean energy alternatives.

One thing that was discovered early on was that the local and state governments had no guidelines by which either the developer or the opponents to development could look for assistance.

But while some states have developed guidelines, wind energy is such a recent addition to the energy mix in most areas -- the nation's wind-energy capacity more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006 -- that most states are relatively inexperienced at planning and regulation.

Just this past week Tioga County did adopt some preliminary guidelines which put any construction of wind turbines under the gees of the planning committees and building inspectors. A small but important step.

As far as the impact on bird populations:

Focusing its study on a mountainous region that included parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the report cited that bird deaths caused by collisions with wind turbines are a minute fraction of total anthropogenic bird deaths -- less than 0.003% [three of every 100,000] in 2003.

The study does admit that in some local and/or poorly planned areas the impact can be more substantial.

While the study found that wind facilities can have certain adverse environmental effects on a local or regional level, the report committee saw no evidence that fatalities from existing wind facilities are causing measurable changes in bird populations in the U.S. A possible exception to this is deaths among birds of prey, such as eagles and hawks, near Altamont Pass, California -- a facility with older, smaller turbines that appear more apt to kill such birds than newer models of wind turbines.

As the second commenter to the story mentions, the older, smaller, and more inefficient turbines used at Altamont pass will have to be replaced which should alleviate some of the problem in that locale.

And as the first commenter opines, cats do far more damage to the bird population so why don’t we fight harder to keep Tabby indoors and/or declawed and neutered?

I get the jitters whenever I see a cat walking across a field or along the side of a road. I probably shouldn’t now that I live in farm country and most of the farm cats earn their keep in and around the barn but they still “freelance” a bit on their own time.

Back in NJ there were folks who would intentionally feed feral cats at the train station. There had to be several dozen of these beasts. Whenever someone would propose capturing them and euthanizing these feral critters…well, the howling wasn’t just from the cats!

I don’t like free roaming dogs either.

(My three cats are neutered and are indoor cats. I won’t declaw them, however.)

The Faithful Heretic

From the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News:

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education.

And more awards and honors than you can shake a stick at. He’s 86 years old and has seen and done a lot in his chosen field. He’s an expert’s expert. And he was ahead of the crowd.

Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.
“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

So, what does he think of all this hullabaloo over CO2 causing Global Warming?

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

So what about the CO2 in the models devised to predict the coming heat wave?

In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?
…
And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

But….But..the models!?

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”

Hmmmmm?

The rest of the article/interview is here.

(Seen at The Drudge Report)

Gaia has a virus. Us.

One environmentalist is now comparing man to a virus.

Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

This guy would like to see the world population shrink to around 1 billion people. I wonder how he would choose to reach that number? Especially since he sees it a necessary to reach that value (one-fifth the current population) almost, well, yesterday.

Watson’s full editorial can be found and read here.

Save the World! In one easy step

The Anchoress has an excellent suggestion on how to combat global warming: Cancel all the concerts.

If Sheryl Crow needs all those buses and trucks just for her little act, just think of the number needed for a multi-band concert tour. If they just all stayed home and shut up for one summer…well, it might save the world!

And just think what could be saved if we shut down all movie and TV production for just one year!