Libertarian Leanings

First Blizzard Of The Season

In Nashua we're expecting anywhere from 10 to 25 inches.  Hiking on Mount Washington is not recommended today.

Observers on top of Mount Washington are bracing for bone-chilling and harsh conditions on the Northeast's highest mountaintop as the storm plays out at 6.288-feet, issuing a wind chill advisory for today.

"By Monday night, the summits will likely see the first wind chill warning of the season as a combination of negative temperatures and 100-mph winds combine for values below 50 below," wrote Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist Ryan Knapp on the Observatory website.

Blizzard conditions are also expected on the summit, according to observers.

U.S. Forest Service snow rangers predict the avalanche danger on the slopes of Mount Washington today will be high.

"Expect blizzard-like, arctic conditions with very limited visibility, making above treeline travel (today) quite severe and not recommended," wrote snow ranger Christopher Joosen on the Mount Washington Avalanche Center's website.

Hope and Change - Global Warming Edition

Hope:

Old Farmer’s Almanac Forecasts Decades of Global Cooling

30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming, Leading Scientist Says

Change:

White House: Global Warming Out, 'Global Climate Disruption' In

Warming? Cooling? Doesn't matter, now. The White House is covered either way.  And they say Obama isn't up to the job!

Global Warming -- Where's The Consensus?

Wichita's scorching summer is making history.

The summer of 2010 is beginning to rival some of the hottest summers in Wichita history – including the infamous summer of 1936, during the Dust Bowl.

Record-breaking Columbus heat? Not quite yet.

Yes, it's been a hot summer in the city.

But Columbus aside, the summer of 2010 is shaping up to fall short of sweltering-hot across all of central Ohio.

Temperatures continue well below average in Southern California.

The average temperature in July was 79 degrees, five degrees below normal, and the first eight days of this month also have been five to six degrees below normal, weather experts said.

That could put Southern California on track for a near-record-low summer, but it's still too early to say, according to weather experts. The Los Angeles area, in fact, has had below-normal temperatures every month since April.

[...]

"The fruits and vegetables, the tomatoes and a lot of the citrus and things like raspberries are not ripening up because it's not getting hot long enough," she said, adding that some fruit could taste less sweet because less sun means less sugar content.

Hiding the Decline and Other Things

A Washington Times column by Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, concludes that there is probable cause for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's investigation of global warming scientist, Michael Mann.  Mann is the creator of the infamous hockey stick graph, which purported to show average global temperatures starting a dramatic rise only late in the 20th century, thus proving that human activity is the cause of a supposedly catastrophic global warming trend.  But the hockey stick graph was shown to a fraud.

Skeptics first became suspicious because the hockey stick failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature - the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mr. Mann's indignant refusal to share his data and methods with skeptics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, skeptics discovered that the hockey stick's computer model would produce a hockey-stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.

Mr. Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn't like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Beyond the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, Mr. Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree-ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous "Climategate" phrase "Mike's Nature trick to ... hide the decline."

So Mr. Cuccinelli has decided to see if other fraud was perpetrated, such as when Mann hired on at the University of Virginia or when he got his government grants. Mr. Cuccinelli has demanded the university hand over all e-mails and other documents related to Mr. Mann.  Push back from the global warming crowd verges on hysteria. 

Left-leaning academics, global-warming alarmists and the ACLU object to Mr. Cuccinelli's probe. They cast aspersions such as "witch hunt," "McCarthyism" and "abuse of office." In their less hysterical moments, they claim Mr. Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.

Lefties are about as interested in an honest investigation of Mann as they are of an honest investigation into global warming itself.  Maybe they think they know something.  Maybe they think there is no way for Mann to survive such a probe.

Right Wing Idiocy?

One Jeff Mussall can be found sermonizing on the subject of climate change in the Portland Liberal Examiner.  He wonders what is wrong with conservatives.

What is it about climate change that gets conservatives so riled up?  Why, despite mountains of evidence, do the deniers rail on, spouting idiotic rants about how much it snowed?  Is it because they are anti-science across the board?

It's apparently beyond question that conservatives are anti-science, according to Mr. Mussall.  The title of his essay is, "Global warming, climate change, weather, and right wing idiocy."  Mr. Mussall lectured on the important distinction between weather and climate, then in the next breath implied that our recent snowy weather is really evidence of climate change.  Then clinching his argument on conservative intolerance of science, he pointed to 2009 as the second warmest year on record.

First, let's dispense with the dreadfully obvious. One has to be a complete moron to not understand the difference between climate and weather. If we based climate change policy on what the weather happened to be that particular week, we wouldn't get anywhere. 

Anyone who has been in a cold climate for even a short while knows that it doesn't snow when it's very cold. And they should also be able to understand that a warmer overall climate will put more available moisture into the atmosphere.

Then all it takes is a change in the jet stream. There is a strong El Nino this year, which takes the jet stream normally in the Pacific Northwest far down the coast. That's why Southern California has seen so much rain. 

The fact is, 2009 was the second warmest year on record, and part of the warmest decade on record. And things are just getting warmed up, pardon the pun. We are still in the early stages of climate change brought on by global warming.

The conservatives who so seem to hate the science might finally "believe" in climate change when Florida is the size of Rhode Island. Or maybe not. 

But back to the question, why does climate change seem like such an impossible concept for many conservatives to grasp?  [My emphasis above]

It's not the concept of climate change that's so difficult to grasp.  The problem conservatives have with climate change is the dubious proposition that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 have caused a recent dramatic and unprecedented rise in global temperatures.  It is a proposition that is designed to place impediments on any economy that runs on oil, like the U.S. economy.   

But it turns out there is some controversy over the supposedly unprecedented warming.  At the very center of this controversy is Professor Phil Jones who has was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit after those damaging emails were leaked.  In an interview with the BBC Professor Jones admitted that there has been no significant warming since 1995, and since 2002 there has actually been some cooling.

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant. [Emphasis in the original]

That by itself ought to shoot down the notion that CO2 levels are responsible for global warming.  There is no reason to doubt that CO2 levels have been increasing.  Shouldn't temperatures have been rising as well? 

An article in the Times of London reports on the reliability of the records from which those dramatically rising temperatures were calculated.  The Times quotes a former lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a formerlead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

It's not just that temperature collection stations have been compromised.  Professor Jones now claims he misplaced data.  It's nowhere to be found.

Now the academic has admitted he may have lost track of some of the data used to produce the famous “hockey stick” graph, which uses climate readings from worldwide weather stations to show a sharp rise in global temperatures.

The Climate Research Unit formerly headed by Prof Jones is responsible for analysing data from hundreds of weather stations to produce "evidence" of global warming which is used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Prof Jones also admitted that his own lack of organisation had contributed to his reluctance to share crucial data with climate change sceptics, but denied that he deliberately distorted the evidence.

Asked whether he had lost track of data, Prof Jones said: “There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

Having poor organizational skills is certainly the lesser sin when compared to distorting climate change evidence.  In fact, I can see where distorting the evidence could turn into a real problem for Professor Jones.  So far he's managed to rake in somewhere in the vicinity of $22 million as he promotes the cause of global warming.

Since 1990, Jones has received $22 million in grant funding. Of that, $19 million was just in the period from 2000 to 2006 – nearly $3 million per year. Most of the grants came from government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy and the European Union. [My emphasis above]

But according to the Jeff Mussalls of the world, questioning the likes of Professor Phil Jones is just right wing idiocy.  Perhaps what we need to factor into our understanding of Mr. Mussall's argument is the concept that greed is a uniquely right wing characteristic.  Left wing greed?  Why it's simply a contradiction in terms.  Actually, that concept is the entirety of his argument in support of anthropogenic global warming.

The Unlikeliest Solution

Mark Williams of the Associated Press recently wrote an article about an unlikely source of energy that could solve the global warming crisis.

An unlikely source of energy has emerged to meet international demands that the United States do more to fight global warming: It's cleaner than coal, cheaper than oil and a 90-year supply is under our feet.

It's natural gas, the same fossil fuel that was in such short supply a decade ago that it was deemed unreliable. It's now being uncovered at such a rapid pace that its price is near a seven-year low. Long used to heat half the nation's homes, it's becoming the fuel of choice when building new power plants. Someday, it may win wider acceptance as a replacement for gasoline in our cars and trucks.

I'm not sure why Mr. Williams thinks natural gas is such an unlikely solution.  People have been talking about it for years, converting cars to run on it.  For transportation purposes what has been lacking is a reliable distribution system.  When's the last time you saw the natural gas option when you pulled up to the pump to fill your tank?

But natural gas is one of the pillars in the T. Boone Pickens energy plan, which was so highly touted not so long ago.

The Pickens Plan.

There are several pillars to the Pickens Plan:

• Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar generation capacity;
• Building a 21st century backbone electrical transmission grid;
• Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
• Using America's natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel in addition to its other uses in power generation, chemicals, etc.  [my emphasis]

I can tell you why I think natural gas is such an unlikely solution.  I anticipate significant barriers to the development and distribution of our natural gas energy resources.  OPEC will resist and drop prices accordingly.  But more importantly there is the political resistance that will rise up to oppose increased US development and production.  

The political resistance comes in two flavors.  Primarily there is ideological resistance.  You might be tempted to think that global warming science seeks to reduce global temperatures, but you would be mistaken if you did.  In reality, Anthropogenic Global Warming is a justification for redistributive social justice. 

Delegates, NGOs Respond
Just as climate talks hit their lowest point, Hillary Clinton descended on Copenhagen like a deus ex machina, putting on the table a $100 billion-per year package of worldwide climate aid starting in 2020, provided that a deal can be reached with China... "I understand the talks have been difficult," said Clinton, who was heading into talks with the Chinese prime minister. "There is a way forward."

That's what everybody in Copenhagen was waiting for.  Show them the money.  Hillary's pledge of $100 billion a year brought immense relief on the left and turned the failed conference into at least a partial success. 

So, for the sake of argument let's pretend that the damaging emails that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia had never been written.  Could we still believe that Anthropogenic Global Warming might actually be real?  I'd be willing to bet, no. 

If wholesale conversion to natural gas were undertaken, and it reduced US emissions of CO2 by 80% lefty ideologues would still oppose it.  The point of Copenhagen was to make developed nations, the US in particular, pay lefty dictators restitution for the sin of wealth.  A unilateral reduction in so called greenhouse gas emissions by the US would simply defeat that purpose.  

And then for another impetus for resisting natural gas development, there is the good old profit motive.  Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit, was said to have raked in roughly $22 million in grants on its behalf from 1991 to the present.  The amount of money devoted to its study is directly related to the perceived severity of the global warming crisis.  The more severe the crisis the more money it deserves. 

As it turns out there are other individuals and organizations making millions on Anthropogenic Global Warming as well.  For them, yet another goal of the Copenhagen climate summit was achieved.  Keep the cap and trade gravy train rolling.

The amount of money involved isn’t trivial. According to Richard North at the Daily Mail, the carbon trading market last year was worth about £129 million (or about $205 million U.S.) and was heading toward trillions of dollars by 2020. So it’s probably not a coincidence that, for all the discord in Copenhagen, the one thing to which all the parties did agree was to extend the Kyoto cap and trade system. The market in carbon offsets or CER would continue.

Who benefits from this?

An interesting question. Of course, it’s well known that Al Gore is heavily involved in the carbon offset market and in other environmental ventures. There is speculation that Gore could be the world’s first green billionaire.

Another beneficiary is the UN itself. All of these international processes happen under the supervision and control of the UN and UN-chartered nongovernmental organizations.

There is huge money to be made, and global warmists are not about to let such a lucrative crisis go to waste without putting up a fight.  Even if by developing and converting to natural gas the US could eliminate global warming, expect environmentalists to fight it tooth and nail.  And that, in itself, will be revealing.  Environmentalist opposition to US natural gas development will be as convincing testimony as you'll want that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not about the weather and not about the climate.  It's about redistributive social justice.  In other words, they just want the money.

Wait! It Gets Worse!

From James Delingpole of the Telegraph.co.uk.

What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.

It's more than a suggestion.

Taking The Long View

Howard Bloom, author of "The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism" and founder of The Space Development Steering Committee, takes a different perspective on the subject of climate change.  He takes the very long view.

Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.

We've been deceived by a stroke of luck. In the two million years during which we climbed from stone-tool wielding Homo erectus with sloping brows to high-foreheaded Homo urbanis, man the inventor of the city, we underwent 60 glaciations, 60 ice ages. And in the 120,000 years since we emerged in our current physiological shape as Homo sapiens, we've lived through 20 sudden global warmings. In most of those, temperatures have shot up by as much as 18 degrees within a mere 20 years.

All this took place without smokestacks and tailpipes. All this took place without the desecration of nature by modern man.

Environmental Shakedown (updated)

Charles Krauthammer recognizes environmentalism for what it is -- corruption.  Socialism has failed as a economic model.  When choice is available it is routinely rejected by the very people it is purported to help.  No problem for socialists.  The holy grail of environmentalism is the new mandate for keeping the governing elite governing in the name of sharing the wealth.

The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

The left leaning Obama administration is doing its part with the EPA's "endangerment finding."  On the eve of the Copenhagen climate conference, a power hungry Obama administration went ahead with it in order to demonstrate that it has the upper hand over a congress that is reluctant to pass cap and trade legislation to regulate CO2 emissions.  Since congress wouldn't give Obama the bona fides of a cap and trade to take with him to the conference, he simply made up his own by having the Environmental Protection Agency declare CO2 a hazard to human health and giving itself power to regulate it.  It's a power grab.

Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Kim Strassel has the good news.  She doesn't think it's going to work out.  The threat to regulate CO2 emissions through the Clean Air Act is not likely to encourage congress to move forward on cap and trade, nor is it likely that the EPA will have any success exercising its new regulatory muscle.

No one can say Washington isn't doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency's move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.

"The Obama administration now owns this political hot potato," says one industry source. "If I'm [Nebraska Senator] Ben Nelson or [North Dakota Senator] Kent Conrad, why would I ever want to take it back?"

All the more so, in Congress's view, because the EPA "command and control" threat may yet prove hollow. Now that the endangerment finding has become reality, the litigation is also about to become real. Green groups pioneered the art of environmental lawsuits. It turns out the business community took careful notes.

So there's the upside for Democrats.  The heat is off on cap and trade.  The upside for the rest of us is potentially huge. 

Industry groups are gearing up for a legal onslaught; and don't underestimate their prospects. The leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in England alone are a gold mine for those who want to challenge the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming.

Anthropogenic Global Warming may be headed for its moment of truth in court.  Which is not to say the fact or fiction of it will be decided there, but possibly enough sunlight will shine in to curtail the hysteria and scour out some of the corruption. 

Boycott Copenhagen?

Fat chance, but that's what Sarah Palin urges Barack Obama to do in an editorial column in today's Washington Post.

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

As you might expect, I would agree.  Obama shouldn't be dragging American into some treaty that is going to put us at a competitive disadvantage, particularly when unemployment stands at 10%.  But if anything has been made clear by the email scandal, fighting climate change is not about the climate or the weather.  It's all about extending the reach of government, and that continues to be Barack Obama's primary goal.