Cont.By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 01/04/2008
But the world is also facing more dramatic rain storm events such as the flooding which hit Britain last summer, scientists warn.
Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, said temperatures in 2008 are likely to be cooler because of the effects of the La Nina in the central and eastern Pacific.
He said it was likely that the La Nina phenomenon would continue into the summer. If his forecast is right it would mean temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
La Nina (the little girl) and El Nino (the little boy) are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects can be felt worldwide.
Recently La Nina caused one of the coldest winters in memory in China, Canada and the Arctic and brought torrential rains to Australia.
Mr Jarraud said La Nina was expected to continue into the summer, depressing global temperatures by a fraction of a degree.
But he said temperatures in 2008 would still be well above average for the past 100 years. The Met Office predicts that 2008 will be around 0.4ºC warmer than the average for 1961-1990.
It said temperatures are influenced by a variety of factors including solar changes, pollution and natural weather cycles such as La Nina.
The consensus among scientists is that long-term temperature rises since 1880 can only be explained by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, caused by human activity.
Experts say climate change is likely to lead to more flooding in temperate regions and in the tropics while droughts in arid areas will get even worse.
The warning came from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which said there would be serious environmental consequences because of a shortage of fresh water supplies.
"The frequency of heavy precipitation events (or proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls) will very likely increase over most areas during the 21st century, with consequences to the risk of rain-generated floods," according to a report, released at the IPCC's annual meeting in Budapest.
"At the same time, the proportion of land surface in extreme drought at any one time is projected to increase," it said.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that unless action was taken 250m people in Africa would be short of water for drinking and for crops by 2020.
"The risk is that these people can no longer sustain themselves and they have to find somewhere else to go," he said warning that the problem would create a major challenge for governments around the world.
The report comes at a time when the price of food staples such as rice and wheat are increasing sharply due to rising demand from Asia and poor harvests due to bad weather.
By H. Sterling Burnett
March 14, 2008
More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.
IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world's glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC's work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.
In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the "hockey stick." This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.
However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.
Furthermore, the community of specialists in ancient climates from which the peer reviewers were drawn was small and many of them had ties to the original authors' 43 paleoclimatologists had previously coauthored papers with the lead researcher who constructed the hockey stick.
These problems led Mr. Wegman's team to conclude that the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming "cannot be supported."
The IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 predicting global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if not mitigated, yet failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. A number of weaknesses in the measurements include the fact temperatures aren't recorded from large areas of the Earth's surface and many weather stations once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures resulting in an urban-heat-island effect.
Even using accurate temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics.
In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.
A good example of a principle clearly violated is "Make sure forecasts are independent of politics." Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists' at least the lead scientists' who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval.
Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.
The IPCC and its defenders often argue that critics who are not climate scientists are unqualified to judge the validity of their work. However, climate predictions rely on methods, data and evidence from other fields of expertise, including statistical analysis and forecasting. Thus, the work of the IPCC is open to analysis and criticism from other disciplines.
The IPCC's policy recommendations are based on flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles. Policymakers should take this into account before enacting laws to counter global warming -- which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.
H. Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Dallas.
By Steven Millo
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A new study, much hyped by the media, blames humans for escalating ice loss in Antarctica. The media, however, seems to have no idea as to how truly manmade the supposed ice loss may be.
Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica; Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming was the Washington Posts front-page, above-the-fold headline last Monday (Jan. 14). The headline for the continuation of the article was Antarctic Ice Loss Could Speed Rise in Ocean Levels.
If true, it would be quite a worrisome situation given that Antarctica contains enough ice to raise ocean levels by about 60 meters, a deluge that would put every major coastal city in the world deep under water and uproot hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.
NASA scientist Eric Rignot reported in Nature Geoscience (Jan. 13) that increased melting had been detected in the ice sheets of western Antarctica, an area where surface temperatures have remained unchanged.
As warming surface temperatures could not be blamed for the ice loss, Rignot hypothesized that the cause may be the flow of warmer waters from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes, Rignot told the Post. We believe it is related to [manmade global warming], he added.
Rignot may indeed believe that humans are the cause he is, after all, part of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization founded on the belief that humans are causing catastrophic global warming. But the facts belie such beliefs.
First, standard climate alarmism claims that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are warming surface temperatures. But not only is such warming not being observed in Antarctica, its actually getting cooler in western Antarctica, according to surface temperature analysis from each of eight NASA stations located there.
Rignot, of course, admits that standard climate alarmism cant possibly explain the western Antarctic melting; thats why he shifted to blaming man for the warmer Antarctic Circumpolar Current. But is this true?
In an effort to support Rignots hypothesis, Columbia Universitys Douglas Martinson told The Washington Post that the [Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which flows about 200 yards below the frigid surface water, began to warm significantly in the 1980s, and that warming in turn caused wind patterns to change in ways that ultimately brought more warm water to shore.
But Martinson also admitted to the Post that there is not enough data to say for certain that the process was set in motion by global warming. Truth be told, there is good reason to question Martinson's assertion about the temperature trend, let alone its hypothetical cause.
According to World Climate Report, a 2007 study by University of Washington researchers reported that, although there is much interest among scientists in ocean temperature, below-surface ocean temperature data are sparse, and the existing data sets involve substantial interpolation, extrapolation, and averaging that may compromise the integrity of results from such data sets.
Adding to the mix is the most recent IPCC report, which says that the upper ocean adjacent to west Antarctica warmed by 1 degree Celsius from 1951 to 1994. But global surface temperatures actually declined from 1940 to 1976, even as manmade emissions of carbon dioxide dramatically increased.
The bottom line is there is no established linkage between manmade emissions of greenhouse gases and any melting in the western Antarctic.
But then, is there even any net ice loss in the western Antarctic to begin with?
While Rignot did use satellite observations of Antarcticas coastline to estimate melting, he compared this real-life data to computer model estimates of Antarctic interior snow accumulation. So the western Antarctic appears to be losing mass only when compared to computer models that, when it comes to global climate, are of questionable relevance to the real world.
At JunkScience.com, we label these sorts of computer modeling exercises as PlayStation climatology.
Even if you put faith in climate models, Rignots don't seem to agree with those of the IPCC, which stated in its most recent assessment, Current global model studies project that the Antarctic Ice Sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.
Finally, according to NOAA data presented on the web site of Bill Chapman of the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the global level of sea ice has reached about the same level as it was at in 2003. The current change in global sea ice coverage is a positive 1 million square kilometers that is, a gain of 1.8 million square kilometers in the Southern Hemisphere netted against a loss of 800,000 square kilometers in the Northern Hemisphere.
It's quite possible that the reported Antarctic melting is manmade but the "man" may be Eric Rignot, as opposed to the term's broader connotation.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is ajunk science expert, andadvocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
By Jeff Jacoby
January 6, 2008
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.
In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.
Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.
University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.
Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.
Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?
"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."
Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.
"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.
Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is over."
But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, "the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."
Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
By Patrick J. Michaels
Ah, spring!
I know it’s here when swarms of red-breasted robins descend on my Virginia farm, rooting for every worm that survived winter.
No one gains much political traction writing about global warming’s threat to turkey buzzards, but robins are cute, so they’re more often the subject of climate change speculation.
Global warming is not pushing the robin to extinction. Au contraire: It’s expanding the robin’s range northward, into places where it's never been seen. Robins are venturing so far north that they’ve even been sighted in the Inuit territory of northern Canada, where, Sen. John McCain tells us, there isn’t even a word for the birds.
Yes, even John McCain has feathered his political nest with the robin’s expansion. Back in 2004, after a hearing McCain organized as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin noted that he was particularly concerned about the rapid warming of the Arctic.
"The Inuit language for 10,000 years never had a word for 'robin,'" McCain lamented, "and now there are robins all over their villages." The BBC even titled a program on arctic warming "No Word for 'Robin': Climate Change in the Canadian Arctic."
What a shame! Pretty little birds invading the Arctic, bringing joy with their whoop of spring!
But, of course, it’s not true. Like the tale of the endangered polar bears that happen to be at or near record population levels, the robin story is yet another climate confabulation. It ranks with the death of frogs in the mountains of Colombia now shown to be caused not by global warming, but by the introduction of fatal fungus on the shoes of concerned ecotourists.
It’s always instructive to consult the wisdom of our elders about climate change, and so I found an article, "The Naming of Birds by Nanamuit Eskimo," by Laurence Irving of the U.S. Public Health Service in Anchorage, Alaska, in a 1953 edition of the refereed journal Arctic.
Irving describes his extensive visits with the people of Northern Alaska, residing in the Brooks Range — the most northerly mountain chain in the United States. He compared English names for birds with the Eskimo names of the ones they encountered.
Irving noted that the bird names were given by the Nanamuit elders. They were no birdie-come-latelys.
Irving’s list brings us the Nanamuit word for "robin": "Koyapigaktoruk." While this may surprise Sen. McCain or the BBC, the Nanamuits saw robins, and this is their phonetic way of describing the tones of an arriving redbreast looking for a mate.
Nesting, and not just some windblown flotsam? Irving designated the robin’s status as "NM," meaning "nesting migrant."
The lack of due diligence on the subject of climate change can be breathtaking. In 1913, Vilhjalmur Stefansson published a book, now available at Amazon.com, called "My Life With the Eskimo." Look it up online and search for "robin," and on page 493 you will find text describing robin sightings, obviously before 1913 (and before global warming), all over the Canadian Arctic.
Stefansson gives the word as "Kre-ku-ak’tu-yok," which sounds suspiciously like the 1953 word given by Irving. That’s the Canadian word. It’s "Shab’wak" in Alaskan Eskimo.
There are plenty of words in Inuit, or Eskimo, describing our red-breasted harbingers of spring. What’s a little disturbing is how the myth of the robin persists, when it is so easy to find the truth.
My minions in Charlottesville informed The Times of the error six months ago. Finally, on April 3, Andrew Revkin posted an acknowledgement on his blog, but no correction in the newspaper itself. We’ve been holding our breath waiting for it to appear in print, only to turn robin's-egg blue.
At the same time, how about a little truth-telling about the hoax of "Warming Island," an islet off Greenland that was — erroneously — thought to be a part of Greenland, connected by land lying beneath the ice.
As Greenland warmed over the last decade, the ice melted and revealed open water underneath, thus giving birth to a "new" island. Climate change enthusiasts claimed the channel between island and mainland had not been revealed for countless millennia.
As it turns out, maps show that Warming Island, indeed, was very much an island a mere 50 years ago, when Greenland, in fact, was warmer than it has been for the last 10 years.
As sure as the robin’s song of spring, we continue to hope that America’s best newspaper (and the BBC) will sing out the truth about climate change and the bob, bob, bobbin’ of the red, red Koyapigaktoruk in the North American Arctic.
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.
Cont.Thursday, August 14, 2008
By Ben Lieberman
It's true: Hundreds of promising oil leases on federal lands are being stonewalled, contributing to lower supplies and higher prices at the pump. But the blame lies not with the oil companies, but with environmental activists.
Much of America's energy potential lies underneath federally controlled lands and waters, but some of those areas are off-limits to oil exploration and drilling. In response to high gasoline prices, several Washington lawmakers want to open these areas, including some of the 85 percent of our territorial waters that are restricted, as well as a small portion of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Polls show that the public endorses this step, but the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, fearing a loss of support from anti-drilling environmental activists, has thus far blocked these measures.
Their argument? The oil companies don't need new leases in restricted areas because they aren't diligently pursuing leases in areas that are currently open to them. "Why should we be giving big oil additional leases when they have 68 million acres under lease already that they're not drilling on right now?" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked.
Sounds damning. But the charge of industry dawdling is totally without support, and proponents of the "use it or lose it" bills that seek to punish delays have yet to produce a single credible example of an oil company dragging its feet on a green-lighted project.
In many cases, there isn't any energy to be found. Dry holes happen, and just because the law allows drilling somewhere is no guarantee of success. However, plenty of leases are sitting atop oil that's likely to remain underground for years, and perhaps permanently. The culprits are environmental activists and their delaying tactics, including several instances in the past few weeks alone.
For example, a lease sale was recently held in New Mexico involving 78 parcels. Environmentalists immediately protested all 78. These protests are one of the first, but by no means the last step that green groups can take to try to stop oil and natural gas production. If past is prologue, subsequent delays and litigation will prevent this energy from reaching the market by many years, and may kill off these projects entirely.
At the same time, energy production in northwestern Colorado was shut down, thanks to activists exploiting the nearly impossible paperwork requirements of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This time, it's the black-footed ferret, but more than 1,000 other listed species means many leases are in or near the potential habitat for at least one of them. Whether shutting down a significant part of Colorado's energy production really benefits the ferrets is an open question, but useful or not, such shutdowns are common. And the ESA is only one of many tools in the anti-energy activists arsenal.
In each case, the oil companies are the ones fighting delays, not causing them. Such battles are becoming more common.
"Protests of leases have risen from 167 per year from 1997-2000 to 1,180 per year from 2001-2007" a 706 percent increase," according to Daniel Kish, vice president of the Institute for Energy Research. "Unless this is stopped, any efforts to access land for energy will be meaningless."
Thus, we have an anti-energy double whammy when it comes to domestic production. There are vast energy-rich areas that are completely off limits, and there are others that are subject to spools of red tape that environmental activists can use to stall or even preclude production.
But rather then streamline these provisions, along with opening up the restricted areas, Democrats and their don't-drill-anywhere allies would rather spin conspiracy theories about big oil sitting on their rights and ignore the real reason that more domestic energy isn't coming online.
Ben Lieberman is senior policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).
Thursday, April 17, 2008
By Steven Milloy
Food riots caused by rising food prices have erupted around the world. Five people died in uprisings in Haiti, perhaps the first of many casualties to come from the fad of being "green."
Food riots also broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. The military is being deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to protect fields and warehouses. Higher energy costs and policies promoting the use of biofuels such as ethanol are being blamed.
"When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal. Turkey’s finance minister labeled the use of biofuels as "appalling," according to the paper.
Biofuels have turned out to be a lose-lose-lose proposition. Once touted by the greens and the biofuel industry as being able to reduce the demand for oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels have accomplished neither goal and have no prospect for accomplishing either in the foreseeable future.
The latest research shows that biofuels actually increase greenhouse gas emissions on a total lifecycle basis. Add in that taxpayer-subsidized diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to fuel production has contributed to higher food prices and reduced food supply, and biofuels turn out to be nothing less than a public policy disaster.
The situation is not likely to get any better any time soon, as cutting the farm subsidies and tariffs on sugar cane-based ethanol imports that have fueled the ethanol craze seems to be yet another third rail of U.S. politics.
Biofuel proponents hope the reliance on food crops to produce biofuels is temporary, and they point to a future where non-food biomass (such as corn stalks and grasses) is used to produce so-called cellulosic ethanol.
But in addition to the fact that the technology for producing cellulosic ethanol on a cost-effective basis is nowhere near ready for prime time, the greenhouse gas footprint of cellulosic ethanol likely will be far worse than that of corn-based ethanol.
It’s one thing to transport relatively compact corn kernels to be processed into ethanol; it’s quite another to transport bulky biomass. The bulk problem would require a multitude of cellulosic ethanol plants to be built around the country — a project that could be quite costly and difficult to locate given the phenomenon of NIMBY-ism and the problem of plant emissions making it more difficult for states to comply with federal air quality standards.
States that don’t meet those standards don’t get their much-needed federal highway funds. Food riots are only the tip of the green iceberg. We might also expect energy riots to erupt one day.
The world has an ever-growing population that needs more and more energy, but the greens are doing everything they can to constrict the world’s energy supply.
As the Sierra Club campaigns to shut down our coal-fired electricity capabilities, the Natural Resources Defense Council campaigns to prevent nuclear power from taking its place. The demise of coal-fired power and the blockage of increased nuclear power will increase the demand for supply constraints on, and the prices for, natural gas.
But then again, environmental advocacy group Earth First perhaps is helping to alleviate the looming natural gas crisis by campaigning against power plants that use the fuel. In a recent campaign against a South Florida power plant, an Earth First campaigner stated that the environment ought not be threatened "so that people can fuel their greedy energy desires." "Just say 'no' to electricity," seems to be the bottom line of eco-think.
Even wind power is becoming more and more politically incorrect. Environmentalist-friendly Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley this week announced that wind farms will not be allowed on state lands because they are eyesores.
Considering eco-activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-standing opposition to a wind farm off the coast of his family’s Hyannis Port, Mass., compound as well as environmentalist concerns that wind farms kill wild birds, it seems that the future of wind power is uncertain.
The environmentalist effort to tie our energy policy knots already is producing results. The availability of electricity in the Washington, D.C., area is so fragile that Maryland officials already are planning for summertime rolling blackouts starting in 2011.
In California, officials are so concerned that a recent state legislative proposal would have provided local utilities the power to control thermostats in new homes and businesses. Although this effort failed, it’s not that hard to imagine that, one day, all homes will have their electrical use controlled by local utilities — no doubt run by your local green energy czars.
Millions in the developing world have died and continue to do so from the greens’ campaign against pesticides such as DDT. Nothing less should be expected from their new campaign that threatens global food and energy production.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
By Steven Milloy
The speeding freight train carrying toxic waste liability for makers, sellers and purchasers of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, was only faintly audible in the distance last spring when this column first warned of it. Now we're beginning to see that environmentalist-stoked train speed toward its victims, whom President Bush and Congress just finished tying to the tracks.
CFLs and all other fluorescent lightbulbs require special clean-up and disposal procedures because they contain small amounts of mercury, which is neurotoxic at sufficiently high exposures. For example, you're not supposed to vacuum breakage or toss used bulbs in household trash.
Despite these clean-up and disposal hassles, environmental groups, bulb makers and retailers relentlessly have promoted CFL use as a strategy for reducing electricity consumption and the power plant emissions allegedly causing global warming.
Eco-activist groups, such as Environmental Defense, which historically have agitated to banish toxic substances from homes, workplaces and the environment, surprisingly have said that the mercury in CFLs is nothing to worry about.
But this new posturing flies in the face of the multitude of scary activist-inspired studies that hyperventilate about potential health risks from the slightest exposures to mercury, not to mention a 1987 article in Pediatrics reporting real-life mercury poisoning of a 23-month old from a broken fluorescent light bulb.
Bush and Congress joined the CFL promotion racket, too. The energy bill enacted last December mandates that traditional incandescent bulbs be phased out starting in 2012. CFLs pretty much are the only alternative.
This activist-business-government marketing juggernaut has succeeded. Wal-Mart alone sold 100 million CFLs last year.
But the partnership is about to implode. As predictable as Lucy pulling away the football from a determinedly charging Charlie Brown, the environmentalists are preparing to turn the tables on the CFL businesses and consumers.
The signal came in a Feb. 17 New York Times editorial entitled "That Newfangled Light Bulb."
The editorial read, in part, "Across the world, consumers are being urged to switch to [CFLs]. ... Now the question is how to dispose of [CFLs] once they break or quit working each [CFL] has a tiny bit of a dangerous toxin almost 300 million CFLs were sold in the U.S. last year. That is already a lot of mercury to throw in the trash and the amounts will grow ever larger in coming years the dangers are real and growing."
The Times piece continued, "Businesses and government recyclers need to start working on more efficient ways to deal with that added mercury. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is raising the cry about the moment when millions of these light bulbs start landing in landfills or incinerators all at once. The pig in the waste pipeline, she calls it."
Aside from the editorial's implicit targeting instructions for eco-agitators and trial lawyers, I could only chuckle at the editorial's nod to, and partial disclosure about, Silbergeld. For many years, she was a "senior scientist" with Environmental Defense who, before moving on to left-wing academia, excelled at fomenting dubious scares about "toxic" substances in the environment.
During Silbergeld's days with Environmental Defense in the 1990s, the group's pitch to the media was "when fluorescent bulbs are crushed, traces of mercury vaporize and enter the atmosphere. If the lamps are buried, the toxic element seeps into the soil."
Until the Times editorial, the activists and the media had been holding back their customary attacks against mercury-containing fluorescent light bulbs.
In lamenting the bulbs, Clean Water Action told the media in 1997, for example, that the mercury level in tuna is so high that a 35-pound child eating more than 2 ounces a week would exceed the EPA's "safe" level.
But while CFL-mandating legislation was pending in Congress, the enviros did a temporary flip-flop: Environmental Defense began pooh-poohing mercury concerns stating, "In short, the exposure from breaking a CFL is in about the same range as the exposure from eating a can or two of tuna fish."
Two ounces of tuna used to be a horror, but in the name of CFLs, two cans became no problem.
The Associated Press reported in 1992 that fluorescent light bulbs were helping to "poison the Everglades with toxic mercury, threatening humans [and wildlife]."
In December 2000, a Massachusetts newspaper reported in an article entitled "Environmentalists Call for Mercury Product Ban" that the Massachusetts governor had proposed that trash-burning incinerators develop plans to separate fluorescent light bulbs and other mercury-containing consumer products from waste.
The business fantasy is for the nation's 4 billion-plus light sockets to sport CFLs. There's much more ka-ching in selling 4 billion $5 light bulbs as opposed to incandescent bulbs costing $0.75. But what about the mercury problem that may impose substantial liabilities on businesses and consumers faster than CFL light bulbs turn on?
Today's business leaders apparently have forgotten the infamous Superfund program that needlessly and retroactively imposed tens of billions of dollars of costs for pre-1980 waste disposal practices regardless of whether they were legal at the time. CFL-maker GE, in particular, is involved in a senseless $500 million clean-up of industrial chemicals known as PCBs buried long ago in Hudson River sediments.
Imagine the clean-up costs from billions of CFLs disposed in landfills and burned in incinerators across the country. Superfund even imposed bankrupting liability on mom-and-pop businesses. Imagine the peril of home-based businesses that casually toss CFLs in the household trash.
First mercury was dangerous. Then, temporarily, it became no big deal. Now that the Greens have caught us in the CFL trap, they're reverting to form on mercury all to cause the sort of chaos resulting in increased government control of our lives.
As Johnny Cash sang, "I hear the train a-comin, it's rollin round the bend." The question is: Will President Bush and Congress just leave us on the tracks?
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Associated Press
HONOLULU — Visitors to Kilauea's summit have a rare chance to see a red, orange, and yellow glow emanate from a vent at Halemaumau Crater, traditionally considered to be the home of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess.
Kilauea has been erupting continuously on the Big Island since 1983 and frequently offers views of lava oozing to the surface and flowing into the sea.
But it's rare for an incandescent glow to be seen at Halemaumau Crater, said Mardie Lane, a spokeswoman for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The bright hot colors are not from lava. Though there is some magma underneath the ground in the area, it hasn't risen to the surface to create lava.
Instead, the colorful hues are created by superheated fumes and steam plumes bursting out of a vent in the crater.
"It's wonderful to look into what is for Hawaiians the traditional home of Pele, and be able to see this glow and this plume rising," Lane said. "In my 27 years in this national park, I've witnessed many incredible sights. And I put this one right up there."
The glow is best seen at sunset and early evening, Lane said. Jagggar Museum, a spot one half-mile from the vent within the park grounds, offers the best vantage point. Rangers have set up a telescope there for visitors who want to get an even closer look.
Those who want to see lava hitting the ocean and adding to the Big Island's land area should go to the end of Highway 130 outside the park.
Hawaii County has set up a viewing area from where visitors can see surface flows of lava in the distance. The site also offers views of steam plumes created by lava flowing into the ocean.
Lane said the incandescent glow at Halemaumau Crater has been visible since mid-March, around the time Kilauea exploded for the first time since 1924.
No lava erupted in that incident, which rained rocks across a 75-acre area, suggesting it was caused by hydrothermal or gas buildup.
The crater exploded again late Wednesday.
High levels of sulfur dioxide pouring out of the crater prompted officials to close the park for two days last week.
But park data showed the air quality was fine around Jaggar Museum and the Kilauea Visitor Center Sunday. Sulfur dioxide levels were moderate southwest of the Kilauea caldera and Puu Oo vent but didn't reach unhealthy levels, the National Park Service Web site said.
Lane advised visitors to wear warm clothes when visiting the 4,000 foot-high summit. She also suggested bringing binoculars, a telephoto lens, or other equipment to get a better view of the glowing vent.
Visitors must stay on the designated overlook area. Lane said visitors should remember they're standing on the rim of a caldera, which is a giant basin-shaped depression that has steep drop-offs.
February 15, 2008
CBC News
There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year.
Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas.
Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.
"It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.
"That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year."
Canadian scientists are also noticing growing ice coverage in most areas of the Arctic, including the southern Davis Strait and the Beaufort Sea.
"Clearly, we're seeing the ice coverage rebound back to more near normal coverage for this time of year," said Gilles Langis, a senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa.
Winter sea ice could keep expanding The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added.
"The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that's a significant increase," he said.
If temperatures remain cold this winter, Langis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand.
But he added that it's too soon to say what impact this winter will have on the Arctic summer sea ice, which reached its lowest coverage ever recorded in the summer of 2007.
That was because the thick multi-year ice pack that survives a summer melt has been decreasing in recent years, as well as moving further south. Langis said the ice pack is currently located about 130 kilometres from the Mackenzie Delta, about half the distance from where it was last year.
The polar regions are a concern to climate specialists studying global warming, since those regions are expected to feel the impact of climate change sooner and to a greater extent than other areas.
Sea ice in the Arctic helps keep those regions cool by reflecting sunlight that might otherwise be absorbed by darker ocean or land surfaces.