You Know You're a Hypocritter When...You Emit More Hot Air (CO2) Than Those Whom You've Been Crittercizing!

http://euobserver.com/9/26360/?rk=1

EU remains off track to meet Kyoto targets

LEIGH PHILLIPS


EU Observer


6/19/08


Greenhouse gas emissions from the oldest European Union member states have declined slightly, according to the latest EU data.

However, the decline occurred to such a small degree, according to data released on Wednesday (18 June) from the European Environment Agency, that if they continue at this pace, they will overshoot reduction targets set under the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.


The EEA figures show that the older member states - the EU-15 - reduced their emissions by 0.8 percent between 2005 and 2006 – bringing the total reduction to reached 2.7 percent below 1990 levels.


[THE U.K. WAS RECENTLY SHOWN NOT TO HAVE MET ITS KYOTO OBLIGATIONS. See: Holy Hypocrisy!! UK Proselytizes About Climate Change, But Can't Even Meet its Own Carbon Commitments!, ITSSD Journal on Energy Security, at: http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/06/httpwww.html .]


The emissions of the European Union as a whole, including new member states, decreased slightly in 2006. They were 0.3 percent lower than 2005, reaching a total reduction of 7.7 percent on 1990 levels.


The agency, which advises the EU on environmental issues, issued emissions figures for 2006 as the data is always published with a delay of about two years.


At the Kyoto summit, the EU-15 committed themselves to a joint Kyoto target of at least eight per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.


But, warn environmentalists, if the countries were to reduce emissions more or less equally every year, a linear path drawn from 1990 to 2012 would show that by this point, emissions should have already been reduced to 6.4 percent below 1990 levels.


Countries are not obliged to adhere to such annual reductions, but if they do not achieve them, it means that larger emission cuts will have to be achieved closer to the target date of 2010.


"This data is alarming," said Sonja Meister, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth Europe. "The EU will only be able to fight dangerous climate change if all member states reduce their emissions year on year."


The environmental group argues that the European Commission should be given the power to ensure that EU states comply with their targets.


"Time is running out and only strong legislation including annual cuts will bring the EU on track to meet its long-term targets," said Ms Meister.


Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector continued to increase over the 2005-2006 period, and large growth in all greenhouse gas emissions continued apace in the aviation and shipping sectors.


The data is troubling for the EU. If the earlier Kyoto reduction targets are not on schedule to be met, this brings into question how realistic the more ambitious new goals of a reduction of 20 percent by 2020, agreed to by EU leaders last spring.


Additionally, the decrease in EU-15 emissions was due to 2006's unusually warmer weather – meaning that people did not have to heat their homes as much – rather than as a result of political movement on the part of governments.


Furthermore, CO2 emissions also continued to climb in the newest 12 EU member states – a development that produced a mild rebuke from environment commissioner Stavros Dimas.
"The emission increases in the majority of EU-12 countries are not helpful," he said.


"The EU-12 countries have to bear in mind that they cannot rely on the successes of the past," he added, referring to the large drop in carbon emissions experienced in eastern Europe as a result of the sharp decline in the countries' economies following the collapse of the Soviet bloc.


"Our targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2012 are for the EU-27 together," he continued, "and a continuous effort will be required by all member states to achieve them."


Across the EU, heavier use of coal for power and heat production resulted in an increase of 15.4 million tonnes of CO2 from this sector. Poland alone accounted for an increase of 7.6 million tonnes of emissions for power and heat production.


Of the EU-15, Denmark and Finland experienced the biggest relative increase in GHG emissions (10.9% and 16.3 % respectively), due to heavier use of solid fossil fuels for power generation.

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http://tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=764

Energy Guzzled by Al Gore's Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month

Gore’s personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite “energy-efficient” home renovations
Tennessee Center for Policy Research

June 17, 2008




NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.


“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.” In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.


In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household. After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient.


Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul. Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.


In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria. “Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said.


“Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore’s home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.

Why Do Environmentalists Continue to Block Montana's Exploitation of Vast Inexpensive Coal Reserves That Could Be Made Greener With New Technologies?

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/06/03/with_vast_reserves_montana_eyes_coal_expansion/

With vast reserves, Montana eyes coal expansion


By Adam Tanner


Reuters


June 3, 2008


ABSALOKA MINE, Montana (Reuters) - Underneath Montana lies an estimated $1.5 trillion of coal, but with uncertainty about future environmental rules, investors are wary about opening new mines in the rugged Western U.S. state.


Many say a big boost to Montana coal production can only follow November's national election, when a new president could lead the way in clarifying environmental laws and encouraging cleaner coal technology. Montana ends the long U.S. state-by-state presidential primary process on Tuesday.


"Nothing is going to happen until we have a carbon law, that's the bottom line," Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer told Reuters. "It needs a new president."


"But what's happening right now is the partnerships are being formed, the capital is being raised, the coal is being acquired, so everybody is ready to move as soon as we have a carbon law."


The state produced 43.4 million tons of coal in 2007, up 3.7 percent on the year, the biggest growth rate of any state. That output is just a tenth of that in neighboring Wyoming, where coal is generally easier to extract and transport.


Yet Montana, which borders Canada, sits on America's greatest coal reserves: 120 billion tons, worth about $1.5 trillion at current prices, according to Jay Gunderson, a research geologist at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology.


"Coal demand is up all over the world," said John O'Laughlin, Westmoreland Coal Company's vice president, coal operations. "With the price for a barrel of oil, there's a lot of interest in Montana coal. But we've got to figure out a way to sequester the CO2. That's what is holding us back."


The company's 34-year-old Absaloka mine in southeast Montana reached a record 7.35 million tons output last year. In 2009, it plans to expand into adjacent Crow Indian reservation land for the first time.


All the presidential candidates back an expansion of some form of coal using more environmentally friendly technology.


"We're sitting on the world's largest supply of energy in our coal resources," presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain said recently. "That has to be one of the fundamental components of energy independence."


Among the Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama has said he would increase resources for commercialization and development of low-emission coal plants, and Sen. Hillary Clinton has called on industry to implement clean coal technology.


"It has been kind of refreshing to hear Hillary and Obama talk about clean coal," Westmoreland's O'Laughlin said. "There is at least a glimmer of acceptance."


INTEREST BUT CAUTION


Montana has not opened a new coal mine in decades.


"Companies are reluctant to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure not knowing what the government is going to do about CO2," said Gunderson at the Bureau of Mines and Geology.


At Absaloka, a single machine -- a dragline excavator that scoops out slabs of rolling countryside to get near the coal -- costs $120 million. Elsewhere, workers dynamite sections of earth and expensive trucks with wheels taller than people carry away coal to be crushed in a vast facility before transport.


Great Northern Properties is the largest private holder of U.S. coal reserves with 20 billion tons, mostly in Montana and North Dakota. Chuck Kerr, president of the Houston-based company, said the nation will eventually tap Montana's coal.


"It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when," he said in an interview. "The silent majority back coal development because it's a very cheap source of fuel."


Gov. Schweitzer has long championed Fischer-Tropsch technology to convert coal into liquid fuels that can be burned in a greener way than traditional coal, but no one has yet invested the many billions needed for such a plant.


"It is incredibly expensive to deploy," Kerr said.


But there are signs of other new projects.


John DeMichiei, president and CEO of Bull Mountain Coal Mining Inc, expects to get private financing by July 15 for what he said could be the largest underground coal mine in the world, located 35 miles north of Billings, Montana.


"It takes extreme capital investment," he said. "With these sales prices starting to at least support this type of capital investment, I think you will see more investment in Montana in terms of coal."


DeMichiei hopes to begin large-scale production at Bull Mountain by September 2009, with production of 14 million tons a year. The mine, with 430 million tons in reserve, now produces just 40,000 tons a month, he said in an interview.


The company's main investor is Airlie Group of Greenwich, Connecticut. "We are in discussions with a number of parties to get the mine fully financed and build a railroad and get it to be one of the largest long wall mines in the United States, if not the largest," Airlie Managing Director Andy Dwyer said.


But he added: Wyoming's "Powder River Basin has established rail lines and transportation hubs and the ability to substantially expand. So if there isn't going to be any substantial increase in demand then quite frankly the Powder River Basin can meet a good deal of that demand."


Schweitzer said despite its greater reserves and plans for expansion, Montana may never surpass Wyoming in production. "The world of hydrocarbons will be over and we'll still have 90 percent of our coal in the ground," he predicted.


"Wind and solar and hydrogen -- they'll be the energy sources of the future. Forty, 50 years from now hydrocarbons won't be an energy source of any large quality."
(Editing by Braden Reddall)

US & EU Ethanol Ecstasy Accentuates Weaknesses in Food & Energy Policy Planning

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g5BBXipUNID1wgmdeVD7nyK5AKYQD90FJVOO0


US, EU asked to reconsider biofuel goals as food prices rise


By AOIFE WHITE – 19 hours ago


BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — The U.S. and European Union should reconsider a shift to biofuels that has helped increase food prices worldwide by turning agricultural land over to energy crops, American economist Jeffrey Sachs said Monday.


Targets to produce more fuels that release less carbon dioxide when burned "do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition," Sachs, a special adviser to the United Nations, told reporters before he spoke to EU lawmakers at the European Parliament.


[POLICYMAKERS SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS EVENTUALITY BEFORE AGREEING TO PROMOTE 'BIO'-ETHANOL IN A 'VACUUM'. GOVERNMENTS ARE INCAPABLE OF 'PICKING WINNERS' IN 'HORSE RACES' SUCH AS THESE. THE MOST PRUDENT OPTION WOULD HAVE BEEN, AND CONTINUES TO BE: PROMOTE, THROUGH INCENTIVES, THE RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT & COMMERCIALIZATION OF VARIOUS ENERGY RESOURCES UNTIL A 'COMPLETE ENERGY SHIFT' CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED. THIS MEANS, ALL ENERGY SOURCES REMAIN ON THE TABLE, INCLUDING OIL & CLEAN COAL, UNTIL CLEANER, ALTERNATIVE RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES ARE 'READY TO ROLL'.]

"In the United States, as much as one-third of the maize crop this year will go to the gas tank and this is a huge blow to the world food supply, so these programs should be cut back significantly," he said.


Top international food scientists recommended last month that the use of food-based biofuels, such as ethanol, be halted, saying that would cut corn prices by 20 percent during a world food crisis.


So far, the U.S. biofuel program has had more impact on food shortages, but Europe's plans to rapidly boost biofuel output in coming years would also start to bite, Sachs said.


"Neither of them makes much sense actually in terms of the environmental effect, the energy balance, or the food impact, so I would advocate a reconsideration of both under the new market conditions," he said.


European Commission spokesman Michael Mann insisted that biofuels were not a significant factor in pushing up food prices. More important are recent poor global harvests, growing food demand in Asia and export restrictions in Ukraine and Russia, he said.


[IN OTHER WORDS, THERE ARE UNCONTROLLABLE /VARIABLE EXTERNAL, BUT PREDICTABLE FACTORS THAT, WHEN ADDED TO READILY KNOWN FACTORS, CREATED THE PRESENT DYNAMIC OF FOOD SHORTAGES (DECREASED SUPPLY) AMID INCREASING DEMAND, THUS SPARKING HIGHER FOOD PRICES.]


"In Europe, we use less than 2 percent of our cereals production for biofuels, so their contribution to higher food prices is marginal, if not nonexistent," Mann said.


to affMann said the EU did not expect replacing 10 percent of all transport fuel with biofuels by 2010 ect future food prices because Europe planned to increase the amount of land under cultivation and use crop waste, such as straw, to make some biofuel to meet the target.


But Sachs insisted that biofuels in Europe were hitting the food supply to a "modest extent" because some wheat is turned into ethanol and "land is diverted from grains to rapeseed and other inputs for biodiesel."


The U.S. ethanol industry also rejects claims that biofuels are responsible for food price increases, saying ethanol — made from wheat and sugar cane — and other biofuels account for just 4 percent of the price surge.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture puts the figure closer to 20 percent.


Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said it was unfair to blame financial speculators for soaring prices for basic foods such as wheat and rice.


[PROFESSOR SACHS IS OFF-BASED HERE. BIO-CRAZY VENTURE CAPITALISTS HAVE BEEN PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR PUSHING NEW LAWS IN THE U.S. CONGRESS TO PROMOTE BIO-ETHANOL RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT & PRODUCTION. AND, FINANCIAL SPECULATORS IN CHICAGO, NEW YORK, LONDON, ETC. HAVE CERTAINLY BEEN PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR BIDDING THE PRICE OF FOODSTUFFS UP INTO THE STRATOSPHERE.]


"The fact inventories are very low, that food supply is more stagnant compared to food demand, gives a reason for speculators to try and buy and hold grains," he said.


Underlying problems — "a tight food supply and vulnerability to climate shocks" — need long-term solutions such as boosting aid to poorer nations to help them increase food production, he said.

Former Greenpeace Co-Founder Exposes 'Pop-Environmentalism' as the Root of Climate Change Hysteria, While Calmly Discussing Virtues of Nuclear Energy

http://www.newsweek.com/id/131753

A Renegade Against Greenpeace: Why he says they're wrong to view nuclear energy as 'evil'


Fareed Zakaria


NEWSWEEK


Apr 12, 2008


Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement—an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there.


After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy.


NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to Moore about his sparring with the green movement, and why he thinks nuclear power is the energy of the future.


Excerpts:


ZAKARIA: At Greenpeace, you fought against nuclear energy. What changed?


MOORE: My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors.

That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.


Why do you favor nuclear energy over other non-carbon-based sources of energy?


Other than hydroelectric energy—which I also strongly support—nuclear is the only technology besides fossil fuels available as a large-scale continuous power source, and I mean one you can rely on to be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Wind and solar energy are intermittent and thus unreliable. How can you run hospitals and factories and schools and even a house on an electricity supply that disappears for three or four days at a time? Wind can play a minor role in reducing the amount of fossil fuels we use, because you can turn the fossil fuels off when the wind is blowing. And solar is completely ridiculous. The cost is so high—California's $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants. It's ridiculous.


A number of analyses say that nuclear power isn't cost competitive, and that without government subsidies, there's no real market for it.


That's simply not true. Where the massive government subsidies are is in wind and solar. I know that France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear, does not have high energy costs. Sweden, which produces 50 percent of its energy with nuclear and 50 percent with hydro, has very reasonable energy costs. I know that the cost of production of electricity among the 104 nuclear plants operating in the United States is 1.68 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's not including the capital costs, but the cost of production of electricity from nuclear is very low, and competitive with dirty coal. Gas costs three times as much as nuclear, at least. Wind costs five times as much, and solar costs 10 times as much.


What about the issue of nuclear waste?


As is now planned, I'd establish a recycling industry for nuclear fuel, which reduces the amount of waste to less than 10 percent of what it would be without recycling. How many Americans know that 50 percent of the nuclear energy being produced in the U.S. is now coming from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads?


The environmental movement is going on about how terrible it will be if someone does something destructive with these materials. Well, actually the opposite is occurring: all over the world, people are using former nuclear-weapons material for peaceful purposes—swords into plowshares. This constant propaganda about the cost of nuclear energy—that's just activists looking for the right buttons to push, and one of the key buttons to push is to make consumers afraid that their electricity prices will go up if nuclear energy is built. In fact, it's natural gas that is causing [energy] prices to go up.


Don't you worry about proliferation?


You do not need a nuclear reactor to make a nuclear weapon. With centrifuge technology, it is far easier, quicker and cheaper to make a nuclear weapon by enriching uranium directly. No nuclear reactor was involved in making the Hiroshima bomb. You'll never change the fact that there are evil people in the world. The most deaths in combat in the last 20 years have not been caused by nuclear weapons or car bombs or rifles or land mines or any of the usual suspects, but the machete. And yet the machete is the most important tool for farmers in the developing world. Hundreds of millions of people use it to clear their land, to cut their firewood and harvest their crops. Banning the machete is not an option.


Are you optimistic that there will be an aggressive move toward nuclear power in the industrial world, and in particular in the United States?


There are 32 nuclear plants on the drawing boards right now. Last year four applied for their licenses and this year we expect 10 or 11 more. That's just in the United States. There are hundreds of nuclear plants on the drawing boards around the world. This is a completely new thing: the term "'nuclear renaissance" didn't exist three years ago, and now it's a widely known term. Unfortunately, the environmental movement now is the primary obstacle here. If it weren't for their opposition to nuclear energy, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world today.

EU Energy Entrepreneurs Experience Economic Epiphany Exposing Elusive Emissions Endgame

http://www.enn.com/climate/article/31567

Power Users Warn EU Investment Stalls Over Climate

From: Reuters Published February 21, 2008 11:41 AM

By Huw Jones and William Schomberg

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Energy-intensive industries in Europe warned on Thursday that big investment decisions are being put on hold until the European Union hammers out its plan for fighting climate change after 2012.

A month after the EU's executive announced proposals to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the 27-nation bloc, executives from some of Europe's biggest companies said they could not afford to wait long for details of how the system will work.

Juha Rantanen, chief executive of Finnish stainless steel company Outokumpu, said the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, which will make companies pay increasingly for their pollution, was already hitting his company's plans to expand mining of ferrochrome, a stainless steel ingredient."With not knowing what the price of electricity will be beyond 2012, or what will be the price of emissions rights, we are not making that investment and instead we buy ferrochrome from South Africa and Kazakhstan, where it's being produced in an environmentally less efficient way," he told Reuters.

"This trading scheme puts a cost into operations in Europe which is higher than for competitors in other regions. That will ultimately lead to European industry investing less in Europe."

Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of French chemicals group Rhodia , noted that French cement maker Lafarge had recently suspended its investments in plants in the EU and said Rhodia might face a similar dilemma in the near future.

"It is important we get as quickly as possible visibility on (the EU plans)," Clamadieu said. "If we don't, then I think there will be lot of investment project delay or investment which will move to different regions of the world."

DECISION DEFERRED

EU governments aim to agree on a post-2012 reform of the Emissions Trading Scheme by the end of this year, but the Commission wants to defer the question of special treatment for energy-intensive industries until 2010.

The outcome will depend on whether there is an international agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for global warming, it argues.

Addressing the same conference on climate change and business, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso pledged again that if there were no global solution,

the EU would look at interim measures such as free emissions permits for energy-intensive industries.

Other executives voiced concern that Europe's ambitious plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions would hurt the competitiveness of industry.

The United States, the world's biggest economy, rejects the idea of mandatory emissions caps and major developing economies, such as China and India, say it is unfair to ask them to make big emissions cuts after centuries of pollution by richer countries.

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Boyden Gray suggested Europe should delay its ambitious targets for cutting emissions from 2020 until 2030 to allow time for technology to develop.
European industries that are the biggest consumers of power want special treatment under the new rules.

Michel Wurth, who sits on the management board of the world's biggest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, said companies like his wanted know how the EU would define energy-intensive industries, what proportion of emissions rights they would have to pay for and how much funding they would get to finance research into cleaner manufacturing and new products.

"Today the European steel industry is at the top in terms of energy efficiency so if you force European steel to reduce or get out of production, the consequence will be the global steel industry will emit more than it does today," he said.

ArcelorMittal recently agreed to keep open a blast furnace in Liege, Belgium, until 2012 but possibly not longer due to the uncertainties about the next phase of the EU energy rules after that date, Wurth said.

(Additional reporting by David Lawsky, editing by Anthony Barker)

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Call For Large Unspecified National 'Sacrifices' and High Cost Enviro-Energy Use Regulatory 'Changes'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/opinion/01tue1.html


New York Times


January 1, 2008


Editorial: In Office


The One Environmental Issue


The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions.


In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and forbidding an issue to sell to ordinary voters. For similar reasons, John Kerry’s ambitious ideas for addressing climate change and reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil never advanced much beyond his Web site.


Times have certainly changed. It is not yet clear to what extent Americans are willing to grapple with the implications of any serious strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: more specifically, whether they are ready to pay higher prices for energy and change their lifestyles to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels.


Polls suggest, however, that voters are increasingly alarmed, and for that Mr. Gore is partly responsible. His film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” raised the issue’s profile. Then came four reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, predicting catastrophic changes in weather patterns, sea levels and food production unless greenhouses gases can be quickly stabilized and then reduced by as much as 80 percent by midcentury.


There is also a growing appetite for decisive action — everywhere, it seems, except the White House. Governors in more than two dozen states are fashioning regional agreements to lower greenhouse gases, the federal courts have ordered the executive branch to begin regulating these gases, and the Senate has begun work on a bipartisan bill that would reduce emissions by nearly 65 percent by 2050.


[THIS IS PATENTLY FALSE - RATHER, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ORDERED, IN MASSACHUSETTS V. EPA, WHICH WAS DECIDED APRIL 2, 2007, THAT
(http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf) "BECAUSE GREENHOUSE GASES FIT WELL WITHIN THE [CLEAN AIR] ACT'S CAPACIOUS DEFINITION OF 'AIR POLLUTANT', THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY MUST EVALUTE WHETHER GREENHOUSE GASES, SUCH AS CARBON DIOXIDE, "CAUSE[] OR CONTRIBUTE[] TO AIR POLLUTION WHICH MAY REASONABLY BE ANTICIPATED TO 'ENDANGER' PUBLIC HEALTH OR WELFARE", WITHIN THE MEANING OF SECTION 7601(a)(1) OF THE FEDERAL CLEAN AIR ACT. THE SUPREME COURT DID NOT REQUIRE THE EPA TO REGULATE CARBON DIOXIDE AS MANY ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST GROUPS HAVE FALSELY CLAIMED. "WHILE THE STATUTE [CLEAN AIR ACT] CONDITIONS EPA ACTION ON ITS FORMATION OF A 'JUDGMENT', THAT JUDGMENT MUST RELATED TO WHETHER AN AIR POLLUTANT 'CAUSES[S], OR CONTRIBUTE[S] TO, AIR POLLUTION WHICH MAY REASONABLY BE ANTICIPATED TO ENDANGER PUBLIC HEALTH OR WELFARE'." §7601(a)(1). UNDER THE ACT'S CLEAR TERMS, EPA CAN AVOID PROMULGATING REGULATIONS ONLY IF IT DETERMINES THAT GREENHOUSE GASES DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO CLIMATE CHANGE OR IF IT PROVIDES SOME REASONABLE EXPLANATION AS TO WHY IT CANNOT OR WILL NOT EXERCISE ITS DISCRETION TO DETERMINE WHETHER THEY DO."]


Still, the country is a long way from a comprehensive response equal to the challenge. That is what the Democratic candidates are proposing. Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson and Representative Dennis Kucinich have all offered aggressive plans that would go beyond the Senate bill and reduce emissions by 80 percent by midcentury (90 percent in Mr. Richardson’s case), much as called for in the United Nations reports.


These plans would rest primarily on a cap-and-trade scheme that imposes a gradually declining ceiling on emissions and allows power plants, refineries and other emitters to figure out the cheapest way to meet their quotas — either by reducing emissions on their own or by purchasing credits from more efficient producers. The idea is to give companies a clear financial incentive to invest in the new technologies and efficiencies required to create a more carbon-free economy.


[THE USE OF EMISSIONS CAP & TRADE REGIMES ARE QUITE EXPENSIVE TO THE PUBLIC (CONSUMERS) AND CANNOT ENSURE THAT ACTUAL EMISSIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE INTO THE ENVIRONMENT ARE INDEED REDUCED, SINCE A CAP & TRADE REGIME SIMPLY INVOLVES ONLY 'PAPER ACCOUNTING ENTRIES' THAT REFLECT 'OFFSETS' OF FICTITIOUS CARBON CREDITS CALCULATED IN RELATIONSHIP TO A REGULATORY LIMIT, WITH ACTUAL CALCULATED EMISSIONS. THE CANDIDATES' CAP & TRADE PLANS DO NOT SPECIFY HOW SUCH CALCULATIONS CAN AND WILL BE VERIFIED. ONE NEED ONLY LOOK TO THE SELF-ADMITTED FAILURE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION'S CARBON DIOXIDE CAP & TRADE SYSTEM]


None of the Democrats trust the market to do the job by itself. All would make major investments in cleaner fuels and delivery systems, including coal-fired power plants capable of capturing carbon emissions and storing them underground. Every Democrat except Mr. Kucinich says that carbon-free nuclear power has to be part of the mix, although all are careful to say that safety issues and other concerns must first be resolved.


Internationally, the Democrats say they would seek a new global accord on reducing emissions to replace and improve upon the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Winning agreement among more than 180 nations will be slow-going, so several candidates, including Mrs. Clinton, have suggested jump-starting the process by bringing together the big emitters like China very early in their administrations. China and the United States together produce about 40 percent of the world’s total emissions and neither has agreed to binding reductions.


The only Republican candidate who comes close to the Democrats with a plan for addressing climate change is John McCain, one of the authentic pioneers on the issue in the Senate. In 2003, along with Joseph Lieberman, Mr. McCain introduced the first Senate bill aimed at mandatory economy-wide reductions in emissions of 65 percent by midcentury. He also regularly addresses the subject on the campaign trail.


The other leading Republican candidates — Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee — talk about energy issues almost exclusively in the context of freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil. All promote nuclear power, embrace energy efficiency and promise greener technologies. Only Mr. Huckabee has dared raise the idea of government regulation, embracing, at least theoretically, the idea of a mandatory cap on emissions. The rest prefer President Bush’s cost-free and demonstrably inadequate voluntary approach, which essentially asks industry to do what it can to reduce emissions.


So far, the Democratic candidates seem more engaged with the issue than some of their interrogators in the news media. In a recent study, the League of Conservation Voters found that as of two weeks ago, the five main political talk-show hosts had collectively asked 2,275 questions of candidates in both parties. Only 24 of the questions even touched on climate change.


One result is that even the candidates who urge comprehensive change have not been pressed on important questions of cost: How do they intend to pay for all the new efficiencies and technologies that will be necessary? And what kind of sacrifices will they be asking of people who almost certainly will have to pay more for their electric bills and their greener cars?


[THESE ARE EXCELLENT QUESTIONS THAT DESERVE HONEST ANSWERS, WHICH HAVE NOT YET BEEN FORTHCOMING]


Addressing these questions will require more courage of the candidates than simply offering up broad new visions. The voters deserve an honest accounting and the candidates should be prepared to give it.

New York Times: In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

By JOHN TIERNEY


Published: January 1, 2008


New York Times


I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.
Skip to next paragraph


How will the world react to climate change in 2008?

Join the discussion. Go to TierneyLab »
Further Reading:


"Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation." Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein. Stanford Law Review, 1999 "Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation Media Coverage and Climate Change." Prometheus blog, Roger Pielke, Jr.
"Media Mania for a 'Front-Page Thought' on Climate." Dot Earth blog, Andrew C. Revkin.
"2007 Tropical Cyclone Season Summary." Ryan N. Maue, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.
"Effect of Remote Sea Surface Temperature Change on Tropical Cyclone Potential Intensity." G.A. Vecchi , B.J. Soden. Nature, Dec. 3, 2007.
"Heightened Tropical Cyclone Activity in the North Atlantic." G.J. Holland, P.J. Webster. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Nov. 15, 2007.
"Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts." Andrew C. Revkin. New York Times, Oct. 2, 2007.
"NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face."
"NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007."
"2007 to Be 'Warmest on Record.'" BBC News.
"2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend." BBC News.


You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.


Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.


But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).


Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.


A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”


When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.


When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, it was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).


The most charitable excuse for this bias in weather divination is that the entrepreneurs are trying to offset another bias. The planet has indeed gotten warmer, and it is projected to keep warming because of greenhouse emissions, but this process is too slow to make much impact on the public.


When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.


Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, professor of economics and political science at Duke University, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.


The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome,” minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy.


“Many people concerned about climate change,” Dr. Sunstein says, “want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.”


Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.


Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, but they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents. Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.


Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.


Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?


It was, of course, the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.


In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”


“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier.

Bill Clinton, Climate and the ‘Instanet’

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/bill-clinton-climate-and-the-instanet


By Andrew C. Revkin


February 1, 2008


Much of the power of the Web lies in speed and reach. But those same properties are the source of its greatest failing as well: the tendency to spread faulty assertions instantly and widely. Maybe it’s time for a “slow blog” movement, just as there’s now a slow food movement — and even a slow life movement, as described in The Times this week.


I’ve written about a couple of recent examples of this kind of fast-motion flow of misinformation (and often disinformation), including the release of a startling paper debunking global warming that was entirely fake and designed to fool right-wing bloggers and radio hosts.
Video


Another incident of this sort flared yesterday, involving former President Bill Clinton. It started when the Drudge Report posted a link to an item on the Political Punch blog by the ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper quoting Mr. Clinton proposing that “we have to slow down our economy” to save the planet from global warming. (For a longer sit-down interview I had with Mr. Clinton on energy and climate, click on the video to the left).


The provocative line in the ABC blog post was this: “In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: ‘We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ ”


The post included a video snippet of that line, as well.


Further down in the post, Mr. Tapper included the full text and a link to the entire speech. The context makes it clear that Mr. Clinton was not recommending a slowdown to limit warming, and instead was saying that an economic slowdown and emissions cuts in the United States and other industrialized countries would have no effect because emerging economic powerhouses like China would not follow suit. But the blogosphere, for the most part, doesn’t seem to have time for full transcripts — only the portion that suits some preexisting stance.


For the record, here’s the full statement:

“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich countries — would say, ‘O.K., we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”


After the Drudge link, there was a near-instant barrage of attacks on Mr. Clinton (and in some cases his candidate spouse) from the libertarian Cato Institute, the Republican National Committee and other groups.


Almost as quickly, some longtime critics of the Clintons and global warming science noticed that Mr. Tapper’s post included the full text of the climate portion of Mr. Clinton’s speech, which clearly showed the offending line had been taken out of context. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writing on the National Review’s blog The Corner, said: “…That video is actually (and again, I can’t believe I’m saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton.”


But, of course, the echo chamber was already reverberating. You may have noticed several Dot Earth visitors who reject the idea that humans are warming the planet posted links to the initial barrage of criticisms of Mr. Clinton.


Other Web sites, including the Carpetbagger Report and Media Matters, have fully de-constructed the incident (and sharply criticized Mr. Tapper).


For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton’s speech confusing and was posing questions more than offering criticisms. And his main point, he told me over the phone late last night, was to examine whether Mr. Clinton was portraying efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions as something that would blunt the economy. This is a point that other proponents of gas curbs have sometimes downplayed.


“I didn’t think I was accusing him of anything other than candor,” Mr. Tapper said.

Does anyone out there want to start a “slow blog” movement?

UK Used Presidency of UN Security Council to Incorporate Sustainable Development Within Broader Council Mandate

http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20S2007%20186.pdf


UK Used Presidency of UN Security Council to Incorporate Sustainable Development Within Broader Council Mandate


During September 2005, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution S/RES/1625 (14 September 2005), declaring "the effectiveness of the Security Council's role in conflict prevention [and] reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy to conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development.


"Reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy of conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict and political and social crises in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development, poverty eradication, national reconciliation, good governance, democracy, gender equality, the rule of law and respect for and protection of human rights..."


"...2. Affirms its determination to strengthen United Nations conflict
prevention capacities by:


...(g) helping to enhance durable institutions conducive to peace, stability and sustainable development..."

http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20SRES%201625.pdf



Building upon Security Council Resolution 1625, during April 2007, UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett used Britain’s then presidency of the Security Council as a platform to promote sustainable development as a separate rationale to preserve international peace and security. This indirectly served the purpose of pushing reform of the Security Council’s traditional scope of jurisdiction and authority.[1] In particular, she insisted that the UN Security Council expand its jurisdictional mandate, traditionally limited to ‘prevention of conflicts’ and ‘maintenance of international peace and security’, so that it also covers ‘collective global environmental threats’ to sustainable development, such as climate change.[2]


In pursuing this multilateral campaign, Ms. Beckett not unexpectedly relied on the recently issued Stern and UN Intergovernmental Climate Change Committee Reports [3] to raise the specter of an impending global environmental and human disaster should the member states of the United Nations fail to reach a political ‘burden-sharing’ (a/k/a economic wealth redistribution and technology transfer) accord that proactively and adequately addresses the hazards posed by runaway climate change. Many left-leaning politicians, scientific academies and environmentalists in Europe and the United States have likewise used these controversial reports to squelch the scientific debate over the causes and effects of climate change.[4]


This proposal was contained in a more formal UK concept paper that resulted in the Security Council’s first debate on environmental issues. The Security Council Report documenting this meeting states the following:


“1. All members of the international community face a shared dilemma. To ensure well-being for a growing population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectations, we must grow our economies. Should we fail, we increase the risk of conflict and insecurity. To grow our economies we must continue to use more energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. But if we use more fossil fuels without mitigating the resulting emissions, we will accelerate climate change, which itself presents risks to the very security we are trying to build.


2. The aim of the debate is to raise awareness of a set of significant future security risks facing the international community as a result of failing to resolve this shared dilemma, to promote a shared understanding of these risks, and to explore ways to address them.


3. The focus of the debate will be on the security implications of a changing climate, including through its impact on potential drivers of conflict (such as access to energy, water, food and other scarce resources, population movements and border disputes). No other international forum has yet addressed these issues from this perspective. A Security Council discussion will therefore make a useful initial contribution, while recognizing that it is for other United Nations bodies (in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to pursue other aspects of climate change that are not within the mandate of the Security Council (including action to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a safe level, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities).


... 6. While the physical effects of climate change and what can be done about them are important issues, it is their potential impact on security that is the proposed focus of this Security Council debate.”


The UN Security Council Report then proceeded to outline the following key ‘security risks’ posed by climate change which would not only contribute mightily to political efforts aimed at raising public fears about the hypothetical impacts arising from climate change, but would also justify greater UN involvement in national sovereign affairs:


“Border Disputes


A significant proportion of current threats to international peace and security are disputes over borders or land. Melting ice and rising sea levels caused by climate change are likely to result in major changes to the world’s physical landmass during this century. Will political and maritime borders change as well?... [T]he possible submergence of entire small island States, dramatically receding coastlines, and the development of new shipping routes...could all lead to disputes over maritime zones and other territorial rights.


Migration


[S]ubstantial parts of the world risk being left uninhabitable by rising sea levels, reduced freshwater availability or declining agricultural capacity. This will exacerbate existing migratory pressures from rural areas to cities, from unproductive land to more fertile land, and across international borders... Migration does not in itself lead directly to conflict. But it can alter the ethnic composition and/or population distribution within and between States, which can increase the potential for instability and conflict


Energy Supplies


There is already extensive discussion on the relationship between energy resources and the risk of conflict, in terms of competition over scarce energy resources, security of supply, and the role energy resources play once conflict has broken out. Climate change is expected to complicate this relationship still further, presenting us with a shared dilemma about how to balance our climate and energy objectives while preserving security...


Other Resource Changes


Climate change is likely to make essential resources (notably freshwater, cultivable land, crop yields and fish stocks) more scarce in many parts of the world, particularly in already vulnerable societies. Resource scarcity threatens people’s livelihoods, especially when changes occur relatively quickly. Much depends on the adequacy of adaptation strategies. But increased scarcity increases the risk of competition over resources within and between communities and States. This can create instability, increasing vulnerability to conflict...


Societal Stress


The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change noted that climate change was a major challenge to poverty reduction, affecting the poorest countries earliest and most. The tensions that climate change through its impact on development — and hence inequality — could produce within and between States might not in themselves necessarily lead to conflict. But in some weaker States — e.g., where severe inequalities occur among different groups in society, for example on ethnic grounds — political violence within and between States may become more likely.


Humanitarian Crises


Climate change is likely to increase the risk of extreme weather events that may become sudden humanitarian emergencies. There are already indications that such events, especially on a large scale, can exacerbate societal and cross-border stresses, with potential consequent political and security impacts. There is a proven correlation between drought and the likelihood of high intensity conflicts in some regions, and some Governments have struggled to cope with the social consequences of major natural disasters. 8. Conflicts often start when societies cannot cope with multiple stresses...”


http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20S2007%20186.pdf



It is interesting to note how the Security Council referred to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’.


While standing their political ground, it was apparent that Madams Merkel and Beckett had side-stepped the important scientific debate that continues to rage throughout the world. This debate concerns the extent to which certain human activities can actually be shown to cause measurable global warming or to merely correlate with a barely observable rise in global temperatures that may or may not prove cyclical in nature. Ordinary scientists, engineers and business people, the world over, know quite well that there is a marked difference between causation and correlation, and that they can make rationally-based decisions in their daily lives guided only by the ‘knowables’ in life rather than the ‘unknowables’.


Did Ms. Beckett’s reference to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’ suggest a nuanced effort to base intergovernmental regulatory policy on popularly fanned fears about largely hypothetical, unpredictable and/or unknowable future natural and man-made hazards that have not yet been shown to pose direct ascertainable risks to human health or the environment???



[1] See "Update Report No. 2 Energy, Security and Climate", UN Security Council (12 April 2007) at: http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/site/c.glKWLeMTIsG/b.2666033/k.BE96/Update_Report_No_2brEnergy_Security_and_Climatebr12_April_2007.htm [2] See “Opening Statement of Margaret Beckett at UN Security Council Climate Change Debate” British Embassy Buenos Aires (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1138870133146 .
[3] See “Speech of Margaret Beckett and UN Security Council Climate Change Debate On Energy, Climate and Security” Foreign and Commonwealth Office News (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1176454354972 . [4] See, e.g., “Royal Society Letter to ExxonMobil Requesting ExxonMobil to Stop Funding of Lobby Groups that Seek to Misrepresent the Scientific Evidence Relating to Climate Change” (Sept. 4, 2006) at:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=23780 ; “Rockefeller and Snowe Demand that Exxon Mobil End Funding of Campaign that Denies Global Climate Change”, Press Release, Office of United States Senator for Maine, Olympia Snowe (Oct. 30, 3006) at:
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9ACBA744-802A-23AD-47BE-2683985C724E ; Michael Erman, “Greenpeace: Exxon Still Funding Climate Skeptics”, Reuters (May 17, 2007) at: http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-05-18T102946Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-298816-1.xml&archived=False .

Politically Correct Environmentalism Keeps Republican Candidates Mum About Tapping Florida's Huge Offshore Energy Resources

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=286155639255557


The Coast (Of Florida) Is Still Clear


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY


January 25, 2008


Energy Policy: Our dependence on foreign oil is a crucial economic and national security issue. So with billions of barrels of crude sitting off Florida, why was the subject of getting it left out of the Republican debate?


It was by all accounts a dull and unhelpful affair. With Tuesday's Florida primary looming, there appeared to be a desire on the part of the candidates not to make any gaffes, ruffle any feathers, provoke any controversies.


This is the only explanation for why none of the GOP contenders brought up, or were asked about, a perfect topic for a Florida debate — drilling for vast known reserves of oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast.


Maybe the media aren't interested or consider the subject closed. Maybe there's not that much disagreement among the candidates. Certainly, as we have noted, Sen. John McCain has voted against drilling in ANWR four times and has expressed no passion for developing domestic sources of energy.


In an interview with Florida CBS affiliate WINK-TV last October, another leading candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, was asked about the subject and replied: "With regards to Florida . . . the federal and state governments have reached an agreement on a 120-mile limit, and that's something which can be pursued."


Wow. Something which can be pursued. At least not with enough passion to offend any Florida voters. Drilling for oil and natural gas in the gulf is certainly something the Cubans and their Chinese patrons are pursuing.


Cuba's state-run oil company, Cubapetroleo, has inked a deal with China's Sinopec to explore for oil in its half of the Florida Strait and is using Chinese-made drilling equipment to conduct the exploration. Since oil fields do not respect international boundaries, Cuba and others will be pumping petroleum that should be ours.


Enviro-leftists who oppose drilling in the gulf should know that none other than Fidel Castro is taking advantage of the Outer Shelf. Cuba has gleaned $1.7 billion from oil and gas drilling as close as 60 miles from the Florida coast since 2004, according to Rep. John Peterson of Pennsylvania, and "is drilling closer to sovereign American property than we are."


Lease Area 181 off the Gulf Coast of Florida is estimated to contain 1.25 billion barrels of recoverable oil and nearly 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to heat 6 million homes for 15 years. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the North Cuban Basin contains 4.6 billion barrels of oil.


Is offshore oil an environmental threat? Brazil has achieved energy independence in part from the 1.9 million barrels of oil it gets from offshore drilling daily. The North Sea is full of oil and gas rigs. And of all the damage done by Katrina to our existing oil and gas rigs, vast oil spills were not one of the problems.


According to the Interior Department, since 1985 more than 7 billion barrels of oil have been produced in federal waters, with less than 0.001% spilled. It's likely that more oil has been leaked by cars, SUVs and motor homes traveling to these pristine beaches, or from the boats and jet skis rented by tourists, than is or will be leaked getting the oil to fuel them.


"This is the irony of ironies," complains Charles Drevna, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. "We have chosen to lock up our resources and stand by to be spectators while these two come in and benefit from things right in our own backyard."

While politicians founder about ways to stimulate the U.S. economy, how about developing domestic energy resources? We reduce our dependence on foreign oil, increase supply, reduce energy costs and create American jobs. We might even be able to afford to take the family down to the beach.

Biofuels could boost global warming, finds study

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/21090701.asp


Biofuels could boost global warming, finds study


By Zoe Corbyn


RSC Chemistry World


21 September 2007


Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown.1 The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages and damage biodiversity.



Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and is currently subject to open review.



'The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuel are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto,' Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World. 'What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse.'



"What we are saying is that growing biofuels is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse"
- Keith Smith


Crutzen, famous for his work on nitrogen oxides and the ozone layer, declined to comment before the paper is officially published. But the paper suggests that microbes convert much more of the nitrogen in fertiliser to N2O than previously thought - 3 to 5 per cent or twice the widely accepted figure of 2 per cent used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).



For rapeseed biodiesel, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the biofuel production in Europe, the relative warming due to N2O emissions is estimated at 1 to 1.7 times larger than the quasi-cooling effect due to saved fossil CO2 emissions. For corn bioethanol, dominant in the US, the figure is 0.9 to 1.5. Only cane sugar bioethanol - with a relative warming of 0.5 to 0.9 - looks like a viable alternative to conventional fuels.



Some previous estimates had suggested that biofuels could cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 per cent.2



Global picture



The IPCC's N2O conversion factor is derived using data from plant experiments. But Crutzen takes a different approach, using atmospheric measurements and ice core data to calculate the total amount of N2O in the atmosphere. He then subtracts the level of N2O in pre-industrial times - before fertilizers were available - to take account of N2O from natural processes such as leguminous plants growing in forests, lightning, and burn offs.



Assuming the rest of the N2O is attributable to newly-fixed nitrogen from fertilizer use, and knowing the amount of fertilizer applied globally, he can calculate the contribution of fertilizers to N2O levels.



The results may well trigger a rethink by the IPCC, says Smith. 'Should we go along the road of adding up the experimental evidence for each of the processes or are we better off using the global numbers?'



Critical reception



But other experts are critical of Crutzen's approach. Simon Donner, a nitrogen researcher based at Princeton University, US, says the method is elegant but there is little evidence to show the N2O yield from fertilized plants is really as high as 3-5 per cent. Crutzen's basic assumption, that pre-industrial N2O emissions are the same as natural N2O emissions, is 'probably wrong', says Donner.



One reason he gives is that farmers plant crops in places that have nitrogen rich soils anyway. 'It is possible we are indirectly increasing the "natural" source of N2O by drawing down the soil nitrogen in the world's agricultural regions,' he explains.



Others dispute the values chosen by Crutzen to calculate his budget. Stefan Rauh, an agricultural scientist at the Instituteof Agricultural Economics and Farm Management in Munich, Germany, says some of the rates for converting crops into biofuel should be higher. 'If you use the other factors you get a little net climate cooling,' he said.



Meanwhile, a report prepared by the OECD for a recent Round Table on Sustainable Development questions the benefits of first generation biofuels and concludes that governments should scrap mandatory targets.



Richard Doornbosch, the report's author, says both the report and Crutzen's work highlights the importance of establishing correct full life-cycle assessments for biofuels. 'Without them, government policies can't distinguish between one biofuel and another - risking making problems worse,' said Doornbosch.

US Enviros Aim to Halt Coal Use and Risk US Economic & Energy Security: Launch Court Actions Pushing US to Adopt Flawed EU Policy on Carbon Emissions

Coal Power Goes on Trial Across U.S. Activists Sue to Slow Boom; Industry Says Americans Want the Electricity


updated 4:26 p.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 14, 2008


BILLINGS, Mont. - In federal and state courtrooms across the country, environmental groups are putting coal-fueled power plants on trial in a bid to slow the industry's biggest construction boom in decades.



At least four dozen coal plants are being contested in 29 states, according to a recent Associated Press tally. The targeted utilities include giants like Peabody Energy and American Electric Power down to small rural cooperatives.



From lawsuits and administrative appeals against the companies, to lobbying pressure on federal and state regulators, the coordinated offensive against coal is emerging as a pivotal front in the debate over global warming.



"Our goal is to oppose these projects at each and every stage, from zoning and air and water permits, to their mining permits and new coal railroads," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club attorney who directs the group's national coal campaign. "They know they don't have an answer to global warming, so they're fighting for their life."



Industry representatives say the environmentalists' actions threaten to undermine the country's fragile power grid, setting the stage for a future of high-priced electricity and uncontrollable blackouts.



"These projects won't be denied, but they can be delayed by those who oppose any new energy projects," said Vic Svec, vice president of the mining and power company Peabody Energy.
While observers say forecasts of power grid doom are exaggerated, the importance of coal — one of the country's cheapest and most abundant fuels — is undeniable.



Coal plants provide just over 50 percent of the nation's electricity. They also are the largest domestic source of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, emitting 2 billion tons annually, about a third of the country's total.



The score so far Environmental groups cite 59 canceled, delayed or blocked plants as evidence they are turning back the "coal rush." That stacks up against 22 new plants now under construction in 14 states — the most in more than two decades.



Mining companies, utilities and coal-state politicians promote coal in the name of national security, as an alternative to foreign fuels. With hundreds of years of reserves still in the ground, they're also pushing coal-to-diesel plants as a way to sharply increase domestic production.



The outcome of the fight over coal could determine the nation's greenhouse gas emissions for years to come, said Gregory Nemet, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin.



"It's pretty much irreversible," Nemet said. "Once a coal plant is built, it will last 50 years or so."



But in opposing coal projects across the board, environmentalists risk hobbling more advanced coal plants that could rein in at least some of those emissions, Nemet said. He added that rising demand for electricity means more power "has to come from somewhere."



"There's too much pressure — in terms of energy independence and the inexpensiveness of that resource — to not use that coal," Nemet said.



One of the latest challenges to a utility came in the heart of coal country — Montana, which boasts the largest coal reserves in the nation.




On Friday, a state panel refused to rescind an air-quality permit it had granted for a plant proposed for the Great Falls area by Southern Montana Electric, despite concerns about the plant's carbon dioxide emissions. The 250-megawatt plant is projected to emit the equivalent of 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, as much as a half-million vehicles.



The Montana Environmental Information Center, which had asked the panel to review the permit, vowed to appeal the ruling.



Nilles said the Sierra Club spent about $1 million on such efforts in 2007 and hopes to ratchet that figure up to $10 million this year.



Meanwhile, coal interests are pouring even more into a promotional campaign launched by the industry group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. It spent $15 million last year and expects to more than double that to $35 million in 2008, said the group's director, Joe Lucas.



Funding for the group comes from coal mining and utility companies such as Peabody and railroads that depend on coal shipments for a large share of their revenues.



Peabody's Svec acknowledged a rush to build new plants, but denied the goal was to beat any of at least seven bills pending before Congress to restrict carbon dioxide emissions — a charge leveled by some environmentalists.



Rather, he said, the construction boom is driven by projections that the country will fall into a power deficit within the next decade if new plants are not built. [A LARGELY TRUE STATEMENT]



Industry attorney Jeffrey Holmstead said that could lead to a future of rolling blackouts as the economy expands and electricity consumption increases. Holmstead was in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air program during the first five years of the current Bush administration.



The power deficit cited by industry officials is based on projections from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. NERC vice president David Nevius said his group is "neutral" on what kind of plants should be built to meet rising demand.



"We're not saying the lights will go out. We're just saying additional resources are needed," Nevius said. "We don't say coal over gas over wind over solar."



600-plus plants nowUtilities currently burn more than 1 billion tons of coal annually in more than 600 plants. Over the next two decades, the Bush administration projects coal's share of electricity generation will increase to almost 60 percent.



That projection held steady in recent months even as courts and regulators turned back, delayed or asked for changes to plants in at least nine states.



Other projects in Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Florida and several other states have been abandoned or shelved.



Some were canceled over global warming concerns. Utilities backed off others after their price tags climbed over $1 billion due to rising costs for materials and skilled labor.



Environmental opposition to coal plants was galvanized by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that said carbon dioxide is a pollutant open to regulation.



The case, Massachusetts vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, involved vehicle emissions. But environmentalists aim to use the decision as a fulcrum to leverage regulators to take a harder line on greenhouse gases in several emerging power plant disputes. The result could serve as an early barometer of the reach of the Supreme Court ruling.



More tests of the two sides' arguments are certain. Industry groups say at least 15 coal-fired power projects are nearing the end of the approval process and could soon start construction.