A changed climate
Oct 2nd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The European Union is struggling to deliver on its promises to cut carbon emissions

JUST 18 months ago the European Union promised to save the world from climate change. A final plan to deliver on those promises must be finished soon. But it is in deep trouble.

The conclusions of the March 2007 summit proclaiming the EU’s “leading role” on climate change make for wistful reading today. They begin “Europe is currently enjoying an economic upswing,” and add that growth forecasts are “positive”. Back in that long-lost golden age, the EU’s leaders were in heroic mood. They offered binding promises known as the 20/20/20 pledges. By the year 2020, they would cut Europe’s carbon emissions by at least a fifth over 1990 levels; derive 20% of all energy from renewable sources; and make energy-efficiency savings of 20%.

The heroic mood is gone now. In March 2007 Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and chairman of the summit, was a green champion. Today she sounds like a lobbyist for German business, listing the industries that must be shielded from the full costs of her package. In truth, almost every country has found reasons why the climate-change promises may be impossible to meet in their current form. Britain is gloomy about its renewable-energy targets. Ireland says its farmers must be protected (grass-fed Irish cows emit a lot of methane)...

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12341574

Business Day

Hold the front page on who's causing climate change

David Purchase
October 4, 2008

LIKE many, I'm finding it hard to decide whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon or part of a natural order, a natural cycle of things.

But it seems as if there can be no debate about this. Dare to challenge the "inconvenient truth", that global warming, leading to climate change, is man-made, and heaven help you. In ages gone by, it seems you either died of the black plague, were drowned as a witch or burned as a heretic. Life choices were thus somewhat limited.

Isn't there now a little of "Middle Ages" intolerance in the climate change debate?

Now, before you bring out the stocks and load up with tomatoes to aim in my direction, let me explain my position.

I don't deny the fact of a changing climate. Nor do I deny that the northern ice cap has diminished over the past 10 years (but I will add that the ice cover of the southern oceans, though slightly increased this year, has remained stable for the past 35 years).

Nor do I deny that weather patterns in south-eastern Australia have changed; and that the southern half of the driest continent is drier than it was 10 years ago.

I won't deny that the Murray-Darling river basin is facing crisis and that our farming and water-use practices must change if we are to sustain our rivers, our natural environment and the communities, farms, and industry that rely upon them.

Nor do I deny that all these are problems deserving of the full attention of government and, quite rightly, causing us to examine the way we use and apportion our water resources, and the way we respect, or disrespect, our planet.

We have performed poorly and short-sightedly in managing our environment and resources. The evidence is all around us on land, sea and air.

So, I don't question we have a task ahead of us as custodians of Earth — and that we have a responsibility to hand it to our children and grandchildren in better shape than it was handed on to us.

My issue, however, is with the Orwellian "thought police" who refuse to countenance real debate on the issue, who insist on adherence to the "inconvenient truth" — that this is man-made — and who howl down and laugh smugly behind their hands at anyone who says, "wait a minute; let's pause and take a less-hysterical look at things".

In a recent article, Ian Plimer, professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne and professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, made the following comments:

"Science," he said, "is married to evidence, scepticism and dissent. Noise, political pressure or numbers of converts does not validate a scientific concept.

"When the president of the Royal Society says the science on human-induced global warming is settled, one is reminded of a previous president who said it was impossible for heavier-than-air machines to fly!"

In my opinion, those leading the climate change discussion have become so intolerant, and their views so congealed, as to exclude any contrary views or testing of the argument.

I insist that we continue to debate the issue.

I insist that we hear — above the noise of the throng, above the derision of the climate change fanatics — from those scientists and researchers who hold counter views, who provide counter-explanations, and whose research points to other possible causes of warming than carbon release from human activity.

I happen to believe that the social, cultural and intellectual marketplace of ideas and opinion, of discussion and the weighing of facts, of the testing and retesting of argument, are central to our success as a community, as a nation, and as a world. It is important we do all these things with climate change before imposing enormous and, perhaps, unnecessary cost imposts on business.

I can't help but think that, in 10 years' time, we will look back and wonder how so many of us were misled by global warming alarmism.

I think there is a silent majority who, like me, harbour doubts on the cause of climate change. But the trouble with the silent majority is that it has become too silent. We have allowed ourselves to be bullied submissively into a single view and a single course of action.

It is time we returned open, reasoned debate, genuine inquiry and a genuine sharing of ideas to this discussion.

David Purchase is executive director of the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce.

http://business.theage.com.au/business/hold-the-front-page-on-whos-causi...

Sydney Morning Herald

Act hastily, roo the scare tactics

Miranda Devine
October 2, 2008

I don't want to eat kangaroo. Ever. It's dark, chewy, gamey and smelly. But, says Ross Garnaut, the Government's economics guru on climate change, kangaroo is what we will all have to eat in a few years. Beef and lamb will be reserved only for the very wealthy in the brave new future he envisages, in which Australia leads the world on tackling climate change.

If we don't, he said on Tuesday, releasing his 652-page study on the cost of climate change, "the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time". Cue spooky music.

In Chapter 22, "Reforming Land Use", Professor Garnaut spells out the kangaroo solution, with a plan to push Australian culinary habits back to prehistoric times.

"For most of Australia's human history - around 60,000 years - kangaroo was the main source of meat. It could again become important."

The idea is to knock off 7 million beef cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replace them with 240 million kangaroos, which virtuously barely burp or fart the greenhouse gas methane, unlike their bovine and ovine peers.

Then there's the little bit in Garnaut's report about escalating prices of electricity, gas and petrol. He has forecast electricity prices to rise between 21 and 37 per cent - or up to $450 a year for the average family.

Garnaut's timing was unfortunate; his scheduled press conference with Kevin Rudd had to be delayed while the Prime Minister busied himself with reacting to the latest crisis from Wall Street.

The good news is the global financial meltdown means the Government is unlikely to follow the most extreme urgings of the climate industry to further endanger Australia's economy, not to mention its palates, with reckless promises of leading the world with deep cuts to emissions. The Garnaut report, at least, has described as "delusional" the idea, pushed by many in the climate industry, that Australia can go it alone in the absence of a global consensus.

The maths is simple. Australia was responsible for 1.5 per cent of global emissions in 2005, dropping to 1.1 per cent by 2030, says Garnaut. The world's largest emitter, China, will go from 18.3 per cent in 2005 to 33 per cent in 2030, with the second largest emitter, the United States, dropping to 11.1 per cent.

So even if you believe everything coming out of the monopoly Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and even if all Australians and their farm animals committed hara-kiri, the long-term impact on global warming of the mass martyrdom would be negligible.

The Prime Minister keeps saying that "the cost of inaction will be far greater than the cost of action".

So if our actions mean nothing and the cost of inaction is greater, then we will have to pay the price of action as well as inaction.

The argument is "similar to advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin is a good deal because the cost compares favourably to the cost of inaction, which is losing the leg," Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, wrote last month. "Of course, the aspirin doesn't prevent that outcome."

Nevertheless, the Government is in the unenviable position of trying to placate the climate industry and green groups, while keeping the economy safe.

The pressure is intense. Last week an open letter to Rudd from Australia's self-described "leading climate scientists" - all 16 of them - warned of dire consequences of not acting now: "Many millions of people from around the world will be at risk from extreme events such as heatwaves, drought, fire, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, vector-borne, water- and food-borne diseases will spread rapidly …"

They urged the Government to commit as a "minimum" to an emission reduction target for Australia of 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

This represents the most extreme of the three scenarios costed by Garnaut: 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 25 per cent reductions by 2020. And without a global deal, even a 10 per cent target is overly ambitious.

The signatories might do well to heed the words of the eminent New Zealand naturalist, the late Sir Charles Fleming, who said in 1986 that: "Any body of scientists that adopts pressure group tactics is endangering its status as the guardian of principles of scientific philosophy that are worth conserving.".

Fleming is quoted in a speech to be delivered at a climate change conference in Canberra next week by Professor Bob Carter, a geologist of James Cook University in Townsville, a climate change "thought criminal", who has been a thorn in the side of the consensus lobby.

Carter pointed out yesterday that Garnaut's economic analysis has been erected on the "faulty … politically tainted science" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This means, "that the economics, however elegant, is worthless.

"Before human-caused global warming can become an economic problem, it first has to be identified by scientific study as a dangerous hazard for the planet, distinct from natural climate change."

Carter's address is based on his paper just published in the Journal Of The Economic Society of Australia, "Knock knock: Where is the evidence for dangerous human-caused global warming?"

Climate change is an important subject for research but it has been hijacked by "a combustible combination of poor science, special-interest-group pleading and public hysteria, which together distract from, rather than deal with, the very real risks of natural climate change".

There has never been any question that human-caused climate change is real. But the important question is "what is the sign and magnitude of the net global human effect on climate, and can it be measured?"

Yet, "no summed human effect on global temperature has ever been identified or measured". He says the Kyoto protocol has produced no measurable environmental benefits and "attempting to 'stop climate change', or, in the present state of our knowledge and technology, even to modify it, is an Arcadian fantasy."

But it is a fantasy that suits some, especially those experiencing schadenfreude about the economic meltdown. Take the geniuses at crikey.com.au who think "the death of Wall Street has saved the polar bear" because consumption will be slashed. It's a greenie's dream: no more plasma TVs, less food, and just the little problem of mass unemployment. Yay!

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine/act-hastily-roo-the-sc...

Global Warming Alarmism is Unacceptable and Should be Confronted

By Vaclav Klaus, 10/1/2008 9:15:22 AM

Many thanks for the invitation and for the opportunity to be here with all of you. I have visited the U.S. many times since the fall of communism in November 1989 when – after almost half a century – traveling to the free world became for people like me possible again, but I’ve never been to this beautiful city and to the state of Oregon before. Once again, thank you very much.

I am expected to talk here about global warming today (even though I don’t really feel it, especially not in this room) and my address will be devoted mostly to this issue. As you may expect Oregon is – for me – in this respect connected with the well-known Oregon petition which warned and keeps warning against the irrationality and one-sidedness of the global warming campaign. Rational people know that the warming we experience is well within the range of what seems to have been a natural fluctuation over the last ten thousand years. We should keep saying this very loudly.

Read rest of speech here...

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?ff0796e1-e571-4b15-9d0a-1d53dff...

Tuesday, 30 September 2008, 5:19 pm

"Finally, this won’t be the last government-induced boom and bust. Lehman Brothers was gearing up (like Enron) for carbon trading. Will the carbon market be the next fiasco in a few years’ time?"

Roger Kerr is the executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable.

From Times Online
October 1, 2008

The Green Rush: Nigel Lawson appeals for calm as 'new religion' takes hold

Rosie Lavan

The former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson made a sceptical and profoundly controversial foray into environmentalism earlier this year with the publication of his book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, which argued against the accepted views on global warming and the increasing fears which surround the issue.

In this week's interview for The Green Rush, Times Online's series on business and the environment, he outlines his position, arguing that global warming is treated as if it was "a new religion", rather than being considered in rational terms.

"I do think, because this is a very important issue, because anything we do about it is going to have huge economic consequences, we really do need to approach the subject coolly and calmly and rationally," he says.

Lord Lawson, who served as Margaret Thatcher's energy minister, and then as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, says that the onus is on politicians and governments first to examine the science behind global warming, and then to act accordingly. It is not, he argues, a matter where businesses have "anything sensible to contibute".

He acknowledges that businesses may see opportunities to profit from environment-related government subsidies, "and if the Government is so foolish as to give these subsidies then I'm not going to complain about businesses taking advantage of that."

But he adds that such subsidies may be reined in as the pressures of the global economic downturn continue to be felt. (Lord Lawson was speaking to Times Online earlier this summer, before the recent, renewed economic turbulence in Europe and the United States.)

China and India, Lord Lawson argues, are right to avoid targets to reduce carbon emissions which would force them to curb their development. But he predicts that in consequence it will not be possible to meet targets for the cutback in global carbon emissions (which he himself does not believe to be necessary) or even to significantly reduce emissions at all.

"What is likely to happen is more and more of those industries that use a lot of energy will decamp to China and India, or else they will decline in Europe and their opposite numbers in China and India, because they've got much cheaper energy, will get a bigger and bigger share of the market. So that in fact the emissions will still be coming but they'll be coming from China and India instead of coming from Europe."

He also argues that there are "plusses as well as minuses" associated with a warming planet, citing findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Last year, he says, the IPCC "suggested that the sort of mean, most likely, increase in temperature over the next hundred years is an increase of about three degrees centigrade. And they say that an increase of about three degrees centigrade would actually be beneficial to world food output."

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/articl...

It's good!!!
.............................................

Revealed: oil-funded research in Palin's campaign against protection for polar bear

• Paper authored by known climate change sceptics
• Governor suing over threatened species ruling

Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian, Wednesday October 1 2008

The Republican Sarah Palin and her officials in the Alaskan state government drew on the work of at least six scientists known to be sceptical about the dangers and causes of global warming, to back efforts to stop polar bears being protected as an endangered species, the Guardian can disclose. Some of the scientists were funded by the oil industry...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/01/sarahpalin.climatechange

The green bubble bursts

Amid the energy crisis, Democrats are losing the high ground on the environment to a GOP that is pushing oil drilling.

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
September 30, 2008

As the election enters its endgame, Democrats and their environmental allies face a political challenge they could hardly have imagined just a few months ago. America's growing dependence on fossil fuels, once viewed as a Democratic trump card held alongside the Iraq war and the deflating economy, has become a lodestone instead. Republicans stole the energy issue from Democrats by proposing expanded drilling -- particularly lifting bans on offshore oil drilling -- to bring down gasoline prices. Whereas Barack Obama told Americans to properly inflate their tires, Republicans at their convention gleefully chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" Obama's point on conservation and efficiency was lost on an electorate eager for a solution to what they perceive as a supply crisis.

Democrats and greens ended up in this predicament because they believed their own press clippings -- or, perhaps more accurately, Al Gore's. After the release of the documentary film and book "An Inconvenient Truth," greens convinced themselves that U.S. public opinion on climate change had shifted dramatically, despite having no empirical evidence that was the case. In fact, public concern about global warming was about the same before the movie -- 65% told a Gallup poll in 2007 that global warming was a somewhat or very important concern in comparison to 63% in 1989. Global warming remains a low-priority issue, hovering near the bottom of the Pew Center for People and the Press' top 20 priorities.

By contrast, public concern about gasoline and energy prices has shifted dramatically. While liberals and environmentalists were congratulating themselves on the triumph of climate science over fossil-fuel-funded ignorance, planning inauguration parties and writing legislation for the next Democratic president and Congress, gas prices became the second-highest concern after the economy, according to Gallup.

This summer, elite opinion ran headlong into American popular opinion. The train wreck happened in the Senate and went by the name of the Climate Security Act. That bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would have, by all accounts (even the authors'), increased gasoline and energy prices. Despite clear evidence that energy-price anxiety was rising, Democrats brought the bill to the Senate floor in June when gas prices were well over $4 a gallon in most of the country. Republicans were all too happy to join that fight.

Indeed, they so relished the opportunity to accuse Democrats of raising gasoline prices in the midst of an energy crisis, they insisted that the 500-page bill be read into the Senate record in its entirety in order to prolong the debate. Within days, Senate Democrats started jumping ship. Democratic leaders finally killed the debate to avert an embarrassing defeat, but by then they had handed Republicans a powerful political club.

Republicans have been bludgeoning Democrats with it ever since. They held dramatic "hearings," unauthorized by the Democratic leadership, on the need for expanded oil drilling to lower gas prices. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich quickly announced a book, "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," a movie and a petition drive. And Republican presidential candidate John McCain stopped making speeches about his support for bipartisan climate action, which is how he had started his campaign, and attacked Obama and congressional Democrats for opposing drilling instead.

On June 9, three days after the emissions cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate, Obama led McCain by eight points, according to Gallup. By June 24, the race was in a dead heat, a shift owed in no small part to Republicans battering Democrats on energy. Seeing the writing on the wall, Obama reversed his opposition to drilling in August, and congressional Democrats quickly followed suit.

But the damage has largely been done. In following greens, Democrats allowed McCain and Republicans to cast them as the party out of touch with the pocketbook concerns of middle-class Americans and captive to special interests that prioritize remote wilderness over economic prosperity.

In a tacit acknowledgment of their defeat, some green leaders, such as the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, have endorsed the Democrats' pro-drilling strategy. But few of them seem to realize the political implications. The most influential environmental groups in Washington -- the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund -- are continuing to bet the farm on a strategy that relies on emissions limits and other regulations aimed at making fossil fuels more expensive in order to encourage conservation, efficiency and renewable energy. But with an economic recession likely, and energy prices sure to remain high for years to come thanks to expanding demand in China and other developing countries, any strategy predicated centrally on making fossil fuels more expensive is doomed to failure.

A better approach is to make clean energy cheap through technology innovation funded directly by the federal government. In contrast to raising energy prices, investing somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion annually in technology R&D, infrastructure and transmission lines to bring power from windy and sunny places to cities is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Instead of embracing this big investment, greens and Democrats push instead for tiny tax credits for renewable energy -- nothing approaching the national commitment that's needed.

With just six weeks before the election, the bursting of the green bubble is a wake-up call for Democrats. Environmental groups, perpetually certain that a new ecological age is about to dawn in America, have serially overestimated their strength and misread public opinion. Democrats must break once and for all from green orthodoxy that focuses primarily on making dirty energy more expensive and instead embrace a strategy to make clean energy cheap.

By continuing to hew to the green agenda, Democrats have not only put in jeopardy their chance of taking back the White House and growing their majority in Congress, they also have set back the prospects of establishing policies that might effectively address the climate and energy crises.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are authors of "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility" and co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-shellenberger30-2008sep30,0,58...

 There are reasons that only three reporters covered a news conference
this morning with Czech President Václav Klaus at the Portland Hilton.
And there are reasons I was one of them.

I'll wait until the end of this post to tell you about me. First, the
reasons behind the dismal turnout — especially notable in a city where
visits by heads of state are so rare. KBOO, KOIN and WW were the only
media outlets at the question-and-answer session with a European
president.

more here

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll

document scanning

Green fascism anyone?
............................................

Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

• Study looks at food impact on greenhouse gases
• Return to old-fashioned cooking habits urged

Juliette Jowit
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 30 2008

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.

The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving

From The Times
September 30, 2008

Global warming: why cut one 3,000th of a degree?

Britain's efforts to reduce the speed of global warming will cost huge sums of money and have a pitifully tiny effect

Bjørn Lomborg

Global warming is seen everywhere as one of the most important issues. From the EU to the G8, leaders trip over one another to affirm their commitment to cutting CO2 to heal the world. What they do not often acknowledge - in part because it would lose them support - is that the solutions proffered are incredibly costly and will end up doing amazingly little good, even in a century's time. This is the truly inconvenient truth of the politics of global warming.

Let's be clear. I'm not contesting the existence of global warming. Doing so is silly, given the clear and strong results from the UN climate panel. Global warming will most probably warm the planet by between 1.6 and 3.8C above current temperatures by the end of the century. The total cost of the consequences of this warming is estimated by William Nordhaus, of Yale University, to be $15 trillion.

However, we need to keep our cool: global warming's total cost will be only about one half of 1 per cent of the net worth of the 21st century; that is the current worth of all the wealth projected to be generated in this century. Panicking is unlikely to lead to sensible policies. It could lead to exorbitantly expensive policies, which will do great harm.

Many of the proffered global warming policies are designed to help politicians bathe in the warm glow of good intentions, with little or no regard to the mounting costs and infinitesimal benefits.

It is a well-rehearsed point that the Kyoto Protocol was a terribly inefficient, hugely costly way to do virtually no good. Even if every industrialised country, including the United States, had accepted the protocol, and everyone had lived up to its requirements for the entire century, it would have had virtually no impact, even a hundred years from now. It would reduce the global temperature increase by an immeasurable 0.15C by the year 2100. The cost of implementing Kyoto, taking the average figure from the various top macroeconomic models, would have been almost £100 billion annually for the rest of the century.

The US declined to sign up to Kyoto and many countries, including Spain, Japan, Canada, and Greece, have had a hard time living up to their pledges. It is likely that the total reduction in carbon emissions will be less than 5 per cent of what Kyoto promised.

Yet the EU and others advocate that Kyoto-style policies are still right, only that much more than Kyoto is needed. The EU has promised to cut its emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, through a 20 per cent increase in renewables. There seems to be no better reason for this decision than that 20 and 20 in 2020 sounds good. Gordon Brown has wholeheartedly backed the plan, which includes making a dramatic increase in renewables - mainly 3,500 wind turbines in the North Sea.

The British Government estimates the cumulative carbon saving from all its plans at somewhere between 950 and 1,100 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The Department for Business will not give a figure beyond that timeframe but, given that wind turbines have a lifetime of about two decades, this seems the relevant cumulative reduction given the investment. The department confirms that the total investment from public and private sources into renewables will be about £100 billion.

Computer modelling - using DICE (dynamic integrated model of climate and the economy) - shows that the net effect of the UK renewables effort is impossibly tiny. The temperature increase by 2100 without Mr Brown's plan would have been 2.4536181C. With the best-case scenario the huge UK effort means that the temperature at the end of the century would be 2.4532342C. The effect is a difference of about 0.00038C - or about one three-thousandth of a degree in a hundred years. This is the equivalent of delaying the temperature increase by the end of the century by a little less than a week.

Of course, these numbers are way too precise: different models and assumptions would give somewhat different results. Yet because we are talking about relative change, the absolute climate sensitivity of the particular model matters very little. Thus the order of magnitude is robust and indicates an astonishingly small effect for a very large cost.

If one imagines that the reductions could be sustained across the century (which presumably would also call for five repeated investments of hundreds of billions of pounds), the effect is still very small - a temperature reduction of about one six-hundredth of a degree.

Using the latest academic meta-study by Professor Richard Tol we can calculate that cutting 1,100 million tonnes of CO2 would create benefits worth £4 billion in terms of the impact on agriculture, forestry, preventing deaths from heat and cold, disease and unmanaged eco-systems. At a cost of £100 billion, the investment involves paying £1 to do less than 4p worth of good.

The UK emits about 2 per cent of global CO2. Thus we could imagine the world as composed of 50 UKs, each emitting one fiftieth of the carbon. If all 50 of our “UKs” paid a £100 billion to reduce temperatures by one three-thousandth of a degree in 100 years, the result would be still be trivial: one sixtieth of a degree by the end of the century. Costs would most probably increase similarly, fiftyfold to £5,000 billion. This amazing sum would simply postpone global warming and its problems by a mere 11 months by the end of the century.

The cost of £5,000 billion is equivalent to a hundredfold increase in global donations to developing countries. To make a simple comparison, the UN estimates that for about £40 billion annually, we could solve all major basic problems in the world - we could give clean drinking water, sanitation, basic education and healthcare to every person in the world. But instead we are spending a fortune achieving almost nothing.

Of course, we shouldn't ignore global warming. But instead of trying to cut CO2 emissions, we should focus on dramatically increasing the funding into energy research and development. What matters is getting low-cost low-carbon technology available faster. If the price of renewable energy dropped below the cost of fossil fuels by mid-century, everyone - including China and India - would switch to the greener alternatives. Work done by the Copenhagen Consensus suggests that such a policy could be 300 times better for the world than the UK approach. We could end up doing more than £11 worth of good for each £1 invested. While we would do much more good in total terms, the cost would also be much lower, and hence much more likely to be implemented.

When it comes to climate, we have to come to our senses. Yes, global warming is real and caused by human beings, but it doesn't mean we should panic in our policy decisions. We need to do the right thing - and invest in discovering and developing new low-carbon technology.

Bjørn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and the author of Cool It: The Sceptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/a...

Dump The ETS
Rodney Hide MP
Monday, September 29 2008

Speech to Public Meeting; Franklin Centre, Pukekohe; Monday 29 September 2008.

The Emissions Trading Scheme was rushed into law in the dying stages of the Clark/Peters Government - which has only vague ideas of how it will affect our economy.

National opposed Labour's ETS - and is going to produce its own.

ACT is the only Party that has opposed the ETS from day one.

Whatever your view on climate change - and I'm sceptical - the ETS is a bad idea.

It will put huge cost on Kiwi fami lies and big costs on every business - and it will do so for no gain. We could shut New Zealand down and it would not make a difference to world weather.

The National Party has always supported an ETS - just not the one Labour came up with. National thinks you can have an ETS without costing business and households, but that's not possible. The purpose of the ETS is to put a cost on greenhouse gas emissions and force up costs. That's its point: you will pay and pay and pay.

For nothing.

ACT has always opposed the ETS. The science doesn't justify it, the costs are large and there are no benefits.

National MPs have sidled up to us to agree with us - and to complain that Nick Smith as hijacked National's policy. They agreed with John Key when he said climate change was a hoax. Now he too is backing the ETS.

The National Party is selling New Zealand out for bad politics.

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research stated in its 2008 study, 'The Impact of the Proposed Emissions Trading Scheme', that dairy land values would fall 40 percent, and beef and sheep land values would fall 23 percent.
The annual incomes of household would fall $3,000, and the average hourly rate would fall $2.30. Every year we will forgo 22,000 new jobs.

Even our enemies in war time haven't done this to us, and here we are doing it to ourselves with National agreeing with Labour to put big costs on busi ness and squeeze households even more.

It's wrong. I've been to successful businesses exporting around the world that won't survive the ETS. They will shift to Australia and dodge the costs.

That's a further loss of jobs and income. For nothing.

We need Smart Green policies - not dumb ones like the ETS.

There is no evidence that CO2 drives climate or that industrialisation is warming the world.

In fact, the evidence is the reverse. The world temperature has increased in the past 150 years by about half a degree. But the bulk of that increase was in the first half of the 20th Century - before the post-war economic boom. During that boom, the world temperature dropped.

When I started out as an environmentalist the fear was global cooling.

There are many anomalies in the evidence. Ice-core samples show that CO2 levels lag temperature by 800 years. And the increase in temperature in the past 150 years has been at the Earth's surface - not the troposphere, as the theory of CO2-induced temperature change predicts.

The only thing going for the man-made global warming theory is the computer models - but they're just a direct result of the assumptions fed into them. Their predictions are the result of what's fed in, and the e vidence doesn't back the models' predictions.
..

That's why ACT is campaigning this election to dump the ETS. We should dump the ETS and withdraw from Kyoto. We should not have to send our hard-earned dollars to the Russians.

We were told in Parliament that Europe was also rushing ahead to have an ETS.

Well, here's a newsflash: German chancellor Angela Merkel last week backed an almost total exemption for German industry from new rules to force companies to pay for greenhouse gas emissions. Merkel said that, although she supported the need to tackle climate change, she "could not support the destruction of German jobs through an ill-advised climate policy".

So why are we?

We need a change of government this election. But we need something more: we need a change of direction. There's only one way that you can vote for a change of direction: Party vote ACT.

You can be the difference: Party vote ACT - and dump the ETS.

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35...

Daily Mail

BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased 'one-sided polemic'

By Tamara Cohen
27th September 2008

The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against.
During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.

‘I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,’ he said yesterday. ‘The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct. ‘I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.’

Ofcom confirmed it was looking into a ‘fairness complaint’ about the documentary. A BBC spokesman said: ‘We stand by the programme.’ Lord Monckton, 56, a former journalist and Cambridge graduate, says scientific data shows the world is cooler today than in the Middle Ages.

He appeared alongside other sceptics including distinguished Florida-based meteorologist Professor Fred Singer, John Christy, a climate change expert and adviser to the U.S. government and the climatologist Dr Patrick Michaels, of the University of Virginia.

All their interviews, he claims, were heavily cut so that they appeared as personal views. ‘We do not dispute that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do dispute its effects’, he said. ‘The data shows that 2008 is the same temperature as 1980 and that the effects of these changes in the atmosphere are not negative but more likely to be beneficial.’

Lord Monckton played a key role in a legal challenge heard in the High Court in October 2007 in an effort to prevent Al Gore’s film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, from being shown in English schools.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063110/BBC-investigated-peer-sa...

Carbon capture is not here yet
By Christopher Booker
28/09/2008

For five years, with increasing vehemence, this column has been warning that Britain will soon face an unprecedented energy crisis through our failure to replace ageing power stations with enough new ones to meet our electricity needs.

Last week, with the National Grid's warning that blackouts could begin this winter, this wholly predictable crisis at last made front-page news - which was why the most significant Labour conference speech was that made by our Business (and energy) Secretary, John Hutton.

Alone among senior politicians, Mr Hutton has woken up to the gravity of this threat to our economic survival and "our sovereignty as a nation". Aware that we can no longer look to natural gas to save us, he emphasised that our only hope is to get on with building new nuclear and coal-fired power stations as fast as possible - "no coal plus no nuclear equals no lights, no power, no future", as he put it.

Hence, two days later, his announcement that British Energy is to be sold to France's EDF, as our best hope of building new nuclear reactors.

But even EDF cannot promise that the first of its four planned reactors will be supplying power before 2020, some five years after we are due to lose 40 per cent of the generating capacity we need to meet current peak demand.

Hence Mr Hutton's repeated insistence that we urgently need a new generation of coal-fired power stations. But, as we saw from the recent court victory of the Greenpeace protesters at Kingsnorth, these are hated by the immensely powerful "green" lobby as much as nuclear power.

Just what Mr Hutton is up against was highlighted by the ultimatum from Lord Smith (the former Cabinet minister Chris Smith), who has now, bizarrely, been put in charge of the Environment Agency. No new coal-fired power stations can be allowed, insists Smith, unless they are fitted with full "carbon capture and storage".

This is the extraordinary notion that all the CO2 emitted from burning coal can be piped off and buried in holes in the ground. The greens babble on about "carbon capture" as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. But the hard fact is that this "green dream" is still only at the experimental stage, and all evidence suggests that in practical terms the experiment isn't working.

According to a McKinsey report given last week to the European Commission, the capital cost of a coal-fired power station fitted with "carbon capture" will be two or three times that of a conventional coal-fired plant. Its operating costs could then also be double, not least because they will need to burn up to 60 per cent more coal to generate the same electricity.

At present, to generate 35 per cent of our power, we burn 52 million tons of coal, 22 million tons of which we have to import from Russia. To fit our power stations with "carbon capture" we would need to build at least four more large coal-fired plants just to make up the power diverted into disposing of CO2. And to do that we would have to become even more dependent on imports from such unreliable sources as Russia, at a time when coal prices are already soaring.

Last week I said that the astronomic costs we are threatened with by the EU's emissions trading scheme "betoken the economics of the madhouse". Now, for yet another wholly unproven "green dream", we are being asked to more than double the cost of coal-fired electricity yet again. As Mr Hutton implied, we will soon have to choose between these fantasies and our survival as a nation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/28/do...

Gore in San Jose speech: Climate change deserves same attention bailout is getting
By Matt Nauman
Mercury News
Article Launched: 09/27/2008 01:52:50 PM PDT

Al Gore said in San Jose on Saturday that the climate crisis deserves the same type of attention and money from Washington that the financial meltdown is getting.

"Instead of a focus only on a bailout, we need to bail in renewable energy," Gore said during a 50-minute speech at the Civic Auditorium.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10577439?source=rss

Wishful thinking!
...........................................

UK accused of 'sabotaging' Europe's green energy plans

Leaked documents show strong pressure being exerted to 'kill the essence' of the EU's renewable energy targets

John Vidal,
environment editor
guardian.co.uk,
Friday September 26 2008

Britain has been accused of trying to wreck Europe's plan to tackle climate change by lobbying to remove aviation from renewable energy targets.

Leaked documents from the council of the European Union show that the UK is exerting strong pressure on other EU governments. The argument being used is that biofuels made from plants or algae will not be ready for use as commercial aviation fuel until after 2020.

EU leaders pledged last year to generate 20% of all energy from renewable sources but if aviation, which contributes up to 9% of all greenhouse emissions in Europe, is omitted from the EU calculations at a meeting of energy ministers next week, it will significantly reduce the overall target and make it harder to tackle climate change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/26/biofuels.climatechange

Climate change fears after German opt-out
By Chris Bryant in Berlin, Fiona Harvey in London and Tony Barber in Brussels

Financial Times

Published: September 22 2008 16:43 | Last updated: September 22 2008 16:43

A German government decision to back an almost total exemption for industry from new rules that would force companies to pay for the carbon dioxide they emit threatens to undermine a key tenet of European Union climate policy, climate campaigners warn.

The decision is a victory for German industry, which feared European Commission proposals for an auction of carbon emission permits would cost billions of euros and restrict its ability to compete internationally.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4e47f656-88ba-11dd-a179-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=...

Daily Telegraph

BBC investigated over climate change documentary
By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent
26/09/2008

The BBC is being investigated by the television watchdog over claims that it misrepresented global warming sceptics in a documentary.

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast recently on BBC Two, was billed as a "definitive" guide to the history of global warming.

During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton, a former advisor to Lady Thatcher. Lord Monckton has now complained to Ofcom that his views were unfairly represented on the programme.

"I have no doubt Ofcom will act. The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct," he said.

"I understand they have to edit these things but I was interviewed for 90 minutes and they omitted all of my scientific evidence, leaving only a few comments which sounded as though I was sceptical for personal reasons. It was rather caddish of them."

The row comes only months after Channel 4 was criticised by Ofcom for misrepresenting the views of some of the world's most distinguished scientists in a documentary on climate change.

It said that The Great Global Warming Swindle, which challenged the theory that human activity was the major cause of climate change, was "unjust and unfair" in the way it represented individuals, including Sir David King, the Government's former chief scientist. Ofcom confirmed that it was looking into a "fairness complaint" about the BBC documentary.

A BBC spokesman said: "We stand by the programme."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09...

Those who believe absurdities....
...................................................

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday September 26 2008

"Mugabe also blamed global warming for the widespread scarcity of food in his country. Droughts and floods over the past seven years had disrupted the food supply, he said, implicitly rejecting the widespread view that it stems from the economic disruption that followed his state seizure of large farms owned by whites, and the crippling inflation rate of at least 11m% and rising."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/26/zimbabwe.unitednations

Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants
Wed Sep 24, 2008

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon."

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE48N7AA20080924?fee...

Snooze..............................

Obama declares support for 'clean' coal

Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for the US coal industry after running mate Joe Biden declared 'no coal plants here in America'

Elana Schor in Washington
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday September 24 2008 09:36 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/24/energy.uselections2008

More Snooze..............................

Coal power stations must have carbon capture and storage, Environment Agency says
By Paul Eccleston
25/09/2008

New coal-fired power stations shouldn't be built unless they have the technology to filter out damaging greenhouse gases, the Environment Agency has warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/25/eacoal...

Bloody hypocrites!
..............................................

Green idealists fail to make grade, says study

David Adam,
environment correspondent
The Guardian,

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights."

Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.

Only a very small number of citizens matched their eco-friendly behaviour at home by refusing to fly abroad, Barr told a climate change conference at Exeter University yesterday.

The research team questioned 200 people on their environmental attitudes and split them into three groups, based on a commitment to green living.

They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.

Questioned on their heavy use of flying, one respondent said: "I recycle 100% of what I can, there's not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do."

Barr said "green" lifestyles at home and frequent flying were linked to income, with wealthier people more likely to be engaged in both activities.

He said: "The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts."

The team says the research is one of the first attempts to analyse how green intentions alter depending on context. It says the results reveal the scale of the challenge faced by policymakers who are trying to alter public behaviour to help tackle global warming.

The study concludes: "The notion that we can treat what we do in the home differently from what we do on holiday denies the existence of clearly related and complex lifestyle choices and practices. Yet even a focus on lifestyle groups who may be most likely to change their views will require both time and political will. The addiction to cheap flights and holidays will be very difficult to break."

The frequent flyers said they expected new technology to make aviation greener, echoing comments made by Tony Blair last year, who said it was "impractical" to expect people to take holidays closer to home. He said the solution was "to look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/24/ethicalliving.recyclin...

Green nosing bastard!
...............................

Daily Telegraph

Labour Conference: Gordon Brown says CO2 targets must be raised to 80% by 2050

By Paul Eccleston
23/09/2008

Gordon Brown is ready to adopt much tougher targets for slashing the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.

He made clear that he wants the current target of a 60 per cent cut in CO2 by 2050 raised to 80 per cent.

The Prime Minister said he had asked the Climate Change Committee - which is considering whether such a large cut is feasible - to report by next month instead of the end of the year.

It will allow the Committee to make its recommendation while the Climate Change Bill is still before Parliament and in time for the target figure to be raised significantly.

The move was immediately welcomed by environmental groups who have been pressing for much bigger cuts in emissions.

Mr Brown told the Labour Party conference in Manchester that a rising global population was producing a greater demand for energy.

"So the new settlement also requires another great and historic endeavour to end the dictatorship of oil and to avert catastrophic climate change, a transformation in our use of energy. New nuclear power, an unprecedented increase in renewables and investment in clean coal," he said.

"And I am asking the climate change committee to report by October on the case for, by 2050 not a 60 per cent reduction in our carbon emissions, but an 80 per cent cut - and I want British companies and British workers to seize the opportunity and lead the world in the transformation to a low carbon economy and I believe that we can create in modern green manufacturing and service 1m new jobs."

Friends of the Earth's Head of UK Climate, Ed Matthew said: "Gordon Brown's announcement today is welcome, however it must pave the way for a climate change law which commits the UK to cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050.

"This is the scale of cuts which scientists say are needed to tackle climate change. If the UK is to play its part in keeping global temperatures below danger levels the Prime Minister must also ensure that the law covers all the UK's emissions - including our share of emissions from international aviation and shipping."

Colin Butfield, head of campaigns at conservation organisation WWF, said: "Gordon Brown's statement has given the strongest indication yet that the Government's current target, aiming to cut UK emissions by 60 per cent, is based upon out of date science.

"WWF welcomes the Prime Minister's apparent recognition that we need cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050, if the UK is to play a leading role in the global efforts to tackle climate change."

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said the adoption of 80 per cent emissions cuts would represent a "significant defeat" for Business Secretary John Hutton's plans for a new unabated coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth.

Green Alliance director Stephen Hale said: "Gordon Brown was right to rail against the dictatorship of oil.

"Now he must back those words with energy and transport policies that will overthrow it and put us on track for a prosperous low carbon economy."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/23/eaco21...

Global yawning over global warming
September 23rd, 2008, 4:51 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Mark Landsbaum

One
thing about tough times is that they tend to help focus the mind. Have
you noticed that amid genuine financial crisis how little attention is
given to faux global warming?

“‘Global warming’ is sub-prime science,
sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down
with the sub-prime mortgage,” said Philip Stott, UK professor emeritus
of Biogeography and author of Global Environmental Change.

for more see original source

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll

speakers

Three cheers to the government not losing its nerve!
.....................................................

Nuclear power and coal crucial to UK, says Hutton

Nicholas Watt,
chief political correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday September 23 2008

Britain needs to undergo a "renaissance in nuclear power", and coal will continue to be a "critically important fuel" for the country, the business secretary, John Hutton, said yesterday.

In a speech which drew immediate criticism from environmental groups, Hutton said that the two controversial sources of energy were crucial to ensure that Britain retained a secure energy supply.

The international battle for energy security poses a threat to Britain's competitiveness and its "sovereignty as a nation", he said.

"It means a renaissance in nuclear power. Low carbon, reliable, secure ... And because energy security is a first thought, not an afterthought, I will not turn my back on another critical source of energy security for the UK, coal."

The business secretary took a swipe at David Cameron, who has said he would ensure that a new generation of "unabated coal power plants" could not be built by imposing a California-style emissions performance standard.

Hutton said: "I understand that people feel passionate about this issue. Others, like the Tories, see an opportunity for pandering. But coal is critically important for the UK. Flexible. Available. Reducing our reliance on imported gas."

Hutton's remarks show that Labour believes Cameron could be vulnerable on energy as high oil prices and the wider global economic downturn make people wary of restrictions on fuel even if they are designed to help the environment.

Cameron has since indicated that he would be prepared to allow a new generation of nuclear power stations, though he warns that he would not provide any "blank cheques".

Hutton said Britain had to look beyond weathering the current economic storm to make changes - "emerging stronger and fitter to seize the new manufacturing opportunities in the green economy and global markets of tomorrow".

Greenpeace criticised Hutton's support for coal-fired power stations, saying they would make a "colossal contribution" to climate change.

Executive director, John Sauven, said: "John Hutton somehow manages to sound like a cross between Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher ... The Iron Lady said she would build as many new nuclear stations as Hutton is promising but she managed just one because the economics didn't stand up - and they still don't."

Robin Webster of Friends of the Earth added: "Peddling a new generation of coal-fired power stations before we even know if carbon capture and storage is going to work is dangerous and misleading. Hutton has failed to grasp the serious threat posed by climate change or the huge potential of renewable energy."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/23/nuclearpower.fossilfue...

...and not conclude that global temperature is on a downward trend? Yet this is what the Met Office in an article from the Guardian attempts to do. How on earth could anyone seriously draw in that blue line showing an increase of 0.09C over the last decade? Ridiculous!

Climate sceptics have their head in the sand, says the Met Office

An apparent cooling trend is exaggerated by a record high temperature in 1998 caused by El Niño, experts say

David Adam,
environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk,
Monday September 22 2008

"Climate sceptics such as Nigel Lawson who argue that global warming has stopped have their "heads in the sand", according to the UK's Met Office.

A recent dip in global temperatures is down to natural changes in weather systems, a new analysis shows, and does not alter the long-term warming trend.

The office says average temperatures have continued their rising trend over the last decade, and that humans are to blame."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/22/climatechange.scienceo...

Cool discovery lifts global warming outlook: researcher

Duane Froese examines an ancient ice wedge.

by Staff Writers

Ottawa (AFP) Sept 19, 2008

Ice unearthed in Canada that stayed frozen for
700,000 years, even in warmer times, should allay fears of melting
permafrost venting its vast carbon stores to hasten global warming, a study said Friday.

Permafrost, or subsoil that remains frozen year-round, underlies a
quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere and is estimated to hold
twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.

When it melts, some experts fear it will quicken the pace of global warming significantly.

But the discovery of a cone-shaped wedge of subterranean ice near
Dawson City, Yukon, that did not melt during balmier times shows that
permafrost is more "stubborn" than first believed, researcher Duane
Froese of the University of Alberta's earth and atmospheric science department told AFP.

And so, current climate models that predict "extensive and severe
degradation of permafrost in response to global warming, with a
potential for release of large volumes of stored carbon" should be
revised, the study says.

In theory, the permafrost in the interior of Yukon and Alaska, along
with this wedge of ice exposed by Klondike gold mining, should have
melted during more temperate periods, Froese explained.

Some 120,000 years ago, for example, the Earth is believed to have been a few degrees warmer than now, he said.

The fact that the wedge did not melt indicates "some inherent
properties of permafrost" are keeping it cool, and so climate models
that predict significant melting of permafrost in the coming decades
are wrong, he said.

The findings also suggest that global warming will occur at a much slower pace than predicted, Froese said.

"We don't have to be as worried," he told AFP. "Permafrost seems to be very resilient."

"Relative to other parts of our cryosphere or frozen parts of the
Earth, like sea ice that is responding so quickly (to warming) or glacier ice which is responding quickly as well, deep permafrost is remaining cool."

Froese surmised that the layer of soil atop the permafrost acts as insulation from the warming atmosphere.

Environmental groups immediately lambasted Froese's conclusions, saying
all evidence so far points to a melting permafrost, causing sinkholes
to open up, and homes and forests to tilt.

In an interview with AFP, Froese qualified his findings.

He pointed out that his study dealt with the "deep" or continuous layer
of permafrost that can be up to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) deep at spots
and contains more carbon that the thin top layer that has mostly
concerned others.

"This does not tell us that we don't need to worry about shallow
permafrost which also contains tremendous stores of carbon," he said.

His ice chunk, determined to be the oldest in North America, was first
discovered seven years ago, but was not dated until more recently based
on a layer of volcanic ash later found on top of it.

The study appeared in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll

scan aperture cards

Reuters

EU's CO2 plans a cost disaster: German industry
Mon Sep 15, 2008

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany must push for change in how European countries share the financial burdens of tighter carbon trading rules after 2012, or face prohibitive rises in carbon avoidance costs, energy users' group VIK said on Monday.

"Germany's carbon trading position has to become top of the political agenda as we get closer to elections in 2009, the ball is in Chancellor Angela Merkel's court to avert disaster," said Alfred Richmann, managing director of the Essen-based group.

"The EU plans in their current shape will not lead to any more CO2 emissions savings, as those are capped, but bring sky-high new carbon taxes," he said at a conference in Berlin.

"On top of that, there will be a tsunami of power price hikes as a consequence, which could threaten investment plans, our industry's competitiveness, and jobs."

Richmann's remarks came days after the European Parliament's industry committee endorsed plans for CO2 emitters to buy permits for their greenhouse gas emissions from 2013 at auction, while ignoring German pleas for a raft of exemptions.

VIK has calculated that the auctions will bring the government 15 billion euros ($21 billion) of additional annual income which would have to be borne by consumers in the sectors it represents, including steel, paper, aluminum and cement.

Power prices would increase by 50 percent after 2012.

The EU's hard line was partly upheld as industries to be affected by the changes were divided, and Germany's environment and economic ministers, who represent different parties in a coalition government, failed to resolve differing interests.

The European Commission aims to tighten the carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS), the bloc's central tool to implement climate protection, as part of its international obligations.

To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, the EU plans to hand out fewer CO2 emission permits to polluters and force them to buy them all instead of receiving most for free.

The head of the energy and environment unit at the EU Commission told the conference the discussion was still in flux, with more talks due in the EP and in the council of ministers.

"The process is ongoing, we are looking for the most cost effective ways to cut CO2 emissions and are looking to the member states for inspiration," said Piotr Tulej, head of the energy and environment unit at the EC's energy directorate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSLF...

 This is from the UK Telegraph

Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam
By Christopher Booker

 Have your say    
 Read comments

What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers
and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will
jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal
and gas prices)?

The answer is that, before its
collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade
created by the new worldwide regulatory system to "fight climate
change" by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide.

The
biggest money-spinners will be the schemes whereby industry will pay
for permits to emit CO2 at so much a ton, either directly to
governments or by buying them on an international market.

This market, soon to be worth
trillions of pounds, was where Lehman hoped to be "the prime brokerage
for emissions permits", as it set out in two hefty reports on "The
Business of Climate Change".

Advised by some of
the world's leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen
and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm's erstwhile managing director
Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the
company set up by Gore to sell "carbon offsets" in return for planting
trees, was a prized Lehman client.

The particular
market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and
selling of carbon permits, through the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme
(ETS) set up in 2005, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and
the "cap and trade" system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama.

This
may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because
ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it
will impose on industry, not least electricity.

The
EU scheme already adds more than a billion pounds a year to our
electricity bills. In four years' time it will become much more obvious
when, under phase two of the ETS, permits will be auctioned, at a
projected initial figure of £35 per ton of CO2.

On
the basis of current wholesale prices, the annual cost of electricity
used in the UK alone is around £32 billion. Adding £35 for every ton of
CO2 emitted in producing it will mean that our electricity supply
companies will have to pay £8 billion for their permits, adding 25 per
cent to the total cost. Under EU rules, this must be passed on to all
of us in our bills.

The idea is that, to reduce
carbon emissions by an eventual 60 per cent, the number of permits
auctioned will reduce year by year, leaving an ever larger shortfall
which firms will have to account for either by reducing emissions or by
buying additional permits - not least from the developing world under
the UN's CDM.

Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse.

The new costs it will impose are so colossal that whole industries,
including aluminium, steel and Germany's chemical companies, threaten
to move their operations outside the EU unless they are given free
allocations. It has not even been agreed who - whether national
governments or the EU itself - will run the auctions or keep the
hundreds of billions of euros a year the scheme will raise.

China,
by virtue of having built giant dams to produce electricity, will be a
net "carbon creditor", able to sell permits to the EU worth billions
more, despite continuing to build a new coal-fired power station every
four days.

So will Russia, thanks to it having
closed down so much of its polluting industry after the fall of
Communism. There is not the slightest indication that the scheme itself
will result in any lowering of global CO2 emissions.

What
is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the
EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will
face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a
consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include
Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to
become the maddest scam the world has ever seen.

BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change

As
informed questioning of the global warming orthodoxy rises on all
sides, the BBC's three-part series Climate Wars, ending tonight, bears
all the marks of a carefully planned counter-attack.

BBC
science producers were apoplectic at the attention given last year to
Martin Durkin's Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle,
featuring a galaxy of the world's more sceptical climate scientists.
This is their riposte.

Last week, against a range
of far-flung locations from Greenland to California, the presenter, Dr
Iain Stewart, tackled three of the main arguments of Durkin's film.

In
each case the technique was the same. After caricaturing the sceptics'
point, with soundbite clips that did not allow them to develop their
scientific argument, he then asserted that they had somehow been
discredited.

For example, doubts had been raised
over the reliability of satellite temperature records which do not show
the same degree of warming as surface readings. Dr Roy Spencer, who
designed Nasa's satellite system for measuring temperatures, was
allowed to admit that a flaw had been found in the system.

But
his interview ended before he could explain that, when the flaw was
discovered in 1998, it was immediately corrected (although it made
little difference to the results).

Likewise, there
is a growing case for a correlation between global temperatures and
solar activity. Dr Stewart accused Durkin's programme of cutting off a
graph which illustrated this at a point when the data failed to support
the thesis. Then he did exactly the same himself, not extending his own
graph to 2008 in a way that would reinforce the thesis.

Most hilarious of all, however, was a long sequence in which Stewart defended the notorious "hockey stick" graph, which purports to show that temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level on record.

The
BBC had a huge blow-up of this "iconic" graph carted triumphantly round
London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace, as if it were proof that the
warming alarmists are right.

There was no hint
that the "hockey stick" is among the most completely discredited
artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the
devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's
creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a
hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

There
was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or
obscure some vital fact. Yet the "impartial" BBC is sending out this
farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the "march of
the lie" continues.

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