Global Warming Update

The chart below plots atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide alongside a global monthly temperature mean. Presumably there should be a correlation, as the theory of global warming posits that the greater the concentration of CO2, the greater the greenhouse effect.
















Instead, as CO2 has risen steadily, average global temperatures since 1998 have been in decline. The reason for the 1998 spike is the super El Nino that warmed the Pacific. (Via ICECAP)

And in other global-warming news ...

• The National Hurricane Center is being accused of artificially inflating the number of officially designated hurricanes.
  
  
• American CO2 output declined in 2006 by 1.6 percent -- but the greens aren't happy, presumably because the decline didn't come through command-and-control regulations.
  
  
• Not that such regulations work: European emissions continue to rise (as seen below). So much for Kyoto.
  
  

Politicians Being Politicians

For it's impressive distillation of nauseating backslapping, mawkish self-celebration, and dubious factuality into one hugely lame quote, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's comments in a Governor Spitzer press release on New York's self-imposed Kyoto Protocol could go down as a politicians-being-politicians quote of the year:

“Bravo to Governor Spitzer for striking this blow against global warning and greenhouse gas emissions—and for recognizing that with a little courage, being ‘green’ is much easier than people think. Here in cutting-edge Brooklyn, we’re proud of our solar-powered subway terminal at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, our co-gen co-ops in Clinton Hill, our huge new green roof in Red Hook, our food justice efforts in East New York—the kinds of sustainable initiatives that have the rest of the country saying ‘Brooklyn, NYC, and New York State — How green it is!’”

Yes, that's exactly what everyone's saying.

Around the Web

-- The New York Times is no johnny-come-lately on climate change. One of its first distress signals was printed way back in '95 -- 1895, that is!

-- Here's something as rare as a "smoking permitted" sign: The Wall Street Journal's Hugo Restall spends an entire column waxing rhapsodic on the joys of smoking.

-- The birthplace of Ebenezer Scrooge moves to ban Santa Claus.

-- Be proud: Your tax dollars are financing post-Thanksgiving congressional vacations to Brazil.

-- Councilman James Oddo, fresh from his long, lonely and hard-fought battle to ban metal baseball bats, has another big idea.

An Eco-Warrior of Convenience

Today Mayor Bloomberg is delivering the keynote address at a Seattle climate-change conference sponsored by the United States Conference of Mayors. He will propose taxing carbon emissions, which will be levied upon companies -- not individuals themselves -- which is an important distinction.

A recent New York Post analysis of Hizzoner's real-estate portfolio and travel style found that no one holds a candle his massive energy consumption (well, except for maybe Al Gore). His personal carbon footprint equals that of "18 average Americans, 53 Europeans or 404 Guatemalans."

His (conservatively) estimated 364 annual tons of smog-inducing carbon dioxide is equivalent to "keeping 69 cars a year on the road or lighting the Empire State Building for 4 days," The Post reported.

Besides his spacious Upper East Side townhouse, the mayor owns five homes: a country house in Armonk; a farm in North Salem, both in Westchester; a four-bedroom condo in Vail, Colo.; a palatial flat on London's posh Cadogan Square, and a sprawling, 6,000-square-foot beachfront spread in Bermuda.

Together, the properties boast enough square footage to swallow two mansions like the 10,000-square-foot one owned by former Vice President Al Gore, one of several leading climate-change critics rapped lately for being voracious energy users themselves.

Bloomberg's carbon footprint swells to epic proportions when you include his penchant for reaching his far-flung getaways by one of the handful of private jets owned by his financial information firm, Bloomberg LP.

Fortunately, this chief of the Green Police has a get-out-jail card.

A City Hall spokesman said the mayor has chosen instead to donate to worthy causes -- "public health, the arts and education" -- while seeking "broader change."

Beyond taxing businesses guilty of producing the energy Americans demand, Bloomberg has also proposed city-specific policies: energy quotas on Gotham's private sector, mandatory hybrids for all cabbies, an $8 motorist tax for driving in Manhattan, new taxes on consumers' electricity bills. He's even threatening to devastate Gotham's natural landscape by planting one million new trees.

In other words, by forcing New Yorkers to consume less, the city serves as Mayor Mike's personal carbon offset.

How convenient.

Around the Web

• Pat Buchanan actually writes something worth reading (even if Stephen Moore wrote much the same column only a few weeks ago).

• An anti-tobacco activist says New York City's health czar, Dr. Thomas Frieden, manipulates the science of second-hand smoke in the tradition of the infamous Tobacco Institute.

• Robert Gates continues his audition for the next Clinton Administration.

• The Center for Consumer Freedom's Rick Berman reports: "During the same time that health officials have placed increasing emphasis on obesity rates, the incidence of eating disorders has nearly tripled."

• A Johns Hopkins professor says claims of an obesity epidemic are "wildly exaggerated" and hurt children.

• A British editorial says a proposed regulation that will "warn" parents of obese "seem to assume a level of stupidity among the general public." It also has an intriguing suggestion for remedying obesity: "eat less and exercise more."

(hat tip to my pops & the Center for Consumer Freedom)

Al Gore Debates Global Warming!

After refusing countless invitations to debate a global warming skeptic, the folks over at JunkScience.com have gone ahead and sponsored a debate on his behalf:


Steve Milloy explains the value:

Last March, the prestigious New York debating society Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate on global warming, which may be viewed here. A pre-debate poll indicated that, by 2-to-1 (57 percent to 29 percent, with 14 percent undecided), the audience believed that manmade global warming was a crisis. But in the post-debate poll, the audience reversed its pre-debate views - the ranks of the skeptics swelled to 46 percent, the believers plummeted to 42 percent and the undecided declined slightly to 12 percent.

"That's the power of debate," said Milloy. "Though Al Gore aggressively promotes global warming alarmism, he unfortunately seems to lack confidence in his ability to debating climate change against others. But Al Gore's curious reluctance will hardly stop the public from being able to see how his points stack up against that of climate experts," Milloy concluded.

What Is Al Gore Afraid Of?

He's asked to put his money where his fear-mongering mouth is -- and refuses. From today's Political Diary:

Al Gore thinks the climate crisis is so dire that he's written a book, produced a movie and organized a world-wide music event to raise awareness. These have helped to make him a rich man, but is he willing to put his money where his mouth is? Don't bet on it.

J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and expert on long range forecasting, has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that he can do a better job of predicting the future of climate change than the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts of rising temperatures are cited in virtually every media account. Mr. Armstrong and a colleague, Kesten Green of New Zealand's Monash University, examined the IPCC's work for last month's 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting and found it essentially valueless according to established principles of forecasting. "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder," concluded the two.

So what's Prof. Armstrong's own climate prediction? No change at all. "The methodology was so poor that I thought a bet based on complete ignorance of the climate could do better," says Mr. Armstrong. "We call it 'the naïve model.' Things won't change."

Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting -- the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods -- and Principles of Forecasting, which was voted a "favorite book" by researchers and practitioners associated with the International Institute of Forecasters. If Mr. Gore accepts his challenge, Prof. Armstrong has proposed that each man put $10,000 into a charitable trust at a reputable brokerage house. The winner would then choose a charity to receive the total amount.

So far, Mr. Gore -- usually quite the opportunist -- has balked at the opportunity to establish credibility with global warming skeptics. "Please understand that Mr. Gore is not taking on any new projects at this time," read a note to Mr. Armstrong from Mr. Gore's communications director.

-- Taylor Buley

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

The latest ...

International Center for Theoretical Physics: Paris sizzles, Mediterranean wilts from global warming

Greenpeace: Global warming could create some 200 million climate refugees by 2040 and the bulk of the affected will be people living in poor countries.

Jim Hansen (NASA): The Earth today is in "imminent peril."

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF): 'We have five years to save the planet'

The UK's Stern Report: Global warming will worsen gender inequality, lead to forced marriages.

Turkish textile company: "Due to global warming, knitwear is not attracting enough costumers. This phenomenon ... has pressured us to stop our production."

Aussie imam: Global warming is Allah's revenge for secularism.

Terry Root, Stanford University: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The U.N.: North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Brothel owner: Global warming hurting business

Apparently, I'm not the only one cataloging the hype. John Brignell's is much longer.

Earlier:

Frontline Magazine: "American lifestyles are creating a climate holocaust."

University of Sydney: "Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar."

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

The latest ...

Greenpeace: Global warming could create some 200 million climate refugees by 2040 and the bulk of the affected will be people living in poor countries.

Jim Hansen (NASA): The Earth today is in "imminent peril."

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF): 'We have five years to save the planet'

The UK's Stern Report: Global warming will worsen gender inequality, lead to forced marriages.

Turkish textile company: "Due to global warming, knitwear is not attracting enough costumers. This phenomenon ... has pressured us to stop our production."

Aussie imam: Global warming is Allah's revenge for secularism.

Terry Root, Stanford University: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The U.N.: North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Brothel owner: Global warming hurting business

Apparently, I'm not the only one cataloging the hype. John Brignell's is much longer.

Earlier:

Frontline Magazine: "American lifestyles are creating a climate holocaust."

University of Sydney: "Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar."

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."

Shades of '1984'

Is this kid anything other than brainwashed?

Interesting Reading

Scientists who have reversed their opinion on global warming.

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

There have been so many since the last installment, but the latest definitely needed to be bookmarked for posterity.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF): 'We have five years to save the planet'

The UK's Stern Report: Global warming will worsen gender inequality, lead to forced marriages.

Turkish textile company: "Due to global warming, knitwear is not attracting enough costumers. This phenomenon ... has pressured us to stop our production."

Aussie imam: Global warming is Allah's revenge for secularism.

Terry Root, Stanford University: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The U.N.: North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Brothel owner: Global warming hurting business

Apparently, I'm not the only one cataloging the hype. John Brignell's is much longer.

Earlier:

Frontline Magazine: "American lifestyles are creating a climate holocaust."

University of Sydney: "Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar."

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."

'Intellectual Pigmies'

One of the smartest guys alive, George Gilder, author of "Wealth and Poverty" and now something of a microchip genius, weighs in on Al Gore and his horror flick, "An Inconvenient Truth":

The disabling flaw of the Al Gore movie is that nearly all the details (Kilamanjaro, the Chad lake, the spread of diseases and on and on) dissolve as soon as you investigate them. (It’s been colder than usual on Kil; the lake is a few feet deep and disappears cyclically; the diseases are unrelated to GW.)

The key to his scientific argument is the famous Academy Award extrapolation of CO2 increases to the skies, as dramatized by his elevator lift scene.

But far from an exponential, CO2 does not even have anywhere near a linear impact on temperatures. If he compared the increase in CO2 not to existing CO2 but to the gyrations of other greenhouse gasses, particularly water vapor, which is 130 times more voluminous, he would have had to crawl along the bottom of the chart with a magnifying glass.

The idea that CO2, which is absorbed by plants and sustains them (to the extent of a 28% increase in foliage in recent years), is a pollutant of any kind will be regarded by future scientists as the looniest notion of our increasingly innumerate media culture. Nick Tredennick did a great short essay on this. (See http://blog.gildertech.com/index.php?/archives/13-Aliens-Global-Warming.html)

As Richard Feynman pointed out about adjectival "sciences," environmental science probably isn't. It's science for rich upper class dummies like Bobby Kennedy and Sharon Rockefeller who think they should be able to push around current wealth creators because their own wealth is "well seasoned" by time and refined by Ivy "liberal arts." They themselves are intellectual pigmies compared to their forbears in business whom they depend on for their trust fund support and disdain in politically correct fatuities.

Link here (2nd item)

Saving the World One Tax Hike at a Time

In car-obsessed California, one lawmaker wants to penalize those who drive the wrong kind, the San Jose Mercury News reports:

Call it the Robin Hood approach to global warming. California drivers who buy new Hummers, Ford Expeditions and other big vehicles that emit high levels of greenhouse gases would pay a fee of up to $2,500.

And drivers who buy more fuel-efficient cars - like the Toyota Prius or Ford Focus - would receive rebates of up to $2,500, straight from the gas-guzzlers' pockets.

That's the provocative proposal from a Silicon Valley legislator whose "Clean Car Discount" bill is gaining momentum, sending car dealers into a tizzy and sparking passions among motorists.

Why? It's the first time California has considered penalizing consumers to limit global warming, rather than just providing incentives such as solar power rebates or special access to the carpool lane for hybrid vehicles.

"If we are going to effectively fight global warming, we are going to have to find a way to get the cleaner cars on the road and the dirtier cars off the road," said Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos. "We need to have both carrots and sticks."

Ruskin's bill, AB493, won approval of the Assembly Transportation Committee two weeks ago.

A Few Must-Reads

-- The Washington Post, hardly a lapdog of the president, absolutely eviscerates Madam Speaker Pelosi's diplomatic adventures in Syria.

-- In a "loosely scientific" analysis, Radar details The New York Times' top 10 most error-prone reporters. In rather biting fashion, to boot.

-- Robert Tracinski says the Supreme Court ruled Monday that "the EPA is obliged to treat every substance on earth as a pollutant to be regulated, unless it can demonstrate why that substance is not a pollutant." Well, just the ones involved in any part of the economy, anyway.

The Supremes' Green Dreams

Five members of the Supreme Court ruled Monday that an unelected federal bureaucracy must regulate -- or, failing that, explain clearly why it will not -- the emission of carbon dioxide, a gas that human beings exhale with every breath. How this will play out is anyone's guess.

The Wall Street Journal speculates:

The ruling means the EPA must regulate automobile emissions unless that agency can show the science of global warming, or the potential harm it may cause, are too uncertain to justify action. The Bush EPA will no doubt be sued whatever it does. Congress will also dive in with more regulation, if only to clear up the legal uncertainty.

Cato's Patrick Michaels expounds on the ruling's ominous implications:

The implications may be quite staggering. The decision means that carbon dioxide qualifies as a 'pollutant', something that causes net harm. This surely will open up a massive number of subsidiary cases. What levels of carbon dioxide emissions, if any, are allowed without being labeled pollutants? There is very little in our society that does not have some relationship to the production of carbon dioxide. Make no mistake -- we have now entered the era where the courts will enter into almost every aspect of our lives.

The last I checked, the Constitution was designed specifically to prevent unaccountable, distant bureaucracies from imposing rules on Americans. Yet the EPA has essentially just been given a green-light to control every facet of American life. This can't be constitutional.

Then again, what do I know? I'm not a Supreme Court justice.

Related commentary:

Jonathan Adler: Hot Times in the High Court
The Wall Street Journal: Jolly Green Justices
Henry Payne: The Green Supremes

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

It's hard to keep up, but here's an updated list.

The UK's Stern Report: Global warming will worsen gender inequality, lead to forced marriages.

Turkish textile company: "Due to global warming, knitwear is not attracting enough costumers. This phenomenon ... has pressured us to stop our production."

Aussie imam: Global warming is Allah's revenge for secularism.

Terry Root, Stanford University: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The U.N.: North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Brothel owner: Global warming hurting business

Apparently, I'm not the only one cataloging the hype. John Brignell's is much longer.

Earlier:

Frontline Magazine: "American lifestyles are creating a climate holocaust."

University of Sydney: "Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar."

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."

'The Great Global Warming Swindle'

I haven't had time to watch this documentary in full, but reliable sources inform it's well worth watching:

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

"American lifestyles are creating a climate holocaust," says Frontline, India's "national magazine," in its March 9th issue.

Earlier:

University of Sydney: "Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar."

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."

TREND WATCH: Overselling Global Warming

Today, the University of Sydney announced: Global warming will cause children's fevers to soar.

Earlier:

Science Direct: "Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide."

Al Gore: "We face a challenge in the conservation of democracy that we must be up to in order to save the climate balance on which our civilization depends."

Christian Aid: "Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now."

James Hansen, NASA scientist: "We have less than 10 years."

James Lovelock, climatologist: "The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of people's lives ... A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Woods Hole Research Centre: "The Amazon rain forest could become a desert."

British government: "40 percent species face extinction."

Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden: "Two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century."

The UN: "One quarter of world's mammals face extinction within 30 years."

Chris Thomas, conservation biologist: "By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction."