Tag: News

By Christopher Booker
For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend “climate change”. In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.In China, the world’s largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: “In 43 years I’ve never seen anything like the decline we’re looking at in South America.”In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year’s oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year’s food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before. There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades. Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall. It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven’t noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat. It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world’s food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU’s biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn’t persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn’t vote for last week.
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By G.W. Denier, Global Shamming Blog
I truly hope all this hogwash fails like the stupid BS it is! I will not stop eating food that I prefer; I will not stop drinking alcohol. I will not stop driving a gas-powered car. I will not stop eating tomatoes. I will keep using regular light bulbs as long as they’re available. I’ll use the toilet paper that’s necessary. On each Earth Day or Earth Hour, I will turn on every light in my house and run my vehicles in the driveway too.I can’t wait to see this stupidity fail; it has already failed. The media just won’t admit that their propaganda campaign is a disaster. Because their stupid little myth hasn’t taken root. Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu GIVE up lamb roasts and save the planet. Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment. Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions. “Changing our lifestyles, including our diets, is going to be one of the crucial elements in cutting carbon emissions,” said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.Source

By Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore

This would be funny if it wasn’t putting lives at risk:

The Lower Mainland’s health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.’s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints. Critics say the payments mean the government’s strategy to fight climate change [hoax] will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding. “You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency,” NDP health critic Adrian Dix said. “That just doesn’t make sense.” The Fraser Health Authority will pay $616,000 in carbon tax this year, rising to $821,000 next year, officials there said. And by 2010 Fraser will also be paying $1.3 million a year to the province’s Pacific Carbon Trust to offset its projected 52,600 tonnes of carbon emissions released. The trust pays out money to offset projects — for example to help a firm upgrade its industrial heating system so less carbon-based fossil fuel is used. The carbon emissions saved are counted against what the paying arm of government emits. Vancouver Coastal Health Authority also expects its costs will be close to $2 million next year in combined carbon tax and offset payments. Fraser Health officials are grappling with a budget shortfall of more than $100 million and potential cuts to patient services, while low on their list, have not been ruled out. Dix warned that some of the potential cuts — such as closing the ER at Mission Memorial Hospital — would actually increase carbon emissions by sending patients further afield. “Obviously when you shut down regional centres it makes people travel farther to get to their health care facility,” he said.

The rest here.Source

By Pete Chagnon, OneNewsNow

A noted skeptic of “climate change” disagrees with a recent report that the oceans are becoming too acidic. In recent hearings before the Oceans Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, researchers and scientists predicted a dire future for the world’s oceans. According to their research, “manmade climate change” is warming the oceans and increasing the acidity of the water as they absorb more carbon — which they claim, in turn, could destroy the economies of coastal communities. Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted skeptic of manmade climate change who has testified before Congress, edits the Science & Public Policy Institute‘s “Monthly CO2 Report.” He says global-warming alarmists have realized that their predictions are not coming true, so they are resorting to a new scare tactic. “The U.N.’s own reports show very clearly that if the sort of warming that they pretend is going to happen to the oceans does actually happen, then by a very elementary law of gases called ‘Henry’s Law,’ the oceans will out-gas CO2 — just as you’ll find happening with a bottle of Coke if you stand it open in the hot sun,” he explains. “It will start frothing out as the CO2 is out-gassed because, as Henry’s Law operates, the warmer water can’t contain so much CO2.” Monckton contends that the exact opposite will happen if the oceans warm according to the alarmists’ models, resulting in an alkalization — but he contends not enough to harm ocean life. Monckton calls the alarmists’ claims “extravagantly baseless.” SourceH/T: CCF

Hello mainstream media…where are you?

Record low temperatures in 18 states – 6 Jun 09
Record low temperatures in 15 states – 5 Jun 09
Record low max temperatures in 24 states – 5 Jun 09
Record low temperatures in 11 states – 4 Jun 09
Record low max temperatures in 20 states – 4 Jun 09
Record low temperatures in seven states – 3 Jun 09
Record low max temperatures in 10 states – 3 Jun 09

See Record Low Temperatures across the US.

Australia: Cold weather smashes records

A bumper start to the ski season, Canberra frozen, snow over the Melbourne hills, widespread severe frost and records are falling. The cold snap is abating slowly, but not before a final icy sting that has seen records fall across the southeast in the last 24 hours. Frost under clear skies last night was severe in much of the inland, notably Canberra’s -5.8 degrees this morning, their coldest for June in nine years. Yesterday, Thredbo reached a high of -6.4 degrees, the coldest maximum recorded in New South Wales for 31 years. Last night, Cabramurra’s minimum fell to a 12 year low of -6.8 degrees. Coastal locations also felt the cold with Montague Island’s mercury levelling out at three degrees last night, their coldest June night in 37 years. Queenslanders have been feeling the cold too, with frosts pushing through the southern inland. Last night Toowoomba recorded -1 and Coolangatta just 2.2 degrees. Tonight Brisbane is next on the current cold blast’s whirlwind tour of the southeast, a minimum of five degrees is forecast, potentially their coldest June night in seven years.ZIMBABWE:
With the country at the beginning of the winter season that always experiences an increase in the demand of power due to the cold weather, Zimbabweans are headed for the worst winter in the history of the country.

On Monday, all residential areas in Bulawayo did not have electricity, a development that also affected the city’s hospitals.

Already, residents of Bulawayo have lost property to criminals who take advantage of the dark nights to rob them of their belongings.

NEW ZEALAND: Ski resorts gear up for action

Across the ocean at New Zealand, favourable cold weather, consistent snowfalls and plenty of snowmaking opportunities resulted in superb snow conditions for the opening of Coronet Peak on the Queen’s birthday weekend, in Queenstown.

Cold, wet spring hindering farmers and gardeners in Manitoba

Billings, MT – More record-setting cold

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAYS THAT A RECORD LOW MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 47 DEGREES WAS SET AT THE BILLINGS AIRPORT YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD FOR A JUNE SEVENTH OF 48 SET IN 1974.

AND THERE WAS ANOTHER RECORD LOW HIGH TEMPERATURE SET ON SATURDAY. THE MERCURY ONLY REACHED 50 DEGREES ON JUNE SIXTH, BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF 52 SET IN 1945.

Lack of global warming hits Finland

Aatos Kantanen, who lives in Kyyjärvi in Central Finland, rubbed his eyes when he took a look at his outdoor thermometer at 3.00 a.m. during the night between Saturday and Sunday. The reading was – 10°C. Yes, minus 10.

”Several perennials that have never been affected before were killed by the frost in our garden. For example some common hops (Humulus lupulus) got frostbitten, while the bergenias (Bergenia cordifolia) are looking rather bleak, and the garden bushes have suffered as well”, reports Aatos Kantanen’s wife Pirjo Kantanen, speaking over the phone from her garden in Kyyjärvi on Monday evening.
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At the same time, a number of chicks have been found dead in nests as a result of the chilly early summer.

”The smaller the chick and the more open the location of the nest, the more sensitive the young bird is to cold”, reports Teemu Lehtiniemi, the head of conservation and science at BirdLife Finland, the parent organisation of Finnish ornithological societies.
”The cold period has certainly been difficult for terns (Sternidae) nesting on rocky islets and for northern lapwings (Vanellus vanellus) nesting in fields”, Lehtiniemi observes.

H/T: Tom Nelson

AccuWeather’s Joe Bastardi: “the ’science is in’ crowd does not want them to see facts” and parts of US to have “year without a summer” « Watts Up With That?

The NOAA Climate Prediction Center 8-14 day forecast says it is already shaping up to be a cold June…

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow

Romm’s Fairy Tales
Joseph Romm, George Soros’s bulldog at the alarmist climate fantasyland web blog called Climate Progress has a post (h/t Climate Depot) ”NOAA puts out “El Nino Watch, so record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record”. Based on the coming El Nino he hints at upcoming disappointment for climate realists with respect to arctic ice and warmer global temperatures for 2009 and for the decade. Of course he used the bogus NOAA temperatures which have taken the lead in being the most contaminated and exaggerated through station dropout globally, no adjustment for urbanization, a purposeful adjustment up of sea surface temperature warming (compare UNISYS with NOAA satellite), and bad siting (Anthony Watts has identified only 10% of the 948 United States stations meet government’s own standards for siting). The result is nonsense press releases every month like a year ago in June when NOAA proclaimed it to be the 8th warmest June in 129 years with an anomaly of +0.5C, while the satellites that don’t have these surface errors found it to be the 9th coldest in its 30 years of record keeping with an anomaly of -0.11C. This last month University of Alabama MSU global satellite data had an anomaly of just 0.043C. You can count on NOAA, which has become another Mother Goose to tell a different story when they announce the May global numbers with their bogus assessment. Romm who revels in fairy tales, will surely announce the NOAA results.
See larger image here. THE REAL STORY El Nino is coming on very much as it did last year at this time.
See larger image here. But Romm is ignoring it is doing so in a low solar and cool PDO era, with a cooling Atlantic and after a high latitude volcano, all of which project to a cool summer and a cold winter. The cold PDO usually also means a quick and brief El Nino. Years like 1965/66 and 1976/77 had similar conditions. The summer, fall and following winter composite average shown below. BTW, you won’t here mention of the PDO, ENSO is used only because they need it to explain year to year variability, admitting to the PDO would be game set and match for the alarmists as it would me admitting to a factor that explains the two decades of warming from 1979 to 1998, that was used to make CO2 the culprit.
See larger image here. He is making the same mistake James Hansen and the UK met office made in early 2007 during a brief El Nino spike, predicted 2007 would be the warmest on record eclipsing 1998. It instead as El Nino gave way to La Nina had the most rapid cooling of the entire satellite record. IRI has compiled the El Nino model forecasts and most forecast a transition through neutral (La Nada) and many to El Nino. Hansen’s NASA climate model is the warmest (must use the Hansen adjustment techniques). Lets look at some El Ninos using the TAO Triton cross-sections and see how they compare to this latest ocean water temperature pattern. Last year showed a similar summer warming of the tropical Pacific that faded in the fall back to La Nina. Note the similarity in the ocean heat content to June of last year
See larger image here. The last moderate El Nino in 2002 led to a very cold winter in the eastern United States with 6 months of below normal temperatures. It was very similar to this year in June.
See larger image here. The ‘big-daddy’ El Nino of 1997 was much warmer underneath with a strong suppression of the thermocline. Anomalies of greater than +7C compare to the 1-2C anomalies this year. The PDO was in its warm mode in 1997 and the sun was coming back to life strongly both giving the ENSO a boost. The CPC’s prize CFS climate model (Link here CFS.JPG) shows a cool summer, fall and eastern US winter not (winter not unlike 2002/03). Time will tell (and maybe how much recovery in solar activity) whether we go back to normal or continue El Nino through the winter like 2002/03. La Ninas tend to dominate in low solar winters but El Ninos often pop when the solar activity bounces back. In any event, it will be Romm who will be talking to himself when the year is over not the climate realists. Adventures in fantasyland can be so entertaining. Recall early this year when Romm lost a debate to Marc Morano who came to argue the science and Romm like most of his ilk simply deferred to authority (railroad engineer Pachauri’s own work of fiction and NOAA’s silly press releases) and went ad hominem, another favorite tactic of those whose science is bankrupt. See pdf with all images here. Source

By Willem Buiter, Financial Times

In my discussion of the Cap & Trade scheme for carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2E) emissions (greenhouse gases) proposed by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass. (the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009), I argue that the two key issues are (1) the size of the overall quota and (2) the enforcement of the rule that without a permit, you cannot emit. Prima facie, the scheme looks tough. The Discussion Draft Summary of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 reads: “The draft establishes a market-based program for reducing global warming pollution from electric utilities, oil companies, large industrial sources, and other covered entities that collectively are responsible for 85% of U.S. global warming emissions. Under this program, covered entities must have tradable federal permits, called “allowances,” for each ton of pollution emitted into the atmosphere. Entities that emit less than 25,000 tons per year of CO2 equivalent are not covered by this program. The program reduces the number of available allowances issued each year to ensure that aggregate emissions from the covered entities are reduced by 3% below 2005 levels in 2012, 20% below 2005 levels in 2020, 42% below 2005 levels in 2030, and 83% below 2005 levels in 2050.” In fact, the scheme is a total con. It permits the US to increase CO2E emissions until 2020. The escape mechanism used – carbon offsets or carbon credits – suggests that for the period 2020 – 2050 also, the supposed intent of the Act – to reduce CO2E emissions in the US – will be neutered. Provided the secondary markets for permits are efficient, Cap & Trade is equivalent to a tax on CO2E emissions. They both have the same informational requirements for the policy authorities/regulators: the authorities must be able to monitor and measure the actual volume of CO2E emissions. That is not a minor challenge, because there are many sources of CO2E emissions, and many of them are either hard to monitor or too small-scale to warrant the fixed cost of monitoring. That’s why ACES exempts entities that emit less than 25,000 tons per year of CO2 equivalent. So my father-in-law’s barbecue activities will probably be exempt. That is just as well, as his grilled swordfish is to die for. Monitoring and measuring the actual volume of emissions is difficult, but in principle it can be done in a way that can be independently verified. Carbon offsets: a con for our time The ACES bill allows polluters to purchase up to 2bn tonnes a year in carbon “offsets”, over and above the total allowance provided by the permits of the Cap & Trade scheme. This 2bn-tonne annual offset allowance exceeds all the CO2E emission reductions envisaged between now and 2040! As further icing on the environmental cake, many of these offsets could be purchased overseas (and be based on overseas ‘carbon offset operations’), and would therefore not reduce US domestic emissions, even if they reduced overseas emissions (which they probably won’t anyway, as I argue below). What is a carbon offset or carbon credit? A carbon offset or credit is the right to an additional allowance to emit greenhouse gases, which is created by some activity or investment that has reduced carbon emissions, or rather, that is alleged to have reduced carbon emissions, based on some counterfactual, hypothetical scenario. This credit can be sold by the originator to interested parties such as a US utility that wishes to emit more CO2E than the sum of its free allowance and any additional purchases it has made of additional permits in the secondary market for permits. An example is tree planting. Joe Bloggs plants a bunch of trees, say in a re-forestation project in the Amazon jungle. A number is put on the amount of C02 that will be absorbed by these additional trees. This becomes a carbon offset or carbon credit that can be sold by Joe to some avid polluter in America. What’s wrong with this? Nothing, except that the claim about the additional CO2 that will be absorbed by the tree planting project is non-verifiable. Even if we can determine exactly how much CO2 will be absorbed by the re-forested patch of jungle between now and Kingdom Come, we still don’t know what we need to know. What we need to know is how many of these additional trees would have been planted in the absence of the carbon offset or carbon credit scheme. If Joe would have planted the same number of trees in any case, even without the incentive of the revenue from the carbon offsets/credits, the project is not ‘additional’. It gets better. Carbon credits/offsets have been awarded not just for planting trees, but also for not cutting them down. The logic is impeccable – if without the carbon offsets I would have cut down the trees, CO2 absorption would have been lower, so the scheme is additional – but non-verifiable. “Hello, Honey! Busy day again. Been hard at it, not cutting down those trees again. Money’s on the way.” It’s rather like a counterfactual version of the set-asides of US and EU agricultural policy. For carbon offsets or carbon credit schemes to work you don’t just have to monitor and measure actual carbon emissions. You have to be able to monitor and measure carbon emissions in a hypothetical, counterfactual ‘parallel’ universe in which the carbon offset scheme does not exist. We can build mental, mathematical models of that hypothetical, counterfactual universe, but we cannot measure it objectively, the way we can, in principle, measure actual emissions. Controlled experiments are not possible. Natural experiments are likely to be few, far between and of dodgy quality. So how does one establish the degree of additionality of schemes and projects that are proposed as candidates for carbon credits or carbon offsets generating activities or investments? Well, you hire an expert. I know there are honest and incorruptible experts. I also know that there are sufficient numbers of dishonest, corruptible experts who will certify anything for the right price. I fear that any claim to additionality for even the wonkiest carbon-offsets generating project will be certified by some unscrupulous, dishonest expert, agency or business. The shameful recent experience of the rating agencies in the rating of complex structured financial products shows how low experts and professionals will stoop if the price is right. This generalised “trahison des clercs” has produced a vast and growing industry of verifiers and certifiers of candidate carbon offset producing projects, investments and activities. No doubt there are competent, well-intentioned and honest practitioners of the CO2E additionality arts. The problem is, we will never know. We have to take the word of experts and professionals who are exposed to the most naked conflict of interest. There have already been reports of claims for carbon credits/offsets that were so blatantly ridiculous (including the repeated not cutting down on the same patch of hardwood forest). The world will be taken for a massive ride if we don’t kill the whole carbon offsets/carbon credits business outright. The political economy of the birth of this demented carbon credit/offset scheme was the perception in the rich industrial countries that the developing countries had to ‘get something’ out of the war on global warming. Perhaps they should. Carbon credits/offsets, however, are not the way to do it. An elaborate con, employing mainly consultants and specialised businesses from the advanced industrial countries, is not a solid foundation for economic development. Aha! Given the reality that ACES allows CO2E emissions to be increased, effectively indefinitely, some of the more bizarre features of the law make more sense. There is no economic problem (‘just’ a breach of faith) with the fact that Candidate Obama’s election promise that 100 per cent of carbon trading permits would be auctioned off in the carbon market has been scrapped. About 85 per cent of the allowances will be given away to various interested and hard-lobbying parties in the energy sector; local electricity distribution companies are scheduled to receive 35 per cent of the permits. The initial allocation of the permits is a distributional issue, not an efficiency issue. It determines how the scarcity rents created by the permits are allocated. It need not interfere with the efficient abatement of CO2E emissions, as long as the allocation does not depend on current and future planned or expected emission volumes. Even if all permits are given free of charge to the biggest historical polluters, they will have a scarcity value (opportunity cost) to these historical polluters. They can keep them and continue to pollute, or they can sell them in the secondary market for permits. If this secondary market for permits is reasonably efficient (admittedly an untested conjecture), the right signals will be given to ensure that the mandated overall reduction in emission volumes is achieved in the most cost-efficient manner. But what does not make even an ounce of sense in the draft ACES law, is that regulators will be required to ensure that distributors and other recipients of free permit allocations, pass on the full value of these allowances to the consumer. Consumers, whose energy demand is the ultimate cause of the CO2E emissions, will therefore have no financial or price incentive to reduce their energy consumption. The allocations of permits to the energy producers will have no value to these energy producers, because they have to pass the scarcity rents on to the consumers. The result is that the entire permit scheme does not alter the price or quantity constraints faced by any participant in the CO2E scheme. Therefore, emissions will not be reduced. But that is inconsistent with the supposed desire to reduce emissions to 83 percent of their 2005 level by 2020 and to 17 percent of the 2005 level by 2050. Except that is it not inconsistent if there is no intention to reduce emissions at all, but instead every intention to permit them to be raised above their 2005 levels. And that is of course what is going on. A similar sleight of hand can be found in another part of the ACES Act – ‘the renewable electricity requirement’. This begins at 6% in 2012 and gradually rises to 25% in 2025. But the governor of any state may choose to meet one fifth of this requirement with energy efficiency measures. This means that the renewable energy objective is emasculated by allowing power companies to count efficiency savings as part of their renewable energy target. Think about it. Energy savings already get rewarded, because you need fewer CO2E emissions permits. Counting them in addition as a contribution to renewable energy is double counting. Conclusion The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009 is worse than nothing: it is a con and a fraud. It pretends to be a vehicle for reductions in CO2E emissions. In fact it is designed to permit increases in CO2E emissions. Reducing CO2E emissions is painful. America doesn’t do pain any longer. Be it the environmental or the fiscal arena, only painless solutions are politically acceptable and feasible. When there are no painless solutions, problems are allowed to fester and grow until they finally blow up. It is time for America to grow up and to accept that there are problems for which there are no painless solutions.
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