Global Warming Update

I love the global warming issue because even as the cause becomes more and more ridiculous, the advocates just double down again and again.  When you think they should be looking to climb down gracefully and hope nobody would remember to associate their names with this scam, instead they become ever louder and more extreme and more shrill in their demands.  The end game is going to take a long time, and be a lot of fun.

On March 8 one Shaun Marcott, a new Ph.D. at Oregon State University, and other authors, published in Science a new reconstruction of temperatures over the last 11,300 years.  The reconstruction was based largely on cores from undersea sediments, and showed a strong 20th century uptick, thus appearing to vindicate, at least in part, the famous and discredited "Hockey Stick" graph of Michael Mann et al.  The article promptly got a lot of publicity.

It took Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org just over a week to completely demolish the article, in a series of posts from March 13 to March 19.  By March 31 Marcott et al. had posted a "FAQ" about their article at realclimate.org, admitting that the 20th century portion of their reconstruction "is not statistically robust [and] cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes."

Meanwhile, the real news in the field of climate is the refusal, now for over 15 years, of global temperatures to increase, even as atmospheric CO2 continues to soar.  The data are easily available, for example here from the UAH satellite temperature series.  Sooner or later somebody has to notice.  Well, for example, the Economist magazine, long a group thinker of global warming alarmism, is starting to notice, and published  a long article in the March 30 edition beginning the attempt at graceful climb down.

[A]s an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before.

And at the Financial Post in Canada, long skeptical environmental columnist Lawrence Solomon writes on April 13 to welcome to the ranks of the skeptics, along with the Economist,  Die Zeit of Germany and its top (and very green) columnist Harald Martenstein.

But in a world badly in need of the humor coming from people making fools of themselves, the super-environmentalist Bill McKibben of Middlebury College in Vermont and of the web site 350.org obliges by choosing this time to launch a massive campaign to get university endowments to divest from investment in fossil fuel companies.  McKibben is the non-scientist former writer for the New Yorker who chooses to make a career lecturing everybody else on how they are destroying the planet by using fossil fuels.  He doesn't know a thing about the subject matter, but he must have some personal charisma or something, because it is remarkable how many in the environmental movement are completely willing to follow him over the cliff of the global warming scam and take the whole movement with them. 

According to the Yale Daily News here, McKibben's divestment campaign "has spread to 252 college campuses, including most of the Ivy League" as of February 8.  Vassar is one of the colleges most deeply in the grip of the hysteria, and you really need to read some of the stuff to understand the powerful religious fervor of these people.  From the February 27 Vassar Miscellany News, by Gabe Dunsmith and Erin Boss: 

Divestment from fossil fuels promises to bring about a people-powered transition to a sustainable world.  Though the atrocities of fossil fuel may seem far from our campus, Vassar's endowment, like that of so many other institutions, is invested in corporate conglomerates like BP, Exxon, and Halliburton. . . .  Perhaps most importantly, divestment is a fight for justice. It brings Vassar students one step closer to the communities that the fossil fuel industry decimates. . . .  After all, the brunt of the climate crisis will be felt in communities that are already silenced and oppressed.

You mean you didn't know that the landowners of northern Pennsylvania were "silenced and oppressed" by the fracking boom?  Of course, the kids who write this stuff have never gone more than a day or two in their lives without electricity, they fly and drive wherever they want, they have plenty of heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, and computers and smartphones and everything else you can think of.  I wonder how many of them are prepared to give all that up.  My bet is zero.  You may think you have to be smart to get into these fancy schools, but not really very smart.

Climateers Making Fools Of Themselves

There's a great round-up today on the web site called RealScience (written by Steven Goddard) titled Settled Science Update:  Global Warming Means More Snow, Less Snow, Record Snow And No Snow.

Back in the heyday of the global warming scare, many warmists made the obvious prediction that warming would mean less snow.  Many of them went even further and predicted the disappearance of meaningful snowfall in places like England within not many years.  Then, of course, the last few years have seen above normal and even record snowfall in these very places.  Obviously, that must be caused by global warming too!  If you think I must be kidding, I followed some of the links at Goddard's site to come up with a few of the best quotes.

From Charles Onians in the Independent, March 20, 2000:

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. . . . .Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. . . . .  However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event.  Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

CRU, of course, is not nowhere in the climate wars, but rather home of Hockey Team leader Phil Jones, the CRU temperature series, and the Climategate e-mails.

Well, it seems that recent winters have turned out to be unusually cold and snowy in England and, for that matter, over the Eurasian continent.  To find the explanation, you'll have to go to Clive Cookson in FT Magazine on January 20, 2012, summarizing a recent scholarly article in Environmental Research Letters by lead author Judah Cohen and others.  

The past two decades have seen strong warming during the summer and early autumn over the Arctic, which has caused unprecedented melting of sea ice. The result is more moisture in the atmosphere, which, in turn, results in increased precipitation over the northern Eurasian continent . . .  [A]verage October snow cover over Eurasia – and particularly Siberia – has grown since 1988. . . .  The effect of increased autumn snow cover is to intensify the seasonal cooling of the Eurasian continent and strengthen the area of high pressure that forms over Siberia in the winter. As a result the Arctic Oscillation, the atmospheric pressure pattern in the mid-to-high latitudes, is more likely to be in the “negative phase” that feeds cold polar air across the eastern half of the US and northern Europe.  “In my mind there is no doubt that the globe is getting warmer,” says Judah Cohen, lead author of the paper.

Got that?  Don't you see how obvious it is that warmer temperatures mean more snow, rather than less snow?  I wonder if anybody has told Viner or Jones.  Or for that matter our president, who still doesn't know that the climate campaign has collapsed into foolishness and thinks that he has the power to control the weather by pricing the poor out of the energy market.

The Next Four Years -- Looks Like The War On The Economy Will Continue

Four years into a pitiful economic recovery, what are the prospects for the next four?  In the last four years, the government footprint in the economy has gone up by 4 - 5% of gdp -- no sign that that is going to go down any time soon.  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continue to increase at rates far in excess of overall economic growth, with no good prospect of reform.  Taxes on the top producers have just gone up.  But the U.S. economy is a huge and remarkably resilient engine.  Can't it get going and outrace these things?  

If you were thinking of getting your hopes up, consider this from Obama's second inaugural address:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

And this wasn't just buried somewhere.  From all indications, it appears that he intends to make it the signature initiative of his second term.

There were no policy specifics mentioned.  However, every policy idea that has ever been on the table as to "climate change" has two essential features:  (1) it attempts to decrease the use of carbon-based energy either by direct prohibition or by raising the price, and (2) its effect on total world use of carbon energy, given rapid increases in third world use, cannot have any but completely negligible effect on world temperature, even if you believe that more atmospheric CO2 will increase temperatures.

Over at the Washington Post's wonkblog, Steve Plumer has a list of policies that Obama might try:  have EPA force the closing of coal-fired power plants (sure to raise the price of electricity); force the use of more "renewable" energy (costing a multiple of carbon-based energy); back to cap and trade (specifically intended to raise the price of energy to force the people to use less, aka intentional impoverishment of the people).  Or how about a really high, really regressive "carbon tax"?  Maybe that will "save the planet" by forcing the low income people to stay home and keep their homes heated to only 50 degrees.  Or how about a few more billions -- make it trillions! -- for renewable energy subsidies?  Of course, the renewables can't possibly compete with fossil fuels on equal terms, so when the subsidies end, all of the wind and solar producers go out of business the next day.

Meanwhile, it's been fifteen years since world temperatures have increased -- fifteen years in which carbon emissions from the third world and former third world (China, India) have soared.  One would think that the climate campaigners by this time would be looking for a way to climb down inconspicuously and slink away before they make themselves look even more ridiculous.  Nope, they're doubling down.

In the old days the government thought it was its business to make electricity available and inexpensive.  From the 1930s to 1990s we had the Rural Electrification Administration, that handed out big grants to bring carbon-based electricity to every farm in America.  What happened to that?  Well, no Federal bureaucracy ever goes away.  In 1994 they turned it into the Rural Utilities Service.  According to allgov.com, that agency dispensed some $9 billion from 2002 - 2012.  And one of the key missions?  Making electricity less expensive in rural areas!  Here's a press release from December 19, 2012: 

USDA ANNOUNCES FUNDING TO HELP REDUCE ENERGY COSTS IN REMOTE, RURAL AREAS

Well, nobody ever said the government had to be consistent.  The point is to pass out money and to make yourself look like the sugar daddy.

Anyway, everything about "climate change" policy is a war on the efforts of entrepreneurs to make the economy more productive and efficient, and the people wealthier.  So what is the chance of the economy improving any time soon?

More (State) Government Wealth Destruction: The LIPA Follies, Continued

From today in Crain’s New York Business, (may be behind a pay wall)  the headline “LIPA to require state bailout.”  LIPA would be the Long Island Power Authority, purveyor of the highest-priced electricity in the lower 48.  I like the term “require,” like there’s nothing we can do about it.  It’s just a law of nature!

In fact what we have going on is serious wealth destruction, $7 billion or so, by a succession of New York governors, Democrats Cuomo pere et fils, as well as the intervening Republican Pataki.  (What, we can’t blame this one on Spitzer?  Surprisingly, no; although if he had gotten a chance to weigh in on it he clearly would have gotten it wrong.)

It seems that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his recent State of the State address, proposed to “abolish” LIPA. 

“It has never worked,” he said. “It never will.” But analysts believe that persuading a private company to buy the much-maligned utility would require the state to assume at least $4 billion of LIPA's $7 billion in debt. A sale would then trigger nearly $1billion in additional costs: early-termination fees paid to bondholders, as well as penalties for the derivatives contracts that would suddenly become void, according to people who have studied a privatization.

Who could have seen it coming that LIPA would never work?  Just a brief review of the history (more detail in my previous post here and at Wikipedia here):  From about 1973 to 1985, Long Island’s then-private utility LILCO built a nuclear power plant at Shoreham at a cost of about $6 billion.  When it was fully built and ready to operate, then new Governor Mario Cuomo, bowing to strongly expressed nuclear fears of the Long Islanders, decided to block the opening by refusing to cooperate in the development of an emergency evacuation plan.  The opening was blocked, and now Long Island had spent $6 billion with no electricity to show for it.  That $6 billion (plus some accumulated interest) is the hole we are still trying to deal with.  Cuomo pere came up with the idea of transferring much of the cost of the plant to other New York taxpayers, and to Federal taxpayers, by creating a “public” utility for Long Island that could issue tax exempt bonds.  That would be LIPA.  Of course, they didn’t have the people actually to run a complex utility, so LIPA was set up as the thinnest of possible shams to claim the tax exemption – nothing but a board of directors with all the real work subcontracted to private utility operators.  It took until 1998, in the administration of Pataki, to finally get LIPA up and running and all the debt refinanced into tax exempt bonds.

But even though the interest rates were somewhat lowered, Long Island still had the now $7 billion of debt and also had to buy its electricity elsewhere.  Not hard to see why it has the highest electric rates in the country.  It also had a utility consisting of nothing but a political board with no idea how to produce or deliver electricity, and a mission to come up with electricity free both from all risks and all costs.  Not possible. They pretended to solve that by skimping on maintenance.  Then came Hurricane Sandy.  The next-to-no maintenance thing didn’t work out so well.

Meanwhile, how dangerous is nuclear power really?  The worst recent nuclear accident is the one at Fukushima, Japan in 2011.  How many people died from radiation as a result of that?  Believe it or not, not a single death there has been definitively attributed to radiation so far, although an unknown number of cases of cancer could develop in the future.  Here is the Wikipedia entry:

A few of the plant's workers were severely injured or killed by the disaster conditions (drowning, falling equipment damage etc.) resulting from the earthquake. There were no immediate deaths due to direct radiation exposures, but at least six workers have exceeded lifetime legal limits for radiation and more than 300 have received significant radiation doses. Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima have ranged from none to 100.

Meanwhile we accept tens of thousands of deaths per year from automobile accidents without complaint and, indeed, barely noticing it.  Also, the people of Westchester accept (reluctantly) the risk of the Indian Point nuclear plant, that supplies about 25% of the electricity for New York City.  Our current Governor also is trying to close that one down.  Oh, and he continues a hold on drilling for natural gas within the state by the “fracking” method.  So what exactly is the method of producing electricity that he and his supporters will allow?

You will not be surprised that I do not have a lot of sympathy for the Long Islanders here (who let their way overblown fears get the better of them and now would like others to pay the cost), nor for the Governors who go along with and indeed lead this vast wealth destruction.  Sorry, but this is not the problem of the rest of the New York taxpayers, let alone the Federal ones.

Here’s a picture (from 2010) of the Shoreham power plant, still sitting there idle after all these years.

The Climate Campaign Becomes Ever More Bizarre

Yesterday our official weather and climate bureaucrats, NCDC, came out with a big press release:  NCDC Announces Warmest Year on Record for Contiguous U.S.!!!!!!!  OK, the exclamation points are mine, but you can sense the excitement in their words.  Finally, the definitive proof of global warming!  (By the way, for those who don't know, NCDC is the National Climatic Data Center, a part of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is in turn part of the Commerce Department.)

The story was immediately picked up by the press and given full play.  In the print edition of today's New York Times, it's three of the six columns in the middle of the front page at the top, complete with a big color map.  Headline:  Not Even Close: 2012 Was Hottest Ever in U.S.  Note that the word "contiguous" got disappeared from that headline.  Not good, New York Times.  (They did get the word "contiguous" back into the text of the story.)  In the print Wall Street Journal, there's a squib on page 1 followed by a full article on page A4.

It certainly sounds like something significant on its face.  Why am I just a suspicious guy?  That word "contiguous," so conveniently omitted in the New York Times headline, just catches my eye.  Could they really have left out Alaska and Hawaii?  Now Hawaii is kind of small, only 10,000 or so square miles, or well less than 1% of U.S. land area.  But Alaska is 663,300 square miles -- that's about 17.5% of the total U.S. land area, plenty to swing the result.  These people are climate campaigners.  They would not have omitted Alaska if including Alaska would lead to the same result.  The Manhattan Contrarian smells a rat.

So what went on temperature-wise in Alaska in 2012?   A little Google search promptly turns up this article from the January 3, 2013 Alaska Dispatch:   Brrrrrrrr!  Last year coldest in three decades for Anchorage.  And you probably thought it was going to be warm but just not a record.  Nope, coldest in thirty years.

But that's just Anchorage.  How about the rest of Alaska?  Well, in the Alaska Dispatch of December 23, 2012 we have this article:   Forget global warming, Alaska is headed for an ice age.  Excerpt:

In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit

That's a "large value for a decade," the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said in "The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska."

The cooling is widespread -- holding true for 19 of the 20 National Weather Service stations sprinkled from one corner of Alaska to the other, the paper notes. It's most significant in Western Alaska, where King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula saw temperatures drop most sharply, a significant 4.5 degrees for the decade, the report says.

Sure enough, it's the whole state.  And would this swing the result for the United States?  Of course it would.  Now getting an average temperature for something like the United States is not a straightforward exercise (do you weight different stations differently depending on how far apart they are?) but I think we can be absolutely certain that if NCDC got the same result including Alaska then it would have included Alaska.

And what that means is that you can't trust a single word that NCDC or NOAA say on the subject of climate.  They are selectively cherry-picking data to convince you that they have a dramatic result when in fact they have nothing and are just propagandizing for more Federal dollars for themselves.

And how about the New York Times?  I'm sorry, but I can't forgive leaving out the word "contiguous" in the headline, and I can't forgive not mentioning the Alaska result in the story.  Was the omission of Alaska a mistake based on ignorance, or was it intentional?  If the first, it would show that the New York Times reporter knows nothing about his subject and is unable to ask the most obvious questions.  No, this is Justin Gillis, lead guy on the climate beat at the Times and a committed climate campaigner.  Thus, we are left with the conclusion that the article is just a deliberate attempt to propagandize and deceive the readership.

And by the way, the highly accurate satellite temperature data for the entire world are also available.  These data only exist for the 33 years from 1979 to 2012, but at least we can get an indication whether 2012 is somehow out of line.  Here are the data from UAH.   OK, 2012 is in about the top third, but well down from the peak in 1998.  No dramatic story there.