The Cruel Fuel

Biofuels: burning food to power our vehicles. Whose bright idea was that? 

When it comes to climate change the foresight of our leaders is about as good as the models they use to predict the future of the climate in 2100. In their infinite wisdom they agreed to mandate that 10% of our gasoline be made of ethanol. Ethanol is made from crops such as corn, sugar cane and potato. We are burning food to power our motor vehicles. In a world with over 7 billion people it is estimated that about 1.4 billion live in poverty. Will these people be thrilled to learn that while they find it hard to get enough food to eat developed nations are growing food not to sustain their bodies but to sustain their transportation? Biofuels deflect crop production from food to fuel. This means that food prices will rise as the supply of food is decreased. Pop goes the corn price. This affects poor people disproportionately to their income. Gas prices will also be adversely affected.

This inane policy came about because the world incorrectly came to believe that the burning of fossil fuels was causing the globe to warm up because of extra CO2 put in the atmosphere. CO2 is believed to be a heat trapping gas that causes the world to warm irrevocably and that if we do not stop we will become human fricassee. Global warming  was expected to lead to higher temperatures and more severe droughts. Neither is the case but that does not mean that droughts will vanish as summer 2012 in North America shows. They are a recurring phenomenon.  And when they do occur crops will be affected and food prices will rise. So poor people are whacked again by more expensive food: first by the diversion of crops for biofuel and then by drought.

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So, while biofuel policy was enacted to save the world from global warming it has instead harmed the poor by diverting crop production from food to transportation. Rising temperatures have not materialized and while droughts still occur in the world the trend is not toward more severe events. Biofuels have turned out to be a misanthropic policy. Biofuels are a subsidized industry which forces different branches of the government to spend unnecessarily for their transportation. Higher taxes and higher debt for our descendants.

The production processes used in biofuel generation also produce harmful emissions that counteract their questionable benefits.

The war on CO2, a trace gas essential for life on earth, is a misinformed attack on the fossil fuel industry by those who are more interested in world government than in the health of their fellow humans.

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention....and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose." ~ Club of Rome

In short, we should be putting more CO2 into the atmosphere for our friends, the flora. More trees, more flowers, more food.  All good. There already is a common enemy of humans - several of them that do not have to be invented - disease and starvation come to mind. Can we not rally around those problems? Good food makes us healthier and better able to fight off disease. More CO2 in our atmosphere would go a long way toward assisting our goal to help our fellow humans. Global governance not required. Freedom will better serve the purpose. Free countries produce a food surplus. We do not lack for food in our grocery stores. Those that starve have governments where rule of law is weak or exist where war disrupts or destroys the normal activities of everyday life. Food production can be sufficient to avoid starvation but people need strong democratic governments to provide the structure so people can prosper. The ethanol mandate should be abandoned.

Klare Scare - He's Unaware

Michael Klare has penned a misanthropic fear mongering piece at tomdispatch.com. We are told of apocalyptic fantasies because the earth is heating exponentially. Proof please? No reference. After all, it is common knowledge. Who could deny it?

CO2 may be increasing exponentially but temperatures are not. Some long time records indicate recent cooling.

People in Alaska or Antarctica may wish to dispute it.

Kinda takes the GLOBAL outta global warming doesn't it?

Mr Klare mentions the ominously capitalized Great Drought of 2012 but does not admit the far worse Dust Bowl years of the 1930s into evidence. Is that fair?

Mr Klare warns us to expect that drought induced rising food prices will lead to social conflict. This he attributes to global warming inducing more droughts all over the world. And yet, when statistics on droughts are gathered and examined it is learned that droughts around the world are becoming less frequent and severe. It is easy to be misled by your observations, feelings and beliefs when you are making that argument from the midst of the current drought. Scientists have always seemed a bit confused on what causes droughts.

Mr Klare seems unaware that temperatures have cooled over the last 15 years when he asks:  "And what can we expect in the future, as the warming gains momentum?"

Mr Klare claims that heatwaves are becoming more frequent due to global warming and cites several references in support of that assertion. Either he is ignorant that there are contravening studies or prefers to ignore the fact. Is Mr Klare unaware?

Contrary to what Mr Klare believes wildfires are not becoming more frequent. 2012 has been particularly quiet.

Rising sea levels are another scary scenario for Mr Klare. He needn't worry. 

Mr Klare is wrong about all of his weather concerns: "When we think about climate change (if we think about it at all), we envision rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, freakish storms, hellish wildfires, and rising sea levels"

As CO2 concentration rises these instances of severe weather are on the decrease. 

Can we stop burning food to power our vehicles now?

That might help to curtail the food riots that Mr Klare is expecting to increase in number as global warming proceeds unabated. Food riots may increase but they will have nothing to do with rising temperatures which aren't.  With CO2 on an exponential increase we won't be running out of food.

CO2 is GREEN and we need more of it.

Summer in July is Often Hot

James 'adjust the data' Hansen is making a mockery of Climate Science with his recent PNAS paper and NOAA continues the farce with its claim that July 2012 was hotter than July 1936 in the US. Some predicted it and  were ready for it.

This cartoon deserves the widest circulation possible. People who can't see their own folly often get mocked.
Hansen provides a field day for skeptics like cartoonist Josh who has a finely tuned sense of humour and an artistic flair.

Hansen's claims have been addressed in many places around the Net.

See here at Watts Up With That. And here. And here.

See Steven Hayward's column at Powerline here.

Read about Climate Distortion from warmist Cliff Mass here.

Mike Smith compares Hansen's predictions with reality here.

Dr Roy Spencer weighs in here

Dr John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville has this to say. 

Dr. Pat Michaels responds here.


It seems that Dr Hansen has mistitled his article in the Washington Post. It should read 'Climate Change Data Manipulation is here-- and worse than we thought'

 

 

 

Harry Kari

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  ~ H.L. Mencken

So Harry Reid wants to keep us alarmed about the early cherry blossoms (Sakura in Japan) in Washington this spring. Harry speaks without scrutiny but not without criticism.

It is always fun to witness a pompous politician publicly skewer himself with a display of ignorance and logic befit for a buffoon. Senator Harry Reid graciously, although unintentionally, provided such comic relief with his pronouncement that Nature has shot down those who doubt man-made global warming by insinuating that early blooming cherry blossoms herald the arrival of CAGW in Washington in the spring of 2012. By that logic then the late blooming SAKURA in Japan in spring 2012 must announce anthropogenic global cooling in that country.

In Washington D.C they have bloomed early in March 2012. The Huffington Post has blamed this on global warming.

In Japan, due to a particularly cold winter their famed cherry blossoms will be late bloomers this spring(2012). Is this the climate change canary for global cooling? HuffPo logic would seem to lead to this conclusion.

So, let me get this straight. In different parts of the world in the same year in the same month cherry blossoming is a canary in the coal mine for both global warming and global cooling. And both conditions are supposed be caused by too much human induced CO2 in the atmosphere and nothing else? CO2 is truly a magical gas.

Can we conclude that there was an overabundance of CO2 in Washington and a dearth in Japan? Who arranged for that? Has anyone got the numbers?

CO2 can do to the climate anything, anywhere, anytime.  The perfect explanatory variable: CO2 did it!

Or maybe this is a better explanation.

Real-Science.com has found that the cherry trees in Washington bloomed in October back in 1941.  Here is the 2011 bloom watch. They were early in 1946 and 1945 as well. (You will have to block the pop-up on Stephen Goddard's co-opted site to see these last 3 links.) Paul Homewood points out the ebb and flow of flora in response to climate change of the recent past. Early or late cherry blossoming is nothing new. Its alarming nature is a figment in the imagination of Harry Reid.

In 2012 they were in full bloom by Mar 20. In 1990 and 2000 Sakura occurred earlier than that.

It seems Washingtonians are used to weird cherry blossom behavior.

Harry's staff have failed to prevent their boss from committing verbal harikari on the CAGW issue.Would Harry like to recant?

Global Warming in Greenland

Jeff Masters over at the Weather Underground noticed that in July 2012 the temperature at the Summit Camp in Greenland blasted above freezing for 5 days in a row. This was some kind of record. The Summit is the coldest place in Greenland and averages -10C in the summer. Warmists like to point out anomalies that support their view that the Earth is warming and 5 days of above zero temperatures at the Summit Camp in Greenland in 2012 when there was a heatwave and drought ongoing in the US apparently is cause for alarm. To their mind's eye it supports the view that the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting due to man made global warming.

The Big House at the Summit Camp was built on stilts so that it could be brought to grade. I wonder how many times the BH has been lowered since its construction. The Ice Sheet adds about a meter of snow each winter. Some WWII planes that went down in Greenland in 1942 were later found in 264 feet of ice. Each summer the periphery of the Greenland ice sheet near sea level melts in the summer sun. Icebergs are often formed as pieces of tidewater glaciers break off at the terminus. In winter the snow accumulates anew atop the ice sheet and pushes the glaciers back into the sea.

Warmists love their hysteria and can't live without it.They manufacture it with tunnel vision that only allows them to see affirming instances of reality. Those events that do not square with their vision are ignored, denied or spun into affirming instances. Reality must conform to their preconceived notion of a warming world.

If unusual warmth in a usually cold place is seen as evidence for a warming world then by that same logic one would suppose that cold in a place where it is usually warm could be interpreted to be evidence of a cooling world. The problem for the warmist is that such events are regular occurrences. Unusual warmth in one place will be offset by colder than normal events somewhere else. Never will you find a time where everyplace on the planet is warming or cooling in unison. In fact, East Antarctica has been cooling for thirty years. Kinda takes the GLOBAL outta of global warming doesn't it? Where's the BEEF?

In 2011, in the driest desert on the planet, the Atacama in Chile, snow dropped from the sky. Evidence of global cooling no doubt. You won't find a warmist blaming heat trapping CO2 in the area for that one. The Sahara received snow in the winter of 2012. That was the first time since 1979. By the logic of the warmist it is more evidence of global cooling. The South Pole on June 24, 2012 set a new record low for that location of -100.8F. Kinda takes the GLOBAL outta of global warming doesn't it? Where's the BEEF?

Warmists were trying to prove something true that cannot be. The whole globe cannot be warming everywhere at once. It doesn't. Look around. Whenever there is a heatwave as in the US in 2012 it is unusually colder elsewhere - UK, Amsterdam, Anchorage, B.C., Washington State, Oregon, Florida, Phoenix. Even winter locations such as Chile, Argentina, N.Z., Australia, Fiji, and South Africa are experiencing a fiercer winter than normal. The cold offsets the heat. Search here.

All facts must be admitted into consciousness in order to formulate a correct theory. That theory must account for all relevant facts. 

The theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) assumes the superiority of one factor as the cause of the Earth's weather/climate - carbon dioxide (CO2). And yet the predictions that flow from that theory are not being reflected in reality. Therefore the theory must be wrong.

Since warmists can't prove global warming they switched to climate change as the dependent variable for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. After all, who could deny that the climate is changing since it always does. Not giving up on their campaign to demonize CO2, a trace gas essential to life on Earth, they claimed that extreme weather events were becoming more frequent and more severe and that CO2 was fueling this trend. Except that humans can count and keep records which can be checked to see if the claim of an increasing trend is true. Most extreme events like severe hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, droughts,  mudslides, hail and avalanches are trending down. And these downward trends are occurring while the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from soccer Moms driving vans and using plastic bags is on the increase. Disconnect.

So where does this leave warmists? Without a case.

But the damage has been done. 'Green' policies have been pursued by industrialized governments who have been made to feel guilty about their CO2 emissions. Alternative energies have been sought and subsidized as a means to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere back to what is considered to be an acceptable level. There is even a web site 350.org that is named for the 'safe' target limit. Governments have pursued wind, solar and biofuels as the primary alternatives to fossil fuels. They have launched an attack on the coal industry as the 'worst offender' and forced the closing of coal fired power plants. As a result of these policies governments find their expenses rising because of subsidies, citizens find both their taxes increasing and their energy costs inflating. This is not beneficial to the less wealthy among us. And that is not the end of it. Our food prices skyrocket because of the mandate that 10% of the gas in our cars must be composed of ethanol which is made from corn. So we are paying more for food because we are burning biofuels in our vehicles. This is exacerbated during times of drought. Whose bright idea was it to burn food in our vehicles? That is a crime against humanity. Whose bright idea was it to subsidize sunrays and breezes and mandate they they supply X% of our energy needs by twenty whatever? Think sailboat and nighttime. These alternative sources of energy are unreliable and expensive. Welcome to sweating and shivering. Unless you are a member of the elite who need fossil fuels to carry on their great work. Think North Korea at night. The leaders have light. Everyone else is celebrating Earth Hour throughout the night. I have often thought that Earth Hour was instituted to get us ready for those days ahead.

Not only do warmists see only events that confirm their bias they do not see the benefits of the molecule that they demonize. Trees, plants and crops love CO2 not to mention corals in the sea. Scientists have documented the benefits of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. They fail to see that CO2 is greening the planet. CO2 is green. In a world of 7 billion people who like to eat, enacting policies that limit plant food is a crime against humanity.

But then 'greens' tend to see humans as evil. There are too many of us that consume too much and we are destroying the Earth. So it is not surprising that population control is on the green agenda. Greens tend to be misanthropes and would not bat an eye if a disease of some sort were to decimate the population. Some, like Prince Philip, even wish for it. Others think eradicating smallpox was a mistake. Could that be why vaccine scares have developed? In the past, finding treatments and cures for the afflictions of humans was seen as a good thing. Anyone who expressed differently would be seen as a monster who wants to commit a crime against humanity. Has something changed?

Greenland is still frozen at the Summit. No golf today.

Why We Need Debate, Not Consensus, on Climate Change

Re blogged from Watts Up With That.

NOTE: This op-ed was rejected by the New York Times. It was submitted as a response by The president of The Heartland Institute in reply to Fred Krupp’s Wall Street Journal essay. I reproduce it here in hopes of it reaching a wide audience. Feel free to reproduce it elsewhere. – Anthony

by Joe Bast

Dear Fred,
I read your August 7 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, “A New Climate-Change Consensus,” with great interest. As you know, The Heartland Institute is a leading voice in the international debate over climate change. The Economist recently called us “the world’s most prominent think-tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.”

Please follow the link to read the balance of this important letter. 

The comments are worth a glance as well.

Why the 97% consensus figure is a hoax.

Mr. Mann

"As the science of climate change becomes increasingly clear and better understood, the climate science denial machine has become nastier and dirtier in its misinformation campaign," Mann explains.

Trouble is Mann can't tell misinformation from information. He lives in a world of self-delusion supported by data manipulated to tell the story he wants and needs to believe. He is not alone.

His continued refusal to admit his errors paint him into a corner or dig him a deeper hole but however you want to characterize it he is preparing his own demise as a serious scientist. James Lovelock saw the error of his ways and courageously switched course and went where the data lead. The consequences of not admitting scientific error is ridicule and ultimately, self destruction. Does Mann realize this? It will be a shame for his family but scientific truth is more important than the individual. May his ego not lead him into darkness. You can get lost there. 

An example of the exact same thing, 'misinformation', that he accuses CO2 climate change deniers of perpetrating has recently appeared in the news. The news media were awash in the great Greenland meltdown of summer 2012 where the temperature zipped above freezing as it sometimes does during the summer and called it unprecedented in the title only to have the body of the report correct that impression with the news that this type of melt happens about once every 150 years. Therefore, not unprecedented.

Now, Michael, who is engaging in misinformation and trying to leave an impression of 'unprecedented' climate change when no such conclusion is supported by the data?

Mr. Mann is adamant that Big Oil is funding the CO2 climate change skeptics. Rather than focusing on the claims being made by the skeptics he prefers to divert attention to their supposed funders - does he have proof? This is a convenient red herring and allows him to deflect criticism of his own work onto another part of his own delusion. Most critics of CO2 induced climate change will point out his errors without charge.

Let us focus on the facts, Michael.

CO2 is increasing, temperatures are not. But greenery is. Plants love it. CO2 is green!
Extreme weather events are not increasing.
Temperatures have been warmer in the past when CO2 was at lower concentrations.
Neither ice sheet is melting in any unprecedented way.
Sea levels are not accelerating. In many places sea level shows no increase.
Climate models are out of sync with reality.

The evidence supports the skeptics. 

CO2 is a minor to non-existent factor in climate change.

We love to scare ourselves to death.
It sells papers and programming so the media love a good scare. High Nielsen ratings attract advertisers.
Some politicians love to save the world and be idolized as heroes. Can't think of anyone in particular. Can you?
Scientists can attract funding by offering to investigate the problem.
Crony capitalists love it. Guaranteed loans and grants and subsidies and bailouts.
Misanthropes can bask in their superiority by bashing humans and their greed.

The truth gets buried and we, the people, get conned.

Until honest people catch onto the scam and fight back. It is a sad state of affairs that such human energy must be expended to combat the lies but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Long live the internet!

Mr Mann, you have no trump left in your hand.