Posted 15 November 2010
In New Zealand, public more skeptical of global warming claims. Read more here
**CCNet - 14 November 2010
The Climate Policy Network
Green Energy Policies Face Collapse In UK & USA
**
Nothing more poignantly reflects the collapse of the great global warming scare than the decision of the Chicago Carbon Exchange, the largest in the world, to stop trading in "carbon" – buying and selling the right of businesses to continue emitting CO2. Despite a series of unconvincing attempts to clear the Climategate scientists, it has become clear that the 20-year-old climate scare is dying on its feet. -- Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 2010
The UK system that encourages green energy development should be scrapped to ensure a new generation of fossil fuel and nuclear power stations, according to one of Scotland’s most senior business leaders. Rupert Soames, the head of temporary power group Aggreko, has called for the abolition of the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) system. --Steven Vass, Sunday Herald, 14 November 2010
The great danger facing the UK’s Energy Policy is that the history of meddling with the markets; the persistence with which we re-iterate unachievable goals for emissions reduction; the wildly optimistic forecasts of the availability, cost and performance of new technology; all these leave the serious investors, the institutions who have the billions we need, shaking their heads. I think the UK is in danger of becoming unattractive as a place to build new infrastructure. We may wish the replacement to be wind, we may wish the replacement to be tidal but wishing isn’t going to make it happen and I think you have responsibly to have a Plan B. We have to move on from the days of holding hands and singing Kumbaya to the great green God. --Rupert Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, Scottish Parliament, 12 November 2010
The problem at the moment is that the electricity price generated by cheap coal and gas is near to £50 per megawatt-hour. It needs to be more like £60 to break even or £80 to be attractive for companies to make the effort to start building expensive, low-carbon nuclear plants. –-Rowena Mason, The Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 2010
Republicans in the new Congress will pose a greater threat to the Obama administration's strategy to regulate greenhouse gas polluters than a plethora of industry lawsuits. President Barack Obama has always said the EPA would regulate carbon emitters if lawmakers failed to pass a climate bill. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in January after winning some 60 seats in the midterm elections, are organizing to stop that from happening. They say the regulations will cost industry jobs and billions of dollars as the country struggles to recover from the recession. --Timothy Gardner, Reuters, 12 November 2010
1) The Climate Change Scare Is Dying, But Do Our MPs Notice?
The Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 2010
2) A Churchillian Warning: Britain's Green Energy Policy Is Completely 'Bonkers'
The Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2010
3) Pressure Growing To Scrap Renewables Obligation
Sunday Herald, 14 November 2010
4) UK Energy Bosses Want Government To Force Up Electricity Prices To Make Nuclear Competitive
The Sunday Telegraph, 13 November 2010
5) Obama's Climate Policy Faces Termination In New Congress
Reuters, 12 November 2010
6) David Henderson: Deutsche Bank’s Green Politics
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 November 2010
7) Peter Foster: The Copenhagen Emissions Gap
Financial Post, 13 November 2010
8) And Finally: A New Consensus
Investor's Business Daily, 13 November 2010
1) The Climate Change Scare Is Dying, But Do Our MPs Notice?
The Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 2010
Christopher Booker
Nothing more poignantly reflects the collapse of the great global warming scare than the decision of the Chicago Carbon Exchange, the largest in the world, to stop trading in "carbon" – buying and selling the right of businesses to continue emitting CO2.
A few years back, when the climate scare was still at its height, and it seemed the world might agree the Copenhagen Treaty and the US Congress might pass a "cap and trade" bill, it was claimed that the Chicago Exchange would be at the centre of a global market worth $10 trillion a year, and that "carbon" would be among the most valuable commodities on earth, worth more per ton than most metals. Today, after the collapse of Copenhagen and the cap and trade bill, the carbon price, at five cents a ton, is as low as it can get without being worthless.
Here in Britain, as the first snows fall, heralding what may be our fourth cold winter in a row, it is time we addressed one of the most glaring political "disconnects" in our sadly misgoverned country.
Next Friday is the first anniversary of the leaking of the "Climategate" emails – the correspondence of a small group of scientists at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). By exposing their manipulation of data and suppression of dissent, these called their reputation as disinterested scientists seriously into question. But that was only the first in a series of events that, in the past year, saw the climate scare going off the rails.
Next month sees the anniversary of the Copenhagen conference – the largest ever held, with upwards of 100,000 people present – which collapsed in an acrimonious shambles, without the treaty that would have landed the world with the biggest bill in history. This was followed by all those scandals surrounding the IPCC itself, hitherto regarded as the supreme authority on global warming. It emerged that the most recent IPCC report was riddled with errors, and that many of its more alarming predictions were based, not on proper science, but on claims dreamed up by environmental activists.
Since then, despite a series of unconvincing attempts to clear the Climategate scientists, it has become clear that the 20-year-old climate scare is dying on its feet. The money draining away from the Chicago exchange speaks louder than all those inquiries – and the same point will be made obvious in a fortnight's time in Cancun, Mexico, as the UN attempts to salvage something from the wreckage at a conference that will draw scarcely a tenth of the numbers that met in Copenhagen.
But to all this deflation of the bubble our political class in Britain remains quite impervious. Our governments in London and Brussels charge on with completely unreal and damaging policies which increasingly look as much of a shambles as the warming scare which inspired them. Scarcely a single politician dares question the Climate Change Act, by far the most expensive law in history, which commits Britain, uniquely in the world, to reducing its CO2 emissions by 80 per cent in 40 years. By the Government's own estimates, this will cost up to £18 billion a year. Any hope that we could begin to meet such a target without closing down most of our economy is as fanciful as the idea that we can meet our EU commitment to generate 30 per cent of our electricity by 2020 from "renewable" sources, such as wind and solar.
It was recently reported that farmers are rushing to cash in on the ludicrous subsidies which could earn them £50,000 a year for covering 35 acres of their fields with solar panels bought from China. These yield, on average, only 8 per cent of their capacity. Last year, all the solar panels in Britain generated an average 2.3 megawatts, barely 1/500th of the output of a single medium-sized coal-fired power station. Yet our Government wants us to pour billions of pounds into this scheme, just when Spain, Germany and Australia have drastically reduced their own solar subsidies, because the billions they lavished on them turned out to be a total waste of money for virtually no return.
Our Government also wants us to pay £100 billion through our electricity bills for thousands more wind turbines over the next 10 years, with another £40 billion to hook them up to the grid. Yet it's predicted that by 2013, thanks to soaring costs and technical problems, orders for turbines will have fallen by 93 per cent.
The EU continues to set targets to power our transport with an increasing percentage of biofuels, when a new report from some of its own advisers finds that meeting its 2020 target will mean taking an area of farmland as large as Ireland out of food production, and that producing biofuels requires up to 167 per cent more energy from fossil fuels than they theoretically save.
None of this, of course, will do anything to save Britain from the looming crisis when the ageing nuclear and coal-fired power stations which supply 40 per cent of our current electricity needs are forced to close. The other night when it was very cold I checked to see how much of our electricity was, at that moment, coming from wind. The answer was 0.1 per cent, or a thousandth of all the power we were actually using to keep our homes lit and warm.
It appears that Chris Huhne, our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is so obsessed with the half of his job relating to climate change that he can happily ignore the other half, to do with keeping the lights on. But Mr Huhne is far from alone. Not a single MP of any party has yet found the courage to mount a properly briefed challenge to all this lunacy. So what do we pay them for?
The Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 2010
2) A Churchillian Warning: Britain's Green Energy Policy Is Completely 'Bonkers'
The Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2010
Simon Johnson
Scotland is in “serious danger” of suffering power shortages over the next decade thanks to Alex Salmond’s “bonkers” green energy policies, the head of one of the country’s largest generators has warned.
Rupert Soames, chief executive of Aggreko, said Scotland’s lights will be “perilously close” to going out because a huge proportion of existing coal, oil and nuclear power stations are due to shut down over the next eight years.
He accused politicians of “holding hands and singing Kumbaya to the great green God” but warned the reality is it will be many decades before renewable energy can plug the gap left by traditional sources of power.
Unless Mr Salmond ends his ‘wishful thinking’ and draws up alternative plans, Mr Soames warned Scotland will be in “deep trouble” by 2018.
But SNP ministers dismissed his claims last night and argued their target of generating 80 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 was realistic, despite the cost and unproven nature of the technology involved.
Mr Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill and brother of the Tory politician Nicholas Soames, was speaking at business conference at the Scottish Parliament.
Although his comments addressed an impending energy crisis across the UK, he suggested the problem is more acute in Scotland. The SNP has refused to allow the construction of new nuclear power stations north of the Border.
“How is Scotland going to react to the fact the national grid, on which we all depend, will lose 30 per cent of its generating capacity by 2013?” he asked delegates.
“We may wish the replacement to be wind, we may wish the replacement to be tidal but wishing isn’t going to make it happen and I think you have responsibly to have a Plan B.
“We have to move on from the days of holding hands and singing Kumbaya to the great green God or believing that Scotland is going to be the centre of the universe for renewables.”
The largest offshore wind farms are actually being built off the east coast of England, he said, which is closer to the major centres of energy demand.
Mr Salmond’s policies fail to recognise “the cold realities” of financing and engineering expensive new forms of green technology, Mr Soames continued.
He warned it will require Scottish politicians to display considerable leadership to “avert a very real energy crisis that will hit us in less than ten years time.”
“My concern is that not the long-term vision is wrong, but policy-making is so focused on the end of the road that you can’t see the giant pothole 300 yards ahead,” he said.
He mocked the ever-increasing climate change targets imposed by politicians – Mr Salmond’s original 2020 green energy target was 50 per cent – as they suggest “all this can be achieved without any consequences, no matter how bonkers the policy”.
Instead he argued the deadlines for existing targets should be pushed back a decade, adding: “We cannot live without electricity and even brief shortfalls would be catastrophic.”
A third of the UK’s energy capacity from coal, two-thirds from oil and nearly three-quarters from nuclear generation will end over the next eight years, he said.
“Without an immediate programme of building new power stations, with concrete being poured in the next two years, we will be in serious danger of lights going out,” Mr Soames said.
Without naming Mr Salmond specifically, he said anyone who believes nuclear power is dispensable and more than 10 per cent of energy will come from the wind, is talking “nonsense” and should be “banned” from formulating energy policy.
Similarly, he argued that it is unrealistic to believe that targets to cut energy consumption by 30 per cent by 2020 can be met, or that tidal power is going to make a “meaningful contribution” in the next 15 years.
Full story
3) Pressure Growing To Scrap Renewables Obligation
Sunday Herald, 14 November 2010
Steven Vass
The UK system that encourages green energy development should be scrapped to ensure a new generation of fossil fuel and nuclear power stations, according to one of Scotland’s most senior business leaders.
Rupert Soames, the head of temporary power group Aggreko, has called for the abolition of the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) system.
Speaking after a controversial speech in the Scottish Parliament on Friday in which he called for carbon reduction targets to be postponed for 10 years, Soames told the Sunday Herald that the current Ofgem review into the future of energy policy needed to ensure a wider energy mix. Failure to do so would, he said, risk ageing power stations closing down or falling foul of the European Large Combustion Plant Directive when it comes into effect by 2015, and could lead to the “lights going out” in the next few years. Soames blames the current UK energy investment climate for the recent decisions by energy companies to postpone new power stations at Kingsnorth (Kent), Baglan Bay (Wales) and Drakelow (Derbyshire). He said: “We need a new market structure that will allow as far as possible a level playing field between renewables, nuclear and thermal power stations so that people can build all three types of technologies.”
Where the ROC rewards electricity supply companies which obtain rising proportions of their power from renewable sources each year, he said this should be replaced by setting a minimum price for hydrocarbon fuels used in power generation at a level at which renewables become attractive, thought to be about $150 (£93) per barrel of oil.
“It means the thermal plants know what they are going to be paying for their fuel. You use the difference between that price and the market price [currently $87] as a levy that then goes to reduce energy consumption.”
He added that you could retain the ROC system for existing renewable energy developments to minimise the upheaval from the changeover.
Soames went on to criticise the SNP Government’s hope that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would be capable of decarbonising power stations. “The idea that CCS is going to be able to contribute significantly to power generation inside of 15 or 20 years is bonkers. People who are not engineers seem to have an unrealistic view of what’s going to be possible,” he said.
Full story
4) UK Energy Bosses Want Government To Force Up Electricity Prices To Make Nuclear Competitive
The Sunday Telegraph, 13 November 2010
Rowena Mason
In interviews with The Sunday Telegraph, the bosses of RWE npower, E.ON UK, EDF Energy, Centrica and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) set out their hopes that the Government’s imminent white paper on the UK market will finally force up the price of electricity enough to make low-carbon nuclear power achievable.
They differ on the best ways to promote new generation, but the consensus is that a “carbon floor price” alone – artificially raising the cost of emissions permits – will not make the economics of nuclear attractive.
Three chief executives favoured capacity payments – paying generators to make their plants available to provide power – and two are keen on a “low carbon obligation” – forcing companies to produce a certain amount of energy from low carbon sources.
Dr Paul Golby, the chief executive of E.ON UK, which is planning to build nuclear power plants with RWE, said: “We absolutely have to have this change because the current market won’t bring forward low carbon investment. We think the carbon floor will be helpful but insufficient on its own. The timing of it needs to be considered because we don’t want to drive out the current coal plants ahead of time.”
He would like to see a low carbon obligation, but is sceptical about capacity payments.
Energy companies are facing significant risks as they decide whether to make the £40bn investment needed for eight new nuclear power stations in a decade.
Full story
5) Obama's Climate Policy Faces Termination In New Congress
Reuters, 12 November 2010
Timothy Gardner
Republicans in the new Congress will pose a greater threat to the Obama administration's strategy to regulate greenhouse gas polluters than a plethora of industry lawsuits.
The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is marching ahead with rules requiring big polluters like coal-fired power plants, oil refiners and cement manufacturers to get permits starting January 2 to emit gases blamed for warming the planet.
President Barack Obama has always said the EPA would regulate carbon emitters if lawmakers failed to pass a climate bill.
Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in January after winning some 60 seats in the midterm elections, are organizing to stop that from happening. They say the regulations will cost industry jobs and billions of dollars as the country struggles to recover from the recession.
The EPA is already under fire from business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, who have filed suits to block it from regulating.
But the lawmakers represent a bigger threat. "Congress doesn't give the EPA nearly as much deference as the courts do, and there are about to be a lot more Republicans and unenthusiastic Democrats," said Michael Gerrard, the director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
The uncertainty about the future of emissions policy could stall billions of dollars of investments in power plants and factories and prove to be a painful hurdle to longer-term growth when the economy begins to recover.
It will also hamper the Obama administration from taking a leading role in annual global climate talks in Mexico that start later this month.
BOTTOM LINE
Even before January, Republicans could add language that would delay the EPA from acting to a short-term spending bill that would fund the government until about February. Next year, they could attach it to longer-term spending bills that would fund the government through September or through fiscal year 2012.
Nobody says it will be easy to do, but the goal of Republicans is to attach language to a spending bill that Obama could not veto because doing so would shut down the government.
Efforts to do that or attach text to other bills stopping the government from funding EPA climate regulation would likely be widely supported in the House.
"The bottom line ... is we're not going to allow (the EPA) to regulate what they cannot legislate," Representative Fred Upton, a contender for chairing the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the Washington Examiner this week.
Representative Joe Barton, Upton's competition for the seat is also against EPA regulation.
Even before Republicans won all those seats, they tried to attach such language to spending bills in the House. An amendment that would have stopped such EPA efforts for two years was blocked by a vote of seven to seven in an appropriations subcommittee last summer.
Republicans in both chambers could also get support from Democrats in states where fossil fuels play an important economic role. Senator John Rockefeller, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia, will likely try to move legislation delaying the EPA from acting for two years.
And with Republicans also winning seats in the Senate, they are seeking more than just a delay.
"Longer term ... we would like to find common ground for a permanent removal of EPA's ability" to regulate carbon, said an aide to a senior senate Republican.
Full story
6) David Henderson: Deutsche Bank’s Green Politics
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 November 2010
In relation to climate change issues, two recent initiatives on the part of the Deutsche Bank Group give grounds for concern.
(1) In September, the Bank's 'Climate Change Advisors' issued a document entitled Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments: it was authored by three climate scientists at Columbia University. In an editorial introduction, the Bank's Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research describes it as “a balanced, detailed and expert assessment of the scientific case for climate change that will help investors navigate these extremely complex issues”.
The document's claims to accuracy as a navigational guide were promptly put in question by Ross McKitrick, one of the 'skeptics' supposedly disposed of within it. McKitrick's paper, entitled Response to Misinformation from Deutsche Bank, is dated 12 September. It identifies and spells out an array of errors and misrepresentations.
In response, the authors of the document have now put out a new text which supersedes the original. In this new version they have added a three-page Response to McKitrick where they admit to a few 'mischaracterizations' and offer amended versions of three sentences that they acknowledge to have been misleading. However, the original wording of these faulty sentences remains unchanged and unfootnoted in an unaltered main text: McKitrick has described this behaviour as 'unsporting', while others might characterise it as unprofessional.
In a second piece, dated 8 November, McKitrick has responded to the revised report. In this paper he extends and reinforces his critique. Viewed together, his twin presentations appear as unanswerable. As a guide to investors, or indeed for any other purpose, the document is worthless.
It would be interesting to know whether the Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted.
Looking at the list, it would seem that so such person is to be found among the eminent individuals who make up the Deutsche Bank's Climate Advisory Board: all appear as people who are (to quote a nice phrase from Clive Crook) 'precommitted to the urgency of the climate cause'. A more representative Board, spanning a wider range of opinions. might have taken more trouble to ensure that any published work issued under its auspices would measure up to professional standards.
(2) In the recent Californian elections, voters were invited to accept or reject Proposition 23, which would have placed strict constraints on the state government's plans to introduce further curbs on CO2 emissions. A few days before the vote, a Financial Times report noted that:
'Sixty-eight big investors, managing $415bn in assets, have united to urge Californians to vote against efforts to roll back the state's carbon legislation ... Signatories include ... Deutsche Bank Climate Advisers ...'
If this report is correct, it would seem that its Climate Advisory Board took a strong position on the Bank's behalf on a controversial political matter.
As its website confirms, Deutsche Bank is fully is committed to Corporate Social Responsibility. How far its current handling of climate change issues can be judged to be responsible is open to debate.
Professor David Henderson is the Chairman of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council. His latest publication on climate change issues has just appeared in the quarterly Newsletter of the Royal Economic Society.
7) Peter Foster: The Copenhagen Emissions Gap
Financial Post, 13 November 2010
Long-range economic projections are usually useless, but this week’s World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency is immediately revealing. It emphasizes the massive failure of the United Nations-based climate agenda to stampede nations into suicidal commitments to slash growth and curtail freedom in order to make the world safe for bureaucracy.
Not that you will find any politicians acknowledging that. Nor is it that the IEA isn’t on board with the climate agenda (after all, it’s a global bureaucracy), it’s just that its forecast can’t possibly hide that emissions are set to climb to a level that alarmists tell us will lead to climate apocalypse.
The IEA confirms why radical green NGOs were so apoplectic about this year’s Copenhagen Accord. It did little except embody vague non-binding commitments to reduce emissions, crank up subsidies to alternative energy, and ship yet more cash to keep poor countries dependent. Even if developed countries did live up to their Copenhagen commitments, which the IEA dubs the “New Policies Scenario” (and doubts), primary fuel demand will still climb by a third by 2035, and fossil fuel will still be king.
The IEA’s projections thus render farcical the solemn commitments by global politicians to slash emissions by 80% by 2050, relying on the fact that they’ll all be safely dead, or that the private sector will have developed some unforeseen wonder technology by then.
It is also within this context that should be seen the G20’s bold statement this week that: “We reaffirm our resolute commitment to fight climate change…. We will spare no effort to reach a balanced and successful outcome in Cancun” (next month’s latest mega climate conference). Somebody at the G20 forgot to check with the World Energy Outlook report, which turns the G20 commitment into so much (additional) posturing and hypocrisy, which, fortunately, is going nowhere.
The Copenhagen Accord set a Canute-like target of keeping average global temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, but the IEA is rude enough to point out that the Copenhagen policy commitments — even if they were to be met — would miss that target by a long way; according, at least, to the UN’s own dodgy computer models. These have been constructed to support the notion that carbon dioxide drives the climate and that forecast levels of 650 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere will lead to a rise of “more than 3.5C in the long term.” Whenever that is.
The really dramatic news is contained in the chart above, which shows the increasingly yawning projected gap between the emissions the world is actually projected to produce and what is required — according to the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — to keep the temperature increase to that arbitrary 2C.
The chart demonstrates that IPCC science would indeed demand the end of industrial civilization as we know it. To reach the allegedly “safe” level, some way would have to be found to slash an additional 13.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually by 2035 — that is, more than 40% from expected levels.
An equally bizarre aspect of the chart is the geographic breakdowns, which neatly apportion the “share of cumulative abatement” between different regions and countries, and show that China will “have to” account for around 4.5 gigatonnes of emissions reductions to do its share toward meeting the target. Good luck with that.
It is essentially to remember — and to help people sleep at night — that the temperature consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are hotly debated by well-credentialled scientific skeptics, whose case has been bolstered by Climategate and the flood of scandals about the politicization, corruption and incompetence of the IPCC (even if that flood hasn’t quite washed up on the shores of the mainstream media).
The main point is that the IEA’s outlook confirms that the fossil fuel age is far from over. Refuting the peak oil mystics, the IEA predicts that oil production will keep growing for the next quarter century to almost 100 million barrels a day. Canada will add an extra two million barrels a day from the oilsands. Output of natural gas is set to grow. Coal retains its importance, with China’s coal-fired electricity tripling by 2035 — while Western jurisdictions such as Ontario punish their consumers by shutting down coal plants.
Meanwhile, to the extent that the IEA does see a slowing in the rise of fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, this is significantly due to projected massive new government “support” for uneconomic renewables, which may well not be forthcoming.
The IEA has a typically lopsided view of subsidies. When it comes to oil, “getting prices right” means abandoning subsidies. When it comes to renewables, “getting prices right” means abandoning markets. The IEA bemoans that fossil fuel subsidies were some US$312-billion in 2009, but these were overwhelmingly lower local prices to subsidize industry or pacify those living under petro-tyrranies, not grants to Exxon Mobil. Subsidies in Iran alone approached US$70-billion, while the other big subsidizers were — in descending order — Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, China, Egypt, Venezuela and Indonesia.
It’s apparently bad to give an oppressed Venezuelan a break at the gas pump, but it’s good to stiff Ontario electricity consumers so that IKEA can make out like bandits by coating its store roofs with solar panels (and it’s not even certain if this latter activity is counted among the subsidies).
Under the assumption that Copenhagen commitments are met, subsidies for renewables will rise from US$57-billion in 2009 to a whopping US$205-billion (in 2009 dollars) by 2035. China, which the IEA acknowledges will dominate global energy trends, is projected to become the market leader in low-carbon technologies, which means that a big chunk of Western subsidies is headed for the Middle Kingdom — even as China triples its coal use. China will end up burning coal to produce solar panels to ship to Ontario?
Not that the IEA is totally blind to the potential for the biomass hitting the windmill. It suggests that “attention needs to be given to the cost effectiveness of support mechanisms.”
What a novel notion! Perhaps a little attention also might be given to re-examining the barmy aspiration of trying to regulate the weather by putting the global economy under bureaucratic control. Or could it be that bureaucratic control is the real objective?
Financial Post, 13 November 2010
8) And Finally: A New Consensus
Investor's Business Daily, 13 November 2010
Wouldn't the followers of Scientific American have a pretty good understanding of what's really going on with the climate? If a reader poll is any indication, they're skeptical man is heating the planet.
For years we've heard that scientists have reached a "consensus" that the earth is warming due to a greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions resulting from man's use of fossil fuels. No use in discussing it further, Al Gore and others have said. It's happening.
Not every reader of Scientific American magazine is a scientist. But the responses of the 7,000 readers (6,767 as of Friday morning) who've taken the magazine's online poll strongly suggest that claims of a consensus are, at best, an exaggeration.
More than three-fourths (77.7%) say natural processes are causing climate change and almost a third (31.9%) blame solar variation. Only 26.6% believe man is the cause. (The percentages exceed 100 because respondents were allowed to choose more than one cause on this question.)
Whether climate change is man-caused or natural, most respondents don't believe there's anything that can be done about it anyway. Nearly seven in 10 (69.2%) agree "we are powerless to stop it." A mere one in four (25.7%) recommend switching "to carbon-free energy sources as much as possible and adapt to changes already under way."
It seems even some of those who would endorse changing energy sources don't believe the benefits are worth the costs (which indicates they aren't taking the alarmists' claims seriously). Almost eight in 10 (79.4%) answer "nothing" to the question: "How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?"
A small but apparently hard-core 12.3% say they'd be OK with spending "whatever it takes." Only 4.9% choose "a doubling of gasoline prices" while 3.4% don't mind paying "a 50% increase in electricity bills."
That small, but hard, core likely makes up most of the 15.7% who think "the IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is an effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts." These holdouts are overwhelmed, though, by the 83.6% who agree the IPCC "is a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda."
This isn't what we expected from the readers of a magazine that Cato's Patrick Michaels says "has been shilling for the climate apocalypse for years." Yet we're not shocked. A new consensus is emerging as the unraveling of the global warming tale picks up speed.
Investor's Business Daily, 13 November 2010
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 1 Carlton House, London SW1Y 5DB
Director: Dr Benny Peiser
http://www.thegwpf.org