POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak

Don’t fall for socialist global warming hysteria

FROM-NJ.Com

To the Editor:

“First there was New Orleans; then … Seabreeze, and then … Greenwich Pier. What’s the common thread? One is global warming. As the ice caps shrink … easily verified by comparing satellite images of the polar caps for the last 10 to 20 years … the oceans rise.” (The News, May 26, “It all begins with one sandbag”)

But what about the disappearance of an entire New Jersey municipality, South Cape May, nearly a century before the “global warming” hysteria? Contrary to liberal fairy tales, catastrophic storms have historically wreaked havoc! Whether cyclical “global warming” or “global cooling,” Atlantic storms have always washed away homes, streets, and acres of the land.

I built our home on the edge of the Delaware Bay. One weighs the obvious storm damage risks, not just from floodwater, but pounding by ocean-sized waves such as the most recent storm that caused extensive damage to Gandy’s Beach. I’ve spent around $30,000 of my own, not taxpayers’ money, to construct and maintain defensive bulkheads over the 20 years I have lived here. That comes to $1,500 a year in addition to the almost $7,000 dollars in taxes, owing to the bay view. Insurance, including flood, is another $2,000 a year. This $1,000 a month is my burden to bear. I don’t expect taxpayers to protect my property from inherent risks.

I’m not some mindless “Gorebot” who believes natural weather events are attributable to man-caused “Global Warming.” Al Gore’s con has made him exceedingly rich. A liberal hypocrite, Gore’s carbon footprint for his 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Tennessee and his new $9,000,000 mansion in California, plus cars, boat and private jet, etc. is astronomical. Gore burned more electric every month than did the average household in a year! The writer adds, “The best solution would be to stop polluting the air with carbon dioxide.” One wonders how he heats or cools his home, powers his transportation and generates electricity with no CO2 footprint?

Instead of looking at satellite polar ice cap images over a quite brief interval of only 20 years, I suggest we study global weather patterns thousands of years prior to the Industrial Age, electricity, automobiles, boats and jets. Incidentally, current scientific and weather data indicates that global warming stopped many years ago.

Archeologists believe there was once a “Bering Land Bridge” over which nomadic hunter-gatherers migrated to North America. Sea levels were far lower during that great Ice Age when a mind-boggling mass of water was frozen in the Northern ice cap. In fact, sea levels are thought to have been an incredible 100-150 meters lower than today, exposing a Bering Land Bridge to Alaska. Similarly, glaciers that once covered the northern United States were so thick they gouged out the great lakes! Yet they receded naturally, thousands of years before any fossil fuels were used. The United Nations now postulates that livestock herds cause the worst emissions.

It is estimated that up to 200 million Bison once grazed the Great Plains from Canada to Mexico. A recent UN report states that the current world’s cattle herds are the greatest threat to the climate. Yet ancient Bison herds were exponentially larger. Nevertheless, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization claims that cattle generate more greenhouse CO2 emissions than all fossil fuel powered cars and trucks combined.

Do you catch that stunning tidbit? Yet at only 11.2 million head, cattle are a very small percentage of the prehistoric 200 million Bison thought to once inhabit this land. Thus the carbon footprint of innumerable herds of gaseous Bison would dwarf today’s CO2 fossil fuel emissions! I suppose gaseous Bison melted the ice cap?

Global warming and cooling are just one of various natural cycles in which we have negligible effect. Don’t let liberal hypocrites like Gore and other fear mongers intimidate you into surrendering our national sovereignty, our freedom and unique living standards to any autocratic government. The Democrat socialists are trying to impose on free Americans a global government with despotic ruling powers, supported by confiscatory taxes.

Programmed “Gorebots” are incapable of analytical thought. They scare children with cataclysmic propaganda that captive students are compelled to watch in most public schools. It is your responsibility to deprogram your children. Teach them the facts about pre-historic Ice Ages. And about epic “global warming” that naturally melted these great glaciers long before the use of fossil fuels and cattle ranching. Learn! Think! Question! Expose liberal myths! And never, never follow brainwashed “Gorebots” who serve a global socialists agenda.

Davis Patterson
Fortescue

The Great Hypotheses Scam Continued

It is important to recognize that projections of climate change in specific areas are not forecasts comparable to tomorrow’s weather forecast. Rather, they are hypothetical examples of how the climate might change and usually contain a range of possibilities as opposed to one specific high likelihood outcome. (EPA)

Wherein: Climate models which are nothing more than hypothesis are used to generate studies of future events, which are unmeasurable and unverifiable. Also known as CYBER WAG (Computer generated Wild Ass Guesses)


**************************************************

I came across this rather frightening article in Africa Business Daily with the ominous title and opening:

Climate change to eat into Kenya’s tea production

Climate change will drastically reduce Kenya’s tea production over the next 40 years with suitable lands being pushed further up the altitude, denting earnings from one of the country’s top hard currency sources.

Scientists from the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) said during a global conference that land under tea will reduce by 42 per cent by 2050, creating excess capacity in tea factories dependent on the catchments.

This is the type of totally irresponsible assertions that could and will have very real  implications on peoples lives. In making these claims at this conference the scientist relied upon a study called  Future Climate Scenarios for Kenya’s Tea Growing Areas by Dr Peter Laderach, Dr Audberto Quiroga, Dr Jason Gordon, and Dr Anton Eitzinger. As is common practice in the scientific community these scientist are basing their findings and recommendations almost exclusivly on the output of hypothetical global climate models. Some excerpts from the study:

Methodology C • Current climate from historical climate generationGlobal circulation models as future climate Suitability prediction...

..Future climate C• Global circulation models (GCM)Calibrated in the past (using time-series)and projected to the future >> UNCERTAINTY Emission scenarios = Political uncertainty Global Circulation Models = Scientific uncertainty• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/)Fourth Assessment Report, based on the results of 21 global climate models(GCMs)...

...Future climate: Downscaling of GCM C• Delta (Hay et al. 2007) – Base climate: WORLDCLIM, Used in most studies of CC. – Take original GCM surfaces (time series) – Calculate averages for baseline & specific periods – Calculate anomalies – Interpolate anomalies – Add anomalies to WORLDCLIM

They give a list of all the GCM's they used to reach findings such as:

the annual rainfall increases from 1658 millimeters to 1732 millimeters in 2050• Temperatures increase and the average increase is 2.3 ºC passing through an increment of 1.0 ºC in 2020• The maximum temperature of the year increases from 26.6°C to 29°C in 2050• The minimum temperature of the year increases from 8.9°C to 11.1°C in 2050...

or details of our future world such as:

In 2020 the municipalities Meru and Nithi will have larger increase in precipitation • In 2050 Kisii and Nyamira will have the largest increase in precipitation....

...Regional changes in the mean annual temperature D • The increase by 2020 is between 0.7 and 0.9 ºC • The increase by 2050 is between 2.1 and 2.2 ºC The mean annual temperature will increase progressively

Please note the use of the word "will" in the study, as if the output of these models is ordained from on high. And from such hypothetical computer model output they reach the following conclusions:

In Kenya the yearly and monthly rainfall will increase and the yearly and monthly minimum and maximum temperatures will increase by 2020 and progressively increase by 2050.• The implications are that the distribution of suitability’s within the current tea-growing areas in Kenya for tea production in general will decrease quite seriously by 2050.• The optimum tea-producing zone is currently at an altitude between 1500 and 2100 masl and will by 2050 increase to an altitude between 2000 and 2300 masl.• Compared with today, by 2050 areas at altitudes between 1400 and 2000 masl will suffer the highest decrease in suitability and the areas around 2300 masl the highest increase in suitability.• A comparison of potential diversification crops recommended by the project show that coffee perform similar to tea and would not be a good alternative crop. For more than 90% of these sites maize and cabbage will remain constant and pea will be much more suitable on 97% of this sites. Passion fruit will be much more suitable on 51% of this sites and banana on 14% of these sites more suitable for 2050.

Extrapolating from Kenya's future climate which exists only within a computer, these people are setting in motion a plan to change the way farmers produce "one of the country’s top hard currency sources". From the article

The scientists were making presentations at the Tea Research Foundation of Kenya in Kericho. The seminar was organised by the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) and the German International Cooperation (GIZ). 

The report says the two organisations aim to increase Kenyan tea producer’s resilience to climate change, to secure their livelihoods and make them more environmentally and economically sustainable. 

The two partners will over the next three years train 10,000 farmers on the most appropriate adaptation techniques,” they said....

Among these techniques will be diversifying their crops to adapt to the hypothetical climate change which  exists solely within computer models and the unscientific projections of a scientific community  who is no longer grounded in reality.

Explain This

Being originally from the Northwest and having a great deal of family living there I am drawn to articles about the area. With all the news spin about the great Mississippi flooding, the high water on another iconic river I know well has not been much in the news. The Columbian reports

Columbia River levels remain near flood stage 

What I found interesting in this article was that rather than being buried in the usual global warming hype the cause was clearly stated right near the top of a straight news report. (emphasis mine)

The Columbia River is experiencing its highest water runoff levels since 1997 because of high precipitation levels this year and late-melting snow, Barton said. The preserved snowpacks making their way into the Columbia River Basin are 180 percent as deep as normal

The key to this is not the "180 percent as deep as normal " snow pack though it should be, the alarmist community having now captured the narrative on excessive snow being a product of a warming atmosphere. The key which flies in the face of the narrative is the "late-melting snow".

It is one thing to claim that a warmer atmosphere will absorb more moisture which will fall as snow in colder months, it is quite another thing to try to claim that colder weather will last longer in a warming  world. This point is driven home by the next sentence of the article explaining why the mighty Columbia River is so high this year.

“The unique thing about this year’s conditions was it was wet and cold late into April and early May,” Barton said.

In a normal year, the water would have released into the river at a more gradual pace. However, this year the river was forced to accept a gulp of water.

So this year is unique as far as the Columbia is concerned, but not because of warmer weather or just increased moisture (snow) but rather because it stayed colder and wetter longer than normal. 

Oil “subsidy” and “tax breaks” nonsense

FROM-Townhall

By Paul Driessen


President Obama frequently says Americans "need to end our $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to oil companies." The latest Democrat bill would have repealed some $2 billion of what Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and others call "subsidies" and "special tax breaks" for Big Oil.

That’s baloney – shameless demagoguery that will inflict further damage on our struggling economy.

Subsidies are cash payments from government to the private sector. Money is taken from the 51% of Americans who still pay income taxes – and transferred by legislators and bureaucrats to companies and activities that "deserve" or "require" these wealth transfers, because the recipients perform an important service and/or could not remain in business unless subsidized with other people’s money (OPM).

The petroleum industry does not receive "subsidies" to produce oil and natural gas. It doesn't even get "special tax breaks" or outright tax credits. What are falsely described in these terms are actually tax deductions for costs incurred by companies in the process of exploring, drilling, producing and refining the oil and natural gas that energize this nation's economy and living standards.

These tax deductions are equivalent or similar to deductions claimed by every US business, large and small, for things like facilities depreciation, equipment, utilities, payroll, and research and development. They are intended to ensure that businesses, like individuals, recover their costs and get taxed only on their net incomes. For oil companies those deductions include:

* Geological and geophysical costs, for exploration to assess prospects prior to drilling;

* Intangible drilling costs – equipment, labor, fuel and supplies associated with drilling expensive wells;

* Expensing "tertiary injectants," water and chemicals injected into older wells to keep them producing;

* Domestic manufacturer's deductions of up to 6% of income earned from extracting oil and gas (farmers, manufacturers and other producers can deduct up to 9% of earned income);

* Percentage depletion allowance, allowing for gradual recovery of up-front investments in a petroleum (or iron, gold, limestone, et cetera) deposit that is gradually extracted and depleted. The allowance is not available to "integrated" companies that produce, refine and market oil.

White House, congressional and eco-activist claims that repealing these deductions will generate "billions in new revenues" reflect an abysmal grasp of basic business, economic and behavioral principles....

read entire article here

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak

FROM-My High School Journalism

Kids 'Scared Straight' to Climate Activism

FROM-American Thinker

By Anthony J. Sadar and JoAnn Truchan

Teenagers, like many adults, are not too old to believe in fairy tales. But, youngsters typically have much more time and energy to devote to acting on their fantasies, like the one showcasing a global-warming goblin.

For example, from May 7 through May 14, kids the world over were to tramp in the "iMatter March" to convince adults that the most pressing global issues are not bloody terrorist attacks, abject poverty, tyrannical socialism, or even kooky environmentalism, but rather the planet's real peril comes from climate change.

The week before the marches, some of the participants were plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in federal court against EPA chief Lisa Jackson, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others. The kids claimed they have a profound interest in "ensuring our climate remains stable enough to ensure their right to a livable future." Their support and talking points come from high-powered climate prognosticator James Hansen, whose sincerity and ability to convince is not in doubt. Additional support and encouragement for the youth is coming from numerous progressive organizations who have become exasperated with discerning adults.

Most adults (this excludes heavily-financed global-warming gurus and their minions) have come to realize that one of the solid truths in life is that no one knows the future. And, if someone claims to know that the Rapture will occur on May 21st, or the earth will end on December 12, 2012, or the globe will be intolerably warmer in 2050, they're usually deluded, arrogant, or both.

Well-grounded adults understand that the future is not fixed, or many simply lack the interest to care. Adults, after all, have adult responsibilities.

So, if the climate scare-mongers can't frighten the adults, the next logical step is to heap angst on their children who then frighten (or better, pester) the adults into action.

Oscar Wilde once said, "In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." What was true in 1887 is still true today, as those with limited or non-existent adult responsibilities can find the time to take up causes. However, there is a reason why 13-year-olds are not allowed to drive, purchase alcohol, vote, or hold elected office -- they simply lack the experience to do so intelligently and with maturity....

Read article here

"Teach Your Children Well" Update

I often post letters to the editor and other comments by ordinary citizens critical of climate change religion science under the heading of Power to the People. In searching out these articles and letters I of course run across the opposite, individuals who subscribe to the "orthodoxy" of  the "consensus" on climate change.

One of the great challenges for those of us in the realist camp is to try to separate the many legitimate environmental concerns from the actual science or (lack thereof) behind global warming. But even more difficult and more dangerous to humanity is the challenge in recognizing and countering the growing totalitarian ideology which underpins and advances the climate change movement.

This point was driven home to me by the following letter to the editor published in the Santa Maria Times

The problem of warming

Global warming is a big warning to humans. But there are four keys to help Earth cool down — recycling, healthy transportation, vegetarian diet and government control.

Recycling is the most popular and easiest way to fight global warming. Families do the sorting at home, firms use recycled materials to produce products, supermarkets also change their plastic bags to paper bags.

Healthy and convenient transportation would not only decrease the emissions of carbon dioxide, but help people live a healthier life. There are so many forms of transportation that are healthier and more convenient than a car, such as riding a bicycle, taking a bus, subway and train.

Eating less meat is absolutely the most effective way to deal with the global-warming problem because much of the carbon dioxide is discharged by animals. Demand for meat means more animals would be raised and killed. That is why a vegetarian diet is so important.

Government control is the core fact in environment control. Government can use its power to appeal to citizens for individual behavior changes.

It is all about individual behavior. If everyone did their recycling job, drove less, ate less meat, Earth would not be so angry at its children.

Wanying Xiang

Santa Maria

As an American I am appalled though not shocked by such sentiments. Consider this statement
"Government control is the core fact in environment control. Government can use its power to appeal to citizens for individual behavior changes."

Consider the indoctrination that is behind the above comments. A citizen of the United States of America, a young one I assume, so brainwashed by the climate change environmental denizens that she is calling for "government power" to "appeal...for individual behavior changes." As she rightly notes, though I doubt recognizes or even understands, governments do not appeal... they control.

The danger in this indoctrination of our youth can not be underestimated. The very idea that people would have so little understanding of the consequences of allowing governments to "control" their lives is frightening but not unexpected. Consider these recent articles which explain it all. On the one hand we have

 "Clueless in America".  
According to the latest survey of Things Americans Are Ignorant About, high school and middle school students don't know much about civics....

"Getting a grip on government"

...Fewer than half of American eighth-graders know the purpose of the Bill of Rights, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and only one in 10 has a high-level understanding of the checks and balances of the three branches of government....

This is just a small sampling of how America's education system, predominately a government run system I might add, is ignoring the foundation upon which this country was founded and on which past generations of Americans were well educated. They are doing so in order to replace an American citizenship rooted in the concept of individual liberty and a healthy skepticism of government control and replacing it with a belief that only government can keep Earth from "being angry with her children."

What is traditional civics being replaced with in the American education system? The following  article explains what the federal government has decided is important for our youth to be taught.

New federal program promotes ‘green’ school policies 

By Laura Devaney 

As the “green” movement sweeps across the nation, prompting citizens to buy organic produce and reduce their energy consumption, schools are following suit with lesson plans that teach students how to value environmental resources and with practices that save energy—and money. Now, a new federal program will honor and encourage these efforts.

The U.S. Education Department (ED) created the Green Ribbon Schools program to recognize schools that are creating healthy and sustainable learning environments and teaching environmental literacy. The new awards program will receive support from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“Preparing our children to be good environmental citizens is some of the most important work any of us can do,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said at an event announcing the new program. “It’s work that will serve future generations and quite literally sustain our world.”

It is no longer important that our children be good citizens of the United States, understanding the importance of freedom, liberty and the foundational principles which maintain them, " the most important work any of us can do"...is... "preparing our children to be good environmental citizens."  Thus says the Indoctrination  Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Update:Response from Wanying Xiang, the writer of the letter to the editor above in the first comment below. My only response is that perhaps she needs a better translator.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak

Politicians, bureaucrats will be forced to reject climate change propaganda

James D. Kellogg

FROM-Glenwood Springs Post Independent

Less than a decade after the painfully dry year of 2002, the Upper Colorado River Basin is laden with snowpack that's 160 percent of average. Total runoff this spring and summer will be huge, potentially swelling creeks and rivers to record volumes. Flush with inflows, reservoirs will fill and spill.

An Associated Press article from Dec. 5, 2008, asserted, “Western U.S. states will face more water shortages in the years ahead as climate change exacerbates the strains drought has put on the Colorado River.”

Apparently, the “scientific consensus” doesn't have a clue about climate. Or maybe it does. To show warming trends, models used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) depend on the assumption that climate change is man-induced. At the same time, U.S. government-funded research by Dr. Roy Spencer and others is providing mounting evidence that climate change is natural and cyclical.

Undeterred, well-funded environmental special interests claim the debate is over; fossil fuels are changing the climate in ways harmful to human health and the environment. Junk science and misrepresentation of data have conjured an environmental crisis.

Environmental groups are lobbying for limits on Constitutional liberty and economic prosperity to enable aggressive government action to save the Earth. Maurice Strong, advisor to former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, bluntly stated, “The only way to save the world will be for the industrial civilization to collapse.”

One scheme to engineer America's economic collapse is “cap and trade” legislation. Under the pretense of halting devastating climate change, the federal government would dictate drastic reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, particularly those from use of fossil fuels. Companies that emit more CO2 than legal limits would have to buy carbon credits or face stiff penalties and fines. Many would be forced to reduce production, move operations abroad, or go out of business altogether.

A cap-and-trade bill passed in the US. House of Representatives in June 2009, but never came to a vote in the Senate. Americans understood that it was a massive energy tax and voiced strong opposition.

Predictably, environmentalists made an end run around American voters. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Massachusetts vs. EPA that CO2 is a pollutant and that the “EPA no doubt has significant latitude as to the manner timing, context, and coordination of its regulations.” In effect, the court usurped congressional authority and wrote new law to expand powers of the presidency beyond constitutional limits.

When cap and trade failed, the Obama administration simply exploited the power granted by the court. The EPA made a carbon endangerment ruling, decreeing that CO2 is indeed a pollutant requiring stringent regulation.

Now the EPA is engaged in a campaign to drive coal-fired power out of existence and stymie natural gas production. Mr. Obama promised, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Our standard of living is set to decline. Ultimately, carbon purging will expand like a contaminant plume, victimizing schools, farms, homes and everything else. It sounds so benign under the guise of saving the planet.

On April 6, 2011, Republican-sponsored legislation to overrule the EPA power-grab failed to garner a supermajority vote in the Senate. But as more Americans learn the truth, politicians and bureaucrats will be forced to reject climate change propaganda. Restrictions on individual freedom, limitations on mobility, and hindrance of economic growth won't be sacrificed for pseudo-science that empowers anti-capitalist collectivism.

The drought of skeptical science and intellectual honesty in the green movement will eventually be washed away by a torrent of public backlash. It's like the Colorado River. If you ignore the flood warnings, you're going to drown.

James D. Kellogg of New Castle is a professional engineer and the founder of LiberTEAWatch.com and WriterBalm.com. Contact him at jamesdkellogg@yahoo.com.

An Inconvient Truth: A Fifth Anniversary Tribute

FROM-The American Spectator

By Mark Hyman

This month is the fifth anniversary of the release of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary film became a sensation among the political left, the easily impressionable segments of the public and a majority in Congress that was all too eager to enact legislation to solve the global crisis.

The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and the audio version received a Grammy. For his efforts to save the planet, Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a very good haul for a film that grossed a rather paltry $23 million in domestic box office receipts.

There is no denying that Gore and his film deserve the lion's share of the credit (or blame) for launching the wild hysteria to combat "manmade global warming" that swept the nation in 2006.

The U.S. House of Representatives created an entirely new committee "The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming" because "global warming is an urgent problem that requires action now" such as hastening the nation's "transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy."

Congress passed legislation banning incandescent light bulbs by 2014. Americans will soon exclusively use CFL (curly-fry light) bulbs that will keep a home as dimly light as a Third World hospital room.

On several occasions Congress was unsuccessful in enacting "cap and trade" legislation that would be a financial windfall for some groups but would also kill thousands of American jobs. Common sense prevailed as the legislation failed to move in Congress but, the Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to implement the legislation via regulatory edict.

After the film was released, a number of strange bedfellows jumped onto the manmade global warming bandwagon. In one public service announcement, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, who sat together on a sofa like a pair of love-struck lab partners before they were to head off to the senior prom, demanded a solution to global warming.

A year later the always-evolving Gingrich would abandon his newfound fossil-fuels-are-evil buddies and publish a book titled Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less in which he advocates pumping as much oil from the ground as is humanly possible.

Going Green became the catch phrase. There was a rush to purchase hybrid vehicles such as the two-seat Honda Insight, the impractical compact that is not much larger than a circus clown car, and the overpriced Toyota Prius that has been plagued with numerous battery and service problems.

The Discovery cable network launched Planet Green channel whose star celebrity is Ed Begley, Jr. That's right, who? That came on the heels of NBC Universal airing "green" theme programming on its stable of cable and broadcast channels during the month of April. Even Time magazine offered a "Going Green" column. Green expos, exhibits, conventions and bazaars popped up around the country. Green was in.

Not content with his role as Chicken Little, Gore went on to co-found a "carbon credit" company that has made him millions. He even used the carbon credit service for himself. He deems his extravagant, high-energy use home as being "carbon neutral" because he purchases "carbon offsets." From himself.

This review comes five years after the film's original release but, I confess the timing is only a mere coincidence. My primary goal in watching the film was to determine if I was correct in what I remembered of my 2006 viewing. I began to have doubts.....

Read entire article here

51% Blame Extreme Weather on Long-Term Planetary Trends, 19% Blame Human Activity

FROM-Rasmussen Report

U.S. meteorologists say the deadly storms tearing up the South are not a result of climate change. None the less, the extreme weather has rekindled the global warming debate in Washington, D.C.

But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of American Adults think the recent severe weather is primarily caused by long-term planetary trends. Only 19% blame the extreme weather on human activity which many climate change activists view as the cause of global warming. Twelve percent (12%) say there's some other cause for the bad weather, and 19% more are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans say the weather in their area is worse than it has been in recent years. Roughly half (49%) disagree with that assessment, but 12% are undecided.
Fifteen percent (15%) of adults say they have personally been impacted by the severe weather or have a family member who has suffered through it. Among those impacted by the severe weather, 62% say the weather in their area has been worse this year.

Read article here

"Notable Quotes"

"I think it was Steward Brand, a recovering environmentalist (he came out for more nuclear power several years ago), who first made note of the photograph below of Indonesian students studying outside beneath streetlamps because they had no electricity at home and the university library was full. If you ask these students about what they most need to secure their future, it won't be expensive solar panels and windmills from American green power advocates."


Steven Hayward

‘CLIMATE SCIENTISTS’ RELEASE PROFANE VIDEO BASHING DENIERS

FROM-The Blaze

Next to Nothing...and more : update

The IPCC released a much touted report yesterday on renewable energy. I was not all that interested but I did skim through it. While doing so the following graph caught my attention.

Figure SPM.2 | Shares of energy sources in total global primary energy supply in 2008 (492 EJ) Modern biomass contributes 38% of the total biomass share. [Figure 1.10, 1.1.5].  

Notes: Underlying data for figure has been converted to the ‘direct equivalent’ method of 

accounting for primary energy supply [Box SPM.2, 1.1.9, Annex II]

I was amazed that despite all the hype, all the press and all the investment poured into renewable energy over the past two decades how little there is to show for it, 12.9%

Initially what caught my attention was solar. Granted that this is all energy and they had to convert the various uses to a common accounting method in order to quantify the various sources but the fact remains that solar power only accounts for one tenth of one percent of all global energy. That is the very definition of next to nothing.


Think about that. Think of all that we read and hear about solar energy. Think of the investments both private and public in the billions of dollars which have been poured into solar energy and  to date according to the IPCC we receive 1/10 of 1% of our energy from solar, amazing.

As I was getting ready to write up this note on my incredulity at the minuscule return on investment for solar, something else caught my attention. Obviously biomass accounts for the vast majority of  renewable energy sources but what do they mean by modern biomass? Well I went back through the report and it means exactly what you would expect it to mean.

The largest RE contributor was biomass (10.2%), with the majority (roughly 60%) being traditional biomass used in cooking and heating applications in developing countries but with rapidly increasing use of modern biomass as well.

So in fact 62% or 6.3% of the total global energy that the IPCC lists as biomass which is figured into the renewable energy category is old fashioned wood, animal dung, and various other forms of energy which have been used since the discovery of fire to heat and cook. The same sources of energy that confines the impoverished throughout the world to a life of misery, poverty and death. But it helps with the IPCC's accounting and spin. Unless of course it is the IPCC's contention that these primitive energy sources are good for the future.

So let's look a little closer at the above chart. Taking away the primitive sources of energy responsible for millions of children's deaths each year from lung diseases, modern biomass  accounts for 4.5% of global energy bringing the total down to 6.6%  for renewable energy.

But in a very real way it is worse than that. Would anyone really consider hydropower a modern energy source? No.  There is no doubt that it is a renewable energy source but do we think of it as
a product of the new "green energy"  revolution? No.

So if the IPCC was doing and honest report, I know I laughed just writing that, they would point out that the "green energy" revolution accounts for at most 4.3% of all of the energy in the world.

I won't even point out that the greatest share of that "revolution" is the result of bio fuels which are responsible for higher food prices and shortages around the world. Oops I pointed it out.

The scope of the waste in money and human lives wrought by this sham of climate change is staggering. Thank you climate science community for your service to humanity.

Update: It is worse than my original post. I subtracted the modern biomass from the total rather than the traditional biomass which means even less (4.3%) of the world's energy is the result of the "green energy" revolution. I have corrected this in the text. To put this into context consider how fast the two previous energy revolutions fueled global economic booms, steam and oil and they did it the old fashioned way, they earned it in the free market, not through taxpayer subsidies and government mandates.

Global Warming now proven to cause.....

Just as the 20th Century's increase in global temperatures can only be attributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, there being no other acceptable scientific explanation, it has now been scientifically proven that.....

Obama's Scandalous War Against Domestic Oil

FROM-Human Events

by David Limbaugh

Do you remember the terrible things the left was saying about President George W. Bush when gas prices soared under his watch? Yet President Obama, whose policies and actions are actually contributing to rocketing gas prices today, gets the usual mainstream media pass.

Is it that the liberal media exempt Obama from accountability because they're on his team in general? Is it because they think he's blameless in the equation even though they sprang to the unfounded conclusion that Bush was culpable? Or could it be that they aren't critical because they share his bias against conventional energy and believe the pain caused by his policies is necessary to move us toward alternative energy sources?

During Bush's term, gas prices went down 9 percent, adjusted for inflation. Yet, preposterously, he was excoriated for allegedly colluding with "big oil" to drive up prices. When prices spiked later in his term, he took proactive steps to increase our supply and reduce prices, and they worked. But Obama has taken action to impede conventional energy sources and shove us into alternative ones. Even so, liberals ignore any possible causal links.

Obama told us he would bankrupt the coal industry. He's pushing high-speed rail down our throats despite the lack of public demand for it and our inability to finance it. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the administration intended to coerce us out of our cars. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

In view of exploding gas prices, why aren't these statements seen as scandalous? Where are the calls for investigations?

Obama demeans "big oil," pushes alternative energy every time he gets a chance and does everything in his power to suppress domestic oil production, then looks us in the face and tells us he's increasing domestic production -- kind of like how he says his budget won't add a penny to the national debt. The audacity is of Hollywood magnitude, and so is the lack of scrutiny that enables it.

Behind the smoke and mirrors of his rhetoric, it's hard not to conclude that Obama's on a mission to suppress or shut down the existing oil infrastructure in the United States in pursuit of his stated alternative priorities.

The Heritage Foundation's Rory Cooper reports that, as of February 2011, at least 103 permits were awaiting review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. And since February, the administration has issued on average only 1.3 permits a month, a 78 percent reduction in the monthly average according to the latest Gulf Permit Index.

Obama even reversed an earlier decision to open access to coastal waters for exploration, placing a seven-year ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Oil production in the Gulf is expected to drop by 220 thousand barrels per day in 2011, which is going to cost the U.S. some $1.35 billion in revenues in 2011.

Not only are we losing oil production and revenues, the administration's actions are destroying jobs in the oil industry and elsewhere. Many companies are going out of business. The Heritage Foundation reports that Seahawk Drilling, of Houston, laid off 632 employees before recently filing for bankruptcy as a direct result of Obama's moratorium and subsequent "permitorium." Seahawk owned and operated 20 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf. Randall Stilley, president and CEO of Seahawk, said, "As an American, you never want to look at your own government and say they're hurting you personally, they're hurting your business and they're doing it in a way that's irresponsible. I'm not very proud of our government right now and the way they handled this."

Cooper explains that these crippling policies are having a negative rippling effect throughout the economy. Many vendors, suppliers, restaurants and retailers are losing revenues or going out of business. More than 30 deepwater rigs, which each employ around 200 people, have moved from the Gulf to other markets. While the industry is on "life support," Obama is at war with it, brazenly spending billions to support foreign oil and jobs in Brazil.

Making matters worse, the administration and congressional Democrats are considering legislation that would further damage energy businesses by significantly increasing taxes on domestic oil and gas concerns. And just in the past few days, we've been reading that the administration is floating a plan to tax cars by the mile.

Can you imagine the insanity and insensitivity of raising taxes on this ailing industry and its consumers (drivers) at a time when both need all the relief they can get?

Obama is no less determined to cram his preferred energy alternatives down Americans' throats than he was to force feed us socialized medicine. Again, where is the outrage?

CSI: Climate Science Investigation

FROM-American Thinker

By Anthony J. Sadar and Albin Sadar

In the ongoing wake of Climategate, hockey-stick statistics, and uncooperative temperature trends, the atmospheric tension surrounding global warming continues to hover in the air. The drama, in fact, calls to mind those real-life murder mysteries on TV. In those investigative report shows, we're presented with the forensics and myriad facts, including interviews with detectives, family members, witnesses -- even face-to-face confrontations with the defendants themselves.

And, many times, when the convicted defendant is interviewed, he will say something like, "From the very beginning, the cops suspected me and never looked anywhere else. Anything they found that pointed to me as the guilty party, they took seriously; anything that pointed to someone else, they dismissed."

When this kind of a statement comes from someone sitting behind bars, the viewer is understandably suspicious. After all, doesn't it make sense that the defendant would say anything to win an appeal or release? This, of course, may be true -- that he'd say anything -- but what if what he says actually is true?

Read Article here

Picture of the Day

FROM-Jennifer Marohosy

The Great Hypotheses Scam Continued

It is important to recognize that projections of climate change in specific areas are not forecasts comparable to tomorrow’s weather forecast. Rather, they are hypothetical examples of how the climate might change and usually contain a range of possibilities as opposed to one specific high likelihood outcome. (EPA)

Wherein: Climate models which are nothing more than hypothesis are used to generate studies of future events, which are unmeasurable and unverifiable. Also known as CYBER WAG (Computer generated Wild Ass Guesses)


**************************************************

This scam virus originates in one of America's great institutions, Johns Hopkins. In addition to the normal despicable practice of using unproven, unverifiable and unmeasurable projections of future climate, generated only in the depths of computer models, these scientists project their finding so far into the future as to be totally meaningless. They are projecting future heat wave deaths in Chicago.

For the analysis, Peng and his colleagues developed three climate change scenarios for 2081 to 2100. The scenarios were based on estimates from seven global climate change models and from mortality and air pollution data for the city of Chicago from 1987 to 2005. The data were limited to the warm season from May to October of each year.

Once again we see that scientist are feeding from the troff of climate science's fantasy world of future scenarios which are neither evidence upon which scientific findings can be determined or for that matter a valid scientific methodology. From the report:

In the second stage of our approach, we obtained estimates of future heat waves from seven different climate model simulations of temperature from the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI 2009) as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) (Meehl et al. 2007a). 

Even if the models which the projection are based upon were correct, do we believe that technological and medical advances would not keep up with these dire predictions? That despite centuries of historical precedents of mankind's ability to adapt and conquer environmental and medical challenges we will be unable to find solutions to a hypothesized warming?  At the turn of the Twentieth Century what would projections for typhoid deaths have been for the last two decades of the century? Or for the scourge of Polio? To make such projections is meaningless, even more so when they are based on the speculative hypotheses of climate models. It is not as if these researchers do not recognize how totally speculative this little exercise is:

Our results assume that the baseline rate of mortality on non–heat wave days is the same in the future as it is for the present day.

The estimates also assume that there is no adaptation to extreme heat, so that the mortality risk from heat waves is constant over time. 

In other words if everything remains as it is today and if the models are correct in their assumptions of future warming, then these projections could happen. But even they know they are just swimming against the tide of reality:

For example, the presence of central air conditioning in Chicago housing units has risen steadily for 1995–2003 from 47% of all housing units to 60% (U.S. Census Bureau 2004). In our analysis, we do not adjust for air conditioning use, early warning systems, and other factors that could lower the mortality impact of heat waves under a changing climate. Further, additional climate change scenarios with more or less stringent control of greenhouse gases could be explored, as well as more definitions of heat waves. In the next few years, new scenarios at higher resolution from both global climate models and regional climate models will become available and are expected to represent more accurately local climate change effects (such as blocking effects) that are relevant for extreme heat statistics.

After all this assumptions and speculations what are we left with?

Applying the present-day heat wave risk for Chicago to the estimates of heat waves under future conditions, we estimated an annual excess mortality attributable to heat waves ranging between 166 to 2,217 deaths per year

Excuse me?  That seems to be quite a range doesn't it? Well they explain why and the reason ought to stop every such pathetic perversion of science from using climate models to conduct science:

Projections of future heat wave mortality varied considerably across the climate models and across SRES within a climate model.

So here we have alleged scientist spending valuable research time not to mention monies which could have been used towards actual scientific inquiries wasting both time and monies to hypothesize upon a hypotheses what the potential deaths will be in one city in the distant future. It is not even as if this information, if anyone was foolish enough to use it, can be used for some sort of policy decisions being far too speculative and distant in the future to have any practical application.

If the output of the climate models generate such a wide range of hypothetical outcomes what possible benefit are they? Only one. To perpetuate the scam, to generate press releases "Climate Change Analysis Predicts Increased Fatalities from Heat Waves" and fear mongering media accounts "Extreme weather due to climate change deadly" in order to insure continued funding to the climate change academic complex.

It is deceptive, it is corrupt, it is not scientific and the fact that so called moderate scientist do not speak out against it is a stain upon their profession, if it can still be called that. But these scientist explain why .

Our approach could be easily modified with respect to various inputs and assumptions about the future to obtain predictions from a wide range of climate-change scenarios. 

Those various "inputs and assumptions... to obtain predictions from a wide range of climate-change scenarios " is the goose which is laying the golden egg for scientist  throughout the scientific community and they know it. This is why they close their collective eyes to the greatest scientific scam in history.

Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!

FROM-The American Interest

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.

Read the whole piece for a thoughtful and brutally clear expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of the green movement from one of the smartest people in it. This is what I’ve been getting at for more than a year here: regardless of what is happening to Planet Earth, the green movement does not have coherent and workable solutions.

Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony.

Monbiot gets it, and furthermore concedes one of the main arguments of the anti-green case. The ‘problem’ is not a shortage of carbon rich non-renewable futures. The problem is the abundance of these fuels. We are not running out of hydrocarbons; shale natural gas, tar sands and coal offer enormous reserves that can cover our needs for the foreseeable future. We have an abundance of fossil fuel. Moreover, it seems likely that for a very long time to come, fossil fuels will be substantially cheaper and more abundant that expensive renewables. (One should also note that these new fuel sources are found in places like Canada and the United States rather than Saudi Arabia and Iran.)

More, Monbiot also acknowledges the contradictory and inconsistent nature of the green solutions. He acknowledges that there is no prospect for democratic politics to impose the draconian limits on consumption and economic activity that green dogma requires. Every ‘solution’ the greens have come up with has a fatal flaw of some kind; none of it works, none of it makes any sense. As Monbiot concludes,

“All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.”

This is an awesome admission of categorical intellectual, political and moral failure. For two decades greens have arrogated to themselves the authority of science and wrapped themselves in the arrogant certainty of self-righteous contempt for those who oppose them. They have equated skepticism about their incoherent and contradictory policy proposals with hatred of science and attacked their critics as the soulless hired shills of the oil companies, happy to ruin humanity for the sake of some corporate largesse.

Monbiot has worked his way through to a cogent description of the dead end the global green movement has reached, but he has not yet diagnosed the cause. In particular, he remains a staunch Malthusian. In his view, humanity is good at creating new ways to destroy itself, but not at finding solutions to the problems we create. Our ingenuity is magically good at finding new fossil fuels, but we have no skill whatsoever at managing the consequences of our discoveries. The unknown technologies of the future will create horrible new disasters, but they will offer no new ways to contain or manage the disruption they cause.

Economic growth is a cancer, in this view. Its bad effects are permanent and cumulative, its blessings are evanescent and ultimately trivial.

Malthusianism is a religious conviction that desperately needs to think of itself as a science. From Thomas Malthus and his mathematical certainties to Paul Ehrlich with his famine timetables and the Club of Rome with its ‘scientific’ predictions of resource exhaustion, Malthusians have made confident predictions about the future and claimed scientific authority for statements that turned out to be contemptibly silly. That is the brutal fate that often awaits people who can’t keep the boundaries between science and religion straight.

It is happening on a massive and humiliating scale to the world’s greens today. Monbiot’s sober assessment of the consequences is dead on; when the greens digest his analysis and go a bit further to ask how they got into this mess, they will be ready to join something that the world truly and urgently needs: a serious and grownup conversation about how to conserve the beauty and viability of our glorious home as the human race continues to develop the extraordinary intelligence Mother Nature has seen fit to give us.

Montana Sacrilidge

Remember awhile back we posted on a study about plants in California? No? Too bad it was a good post. For those not willing to go back and read it I'll review a bit of it here.

It seems that much to the surprise of the researchers of this particular study, the plant life in  California rather than fleeing to the hills to escape man induced fire and brimstone were instead moving down the mountainside. As we discussed at the time, this had the researchers in quite a tizzy.

We now have a shocking development in the flimflam community, where it has been determined that in spite of previous model induced hypothesis, real world evidence points to the conclusion that plant life rather than fleeing to the mountain heights to escape MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING it is instead moving down hill.

For years researchers have watched plants and animals migrate to cooler quarters in response to global warming. But a new study suggests some plants are moving downhill, drawn by increased precipitation.

Before I got all wrapped up in a discussion of the predictions by the amazing Dr Chu of Nobel Laurette and Energy fame, I mentioned that my theory was that they were moving downhill in order to suck up some of that sweet California carbon dioxide emitted along the I-5 corridor. As it turns out neither the University of Montana researchers theory or mine was sufficient to appease the God's Of Academia and their lust for taxpayer funded studies. So some local folks at Stanford are taking issue with their peers, though they did not mention my theory in the article for some reason.

I probably would not have caught the connection to the previous study, in fact I probably would not have read the article at all if I had not been captivated by the opening paragraphs.

A lizard is almost invisible, camouflaged in a bush.  A bumblebee flits about and pauses on one of the plant’s flowers. An ant descends a stem, delivering food to her brothers. 

What kind of lives would the lizard, bee, and ant lead without this plant?

What kind of lives indeed. The pure poetry of this brought me to tears...then I got up off the floor and read the rest of the article.

I will not bore rob you of the joy of reading the entire article by posting it all here. But I will post a few key points on this waste of time an money academic endeavor.

To discover how California plant distributions have changed over time, the Stanford team is using a comprehensive dataset: museum specimens of a large number of California plants.  Since the mid 1800’s and until the present day, these plants have been collected by a variety of individuals, from the famous naturalist John Muir to amateur botanists, says William Anderegg, a Stanford graduate student in biology involved in the project.  When and where the plants were picked can be used to assess how the locations of the plants themselves have changed over time.

This actually sounded somewhat familiar and of course it was:

This January, Shawn Crimmins and colleagues at the University of Montana published a similar study of California plant species movements, analyzing a part of the dataset used by the Stanford team.  The group discovered that plants moved down, rather than up, in elevation, driven by water availability.  However, Anderegg claims that the group did not correctly account for differences in how plants have been collected over time, and that “they could have … gotten a completely false trend due only to sampling.” 

Oh those Montana Hayseeds researchers and their false trends, we can't have them coming down here to the Golden State and telling us our plants are not acting in a political correct manner as prescribed by consensus science! "Downhill you say, well we'll show you bumpkins, we are going to bring in some heavy hitters to show you which way the plants grow, uh go, Ivy League brains are needed to put you Montanaites in your place! "

To address that possibility, the Stanford team collaborated with Adam Wolf, a postdoctoral associate at Princeton University, to develop a new statistical method to obtain accurate plant location information that accounts for biases in where and when plants were sampled.  Using their new method, the team is attempting to better understand the movements of California plant species.  One preliminary finding is that the distribution of plants in the Mojave Desert are moving up in elevation over time, in accord with the increasing temperature hypothesis. The group hopes to find why species in other locations are moving more, less, or not at all.

"HUH SEE Montana Boy! Stanford don't take crap from a state whose biggest thing is sky. You get political incorrect findings in our state and we'll develop a new statistical method to get the approved results. Don't mess with Texas huh? Texas got nothing on California when it comes to getting IPCC  results, it ain't for nothing that the great Al Gore bought that mansion here you know." 

It all ties back into the broader research task on Root’s agenda:...

Indeed it does

 ...learning about species interactions to better understand the full impact of climate change.  Think back to the plant, bee, ant, and lizard, all intertwined in their environment.  A change in the location of the plant could have profound consequences on the others.  Root believes that with further research, we can prepare ourselves, and other species, for the shifts and disruptions that our actions may have already set in motion. 

“There is hope,” she said.

Yes, Hope and climate change what more could a researcher ask for? And let's not forget about the lizard. Hey and Montana Boy keep your politically incorrect butt out of California...capice?

Done

Virus Tracker Update

Tracking the Great Hypotheses Scam Virus through the media and society

Here is our initial post on the this Interior Department Study which included the following conclusions

Lack of calibration of the hydrologic models is a real issue that needs to be addressed and should be addressed before these models are used in future assessments. Reclamation will (a) refine the VIC application and/or (b) introduce more appropriate hydrologic models. However, before implementing west-wide calibration efforts, it also is important to assess the fitness of the chosen model structure for some geographic situations, particularly basins where ground water interactions with surface water may be an important process and not well simulated in VIC.

AND

6.1.2 Global Climate Simulation
While the activity presented in this report considers climate projections produced by state-of-the-art coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models and even though these models have shown an ability to simulate the influence of increasing GHG emissions on global climate (IPCC 2007), there are still uncertainties about the scientific understanding of physical processes that affect climate; how to represent such processes in climate models (e.g., atmospheric circulation, clouds, ocean circulation, deep ocean heat update, ice sheet dynamics, sea level, land cover effects from water cycle, vegetative other biological changes); and how to do so in a mathematically efficiently manner given computational limitations

Yet we have media outlets and authority figures representing this report as being evidence on which changes to policies should be made.

VIRUS TRACKER
LA TIMES

[excerpts]

...Temperatures could rise 5 degrees to 7 degrees this century, increasing evaporation, and the spring snow pack will drop sharply in much of the West, changing the timing of peak runoff, which is crucial for the state's irrigated agriculture....

...The report predicts that precipitation in the river's upper reaches will increase by a few percentage points in the mid- and late century, although that would be offset by a slight drop in runoff associated with warmer temperatures and more water consumption by plants.

Farther down the river, at Lee's Ferry, runoff could decline by 8.5% in the 2050s, the report suggests.

The greatest drop is predicted for the Rio Grande in New Mexico, where stream flow could shrink by nearly a fifth by the last quarter of the century.

"The status quo is going to change," U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael L. Connor said. "We need to take action now to plan for those changes that are occurring."

Pasadena Star News

[Headline]

New report says climate change likely to make water more scarce

[excerpts]

..Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the report will help officials understand the long-term effects of climate change on Western water supplies and will be the foundation for efforts to develop strategies for sustainable water management 

The report notes that projected changes in temperature and precipitation are likely to alter the timing and quantity of stream flows in all Western river basins, with increased flooding possible in the winter due to early snowmelt and water shortages in the summer due to reductions in spring and summer runoffs..... 

.... All eight basins should see an increase in temperature of about 5 degrees to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, the report says.

Four basins will see an increase in overall precipitation by 2050: the Upper Colorado, Columbia, Missouri and Sacramento, while four will see a decrease: the Lower Colorado, Rio Grande, San Joaquin and Truckee.

Reductions in spring and summer runoffs could lead to a drop in water supply in six of the eight basins, the report said.

Local officials said the report shows the need for more water conservation.

"It just means that it's all the more important for us to conserve water and be independent of imported water supplies as much as we can," said Carol Williams, executive director for the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster.....

....MWD also is looking at solutions. One possibility would be to build a desalinization plant in Mexico that would free up Colorado River water for the United States, including Southern California, he said.

One problem could be the expense. Water from such a plant would cost $1,500 per acre-foot, in contrast to the water bank's cost estimated at $450 per acre-foot that also includes pumping costs, according to Hazencamp.

Updates as found

UPDATE 1

Reuters

[Headline}

Climate change to hit American West water supply

[excerpts]

...This steep drop in stream flow is projected for parts of the West that have seen marked increases in population and droughts over recent decades, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a telephone briefing.
"These changes will directly affect the West's water supplies, which are already stretched in meeting demands for drinking, irrigating crops, generating electricity and filling our lakes and aquifers for activities like fishing, boating and to power our economy," he said... 

..."Climate change will add to the challenges we face, which will be felt first in the Western United States," said Anne Castle, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for science and water. She noted that some of the fastest population growth has occurred in the driest areas, including parts of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Texas.

"Water is on the leading edge of climate change, so many of these basins have already experienced significant ... decreases to water supply," Castle said.

also Lompoc Record

The Other Side Of The Story

This Episode Brought To You By

The American Thinker

Adventures in the Climate Trade

By Norman Rogers

Global warming, now called climate change, is a big industry with academic and commercial branches.  One way or another the government provides the money to keep it in business.  The academic side supports thousands of scientific workers churning out some good science larded with lots of junk science.  The commercial side is busy turning out tank cars filled with corn ethanol and covering the landscape with windmills.  Nobody would be doing any of this without government subsidies and mandates.   A recent example of how the geniuses in Washington direct policy is the loaning of hundreds of millions to electric car companies like Tesla.  Tesla is the stock that everyone is going to be trying to short when they aren't trying to short First Solar.

Some of this government support is direct, such as the 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour subsidy for windmill electricity.  But much is mandated by regulations that result in increased consumer prices -- a hidden tax.  For example utilities may be required to generate a certain percentage of their electricity from green sources such as windmills.  Since the electricity from these sources is expensive, prices to the consumer must be raised. 

Why the government even bothers trying to reduce CO2 emissions is a mystery.  Rising CO2 emissions from China and the rest of Asia make any efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in the U.S.  irrelevant.  The numbers and trends are very obvious on this point.  China currently generates 1/4 as much electricity per capita as the U.S.  and China has 4 times the population.  This suggests that China could eventually increase its electricity generation by a factor of 16 to match the per capita electricity usage enjoyed in the U.S.  In the single year 2010 electricity production grew 15% in China, a pace that would double production in 5 years. Electricity in China comes mainly from coal, the indigenous fuel available in large quantities and the most CO2 emitting fuel.  China is also consuming ever increasing quantities of oil to support its growing automobile population.  Even at its current early stage of economic development China passed the U.S.  in the generation of CO2 5 years ago.  Some apologists for Chinese CO2 policy claim that China is leading in windmills and solar panels while neglecting to point out that these are export industries, selling hardware or emissions credits to Europeans who are even bigger believers in the  climate change religion than we are.  Those Chinese industries are currently suffering because the Europeans are running out of mad money.

How big is the climate change industry and how large could it become?  Probably the research side is in the single digit billions.  The mitigation, or CO2 reduction, side is where the big bucks are.  To get an idea consider that the cost of electricity amounts to about $3 a day for each person in the U.S. or around  $300 billion per year.  Double the cost of electricity, something that is seen as good start by the preachers of climate change, and you have another $300 billion per year.  That's half of the cost of Medicare in 2008.   Some people in California are already paying 5 times^[i] as much as people in areas less affected by the green virus.  The beauty of green electricity mandates is that it results in a gradual creep upwards in the cost of electricity and it's not easy to know who to blame.  Of course the climate change industry reaps the benefits as surely as if the government wrote them a check.   Perhaps writing a check should be considered, because it would be a big savings if the government just bribed these people to stop building windmills.