Electric Car Crash

Via-WSJ

Obama's green energy industrial policy turns up in Chapter 11.

Mitt Romney quipped in the first Presidential debate that the problem with the Obama Administration's green energy investing isn't that it tried to pick winners and losers, but that "you pick the losers." He was being generous. Another big green Administration favorite went belly-up on Tuesday with the Chapter 11 filing by battery-maker A123 Systems Inc.

Massachusetts-based A123 is—or was—part of President Obama's grand design to build a U.S. electric-car industry more or less from scratch. The company was founded by entrepreneurs in 2001 to make lithium ion phosphate batteries and attracted private investment from the likes of Sequoia Capital and GE. Then Washington picked up the green energy fad.

As Mr. Obama put it in August 2009, the government would create an "infrastructure of innovation" by doling out "$2.4 billion in highly competitive grants to develop the next generation of fuel-efficient cars and trucks, powered by the next generation of battery technologies, all made right here in the U.S. of A."

In a September 2010 congratulatory phone call to A123's Livonia, Michigan plant, Mr. Obama called it "the birth of an entire new industry in America."

Democrats were explicit that this was an attempt to rehabilitate the idea that government could nurture new industries. As Michigan Senator Carl Levin said in a 2011 speech, A123's factories "are a forceful rebuttal to those who argue against public investment in this field, people who label this 'industrial policy.' In the not too distant past, that label—'industrial policy'—was the kiss of death for any proposal. That's an ideological hang-up that we've now overcome."

One not-so-ideological hang-up: The technology and market for such an industry didn't and still doesn't exist for commercially profitable levels of production. Electric-battery storage in particular has bedeviled technologists for decades. But rather than fund basic research—arguably a role for government—Mr. Obama and his green friends decided to play venture capitalist and industrial planner. With your money.

The Bush Administration gave A123 a $6 million research grant in 2007. But the company hit the jackpot in August 2009 when Mr. Obama's Department of Energy announced a $249 million grant. No strings attached and not even a taxpayer equity stake. The cash was supposed to build three plants in Michigan that would create "more than 3,000 [jobs] by the end of 2012," according to Mr. Obama.

The A123 batteries needed a market, so the government tried to finance that too. In April 2010, the Energy Department gave Fisker Automotive a $529 million loan to develop and produce plug-in hybrid cars—for which A123 would supply the batteries.

Fisker was supposed to be producing cars this year at an old General Motors-United Auto Workers plant in Delaware. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Delaware himself for the plant reopening. But Fisker has struggled with reliability issues, car recalls and management changes. In August, a Fisker Karma vehicle caught fire in a parking lot in California, thanks to a defective cooling fan. The Energy Department froze Fisker's credit line last year.

As for A123, it also struggled with quality-control problems and competition from low-cost producers in Asia. China's Wanxiang Group offered A123 a lifeline in August, but Tuesday that deal fell apart.

Johnson Controls, the Fortune 500 giant, will now pick up the pieces and finance A123's bankruptcy. Johnson Controls received a $299.2 million grant from the Obama Administration in 2009 to build advanced batteries. Johnson Controls is a respected enterprise, but does a company with a fiscal 2011 net income of $1.6 billion really need taxpayer subsidies?

More than any single failure, the larger lesson here is the eternal one about the folly of government industrial policy. Someday someone will find a way to store electric power for long periods, and someday someone may build a commercially viable electric car. We will be the first to cheer.

But the second to last people in the world to know when that day arrives will work for the Department of Energy, and the last will be U.S. Senators. In 2008 President Obama sold voters a fairy tale about millions of "green jobs" that he could conjure up merely by "investing" taxpayer money. The 2012 election is in part a referendum on whether Americans can be fooled again.

Drought! Famine! Global…Cooling?

FROM-Townhall

John Ransom

Climate experts from United Kingdom’s National Weather Service told the world that while is was not unusual for pauses in global warming that last for a decade to occur once every eighty years or so, there was no way that one could last for 15 years or more according to their climate model.

Oops. Their mistake, I guess.

Maybe that’s why when the United Kingdom’s National Weather Service updated their data and it showed that global warming has been paused for the last 16 years, they remained mum.

“The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week,” write the Daily Mail’s David Rose. “The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.”

Rose includes a nice graphic, which we have reprinted below, that shows global temperatures remaining stable since 1997, with a statistically insignificant .03 degree rise on the Celsius scale.

Read article here

In Case You Missed It

Fisher: There may be more to the Arctic thaw than global warming

BANKRUPT SOLYNDRA FILES BIZARRE LAWSUIT BEFORE ELECTIONS


U.S. Biofuel Expansion Cost Developing Countries $6.6 Billion: Tufts

Park Ridge green fuels company feels squeezed by probe [The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)]

Climate research gets big funding boost

Solar Markets?

U.S. lawmakers press DOE about Abound Solar tech problems

WASHINGTON Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican lawmakers on Wednesday pressed the Obama administration for more information about its decision to back, and then stop funding, a now-bankrupt solar company, with a report now saying the company may have been selling a faulty product.

The request from leaders of the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce committee marked the latest probe of the administration's energy loan program, which has become a lightning rod for critics after the high profile failure of solar panel maker Solyndra.

Abound Solar, another solar manufacturer in the program, filed for bankruptcy in July after receiving about $70 million of its $400 million loan guaranteed by the government.

At the time Abound cited intense competition from Chinese panel makers as the reason for the company's collapse, but a report from The Daily Caller website said internal documents show Abound's panels were defective.

"Recent reports and publicly available documents indicate that persistent technological problems contributed to Abound's inability to remain commercially viable and, ultimately, its bankruptcy," said Republican Congressmen Fred Upton, Energy and Commerce committee chairman, Cliff Stearns and Cory Gardner in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The Daily Caller report said the panels were underperforming and prone to catch fire. The website was founded by Tucker Carlson, a conservative commentator, and Neil Patel, who was an adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In their letter, the lawmakers questioned what the Energy Department knew about these technological problems before awarding Abound's loan and whether these issues played any role in the department's decision to cut off funding for the project in August 2011.

Prior to finalizing the loan for Abound, a department-commissioned engineering report found "performance shortfalls" with the company's panels, the lawmakers said.So far, the funding received by the three bankrupt companies - including Beacon Power, an energy storage company - in the loan program represents less than 4 percent of the $16 billion in loans the program backed.

The Energy Department has defended its investment in Abound Solar, saying the company was an "innovative" manufacturer that suffered from the precipitous drop in solar panel costs.

An Energy Department official said the administration has already provided Congress with more than 1 million pages of documents as part of Republicans' extensive review of the loan program, including the independent engineering and market analyses used to evaluate Abound.

Like Duh!

Experts: Global warming means more Antarctic ice

Notable Quotes

“By the way, yes, my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is eating our planet because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke. That’s a threat to our children’s future, and we can do something about it.”

President Barack Obama
University Of Miami Oct. 11, 2012

The Solar Market?

ANALYST: Solar Power Will Never Work For The Vast Majority Of The World

AllianceBernstein analysts Catherine Wood and Brett Winton believe the day when solar power can achieve grid parity, or be cost competitive without subsidies, may never arrive.

Read more here

Revenge of the fossil fuels: Setbacks mount for renewable energy sector

FROM-The Providence

BY YADULLAH HUSSAIN, FINANCIAL POST

After a fantastic run spanning a few years, the renewable energy sector has taken a number of hits recently, which suggests its inevitable march as the energy source of the future is far from certain.

“It’s pretty bleak — there is no way to sugar coat it. But I wouldn’t call it a lost cause,” says Matt Horne, director of climate change at the Pembina Institute.

While all sectors have ups and downs, there is a fear that renewables’ weaknesses could lead to structural changes, as policymakers no longer have the luxury of supporting and extending subsidies at a time of fiscal austerity.

And much to the dismay of environmentalists, fossil fuels are clawing their way back into the public’s good books. Or at least they are offering a compelling economic case that few can resist at a time of slow economic growth.

A number of factors have turned the tide. Plentiful oil and abundance of cheap natural gas, especially in the United States and Canada, with its promise of high-paying jobs has been an irresistible lure for governments desperate to create employment.

While some North American regions such as Quebec hold the practice of hydraulic fracturing in disdain, many others are warming up to its benefits. Natural gas has taken the pressure off the wider carbons industry as it has displaced coal.

“Of course, natural gas is reducing the use of coal, which emits much more greenhouse gases, so you could argue that is has helped the green movement, but it is definitely becoming an obstacle [to renewables] due to low prices,” says Ann-Louise Hittle, head of macro oil at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy.

The renewable sector’s problems are most visible where it has achieved the most: Europe.

Read entire article here

The Solar Market ?

FROM- The NYT

Glut of Solar Panels Poses a New Threat to China

BEIJING — China in recent years established global dominance in renewable energy, its solar panel and wind turbine factories forcing many foreign rivals out of business and its policy makers hailed by environmentalists around the world as visionaries.

But now China’s strategy is in disarray. Though worldwide demand for solar panels and wind turbines has grown rapidly over the last five years, China’s manufacturing capacity has soared even faster, creating enormous oversupply and a ferocious price war.

The result is a looming financial disaster, not only for manufacturers but for state-owned banks that financed factories with approximately $18 billion in low-rate loans and for municipal and provincial governments that provided loan guarantees and sold manufacturers valuable land at deeply discounted prices.

China’s biggest solar panel makers are suffering losses of up to $1 for every $3 of sales this year, as panel prices have fallen by three-fourths since 2008. Even though the cost of solar power has fallen, it still remains triple the price of coal-generated power in China, requiring substantial subsidies through a tax imposed on industrial users of electricity to cover the higher cost of renewable energy.

The outcome has left even the architects of China’s renewable energy strategy feeling frustrated and eager to see many businesses shut down, so the most efficient companies may be salvageable financially.

In the solar panel sector, “If one-third of them survive, that’s good, and two-thirds of them die, but we don’t know how that happens,” said Li Junfeng, a longtime director general for energy and climate policy at the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planning agency.

readentire article here

Blow Your Mind Stories

FROM-Jer's Place

EPA Sued Over Heinous Experiments on Humans

After accumulating evidence via the Freedom of Information Act that showed the Environmental Protection Agency conducted disturbing experiments that exposed humans to inhalable particulates the agency has said are deadly, sound science advocate Steven Milloy has sued the federal government.

The trials, which were carried out at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, exposed subjects to fine particulate matter (called “PM2.5”) at extremely elevated levels for up to two hours at a time. EPA’s Web site on particulate matter and its 2009 “Summary of PM2.5 Risk Estimates,” stated, “an examination of cause-specific risk estimates found that PM2.5 risk estimates for cardiovascular deaths are similar to those for all-cause deaths….” Also, in July 2011 EPA stated in the Federal Register announcement of its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that “a recent EPA analysis estimated that 2005 levels of PM2.5 and ozone were responsible for between 130,000 and 320,000 PM2.5-related and 4,700 ozone-related premature deaths….”

And to cap it all, last September EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “Particulate matter causes death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”

Read entire article here

and more here and here

The suit accuses the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,” was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its “permissible limit.”

Yet even that phrase is misleading. In testimony delivered to Congress in September of 2011, EPA chief Lisa Jackson claimed that exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns–or less–was lethal. ”Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” she testified at the time.

Skeptics From Around The Globe

Germany







Klaus-Eckard Puls

 Vice President of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE)









"Only a few people in the climate discussion are aware that CO2 is not the main driver, and that most of the warming is assigned to the dubious amplification mechanism. CO2 by itself only has a warming potential of 1.1°C per atmospheric concentration doubling. It is only through the theoretical assumption of the up-to-now poorly understood amplification mechanism that the warming gets catapulted by the IPCC to 2.0-4.5°C per CO2 doubling, mainly through water vapour and clouds.”

Like Duh!

FROM-Business Insider


STUDY: Electric Cars May Be Twice As Bad For Global Warming As Regular Cars

Read more here

Skeptics From Around The Globe

South Africa









Dr Kelvin Kemm

is a Technology Strategy Consultant and runs his own company, Stratek, based in Pretoria, South Africa. He studied at Natal University where he gained a PhD in nuclear physics before working as a scientist at the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa. He subsequently moved into the field of the management of technology, and became involved in a variety of projects in many industrial sectors, giving him wide exposure to the technological and industrial base of society. In 1994, Dr Kemm was appointed to the International Board of Advisors of the Washington DC-based environment and technology lobby group, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. In 1996, he became the first person from Africa to be appointed to the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), and was appointed to the ESEF Board in 1999. He is also a member of the British Institute of Nuclear Engineers. Dr Kemm has written a public interest book on technology entitled "Techtrak – A Winding Path of South African Development". He also has his own weekly newspaper column in Engineering News, and has appeared widely on radio and TV.

"It really amazes me – and also does not surprise me – when, in climate change discussions, completely illogical conclusions take hold in the public mind. It is amazing that basic logic escapes the public or is twisted without anyone seeming to care. On the other hand, it does not surprise me because there are elements in society which want false conclusions to be fed to the public so that they will toe the line of the propagators."

In Case You Missed It

FROM-US News

Could Controversy Surrounding Global Warming Cool Down?
Climate change hasn't always been a partisan issue.

By JASON KOEBLER

Gridlock in Washington has stopped Congress from pushing through legislation that would have helped farmers, reworked No Child Left Behind, and help companies fight cybersecurity. So it's no wonder Washington has stayed away from a polarizing issue such as climate change during an election year.

But sentiment on the issue hasn't always been divided along party lines. During the 1988 presidential campaign, Republican George H.W. Bush pledged to "fight the Greenhouse Effect with the White House effect." And a 1997 PEW poll found that nearly half of Republicans thought America should follow other countries' leads on environmental issues. Nearly two-thirds of Americans were willing to pay up to 25 cents more per gallon of gas to help combat global warming. Other polls suggested that nearly two-thirds of Americans thought global warming was a serious issue.

So what happened?.......

read here

In Case You Missed It

FROM-The Register

New science: SEAS WILL RISE due to CO2 ... but not for centuries

Not a problem for your children, or theirs (recurring)

By Lewis Page

A new, first-of-its-kind comprehensive scientific analysis has shown that there is little to fear from rising sea levels driven by global warming. The likelihood is that the 21st century will see rises much like those of the 20th, and even in the worst possible case sea levels in 2100 will be far below those foreseen by alarmists.

Read here

The Solar Market?

FROM-Minneapolis Star Tribune

Xcel must retain solar subsidy

State regulators order the electric utility to continue supporting Minnesota's small-but-growing solar industry.

(excerpts)

Minnesota regulators on Monday ordered Xcel Energy to retain a popular program that subsidizes the small-scale solar-power projects of its customers. 

State Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman decided that the Minneapolis-based utility must fund the Solar Rewards program at the current $5 million-a-year level for the next three years. 

The state's small-but-growing solar industry, especially installers, had feared a drop in orders if the program ended. So far, it has helped 560 homeowners and businesses afford solar panel systems since 2010....

(2 years @ $5 million a year=$10 million ratepayers dollars divided by 560 customers=$17,857.00  for every subsidized customer.)

...Xcel wanted to drop Solar Rewards from its broader conservation program after 2013, saying it was not a good deal for the ratepayers, who foot the bill. The utility also argued that solar generation doesn't belong in a conservation program that aims to reduce electricity use by 1.5 percent each year.

In Case You Missed it

FROM-Western Farm Press

Collision coming between biofuels mandates and market reality

In the face of a small corn crop and high prices, there has been a great deal of debate about a partial temporary waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS) mandate for ethanol in 2013. Our analysis of the likely impacts of such a waiver can be found here. While the headlines have focused on the short-term implications of waiving the ethanol mandate in 2013, a potentially much larger issue looms on the horizon. Beyond 2013, there are real questions about the feasibility of meeting the ever-increasing requirements of the RFS, and this concern goes beyond the well-known difficulties with meeting the mandate for cellulosic biofuels. The purpose of this post is to show why the RFS is likely to collide with market realities in the near future....

read here

Political Non-Science

One can almost prove scientifically that science and politics don't mix.

FROM-American Spectator

By Lars Walker


"Science is better than faith," the scientist told me. "Faith is about opinions and beliefs that have no rational foundation. There's no way to prove one is better than another, so everybody just ends up yelling. And when the argument gets heated enough, they start killing each other.

"In science, on the other hand, we can prove or disprove things. Feelings don't come into it. If a theory doesn't work under laboratory conditions, if the results aren't reproducible, then it falls to the ground and that's the end of it."

"It's a good point," I conceded, "though you must admit it hasn't always worked that way. Lysenko in Russia did peer review by firing squad."

"Which proves my point," said the scientist. "That wasn't science."

"I could argue that killing people for religion isn't faith either."

"Prove it."

Touché.

In the modern world an appeal to science generally trumps appeals to faith or authority, and although I'm a Christian evangelical, I think that's largely a good thing. Science, historically the fruit of a theistic world view that saw the universe as a rational artifact, works. It works wonderfully. It brings genuine results from which we all benefit. It's been misused from time to time, but taken as a whole it's been an overwhelming blessing to mankind.

The problem comes when we try to apply science to areas that aren't subject to the microscope, the telescope, or the mass spectrometer.

Like politics.

The Solar Market?

FROM-Gigaom

Sep 30, 2012 - 6:49AM PT

China’s Hanergy to buy solar startup Miasole in fire sale

(excerpts)

...MiaSole was desperate for a white knight to rescue it from oblivion. After years of research and development, the company seemed to have finally nailed its manufacturing process to making solar panels out of copper, indium gallium and selenium (CIGS) that are more efficient than many rivaling CIGS thin film companies. But it was running out of money and needed to expand its production and attract customers. CEO John Carrington joined MiaSole late last year, and he made a public appeal in December for investors and partners who could bring money and sales and marketing expertise....

...Solar startups have been picked off one by one cheaply – or filed for bankruptcy – over the past 19 months because the global solar market has been plagued by a glut of solar panels. The fast-falling panel prices – roughly 50 percent in 2011 alone and 30 percent so far this year – have put an enormous pressure on companies to lower their prices. That pressure is particularly difficult to handle for startups, which often have higher manufacturing costs initially when they are scaling up production of their technology. And many of them indeed were trying to raise more money and make that leap to mass production when the financial market crisis hit in late 2008, followed by the oversupply of solar panels starting in 2011....

Notable Quotes

FROM-Jer's Place

"We’re offering conservative reforms that are proven ideas to grow the economy. We want to reapply our nation’s founding principles to fix those problems. I would argue our president is replacing our founding principles.”

Paul Ryan

Cyber Wag Alert-Little Fishes

FROM-Jer's Notes

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)

Since I have not done a Cyber Wag  alert in awhile I would suggest that that you read the above link to review.

In this particular incident the scientific community is using their vast computer power to kill off and stunt the growth of the entire fish population of planet Earth.

Fish to shrink by up to a quarter due to climate change, study reveals 

Scientists predict 14-24% reduction in fish size by 2050 as ocean temperatures increase

After considerable wringing of hands:

Global warming is likely to shrink the size of fish by as much as a quarter in coming decades, according to a groundbreaking new study of the world's oceans.

The reduction in individual fish size will be matched by a dwindling of overall fish stocks, warned scientists, at a time when the world's growing human population is putting ever greater pressure on fisheries.

And further alarmist verbage meant to scare the unenlightened masses:

"It could be worse than that," said Prof Callum Roberts, at the University of York, who described the research as the most comprehensive to date. Roberts, who was not one of the study's authors,...

Of course it could be our friendly scientist are known for their conservatism when it comes to hyperbolic rhetoric.

"We will see dramatic changes in the oceans likely to reduce productivity," said Roberts. "One billion people rely on fish for primary animal protein and that is going to increase, especially in developing countries. We have to get to grips with our dependence on fossil fuels otherwise we are stuffed."

Oh yes of course couldn't have a scientific discussion without throwing the old fossil fuel/big oil angle into it. But to make sure everyone makes the connection our scientist point it out

"Our work shows a very concerning future for the oceans and so it is very important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop better fish management policies to adapt to these changes," said Cheung.

The pertinent passage is found well down in the article and identifies it as a Cyber Wag:

Cheung's team projected temperature rises using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on a high-emissions scenario that matches the current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.

So as is usual they are using a hypothesis, a model, which can not be proven to make model of what will happen decades hence and using this to drive their society crushing agendas and feed their government grant coffers.

One wonders what the world would look like today if these same scientist used their talents and intellect to truly help mankind rather than to saddle it with unsustainable policies based solely on Cyber Wag fecal matter.

The Solar Market?

FROM-New Jersey Star Ledger

Solar panels come to Union County, but program's future not so bright

(Excerpt)

...But instability in New Jersey’s market for solar energy credits, known as SRECs, has raised concerns about the program’s potential to be expanded in the future. And it also calls into question the revenue streams of a private company, California-based Tioga Energy, which owns the solar panels and is obligated to pay back $15 million in debt that Union County guaranteed.

It’s one of many public-backed solar energy initiatives undertaken in New Jersey in recent years, and the uncertainty that surrounds it is an example of what’s being experienced around the state in other parts of the nation. 

The SREC credits, essentially a subsidy, are awarded to homeowners, businesses and utilities that generate energy with solar panels. Prices are set on a market in which utilities buy credits to meet state-mandated quotas. 

For the first few years of the SREC market, solar panel owners got $600 or more for each SREC they earned by generating 1,000 kilowatts of solar energy, equal to about two thirds of the monthly electricity needs of the average New Jersey household. 

Then, once supply of SRECs exceeded what the state told utilities to procure, prices plummeted to the mid-$100 range on spot markets.
That was bad for anyone who relied on high SREC values to pay off solar panel financing, like Tioga, and bad for solar builders if it brings new projects to a screeching halt. 

To save jobs, the state Legislature sharply increased the utilities’ demand for credits over a three-year period, and Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill into law in July. 

So far, though, it hasn’t worked: Prices on the spot market dropped from the mid-$100s to $60 or $70 as of last week, according to the SREC trading company Flett Exchange. 

In the case of the Union County program, Tioga will generate the majority of its revenue by selling electricity to the agencies that allowed it to install the solar panels. But it will also sell SRECs to generate income, and the low prices are bad for its bottom line. 

"We’re going to have to dig in to our own coffers to make the bond repayments," said Marc Roper, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing....

What could go wrong?

From The Reno Gazzete Journal

Tequila plant is tapped for biofuel

UNR research gets federal backing with $14.3M grant

Feel free to read the article but it seems to me that giving millions of dollars to a University to study Tequila has the potential to  get, uh be wasted, and the University of Nevada at that.

Science Fiction: ‘Climate Vulnerability Monitor Report’ Released

This irresponsible report does not belong anywhere near policy planners.

FROM-PJ Media

On Wednesday, the 2012 “Climate Vulnerability Monitor – a Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet“ was released to great fanfare in New York City. Conducted by the DARA group, a non-governmental organization based in Europe, and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, the 331-page report forecasts death and destruction on a scale normally reserved for science fiction.

Media covering the report printed extraordinary headlines. Per US News & World Report: “Report: 100 Million Could Die From Climate Change By 2030.”

The Manila Bulletin headlined an Agence France-Presse newswire article: “Climate Change Choking World Economy — Report.”

Businessweek announced: “Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion.”

Only a few questioned whether the report made any sense. Calling it “a triumph for public relations,” statistician Bjorn Lomborg — director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark — showed how the report’s handling of “climate change deaths, economic costs, and the costs of ‘action versus inaction’” is nonsense.

However, even Lomborg accepts the climate change science underlying the report. This is a serious mistake. Science misunderstandings continue to drive the climate scare, and lead to exaggerated reports such as the “Monitor.” While humans undoubtedly have some impact on climate, especially at regional levels due to the “urban heat island” effect, preventing climate from changing on a global basis is science fiction.


Read article here

CLIMATE LOSERS GETTING DESPERATE

FROM-Power Line

Did you know that climate change kills! At least that’s the claim out in a new study yesterday, as reported in The Daily Beast, which, last I checked, relies heavily upon a hydrocarbon-intensive energy system to exist. Anyway, according to the latest CO2-breathless story, climate change kills 400,000 people a year, and costs the global economy $1.2 trillion. Jeepers: Maybe the climate—or Mother Nature Herself—should come with a warning label like cigarette packs.

The report comes from something called the Climate Vulnerability Forum (with offices conveniently located in Geneva and Madrid, because you wouldn’t want to be located where any of the world’s poor actually have to live without modern energy would you?), and is hardly worth pouring through the methodology to debunk. In fact, it is not necessary to dispute the death toll estimate to grasp how colossally stupid the study is.

I’m reminded of P.J. O’Rourke’s great line about socialized medicine: if you think health care is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free....

Read here

Reefer Madness (Climate Change Edition)

FROM-American Thinker

By Daren Jonescu

A new study by climate researchers from Germany, Australia, and Canada seems to prove beyond any doubt that -- hold on to your hat -- if global temperatures reach levels at which coral reefs are damaged, then coral reefs will be damaged. Terrifyingly irrefutable logic.

The news article outlining the study's findings, entitled "World's coral reefs will die without drastic action on climate change: study," is as typical in its alarmism as it is alarming in its typicality. What does "drastic action" entail? How are such "drastic" measures to be undertaken? Who is to take them? Might there be any legal or ethical issues implied by such measures? A real journalist, if there were one, would be asking these questions. Our modern Official Story disseminators simply say, "Wow, listen to this!" In reply, the online commentators on this article line up to say, "Yeah, it's all the right-wingers' fault," or "Man, this is scary."

So, what computer-generated scenario are they alarming us with now? The study's lead author, Dr. Katja Frieler, explains the study's conclusions in the clearest possible terms (emphasis added).

Our findings show that under current assumptions regarding thermal sensitivity, coral reefs might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems if global mean temperatures actually exceed two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.

Here we go again. The global warming grant-seekers and their promoters at the United Nations have thrown some more data into their Big If Machine and come up with another argument for destroying the world's economy, impoverishing or eliminating millions, and violating natural rights in the name of Gaia. (See further examples here and here.)

"If global mean temperatures actually exceed two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level." The news article notes that this warning matches up perfectly with the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which declares that "any further rise in global temperatures should be kept to below two degrees C over pre-industrial levels." The author presents this similarity as a case of mutually reinforcing findings, whereas of course that "two degrees above pre-industrial levels" trope is the standard jargon of climate change fear-mongering. The new study, like so many others, is merely adopting the U.N.'s Framework assumption and running with it.

This study asserts that coral reefs might be harmed if temperatures "exceed" two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Exceed by how much? And what if "current assumptions regarding thermal sensitivity" are wrong? And should not scientific researchers feel obliged to answer such questions -- not to mention the question of whether there is any imminent risk of such a rise in temperature -- with a greater degree of certitude before drawing conclusions that imply a need for "drastic measures"? Furthermore, what are we to make of the conclusion itself -- namely, that if all these conditions obtain, then coral reefs "might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems"? Might? Quantify "might," please. (Just kidding -- please do not try to quantify might; we have been inundated with enough specious computer models already.)

Notice, further, the loaded terminology of "pre-industrial levels." This way of framing the historical temperature record pre-determines that the subsequent rising temperatures were the result of the industrial age per se -- i.e., that you built that, as it were.

If we restated Dr. Frieler's conclusion using the accepted categories of climate science, rather than the politically loaded phrase "pre-industrial," the study's findings would sound like this: "Coral reefs might become less prominent if global mean temperatures actually exceed two degrees above the levels from the end of the Little Ice Age." That seems to make a bit of a difference, doesn't it? Substituting "pre-industrial" for "Little Ice Age" is sleight-of-hand unworthy of science.

This is the point in a "climate denial" article where Al Gore's acolytes usually jump in to say, "You're only reading a media report, not the actual study with all its hard evidence." First of all, there are plenty of careful scientific analyses of the scholarly heart of the global warming charade. And from all these analyses -- from the cherry-picked tree ring samples and ice core data to the carefully bracketed "hockey stick" -- we have learned that the chief theoretical weakness of "orthodox" climate change theory is the fundamental closed-mindedness of the theorists. They set out to find a predetermined answer to their question, and then they take any necessary steps to make darned sure their chosen evidence seems to back it up.

The controversy over the infamous e-mail discussion of "hiding the decline" has taken on a life of its own, obscuring a more basic point. The mention of hiding the decline was merely an admission of guilt; the fact of guilt -- i.e., bad science -- had already long been established.

Secondly, most run-of-the-mill climate change "studies" do not bear intense analysis for the simplest reason of all: on their face, they are not really claiming to have proven anything beyond their own computer models' imaginary worlds. Such is the case with this latest coral reef study. The researchers hypothesize that if certain things happen, certain adverse outcomes will occur. The question they do not, cannot, and do not even feel the need to answer, is: "Why should we assume that these hypothetical conditions are anything but science fiction?"

Their entire study rests on the "pre-established" wisdom of man-made global warming. Since J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, many people of various degrees of talent have milked a lot of money out of adapting his characters and settings to their various purposes. But if someone turned around and tried to present "new research" on hobbit social arrangements to the Anthropological Society of London, he would be laughed out of town. (Okay, probably not these days, but you get my point.)

The case of these studies which purport to add to our scientific understanding of the world according to the thoroughly discredited notion of man-made global cooling/global warming/global climate change is no different from that of our imaginary hobbit anthropologist. Or rather, it is different in one way only: the researchers into Middle-earth's climate have thus far gotten away with the ruse. The governments of the world are taking or proposing expensive and despotic steps to prevent Sauron from killing Frodo. And in this version of the story, Sauron, the villain, is you -- you who wish to live a productive, comfortable life in an advanced, free society. It is you who must be stopped.

The article concludes with one more dire warning from another of the researchers.

"The window of opportunity to preserve the majority of coral reefs, part of the world's natural heritage, is small," says co-author of the study Malte Meinshausen, who is a senior researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

"We close this window if we follow another decade of ballooning global greenhouse-gas emissions."

Really? Not if the dean of climate fear-pmongering, Phil Jones of East Anglia University, is correct. He has reluctantly admitted that there has been no significant increase in global mean temperatures since 1995. The trajectory of doom assumed by the authors of all these tagalong studies, and built into their Big If Machine computer models, simply is not borne out by the facts.

This study is thus reducible in spirit to the wording I used at the outset: if global temperatures should somehow happen to reach levels at which we think coral reefs might be adversely affected, then coral reefs would, obviously, be adversely affected.

This is science?

Global Warming and Shrinking Manhood

FROM-the Corner

By Mark Steyn .

 Readers have asked me for an update on climate scientist Michael Mann’s threatened lawsuit against National Review for mocking his hockey stick. I don’t really have anything new to report on that front, but I heard Rush mention this story the other day – CBS News, in an alarming story headlined “Male Genitalia Shrinking“, is reporting that global warming may be responsible for a ten per cent reduction in male private parts over the last fifty years. According to this alleged Italian study:

Air pollution has been shown to ‘negatively impact penis size’.

So no hockey stick there. We may have to call these Italian scientists as expert witnesses.

North Dakota Oil Production Sets Records in July, Monthly Output Exceeds 20m Bbls. for First Time

FROM-Carpe Diem

IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk

FROM-American Thinker

By Joseph L. Bast

On June 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement saying it had "complete[d] the process of implementation of a set of recommendations issued in August 2010 by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), the group created by the world's science academies to provide advice to international bodies."


Hidden behind this seemingly routine update on bureaucratic processes is an astonishing and entirely unreported story.  The IPCC is the world's most prominent source of alarmist predictions and claims about man-made global warming.  Its four reports (a fifth report is scheduled for release in various parts in 2013 and 2014) are cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. and by national academies of science around the world as "proof" that the global warming of the past five or so decades was both man-made and evidence of a mounting crisis.


If the IPCC's reports were flawed, as a many global warming "skeptics" have long claimed, then the scientific footing of the man-made global warming movement -- the environmental movement's "mother of all environmental scares" -- is undermined.  The Obama administration's war on coal may be unnecessary.  Billions of dollars in subsidies to solar and wind may have been wasted.  Trillions of dollars of personal income may have been squandered worldwide in campaigns to "fix" a problem that didn't really exist.


The "recommendations" issued by the IAC were not minor adjustments to a fundamentally sound scientific procedure.  Here are some of the findings of the IAC's 2010 report.


The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give "due consideration ... to properly documented alternative views" (p. 20), fail to "provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors" (p. 21), and are not "consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses" (p. 22).  In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.
The IAC found that "the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors" and "the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents" (p. 18).  Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and "do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications" (p. 18).  In other words: authors are selected from a "club" of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.


The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers by politicians and environmental activists -- a problem called out by global warming realists for many years, but with little apparent notice by the media or policymakers -- was plainly admitted, perhaps for the first time by an organization in the "mainstream" of alarmist climate change thinking.  "[M]any were concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment's findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be politically motivated," the IAC auditors wrote.  The scientists they interviewed commonly found the Synthesis Report "too political" (p. 25).
Really?  Too political?  We were told by everyone -- environmentalists, reporters, politicians, even celebrities -- that the IPCC reports were science, not politics.  Now we are told that even the scientists involved in writing the reports -- remember, they are all true believers in man-made global warming themselves -- felt the summaries were "too political."


Here is how the IAC described how the IPCC arrives at the "consensus of scientists":


Plenary sessions to approve a Summary for Policy Makers last for several days and commonly end with an all-night meeting.  Thus, the individuals with the most endurance or the countries that have large delegations can end up having the most influence on the report (p. 25).


How can such a process possibly be said to capture or represent the "true consensus of scientists"?
Another problem documented by the IAC is the use of phony "confidence intervals" and estimates of "certainty" in the Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27-34).  Those of us who study the IPCC reports knew this was make-believe when we first saw it in 2007.  Work by J. Scott Armstrong on the science of forecasting makes it clear that scientists cannot simply gather around a table and vote on how confident they are about some prediction, and then affix a number to it such as "80% confident."  Yet that is how the IPCC proceeds.


The IAC authors say it is "not an appropriate way to characterize uncertainty" (p. 34), a huge understatement.  Unfortunately, the IAC authors recommend an equally fraudulent substitute, called "level of understanding scale," which is more mush-mouth for "consensus."


The IAC authors warn, also on page 34, that "conclusions will likely be stated so vaguely as to make them impossible to refute, and therefore statements of 'very high confidence' will have little substantive value."  Yes, but that doesn't keep the media and environmental activists from citing them over and over again as "proof" that global warming is man-made and a crisis...even if that's not really what the reports' authors are saying.


Finally, the IAC noted, "the lack of a conflict of interest and disclosure policy for IPCC leaders and Lead Authors was a concern raised by a number of individuals who were interviewed by the Committee or provided written input" as well as "the practice of scientists responsible for writing IPCC assessments reviewing their own work.  The Committee did not investigate the basis of these claims, which is beyond the mandate of this review" (p. 46).


Too bad, because these are both big issues in light of recent revelations that a majority of the authors and contributors to some chapters of the IPCC reports are environmental activists, not scientists at all.  That's a structural problem with the IPCC that could dwarf the big problems already reported.
So on June 27, nearly two years after these bombshells fell (without so much as a raised eyebrow by the mainstream media in the U.S. -- go ahead and try Googling it), the IPCC admits that it was all true and promises to do better for its next report.  Nothing to see here...keep on moving.


Well I say, hold on, there!  The news release means that the IAC report was right.  That, in turn, means that the first four IPCC reports were, in fact, unreliable.  Not just "possibly flawed" or "could have been improved," but likely to be wrong and even fraudulent.


It means that all of the "endorsements" of the climate consensus made by the world's national academies of science -- which invariably refer to the reports of the IPCC as their scientific basis -- were based on false or unreliable data and therefore should be disregarded or revised.  It means that the EPA's "endangerment finding" -- its claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and threat to human health -- was wrong and should be overturned.


And what of the next IPCC report, due out in 2013 and 2014?  The near-final drafts of that report have been circulating for months already.  They were written by scientists chosen by politicians rather than on the basis of merit; many of them were reviewing their own work and were free to ignore the questions and comments of people with whom they disagree.  Instead of "confidence," we will get "level of understanding scales" that are just as meaningless.


And on this basis we should transform the world's economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?
In 2010, we learned that much of what we thought we knew about global warming was compromised and probably false.  On June 27, the culprits confessed and promised to do better.  But where do we go to get our money back?


Joseph L. Bast (jbast@heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute and an editor of Climate Change Reconsidered, a series of reports published by The Heartland Institute for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

The Other Scandal In Unhappy Valley

FROM- CEI

 by RAND SIMBERG

So it turns out that Penn State has covered up wrongdoing by one of its employees to avoid bad publicity.

But I’m not talking about the appalling behavior uncovered this week by the Freeh report. No, I’m referring to another cover up and whitewash that occurred there two years ago, before we learned how rotten and corrupt the culture at the university was. But now that we know how bad it was, perhaps it’s time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how muchwe’ve also learned about his and others’ hockey-stick deceptions since. Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.

To review, when the emails and computer models were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia two and a half years ago, many of the luminaries of the “climate science” community were shown to have been behaving in a most unscientific manner. Among them were Michael Mann, Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, whom the emails revealed had been engaging in data manipulation to keep the blade on his famous hockey-stick graph, which had become an icon for those determined to reduce human carbon emissions by any means necessary.

As a result, in November of 2009, the university issued a press release that it was going to undertake its own investigation, independently of one that had been launched by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in response to a demand from Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R- N.Y.). In July of the next year, the panel set up to investigate declared him innocent of any wrongdoing:

Penn State Professor Michael Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

The panel of leading scholars from various research fields, all tenured professors at Penn State, began its work on March 4 to look at whether Mann had “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.”

My emphasis.

Despite the fact that it was completely internal to Penn State, and they didn’t bother to interview anyone except Mann himself, and seemingly ignored the contents of the emails, the warm mongers declared him exonerated (and the biggest victim in the history of the world). But many in the skeptic community called it a whitewash:

This is not surprising that Mann’s own university circled the wagons and narrowed the focus of its own investigation to declare him ethical.

The fact that the investigation cited Mann’s ‘level of success in proposing research and obtaining funding’ as some sort of proof that he was meeting the ‘highest standards’, tells you that Mann is considered a sacred funding cash cow. At the height of his financial career, similar sentiments could have been said about Bernie Madoff.

Mann has become the posterboy of the corrupt and disgraced climate science echo chamber. No university whitewash investigation will change that simple reality.

Richard Lindzen of MIT weighed in as well:

“Penn State has clearly demonstrated that it is incapable of monitoring violations of scientific standards of behavior internally,” Lindzen said in an e-mail from France.

But their criticism was ignored, particularly after the release of the NAS report, which was also purported to exonerate him. Remember, this was all before anyone outside of the world of college sports had ever heard of Jerry Sandusky, when the university had a deep well of national respect for its integrity, deserved or not. But in rereading the NAS “exoneration,” some words stand out now. First, he was criticized for his statistical techniques (which was the basis of the criticism that resulted in his unscientific behavior). But more importantly:

The OIG also independently reviewed Mann’s emails and PSU’s inquiry into whether or not Mann deleted emails as requested by Phil Jones in the “Climategate” emails (aka Allegation 2). The OIG concluded after reviewing the the published CRU emails and the additional information provided by PSU that “nothing in [the emails] evidenced research misconduct within the definition of the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation.” Furthermore, the OIG accepted the conclusions of the PSU inquiry regarding whether Mann deleted emails and agreed with PSU’s conclusion that Mann had not.

Again, my emphasis. In other words, the NAS investigation relied on the integrity of the university to provide them with all relevant material, and was thus not truly independent. We now know in hindsight that it could not do so. Beyond that, there are still relevant emails that we haven’t seen, two years later, because the University of Virginia continues to stonewall on a FOIA request, and it’s heading to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno (and to a lesser degree, Jerry Sandusky) was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being whitewashed investigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?

It’s time for a fresh, truly independent investigation.