This is one of the reasons that studying historical temperatures is so important (a need that resulted in ClimateGate and the CRU emails). If history shows that Earth has been dramatically warmer than current temperatures, then we can assume that the runaway tipping point will not be reached (at least not very soon).

A recent study shows that this feedback appears to exist. The good news is that the models have it wrong – they expected a far greater feedback than was found in this current study. This is great news for mankind as our imminent death is at least delayed. It also reaffirms my call for better climate modeling science!

It is unlikely that President Barack Obama is strong enough to persuade Congress to pass sweeping legislation to ruin the American economy with global warming fears. It was close though! If the US Government had gone after cap and trade prior to healthcare, they would have pulled it off. Now it is doubtful.

The following article by Alister Doyle appeared on Reuters.

Climate change caused by mankind will release extra heat-trapping gases stored in nature into the atmosphere in a small spur to global warming, a study showed.

But the knock-on effect of the additional carbon dioxide — stored in soils, plants and the oceans — on top of industrial emissions building up in the atmosphere will be less severe than suggested by some recent studies, they said.

“We are confirming that the feedback exists and is positive. That’s bad news,” lead author David Frank of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL said of the study in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

“But if we compare our results with some recent estimates (showing a bigger feedback effect) then it’s good news,” Frank, an American citizen, told Reuters of the report with other experts in Switzerland and Germany.

The data, based on natural swings in temperatures from 1050-1800, indicated that a rise of one degree Celsius (1.6 degree Fahrenheit) would increase carbon dioxide concentrations by about 7.7 parts per million in the atmosphere.

That is far below recent estimates of 40 ppm that would be a much stronger boost to feared climate changes such as floods, desertification, wildfires, rising sea levels and more powerful storm, they said.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already risen to about 390 ppm from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. Only some models in the last major U.N. climate report, in 2007, included assessments of carbon cycle feedbacks.

Frank said the new study marks an advance by quantifying feedback over the past 1,000 years and will help refine computer models for predicting future temperatures.

SURPRISES

“In a warmer climate, we should not expect pleasant surprises in the form of more efficient uptake of carbon by oceans and land,” Hugues Goosse of the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, wrote in a comment in Nature.

The experts made 220,000 comparisons of carbon dioxide levels — trapped in tiny bubbles in annual layers of Antarctic ice — against temperatures inferred from natural sources such as tree rings or lake sediments over the years 1050-1800.

Goosse said the study refined a general view that rising temperatures amplify warming from nature even though some impacts are likely to suck carbon dioxide from the air.

Carbon might be freed to the air by a projected shift to drier conditions in some areas, for instance in the east Amazon rainforest. But that could be partly offset if temperatures rise in the Arctic, allowing more plants to grow.

Warmer soils might accelerate the respiration of tiny organisms, releasing extra carbon dioxide to the air. Wetlands or oceans may also release carbon if temperatures rise.

Frank said it was hard to say how the new findings might have altered estimates in a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 that world temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 Celsius by 2100.

“Of the models that did include the carbon cycle, our results suggests that those with slightly below average feedbacks might be more accurate,” he said. “But we can’t now say exactly what sort of temperature range that would imply.”

While there are some problems with relying on wind power for the bulk of our energy needs in the US, wind probably has a place to augment and help us meet our needs, especially if the US doesn’t quickly add more nuclear generation capability!

A short video from Wind Power Works

While I typically do not reproduce pages in whole, I am going to put the entire text of the Wind Day campaign here for your convenience. You should also go to the Global Wind Day site.

In 2009, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), which initiated the Wind Day campaign, will join forces with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) in order to coordinate the first Global Wind Day. The campaign will build on the efforts and success of the European Wind Day 2007 and 2008, in which over 20 countries participated in Europe, with hundreds of public events organised.

At a time of energy and climate crisis, it is vital to explain to the decision makers why the world crucially needs an energy shift. Policy makers are seeking solutions and the wind industry offers the best way to produce CO2-free electricity quickly and efficiently.

Wind can be found everywhere, and energy from wind is helping ease the widespread dependence on fossil fuels. In addition, wind energy creates jobs and contributes to economic growth by offering highly technical know-how and the possibility of exporting wind energy and its technology.

However, wind energy is also close to the everyday life of citizens, and therefore  citizens should be aware of all the benefits deriving from the deployment of this energy source. To fully exploit worldwide wind resources we need the support of local authorities, students, communities and citizens . We need that support to explain that wind power works.

Think global – Act local

The Global Wind Day is an awareness campaign for the promotion of wind energy worldwide. The message is global: wind power works – it tackles climate change, it improves energy dependence on fossil fuels, and it is an intelligent investment. All the events will take place all across 25 countries worldwide. The Global Wind Day will both reach out for and be powered by the people.

On 15 June 2009, thousands of public events will be organised simultaneously. Click here to discover your local events on the wind events map.

2009 will be a crucial year for the fight against climate change. Decision makers from all over the world will meet in Copenhagen in December to discuss the post-Kyoto protocol agreement. By participating in one of the numerous events organised for the Global Wind Day you will have the possibility of learning how wind energy works, and how wind turbines work. Above all, you will join EWEA and GWEC in asking decision makers at national, regional, and local level around the world to endorse new commitments and approve proper legal frameworks that will enable a large-scale development of wind power.

There does not appear to be any new scientific evidence of global warming in this paper.  Instead it references the 2007 IPCC findings and then studies that financial impact of those assertions.

The Telegraph recently wrote a story on the report.

The UK needs to cut greenhouse gases by 45 per cent by 2020 to prevent the world “lurching into climate disaster”, according to a new report from Oxfam.

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This would mean the UK would have to increase its current target to cut greenhouse gases from 34 per cent on 1990 levels to 45.3 per cent by further improving energy efficiency and relying more on renewable energy.

Both Europe and the US would need to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2020 – almost double the current EU target of 20 per cent and more than three times the most likely target to be set by the US of 14 per cent. Japan would have to deliver a 56 per cent reduction, although the country recently announced it would not commit to more than eight per cent.

At the same time it will be necessary to pump more than £90 billion into helping poorer countries cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change to prevent “climate catastrophe”.

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Aid agencies and developing countries are putting increasing pressure on rich nations to sign up to tough emissions targets and a “financial mechanism” that can provide money for poorer countries to adapt to climate change. One suggestion is for the money from carbon markets to go towards the adaptation fund or for a tax on international aviation and shipping to provide the money.

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Phil Bloomer, Oxfam’s Campaigns and Policy Director, … “Rich countries have the money and the technology to pull us from the brink of no return. They have a double duty – to deliver massive emissions cuts at home and provide money for poor countries to tackle their emissions too,” he said.

“It is unrealistic and immoral for rich countries to expect developing countries to cut their emissions first when it is developing countries who are most vulnerable to climate change and need to develop out of poverty. Every country must play its part.”

By addressing the magnitude of the climate threat with urgency, a powerful global climate change treaty would help establish a firm foundation for a sustainable economic future. This would set a more predictable framework for companies to plan and invest, provide a stimulus for renewed prosperity and a more secure climate system. Economic recovery and urgent action to tackle climate change are complementary – boosting the economy and jobs through investment in the new infrastructure needed to reduce emissions.

Business is at its best when innovating to achieve a goal and the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is vital to our common social, economic and environmental future. At the Summit we agreed that this will require ¹:

1. Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets.

We support the scientific evidence of the IPCC’s 4th. We are concerned that some recent scientific evidence suggests the problem may be worse than many of the IPCC estimates.

An effective global climate treaty must establish an ambitious goal and set emission targets that protect us and future generations from the risks of climate destabilization. Limiting the global average temperature increase to a maximum of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels would entail abatement of around 17Gt versus business-as-usual by 2020.

This will require an immediate and substantial change in the current global greenhouse gases emission trend: it must peak and begin to reduce within the next decade. Longer-term targets must be informed by the evolving science, but the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report indicates that global emissions must fall by at least half of 1990 levels by 2050.

We believe that working to reduce emissions now is less costly than delaying our efforts. There is nothing to be gained through delay. The deepest reductions should initially be made by developed economies though global emissions reduction will require all nations to play a part.

Emissions reduction at this scale will profoundly affect business, and business is already taking action to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. We are ready to make those changes and support ambitious political decisions to address the climate challenge wherever we operate. If policies are well designed and implemented, the benefits of early action will outweigh the short-term adjustment costs. This early action can only be achieved by setting an ambitious 2020 target.

2. Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions.

Achieving and tracking greenhouse gas emissions reduction is vital to measuring convergence towards the objectives of an effective climate treaty. As businesses we can set an example by contributing to a unified, coherent and reliable measurement, reporting and verification discipline leading to mandatory reporting. Accounting for the emissions we are responsible for will provide the basis for emissions reduction beyond what may be required by regulation and allow our performance to be properly judged and rewarded by investors and the public.

3. Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies.

To promote effective, efficient, equitable and ambitious action to address climate change the world will need to mobilize the scale of investment necessary to achieve the emissions reduction required. Properly established, an international carbon market framed around ambitious reduction targets can enable both cost-effective abatement and create the carbon price stability to drive the deployment of technologies that will deliver large-scale emissions reductions.

The first steps to establishing a global market will be to enable linkage between national and regional carbon markets. An international agreement will help secure investor confidence in the carbon market, and national actions will help generate new financial flows for climate investment.

The new climate treaty must “push” the development of new technologies through the use of public funds to leverage private finance in early stage demonstration and deployment. This will require policy measures that create clear, predictable, long-term incentives to stimulate private investment and enable the global diffusion of capital and technology.

4. Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones.

The private sector is already the source of over two-thirds of the world’s investments in clean technology innovation, and is the most effective source of know-how and technology dissemination and transfer. Many low-technologies already exist and can significantly reduce global emissions. Significant emissions reduction can be achieved through energy efficiency, much of it with positive financial returns. Standards and regulations are the best way to achieve this. A new treaty must support deployment of low-carbon solutions by encouraging incentives for public and private purchasers to choose the lowest emissions infrastructure and technologies and for investors to account for climate risk in their decisions.

Government and business must work together to ensure that all nations have equitable access to new clean energy technologies and other innovations by, among others, working with developing countries to improve the infrastructure required for effective deployment.

An effective global climate treaty must provide the means to fund research, development and the deployment of new clean energy technologies. Pricing can help “pull” these technologies through the innovation chain, generate revenue and enhance the flow of investment to developing countries. Governments should strive to end the current perverse subsidies that favour high-.emissions transport and energy infrastructure and promote deforestation.

A shift to a low-carbon economy, supported by private sector participation and government, has the potential to drive the next generation of technological innovation, address the environmental and economic challenges that climate change presents, and contribute to global development.

5. Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change.

We recognize that adaptation is as important as mitigation in an effective global climate treaty. Adaptation planning will require a holistic and long-term planning perspective, which will require different levels of activity at the international, national and local levels. Businesses will be responsible for building much of the infrastructure needed to protect us from climate impacts. An effective global climate treaty will mobilize funding that supports public private partnerships to enhance development, adaptive capacity, climate resilience and management of risk.

6. Innovative means to protect forests and balance the carbon cycle.

Because a significant proportion of the CO₂ reduction required by 2020 comes from the sequestration of carbon in forests and agriculture lands, an effective climate treaty must facilitate such sequestration. If emissions reductions targets are to be met, there is an immediate need to protect forests and enhance carbon sequestration. The private sector can play an important role in reducing deforestation, particularly in developing countries, through mechanisms structured to value conservation.

We believe these elements should form the core of the international climate change treaty agreed at Copenhagen. As business leaders we stand ready to innovate and operate within the framework established through that treaty and national policies.

Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, development and innovation. Acting together, we owe it to future generations to meet this challenge. Now is the time to create the foundations for long term, low carbon prosperity. We are willing to work with government to do so.

*

Presented by the Copenhagen Climate Council, informed by discussions with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; 3C; the World Economic Forum Climate Change Initiative; the U.N. Global Compact and The Climate Group, and deliberations among participants at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, May 24-26 2009.

1. The views expressed here have been informed by discussions at the World Business Summit on Climate Change. They do not necessarily reflect the views of all participants.

This story is from AP.

By DINA CAPPIELLO and H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation imposing the first nationwide limits on the pollution blamed for global warming advanced in the House late Thursday, clearing a key committee despite strong Republican opposition.

The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the sweeping climate bill 33-25 after repeatedly turning back GOP attempts to kill or weaken the measure during four days of debate.

The panel’s action increases the likelihood that the full House for the first time will address broad legislation to tackle climate change later this year. The Senate has yet to take up the issue.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel’s chairman, said the bill represents “decisive and historic action” to increase America’s energy security and deal with global warming. “When this bill is enacted into law, we will break our dependence on foreign oil, make our nation the world leader in clean energy jobs and technology, and cut global-warming pollution,” said Waxman.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has promised to press for passage of climate legislation this year, but prospects remain uncertain, especially in the Senate. President Barack Obama has told Congress he too wants a bill this year, ahead of international climate talks in December.

The House bill requires factories, refineries and power plants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and six other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by mid-century and hasten the nation’s energy shift away from fossil fuels by putting a price on carbon dioxide releases.

Only one Republican — Rep. Mary Bono Mack of California — crossed party lines in support of the bill. Four Democrats voted against it. She said that while she had concerns about the bill, including its cost, the country can’t wait “to make needed changes to our energy policy.”

Waxman had vowed to get the 946-page bill out of his committee before Memorial Day. Pressure on lawmakers to leave for the holiday recess pushed the committee to wrap up late Thursday after considering more than 80 amendments, 56 of them from Republicans and many designed to weaken or kill the bill.

“The American people are overwhelming calling for a new direction … to take action in a way that changes forever our relationship with imported oil, with the loss of jobs overseas, with the pollution that is causing greenhouse gas warming on our planet,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the bill.

Republicans argued that the pollution cuts would lead to soaring energy prices and threaten economic growth by imposing new costs on energy intensive industries already facing economic hardships.

“We don’t want to put the economy in jeopardy,” said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican. He offered an alternative that would have scrapped the cap on greenhouse gases and pollution trading scheme, provide more incentives for nuclear energy and bolster research into capturing carbon from coal-burning power plants. It was defeated 35-19.

Barton said he had “serious concern about the redirection of our energy policy in America.”

“For the sake of our nation I hope to some degree you are right. I’m afraid that you’re not. We will see,” Barton told Waxman minutes before the vote.

To ease the economic impact, supporters of the bill said, the government would issue pollution allowances, or permits, to businesses that could be traded on the open market. The bill calls for giving away 35 percent of the pollution permits to electric utilities that otherwise would likely pass the additional costs onto consumes. The government also would sell 15 percent of the allowances and use the money to provide direct relief to consumers.

“It is very clear that ratepayers are going to be protected,” Waxman insisted.

To get the support of Democrats from coal and industrial states, Waxman agreed to give away significant emissions allowances to industries in their states, including the electric utilities, steel manufactures, automakers and refineries. Waxman also scaled back the required greenhouse gas reductions between now and 2020 from 20 percent to 17 percent. And he eased the requirement for utilities to use renewable energy such as wind and solar for electricity production.

Democrats also added language to create a clean energy bank to disperse grants for new forms of energy and inserted a “cash for clunkers” program that would provide rebates to consumers who turn in gas guzzling vehicles for more fuel-efficient cars.

The bill is H.R. 2454.

I originally found this article by reading Watts Up With That so go over there and check out his handling of this story.

The Interior Department on Friday let stand a Bush administration policy barring the federal government from using the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population as a reason to crack down on global warming, upsetting environmentalists and cheering oil and gas companies.

The decision means the government cannot use the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar explicitly has blamed those emissions for the habitat erosion that last year landed the polar bear on the list of threatened species.

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Environmental groups promised to sue.

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Andrew Wetzler, who directs the endangered species project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision was illegal and that the group would “continue to fight it in court.”

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Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, praised Salazar for what he called “a common-sense decision that will ensure more jobs are not lost due to excessive regulations of greenhouse gases by the government.”

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Congress never intended for the species act to regulate climate change, Salazar said.

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Salazar has overturned several last-minute Bush environmental rules. He rescinded one that would have allowed federal agencies to bypass expert biologists and determine on their own whether their projects threatened endangered plants or animals. He also blocked the issuance of oil and gas drilling leases near national parks in Utah.

Yet Salazar sided with Bush on another high-profile species issue, moving ahead with a plan to remove gray wolves from the endangered list in the Great Lakes region and parts of the Mountain West.

politics, polar bears, Barach Hussein Obama, George Walker Bush,

If you read this site often, you know that I really don’t like carbon trading.  I don’t think it will help solve any problems and it is only a way to tax people and push industries into doom.  Dr. Lovelock appears to agree with me and he is a fairly strong supporter of the theory that global warming is man made. 

Also in this interview, Dr. Lovelock discusses his favorite approach to reducing the overall carbon footprint.  This approach of burying charcoal is not very popular and there are some other environmental concerns in the production of charcoal.

You can read the entire article at NewScientist.  The interview is much longer than what i have reproduced here.  Please click through to the source.

Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?

Not a hope in hell. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt – that’s an awful lot of countryside.

What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?

That is a waste of time. It’s a crazy idea – and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.

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So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste – which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering – into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.

Do you think we will survive?

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.

global warming, carbon trading, cap and trade, charcoal, James Lovelock, carbon dioxide, CO2

Right now, the Democrat party is in control of the US government.  They have a majority in both houses and they control the executive branch.  You would think that they could pull of their agenda of taxing energy use dramatically to change the production of carbon dioxide.  But a little thing happened on the way to legislation – VOTERS! 

Yep, those pesky constituents are bothering the politicians.  It seems that everyone is okay with taxing energy use and changing the climate back to what it was in the 60s and 70s as long as it doesn’t affect the workers, consumers and businesses of their own home district.  The problem is that a vast majority of Americans get hurt by cap and trade taxes.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Democrats are doing such a good job of falling apart on this issue, the Republicans can just sit back and laugh.

To listen to Congressman Jim Matheson is something else. During opening statements, the Utah Democrat detailed 14 big problems he had with the bill, and told me later that if he hadn’t been limited to five minutes, “I might have had more.” Mr. Matheson is one of about 10 moderate committee Democrats who are less than thrilled with the Waxman climate extravaganza, and who may yet stymie one of Barack Obama’s signature issues. If so, the president can thank Democratic liberals, who are engaging in one of their first big cases of overreach.

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Mr. Dingell’s mistake was understanding that when it comes to energy legislation, the divides aren’t among parties, but among regions. Design a bill that socks it to all those manufacturing, oil-producing, coal-producing, coal-using states, and say goodbye to the very Democrats necessary to pass that bill.

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There’s Mr. Matheson, chair of the Blue Dog energy task force, who has made a political career championing energy diversity and his state’s fossil fuels, and who understands Utah is mostly reliant on coal for its electricity needs. He says he sees several ways this bill could result in a huge “income transfer” from his state to those less fossil-fuel dependent. Indiana Democrat Baron Hill has a similar problem; not only does his district rely on coal, it is home to coal miners. Rick Boucher, who represents the coal-fields of South Virginia, knows the feeling.

Or consider Texas’s Gene Green and Charles Gonzalez, or Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, oil-patch Dems all, whose home-district refineries would be taxed from every which way by the bill. Mr. Dingell remains protective of his district’s struggling auto workers, which would be further incapacitated by the bill. Pennsylvania’s Mike Doyle won’t easily throw his home-state steel industry over a cliff.

I originally found this article at RealClearPolitics so please click over there if you want to read every sentence.  Here are the highlights that I found interesting.

We all expect that there will be a contest in Congress this year over global warming and a “cap-and-trade” bill limiting carbon dioxide emissions. After all, the government cannot impose sweeping new controls on our lives without extensive public debate and a vote in Congress that must gain the support of a clear majority of the representatives of the people.

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…the EPA issued a “finding” that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that threatens human health and can thus be regulated under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

This is a scientific farce. How can a basic constituent of the atmosphere that all humans constantly exhale be designated a “pollutant”? Moreover, water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, yet the EPA has not yet declared dihydrogen monoxide gas to be a threat to mankind.

This is also an assault on the entire structure of representative government. Controls on emissions of carbon dioxide will reach into every nook and cranny of the economy, creating a fine network of restrictions on economic activity that will make the recent regime of bailouts, salary caps, and business seizures look like laissez-faire by comparison. …

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Ayn Rand warned that the environmentalist movement constitutes an “Anti-Industrial Revolution,” but the term “revolution” implies a broad base of popular support. Instead, this is an anti-industrial coup, a seizure of power by a small elite who seek to bypass the institutions and procedures of legitimate government.

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The contribution from the courts is the 2007 Supreme Court ruling requiring the EPA to regard carbon dioxide as a potential “airborne pollutant” under the 1990 Clean Air Act–a law passed by Congress almost two decades ago with no intention of regulating carbon dioxide.

The executive branch’s response was a document released last year that stopped short of declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant. But it did establish the legal foundation for the next administration to plan out and implement a comprehensive scheme for regulating carbon dioxide emissions, coordinating the actions of dozens of regulatory agencies.

The title of that regulatory proposal was revealing: it was called the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act. The important word here is “rulemaking.” In a proper system of representative government, the word for “rulemaking” is “legislation,” and only Congress can do it. But Congress long ago ceded a large part of its legislative power to the executive branch by passing laws like the Clean Air Act …

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[Jason] Grumet…said if Congress hasn’t acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft [EPA] rules, the president should…. “The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,” Grumet said.

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Under what system of government does the chief executive say to the legislature, in effect, “write the legislation I want, or else I will simply enact it by decree”? The answer: not under a system of representative government and the separation of powers. Barack Obama is proposing to govern, not in the manner of an American president, but in the manner traditionally sought by leftist strongmen like Hugo Chavez.

When global warming regulations are imposed–and given the legal framework of Monday’s “finding,” they are now inevitable–their ultimate cause will be decades of dishonest cultural propaganda condemning industrial civilization as a scourge to be eliminated. But the immediate cause for this massive new extension of government power is the structure of existing executive-branch power: the all-encompassing reach of the regulatory agencies, and the vast power already surrendered to them by Congress.

This is the shape of the current danger to liberty: our economic freedom is being taken away by regulatory decree, with public debate and congressional votes declared irrelevant ahead of time. It proves the adage that freedom is indivisible–that attempts to take away our economic freedom always begin and end with an attack on our political freedom.

global+warming, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gas, EPA, Barack Obama, pollutant

The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the “dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4–1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6–1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

global+warming, WSJ, Wall Street Journal, James Taranto, polls, global+warming, greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide

I do want to make three additional comments before you read below.  If it takes 1,000 years to recover from an overload of carbon dioxide that has already poisoned our atmosphere then:

1. why would we risk ruining our current economy for a solution that is likely to not ever happen?
2. if it takes 1,000 years to get healthy doesn’t it stand to reason that it takes 1,000 years (or at least a couple of hundred) to get sick?
3. is this just another example of inference based on mathematical computer models that have little to do with reality?

Although America in 2000 passed up an opportunity to elect the man
who invented global warming, eight years later we handed a decisive
presidential victory to an avowed global warmist. And while the message
of Barack Obama’s candidacy on this subject was a bit muddled–he was
for “change,” while global warmists say they want to stop “climate”
change–there is a widespread belief that the voters handed President
Obama a mandate to “do something” about global warming.

A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center, however, calls this into question. In the New York Times’s “Dot Earth” blog, Andrew Revkin described the findings:

According to the survey of 1,503 adults, global warming, on its own, ranks last out of 20 surveyed issues. . . .

Although the more general issue of protecting the
environment ranked higher than climate (named by 41 percent of the poll
subjects) that figure was 15 percentage points lower than in the same
poll a year ago.

Revkin also links to a Rasmussen survey that finds Americans increasingly skeptical about the science behind global warmism:

Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say long-term
planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared to 41% who
blame it on human activity. . . .

In July 2006, 46% of voters said global warming is caused
primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due to long-term
planetary trends.

Why have global warmists lost ground with the public? One obvious
reason is the recession. “The economy” and “jobs” top the Pew list of
top priorities, and both have increased sharply over the past couple of
years. People who are afraid of something real–losing their jobs or
the value of their assets–have little energy left for esoteric and
hypothetical terrors.

Another reason is that it is really cold out. Past Pew surveys were
also taken in January, so that the figures can be construed as
seasonally adjusted, but this has been an especially harsh winter,
which seems to provide experiential evidence against the claims of
global warmism.

Of course, this feeling is illusory: Weather is different from
climate, and it is possible to have cold winters even amid a long-term
trend toward hotter weather–just as, for example, the stock market has
down days during a bull market.

Global warmists, however, have squandered their credibility in
making this point, because they never fail to seize on a hurricane or a
sweltering summer day as “evidence” to make their case. In fact, so
cynical is the public about the claims of global warmists that the
clichéd response to a pleasant winter day is, “If this is global warming, bring it on.”

An additional problem is that whereas global warmists are emotionally
consistent–in a constant state of alarm, accompanied by contempt, even
hatred, for those who dare ask questions–their claims are filled with
logical inconsistencies. A reader spotted a hilarious example in this Los Angeles Times article:

Even if by some miracle of environmental activism global
carbon dioxide levels reverted to pre-industrial levels, it still would
take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to
be reversed, scientists said Monday.

The gas that is already there and the heat that has been
absorbed by the ocean will exert their effects for centuries, according
to the analysis, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science.

Over the long haul, the warming will melt the polar icecaps
more than previously had been estimated, raising ocean levels
substantially, the report said.

And changes in rainfall patterns will bring droughts
comparable to those that caused the 1930s Dust Bowl to the American
Southwest, southern Europe, northern Africa and western Australia.

“People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon
dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years,”
lead author Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, said in a telephone news conference.
“That’s not true.” . . .

Solomon said in a statement that absorption of carbon
dioxide by the oceans and release of heat from the oceans – the one
process acting to cool the Earth and the other to warm it–will “work
against each other to keep temperatures almost constant for more than
1,000 years.”

Is it absolutely crucial to the planet’s future that we curtail
greenhouse gases this instant, or would it not make any difference
anyway? If the latter, what sense does it make to be alarmed? And that
last quote by Solomon is a classic head-scratcher. We’re supposed to worry that temperatures will be “almost constant for more than 1,000 years”? That’s what they mean by global warming?

Weather forecast for the year 3009: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

WSJ, Wall Street Journal, James Taranto, polls, global+warming, greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide

If you don’t want to read such serious stuff, I suggest you read “Canceled Due to Global Warming” and have a good chuckle.

Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee As Prepared Hon. Al Gore Wednesday, January 28, 2009

We are here today to talk about how we as Americans and how the
United States of America as part of the global community should address
the dangerous and growing threat of the climate crisis.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home – Earth – is in
grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet
itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for
human beings.

Moreover, we must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to
the existence of our civilization at a time when our country must
simultaneously solve two other worsening crises. Our economy is in its
deepest recession since the 1930s. And our national security is
endangered by a vicious terrorist network and the complex challenge of
ending the war in Iraq honorably while winning the military and
political struggle in Afghanistan.

As we search for solutions to all three of these challenges, it is
becoming clearer that they are linked by a common thread – our
dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.

As long as we continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars for
foreign oil – year after year – to the most dangerous and unstable
regions of the world, our national security will continue to be at risk.

As long as we continue to allow our economy to remain shackled to
the OPEC roller- coaster of rising and falling oil prices, our jobs and
our way of life will remain at risk.
Moreover, as the demand for oil worldwide grows rapidly over the longer
term, even as the rate of new discoveries is falling, it is
increasingly obvious that the roller coaster is headed for a crash. And
we’re in the front car.

Most importantly, as long as we continue to depend on dirty fossil
fuels like coal and oil to meet our energy needs, and dump 70 million
tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere
surrounding our planet, we move closer and closer to several dangerous
tipping points which scientists have repeatedly warned – again just
yesterday – will threaten to make it impossible for us to avoid
irretrievable destruction of the conditions that make human
civilization possible on this planet.

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to
burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to
change.

For years our efforts to address the growing climate crisis have
been undermined by the idea that we must choose between our planet and
our way of life; between our moral duty and our economic well being.
These are false choices. In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis
are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national
security crises as well.

In order to repower our economy, restore American economic and moral
leadership in the world and regain control of our destiny, we must take
bold action now.

The first step is already before us. I urge this Congress to quickly
pass the entirety of President Obama’s Recovery package. The plan’s
unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas – energy
efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy grid and the move to
clean cars – represent an important down payment and are long overdue.
These crucial investments will create millions of new jobs and hasten
our economic recovery – while strengthening our national security and
beginning to solve the climate crisis.

Quickly building our capacity to generate clean electricity will lay
the groundwork for the next major step needed: placing a price on
carbon. If Congress acts right away to pass President Obama’s Recovery
package and then takes decisive action this year to institute a
cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions – as many of our states and many
other countries have already done – the United States will regain its
credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed
authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and
effective treaty. And this treaty must be negotiated this year.

Not next year. This year.

A fair, effective and balanced treaty will put in place the global
architecture that will place the world – at long last and in the nick
of time – on a path toward solving the climate crisis and securing the
future of human civilization.

I am hopeful that this can be achieved. Let me outline for you the basis for the hope and optimism that I feel.

The Obama Administration has already signaled a strong willingness to regain U.S.
leadership on the global stage in the treaty talks, reversing years of
inaction. This is critical to success in Copenhagen and is clearly a
top priority of the administration.

Developing countries that were once reluctant to join in the first
phases of a global response to the climate crisis have themselves now
become leaders in demanding action and in taking bold steps on their
own initiatives. Brazil has proposed an impressive new plan to halt the
destructive deforestation in that nation. Indonesia has emerged as a
new constructive force in the talks. And China’s leaders have gained a
strong understanding of the need for action and have already begun
important new initiatives.

Heads of state from around the world have begun to personally engage
on this issue and forward-thinking corporate leaders have made this a
top priority.

More and more Americans are paying attention to the new evidence and
fresh warnings from scientists. There is a much broader consensus on
the need for action than there was when President George H.W. Bush negotiated – and the Senate ratified
– the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and much stronger
support for action than when we completed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

The elements that I believe are key to a successful agreement in Copenhagen include:

• Strong targets and timetables from industrialized countries and
differentiated but binding commitments from developing countries that
put the entire world under a system with one commitment: to reduce
emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants that
cause the climate crisis;

• The inclusion of deforestation, which alone accounts for twenty percent of the emissions that cause global warming;

• The addition of sinks including those from soils, principally from
farmlands and grazing lands with appropriate methodologies and
accounting. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. and around the world need
to know that they can be part of the solution;

• The assurance that developing countries will have access to
mechanisms and resources that will help them adapt to the worst impacts
of the climate crisis and technologies to solve the problem; and,

• A strong compliance and verification regime.

The road to Copenhagen is not easy, but we have traversed this
ground before. We have negotiated the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to
protect the ozone layer, and strengthened it to the point where we have
banned most of the major substances that create the ozone hole over
Antarctica. And we did it with bipartisan support. President Ronald
Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill joined hands to lead the
way.

Let me now briefly discuss in more detail why we must do all of this
within the next year, and with your permission Mr. Chairman, I would
like to show a few new pictures that illustrate the unprecedented need
for bold and speedy action this year.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I am eager to respond to any questions that you and the members of the committee have.

Al+Gore, Senate, oil, Iraq, Kyoto

I guess when you work at Stanford though, such thoughts cross your mind.  Or maybe it is just the constant pressure within acedemia to “Publish or Perish” to keep your job. Or maybe it has some deeper and political purpose.

Also, I do not concede the point that the proliferation of nuclear energy makes nuclear war more likely. There have only been two nuclear attacks in history and they both occurred before the advent of nuclear power. The supposition that nuclear power begets nuclear war is simply an opinion posed by the researcher and not grounded in any scientific fact or study.  It helps him get his paper published, which I think may have been the main reason for including it.  It also skews his study away from nuclear power and towards wind and solar.

Several years ago, the late Michael Crichton wrote a book about global warming called “A State of Fear” and it was fairly controversial in its day. One of the many messages that Mr. Crichton was trying to deliver was that scientific conclusions are affected by the opinions of the scientists and those opinions are often affected by the need for money and funding.  It makes one curious as to the hidden motives of the paper’s author, Mark Z Jacobson.

One of Mr. Crichton’s tenets was that just because a scientist says it, doesn’t make it so. In this case, I don’t doubt that nuclear war is bad for the environment but to include war in the discussion on alternative fuels, makes me question the integrity of the study and its conclusions.

According to a new paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, even a very limited nuclear exchange, using just a thousandth of the weaponry of a full-scale nuclear war, would cause up to 690m tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere

---

The purpose of the paper is to compare the total human and environmental costs of a wide range of different power sources, from solar and wind to nuclear and biofuels. One of the side-effects of nuclear power, the report argues, is an increased risk of nuclear war: “Because the production of nuclear weapons material is occurring only in countries that have developed civilian nuclear energy programs, the risk of a limited nuclear exchange between countries or the detonation of a nuclear device by terrorists has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide.”

---

Those figures, as far as I can tell, are entirely arbitrary, and as such I’m rather surprised that the Royal Society for Chemistry are prepared to publish them in their journal.

---

Either way, nuclear doesn’t come out as badly as first- or second-generation biofuels. These, the author remarks, are “ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste,” and may actually “worsen climate and air pollution” relative to fossil fuels.

Please click through to Duncan Clark’s review of the Stanford paper which first made me aware of the study.

global warming, nuclear war, Michael Crichton, State of Fear, scientific bias

Sometimes I think that this site exists solely to condemn Al Gore.  He is easily the person that we discuss more than all else when you consider his film, his rock concerts, and his foolish statements it seems that it is all that one can read on the subject of energy. And to think that this man was a heartbeat away from being the President of the United States for 8 years in addition to a few hanging chads from being elected to the office himself.

While it is not my goal to condemn an individual man, his latest speech is mystifying.  Earlier, I said that he was changing his tactic a bit and trying to use more of the national security argument rather than the global warming argument in his challenge to America.  While this tact is certainly true, some more research has been done to show the level of foolishness that man has in his challenge to be solely relying on solar, geothermal, biofuels, and wind in 10 years.  Of course, Mr. Gore hasn’t solely dropped the mantle of predicting the end of the world either”

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” he says, with his usual gift for understatement. “And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.”

When Mr. Gore was on “Meet The Press” he definitely jumped back on the global warming bandwagon and was nearly so focused on energy independence. I wonder if his friends told him to get off the energy independence argument and get back to talking about the end of civilization as we know it.

I commend Mr. Gore for trying hard to achieve his goals.  I just find it difficult to fathom why he doesn’t want to do it in a more practical method.  Also, the national security issue is strong and is why I personally think we should do more to create other energy solutions. But any discussion of this issue which doesn’t include hydrogen and nuclear is probably off the mark.

In 1995, the U.S. got about 2.2% of its net electricity generation from “renewable” sources, according to the Energy Information Administration. By 2000, the last full year of the Clinton administration, that percentage had dropped to 2.1%. By contrast, the combined share of coal, petroleum and natural gas rose to 70% from 68% during the same time frame.

---

Mr. Gore’s argument would be helped if he were also willing to propose huge investments in nuclear power, which emits no carbon dioxide and currently supplies about one-fifth of U.S. electricity needs, and about three-quarters of France’s. Britain has just approved eight new nuclear plants, and the German government of Angela Merkel is working to do away with a plan by the previous government to go nuclear-free.

---

In his useful book “Gusher of Lies,” Robert Bryce notes that “in July 2006, wind turbines in California produced power at only about 10% of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at about 17% of their rated capacity.”

---

None of this seems to trouble Mr. Gore. He thinks that simply by declaring an emergency he can help achieve Stakhanovite results. He might recall what the Stakhanovite myth (about the man who mined 14 times his quota of coal in six hours) actually did to the Soviet economy.

You can read the entire article here.

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For the record, I was 4 planets.

http://independent.footprint.wwf.org.uk/

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Mr. Al Gore recently gave a speech in Washington DC regarding energy.  While many in the blogosphere will call Mr. Gore “Pope Gore” and refer to environmentalists as a religion, in this case, I don’t think that Mr. Gore makes many of the outlandish comments which I have chastised him about. Most of his comments are regarding energy independence, the status of the technology of alternative fuels, and the balance of power.

He does make a few global warming references which are a little hard to defend. He implies that the fires in California are caused by manmade global warming – this is probably not true since California has been enjoying an unusually wet climate for several decades and it appears that this current drought is simply going back to status quo.

He also makes claims that the North Pole has a 75% chance of being ice free this summer.  While all of the odds that I have seen are 50%, I won’t quibble about that as I am sure someone has given different odds.  Las Vegas thrives on the fact that anyone can announce and believe in different odds of something occurring. There is considerable evidence though that the ice cap is melting due to changing winds and changing ocean currents which probably are not impacted by air temperature changes caused by man.

A very good friend of mine supports the efforts of Mr. Gore, not because of he believes in manmade global warming so much but he thinks we need to break the reliance on oil from the Mideast. It seems that Mr. Gore must have talked to my friend over the last few days since that is almost exactly the tact he is currently taking in this speech.  While I want to break the yoke of foreign oil as much as the next person, I don’t think that doing this by claiming manmade global warming is the right tactic.  Eliminating foreign oil from our energy diet just makes good national defense sense and we should do it based on its own merit not another argument that is harder to make.

Mr. Gore is really pushing solar energy in this speech.  I don’t believe that solar energy technology is quite as developed as he is implying.  I don’t think that the chip manufacturers are anywhere close to producing enough chips to take over 100% of the US energy needs.  In fact, my gut is that they would be stretching their capability to deliver 10% of that need. If we want to be truly energy independent in 10 years, we must discuss and accelerate other forms of energy such as nuclear and hydrogen.

It is my understanding that this speech is part of the public record and therefore I can reproduce it in full here without worrying of violating the copyright of the Washington Post.  In that spirit and with full thanks to the Washington Post, here is the speech that Mr. Gore gave.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT ALBERT GORE JR.: Thank you. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

And Congressman Sherry Boehlert, thank you for your leadership of the Science and Technology Committee and for your work on the Alliance for Climate Protection.

And thank you, Cathy Zoi, the CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection.

I’m so happy that all of you are here. I’m especially happy that my wife, Tipper, is here and my daughter, Karenna, is here. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

And there are several members of Congress, even though the committees are working and the Congress is meeting, but I want to acknowledge Senator Bernie Sanders, who is here, Congressman Jim Cooper, Congressman Jay Inslee, former Senator Jim Sasser, and Mary Sasser.

I want to say a special word of thanks to my friend, will.i.am, who came all the way from Los Angeles to be here. Thank you so much.

(APPLAUSE)

And, also, I want to make special mention of the presence of the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Bob Barr. We’ve had a number of conversations.

I’m grateful for your presence, Congressman Barr.

(APPLAUSE)

And thank you very much — thank you very much, Bob. We’ve had a number of very, very interesting conversations. I appreciate your open mind and your serious approach to this challenge our country is facing.

I have — have had many conversations, of course, with Senator Obama and with Senator McCain. And one of my objectives in approaching this climate crisis is to try to lift this as much as possible out of the partisan framework that sometimes is a serious impediment to solving serious problems in our country.

Incidentally, I did also want to make special mention of the fact that some of our mutual friends are in mourning today. And I want to extend my best wishes to the family of Tony Snow, whose memorial service just ended a short time ago. And we are keeping his family in our thoughts and prayers.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger.

In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly and shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of making big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part in such times must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more, if more should be required, the future of human civilization is at stake.

I do not remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously.

(LAUGHTER)

Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse.

(APPLAUSE)

People are hurting. Gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies, other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure.

Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning, unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse, much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the north polar ice cap have warned that there is a 75 percent chance that, within only five years, the entire north polar ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.

This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, one of the largest glaciers there, the Jakobshavn Glacier, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day. That’s equivalent to the amount of water used in a year’s time by the residents of our largest city, New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.

Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from what they called an “energy tsunami” that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.

And, by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours, and record floods. Today, unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American west.

Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia, and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.

Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that’s been worrying me.

I’m convinced that one reason we have seemed to be paralyzed in the face of these crises is the tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective; they almost always make the other crises worse.

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: Our dangerous over- reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges, the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.

(APPLAUSE)

But if — if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

(APPLAUSE)

In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I’ve held a long series of so-called “solutions summits” with engineers, scientists and CEOs.

And in those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures that are needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions that we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

What if we could use fuels that aren’t expensive, don’t cause pollution, and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the Earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of U.S. electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

The quickest, cheapest, most efficient, and best way to start using all of this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power, and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.

But to make this exciting potential a reality and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start.

That is why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do, but this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold, new strategy needed to re-power America.

So today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

(APPLAUSE)

This goal — this goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans in every walk of life, to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

A few short years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: The sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind and geothermal power, coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal, have radically changed the economics of energy.

When I first went to the Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that, if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive.

Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 a barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy.

And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: The price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram, but the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram.

You remember the same thing happened with computer chips, also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months year after year, and that’s been happening for 40 years in a row.

To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these kinds of results with renewable energy, I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I’ve seen what they’re doing, and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high, I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down. That’s the difference.

(APPLAUSE)

One source of fuel is expensive and going up, and the other source of fuel is free forever. When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills here, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

(APPLAUSE)

Of course, there are those who will tell us that this can’t be done. Some of the voices we hear are from the defenders of the status quo, the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay.

But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, “The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones.”

(LAUGHTER)

To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider seriously what the world’s scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don’t act in less than 10 years.

Those leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution, lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up, as it’s doing right now. But when the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down.

To those who say the challenge is not politically viable, I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo, and then bear witness to the people’s appetite for dramatic change. The time is now.

(APPLAUSE)

I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families can’t stand 10 more years of gasoline price increases. Our workers can’t stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy can’t stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil.

And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.

(APPLAUSE)

What could…

(APPLAUSE)

What could we do instead during these next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years?

Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system.

A political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows it’s totally meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.

When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon and planted the American flag.

(APPLAUSE)

To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the east and the west that need the electricity.

Our national electric grid is critical infrastructure, as vital to the health and security of our economy as our highways and telecommunication networks.

Today, our grids are antiquated, fragile and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost U.S. businesses more than $120 billion dollars a year. It has to be upgraded anyway.

We could further increase the value and efficiency of a unified national grid by helping our struggling auto companies switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars and save those auto jobs and renew our auto companies.

(APPLAUSE) An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid.

At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That’s the best investment we can make. We can make better use of our broadband networks to save energy.

America’s transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry, every single one of them.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage that it causes. I have long supported…

(APPLAUSE)

… a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO-2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn.

(APPLAUSE)

That’s the single most important change that we can make.

In order to foster international cooperation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on CO-2 emissions and a global partnership that recognizes the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world’s agenda for solving the climate crisis.

Of course, the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today.

(APPLAUSE)

In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now in areas that should be protected. (APPLAUSE)

Am I — am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it’s supposed to address?

(LAUGHTER)

When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices that are hurting our country, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they’re going to bring gasoline prices down? It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it.

If we keep going back to the same policies that have never, ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history, alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again.

(APPLAUSE)

The Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway, because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people.

If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: The exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is completely overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time, no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term by giving more money to the oil companies.

However, there is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gasoline prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1-per-gallon gasoline. And we need to get busy creating that system now.

(APPLAUSE)

Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we’ve simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests.

And I’ve got to admit that sure seems to be the way things have been going.

But I’ve begun to hear different voices in this country from the people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different, and bold approach to genuinely solve our problems. We’re on the eve of a presidential election. We’re in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president’s term.

It’s a great error to say the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that’s the key to getting others to follow. And moving first is in our own national interest.

(APPLAUSE)

So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge: for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It’s time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now. And we need to act boldly.

(APPLAUSE)

This is a generational moment, a moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you, each of you, to join me and build this future.

Please join the We campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We’re committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

(APPLAUSE)

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn V rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky.

I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the U.S. Army three weeks later. I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body.

As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air.

And then, four days later, along with hundreds of millions of others, I watched as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.

Thank you for coming. (APPLAUSE)

END

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The Bush administration continues to struggle with what to do with global warming and carbon dioxide as a pollutant.  The Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant resulting from the burning of several fossil fuels. This has caused the EPA to try to figure out what to do with this new authority without destroying the economy.

As with most issues that revolve around Washington DC, this one is embroiled in politics with both major Presidential candidates chiming in.

The Bush administration published a government blueprint to reduce the U.S. output of global-warming gases, but at the same time rejected the document out of hand — saying it relied on “untested legal theories” and would impose “crippling costs” on the U.S. economy.

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The White House argues the Environmental Protection Agency must not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, for fear it would be able to block development across the country.

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The EPA’s document represents the denouement of a long-simmering conflict between the EPA’s career staff and the White House, which has caught EPA administrator Stephen Johnson in an awkward middle ground. On Friday, he praised his staff’s “great work” in trying to put “a square peg into a round hole,” but rejected its findings, siding with other cabinet members in dismissing use of the Clean Air Act.

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Both of Mr. Bush’s would-be successors — Arizona Republican John McCain and Illinois Democrat Barack Obama — have expressed support for capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

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A spokesman for Sen. Obama said he was “disappointed in the White House’s decision to again refuse to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.” A spokesman for Sen. McCain said the approach outlined by the EPA “would give a small, unelected group of bureaucrats unprecedented power to regulate broad swaths of our economy — effectively placing production, employment and investment decisions under government control.”

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The final document affirms the agency’s authority to tackle climate change, and suggests a variety of regulatory avenues. It concludes automobiles could be more fuel-efficient than currently required by law. Based on advanced technologies such as plug-in hybrid vehicles, fuel efficiency could be improved to more than 35 miles per gallon between 2020 and 2025, the document said. A 2007 energy law supported by the Bush administration mandates an average vehicle fuel-efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

For other sectors, the document describes how emissions such as carbon dioxide could be regulated through government permits and an emissions trading system similar to one the EPA administers for acid rain pollution. The analysis has been sharply disputed by President Bush’s aides and lobbyists for utilities and major manufacturers, who say that the Clean Air Act was never intended as a tool for fighting global warming.

This is an excellent article and there is much more to read.  Please click through to the WSJ site.

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The degradation of coral life has been happening for quite some time.  I remember multiple articles on the effects of water pollution on coral life back in the 70s and 80s (before the Internet so I can’t point to those articles – sorry).

This article now includes global warming in that threat.  Since this is coming from the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium and the organization reportedly meets every 4 years then the problem is at least 44 years old!

Interesting that it seems that every news article now has to include a count of scientists that sign on to the theory.  This one has 270 scientists writing the report.  How did they do that – did they each write one sentence out of each 270 sentences?  Also interesting that there were 2,500 scientists at this meeting – must be some interesting conversations at the bar at the local hotel in the evening!  Are there really 2,500 scientists studying coral?  Of course, that number includes “government officials” – your tax dollars at work!

Nearly half of U.S. coral reef ecosystems are considered to be in “poor” or “fair” condition according to a new analysis of the health of coral reefs under U.S. jurisdiction by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

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… more than 2,500 scientists and government officials are gathered this week to discuss coral reef protection strategies and research priorities to further protection of sensitive coral ecosystems.ion, NOAA.

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U.S. coral reef ecosystems, particularly those near populated areas, continue to face threats from human activities such as coastal development, pollution, fishing, sedimentation and recreational use, finds the report, “The State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States: 2008.”ion, NOAA.

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The 2008 report is the third in a series tracking the condition of U.S. coral reef ecosystems at local and national scales. The reports show that the condition of U.S. coral reefs has been declining for decades.ion, NOAA.

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The paper presents new coral evidence suggesting the oceans may have acidified by almost a third of a unit of pH as a result of human emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.ion, NOAA.

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This suggests either that the corals are somehow amplifying the effect – or else that we may have gravely underestimated the rate at which the burning of fossil fuels is turning the oceans acidic.

You can read the entire article here.

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Jim Hansen of NASA must have finally gone off the deep end.  While the man is probably brilliant, his call to put the CEOs of companies on trial for global warming is one of the most radical statements that I have heard in this global warming discussion. He states that he is 99% certain that carbon dioxide has already passed the safe level.

Mr. Hansen is certainly free to challenge the election of politicians and to speak on what he feels needs to be done.  However, when someone calls for radical measures such as putting CEOs on trial for high crimes against humanity, I immediately put him into the weirdo bucket and dismiss him as a heretic.

In order to make an argument more likely to be accepted by the world, personal attacks and radical measures must not be said but kept in the closet. For all his scientific knowledge, Mr. Hansen has just relegated himself to the obscure.

Other comments from around the web on this radical statement by Mr. Hansen:

• Agree With Me Or Die
• Provocateur
• Sweetness & Light
• it ain’t rocket surgery
• Global Warming Thought Crimes

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming….

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Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

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He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.

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…he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level.

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“The problem is not political will, it’s the alligator shoes – the lobbyists. It’s the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it’s intended to work.”

You can read the entire article here.

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