Radioactive Communist Zombies

Bad News on Climate Front

From CNN:

The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

The result of this deglaciation could be conflict as Himalayan glacial runoff has an essential role in the economies, agriculture and even religions of the regions [sic] countries.

Oh my gosh! Why is this important?

The Himalayan glaciers form the world's largest ice body outside of the polar caps. Popularly known as the "Water Tower of Asia," they are the source of water for rivers that flow across the continent: the Indus River in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra that flows through Bangladesh, the Mekong that descends through Southeast Asia, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar, the Yellow and Yangtze rivers of China and a multitude of smaller rivers that flow through the Indo-Gangetic plains of Northern India.

Oh, wait, that was October of 2009, almost two and a half years ago.  Then in January 2010, the UN's IPCC had to admit they'd screwed up:

One paragraph, buried in 3,000 pages of reports and published almost three years ago, has humbled the head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Facing global outcry, Rajendra Pachauri backed down and apologised today for a disputed IPCC claim that there was a very high chance the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035.

The assertion, now discredited, was included in the most recent IPCC report assessing climate change science, ­published in 2007. Those reports are widely credited with convincing the world that human activity was causing global warming.

And now, it appears (hat tip, Instapundit), there as been no melting of the Himalayan glaciers in the past decade:

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

How can this be? Could it be that global warming stopped 10 years ago?  Could it be it stopped because it's not caused by humans but is natural?

But, of course, we all have to pitch in and spend quadrillions of dollars and make most everyone poorer (except the politically connected) to "save" the planet from what might be natural variation in the Sun and the Earth's oceans.

Oh, and the bad news?  It's if you still believe in man-made climate change.

Climate Affects Europe's Economy

The ravages of the climate have come home to roost at least for Europeans (who have tried, as we all know, to stop climate change).

Oh, wait.  I'm sorry, the problem in Europe is, according to the U.S. News and World Report, it's too cold! I thought global warming meant dire consequences because it would get, you know, hotter. But:

If there's one thing Europe doesn't need, it's more drag on economic growth.

Yet that's just what it could be getting, with a fresh dose of snow and frigid weather. The recent European cold snap has killed hundreds, closing airports and schools, cutting power to many, and even breaking a dam and causing flooding in Bulgaria. As people stay in from the cold and commerce shuts down, the cold could mean further stress on a continental economy strained by a debt crisis.

Gee, makes you wonder if all those models predicting a heating planet are correct. Or maybe it's all natural and we're in a cool-down cycle, now.

Or maybe, we just don't have enough information to devastate our economy in the name of a theory and computer models.

Obama Drove a Muscle Car?

Someone was trying to sell a car that Barack Obama leased when he was a state senator in Illinois in 2005-2007. The car?  A 340-horsepower Chrysler 300C (yes, it's got a Hemi).  The sellers were asking for a million bucks for this car that is probably worth about, oh, $10,000 (guesstimate).

Now President Obama is doing everything he can to ensure such gas-sucking (and fun to drive) behemoths are never sold again in America.  Apparently he didn't enjoy the roar of the V-8 as the car shot forward with amazing alacraty for a large sedan.  Or as Car and Driver said:

Eight cylinders hump out the Hemi's 340 horses and 390 pound-feet of torque, the power slipped under the floor to the rear where, in full fury, it paints the road with 10-foot patches of rubber and shoves the mass to 60 mph in a torrid 5.3 seconds.

Maybe Obama is one of those unreasonably prudent drivers.  Or maybe the power scared him and that's why he hates powerful (and fun) cars.

According to Fox New, he traded it in for a Ford Escape Hybrid, probably one of the snooziest vehicles on the road.

And now he's driven around in an armored limousine.

I hope someone asks Romney if he likes to drive.  If he answers "yes" it will make me happier to vote for him, as it appears I'm going to have to.

How Well do Wind and Solar Work? Nobody Knows!

(Hat tip: Instapundit)  As President Obama and the Democrats with their green allies push us into more and more "green" energy with massive taxpayer subsidies, no one seems to be asking how efficient are these technologies.  Which would be, in a rational world, the first thing asked.  The problem is, according (pdf file) to the Science and Environmental Policy Project, no one still knows even after Europe has invested billions in new renewable energy:

Someone experienced in analyzing potential investments in innovative industries may be surprised by the lack of hard data on the performance of solar and wind in generating electricity. Certainly, it is understandable that solar and wind companies may wish to keep certain trade secrets from the public, such as manufacturing design and techniques. But if the results are as solid as the promoters claim, than one would expect the promoters would give the hard data on performance. Yet these are being withheld on the claims that such data is proprietary – confidential.

So were can we look to see how well wind and solar work in supplying electricity.  How about the countries in Europe that have heavily invested in it.

Slowly, information is leaking from nations that have spent heavily on wind and solar, such as Germany. This information should give pause to those touting solar and wind, including politicians. England is pulling back from wind, Germany has announced drastic cut-backs on its subsidies to solar, and Spain has announced the elimination of subsidies for renewable power. These actions are not the result of success. The erratic nature of these sources is well established.

And further more:

According to reports, no coal plants have been de-commissioned in northern Europe rendering the claim of lower carbon dioxide emissions questionable.

Why?  Because electricity cannot be stored and so wind and solar when they don't work (i.e., the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine as it doesn't about 50% of the time)  you need to generate electricity by some method.  And that means you need backup generation.  And those plants must be kept fired up and idling when the electricity comes from renewables so when the renewables stop, they can immediately jump in and take up the load. Other wise there'd be brownouts and blackouts (which while some greens may be okay with that, must of us wouldn't be).

Oh, and pollution controls don't work as well when a fossil fuel plant is changing it's heat output, like from idling to full running.  So renewable energy could be causing more pollution.

I don't know why Obama can't look at the experience of Europe and learn from it.  But he can't even look at the experience of his stimulus plan that failed and learn from it.

Are We Headed For a Mini Ice Age?

Earlier I wrote about scientists saying don't panic over CO₂ and global warming.  Now some scientists are say, yes, panic, but about the coming mini ice age.  From the UK Mail, it appears the (probably natural) warming trend ended about 15 years ago:

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

And in fact, we may be entering a period of low sun activity that could cool things down a bit.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

The global warming climate change true believers will say CO₂ will override any cooling by the sun.  Not so say other scientists.

Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest  a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

How cool could it get?

[I]t is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

And the global warming crowd:

CO₂ levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Well, when it doesn't happen in the next three years, they'll come up with some new story.  Like China burned too much coal.

You know, when you have to bend your science to fit reality, maybe your science is flawed. But there's a lot of money riding on climate change and a lot of power.  Too many people are politically invested in it.  It will not go quiet into the night.  Would help if we didn't have a president who is a true believer (or using it as an excuse to exorcise more power over the economy).

Scientists: No Need to Panic over Global Warming

We've been told over and over again that the scientific consensus is in and we must take drastic action to stop global warming climate change. (Of course it was once the scientific consensus that the sun went around the Earth and that light waves traveled through a mysterious substance called "ether").

Now sixteen scientists have chosen to come off the reservation and say there's no need to panic, as they wrote today (sub possibly required) in the Wall Street Journal.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

That's because global warming is political, not scientific. But according to the sixteen signers of the article:

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Yes, you could call them "inconvenient truths"!

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO₂.

Which is why the "climate scientists" wanted to "hide the decline."

The fact is that CO₂ is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO₂ that greenhouse operators often increase the CO₂ concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO₂ concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO₂ in the atmosphere.

What, you mean there was 10 times the CO₂ in the atmosphere than there is today, before SUVs and coal-fired power plants?  Maybe it occured  . . . naturally?

The scientists go on to talk about how those who oppose the global we'-re all-going-to-die warming orthodoxy are ostracized and even can lose their jobs.

Global warming Climate change is not about saving the planet, it's about controlling the citizens and getting rich as Al Gore has done. Global warming enthusiasts are watermelons: green on the outside and red in the center.  They are socialists who lost the battle to control the world in 1989 so now need another excuse to run the economy.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

No, it's not.  But when you mix political power with science, it's what you get.

The Up Side of Global Warming

As I was driving through a blizzard today here in central Washington State (and Seattle is having a bad snow day but any day it snows in Seattle is a snowcopolypse), I had thoughts about the upside of a warmer world thanks to global warming climate change. Jurisdictions spend billions of dollars on snow abatement and removal.  Businesses also spend huge sums clearing parking lots and sidewalks for their customers' and employees' safety.

Fewer car accidents.  The damage from winter-driving related accidents probably also runs into the billions of not trillions, from fender benders to fatalities.

People wouldn't have to waste precious resources on snow tires (I know, a lot don't now, anyway), tire chains, snow shovels, snow blowers, and snow plows for their pickups (That name again is Mr. Plow).  That probably runs in the trillions of dollars that could be saved.  And no one ever had a heart attack shoveling global warming off their sidewalk.

Children wouldn't miss school so test scores might go up.  Adults wouldn't miss work at a cost of probably trillions in lost productivity.  I bet those environmental economists never consider that in their cost-benefit calculations.

And I wouldn't have to drvy through a blizzard to get to my community meetings with the heater running full blast to keep the windshield ice-free!

So bring on global warming.  Sounds like there's a great up-side to it!

Green Cars for Folks with Lots of Green

What does over half a billion in taxpayer money get you?  Cars that only the very rich can afford.

Fisker is sitting on a $529 million government loan guarantee to make electric cars.  Great.  Never mind they are being built in Finland.  The Fisker Karma (which, like a Chevy Volt has a gasoline engine to extend its range but will only go "up to" 50 miles on electric only according the their website) costs $97,000.  Very few people can afford that.

Now we could think back 100 years when only the very rich could afford cars.  Then Henry Ford came along, used the assembly line, and lowered the price of cars to the point where most people could afford them.  Could the same thing happen with electrics?  Or, what is more important, will they pencil out and finally be cheaper than a gasoline or diesel-powered car.  (I know, in matter of all that is environmentally holy, money must flow like rainwater into the coffers of the goddess Gaia.)  I doubt it will happen soon.  And in any case, why is government money going to build a car very few can afford?  (Yes, I know the government money was not to build the Karma but to build the slightly more affordable Nina which will only cost $57,000 and be built in the U.S.)

So we're taxing Joe Sixpack so Leonardo DiCaprio can ease his environmental guilt.  I'd say that's a good use of money, wouldn't you?

Be Poorer to Save the Planet

Environmentalists rarely are so honest about their goals: to make you poorer. They believe the poorer you are, the less damage you'll do to the planet. Now a group called the New Economics Foundation (NEF) has come right out and said you need to be poorer by working less hours. Michael Coren of something called Fast Company seems to agree:

The NEF argues we need to achieve truly happy lives, we need to challenge social norms and reset the industrial clock ticking in our heads. It sees the 21-hour week as integral to this for two reasons: it will redistribute paid work, offering the hope of a more equal society (right now too many are overworked, or underemployed). At the same time, it would give us all time for the things we value but rarely have time to do well such as care for our family, travel, read or continue learning (as opposed to feeding consumerism).

Not to mention, it may be the only way a modern global society won’t overwhelm the earth’s resources. Creating EU-level living standards for the entire world by 2050 would require a six-fold increase in the size of the global economy, with potentially devastating consequences. Instead of growing the economy, maybe we need to recalibrate society to make everyone happier and successful with less.

"With less" i.e., poorer.  This is the fallacy of the zero-sum game economy.  If everyone on the planet has EU standard of living (which is, by the way, less than the U.S. standard of living), we'll rape the planet's resources.  So people need to stay poor.

Are Earth's resources finite?  Yes.  Are econmics finite?  No.  Who knows what will create wealth without requiring more resources.  Or maybe we could mine asteroids (where have I heard that before?).

At least this New Economics Foundation comes right out and says they want you poorer by working less and then you won't have the money to consume so much, you heartless bastard.  But how will wealth be created if people work less?  Because that's what a job is: wealth creation.  And when you create wealth, everyone benefits.  And think what it would do to the Federal budget if everyone worked less.  They'd pay half the taxes they now do.  That would cut the revenue into the government by about half.  Of course we could just double taxes, then you'd have even less to spend on raping the planet.  It's a win-win!

How about we release the entrepreneurial spirit of people and let them create wealth as best they can?  Then we can all live better.  We'll get the resources, or invent ways around them.  You don't see a lot of whale oil being used for lighting these days because whales became scarce.  Who knows what next thing might be invented to replace the finite resources of the planet.

Political Not Economic Considerations Drove "Green" Agenda

Those of us on the right say the market, not government, should pick winners and losers.  Why?  Because government is very bad at picking winners (viz. Solyndra) while the market is very good at it.  But why is the government bad at picking winners? Because while the market uses economic considerations (i.e., the "invisible hand") to pick winners and losers, government invariably uses politics to pick winners.  That is, usually the firm or person with the best political connections and the biggest lobbying budget.

The Washington Post (!) has an article yesterday showing the failures of the Obama Administration in picking winners was exactly due to politics.  As the WaPo puts it, politics "infused" every part of the Obama Administration's "Green" programs:

The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal ­e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.

Of course the poster child for this is the more than half-billion dollars that went down the Solyndra rat hole:

[Documents] show that as Solyndra tottered, officials discussed the political fallout from its troubles, the “optics” in Washington and the impact that the company’s failure could have on the president’s prospects for a second term. Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-
energy technology.

“What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse. What they are talking about is ‘How are we going to manage this politically?’”

They "bet on the wrong horse." In other words, they gambled with $500 million taxpayer dollars and made their decision politically.

Yes, private investors sometimes bet on the wrong horse and end up poorer but wiser.  That's how the market works.  But when governments bet on the wrong horses, they drag every taxpayer to the betting window with them to subsidize their bet.  And using politics is the worst way to decide what company should be invested in.  But it's the only thing Washington knows.

Which is why keeping governmnet out of the business of business is so important.