1. Renewable energy wrecks environment, scientist claims
Excerpt: Renewable energy wrecks environment, scientist claims Renewable does not mean green. That is the claim of Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University in New York. Writing in Inderscience’s International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, Ausubel explains that building enough wind farms, damming enough rivers, and growing enough biomass to meet global energy demands will wreck the environment.
http://www.physorg.com/news104509955.html
2. Canadian mayor calls Gore ‘junk scientist’ who ‘trades on fear’
Excerpt: “I think there’s a lot of junk science out there that’s masquerading as true science,” the Mayor (Andy Wells, St. John’s) told CanWest News Service yesterday, “and I think as a consequence public agencies and organizations such as municipal councils are making stupid decisions.” < > Mr. Wells said Mr. Gore, Mr. Suzuki and the Sierra Club of Canada trade on fear
to scare Canadians into giving them money to fund their activities.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=cbcc9ff4-6532-4d21-a103-597691d4707c&k=45172
3. Report: NYC Celeb Sighting: Julia Roberts seen in SUV!
Excerpt: Roberts party of four disappointingly rolled up to the restaurant in a chauffeured black Yukon Denali. At 13 mpg in the city and using unleaded gasoline, this vehicle isn’t quite what we were expecting from Julia.
http://www.ecorazzi.com/?p=3406
But…Flashback: Julia Roberts named “Most Beautiful Environmentalist” by People Magazine in April 2007
Excerpt: Julia Roberts got top spot for most beautiful environmentalist, “Getting the nation’s 500,000 school buses to switch from fossil fuels to cleaner-burning biodiesel fules, which are refined from vegetable oils.”
Flashback: Julia Roberts Gets On The (Eco-Fuels) Bus
Excerpt: The biodiesel-fueled bus that is. The pretty woman will be helping biodiesel producer Earth Biofuels promote a program to encourage the use of biodiesel in more than 500,000 diesel school buses nationwide. A recent addition to the Earth Biofuels board of directors, Ms. Roberts will serve as a spokesperson for the eco-fuel. ”It’s very important that we expand our use of clean energy and make a long-term commitment to it. Biodiesel and ethanol are better for the environment and for the air we breathe,” Roberts said in an announcement about her new role.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/julia_roberts_g.php
Maybe it’s time for Julia Roberts to take the Gore Pledge (From April 2007)
Excerpt: Hollywood Celebrities Challenged To Take The “Gore Pledge” Senator James Inhofe (R-OK): “With Earth Day this Sunday, I am issuing an Earth Day Challenge to Hollywood’s global warming activists who talk the talk to walk the walk,” Senator Inhofe said. “I am asking celebrity activists to take the ‘Gore Pledge’ to reduce their home energy usage to that of the average American. Activists in Hollywood who assert that mankind only has 10 years left to act in order to avoid a climate catastrophe have made personal energy use a cornerstone of their pleas to the general public to save the planet. Hollywood activists should make personal energy sacrifices themselves before demanding others do so.
4. Senator Want new Federal Bureaucracy Modeled after Federal Reserve
Excerpt: Under the senators’ plan, companies faced with mandatory pollution cuts could borrow with interest against their future requirements should the carbon price persist beyond Congressional Budget Office estimates. If the borrowing does not work, more allowances would be temporarily released into the market with the caveat that future pollution requirements get tougher. Under the measure, a new seven-member Carbon Market Efficiency Board would have direct oversight of the system. Bill supporters explained yesterday the presidentially appointed board would operate in many ways like the Federal Reserve monitors inflation, interest rates and the overall U.S. economy.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) offered a more critical perspective on the cost plan. “Constructing new federal bureaucracies like the proposed ‘Carbon Market Efficiency Board’ will do nothing to alter the climate or solve the economic issues,” said Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe cited Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate scientist Richard Lindzen, who said in March, “Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.”
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2007/07/24/12 (Subscription required) Greenwire July 24, 2007
5. General Electric Co. issued a credit card on Wednesday it says will be the first to cut help U.S. cardholders voluntarily cut emissions linked to global warming
Excerpt: The card, called GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum Mastercard, allows users the option of automatically contributing up to one percent of their card purchases to buy greenhouse emissions offsets.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070725/us_nm/emissions_ge_dc
6. Former GOP Leader Dick Armey: Tell [Florida’s] Governor Crist To Stop Pandering to Radical Environmentalists!
Excerpt: As you may know already, Florida Governor Charlie Crist has made a deal with radical environmentalists. Armey’s Axiom is “If you make a deal with the devil you are the junior partner.” Under pressure from Al Gore and his liberal buddies in Hollywood, Governor Crist has issued three executive orders that would: force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, impose California-style carbon dioxide motor vehicle standards and force appliances to meet certain “efficiency” standards. Crist is also “warming” up to the Europeans, inviting British and German officials to “discuss and promote initiatives that broaden the Kyoto Protocol and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases beyond 2012.”
http://www.freedomworks.org/newsroom/press_template.php?press_id=2268
7. Prius Politics
Excerpt: Prius politics promises to conquer global warming without public displeasure. Gains will occur invisibly through business mandates, regulations and subsidies. That’s why higher fuel economy standards are acceptable. They seem painless. It sounds too good to be true — and it is. Costs are disguised. Mandates and subsidies will give rise to protected markets. Companies (utilities, auto companies, investment banks) will manipulate rules for competitive advantage. There will be more opportunity for private profit than public gain. The government’s support for ethanol is instructive. In 2006, 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop went for ethanol; the share is rising. Driven by demand for feed and fuel, corn prices have soared. With food costs increasing, inflation has worsened. The program is mostly an income transfer from consumers to producers and ethanol refiners. Americans’ oil use and greenhouse gas output haven’t declined.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072401855.html
8. Forecaster cuts 2007 hurricane outlook
Excerpt: The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.The season will bring 14 named storms, of which six will become hurricanes and three will become major hurricanes, WSI said in its revised outlook. WSI had previously expected 15 named storms of which eight would become hurricanes and four would become major hurricanes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/sc_nm/weather_hurricanes_forecasts_dc_1
9. Claim: Human activity altering rainfall patterns
Dr. Zwiers, one of Canada’s most respected thinkers on global warming, explained this human activity is causing a stronger water cycle, moving more water vapour away from the warmest parts of the planet and pushing it toward the poles. This is what is making wet areas wetter, and dry areas drier. Furthermore, higher use of fossil fuels in the Northern Hemisphere appears to be nudging the central rain band off the equator and driving it farther south, he said.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070724.wclimate24/BNStory/Science/home
10. Happy 10th, Byrd-Hagel
Excerpt: It was ten years ago today that the Senate unanimously instructed the Clinton-Gore administration to not go to Kyoto and agree to that pact, or anything else that met certain proscribed characteristics which happen to describe Kyoto to a Tee.
This became known as the “Byrd-Hagel” resolution, most of whose terms have found their way into subsequent resolutions. In short, nothing has changed on this front in a decade – despite desperate claims that, by so repeating these conditions, the Senate rejected them – except that we’ve learned how George W. Bush helped make the world hate us by agreeing with the Senate.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWY4MDliOGQwMTUxZmRmOTRjMzk1NDM0NjE5ZDRkMTc=&p=1
11. Kyoto Anniversary: What it Means Today
Excerpt: Ten years ago today the U.S. Senate did something that at the time seemed significant and now seems remarkably foresightful. By a vote of 95 to 0, the Senate voted in favor of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which expressed the Sense of the Senate on the upcoming global warming negotiations in Kyoto, Japan. < > Since Kyoto was negotiated in 1997, emissions have actually been rising faster in percentage terms in the EU than in the U.S. As for developing nations, no one in 1997 predicted that annual Chinese emissions would equal U.S. emissions within a decade, as happened this year. And Chinese emissions will continue to rise rapidly if their economic growth continues at around 10 percent per year. Thus, had the Senate ratified Kyoto, the U.S. would now be incurring huge economic costs to reduce emissions, while China and other rising competitors such as India and Brazil would not.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21674
12. Inconvenient Global Warming Myths
Excerpt: When audiences ask Christopher Horner, author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, why he hasn’t made a video of his rebuttal to former Vice President Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” he responds, “Well, just imagine 90 minutes of icebergs not melting…” Horner works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank which seeks free market solutions to environmental problems. “Climate change has never been secure,” the author of the Politically Incorrect New York Times bestseller points out. “This has nothing to do with the impact of humankind.” “Weather has always been unpredictable and severe.” “What about this 20 feet of sea level rise?” he asks. “It is now anywhere within a few inches.” “Sea levels have always risen and receded.” “The ‘90’s were the hottest decade on record except… they weren’t…,” continued Horner. “Since 1998, we should have warmed 4 or 5 degrees, but it has cooled. They have no explanation for it.” He imagines that the environmentalists object, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”
http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/articles.php?id=1777
13. Citizen’s Guide to Global Warming
Excerpt: As this guide will show, Gore’s brand of over-the-top climate hysteria has nothing to do with reality. Whatever the risks of future climate change, they pale in comparison to the risks of the “wrenching transformation” sought by Gore and his environmentalist allies. The restrictions they seek to force on the world would require us to relinquish the energy consumption that undergirds the extraordinary prosperity, health, and comfort of life in the U.S., the nations of Europe, and other wealthy countries. At the same time, those restrictions would prevent individuals in the world’s poorest nations from aspiring to the rich world’s quality of life, consigning them instead to continued poverty and hardship. Environmentalists claim that their alarming view of the Earth’s climate represents the “consensus” of climate scientists, and that the scientific literature provides no room for a more benign assessment of the causes and nature of climate risks. In reality, papers that contradict this ostensible consensus are published in the major scientific journals nearly every week, and we discuss some of their results in the pages that follow.
http://www.johnlocke.org/policy_reports/display_story.html?id=86
14. Coal’s Doubters Block New Wave Of Power Plants
Excerpt: From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high. If significant numbers of new coal plants don’t get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation’s electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118532834584277100.html?mod=hps_us_pageone
15. Orange Blossom Madness
Excerpt: TAS reported Monday (“Republican Governors Who Wilt”) that Republican governors in Minnesota and South Carolina have gone over to the dark side on this issue, adopting policies — hatched by environmentalists but with business types called in as unwitting perfumers — that restrict energy use in the name of saving us from the dreaded CO2. These policies are anti-freedom, anti-intellectual, and a threat to these state’s economies. But interest in them has metastasized across the land. The latest Republican governor to join the greenhouse gasbag bandwagon is Florida’s Charlie Crist. Charlie is the RINO’s RINO, who prefers and deserves the title of “populist.”
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11777
16. Senator Clinton Fails To Ask ‘Hard Questions’ About Yucca Mountain
Excerpt: Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, today blasted Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for accusing the Senate Republicans this week of failing to ask the ‘hard questions’ about Yucca Mountain. Clinton failed to attend the last two EPW hearings on the issue. Senator Clinton was quoted asserting that the EPA (Environment Protection Agency) and DOE (Department of Energy) have been unaccountable to Congress because they have “not had to answer questions up until now because the Republican Congress has not been willing to ask the hard questions,” according to a July 22, 2007 article by the Associated Press.
17. Study Says Smaller Glaciers the Bigger Threat To Sea Level Rise than Greenland/Antarctica
Excerpt: A study posted on Science Express says that smaller, thawing glaciers are a much more immediate threat when it comes to the anticipated rise in sea levels this century compared to the much larger ice sheets. Even though these smaller glaciers only contain 1% of the total water locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, they still could account for 6% of the predicted sea rise by 2100 if they continue to melt, which could add 4 to 10 inches to the world’s sea level by the end of the century.
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/07/study_says_smaller_glaciers_th.html
18. What global warming? West Palm shows few signs of rising temperatures
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flftemps0725pnjul25,0,749955.story
19. Global Warming Threatens Coffee Collapse in Uganda
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070724-uganda-coffee.html
20. Scientist Develops Allergen-Free Peanut
http://www.theindychannel.com/health/13750345/detail.html
21. 900-year-old hidden treasure found attached to Octopus’s tentacles
22. What It Feels Like … to Be Struck by Lightning
Excerpt: When the bolt hit, I was absolutely frozen, just as cold as I’ve ever been in my entire life, but then part of me was incredibly hot, too. I saw these red flashing lights, and I kept thinking, It’s a fire truck! A fire truck! as if I were a little kid. Then there was the most incredible noise I’d ever heard. The sound was so loud that I honestly couldn’t hear anything. Evidently, it’s so loud that it blows the cilia in the ear completely flat. I felt as if I’d been slammed between two Dumpsters. It was like every case of the flu you’ve ever had, at one time. My arms and my legs and my hands all felt as if they weighed five thousand pounds. Every bit of my body was just in absolute pain. It was such a dull ache, and so sharp at the same time; it was like everything from a migraine headache to a hangover to needles being stuck in every millimeter of your body. My hair hurt, my eyelashes hurt; I could feel it when my hair moved, when the wind blew across me.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Re #1. Of course, that is why conservation is an important part of an energy strategy.
Quibble with semantics, Sustainable implies it can be sustainable, not something that is not sustainable. I would be surprised if “greens” want to cover the planet with windfarms and solar cells either.
Why is Bush always blamed for not signing Kyoto when the previous Senate under Clinton made it impossible?
Quibble with semantics…
23: Your’re all going to die ! It’s back on again.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say.
The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded.
Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
But it’s going to be a big fight – read on here…
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/29/tropical.storms.ap/index.html
Greg Holland is an Aussie who was on duty in Darwin as Cyclone Tracy ripped the city apart.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/staffnotes/0503/holland.html
http://www.aerosonde.com/drawarticle/142
It is clear that NOAA would thoroughly disagree with this paper. The number of Atlantic/Gulf hurricanes that have made landfall actually tended to be higher a century ago – see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml. While this is only a subset of total hurricanes, it largely overcomes the problem that a large percentage of hurricanes in the past went unnoticed – if they were weak, shortlived and didn’t hit land.
Cyclone numbers and intensity have been studied for decades – there is no global increase in frequency, but some increase in intensity over the past 30 years. In the Atlantic specifically, there has been a recent increase in frequency but only to levels that were common before about 1960.
Indeed NOAA may indeed say that and the ruckus is already on – but the authors well know where this debate has previously gone and notwithstanding all that, they seem quite willing to enter the fray stating: “”We are of the strong and considered opinion that data errors alone cannot explain the sharp, high-amplitude transitions between the climatic regimes, each with an increase of around 50 percent in cyclone and hurricane numbers,” wrote Webster, of Georgia Institute of Technology, and Holland.”
Kerry Emanuel also thinks they have a new point.
So we’ll have to get a copy of Proc Royal Soc A eh? And see what they reckon. Dare I suggest this is one debate that is far from over.