Global Cooling

The bad news for global warming alarmists just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The majority of data presented below is from just the past few weeks. Also see: U.S. Senate Minority Report: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists (and rapidly growing) Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007” & ‘Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008 - July 18, 2008 & An August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists.

Amusing.
I have always considered the "global warming" craze a fad similar to the "global overpopulation" craze in the 1960s.

Global Warming & Polar ICe

Note: in increase in ice over the past year (left map) is larger than the size of Germany (right map).

HT: No Parasan


Palin tie in:

A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made. .

Another reason to vote for her. Scientific skepicism is healthy. Too bad so many "scientists" put popular fads ahead of critical analysis.

Kyoto Hypocrisy

From Willisms:

G8: Bush & Global Warming

Previously I have reported on Bush's green home. I find this article from WSJ fairly amusing in how credit is rarely given where it is due when it comes to Bush.

There's been a capitulation on global warming, but it hasn't happened in the Oval Office. The Kyoto cheerleaders at the United Nations and the European Union are realizing their government-run experiment in climate control is a mess, one that's incidentally failed to reduce carbon emissions. They've also understood that if they want the biggest players on board--the U.S., China, India--they need an approach that balances economic growth with feel-good environmentalism. Yesterday's G-8 agreement acknowledged those realities and tolled Kyoto's death knell. Mr. Bush, 1; sanctimonious greens, 0.


Not that the president's handling of the climate issue has been stellar. The science of global warming is still unsettled, yet Mr. Bush in 2002 caved and laid out a voluntary emissions-reduction program. Instead of getting credit, he's spent the ensuing years getting shellacked for not doing more. This has laid the groundwork for today's calls for mandatory curbs that would harm the economy. It's also given Washington an excuse to re-micromanage the energy sector. Think ethanol.

But compared with Kyoto, Mr. Bush's vision has been sublime. The basic Kyoto philosophy is this: Set ever lower mandatory targets, ratcheting down energy use, and by extension economic growth. The program was viewed by environmentalists and politicians as a convenient excuse for getting rid of unpopular fossil fuels, such as coal. In Kyoto-world, governments exist to create draconian rules, even if those dictates are disguised by "market" mechanisms such as cap-and-trade.

President Bush's approach is opposite: Allow economies to grow, along the way inspiring new technologies and new forms of energy that lower C02 emissions. Implicit is that C02-control technologies should focus on energy sources we use today, including fossil fuels. In Bush-world, the government is there to incentivize industry, coordinate with it, and set broad goals.

Take your pick. Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets. There's rampant cheating, and endless stories of how select players are self-enriching off the government "market" in C02 credits. Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president's oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period.

Europeans may be slow, but they aren't silly, and they've quietly come around to some of Mr. Bush's views. Tony Blair has been a leader here, and give him credit for caring enough about his signature issue to evolve. He began picking up Mr. Bush's pro-tech themes years ago, as it became clear just how much damage a Kyoto would do to his country's competitiveness. By the end of 2005, he admitted at a conference in New York that Kyoto was a problem. "I would say probably I'm changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years," he said. "The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem." He doubted there would be successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012, and said an alternative might be "incentives" for businesses. Mr. Bush couldn't have said it better.

Or consider nuclear plants. President Bush has pushed hard for more nuclear, with its bountiful energy at zero C02 cost. This was long anathema to British and German politicians, whose populations are virulently anti-nuke and who balked at any official recognition of nuclear benefits. As Kyoto has ratcheted down other energy sources, nuclear has looked better. By 2005, the G-8 document out of Gleneagles contained an explicit acknowledgment that nuclear energy mattered. The EU's energy pact, signed earlier this year, also contained a nod to nuclear. Europe has also gone from trying to banish coal, to using tech to make it cleaner.

Then there's Mr. Bush's insistence that any "global" program must include big emitters such as China and India (Kyoto doesn't). Though it received little press, the U.S. in 2005 started the Asia-Pacific Partnership, a voluntary climate pact between it and Australia, Japan, South Korea, China and India. Unlike Kyoto--in which a government sets a national target for emissions, and then forces a few unlucky industries to make cuts--the Partnership gets industry execs from every sector across the table from relevant government ministers, and devises practical approaches to reductions. This parallel diplomatic approach has proved far more acceptable to countries like China, and played a role in that country's own recently released climate plan.

Global Warming: Mars

Someone should tell the Martians:

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena..

Regulating CO2 gas

As the nearby chart shows, CO2 emissions growth in the U.S. far outpaced that of the 15 "old" members of the European Union from 1990-95 and especially from 1995-2000, when Mr. Climate Change himself, Al Gore, was the second-most powerful man in America. But, lo, the U.S. has outperformed the EU-15 since 2000, according to the latest U.N. data. America's rate of growth in CO2 emissions from 2000-04 was eight percentage points lower than from 1995-2000.


By comparison, the EU-15 saw an increase of 2.3 points. Only two EU states, Britain and Sweden, are on track to meet their Kyoto emissions commitments by 2010. Six more might meet their targets if they approve and implement new, as yet unspecified, policies to restrict carbon output, while seven of the 15 will miss their goals.

Cynics play down America's improvement, noting that its economy cooled from the earlier years to 2000-04. True, but the EU-15 also had lower economic growth in the latest period and still saw its emissions growth rate double. What's more, the U.S. economy expanded 38% faster than the EU-15 in 2000-04, and its population twice as fast. So the trend lines, for now, are reversing. That may frustrate the green lobby because so much of its fund raising depends on vilifying the U.S. But facts are facts, no matter how underreported they are.

Europe's dismal record is explained by its approach to reducing emissions. The centerpiece of the Continent's plan is a carbon-trading scheme in which companies in CO2-heavy industries receive tradable permits for a certain amount of emissions. If they emit more CO2, they must buy credits from firms that are under quota. The idea is to force companies to emit less CO2 by making it prohibitively expensive to keep the status quo.

All this scheme has done so far is provide further proof that government cannot replicate the wisdom of markets. A red-faced European Commission recently admitted that it allowed more permits than there were emissions in 2005-07, keeping permit prices low and undermining the entire system. When Brussels tried to make amends by ordering several member states to cut carbon permits by 7% more than expected for 2008-2012, industry and national capitals squealed. The market hadn't priced in such a dramatic reduction. With carbon permits trading relatively cheaply, firms have been able to get by with minimal changes to the way they do business. That has minimized Kyoto's economic impact.

From the WSJ. There is the hype that by not being a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol the US is un-enlightened compared to our EU counterpart. I guess this is just another example of being practical is superior to "being enlightened" or reality over ideal.