Five months ago, I felt that the tide in Holland was turning. Marcel Stive, a civil engineering professor and member of the Delta Committee, a blue-ribbon panel that was going to publish a report on our coastal defenses, said in an interview with an alumni magazine:

“Fortunately, the time rate of climate change is slow compared to the life span of the defense structures along our coast. There is enough time for adaptation. We should monitor the situation carefully, but up to now climate change does not cause severe problems for our coastal defense system. IPCC has given lower estimates for the expected sea level rise in four successive reports.” (I quoted this in my weblog of 14 July 2008).

But what happened? The Delta Committee published its report in September, and based its recommendations on well over a meter of sea-level rise in this century and a tenfold increase in coastal security. Its estimate for the additional funding needed is two billion dollars annually.

Much of the blame is due to the government's century-long warfare on fire, a study says. House-cleaning blazes in remote areas should not be fought, researchers say.

Forest fires in the Sierra Nevada have grown larger, more frequent and more damaging in the last two decades, according to a study that suggests much of the blame rests with the government's century-long war on wildfire.

The study, published online this month in the journal Ecosystems, found that between 1984 and 2006, the proportion of burned areas where no trees survived increased, on average, to nearly 30%, from 17%.

If “green jobs” mandates are such a swell idea — and indeed, taxes and subsidies in their name are now increasingly touted as the way forward to economic recovery — how is it that they require a bailout . . . before the program has even started?

Reading today’s CCNet, we see an item from the Financial Times noting that China has upped its price for continuing its lucrative Kyoto role as carbon-offset bank for the EU (and, as many hope, for the U.S., as well). China wants $300 billion in “green technologies” — $130 billion from the U.S. (1 percent of our GDP), though we aren’t even Party to the pact, which begs the question why we would not only join this economy-killing treaty, but pay through the nose to do so.

The green technologies might come from American companies, or maybe not; they might be made here, or maybe not, but the presumption is that we will pay China in exchange for their promise to use the money to buy such products, instead of buying economically viable products that they want and need, on their own. Or, slightly less insane, possibly the U.S. taxpayer could just pay to make these green things no one wants, and then send them to China. This smacks of the worst of the WPA and foreign aid rolled into one.

Hansen: Fanatic or just plain nuts?

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.  —Winston Churchill

Imagine the media reaction if a prominent American Christian leader condoned vandalism at abortion clinics. Now imagine the reaction if he went beyond condoning vandalism and agreed to appear as a witness for the defense at the trial of those vandals. 

Then imagine what would happen if he decided to export his religiously motivated crusade to another country.

Well, that’s exactly what just happened, except the religion wasn’t Christianity—it was environmentalism.

Last October, a group of Greenpeace members climbed a chimney at a power plant in Kent, England, and started to paint the words “Gordon Bin It.” The “Gordon” referred to was Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the “it” was a plan to build new coal-fired power plants at the site.

Looks like I'm not the only one who can JUMP to conclusions!

New research has revealed that disease is to blame for the decline in frog populations, not climate change as was first thought.

Scientists are racing against time to curb a fungal disease that is killing the world's frogs.

A University of Tasmania Professor and his colleagues in the United States are baffled by the highly contagious Chytrid Fungus.

More than 50 frog species in the Americas and at least four in Australia have been wiped out.

Initially global warming was thought to help the fungus spread but this has been ruled out.

There are fears a quintessential icon of the English countryside could be destroyed forever by global warming.  …

But as spring gets shorter each year, the flower loses the time it needs to mature and set seeds, and the carpet of blue we look forward to could die out forever.  …

Foxley Wood Nature Reserve, 15 miles to the North west of Norwich on Fakenham Road, is the largest remaining ancient woodland in the county and sees the flower carpet the floor.  …

Richard Hobbs, a spokesman for Norfolk Wildlife Trust, said: “Certainly bluebells are showing above the ground earlier than they used to, and Foxley Wood is the best place to see them, tens of thousands carpet the floor.

Source
The List

Secretary Ed Miliband

An aristocracy is a form of government by an elite that considers itself to possess greater virtues than the hoi polloi, giving it the right to rule in its own interests. Aristocrats were referred to as 'the nobility', or 'nobs'. These days we prefer decisions to be made democratically – the idea being that we can judge for ourselves which ideas serve our interests, thank you very much, ma'am.

But in recent years, politicians have sought legitimacy for their positions from outside of the democratic process. A new aristocracy is emerging from the emptiness of UK politics - and it's considerably more virtuous than thou.

Last Thursday, foreign secretary Ed Miliband announced the government was committing to an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 - up from 60 per cent. This was the latest in a game of politics by numbers, in which the major parties outbid each other to commit to the most punishing targets, each party claiming that its own reduction target best represented 'the science'.

Abundant, reliable, affordable energy makes our jobs, health, living standards and civil rights possible. 

Remember that when you read about people losing their jobs or having to choose between heating, eating, paying the rent or mortgage, giving to charity, or covering healthcare, college, car or retirement costs. Remember it when Congress makes more hydrocarbon energy off limits – or puts more obstacles in the path of nuclear power that generates a fifth of America’s electricity.

I recently visited nuclear power plants and a fuel reprocessing plant in France, which gets almost 80% of its electricity from uranium. And I’ve read some shockingly ill-informed claims about nuclear power and its supposed alternatives. Here are some essential facts.

Alaska’s glaciers grew this year, after shrinking for most of the last 200 years. The reason?  Global temperatures dropped over the past 18 months. The global mean annual temperature has been declining recently because the solar wind thrown out by the sun has retreated to its smallest extent in at least 50 years. This temperature downturn was not predicted by the global computer models, but had been predicted by the sunspot index since 2000.

The solar wind normally protects the earth from 90 percent of the high-energy cosmic rays that flash constantly through the universe. Henrik Svensmark at the Danish Space Research Institute has demonstrated that when more cosmic rays hit the earth, they create more of the low, wet clouds that deflect heat back into outer space. Thus the earth’s recent cooling.

Michael Schlesinger

Remember this prolific e-mailer? Well, among today’s many submissions is a story once again promoting his Bigfoot carbon imprint, of which he boasts like no other: “Nobel Laureate Michael Schlesinger visits Alaska.” That, plus the link, is the entire e-mail: a claim that he is a Nobel laureate gracing Alaska.

Now, clearly, the publication is the one making the claim that Dr. Schlesinger happily promotes. I have a question for all those alarmists who participated in the IPCC process and who now insist that they, too, are Nobel Laureates — including all those anthropology TAs and the like:

Where, precisely, do you find evidence of having this award bestowed upon you? My math is fuzzy, but I see it awarded half-and-half — one half to a Mr. Gore and the other to an organization based in Geneva. May I admire your “medal, personal diploma and a cash award”? Ooh, how did you spend the prize money? Where did you frame the certificate of achievement?

The point has been made by many before me that the IPCC carries with it a great deal of the pursuit of reflected and indirect glory. It is worth noting given the promiscuity of this particular claim: When people fudge about the little things, be very wary of their claims about the big stuff.

Source

Gore calls for Civil Rights Movement-like action to that needed to deal with climate change

The schoolchildren of Memphis heard the name "Al Gore," and their loud, uninhibited response more resembled that given to a rock star than to a former vice president.

Appearing this morning at the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Awards public forum at the Temple of Deliverance, Gore connected the lessons imparted by Civil Rights Movement heroes like fellow honoree Diane Nash to the action needed to confront the "emergency" of global climate change.

Honored last year with a Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to raise awareness over global warming, Gore described growing up in Washington, D.C. and Carthage, near Nashville and watching on early TVs as Nash and other students in Nashville challenged Jim Crow laws with sit-ins and by directly questioning public officials.

For ten years or more, professor David Deming has taught a course in environmental geology at the University of Oklahoma.  In October 2008, he was informed that the “general education” certification for his course was being revoked.  Under the University of Oklahoma system, this means that student enrollment in the course is likely to drop by two-thirds.

This is a course which receives outstanding student evaluations. Professor Deming is well-known to be a global-warming skeptic.  In 2006, he testified before the US Senate that media coverage of global warming had descended into ”irrational hysteria.” Excerpt:

“Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor’s degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow. In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years.