How Much Is a Bird’s Life Worth?

Donna LaFramboise

ExxonMobil, long considered an uber villain by environmentalists, in 2009 agreed to pay $600,000 in fines. Its crime? Over a five-year period, 85 migratory birds (17 per year) died after landing in Exxon wastewater facilities across five US states.

CNN says the birds died after they ingested or became coated with hydrocarbons. These included a hawk, ducks, owls and other species. None are considered endangered but at least some are classified as “protected.”

Exxon’s fine works out to $7,059 per bird. In an effort to save the lives of less than two dozen such birds a year the company has apparently already spent $2.5 million covering and draining the bodies of wastewater and “will spend quite a bit more to implement the environmental compliance plan.”

Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cruden says this case represents “a great win for the environment.” Members of the public who left comments on CNN’s website appear to agree. Observed one: “Seems like such a small amount of money for loss of animal life. Exxon always seems to get away with careless destruction of wildlife.”

A person named Clayton concurred that the fine was too small. Another implied that additional prosecutions were necessary “to stave off the decline in numbers of much of our wildlife.”

One wonders then, how Mr. Cruden and his employer, the US Department of Justice, feel about the worldwide push to increase the use of wind power? Because if 17 bird deaths annually are worthy of legal prosecution and multi-million-dollar remediation, it’s difficult to imagine how windmill companies are going to stave off bankruptcy.

Bats, after all, aren’t mere birds – they’re warm-blooded mammals. And it turns out that windmills alter air pressure in a way that causes the lungs of bats to explode. Researchers studying the issue apparently had little difficulty locating 188 dead bats from wind farms located solely in one part of one Canadian province.

According to a press release from the university with which the researchers are associated:

“The majority of bats killed at wind turbines are the migratory bats that roost in trees, including hoary bats, eastern red bats, and silver-haired bats. While little is known about their population sizes…their deaths could have far-reaching consequences. Bats typically live for many years, in some cases reaching ages of 30 or more. Most also have just one or two pups at a time, and not necessarily every year…All three species of migratory bats killed by wind turbines fly at night, eating thousands of insects—including many crop pests—per day as they go. Therefore, bat losses in one area could have very real effects on ecosystems miles away, along the bats’ migration routes.”

A summary of the bat research paper begins with the observation that the danger windmills pose to birds has been known for decades. A different study suggests that for every three bats that lose their lives due to wind turbines, an additional two birds are killed.

A 2004 California Energy Commission study estimated that as many as 4,720 birds from 40 different species – “including as many as 1,300 protected raptors” – are killed each year by a single wind farm. The Audubon Society says that more than 100 of those birds are golden eagles.

In fairness, this particular California wind farm is said to be unusually deadly, but 4,700 birds a year!

So tell me again why Exxon has been put through the wringer for causing the deaths of 17 birds at the exact same time that wind turbines are massacring them by the thousands?

Note: See recent stories which found millions of birds, many endangered are killed each year by wind farms in the US and globally. In addition, these wind turbins have proved to be a health hazard to humans – with residents homes as far s a half mile away reporting migraines, insomnia and other ailments from the constant hum of the turbines. Don’t expect any CNN story or comments challenging wind power anytime soon as the enviros look the other way.

Either every bird killed by the energy industry should result in a $7k fine – or none should.

Fix the Budget by Cutting Climate Waste

Media Statement by Viv Forbes,
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition.

Any quotes taken directly from this statement may be attributed to Mr Forbes

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the federal government to reduce the burden of the Climate Industry on all taxpayers and consumers.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the biggest national scandal today was how the whole government apparatus, including the nationalised research and media industries and parts of the opposition, was totally captive to a religious belief that a destructive war on carbon energy will somehow provide benefits to some future generation of Australians by cooling the climate and preventing extreme weather events.

“This is a delusion.”

Quote:

It was the great Milton Friedman who said “There is only one tax on the people and that is government spending”.

Cutting expenditure, not re-arranging expenditure, must be the total focus of this budget.

And the first candidate for spending cuts must be the totally useless Climate Change Industry.

Every department, program, research grant, travel grant or salary with climate, warming, carbon, sustainability, renewable, sequestration, clean coal, ethanol or IPCC in its title or mission statement should be abolished forthwith together with its staffing. This list must include but not be restricted to:

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) and its dependants, saving about $3.2 billion.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, saving about $10 billion.

The Emerging Renewables Program, saving about $126 million.

The Clean Technology Innovation Program, saving about $200 million.

Subsidies to Coal-fired electricity generators, saving about $5.5 billion. (This has to be the ultimate madness – the government levies a crippling carbon tax on coal-fired electricity generation to force them to close and then pays huge subsidies to the same generators to delay their closure).

All Climate Change “Research” focussed on carbon dioxide, saving about $300 million.

“Contracts for Closure” – payments to ensure closure of some electricity generators (unbelievable – surely the carbon tax will do this).

The Coal Sector Jobs Package – payments to coal mines to offset the cost of the carbon tax- just abolish the tax.

Coal Sector Assistance Package – Subsidies to some Coal Mines (another stupidity – repaying some of the carbon tax they took in the first place).

Everything funded under the Clean Energy Future Plan.

All renewable energy subsidies.

The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund.

The Ethanol Production Grants Program – a subsidy per litre of ethanol produced.

All climate change officials, lawyers, inspectors and auditors everywhere, maybe 13,000 of them saving, say, $2 billion per year.

The offices of the Climate Commissioner and the Clean Energy Regulator – whatever they cost is wasted money.

The whole Carbon Capture and Storage empire – The National Low Emissions Coal Initiative, the CCS Flagships Program, the National Carbon Dioxide Infrastructure Plan, and the Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

Support for all the International Climate Forums and Conferences via APEC, CEM, G20, IEA, IEF, IPEEC, IRENA, IPCC and all the travel costs associated with attendance.

All handouts under the Green Precincts Fund – $15M spent to date.

All government advertising, market research, media monitoring, media advisers and logo designers promoting the carbon tax, the Department of Climate Change, smart meters or other climate and green energy initiatives.

Donations to Green Friends such as the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Council, Climate Works Australia, Green Cross Australia, and the ACTU – $3 million spent already.

To “balance” all of these reduced expenditures the government must also abolish the carbon tax and all fuel taxes not related directly to public road usage and applied to road construction and maintenance.

Note: The above list probably includes errors, double counting and omissions, but such is the confusion and proliferation of the alphabet soup of what poses as “Climate Policy” that it is doubtful if anyone could prepare an accurate and comprehensive list. The only feasible solution is to start cutting, biggest first. None of them will be missed, except with relief by taxpayers and consumers.

Viv Forbes,
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

Are wind turbines killing off the whooping crane population?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Anthony Watts

An attempt to stimulate discussion about whether or not wind turbines could kill off all endangered whooping cranes in only five years, as some environmentalists suggest.

Guest post by Caleb Shaw

I am having trouble getting to the bottom of a serious issue, (or a serious issue for a bird lover like myself.) It may well be that wind turbines are killing endangered birds, and may lead to the extinction of the California Condor and the Whooping Crane.

Because wind turbines involve a great deal of capital, (not merely the big-bucks of fat-cats, but also and especially the political capital surrounding the save-the-world idea of Global Warming,) the bullying of media-warping power politics seems to be involved. You can’t get a straight answer to a simple question.

All I want to know is whether or not the population of whooping crane has fallen by over a hundred, since wind turbines were erected in their flyways.

I think it may well have happened, but because the government would get bad press if such was “a fact,” the facts get muddled. The government is on record as saying wind turbines are good, and has invested huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in erecting them. They will downplay bad news. One way to downplay is to change the way of counting whooping cranes. For 61 years an aerial count was used. Now a new “hierarchical distance sampling” is used, and gives a number with an absurd degree of uncertainty. .

What is the degree of uncertainty? “Plus or minus 61 whooping cranes.” That could be as much as a half of the total population. It is a failure to give an honest questioner an honest answer.

261 would not be good news, but would indicate the population was at least holding steady, however, if you subtract 61 from the positive direction and go 61 in the other direction, you have 139 whooping cranes, which is an environmental disaster.
It also would be a political inconvenience, and a business inconvenience to all fat cats who have invested huge amounts of money into the enormous, towering, and very ugly turbines.

However I always thought true environmentalists didn’t care about what was inconvenient for politicians, and inconvenient for fat cats, and instead cared about what was inconvenient for whooping cranes.

When you can’t even get the data that matters, not even from the Environmental Protection Agency, it starts to look like environmentalists have been bought out by, and have sold out to, fat cats and politicians. I always thought that was the one thing that environmentalists never, ever would do.

I figured environmentalists needed to be warned. Therefore I left the following comment, (actually a sort of letter-to-the-editor,) at the environmentalist website Wind Turbine Syndrome, on the post: http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2012/the-free-flying-whooping-crane-population-will-be-lost-within-5-years-avian-wildlife-expert/#comment-20922
“I have linked to your story in a post at my obscure website: http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/for-the-birds/
I have also left links to your post when I comment at other websites.

The problem is that environmentalists have overused the sympathy of the public, because some less-than-altruistic environmentalists have raised the alarm, but have done so for reasons that involve political and even business interests. By allowing such people to infiltrate our ranks we have dug a grave for ourselves, because we are now like the little boy who cried wolf. When we raise the alarm, the public rolls their eyes and doesn’t listen.
An example of such a false alarm may well be the “snail darter,” which is a small fish which lives in a California delta. Because California’s climate has included both copious rainfalls and withering droughts, the delta has varied hugely, and the little fish has evolved to cope with tremendous variations. However the environmentalists involved made it sound like the slightest bit of irrigation in America’s richest farmland, (which has the longest growing season,) could wipe the obscure minnow out, by reducing the water in the delta.

While there are good arguments on both sides, the uproar made environmentalists look bad for two reasons. First, it made them look like they cared more for a few hundred minnows than feeding hundreds of thousands of Americans. Second, it made them look like liars, when it turned out that particular minnow had survived horrific historic droughts when the delta was practically dry. Once environmentalists have been made to look bad in this manner, the public is slow to forgive the stain on their reputation.

The whooping crane population was down to around 21 in 1941. It was only due to the work of altruistic environmentalists, who worked hand in hand with Washington DC, that the population bounced back to over 200. It is a triumph, and shows environmentalism at its best.

We need to return to that goodness, but we cannot do so with people who abuse environmentalism in our ranks. We are like a beautiful garden, but our ranks contain some rank weeds.

Some of our members are merely young, and need the guidance of older and wiser members. However others are rather obviously more interested in money, quick profits, and power politics than anything that has to do with keeping nature in balance, and beautiful creatures alive.

None of us much likes to be disagreeable, but we had better disagree with these people, who are actually fakes and phonies. In the most polite manner possible, we need to bring up the truth and demand the facts, and confront them. They are corrupting a beautiful thing, and if we don’t stand up for what environmentalism stands for, we are standing by as a sewer pipe pollutes a beautiful river, but in this case the river is environmentalism itself.

Time to shoot the husky, Dave

BY JAMES DELINGPOLE

There is so much good news about the collapse of the EU’s carbon trading scam, that I’m not sure where to begin. But let’s start with the fact that it has really, really annoyed Bryony Worthington – the activist from the hard-left anti-capitalist pressure group Friends of the Earth who wrote the most economically suicidal piece of legislation in British history, the Climate Change Act. Even more delightfully, it will also have upset Tim “Trougher” Yeo and Lord “King Trougher” Deben, both of whom were not only fully behind this latest planned EU conspiracy against the energy user and the taxpayer but who also had the sublime gall to suggest that this market rigging is what Margaret Thatcher would have wanted.(H/T Benny Peiser, GWPF)

No, really. Let’s pause a moment and cherish the delicious absurdity of this claim. Two Tory wets – of the kind Margaret Thatcher always despised – are now invoking the legacy of Britain’s most fervently anti-EU and pro-free-market prime minister in support of an EU attempt to rig the markets and punish consumers with an artificially inflated carbon tax which no one wants. Have a read and be amazed. You couldn’t make it up.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, that’s right: having a good old dance on the grave of EU’s carbon emissions policy. Here’s what Walter Russell Mead has to say about its significance:

The EU has been the global laboratory testing the green agenda to see how it works. Today’s story means that the guinea pig died; the most important piece of green intervention in world history has become an expensive and embarrassing flop. It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of this for environmentalists everywhere; if the EU can’t make the green agenda work, it’s unlikely that anybody else will give it a try.

I think he’s right. The knock-on effects are going to be cataclysmic – in places like Australia, for example, which had been relying on the rigged EU carbon trading market to prop up Julia Gillard’s carbon emissions scam. And within the vast, overinflated bubble which is the green industry generally. No one will be safe in this sector: seriously, if you’re in renewables – as I know at least one of our regular trolls below does: he’s an adviser to the wind industry and graduated, I kid you not, from the environmental sciences department at the UEA – I would now think very hard about getting yourself a proper job.

So is there a downside to this? Yes, as the astute Richard North notes at EU Referendum, thanks to that Climate Change Act introduced by Bryony Worthington (see above), Britain’s own energy policy is now looking more expensive and disastrous than ever.

Sadly, though, Britain does not get the benefit of this market collapse, Mr Osborne having already decided to add to the cost of the carbon credits, with an additional £4.94 in carbon tax. This, while continental industry and electricity consumers will be paying something like £2 per ton of carbon dioxide produced, the British equivalents will be paying about £7.

With the UK government committed to driving the carbon price up to £18 in 2018, to £30 in 2020 and to £70 in 2030, using the carbon tax mechanism, we now face the spectre of the EU’s carbon market collapsing completely, leaving the UK as the only country in the EU handicapped in this way.

But I must say, personally I take a more sanguine view. It may not have escaped your notice that large numbers of Warmist rats have been leaping off the sinking ship of late in response to the growing evidence that AGW theory is bust. Our media – even our previously credulous mainstream media, even the Ecommunist, for heaven’s sake – is starting to grow more and more sceptical of the expensive energy policies which have been created to deal with what looks increasingly like a non-existent problem.

Do you think that they will consider it reflects well or badly on David Cameron that he continues to support an energy policy whereby:

1. The government’s business department splurges £50 million of taxpayers’ money on an equity fund – Greencoat plc – which invests in wind farms, not a single one of which would exist were they not propped up by heavy taxpayer subsidies. (This is not capitalism. This is a rent-seeking, corporatist oroborus.)

2. His wealthy father in law – Sir Reginald Sheffield Bt – receives a thousand pounds a day, mostly from hidden tariffs on your energy bill, for the hideous wind turbines sticking out like a sore thumb on his estates.

3. Thanks to the Climate Change act – UK taxpayers are committed to spending in excess of £18 billion a year in order to “decarbonise” the UK economy

4. Useless, expensive wind farms and solar farms are springing up like mushrooms – there’s one wind farm planned not far from me near the lovely National Trust property of Canon’s Ashby; there’s a solar farm being planned for Ringmer in the South Downs National Park, for God’s sake – in the most beautiful parts of Britain, and no one wants them there save the developers and a handful of green activists.

5. Our economy continues to tank, in good part because of the Coalition’s suicidal policy in favour of renewables, biomass-burning, carbon capture and storage, and because of its failure to move with sufficient alacrity into shale gas, to adopt a nuclear policy which doesn’t involve being ripped off hideously by EDF, and to investigate the possibilities of thorium.

Something has got to give here. Maybe at the height of the climate change craze in the Nineties and Noughties it would have been different. But economic reality, scientific evidence and public attitudes have moved on.

When Cameron came into power he took what some of us recognised straight away as a massive gamble with the UK economy: he decided to stake all on a revival driven by green jobs, green energy, green investment and announced his intention to lead “the greenest government ever.”

Since the green industry is almost entirely reliant on government subsidy, this was only ever going to work if all the governments of all the world’s major economies were prepared to rig the markets. The carbon credits system, for example, was never going to work in isolated pockets: the EU carbon market was doomed the moment the CCX carbon trading exchange (founders: Al Gore; Goldman Sachs) collapsed in Chicago.

So Cameron’s energy policy is looking completely out of touch with reality and, since the one thing he is truly excellent at is skin-saving I expect he’ll be forced to make moves in a more sensible direction. As too, if he has any sense will Ed Miliband. This will go against the grain: it was on Miliband’s watch as Environment Secretary that so much bad energy policy was formulated. But if he’s planning on winning the next election, I’d suggest to him that it might not now be such a good move to criticise Cameron’s renewable energy policies on the basis that they don’t go far enough.

At times like these, we should be more grateful than ever for the presence of UKIP – the only serious political party in Britain which does have sensible energy policies. Policies, I might add, written on the advice of the kind of people – Professor Ian Plimer; Lord Monckton; Roger Helmer; Godfrey Bloom – who for years have been vilified for being extremist, denier loons but who have now been proved right all along.

I don’t think any of us need hold our breath waiting for an apology, though. If you’re very, very good I’ll treat you to the defiant non-apology I got the other day from a bien-pensant journalist who has frequently mocked my own position on climate change. It’s a peach!

By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger

Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it.

Freeman Dyson

So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him.

“I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said.

Dyson came to this country from his native England at age 23 and immediately made major breakthroughs in quantum theory. After that he worked on a nuclear-powered rocket (see video below). Then in the late 1970s, he got involved with early research on climate change at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

“I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.” That research, which involved scientists from many disciplines, was based on experimentation. The scientists studied such questions as how atmospheric carbon dioxide interacts with plant life and the role of clouds in warming.

But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning, Dyson said.

“I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”

A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.

“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”

Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO-2 into the atmosphere during that decade.

That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer.

“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”

To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.

I hope that guy never gets to hear Dyson’s most heretical assertion: Atmospheric CO-2 may actually be improving the environment.

“It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation,” Dyson said. “About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO-2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil.”

In fact, there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO-2 than the negative effects, he said. So why does the public hear only one side of this debate? Because the media do an awful job of reporting it.

“They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.”

I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.

The problem, said Dyson, is that the consensus is based on those computer models. Computers are great for analyzing what happened in the past, he said, but not so good at figuring out what will happen in the future. But a lot of scientists have built their careers on them. Hence the hatred for dissenters.

“It was similar in the Soviet Union,” he said. “Who could doubt Marxist economics was the future? Everything else was in the dustbin.”

There’s a lot of room left in that bin for the ideas promulgated by people dumber than Dyson. Which is just about everyone.

ADD: This quote from the great H.L. Mencken captures perfectly the religious nature of those in the climate cult:

“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”

Abbott to ‘shoot messenger’ on climate

Tim Flannery says research sheds new light on extreme weather.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he ”suspects” Tim Flannery, the head of Australia’s Climate Commission, would be made redundant if Mr Abbott becomes prime minister.

Mr Abbott has pledged to abolish the Climate Commission – the federal government’s agency for explaining climate science to the public – if elected, along with repealing the carbon price.

”When the carbon tax goes, all of those bureaucracies will go and I suspect we might find that the particular position you refer to goes with them,” Mr Abbott told Macquarie Radio on Wednesday.

”It does sound like an unnecessary position given that the gentleman in question gives us the benefit of his views without needing taxpayer funding.”

Professor Flannery said in a statement that it was critical for emergency and health services, as well as the public, to have the best information from scientists.

”Ignoring it or shooting the messenger will not reduce the threat of climate change, it will just mean that Australia is less prepared,” he said. ”We’d be living in the past to think that Australia did not need to prepare for a changing climate.”

Professor Flannery, a palaeontologist and author who was Australian of the Year in 2007, has been seen as a polarising figure by some because of his calls to phase out large-scale use of fossil fuels.

A Climate Commission report released on Wednesday examined links between Australia’s extreme weather and human-induced climate change. It found natural events were being influenced by climate change, because greenhouse gases are accumulating and trapping extra energy in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

The extra energy meant that natural events were being given an extra kick, meaning heavier bursts of rainfall, more intense heatwaves, and more prolonged dry spells. While heatwaves are not uncommon in summer, eight of Australia’s 21 hottest days on record have occurred this year.

The report’s lead author, Professor Will Steffen, said the report relies upon the known physics of the climate system, empirical observations of past and present weather, and the variety of mathematical models that can test assumptions from different angles.

”We have seen this basic shift in the climate system, where natural events are amplified because there is more energy in the system,” he said. ”The different lines of evidence all point to this conclusion.”

These liar scientists have milked the system for years and need to be purged. good luck Mr Abbott.

The very model of a modern climate scientist

by John McLean

QUADRANT April 3, 2013

Australia’s Climate Commission is beyond a joke. Following hot on the heels of its “Angry Summer” report, which was ridiculed here by Michael Kile, Des Moore and myself, the commission released a media statement headlined “The new normal: Melbourne’s extended Angry Summer”.

Melbourne’s temperature reached some new records in 2013, but why the hysterics about a “new normal”? This supposed “normal” is so “new” that it only occurred this year. March and February in 2012 were quite benign in Melbourne. February maximum temperatures exceeded 30 degrees on six occasions, a run of three late in the month being the most consecutive days. In 2012 March maximum temperature exceeded 30 degrees on just one day. Memo to Climate Commission: It takes more than one instance before it can be called “normal”.

Commissioner Professor Will Steffen is quoted: “However, climate change is now contributing to making these extreme heat conditions worse. These record-breaking events show that climate change is already affecting Victorians” and later “It is important that we understand that the baseline conditions have shifted. We live in a hotter world …”

The first statement makes unproven assertions, derived doubtless from un-validated models of weather, and he confuses weather with climate. The second is dismissed by the most widely cited temperature dataset, the HadCRUT3 data set from the UK’s Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit. The HadCRUT3 data says that there’s been no statistically significant increase in temperatures in the last 16 years. The CRU director said this two years ago and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri recently said that the pause in warming was now 17 years. This begs the question to Steffen, hotter than when?

Melbourne’s March heat wave was caused, as almost always, by a near-stationary High in the Tasman Sea. The earliest available online BoM media statement for Victoria, dated 30 February [sic] 2000 says in part, “Bureau of Meteorology figures released today, show that much of southern Victoria experienced one of its hottest Februarys on record. The hot weather was brought about by long spells of north to north-east winds around high pressure systems, which tended to persist over the Tasman Sea.” The pattern is entirely predictable; the only unknown is how long the high will persist.

In addition to a charming photo of Steffen enjoying a gropup hug with a bevy of young warmists (above), the Climate Commission web pages describe him as a “climate change expert and researcher”. So how can entirely typical meteorologic conditions be overlooked, or the difference between climate and weather confused?

We are forever hearing from “climate scientists” about the dire perils poised to consume our planet, but what is a climate scientist when all is said and done? Steffen’s progress through academia, his papers and the journals in which they are published might provide us with some guidance.

Steffen holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and PhD in chemistry, rather than in any field directly related to determining whether the human influence on climate is significant, negligible or virtually non-existent. During the 1980s he worked with the CSIRO on the “soil-plant-atmosphere system” and from there moved into work on the biosphere (i.e. flora and fauna). He emerged 14 years later as one of those forever-quoted experts on climate science.

There’s no doubt that he’s the “author of numerous publications on climate science”, as the Climate Commission web pages tell us, but many of those publications appear to be books or reports that were unlikely to be peer-reviewed.

His peer-reviewed papers include one for Science in 2000, but with 17 authors for just six pages it’s not clear that his contribution was significant. This was eclipsed by 30 authors for a four-page paper in Nature in 2001, although 26 authors for nine pages in Global Environmental Change, also in 2001, tried hard, and 29 authors for a four-page paper in Nature in 2009 came even closer.

Where he has written papers alone or with few co-authors we find them in journals like Ambio, Carbon Balance Management, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change and Biological Conservation, none of which seem mainstream science or “climate science” journals.

The abstracts of these papers suggest a common format that assumes manmade global warming is significant and dangerous, then looks at its possible impact and potential countermeasures. They tend towards polemics that draw heavily on the work of others and add relatively little in the way of original thought.

The Climate Commission web page mentioned above tells us that Steffen is “a researcher”. Elsewhere he says, “It was during this period that I focused my own research efforts towards synthesis and integration, often assembling teams of top researchers…”, which again poses the question as to the extent of his own input.

If Steffen has ventured into the hard science that seeks to quantify the amount of warming to be expected from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, his paper trail is rather hard to find. He is nevertheless quick to dismiss those who are sceptical of the claim that the warming is, or will be, significant. In a 2010 ANU news report he referred to sceptics as “deniers”. In the same report he went on to say, “The climate system has continued to warm strongly through the 2000-09 decade.”

We now know this assertion to be incorrect, not only because of the hiatus in warming for the last 17 years but, across the decade in question, the HadCRUT3 annual global average temperature anomalies varied by less than 0.1 degrees for eight of those years. The 2000-09 trend in annual averages rose at about 0.3 degrees/century, but omit the first year and the trend was for cooling at just over double that rate.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in July, 2011 he said, “Well over 90% of scientists in the area are quite clear: the Earth is warming and human activity is the major cause.”

He asks his audience to believe that scientific questions are resolved by the amount support for a hypothesis, rather than by the usual method: how well the hypothesis accounts for historical observations and predicts future ones. Perhaps, with the absence of warming for 16 or 17 years, all that Steffen can cling to is his belief that a supposed-but-unproven consensus among scientists amounts to something.

The Climate Commission is joke enough in itself; that it is composed of advocates all harkening unto the same catastropharian creed makes its pretensions and opera bouffe self-importance all the more laughable.

Forever ready to be quoted, Steffen defines the sort of science the Commission prefers – “science”, remember, that confuses climate with weather. As a tool of rational, unbiased inquiry, the Commission is worse than a joke. It is a farce.

UPDATE: The Climate Commission has just released a report, The critical decade: extreme weather. Again it fails to mention the meteorological causes of heatwaves or cyclones, but asserts that these events are influenced by manmade warming.

It also fails to provide any evidence whatsoever that CO2 emissions have caused or exacerbated the reported phenomenon. The basis for its claims is nothing more than a correlation that is undermined by these events being rare before this summer, despite the absence of a statistically significant increase in global average temperatures over the last 16 years.

To put it simply, if temperatures haven’t risen then it is fanciful to blame temperature for weather events of just the last few months.

John McLean was co-author with Chris de Freitas and Bob Carter of a paper that became the centre of controversy when submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research. Their experience with the censors of science can be read here.

No April Fools: Obama’s Green Energy Stimulus is Officially a Joke

Submitted by Paul Chesser on Mon, 04/01/2013 – 10:27

President Obama’s alternative energy “stimulus,” administered through his Department of Energy by previous Secretary Steven Chu, had already become a joke because of the failures and foibles of so many recipients of Recovery Act funds. But now – as though officially commemorating the absurdity of this historically bad U.S. government program – one of its bankrupt beneficiaries has changed its name from one of simplicity to one of mockery.

Electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems has changed its name to B456 Systems. Incorporated.

Reporting the development, headline writers across the nation rubbed their eyes, double-checked the wire information, and then – especially realizing how close they were to April Fool’s Day – had to add extra assurance to the breaking news.

For the Boston Herald, where A123 was headquartered near MIT, it was this:

“A123 Systems changes name to B456 (seriously)”

The Milwaukee Business Journal reported it this way:

“No joke: A123 Systems now B456 Systems”

And a Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Gara built up the suspense with:

“And The Award For History’s Least Creative Rebranding Goes To…”

According to the reports, A123 – now under ownership by Chinese-owned Wanxiang America – was required to change its name as a part of a bankruptcy agreement. The company released a statement Friday explaining that the name A123 will still exist, “operating successfully under Wanxiang’s ownership,” as a limited liability corporation. B456 represents the parts of the company “still in the bankruptcy process.” I guess they don’t understand the entire enterprise was a failure.

And in an additional element of stooge-ery, as Kai Petainen of Forbes noticed, a B456 is a fire extinguisher – as in dousing the flames from your lithium ion battery. Autoblog observes that Amerex model “happens to be good for ‘energized electrical equipment.’”

The double meaning fits, as A123’s (former) top customer is Fisker Automotive, which appears to be near bankruptcy itself. The manufacturer of the $102,000 Karma suffered two recalls – one in December 2011 and another in mid-2012 – because of A123 battery defects that could cause fires. Fisker did suffer fires in Texas and California last year, and Hurricane Sandy’s flooding ignited several of them in New Jersey – and while none were attributed to their batteries (Texas remains unsolved), an A123 battery did cause an explosion at a General Motors alternative energy research facility in Warren, Mich. last April.

Funny, isn’t it? Not “ha-ha” funny, but ridiculous funny – unbelievably stupid funny. Funny in an “I can’t believe our tax money is paying for these comically bad businesses and technologies” way. And it applies to President Obama’s abject failure to invigorate the economy by creating “green jobs” in the alternative energy and electric transportation sectors, which have been around for over a century and the free market still hasn’t made economical or viable. The examples were plentiful:

With a visit by the president, the administration had just boasted how many thousands of green jobs were created by Solyndra, and how environmentally friendly its technology was, thanks to the Energy Department’s $535 million loan guarantee. But months later, with plenty of forewarning to the White House, Solyndra went bankrupt, and left behind a big toxic mess when it shut down. What a rib-tickler!
Fellow stimulus loan recipient Abound Solar, not to be outdone, also went bankrupt and had accumulated a hazardous waste site of its own as it liquidated. But it was later discovered that the company sold defective or underperforming products, and even caught fire. Evidence showed Abound officials knew it, before they received taxpayer dollars. Yet as the Colorado company crashed, the Department of Energy still praised the company’s work as “innovative” and cost competitive – a gut buster!
Employees of battery maker LG Chem, recipient of $151 million from a DOE Recovery Act grant, were discovered on the clock playing games, reading magazines, watching movies or helping charities like Habitat for Humanity – that is, when they weren’t ‘off-duty’ on their cyclical furloughs. Why? They had no real work to do, and as of late October had “yet to ship out a single battery,” according to a local news report. Stop it – you’re killing me!!
And there are so many more jokes where those came from: The Tesla Model S that was panned by the New York Times after it had to be towed away; the Fisker Karma that broke down for Consumer Reports, which then called it the “worst luxury sedan;” A123 executives expecting their bonuses while going through the bankruptcy process; a Nissan Leaf trip that took six hours because of recharging needs, when it should have taken only three hours; Leaf batteries that can’t tolerate extremely hot climates; First Solar panels that couldn’t tolerate desert heat…etc….

Meanwhile the Obama administration repeatedly touted: how clean the energy was; how the future for the American economy was in “green jobs” and the alternative energy sector; how necessary it was to keep up with China in wind and solar (until it became a disaster for the Communists too); and what a great economic investment it was (tell that to the attendees at the “ECO:nomics—Creating Environmental Capital” conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal not too long ago, who are losing their shirts).

And to this day DOE refuses to update its Loan Program Office Web site with new information about any of its projects. Anyone who isn’t aware of the bankruptcies and other project failures that visits the LPO pages would still think Solyndra and Abound are still in business and still created their projected jobs, and that Fisker is still a smashing success, that a $5.9 billion loan guarantee to Ford Motor Company really did convert 33,000 employees to “green jobs,” etc.

There’s enough material to keep Jay Leno’s monologues stoked for a month. Unfortunately those are not tears of laughter streaming down taxpayers’ faces.

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center and publishes CarolinaPlottHound.com, an aggregator of North Carolina news.

Cold Cities Less Sustainable Than Warm Cities, Research Suggests

Mar. 26, 2013

Living in colder climates in the US is more energy demanding than living in warmer climates. This is according to Dr Michael Sivak at the University of Michigan, who has published new research today, 28 March, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters.

Dr Sivak has calculated that climate control in the coldest large metropolitan area in the country — Minneapolis — is about three-and-a-half times more energy demanding than in the warmest large metropolitan area — Miami.

Dr Sivak calculated this difference in energy demand using three parameters: the number of heating or cooling degree days in each area; the efficiencies of heating and cooling appliances; and the efficiencies of power-generating plants.

Not included in the analysis were the energy used to extract fuels from the ground, the losses during energy transmission, and energy costs.

“It has been taken for a fact that living in the warm regions of the US is less sustainable than living in the cold regions, based partly on the perceived energy needs for climate control; however, the present findings suggest a re-examination of the relative sustainability of living in warm versus cold climates.”

Heating degree days (HDDs) and cooling degree days (CDDs) are climatological measures that are designed to reflect the demand for energy needed to heat or cool a building. They are calculated by comparing the mean daily outdoor temperature with 18°C.

A day with a mean temperature of 10°C would have 8 HDDs and no CDDs, as the temperature is 8°C below 18°C. Analogously, a day with a mean temperature of 23°C would have 5 CDDs and no HDDs.

Based on a previous study, Dr Sivak showed that Minneapolis has 4376 heating degree days a year compared to 2423 cooling degree days in Miami.

In the study, Dr Sivak used a single measure for the efficiency of heating and cooling appliances, as most are currently rated using different measures so they cannot be directly

compared. His calculations showed that a typical air conditioner is about four times more energy efficient than a typical furnace.

“In simple terms, it takes less energy to cool a room down by one degree than it does to heat it up by one degree,” said Dr Sivak.

Grouping together climatology, the efficiency of heating and cooling appliances, and the efficiency of power-generating plants, Dr Sivak showed that Minneapolis was substantially more energy demanding than Miami.

“In the US, the energy consumption for air conditioning is of general concern but the required energy to heat is often taken for granted. Focus should also be turned to the opposite end of the scale — living in cold climates such as in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Rochester, Buffalo and Chicago is more energy demanding, and therefore less sustainable from this point of view, than living in warm climates such as in Miami, Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando and Las Vegas,” Dr Sivak concluded.

Wall Street Journal’s Crony Capitalist Conference Turns Sour

GlobalWarming.org: http://www.globalwarming.org/2013/03/27/wall-street-journals-crony-capitalist-conference-turns-sour/

Wall Street Journal’s Crony Capitalist Conference Turns Sour

by Myron Ebell on March 27, 2013

Times have changed since the Wall Street Journal held its first “ECO:nomics—Creating Environmental Capital” conference at the super-swanky Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. I was there in 2008 (but, alas, stayed at the Best Western in downtown Santa Barbara) when several hundred investors and corporate CEOs listened to leading crony capitalists, including Jeff Immelt of GE, James Rogers of Duke Energy, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical, and John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers (where Al Gore was also a partner), smugly explain how they were going to strike it rich off the backs of consumers and taxpayers with green energy subsidies and mandates, federal loan guarantees, and the higher energy prices that would make renewable energy competitive with coal, oil, and natural gas once cap-and-trade was enacted.

This year’s sixth annual conference, which I didn’t attend, was also held at the Bacara Resort, but the mood was apparently different. Yesterday, the Journal ran a six-page supplement that summarized the conference’s highlights. The lead article by John Bussey was headlined: “Green Investing: So Much Promise, So Little Return: At The Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference, the talk was about all the innovations taking place in renewable energy—and about all the investors who are losing interest.”

Bussey writes: “Given all the interest in protecting the environment from mankind’s rapid advance, you’d think this might be the best time ever to invest in renewable energy and the Next Big Green Thing. Guess again. Large parts of green-tech investment look like the torched and salted fields left behind by Roman conquerors: barren, lifeless—and bereft of a return on capital. Put another way: In some areas, if you aren’t already investor road kill, you’re likely the hedgehog in the headlights about to join your maker.”

On page two, an article on a talk by John Dears, chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (or Calpers), reveals that their “fund devoted to clean energy and technology which started in 2007 with $460 million has an annualized return of minus 9.7% to date.” Dears is quoted as telling the conference: “We have almost $900 million in investment expressly aimed at clean tech. We’re all familiar with the J-curve in private equity. Well, for Calpers, clean-tech investing has got an L-curve for “lose.” Our experience is that this has been a noble way to lose money.”

Yes, con artists gaming the system to raise energy prices, impoverish consumers, destroy jobs, and fleece taxpayers can still take comfort that theirs is “a noble way to lose money.” May it long remain so. The entire 2013 ECO:nomics program may be found here. Read it and gloat now—it may be the last one.