Planet Gore on National Review Online

Planet Gore on National Review Online http://planetgore.nationalreview.com Planet Gore is National Review Online’s “global warming” blog, on which a team of experts report and comment on the myriad scientific and economic issues surrounding the contentious global warming debate. This blog is one of the web’s top stops for informed news and views about climate change, alternative energy, environmental activism, and of course, Al Gore’s carbon footprint. en-us © National Review Online 2009. All Rights Reserved webmaster@nationalreview.com (NRO Webmaster) Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:00:11 -0500 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:00:11 -0500 NRO RSS Generator v1.0 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 5 http://www2.nationalreview.com/images/nro_rsslogo.jpg Planet Gore on National Review Online http://planetgore.nationalreview.com 144 80 National Review Online The Cult of the Finite -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDhmNjc4NGM2YmE5ZjlkOWZlOWQwMDBiMWZiOWE5ZTU= Over on <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/">spiked</a>, Planet Gore's favorite Marxist, Brendan O'Neill, makes the case against the Malthus cult; an excerpt below. <blockquote> The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction. The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future. The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else -- including society, progress and discovery -- stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable -- mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too. The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes -- what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination. And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met. We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance -- given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress -- we would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy who wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to the always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the population panickers. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDhmNjc4NGM2YmE5ZjlkOWZlOWQwMDBiMWZiOWE5ZTU= Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:00:14 -0400 Obama Chooses Gestures over Justice -- By: Henry Payne webmaster@nationalreview.com (Henry Payne) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWM2MzI1OGMzYjk0N2VjMDcwMWFkNjI3ZmE2YTg2MjU= Public policy is about choosing priorities in the face of limited resources. That is the lesson Bjørn Lomborg and his <a href="http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/CCC%20Home%20Page.aspx" target="_blank">Copenhagen Consensus</a> try to make plain -- a lesson rejected by the American Left, <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWZhZWNhM2IzMDBmZGU2MTBmMWMxM2I1MWZhNDg2Yzc=" target="_blank">which likes to contend</a> that focusing on one priority does not exclude others. But the Left’s own standard bearer, Barack Obama, has just proved the fallacy of that argument with his trip to China. By its own actions, the administration has conceded the need to choose between the twin goals of climate change and human rights. Obama chose the former, diminishing the United States’ role as a beacon of liberty. With the 192-nation Copenhagen conference on global warming looming, the White House had for months been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/17/world/AP-Climate.html" target="_blank">laying the groundwork</a> for a joint China/U.S. climate deal -- while laying off liberals’ other longtime priority, religious freedom in Tibet. Even as Obama received the Nobel Prize in October, he <a href="http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/dalai-lama-shunned-by-obama-gets-award-from-speaker-pelosi_100257003.html" target="_blank">shunned</a> his fellow Nobel winner, the Dalai Lama, when he visited Washington. The president also ignored him on his China visit. In so doing, Obama de-emphasized brutality against Tibetans in order to focus on the phantom fears of climate change. In return, Obama got . . . symbolism. "The symbolism,” reported the New York Times, “of the world's two largest polluters pledging no half measures to” . . . to do what? End torture in China’s infamous Tibetan “black jails?” Allow Chinese the right to freedom of association? Of religious freedom? No. The U.S. and China pledged to rally “the world around a solution to our climate challenge,'' said the president. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/world/asia/18prexy.html" target="_blank">Explained</a> the Times: “With a civilization as ancient as China’s, (the administration) argued, it would be counterproductive -- and reminiscent of President George W. Bush’s style -- for Mr. Obama to confront Beijing with loud chest-beating that might alienate the Chinese.” Heaven forbid a U.S. president raise his voice against injustice. So there you have it. President Bush thought torture was an imminent threat to those under the boot of Chinese communism. President Obama thinks it is rising sea levels. Obama’s has made his priorities clear: polar bears over people. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWM2MzI1OGMzYjk0N2VjMDcwMWFkNjI3ZmE2YTg2MjU= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:56 -0400 Re: Managing the Planet -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRkZWY2ODBkNzFkYTVjYWNjOTQyNTQ5ZGIyNjIzNGY= By the way, David Pryce-Jones has some thoughts about the EU and its transnationalist magisterium, <a href="http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGVkMjc0NmM2MDU4ZmU2Y2YxNzgzMzM2YjkxZDE2OTU=">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRkZWY2ODBkNzFkYTVjYWNjOTQyNTQ5ZGIyNjIzNGY= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:45:59 -0400 The End of the Bromance -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2M3ODk2Yzg2NGYwMDk2M2ExNjEzNjUyMzcxMzg3YWU= <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29747.html">Politico</a>: <blockquote> Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.” McCain has emerged as a vocal opponent of the climate bill -- a major reversal for the self-proclaimed maverick who once made defying his party on global warming a signature issue of his career. Now the Arizona Republican is more likely to repeat GOP talking points on cap and trade than to help usher the bill through the thorny politics of the Senate. McCain refers to the bill as “cap and tax,” calls the climate legislation that passed the House in June “a 1,400-page monstrosity” and dismisses a cap-and-trade proposal included in the White House budget as “a government slush fund.” </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2M3ODk2Yzg2NGYwMDk2M2ExNjEzNjUyMzcxMzg3YWU= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:54 -0400 Black-Hat Hack, White-Hat Impact -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmE2MzdiZGE4ZDYyNDYzN2Y2Y2FmMTBlODEwY2E2OTk= <blockquote></blockquote> Forgive my slackitude on providing details of the Hadley CRU hack that <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ1ZjZjM2EzNGM0YjliMDdiOTNmZmZhMmI3ZDhkZGY=">Chris referenced yesterday</a>. We've been busy around here staying on top of health-care legislation and <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjQxOTI1YmIzYzg4MmIyNjE4YTI4YmE0N2FiYmVmNzk=">trying to keep the lights on</a>. Thankfully, Planet Gore contributor James Delingpole serves up some nuggets and analysis on his <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/">Telegraph blog</a>, a long excerpt of which is below: <blockquote>When you read some of those files -- including 1079 emails and 72 documents -- you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hadley_hacked/">Andrew Bolt</a> puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science.” [...] Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because -- though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to <a href="http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html">Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room</a> -- he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as: Manipulation of evidence: <blockquote> I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. </blockquote> Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up: <blockquote> 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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate. </blockquote> Suppression of evidence: <blockquote> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment -- minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. </blockquote> Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists: <blockquote> Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted. </blockquote> Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP): <blockquote> ……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back-I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…. </blockquote> And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority. <blockquote> “This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that-take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?” “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !” </blockquote> Hadley CRU has <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100011716/how-the-global-warming-industry-is-based-on-one-massive-lie/">form in this regard</a>. In September -- I wrote the story up here as “How the global warming industry is based on a massive lie” -- Hadley CRU’s researchers were exposed as having “cherry-picked” data in order to support their untrue claim that global temperatures had risen higher at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the last millenium. Hadley CRU was also the organisation which -- in contravention of all acceptable behaviour in the international scientific community -- spent years withholding data from researchers it deemed unhelpful to its cause. This matters because Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude. Its HadCrut record is one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the IPCC. . . . The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view. Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight. But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true, it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmE2MzdiZGE4ZDYyNDYzN2Y2Y2FmMTBlODEwY2E2OTk= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:30:04 -0400 Managing the Planet -- By: Drew Thornley webmaster@nationalreview.com (Drew Thornley) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzBiZDEzYTNkYjMzZDUxODhkMGNlYTkxNzgyMzM1MDE= I always appreciate straight talk on the climate-change agenda -- which many of us know is really about achieving global governance, not lowering temperatures (much less saving the planet). But don't take my word for it. Here's the new EU president, Herman Van Rompuy, saying just that: <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="480" height="295" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> <param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hXWeOa-FuyM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="295" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hXWeOa-FuyM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed> </object> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzBiZDEzYTNkYjMzZDUxODhkMGNlYTkxNzgyMzM1MDE= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:09:26 -0400 The Purloined Letters -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDRmZmMzMTRhYTFjYTFiMTcwZTA3MzFjY2RmYTdmZDM= I'm shocked to see <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm">the BBC</a> covering the Hadley CRU hack story -- and they confirm that the leaked e-mails and documents are legitimate: <blockquote> A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDRmZmMzMTRhYTFjYTFiMTcwZTA3MzFjY2RmYTdmZDM= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:49 -0400 Al Gore Returns to 30 Rock -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDNiYzE0ZDRiMTZiNDJlNWEyZjI4OGI1ODFhM2M2NjY= I thought the episode was pretty blah, but <a href="http://www.nbc.com/30-rock/video/episodes/?vid=1177600#vid=1177600">here it is</a>. Gore makes his appearance at the end of Chapter 3 and is as unfunny as ever. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDNiYzE0ZDRiMTZiNDJlNWEyZjI4OGI1ODFhM2M2NjY= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:30:41 -0400 $10 Billion a Year - For Starters -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWFmODBiOTQ5M2JlOTcxNzgzMjEzMmNmZTYwN2E0NjQ= There won't be any deal in Copenhagen, but how about you start paying for it anyway? <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN19180690">Reuters</a>: <blockquote> UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. environmental chief called on rich nations on Thursday to pledge $10 billion a year for three years at next month's Copenhagen summit to help poor states begin to tackle the impact of climate change. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference that was a short-term figure and that in 10 or 20 years hundreds of billions of dollars would be needed annually to cope with global warming. The Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen had long been billed as the time when a new treaty to cap greenhouse gas emissions would be signed, but the United Nations has admitted that a legally binding deal will not come until later. The slippage has been partly blamed on delays in the United States in pushing new climate change legislation through Congress, a move now anticipated early next year. De Boer listed the $10-billion-a-year pledge as one of his three goals for the summit, along with the submission of emission targets for 2020 by rich countries and of planned actions by developing countries. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWFmODBiOTQ5M2JlOTcxNzgzMjEzMmNmZTYwN2E0NjQ= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:30:11 -0400 New Weapon to Fight Climate Change -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2NjMTllZDdjMWNmMDk3NDlhY2U2NDgyYTllOTMyZGQ= <a href="http://www.cphpost.dk/climate/91-climate/47548-minister-urges-family-planning-to-help-climate-change.html">Birth control</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2NjMTllZDdjMWNmMDk3NDlhY2U2NDgyYTllOTMyZGQ= Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:15:27 -0400 The Blue-Dress Moment May Have Arrived -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ1ZjZjM2EzNGM0YjliMDdiOTNmZmZhMmI3ZDhkZGY= I am not able to fully digest this at present, catching up with the boys from days away and then up at O-Dark-Thirty for a flight to California for a talk, but check out what <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/">Anthony Watts</a> among others have posted. Now, none of us can attest to the validity of what has been posted on a Russian server (nor can we even be sure of how it was obtained, though it purports to be non-classified data held by a purely public agency subject to freedom of information/transparency laws). But I'm told it's almost 61 megabytes of files, and after a few days of scrutiny appears (to the kind of people who would know) to be legitimate. And very revealing, both the data and what are represented to be comments and admissions by leading lights on Team Alarmist. If legit, this apparently devastating series of revelations will be very hard for the media to ignore. I didn't say impossible -- they're fully vested partners in the global warming industry, because catastrophism sells. But so does scandal, and this appears to be the makings of a very big one. Imagine this sort of news coming in the field of AIDS research. Then reflect that the taxpayer spends more on climate-related research than on the entire suite of AIDS programs, far beyond drug research. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ1ZjZjM2EzNGM0YjliMDdiOTNmZmZhMmI3ZDhkZGY= Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:00:21 -0400 What Consensus? Climate Scientists Can't Even Agree on the Past Decade -- By: Drew Thornley webmaster@nationalreview.com (Drew Thornley) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjVhM2I5NjBjMTk4YmM2ZGNiOWYwMmE0NTllNjliNGU= <div>Turns out that some climate scientists are finally <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html">admitting</a> that they don't have all the answers about climate. Many of us have being writing for a while about the unknowns of climate dynamics and the insufficiency of climate modeling, but apparently others are just now getting the memo. Spiegel Online reports:</div> <blockquote style="margin-right: 0px;" dir="ltr"> <div>Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.</div> <div> </div> "It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point." <div> </div> <div>But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations. "Warming has continued in the last few years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, Rahmstorf is more or less alone in his view. Hamburg Max Planck Institute scientist Jochem Marotzke, on the other hand, says: "I hardly know any colleagues who would deny that it hasn't gotten warmer in recent years."</div> <div> </div> <div>The controversy sends confusing and mixed messages to the lay public. Why is there such a vigorous debate over climate change, even though it isn't getting warmer at the moment? And how can it be that scientists cannot even arrive at a consensus on changes in temperatures, even though temperatures are constantly being measured?</div> </blockquote> These would be good questions -- if the climate debate had anything to do with climate. <div> </div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjVhM2I5NjBjMTk4YmM2ZGNiOWYwMmE0NTllNjliNGU= Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0400 Plan B? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjRmMTc0OTc1MGRlZDdkZjU3NWRkM2MyMTQ2ZGViYzE= New York Times: <blockquote> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/11/18/18greenwire-talk-of-plan-b----a-power-plant-only-climate-b-53083.html">Talk of Plan B -- a Power Plant-Only Climate Bill -- Emerges in Senate</a> What was once the central political battleground for addressing global warming in the United States may be making a comeback. While President Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill continue to focus on legislation covering greenhouse gas emissions across broad sections of the U.S. economy, a small bipartisan faction of Senate moderates is examining the idea of passing a bill that deals only with the heat-trapping emissions from power plants. "A power plant-only cap and trade could be doable on the Hill," Mark Helmke, a senior aide to Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), said today. Senate Democratic and Republican staffers are studying a package that combines a mandatory limit on power plant emissions with separate programs outside of the cap-and-trade program aimed at cutting greenhouse gases from other sectors of the economy. "It'd be done with efficiency standards for buildings and stronger CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards for transport," Helmke said. For now, Helmke said, talks are in the early stages and do not involve drafting a bill. "We're doing a lot of research," he said. Legislation focusing on power plant emissions alone is not new. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush both floated the cap-and-trade idea as part of more sweeping plans that covered traditional air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury. But the power plant approach -- aimed at about a third of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions -- largely ended when Bush reversed his 2000 campaign pledge to tackle climate change through mandatory limits. Senate Democrats narrowly passed a "four pollutant" power plant bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee in 2002 but that legislation never made it to the floor (<a href="http://www.eenews.net/public/EEDaily/2002/06/28/1">E&E Daily</a>, June 8, 2002). After that, the concept quickly took a back seat as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) pressed for floor votes on the broader, economywide plan that went after major energy, transportation and manufacturing companies -- accounting for more than two-thirds of U.S. emissions. Obama and McCain campaigned last year in support of cap-and-trade legislation dealing with most segments of the U.S. economy. And the House-passed climate legislation, as well as the Senate bill approved earlier this month by the Environment and Public Works Committee, followed with language that deals with about 7,500 industrial facilities. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is taking the lead with Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in writing the broader climate legislation, said in an interview today that he is not planning to write a bill that goes after only power plants. That, he said, would not be a political winner, anyway. "The problem is you lose countless numbers of entities," Kerry said. "It becomes far more expensive, and they don't get the help you get the other way. You get no transitional cost help that way, so it becomes more expensive. And in fact, you lose three-quarters of the support for the legislation." Kerry added, "We're looking at all kinds of options, but the early take on that is that it's very problematical." </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjRmMTc0OTc1MGRlZDdkZjU3NWRkM2MyMTQ2ZGViYzE= Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:37 -0400 A Fuel's Errand -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWM0NTdiNDZjN2NkNzBkN2JkOTk0N2Y3OTJjY2E1OTg= Robert Zubrin is still plugging away at the flex-fuel mandate, though it seems an uphill climb in our present political moment -- with the Obama administration expecting Detroit to make cars that run on a blend of pixie dust and good intentions. <blockquote> <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/40755-1.html">It’s Time to Open the Fuel Market to Methanol</a> </blockquote> An excerpt: <blockquote> Here’s a fact that is worthy of lawmakers’ attention: Methanol is currently selling internationally, without any subsidy, for $1 per gallon. Why is this important? Because methanol is a clean-burning fuel that can be made anywhere, from anything that either is or was once a plant, including natural gas, coal, recycled urban trash, crop residues, forestry residues, fallen leaves, seaweed, algae, swamp weeds or any other kind of biomass without exception. In other words, the potential global supply of methanol is unlimited, and with such varied sources of supply, it is immune to cutoff by any cartel. And it can be used, along with gasoline and/or ethanol, in any car with flex-fuel capability -- a feature that can be added by manufacturers at a cost of $100 per vehicle. To be sure, a gallon of methanol contains only about half the energy of a gallon of gasoline, so methanol at $1 per gallon is equivalent in miles per dollar to gasoline at $2 per gallon, but that is still a very attractive price. If a law were passed that all new cars sold in the USA had to be methanol-compatible flex-fuel vehicles, then this mark -- $2 per gallon of gasoline equivalent -- would represent a permanent competitive constraint on future gasoline prices. In fact it would do much more than protect Americans from a return of $4-per-gallon gasoline, because if such flex-fuel capabilities were made the standard required for new vehicle sales in the U.S., it would become the global standard, as foreign automakers would be impelled to conform to it to stay in the U.S. market. Thus, in a very short amount of time, all cars being marketed in any serious way internationally would be flex-fuel, and gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against both methanol and ethanol made from any number of possible sources, all over the world. This would put an enduring competitive constraint on the price of oil internationally at roughly the $60-per-barrel level, ending forever the ability of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to loot the world via artificially rigged up oil prices. </blockquote> Archived posts on the Planet Gore's flex-fuel debate <a href="http://search.nationalreview.com/?q=flex&s=Mjg%3D&a=&sdate=&edate=&sort=0">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWM0NTdiNDZjN2NkNzBkN2JkOTk0N2Y3OTJjY2E1OTg= Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:00:59 -0400 Tom Friedman's Mansion Echoes with Cries of 'Where are My Green Technologies?' -- By: Stephen Spruiell webmaster@nationalreview.com (Stephen Spruiell) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjgxYzQwMWY5OTZlMjZmZTFhZmFkYTBhYzgxNTA4YjA= <div lang="EN-US"> <div class="x_Section1">Tom Friedman used to be really smart, so what explains <a href="https://mail.nationalreview.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=a24999ce58ac4f8a83b9943d5dd8b776&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2009%2f11%2f18%2fopinion%2f18friedman.html%3fpartner%3drss%26emc%3drss" target="_blank"> passages like this</a>? Laziness? <blockquote> “What happens when developing nations with soaring vehicle populations get tens of millions of petroleum-powered cars at the same time as the global economy recovers and there’s no large global oil supply overhang?” asks Felix Kramer, the electric car expert who advocates electrifying the U.S. auto fleet and increasingly powering it with renewable energy sources. What happens, of course, is that the price of oil goes through the roof -- unless we develop alternatives. The petro-dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia hope we don’t. They would only get richer. So either the opponents of a serious energy/climate bill with a price on carbon don’t care about our being addicted to oil and dependent on petro-dictators forever or they really believe that we will not be adding 2.5 billion more people who want to live like us, so the price of oil won’t go up very far and, therefore, we shouldn’t raise taxes to stimulate clean, renewable alternatives and energy efficiency. </blockquote> So we should raise the price of carbon to avert a disastrous increase in the price of carbon? I’ve never understood this argument. It seems to be premised on the notion that a tax on fossil fuels would spur clean-energy innovation while an increase in the price of oil based on future supply constraints would not. Is it just about getting a head start? Misery today or misery tomorrow? The market can be remarkably adept at responding to changes in the supply of commodities (<a href="https://mail.nationalreview.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=a24999ce58ac4f8a83b9943d5dd8b776&URL=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fSimon-Ehrlich_wager" target="_blank">witness the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager)</a> -- if government stays out of the way. I’ll take misery tomorrow, with a chance of market mitigation. </div> </div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjgxYzQwMWY5OTZlMjZmZTFhZmFkYTBhYzgxNTA4YjA= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:45:55 -0400 One Last Thought on Al Gore's Journey to the Center of the Earth -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDZlZWYwMDdjZjJkMmM5OTRjOTZkMTFiMmI1MTNkNmI= If you haven't <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns_4pzfOSTc">watched the video yet</a>, please do so and pay special attention to Gore marvel at the advancements in drill bit technology "that don't melt" in the earth's super-heated crust. Conan then says we're "probably drilling deeper than we've ever drilled before." Um, no. Gore might be able to say he misspoke when he said the earth's core was "several million degrees," but he also talked about drilling down two kilometers as if it were a breakthrough, when less-than-state-of-the-art drills have reach far greater depths. I'm not sure how he gets a pass from anyone in the scientific community on this one. To put into perspective how far off Gore is here, the deepest hole ever drilled is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole">Kola Superdeep Borehole</a>, which reached a depth of 12,261 meters -- that's more than 12 kilometers, Al. That breakthrough depth was reached back in 1989 -- by the Soviets. And since Al is interested in how hot such a hole might be, the temperature at that depth was reported at 356°F, slightly cooler than Gore's stellar estimation. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDZlZWYwMDdjZjJkMmM5OTRjOTZkMTFiMmI1MTNkNmI= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:30:03 -0400 Earthquakes Coming to Oregon? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzAwMzM2NGMxZmNjZmQ2Y2VlODExNTBhNGE4YzE3Yzg= <a href="http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/altarock-geothermal-gets-new-boost/">From the New York Times "Green, Inc". blog</a>: <blockquote> As part of a newly announced <a href="http://www.energy.gov/news2009/documents2009/338M_Geothermal_Project_Descriptions.pdf">$338 million boost for 123 geothermal energy projects nationwide</a>, the Department of Energy will sink $25 million into what is called an “enhanced” or “engineered” geothermal demonstration project in Oregon being developed in part by <a href="http://www.altarockenergy.com/about.html">AltaRock Energy</a>, which recently halted work on a similar venture in California due to drilling problems. The grant -- by far the largest on the list -- is for the development of the <a href="http://www.newberrygeothermal.com/project.htm">Newberry Project</a>, which is near an Oregon volcano. A joint venture between AltaRock and Connecticut-based <a href="http://www.davenportpower.com/">Davenport Power</a>, Newberry will begin as a 30-megawatt test facility that can develop into a 120 megawatt plant within the next two years. AltaRock had previously received a $36 million Energy Department grant, as well as venture capital from Google and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. An enhanced geothermal system seeks to tap the essentially bottomless storehouse of energy in the earth’s core. It involves drilling to depths of well over 10,000 feet and then injecting cold water to create networks of small fractures in the hot rock. The concept is to pump water down into these fissures, capture the heat and bring it back to the surface to drive a turbine. Unlike conventional geothermal, which relies on subterranean pockets of hot water, proponents of enhanced geothermal systems say the technology is essentially location-neutral, meaning these wells could be sunk almost anywhere in the world. In June, The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html?_r=1">Times reported</a> that AltaRock, in its regulatory filings, had failed to disclose that a previous experiment in Switzerland had triggered a small earthquake. In a <a href="http://www.altarockenergy.com/nyt.html">detailed response</a> to the article, the company defended its Geysers project, in Northern California, and stressed that it had sought to avoid drilling near fault lines. Still, AltaRock <a href="http://www.altarockenergy.com/AltaRock_EGS_Demonstration_Project_Status_101909.pdf">suspended work on Geysers in September</a>, citing drilling difficulties and a call for further review by California regulators. </blockquote> Don't worry Oregon. I hear Al Gore has been advising the company on the more scientific aspects of the program. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzAwMzM2NGMxZmNjZmQ2Y2VlODExNTBhNGE4YzE3Yzg= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:15:16 -0400 Heresy and the Church of Anthro-Climatism -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDY4MGNkMDNjYzFkYTUwYWMyYWUyZmY5NjgwOTc2YTU= Excerpted below is "Galileo Silenced Again -- The American Geophysical Union is sending science back four hundred years," by AGU members David Legates and Willie Soon: <blockquote> Four centuries ago, “heretics” who disagreed with Church orthodoxy were burned at the stake. Many were the dissenting views that could send offenders to a fiery end. In 1633, the astronomer Galileo Galilei came within a singed whisker of the same fate, for arguing that the sun (and not the Earth) was at the center of the solar system. He was saved only because he was already famous, had good friends in high government places, and agreed to recant his “heresy” (at least publicly) and submit to living under house arrest until the end of his days. We’ve come a long way since then. The Church eventually adopted Galileo’s view of science as its own: Nature is the criterion of the truth about nature. Unfortunately lessons learned 400 years ago have yet to be adopted where the Church of Anthro-Climatism is involved. Burning dissenters at the stake may no longer be an option -- perhaps because it would send prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, many other ingenious punishments are often meted out, to ensure that dissent is at least kept within “acceptable” limits. Just recently, as scientists who specialize in environmental science, climatology, and solar variability, we welcomed the acceptance of our scientific session, Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO2. The session was to be hosted at the upcoming Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Our session was to focus on “knowledge that spans an extremely diverse range of expertise” and provides “an integrated assessment of the vast array of disciplines that affect and, in turn, are affected by the Earth’s climate.” Our ultimate goal was to stimulate discussion at this professional meeting, prior to the upcoming UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report. We developed this session to honor the great tradition of science and scientific inquiry, as exemplified by Galileo when, 400 years ago this year, he first pointed his telescope at the Earth’s moon and at the moons of Jupiter, analyzed his findings, and subsequently challenged the orthodoxy of a geocentric universe. Our proposed session was accepted by the AGU. In response to its acceptance, we were joined by a highly distinguished list of scientists -- which included members of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, France and China, as well as recipients of the AGU’s William Bowie, Charles Whitten and James MacElwane medals. Our participants faithfully submitted abstracts for the session. But by late September, several puzzling events left us wondering whether the AGU truly serves science and environmental scientists -- or simply reflects, protects and advances the political agendas of those who espouse belief in manmade CO2-induced catastrophic global warming. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.heartland.org/full/26365/Galileo_Silenced_Again_.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDY4MGNkMDNjYzFkYTUwYWMyYWUyZmY5NjgwOTc2YTU= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:30:35 -0400 On Gore's Million-Degree Earth -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGE1YjZlOWE3NGM2N2YxNjI2YTNlZmU5NWEzZGU2Mjc= Has a single pro-climate-change website or outlet said or written anything about Gore's claim that the temperature at the center of the earth is "millions of degrees"? Imagine if George W. Bush, John McCain, or the hated politician of the moment, Sarah Palin, had said such a thing -- spouting off some outrageous number in the course of arguing for their preferred energy policies. But Al Gore? Silence. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGE1YjZlOWE3NGM2N2YxNjI2YTNlZmU5NWEzZGU2Mjc= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:15:29 -0400 Re: Red Hot Redemption -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JiOWU0ZjNjZWVmYTg2NTdiM2UxODA4NTZhMzczZDY= A reader sends in an alternative to Gore's Bible passage: <blockquote> A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left. </blockquote> <blockquote> -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JiOWU0ZjNjZWVmYTg2NTdiM2UxODA4NTZhMzczZDY= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:10:47 -0400 Finally, Some Good News on Jobs -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Njg4M2VlOWEwNDNmYjYwZDkyZGY4OGFkMWNjOGJkN2Q= Relatively speaking: <h3 class="rdheadline"><a href="http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/412396_JOELNOV18.html">Gore: U.S. has lost its lead in solar, wind technology</a></h3> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Njg4M2VlOWEwNDNmYjYwZDkyZGY4OGFkMWNjOGJkN2Q= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:00:23 -0400 A Clear Complexion -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzhkODhiMzZhNzg1Y2QwNjA1NjIxNzFkMTA5NWY3MDA= The Sun today: some activity, but no spots. <img src="http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2009/11/18/62cab539c90c996773c6a3323d7ec9cf.jpg" alt="" width="512" height="512" /> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzhkODhiMzZhNzg1Y2QwNjA1NjIxNzFkMTA5NWY3MDA= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:30:31 -0400 Red Hot Redemption -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDg0OThkZDkzYTIzYThlODNmMzFjMzg5NGJmNjVjZGY= <a href="http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/11/about-choice.html">Tom Nelson</a> has the opening of Al Gore's new book, Our Choice: <blockquote> I'm offering you the choice of life or death. You can choose either blessings or curses. --Deuteronomy Chapter 30, Verse 19 </blockquote> And check out the ridiculous <a href="http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-on-al-gore-climate-fraud-promotion.html">cover</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDg0OThkZDkzYTIzYThlODNmMzFjMzg5NGJmNjVjZGY= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:00:36 -0400 Good Enough for Government Work, I Guess -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDVjZDIwMjNjYmZmMzUyMjY2OTEyOTY4NDYwNzNkNzg= Over in the Corner, John Derbyshire caught a hilarious exchange between Al Gore and Conan O'Brien where Gore claims the center of the earth is "several million degrees." <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDcxYThlNzBkOTcyM2EzZmM2MDEyNjFjOGQ3ZmE5M2M=">Derb's analysis</a>: <blockquote> [Me] The <a href="http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/geothermal-gradient" target="_blank">geothermal gradient</a> is usually quoted as 25-50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in <a href="http://www.johnderbyshire.com/FamilyAlbum/Huntington2007/2009-08-30.jpg" target="_blank">the crater of Kilauea</a>). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that's a mile and a quarter if you're not as science-y as Al) you'll have an average gain of 30-60 degrees — exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth's core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius, though <a href="http://www.sawfnews.com/health/35272.aspx" target="_blank">these guys</a> claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9,000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees. If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was "several million degrees," we'd be a star. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDVjZDIwMjNjYmZmMzUyMjY2OTEyOTY4NDYwNzNkNzg= Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:00:50 -0400 Obama's Failure, Europe's Irresistible Candor -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRmZDUyMDI0MzI1MTE2ZWI4Y2VkMDZkMzg2YmY3NDg= The more of these sniveling (and, amusingly, poorly informed) pieces like <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,661678,00.html">this Der Spiegel</a> item, the better, I say. And I hope Drudge links to every one. Europe has every reason to believe in Obama’s deep and -- they hope -- overwhelming desire to do whatever it takes to make Europeans love him, and the motive behind this cold petulance is obvious. I believe the psychologists call it "withholding affection." Though I wish they’d not be so brazen about it, as even he might realize what’s going on. But the condescending anger with which our righteous superiors let America know just where they think we belong in the world -- and how they just can't believe we won't behave -- tells readers even more than we here can hope to do. So keep it coming, Europe, straight through the COP. (Did you catch among the side-linked stories by Euro counterparts that the Copenhagen <a href="http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article836008.ece">jails are too full</a> so that they don’t know what to do with all the rioters next month to whom we’re supposed to listen? And that the carbon-offset regime on which the entire Kyoto enterprise and U.S. cap-and-trade are premised is <a href="http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2416330.ece/Opinion_Carbon_credits_are_a_big_swindle">a big swindle</a>?) Keep it up through the spring, right up to that turn in the road where Sen. John Kerry has kicked the cap-and-trade can -- now that Democratic pols are terrified about losing elections that are still decided by those wretchedly self-interested and commonsense American voters. Somehow this lack of political will on Capitol Hill is all Obama’s fault. OK. Just like it was Bush’s. Keep it coming. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRmZDUyMDI0MzI1MTE2ZWI4Y2VkMDZkMzg2YmY3NDg= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:00:01 -0400 Make It a Double -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzNiN2Q4ZDIwMjgzMDc4OGFhZTQ0MTlmNTliMmRlNDE= I've recycled the photos from my May 2008 "<a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2RkOTc5ZmRmYmU4NWFlMmQ1MGQ2MjE5MTY1YzNjNTM=">On the Rocks</a>" post, but the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/cruise-ship-trapped-in-ice-for-four-days-20091117-ij2h.html">story</a> is new. <img src="http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/05/28/kapitankhlebnikov.jpg" alt="" width="333" height="220" /> Yes, the Kapitan Khlebnikov eco-tour icebreaker is once again stuck in polar ice -- excuse me "rapidly disappearing polar ice." This year, it happened off Antarctica. But not to worry: I think we can safely assume the ship's crew still includes a bartender: <blockquote> Many of the passengers are Britons who paid more than STG10,000 ($A17,901.9) for a tour whose highlight was seeing emperor penguins on Snow Hill island, according to Exodus, a British tour operator. Around 50 mostly British passengers booked their tours through Exodus and have been well cared-for while the ship has been stuck, Rob Dixon, a spokesman for Exodus, told AFP by telephone from London. "There's a lot of entertainment on board," Dixon said. He said the weather was improving and predicted the ship would reach Ushaia by the end of this week, two or three days behind schedule. "They've certainly seen the penguins they came to see," Dixon added, noting that passengers had been able to leave the ship by helicopter. </blockquote> A few more helicopter rides and maybe they can warm up things well enough to make way. <img src="http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/05/30/kapkleb2.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="294" /> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzNiN2Q4ZDIwMjgzMDc4OGFhZTQ0MTlmNTliMmRlNDE= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:30:26 -0400 Big Auto: 'This Is about Saving the Planet' -- By: Henry Payne webmaster@nationalreview.com (Henry Payne) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc4NmIxY2FmNzFmY2ViNTc3YmVhZWI2NDIzYjkyZDM= The Left likes having Big Industry straw men to bash whenever their socialist plans run aground, but the fact is, Big Industry is embracing the U.S.’s leftward lurch. Better to secure your place at the Rentseekers Roundtable, to lock out new competition and guarantee a never-ending stream of government welfare. Take Nissan-Renault, that international Big Auto giant. In introducing the company’s electric plug-in for the U.S. market -- called the Leaf -- to the automotive press for testing this week (the 22-city <a href="http://www.autoweek.com/article/20091114/CARNEWS/911139992">Nissan Leaf Zero-Emission Tour</a>), CEO Carlos Ghosn sounded like the Goracle’s ventriloquist dummy. “This has to happen,” said Ghosn, contending that gas-powered vehicles are dead since oil will never again drop below $70 a barrel. “When you look at what’s happening in the world, when you extrapolate that, it leads to absurd results. This is not about the electric car, this is about saving the planet.” No, it’s about Nissan’s bottom line. “What’s happening in the world” is that governments from Washington to Paris to Tokyo are mandating high-mileage vehicles and extending generous subsidies to help manufacturers build cars consumers may or may not want. Ghosn has placed his bet on <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDQ2MjFhMzNiYzY4NDc5MTI2ZTdiM2FjYmJmNjExZTI=">Better Place</a>, a massively government-subsidized plan to build city infrastructures to accommodate electric vehicles produced by Nissan-Renault like the Leaf. The French government, 15 percent owner of Renault, has already <a href="http://earth2tech.com/2008/10/09/renault-to-electrify-french-cars-by-2011/">ponied up</a> half-a-billion for Nissan-Renault’s electric car development, the governments of Israel and Denmark are partners with Better Place, and Washington is subsidizing each plug-in purchase with a $7,500 tax gift. The Better Place model however, faces substantial <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzhiZDU2NzNhMjg3YzZlMzU0N2Y0N2ExNGRiMWE2MmY=">market barriers</a>. Which is why the players need taxpayer skin. Which is why when it comes to the auto industry these days, there’s little difference whether the spokesman is from Big Auto or Big Government. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc4NmIxY2FmNzFmY2ViNTc3YmVhZWI2NDIzYjkyZDM= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:45:20 -0400 Tweet of the Day -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWE0YTRjY2JlMGU4NjMwYWZmZjU5YzZkYjJjYTQ0Yzk= <a href="http://twitter.com/JimPethokoukis/status/5799148339">Jim Pethokoukis</a>: <blockquote> BTW, the next source I talk with who thinks cap-and-trade has a chance in 2010 will be the first who tells me that. . . . </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWE0YTRjY2JlMGU4NjMwYWZmZjU5YzZkYjJjYTQ0Yzk= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:15:18 -0400 A Historic Non-agreement -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmQzMTMyYWQ1OTY3YjI3NDMzZDJjN2U5YjZiMjMzODg= From the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574540002267533772.html">Journal</a> editorial page: <blockquote> "Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all," President-elect Obama said of global warming last November. "Delay is no longer an option." It turns out that delay really is an option -- the only one that has world-wide support. Over the weekend Mr. Obama bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance will come of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. For the last year the President has been promising a binding international carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol, but instead negotiators from 192 countries now hope to reach a preliminary agreement that they'll sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010. No doubt. The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen's pre-emptive collapse on the Senate's failure to ram through a cap-and-trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that "the world" won't make commitments until the U.S. does. But there will always be one excuse or another, given that developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West's climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don't actually have to be met. <a name="U10270880714IMF"></a> President George W. Bush, for all the obloquy heaped on him for walking away from Kyoto, tried to shift the climate-change debate toward policies that were realistic and achievable, in particular by insisting that benefits had to justify any brakes on economic growth. This strategy resulted in far too much taxpayer waste, including the green-pork subsidies that Mr. Obama loves and has ramped up. Yet it also prevented Mr. Bush from making grandiose if futile promises with no relationship to political reality. Of course, the pointlessness of Copenhagen will now become part of Mr. Obama's argument that the Senate must inflict cap and tax on the U.S., as well as a justification for the EPA's nondemocratic carbon crackdown via clean-air regulation. If he and we are lucky, however, the Senate will fail to act too, the EPA will get tied up in court, and the economy will recover faster without the looming burden of higher energy taxes. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmQzMTMyYWQ1OTY3YjI3NDMzZDJjN2U5YjZiMjMzODg= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:30:29 -0400 Governor Palin Parnell Hates Polar Bears -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTk5ZTg1NzY3ZmIwY2M3YzI4ZjAzZWUyNjg2ZjgyMzA= <a href="http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/19243">News from the North</a>: <blockquote> Alaska governor Sean Parnell said he intends to pursue the state's lawsuit against the federal government concerning the listing of the polar bear under the Endagered Species Act (ESA). The lawsuit was initiated under former governor Sarah Palin, before she resigned in July. Parnell said the ESA is being used as a "land use planning tool" and threatens the continued development of Alaska's natural resources. He said the state has a strong record of developing these resources and protecting its wildlife--a claim disputed by environmental groups who pushed for the ESA listing. The listing was granted in part, as a result of research that estimates two-thirds of hte world's polar bear population will be gone by 2050--and all bears in North America--due to melting sea ice in the Arctic. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTk5ZTg1NzY3ZmIwY2M3YzI4ZjAzZWUyNjg2ZjgyMzA= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:00:38 -0400 Blame Obama for Copenhagen's Failure -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTY3MjgzZmQ4OTU2YzE5OTRjMDVhZDhkNGFiMzg0NzM= Der Spiegel: <blockquote> US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama. The folder labeled "climate change" that George W. Bush left behind for his successor on the desk of the Oval Office in January likely wasn't a thick one. Although Bush once said that America is overly-dependent on oil, he never got beyond that insight. He was too busy waging war on Iraq and searching for a legal basis for extraordinary renditions to pay much attention to the real threat facing humanity. "Forget the climate" seems to have been Bush's unofficial motto. <script type="text/javascript"></script> <div class="spMInline"> <script type="text/javascript"></script> </div> But few people expected that the Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor's <a title="climate change" href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,k-6975,00.html" target="_self">climate change</a> plan. When he took office at the beginning of 2009, it was clear that the success of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December depended almost entirely on the US -- that America needed to take a clear leadership role on a problem that could shake civilization to its very core. Only if the US manages to reduce its excessive energy consumption, commit itself to mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets and help finance the move away from oil for poorer countries, is there still a chance that countries like China and India will do the same and that a dangerous warming of the Earth can be stopped. On the weekend, <a title="Obama announced" href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,661632,00.html">Obama announced</a> that there would be no agreement on binding rules in Copenhagen. It was the admission of a massive failing -- and the prelude to a truly dramatic phase of international climate policy. Obama Lied to the Europeans Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,661678,00.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTY3MjgzZmQ4OTU2YzE5OTRjMDVhZDhkNGFiMzg0NzM= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:30:14 -0400 Climate Catastrophe Canceled -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWMxMmJmNjUyODA4MjAzNWM3ZDdmMjdjN2U4MDkzZmI= <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/andrewbolt/index.php/couriermail/comments/how_the_warming_science_was_tricked_up/">Andrew Bolt has a good post</a> on the new Finnish documentary, Climate Catastrophe Canceled. Video with subtitles <a title="here" href="http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2">here</a>. Transcript<a title=" here." href="http://ohjelmat.yle.fi/mot/taman_viikon_mot/transcript_english"> here.</a> Thanks to reader G-123. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWMxMmJmNjUyODA4MjAzNWM3ZDdmMjdjN2U4MDkzZmI= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:24 -0400 Going Viral -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODNlYTM0YTBkZDRlMGFjZWZkNmZmNjRmZDU5YWNkN2I= The video of Lord Moncton and the problems with the Copenhagen treaty, which <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWZhNGQ2ZGRmYjAyYjJjZWUyOGVmYWM4NmZiMjc0Yjc=">we posted</a> back in October, has had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40">3.5 million YouTube hits</a> (more than 2 million for this version alone, among the many copies available). <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODNlYTM0YTBkZDRlMGFjZWZkNmZmNjRmZDU5YWNkN2I= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:30:02 -0400 The Latest from Lomborg -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWMyZGRiZjUzZDU3ZjJkYzVjM2QxMDE4M2U4NmJiNjU= In case you missed it, Bjørn Lomborg from yesterday's WSJ: <blockquote> Ethiopia, Malnutrition and Climate Change -- Focusing on global warming at the expense of food aid is immoral. Global warming has captured the attention of politicians around the world. The following article is part of a series leading up to the December United Nations conference in Copenhagen on how ordinary people in different countries view the issue: Konget Mekonen and his wife Mulegata Tesfaye laugh when they are asked what would improve their standard of living. "We need everything," Mr. Mekonen says. "Mainly, we need a hospital and more money. We also need food. We are aware that our children do not eat enough." The couple lives in Akakey, an industrial area on the edge of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and have four children of their own. Two weeks before a Copenhagen Consensus Center researcher interviewed them in June, they took in their six-year-old orphaned nephew, Garsum. They found him lying on the dirt floor of his grandmother's house in a rural village. He was unable to stand. "He was living like a dog," his uncle said. The small boy does not speak. He coughs constantly and suffers from spells of vomiting and diarrhea. His adoptive parents took him to a basic health center because they could not afford a hospital. There they learned he is HIV positive and suffering from malnutrition. They can only afford a treatment for his cough. "We do not have money, but we know he is very sick," Mr. Mekonen said. Garsum is too ill to attend school. Mr. Mekonen and Mrs. Tesfaye earn around $70 a month working at a state-owned factory. Each day when they go to work and their own children leave for school, they lock their nephew into their tiny three-room house, alone, so that he won't wander into the streets. Poor families in Ethiopia struggle to survive, and global warming will make it tougher for them. In some of the poorest areas on earth, global warming is expected to increase hunger in the future. Mr. Mekonen has heard talk of global warming but, he said, "it does not affect our lives." </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574537391296901758.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWMyZGRiZjUzZDU3ZjJkYzVjM2QxMDE4M2U4NmJiNjU= Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:00:33 -0400 Tom Graff, R.I.P. -- By: Steve Hayward webmaster@nationalreview.com (Steve Hayward) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTJjOTNkYmQyYzFhZDE3YTdmNTYxN2I2M2M3MTUxNzM= I don't normally get to the obits page of the Washington Post, so it was only by chance that I happened to catch<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502887.html"> the obituary today for Tom Graff</a>, who died at 65 from thyroid cancer a few days ago. Graff was the head of Environmental Defense in Oakland, and as such you wouldn't think he'd be someone to get a shoutout on Planet Gore, but Tom was exactly the kind of market-oriented environmentalist with whom it was easy to break bread. I used to know him when I worked out in the Bay Area, and he would always delight in attacking Gov. Pete Wilson from the right on water policy, remarking to me one time (circa 1990) that Wilson's water plans "were more like something Gorbachev would do" than a genuine market reform. The Post obit suggests some of this, but doesn't capture how wholly market-friendly Graff was. He seemed to attract similar-minded folks the the ED office in Oakland, including economists who endorsed road pricing rather than mass-transit boondoggles as the cure for traffic congestion. Graff and his crew were probably outliers even in the ED community (Graff admitted one time he didn't always see eye-to-eye with HQ in New York). If there were more "mainstream" environmentalists like Graff, a rapprochement between Right and Green would be easier to imagine. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTJjOTNkYmQyYzFhZDE3YTdmNTYxN2I2M2M3MTUxNzM= Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:30 -0400 We Don't Need No Stinking Sacrifice -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjMwZDFlN2RmZTM5N2ZlYmE5MTU0ZTk0MjhjNzAyYjk= <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502210.html">James E. McWilliams</a>, an associate professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos and author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, writes in today's Washington Post on what's missing from the environmental movement today: <blockquote> Agribusiness has been vilified of late by muckraking journalists, activist filmmakers and sustainable-food advocates. We know that something has to be done to save our food from corporate interests. But I wonder -- are we ready to do what must be done? Sure, we've been inundated with ideas: eat local, vote with your fork, buy organic, support fair trade, etc. But these proposals all lack something that every successful environmental movement has always placed at its core: genuine sacrifice. Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change. </blockquote> Perhaps this a growth industry for Al Gore: agribusiness offsets? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjMwZDFlN2RmZTM5N2ZlYmE5MTU0ZTk0MjhjNzAyYjk= Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0400 Drill, Baby, Drill! -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkzYzQ3ZDZmNTBkZGYwZTIyODZjYTMxNTViZDBiZTc= Reader C.H. sends <a href="http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/3909#more-3909">this</a> along: <blockquote> WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago. The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition. Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch. Workers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds. </blockquote> I guess waiting for global warming to unearth the whiskey is not an option. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkzYzQ3ZDZmNTBkZGYwZTIyODZjYTMxNTViZDBiZTc= Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:16 -0400 Obama Makes 2010 the Kyoto Election -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA4NjhiMDY4NDk0ZDE3ZTNkNGM1ODgxMWM1OTlkYWM= <div> Greg noted <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDg3MTliY2U3YjVjNDAwMDQ1M2YxMzg3NGE3MmM1MDQ=">earlier</a> the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/asia/15prexy.html?_r=1">report</a> from the climate confab in Singapore. Read down the article and note the several claims by participants offering the greatest exhibits imaginable of the running absurdity -- now in its 18th year! -- that is this movable feast of conferences in Rio, Barcelona, Bangkok, Bali, Buenos Aires, Bonn, and next month Copenhagen: We had to declare it a failure in advance in order to ensure its success. Mmm. Yes. But here's the far larger point: This also makes the Kyoto II, the proposed 20-year extension of a five-year plan that was the Kyoto treaty, an inescapable issue for the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections. The outcome of these elections will surely dictate the outcome of this scheme -- which, as European diplomats have long admitted, is targeted at the U.S. Kyoto II would exempt the overwhelming majority of the world's nations, including those bit players like China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia -- where greenhouse gas emissions actually are growing, rapidly (which would be odd, if emissions really were the point; clearly, they are not). If the Nov. 2, 2010, elections go better than Team Soros/Obama fear, that will embolden them in the talks less than one week later (November 8-19). A wipeout ensures the right result. Too busy saving my presidency to spend whatever capital remains to push the whole global-governance routine just now. This means every candidate for every federal office must be pressed to state whether this underlying issue of prophesied yet oddly nonexistent catastrophic man-made global warming, on which they bob and weave if they're not shrieking to the heavens about the horrors, is sufficient grounds for the sort of binding international framework to which we are supposed to agree only days later. Those who still won't answer the question need to go to the back of the line. The American public is with the voters in the U.K. and Norway -- to name two countries where recent polls reveal a majority-skeptic electorate -- and we don't believe that, at all. And we're the ox this deal is supposed to gore (so to speak). Of course, Bill Owens in NY-23 showed you can vow opposition to, say, the "public option" to gain election and vote the other way within mere hours. Still, we've gotta ask -- and this means every candidate, on both sides, since if warmist-friendly John McCain had been elected last November, we already would have adopted cap-and-trade, and would be facing a "successful" Copenhagen collapse. So, 2010 is now on track to be the Kyoto Election. And, so long as we start early reinforcing that point, will be. </div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA4NjhiMDY4NDk0ZDE3ZTNkNGM1ODgxMWM1OTlkYWM= Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:00:31 -0400 What Climate Crisis? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDg3MTliY2U3YjVjNDAwMDQ1M2YxMzg3NGE3MmM1MDQ= It can't be much of a crisis if the leaders of the world collectively vote present. The New York Times: <blockquote> SINGAPORE -- President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future. At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on. “There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “I don’t think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact.” </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/asia/15prexy.html?_r=1&hp">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDg3MTliY2U3YjVjNDAwMDQ1M2YxMzg3NGE3MmM1MDQ= Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:30:08 -0400 No Obama Energy Tax Bill Before Copenhagen -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTQyMzRkM2E0NjI4OWM3ZTYyYzMyMmQwNDFjNzBkYTI= And Sen. Kerry is ready for a do-over. <a href="http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politics/588-daschle-no-climate-bill-before-copenhagen">Sean Higgins at Investor's Business Daily writes</a>: <blockquote> Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a close ally of the Obama administration, said today that the U.S. is not likely to have anything substantial to show for itself by the time the president goes to the international climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month. In a Friday conference call set up by the liberal Center for American Progress (where Daschle is a distinguished senior fellow), he told reporters that the effort is stalled for the moment. “The deadline of Copenhagen has not yet arrived, but it is fairly clear at this point that we are not going to be in a position to make any significant new legislative achievement between now and the time of the Copenhagen meeting,” he said. Democrats had hoped at the beginning of the year to have a cap-and-trade bill signed by Obama before he attended the summit. That was later downplayed to just making progress on a bill. While the House narrowly passed a bill earlier this year, legislation has had only very modest progress in the Senate. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill (with no Republican support and one Democrat opposed) last week. It still has four more panels to go through. Getting a 60-seat Senate majority for the current bill seems highly unlikely. Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who co-authored the Senate legislation, has indicated he’s open to starting over to get more bipartisan support. Daschle said he remained hopeful that Congress can get something going later. “I think the prospects will grow after Copenhagen, certainly after health reform,” Daschle said. “Most bills die five or six deaths before they ultimately find eternal life in passage.” </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTQyMzRkM2E0NjI4OWM3ZTYyYzMyMmQwNDFjNzBkYTI= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:30:23 -0400 Greening While Driving -- By: Henry Payne webmaster@nationalreview.com (Henry Payne) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGEyYTBlYTMyODliNjkwYTdhMzNkY2ZiZTYzYjIzMzM= Teaching 16-year-olds the basics of driving is a tall order. But now politicians want to indoctrinate student drivers with a green catechism, too. My Detroit News colleague Manny Lopez <a href="http://detnews.com/article/20091112/OPINION03/911120349/1382/OPINION0302">reports</a> that Michigan’s legislature is considering a bill that would mandate an environmental curriculum for driver’s ed classes. In addition to parallel parking and road signs, Democratic Reps. Bert Johnson and Dan Scripps would force kids to learn about “the importance of carpooling and using public transportation,” “identifying the attributes of a fuel-efficient vehicle,” and “recycling vehicle parts and fluids,” among other scriptures from the green bible. Scripps had his own religious conversion when gas prices hit $4 a gallon and is now determined to convert the unfaithful. “I drive a truck that gives me about 15 miles per gallon,” he says. “I was really regretting it when the gas prices were high.” Already browbeaten by high school texts on recycling and global warming, kids can now look forward to proselytizing from that driver’s ed teacher in the right-hand seat. Paul Canjar of Academy Driving School Inc. in Lapeer, Mich. <a href="http://greatlakesecho.org/2009/10/18/michigan-driving-schools-might-be-required-to-teach-fuel-economy-standards/">says</a> “these kinds of things are completely relevant. It would be dumb not to watch out for better fuel economy when shopping around for a vehicle, especially when we’re thinking about saving the environment.” What’s next -- mandating that the kids take their driver’s license test in a hybrid? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGEyYTBlYTMyODliNjkwYTdhMzNkY2ZiZTYzYjIzMzM= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:00:09 -0400 The Next Mandate -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODVhMmExZjU2MzRiODE1MjcwNmFlZDkwOWQzNzUyOTM= <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125807041772846273.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us">Shorter showers and low-flow shower heads</a>? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODVhMmExZjU2MzRiODE1MjcwNmFlZDkwOWQzNzUyOTM= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:45:21 -0400 My, What a Big Toolbox You Have -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWU0OTM3ODM4YWQ4ZTNlZjQ0Yzg3ZDBjYzg1M2FlNTk= The Chamber of Commerce recently bowed to pressure from big member companies and cravenly pleaded for some form of global-warming legislation. It defended this in e-mails and private meetings with an argument that “we merely restated our position . . . in a different way.” So it is with Congress, in a fashion, with its controversial Sec. 707 identically stuck into both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air has insisted that there’s nothing to see here because you’ll notice that the language says the President “shall” exercise “existing statutory authority.” My colleague Jonathan Adler phrases things similarly on <a href="http://volokh.com/2009/11/11/climate-chavistas/">Volokh</a>: <blockquote> The above provision grants no new powers to the federal government, let alone the President. None. Zero. Zilch. Rather, it directs the President to have agencies use “existing statutory authority” to ensure greater greenhouse gas emission reductions. In other words, it requires the President to ensure that agencies are using all the tools Congress has already delegated to them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- tools that such agencies could use even if the section is not triggered -- and demands the President “submit to Congress” a request for additional authorities the President believes are necessary to ensure greater emission reductions. Moreover, insofar as this provision constrains the Executive Branch’s discretion over what emission-reduction measures it wants to take, it actually reduces executive authority. </blockquote> That first part is true. It says use all existing authority. All of these tools. But, um, used in a radically different way, for a radically different purpose. That “shall” thing is big, too. Leaning too heavily on “existing authority” to say there’s nothing new here has several perils, including that it ignores that this phrase is read by the courts as meaning existing laws, not existing applications of these laws. Jonathan is correct. Existing tools. This provision mandates using them in new ways. It says use all existing authority - the Clean Water Act, NEPA, Endangered Species Act, and any federal law requiring a permit for any economic activity that does or could lead to GHG production -- in a way that is not at all clear is consistent with the legislative intent, design, or otherwise feasible use (before this bill). This asserts on Congress’s behalf that these laws are now legislatively intended to serve as GHG-suppression regimes -- after establishing in an earlier provision causation by and harm from each and every existing or new increment of economic activity that uses or produces resources. That’s new. That’s big. Both on its face and taken in context. All laws intended for purposes A, B, and C are now also expressly intended to be used -- mandated -- to chase an elusive global GHG concentration downward by emission avoidance. This is not the IRS getting Capone on tax evasion because the Feds couldn’t nail him for his racketeering, murder, etc. Tax evasion laws were intended to be used against tax evaders no matter what else those people did, and were employed for the purpose of prosecuting tax evasion. Not every law on the books was intended to keep CO2 from being emitted. Now, everything in an enormous suite of laws intended to manage interstate commerce in the name of ensuring free-flow of goods, services, and other economic activity is turned into an environmental law seeking the rationing of permitted interstate commerce in the name of the atmosphere. E-mails passed along to me indicate that we may be at the heels-dug-in stage. And I have a book to write. My foray over at <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/12/how-sweeping-are-the-global-warming-bills/#more-29254">Big Government</a> was as concise as time permitted, but the conclusion is still clear enough: <blockquote> My point, truncated, is that this provision at issue clears out any legal clutter possibly standing in the way of ongoing attempts to treat the ESA, CWA, NEPA, and in fact all other laws on the books as carbon dioxide suppression/avoidance laws. These laws, particularly ESA, are sweeping in their power even to shut down, but particularly to block anything new. That is in many ways a game-changer for the greens, is why it is being fought, and saves years in the courts fighting over whether such authority actually exists. . . . </blockquote> The first paragraph at issue tells the executive branch to use all existing laws (and all authorities in this bill) to do whatever it thinks necessary to try and lower atmospheric GHG concentrations below where they are the day the law goes into effect; this of course goes far and beyond “cap-and-trade” quotas and timetables. The second paragraph says you can also ask Congress to spell it out if you think you are lacking authority despite “(a).” But “(b)” is a complement to -- not a condition precedent for -- aggressive action under “(a).” This language approves the idea of implementing all federal statutes as GHG-suppression measures. It is impossible to overstate how huge that is. Arguing whether it creates new authority argues a distinction without a difference. This language is a license to steal. It effectively makes the cap and its timetable mere sideshows, but inescapably ensures that anyone seeking the refuge of “certainty” in legislation -- as more and more lobbyists are promising CEOs is available in cap-and-trade -- is a fool’s errand. “But these laws could’ve been used like this before!” Hmm. “Could’ve,” maybe, but that’s a stretch. Now they must. NEPA and ESA, with language and regulatory extensions sympathetic to that use, have been slouching there for some years and are just about there. Those, along with every other law on the books -- every one -- now will be used in this way if this thing passes. That’s new. That’s big. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWU0OTM3ODM4YWQ4ZTNlZjQ0Yzg3ZDBjYzg1M2FlNTk= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:02 -0400 Something Doesn't Smell Right -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWYwZGFhNTQ1OGU3NDRiOWQ5NGM2YTE4ZGEzMzAwOWI= A new source of alternative energy in the U.K. <blockquote> <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#3q6kw4/current.com/items/91439804_poo-power-used-diapers-will-fuel-u-k-recycling-plant.htm/">Used Diapers Will Fuel U.K. Recycling Plant </a> </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWYwZGFhNTQ1OGU3NDRiOWQ5NGM2YTE4ZGEzMzAwOWI= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:15:37 -0400 Graham Answers His Critics -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjI1OGM5MDdhY2RjMDk5NWRmMGFkODgxYWZkNDAyNDc= <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/40525-1.html">Roll Call</a>: <blockquote> Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is pushing back against home-state conservative critics who have sought to censure the independent-minded lawmaker, arguing that he will not allow the criticism to block his efforts to find common ground with others in the Senate. The Charleston County Republican Party this week formally censured Graham over his repeated efforts to work across the aisle on the economy, climate change and immigration. The county party also asked the state party to rescind a resolution commending Graham. Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop issued a statement defending the Senator’s legislative work and his track record on conservative issues. “Senator Graham has a lifetime conservative voting record of 90 percent and last year was rated the 15th most conservative Senator by National Journal. Like former President Reagan, he strongly believes elected officials need to find common ground and work together to solve difficult problems like making our nation energy independent and protecting our environment. Working to solve problems and being conservative are not mutually exclusive. You can do both and that’s what people in South Carolina elected him to do,” Bishop said. “Senator Graham will continue to pursue the same common-sense conservative agenda in his second term in the U.S. Senate as he did in his first,” he added </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjI1OGM5MDdhY2RjMDk5NWRmMGFkODgxYWZkNDAyNDc= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:30:44 -0400 Obama Will Blame the Senate for Copenhagen's Failure? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWNjZmY1ZGZiMzFlMGVkNjdiZTdkYWFhZWU2MWEyODg= Does <a href="http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/enviornment/us-wont-sign-a-treaty-at-copenhagen-until-senate-approves-lead_100274398.html">Secretary Chu</a> think the Senate will pre-ratify an international treaty? <blockquote> New Delhi, Nov 13 (IANS) With barely a month left for the start of the climate change conference at Copenhagen, the United States Friday indicated that it will not initial any treaty there, until it gets approval from the Senate. “We do not want to repeat the historical mistake,” US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, referring to the fate of the Kyoto Protocol. The US is the only country which has signed it, but not ratified it. Chu was speaking at an interaction at the Indian Institute of Technology where he asserted that the US administration was “pushing” for a bill on energy efficiency in the Senate. If approved, it will pave the way for his country signing a protocol at the climate summit at Copenhagen next month. The conference will be held Dec 7-18. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWNjZmY1ZGZiMzFlMGVkNjdiZTdkYWFhZWU2MWEyODg= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:20:01 -0400 How to Double Fuel Efficiency -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTY5YmMyZGZkMDViZWY5MjNhZmEzZTYxODNlOTFhYzc= <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,574928,00.html?test=latestnews">Install better traffic lights</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTY5YmMyZGZkMDViZWY5MjNhZmEzZTYxODNlOTFhYzc= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:00:21 -0400 Headline of the Day -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTM3OThlMDFlNTc3NmYwYmFmYTVjZDljNWQwYjQ3ZjY= <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/carbon/6527970/Everyone-in-Britain-could-be-given-a-personal-carbon-allowance.html">Telegraph</a>: <blockquote> Everyone in Britain could be given a personal 'carbon allowance' Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say. </blockquote> In other words, rationing. And if climate change really is the horror that politicians say it is, then rationing is a pretty good idea. So, why aren't American politicians calling for rationing, too? Don't they want to save the planet? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTM3OThlMDFlNTc3NmYwYmFmYTVjZDljNWQwYjQ3ZjY= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:50 -0400 Obama to Vote 'Present' in Copenhagen? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2E4ZDA3MDUyMDg5ZWRkMmU2MTgwNGU4NDkxZjI5NjI= We are the change we have been waiting for, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/12/AR2009111209127.html?hpid=moreheadlines">at some later date to be determined</a>: <blockquote> Less than a month before negotiators will meet in Copenhagen with the lofty goal of crafting a deal to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is considering endorsing a limited short-term climate pact and deferring more ambitious action until next year. <div id="body_after_content_column"> The scaled-back strategy is driven largely by the realities of domestic politics: The administration is hampered in making an international deal because Congress has not passed climate legislation. So any global pact would be postponed until next year when it would be constrained by whatever domestic climate legislation Congress enacts. Backing an interim agreement -- which would fall far short of what many European and developing nations envisioned when President Obama took office -- would be an attempt to keep the U.N.-sponsored talks from being viewed a failure, say administration and congressional officials. </div> They emphasize that the trimmed-back approach should not be viewed as a withdrawal of U.S. commitment, but rather as a first step: "An interim, operational deal is not meant to be seen as a substitute for a real agreement," Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, said in an interview. "It's meant to be seen as substantive building blocks to a full, legal agreement, and perhaps the best chance of getting such an agreement." </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2E4ZDA3MDUyMDg5ZWRkMmU2MTgwNGU4NDkxZjI5NjI= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:30:36 -0400 Al Gore's Other Too-Radical Idea -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWNmNTU3N2E1MWE0NjhlZWVkN2RmZDRmNWQ2OWZlOTQ= Over in <a href="http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWE0ZWE0MGM2MmYwZGVkZTgzMDVlMmMwNTc3MjJiZDU=">Media Blog</a>, I have a post on the failed business model of Al Gore's Current TV. At what point do people realize that Gore's ideas on how people should power their lives are as ridiculous as his ideas on what people would want to watch on television? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWNmNTU3N2E1MWE0NjhlZWVkN2RmZDRmNWQ2OWZlOTQ= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:00:52 -0400 The Alarmists' Dilemma -- By: John Hood webmaster@nationalreview.com (John Hood) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTUyNGI2MzhlMGJiOTU3MTBlNzU1OTUzNmMyNzBiZjU= CNN/Money <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/13/news/economy/globalwarming_deal/">reports</a> that cap-and-trade advocates are having such a hard time attracting support for the legislation because the Left and the Right are so far apart on energy issues. Every deal-sweetener that might tempt a Republican over to the Dark Side has the potential to repel Democrats: <blockquote> For example, the nuclear industry is looking for upwards of $100 billion in loan guarantees that would go toward building approximately 20 new plants. Long-term ambitions are even bigger. Some Republicans in Congress want up to 100 new nuke plants built over the next few decades. But, at the same time, adding too many nuclear goodies hurts the legislation's chances. "It would risk favoring nuclear over everything else," said Divya Reddy, an energy policy analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. "The outlook for eventual passage is looking weaker and weaker." That doesn't bode well for the Obama administration, which hoped to have a deal at least in the works before heading to Copenhagen next month to hammer out a global greenhouse gas treaty. As for increased oil drilling, the ban on offshore drilling has already expired. Although it could be reinstated with a stroke of the president's pen, Reedy said pro-drilling advocates may be better off simply pushing for a permanent OK in a separate energy bill rather than tangling it up with global warming. Plus, the type of access staunch drilling advocates are looking for - off Florida's west coast and in Alaska's wildlife refuge - would be too much for many Democrats to support. And still, even if broad access to drilling and many more nuclear plants were offered, some lawmakers opposing greenhouse gas laws would remain unconvinced the current bill is a good idea. "The Democrats could offer bags of gold," said Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a free-market-oriented think tank. "There's just nothing that would make cap-and-trade easy to swallow." </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTUyNGI2MzhlMGJiOTU3MTBlNzU1OTUzNmMyNzBiZjU= Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:20 -0400 Chusing the Facts to Fit His Story -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2U3ZDhhNjU1NWM5NTljMmYzMGJiMjNlOWExNmEzYzM= <a href="http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/11/chus-tall-tale.html">Oops</a>. Secretary Chu has been caught making stuff up on how he improved energy efficiency while head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2U3ZDhhNjU1NWM5NTljMmYzMGJiMjNlOWExNmEzYzM= Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:00:10 -0400 Ding Dong -- By: Drew Thornley webmaster@nationalreview.com (Drew Thornley) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjM5OWU3ZTcwMjgyMWQzOGU1YTY1ODJkZjVlOWIxZGM= <div>Considering that global warming has become such a fast-growing a religion, I guess <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.5c89ef2b65e54705267dd3c67d9f1199.121&show_article=1"> this</a> is only fitting:</div> <blockquote> <div>The World Council of Churches on Thursday called on churches around the world to ring their bells 350 times during the Copenhagen climate change summit on December 13 as a call to action on global warming.</div> The leading council of Christian and Orthodox churches also invited places of worship for other faiths to join a symbolic "chain of chimes and prayers" stretching around the world from the international date line in the South Pacific. "On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the WCC invites churches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs or whatever their tradition offers to call people to prayer and action in the face of climate change," the council said in a statement. "By sounding their bells or other instruments 350 times, participating churches will symbolise the 350 parts per million that mark the safe upper limit for CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere according to many scientists," it added. The chimes are meant to start at 3.00 pm local time in each location. The WCC brings together 348 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches representing about 560 million Christians in 110 countries. The Council of European Bishops Conferences, which gathers Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops, is also supporting the campaign, according to a letter released by the WCC. The UN summit in the Danish capital on December 7 to 18 is meant to produce a new global treaty to broaden cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, but the negotiations are still riven by disagreements. The WCC acknowledged that plans for a bell ringing campaign have stirred controversy. "In some countries, the question has been raised whether churches have the right to use their bells for what may be considered to be a political campaign," said Guillermo Kerber, WCC programme executive on climate change. "Those who support the campaign see the care of creation and of people's lives and livelihoods threatened by climate change more as an ethical and spiritual issue that, of course, has political implications, not in a partisan sense but referring to the common good," he explained. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjM5OWU3ZTcwMjgyMWQzOGU1YTY1ODJkZjVlOWIxZGM= Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:30:35 -0400 Translating from Chinese -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTE4MDQ3MWJkNjUyZDc1ODViODdjM2ZhN2E1YWJmMzQ= Peter Huber in Forbes: <blockquote> China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas on the planet. We burn more carbon per person, but China has more people, and both its population and economy are growing much faster than ours. For many members of Congress, a vote for strict carbon limits will be politically suicidal if constituents continue to believe -- correctly -- that the vote will propel a massive shift of jobs, wealth and emissions from Peoria to Beijing. So in the coming months watch out for brazenly false claims that China is blazing the green trail, and getting richer by doing so, and that to compete we must outgreen them. China is of course delighted to jigger numbers to help frame the story. "China attaches great importance to tackling climate change," China's climate commissar recently declared. The Middle Kingdom therefore promises to lower its energy consumption per unit of GDP. Translation: "We promise to get richer." Energy consumption per unit of GDP always falls as a country gets richer. The poorest countries in Africa spend 100% of their GDP on food, the most primitive form of energy. Bill Gates, on the other hand, has the lowest energy consumption per unit of household GDP on the planet. Carbon emissions per unit of GDP follow the same trajectory. China's are about twice as high as ours, Africa's three times as high. The global climate, however, doesn't care a fig about hyphenated emissions, whether per capita, per dollar or per unit of sly political prevarication. "China also sets an objective of increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the primary energy mix to 10% by 2010, and to 15% by 2020." Translation: "We'll keep on burning the stuff that poor people burn until we get rich." Biomass accounts for 10% of the global energy supply but less than 4% in the developed world and closer to 2% in the U.S. The poor always burn more carbohydrates, fewer hydrocarbons. Calling something "renewable" doesn't mean that it saves carbon. Agriculture, forestry and deforestation already cost the planet more than twice as much in carbon equivalents as transportation -- over 30% of all emissions. Since nobody can track how many twigs, cowpats and rice husks a billion peasants burn -- or alternatively, leave to fungi to convert into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas -- China's carbon accountants can make its renewable numbers come out anywhere they like. China is proud to report that it has been shutting down "small thermal power-generation units." Translation: "We're replacing diesel generators with big coal-fired power plants." Big, central power plants burn much cheaper fuel much more efficiently, and therefore generate much cheaper power, and therefore boost energy consumption, emissions and GDP even faster. China touts its new wind, hydroelectric and nuclear capacity. Translation: "China's energy policy is -- and will remain -- solidly anchored in coal." The word "capacity" next to "wind" misleads by a factor of five or so, because much of the time the wind doesn't blow. China's nuclear plants and its gargantuan hydroelectric dams will indeed make a real dent in the carbon intensity of its energy supply. But mushrooming coal consumption will utterly swamp the savings for as long as anyone can possibly foresee. China says it "has increased its carbon sinks by promoting reforestation." Translation: "Your sinks don't count." North America has been reforesting since 1920, and continues to do so. So fast, in fact, that we're currently sucking about two-thirds of our carbon emissions back into our forests and soil. Europe and Japan hate all such talk, at least when it's America that's talking, because we have lots of land to reforest and they don't. U.S. greens do their best not to talk about it too, because -- well, it gets in the way of other agendas. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1102/opinions-china-carbon-greenhouse-gas-insights.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTE4MDQ3MWJkNjUyZDc1ODViODdjM2ZhN2E1YWJmMzQ= Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:00:38 -0400 The Green Gettin' is Good -- By: Drew Thornley webmaster@nationalreview.com (Drew Thornley) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWRlYmM1ZWJmMjVkNDA2NTAzNjkzYTRhNmNlNDhlYTg= <div><a href="http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-green_jobs_that_make_30_an_hour-1019">Yahoo</a> reposts an item today on high-paying "green" jobs<a href="http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-green_jobs_that_make_30_an_hour-1019" target="_blank"></a>. </div> <div> </div> <div>I love this little detail (emphasis mine):</div> <blockquote> <div>Fueled in part by massive federal funding for environmental projects included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) -- better known as the stimulus bill -- green jobs have a bright future. There's a broad range of occupations that allow you to make a difference, so there is likely a green job for you no matter what your interest and skills.</div> </blockquote> <div>Fueled in part? That's like saying wind and solar energy are competitive, thanks in part to massive government subsidies and burdensome state renewable-portfolio standards. </div> <div> </div> <div>Curiously absent from the piece is any mention of the untold numbers of jobs that will be lost (as Spain's experience has demonstrated), thanks in no small part to "green" energy policy.</div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWRlYmM1ZWJmMjVkNDA2NTAzNjkzYTRhNmNlNDhlYTg= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:46 -0400 Land Use and Warming -- By: Patrick J. Michaels webmaster@nationalreview.com (Patrick J. Michaels) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Zjk0MmZmZTc0Njg4MzJhMzIxYjc2ZmJjZWEyZjQ5NDI= Via <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/11/georgia-tech-50-percent-of-the-usa-warming-that-has-occurred-since-1950-is-due-to-land-use-changes/">Anthony Watts</a>, a new study from Georgia Tech has some interesting findings: <blockquote> "Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming." <img src="http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2009/11/11/3fc8ef8aa1f68f391a1e74a23d8598c7.jpg" alt="" width="321" height="469" /> County-level land-use changes from 1950 to 2000, based on censuses of population, housing, and agriculture. A) change in population density; B) change in land area settled at “exurban densities” (i.e., 1 house per 1 to 40 acres); C) change in percent cropland (Brown et al. 2005). </blockquote> This is similar to what we found around the world's populated land areas in 2007 (McKitrick and Michaels, Journal of Geophysical Research): " . . . extraneous, nonclimatic effects reduces the estimated 1980-2000 global average temperature trend over land by about half." <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Zjk0MmZmZTc0Njg4MzJhMzIxYjc2ZmJjZWEyZjQ5NDI= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:15:21 -0400 Yes, Al Gore's Investments Are an Issue -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTZmNTYzZDBlNzY2YTJjNjM3ZmRhYmI5Y2ZiOWYxNjA= Holman Jenkins writes in today's WSJ: <blockquote> Last spring Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked Al Gore during a House hearing if his investments in green energy meant he would benefit personally from cap and trade. "If you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don't know me," Mr. Gore responded (and, yes, according to two reporters present, he sighed). Mr. Gore is quite right that his arguments should be judged on their merits, not on his investments. He's wrong to think his investments are irrelevant, and, even more, that sincerity is dispositive of anything. Sincerity is no substitute for disinterestedness. Here are a couple questions: When so much of his position and prestige are invested in a predicted climate crisis, is Mr. Gore likely to be open to contrary evidence? Is he likely to be particularly fastidious about whether proposed steps will actually have an effect on global warming if they also happen to benefit his investments? Ms. Blackburn's challenge was in a sense late. Mr. Gore long ago jumped over to the side where salesmanship, by whatever means, was the trumping priority. As far back as 1989, he insisted there was "no dispute worthy of recognition" about the danger of manmade climate change. By now, he titularly heads a vast establishment with a stake in one side of the argument. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574527572868084330.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTZmNTYzZDBlNzY2YTJjNjM3ZmRhYmI5Y2ZiOWYxNjA= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:00:06 -0400 The Most Expensive Op-Ed in Recent Memory -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VhZTNkOWFhMGExZjMzZDJlZTBhNTFkMDc0YzA0MTM= There should be a little counter on the side of this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11jacobs.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">New York Times op-ed</a> to tally the billions that all of these ideas to transform America's highway system will actually cost. An excerpt: <blockquote> The most obvious use for the Interstate’s corridors is rail transportation. If we are going to spend billions rehabbing the highways, shouldn’t we, at the same time, invest in adjacent rail lines like the 800-mile high-speed rail system voters approved last year in California The corridors are also perfectly suited for the transportation of energy. Power generated from rural wind farms and solar plants could run through lines buried under the highways to big cities where electricity is needed. The plug-in hybrid vehicles that will someday use the highways could charge up from this grid. And when left idling, these cars would also be able to supply power back to the grid at times of peak demand, while their owners work or shop by the roadside. Instead of continuing to write off the no man’s land beyond the highways -- that sprawl of gas stations, motels and fast-food restaurants -- we should look at this acreage as a resource. Cars and trucks will soon have to pollute less, and they will also make less noise. There’s no reason that this land can’t be transformed into urban hubs, places where people might actually want to live, work or shop, change trains or go for a stroll. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VhZTNkOWFhMGExZjMzZDJlZTBhNTFkMDc0YzA0MTM= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:30:26 -0400 Doubling Down on the Green (Jobs) Slime -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzdjN2Y5ZGNjYWE5NWY1MDMxNGM3MzU1ZTM2ZWFlN2U= The institutional and establishment flailing over the exposure of the “green jobs” myth has yielded a possible trove of documents, but also gone from personal attacks to desperate lies. These guys have been gotten to, but good. First, I’m told by the relevant Freedom of Information Act officer that there are about 500 pages responsive to my FOIA to DoE and NREL about internal machinations over enlisting a taxpayer-funded agency to charge two non-economists with the task of assailing an economic analysis, in often personal terms against the authors, which analysis happened to embarrass the president for repeating easily debunked mythology. And these pages are, um, being redacted right now. Apparently the specifics of a smear job are considered "pre-decisional." If it takes a judge to tell them that "embarassing," "damning," and "possibly career-ending" are not FOIA exemptions, so be it. This volume could actually mean two things, which are not mutually exclusive: either there was an intense flurry of back-and-forth about what to do, making the hatchet-job assignment, and fretting over their having been caught out telling conflicting tales about it; and/or they’re burying me with all papers referenced as a good way to hide the juicy stuff. When FOIA responses are overly productive, I tend to be suspicious -- based on experience. We’ll see in early December. Second, the Spanish minister for industry, tourism, and trade gave a curious <a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6708292.html">interview</a> to the Houston Chronicle posted late last week. Apparently seeking to downplay the importance of March findings by a research team at King Juan Carlos University that his government acknowledged in an April Royal Decree, the minister said things like “It’s a small private university, which is not very relevant. It has a nice name but not very much content.” Mmm. Nada to see here. Except even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_John_Charles_University">Wikipedia</a> gets this one right: KJC University in Madrid is a public institution. It is home to four campuses, several academic specialty research centers, and more than 17,000 students -- and for some time home to, among others, renowned Austrian economic theory stalwart Jesus Huerta de Soto, holder of Spain's highest award in economics and of whom the “green jobs” study’s lead author (Gabriel Calzada, PhD) is a protégé. Regardless, trying to denigrate the government school is just another form of ad hom in apparent response to its refusal to de-certify the study as an official academic product despite repeated insistence from a different government minister. How sleazy can you get? The minister also falsely said the study “compares the destruction of jobs in the housing sector, which has been because of the crisis, to the increase in the employment of the renewable energy sector in the last few years.” No, it does not. One of the study’s authors writes in an e-mail: “We do not say anything even remotely close to this. If he read it, he is a liar. If he has not read it, he is an incompetent and a liar.” The minister made that up to dismiss the study as irrelevant. That would be the study that was affirmed in the April Royal Decree, by the way. The good news is the minister’s dishonesty immediately rekindled interest in the study’s findings, granting it new life in the news cycle. The issue was <a href="http://www.libertaddigital.com/economia/sebastian-niega-en-eeuu-la-veracidad-del-estudio-de-la-rey-juan-carlos-sobre-energia-verde-1276375803/">breaking news</a> on the widely read Libertad Digital, the subject of a <a href="http://fonoteca.esradio.fm/c.php?op=player&id=2669">debate</a> on ES Radio, addressed last night on Intereconomía Radio, and today Dr. Calzada had a live interview on the subject on LDTV. Thanks, lying minister! Indeed, one of the study’s authors has already headlined a <a href="http://www.libertaddigital.com/opinion/juan-ramon-rallo/necesitaba-mentir-sebastian-51782/">response piece</a> in Spain, “Did Sebastian need to lie?” Well, no, he didn’t need to, any more than DoE had to go dishonest and ad hominem. But it does seem that that is how these people operate. It’s what they do -- their only move. It beats arguing facts that are clearly not on one’s side, I suppose. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzdjN2Y5ZGNjYWE5NWY1MDMxNGM3MzU1ZTM2ZWFlN2U= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:00:56 -0400 Is a Red Shirt Still Red in the Dark? -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTE4ZjlmNzFhYTdmZDQ2ODdhMWI3YzQ2MDM3NmRlNjI= The Times is bewildered by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/americas/11venez.html?_r=1">blackouts in energy-rich Venezuela</a>. Elsewhere on the planet, people understand that price controls lead to shortages. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTE4ZjlmNzFhYTdmZDQ2ODdhMWI3YzQ2MDM3NmRlNjI= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:31 -0400 Watermelons -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTUzOTY2OGRkODA3OWIwMmM5ZTRjODY4ZTg1M2VmMDQ= Peter Robinson sits down with Czech president Vaclav Klaus to discuss the communist red under the surface of the environmentalist green: <blockquote> Communism and environmentalism -- we are talking about two ideologies that are structurally very similar. They are against individual freedom. They are in favor of centralist master-minding of our fates. They are both very similar in telling us what to do, how to live, how to behave, what to eat, how to travel, what we can do and what we cannot do. There is a huge similarity in this respect. </blockquote> <img src="http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2009/11/11/9e15f8bade7830e07982d271eab92017.jpg" alt="" width="550" height="310" /> Watch it <a href="http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTUzOTY2OGRkODA3OWIwMmM5ZTRjODY4ZTg1M2VmMDQ= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:30:29 -0400 NBC To Use Its Shows To Promote Green Message -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjAyYTJjZDhkMGJkNTAyNDdlNjhkZTUwMDk0NDUzNTY= However, from this write-up it seems the programs will treat the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091111/ap_on_en_tv/us_tv_green_nbc">green movement as one big joke:</a> <blockquote> This year on "30 Rock," corporate boss Jack Donaghy tells the late-night show's staff it has to cut its carbon footprint by 5 percent, and puts Kenneth the Page in charge of getting it done. . . . In the comedy "Community," the college is renamed "Environdale." College students think they're hiring the band Green Day for a gig, and instead gets the Celtic combo Greene Daeye. Dwight in "The Office" takes the role of "Recyclops" in that comedy. "Heroes" features cast members filling a truck with recyclables and talking about the importance of giving back to the earth. Trainers on "The Biggest Loser" will instruct their clients to buy organic produce and bring their own mugs to the coffee shop. </blockquote> This could be funny. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjAyYTJjZDhkMGJkNTAyNDdlNjhkZTUwMDk0NDUzNTY= Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:00:32 -0400 Dick Lugar on the Obama-Enron Energy Tax -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWJmZmE2OTY3NGExZTE5YTNkMTRlNWI4Zjc4MDg0OGM= <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/11/lugar_warns_democrats_i_dont_s.html">'I don't see any climate bill . . . that I can support.'</a> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWJmZmE2OTY3NGExZTE5YTNkMTRlNWI4Zjc4MDg0OGM= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:00:14 -0400 Polling Big Screen TVs -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjdlYzM2YjY4ODgzNDI4MTNjMjlhZGM2Yzc3ZmQ3NTk= <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/november_2009/most_americans_favor_big_screen_tvs_over_energy_conservation">A hilarious poll from Rasmussen</a>: <blockquote> California is expected to implement energy-conserving regulations any day now that manufacturers and retailers say will in effect ban the sale of big-screen TVs in the state. Other states are likely to follow the Golden State’s “green” initiative in the months ahead. But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of Americans oppose a law that would effectively ban the sale of big-screen televisions to save energy. Sixteen percent (16%) favor the idea, and 18% are not sure. Most adults (53%) say being able to buy whatever kind of TV they want is more important than conserving energy. However, 37% rate conserving energy as more important. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjdlYzM2YjY4ODgzNDI4MTNjMjlhZGM2Yzc3ZmQ3NTk= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:30:30 -0400 EPA Whistleblowers Try to Derail Waxman-Markey -- By: William Tucker webmaster@nationalreview.com (William Tucker) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzEyYTIzNjFmYjE5YmZjYmViOWVmMWMxM2M5NDhiZjU= A married couple, both EPA attorneys in San Francisco, have caused a brouhaha in Washington by posting a ten-minute <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNQzSjb38g">YouTube video</a> criticizing the Waxman-Markey effort at cap-and-trade. In “The Huge Mistake,” Alan Zabel and Laurie Williams -- who each have 20 years of experience in EPA’s San Francisco regional office -- argue in clear, unemotional terms that cap-and-trade will simply turn into a boondoggle for phony “emissions credits,” which don’t accomplish anything except making energy more expensive. Zabel and Williams cite one instance in Europe where manufacturers of a refrigerant had a by-product that was deemed a greenhouse gas more harmful than carbon dioxide. Rather than simply capturing and destroying it, a fairly easy process, they began selling its destruction to utilities as an emissions credit. Soon profits from selling the credits were double the profits of making the refrigerant. Thanks to that perverse incentivize, they began to manufacture more refrigerant just to sell its by-product. Although European regulators have spotted the scam, they have found it impossible to change anything because of pressure from the manufacturers and their home countries. The overall result: increased carbon emissions plus a lot of flimflam that ends up punishing consumers. In place of cap-and-trade, Zabel and Williams argue for a straight carbon tax with 100 percent of revenues given back to consumers -- although it’s hard to imagine Congress watching so much money pass under its nose without wetting its beak. The couple suggests starting the tax at a low level and raising it only as alternative technologies -- including nuclear -- are developed to substitute for coal. The same analysis has been promoted by many economists and Planet Gore contributor Steve Hayward, Kenneth Green, and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute came up with essentially the same recommendation last year (<a href="http://www.aei.org/docLib/20070601_EPOg.pdf ">PDF</a>). Needless to say, the EPA was not happy and immediately ordered the couple to take the video off their own website. But Steven Kirsch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is touting novel approaches to climate change, put it back up on YouTube, where by this afternoon it had received 2,800 views. “The Huge Mistake” could eventually throw a log in front of the Waxman-Markey/Kerry-Boxer steamroller -- although it may cost Zabel and Williams their jobs, as well. <div>-- William Tucker is author of <a href="http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/">Terrestrial Energy:</a><a href="http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/"> How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey</a>. </div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzEyYTIzNjFmYjE5YmZjYmViOWVmMWMxM2M5NDhiZjU= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:50:00 -0400 Fighting the Carbon Market From Down Under -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzJmMTU3M2RhM2Q1MWJiYjkzNDU2NGQ3ZDM3NTg3YmI= A good analysis by blogger JoNova of Australian PM Kevin Rudd's push for a carbon market. An excerpt: <blockquote> The world is considering a new financial market larger than any commodity, it’s “based on science”, but if you ask for evidence, you’re called names -- “Denier”, and by our Prime Minister, no less. This is supposed to pass for reasoned debate? In 6000 words Rudd uses ad hominem attacks, baseless allegations, argument from authority, mindless inflammatory rhetoric and quotes not a single piece of evidence that carbon drives our climate. He repeats quote after quote of sensible, ordinary points from his opponents as if it shows they are confused. Yet he can’t point out how any of them are wrong. It shows the depth of his own delusions -- that he thinks merely questioning “the UN committee” is a flaw in itself. It’s as if being a sceptic is a bad thing, yet the opposite of sceptical is gullible. Rudd throws baseless innuendo when he claims vested interests are at work. The truth is the exact opposite. Exxon spent $23 million on sceptics, but the US government spent $79 billion on the climate industry. Big Government outspent big-oil 3000 to 1. Worse, carbon trading last year was $126 billion dollars. That’s for just one year. The real vested interests stand in the open like signposted black holes hidden in plain view by a legal disclaimer. The singularities at the centre of the climate change galaxy have names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, ABN Amro, Deutche Bank, and HSBC. The banks . . . want us to trade carbon. And the career scientists like their “rock-star” status. “Call us heroes”. “Thanks for the institute. Ta.” The UN bureaucrats soak in their fame and their junkets. Why wouldn’t they? Two weeks and ten thousand people in an exotic locale every year. Nobel prizes for just doing their jobs, and the promise that they might be at the centre of new world financial market: dinner with Obama and tea with Gordon Brown. Status knocks, and everyone is home. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://joannenova.com.au/2009/11/global-bully-rudd-fights-for-foreign-committee-against-citizens/">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzJmMTU3M2RhM2Q1MWJiYjkzNDU2NGQ3ZDM3NTg3YmI= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:30:03 -0400 The Clamor for Calamity -- By: Brendan O'Neill webmaster@nationalreview.com (Brendan O'Neill) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTRjODFlYmI3Y2M2ZjIxMWZmY2U5NDBkODQ2NDQ5OTY= If a climate-change sceptic suggests that the Sun, rather than man, is responsible for climatic variations he is <a href="http://www.marklynas.org/2006/5/19/climate-denial-ads-to-air-on-us-national-television">denounced</a> as evil, a heretic, someone whose words are so foul and twisted that they will be “partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead.” In other words, question the environmentalist consensus, and you are endangering life itself -- your words are literally poisonous. Yet when a climate-change activist openly calls for calamitous events and the deaths of thousands of people as a way of focusing our leaders’ minds on the problem of climate change, no one bats an eye. You can fantasize about the outbreak of disease as a means of “reducing the population” or dream about natural disasters (which should be as “traumatic as possible” in order to wake people from their consumerist-induced stupor), and your fellow activists will nod along in agreement. So warped is environmentalist morality that those who raise legitimate questions about politics and science are accused of killing people with their words, while those who actually talk about the need for people to die are patted on the back. Environmentalists are so colossally angry at the public’s refusal to heed their every word that they have kickstarted what we might call a Clamor for Calamity, publicly arguing that disaster is the only way to bring people to their senses. Last month, Jonathon Porritt -- the former green adviser to the U.K. government and close buddy of Eco-Prince Charles -- <a href="http://www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/leaders-must-be-shocked-into-climate-action">said</a> that there will have to “traumatic shocks to the system” in order to “jolt” politicians on climate change. What kind of traumatic shocks would Mr Porritt like to see? Well, something like Hurricane Katrina or the recent Australian bush fires -- only worse. Porritt says the shocks “need to come as rapidly as possible” and they must be “as traumatic as possible” -- “otherwise, politicians and their electorates will rapidly revert to the current mix of non-specific anxiety and inertia.” If you don’t believe that rapid, traumatic disasters are a good thing, then just look at Hurricance Katrina, says Porritt -- after that, Americans “started to think that it really might be time for the U.S. to get stuck in on climate change.” He also sings the praises of recent disasters in Australia. A country that has had “more than its fair share of traumatic shocks” in recent years, including the deaths of 173 people and the destruction of 2,000 homes in the worst bush fires of modern times, Australia has thankfully become a bit more serious about tackling climate change, says Porritt. For example, the green-leaning Kevin Rudd beat the conservative John Howard in the last general election. But, Australia is still not doing enough; it “still pursues its dream of unbridled affluence, California style,” he says. “Clearly the shocks to their systems just haven’t been bad enough -- which gives us some sense of just how bad future climate shocks are going to have to be to drive any serious transformation.” So the bush fires weren’t sufficiently hellish to cure Australians of their alleged addiction to “unbridled affluence.” Just what does Porritt have in mind for Australia? Worse fires? Earthquakes, perhaps? The deaths of 1,730 people rather than a mere 173? That should do the job. Sounding like an angry Old Testament God surveying sinful communities around the globe, and deciding which of them deserves locusts, which plagues, and which fire, Porritt reveals the deeply intolerant, misanthropic streak in modern environmentalism. And he isn’t the only green indulging in Peril Porn and having wet nightmares about future destruction. In a recent BBC radio debate, a green-leaning commentator <a href=" http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45876,news-comment,news-politics,neo-malthusians-are-self-serving-pessismists">complained</a> that there are “too many people,” and, “for the planet’s sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we’re doomed.” A few years ago, when Britain was hit by a series of floods, a Guardian columnist <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2000/oct/16/comment.weather">prayed</a> for more. “Apathetic about climate change and out of touch with the environment, Britain needs a short sharp shock,” she said. “The best chance Britain has is a course of environmental ECT: lots of small, nasty shocks where it really hurts. So roll on floods, they’ve got a lot to teach us. The more floods, the merrier.” In the early 1990s, Earth First! welcomed the spread of AIDS because it might “bring the human population back to sanity.” Because “just as the plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism,” they reasoned. These fantasies of human-decimating disaster expose how many environmentalists really view nature: not as something polluted by mankind (who now must find practical ways to clean it up), but as a sentient, God-like force which should punish humans for their wanton ways or shock them into changing their lifestyles. Mother Nature becomes the imagined corrector of human depravity. The Clamor for Calamity also reveals how irrational environmentalists consider the rest of us to be. We are so spectacularly stupid, so brain-addled by consumerism -- with eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear -- that the only possible solution is not debate, but disaster. That alone will demonstrate at last that their god is God. As they wait for that rapturous day, environmentalists will continue to censor infidels and heretics, and pray for Gaia’s judgment to be visited upon us all. -- Brendan O’Neill is the editor of <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/">spiked</a> and the author of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=0340955651">Can I Recycle My Granny? And 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTRjODFlYmI3Y2M2ZjIxMWZmY2U5NDBkODQ2NDQ5OTY= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:00:30 -0400 The Lobbyist Ban -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTkwNDY1MmNjZGE3ZjYwYTdmY2ZjMjdlNGExNjViNzI= <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN09271643">UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is coming to Congress</a>: <blockquote> UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 (Reuters) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Washington on Tuesday to lobby U.S. congressional leaders and government officials over next month's climate change summit in Copenhagen, U.N. officials said. The world body wants to clinch a deal at Copenhagen to set new greenhouse gas emissions goals but hopes are fading that a legally binding treaty among all U.N. members can be finalized at the Dec. 7-18 U.N. summit in the Danish capital. Delays in passage of a U.S. climate bill are one of the factors being blamed. A draft cleared a key U.S. Senate panel last Thursday but the legislation is not expected to go through the full Senate before Copenhagen. Ban's climate adviser Janos Pasztor said the secretary-general would talk to senators and White House staff. "He will discuss how governments around the world are approaching the climate negotiations and what these governments expect in terms of the role of the United States," Pasztor told reporters. Although top U.N. climate officials have said a final deal may have to be negotiated in post-Copenhagen talks that could go on for a year, Ban has continued to say he expects the summit to be a success. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTkwNDY1MmNjZGE3ZjYwYTdmY2ZjMjdlNGExNjViNzI= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:45:20 -0400 The Cloudy Future for Climate Alarmism -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGYzZTA5YWE3MDdkMTdkMmM1MTQxNmY1NmFlMTdiMjk= Paul Mushine writes in today's New Jersey Star Ledger: <blockquote> President Obama’s headed to Copenhagen next month to talk climate change. Al Gore’s headed toward profits that could make him the world’s first "carbon billionaire." But where’s global temperature headed? Nowhere, it seems. The most reliable readings of the Earth’s temperature show that it peaked back in 1998. This was not widely reported in America, where the state of science reporting is dismal. But over in England, where they take that sort of thing more seriously, the British Broadcasting Corp. created quite a stir with an article headlined "What Happened to Global Warming?" In it, BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson gave a summary of the problems facing the alarmists: "For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise." Hudson went on to cite numerous scientists skeptical of the theory of anthropogenic global warming. But perhaps the most damning observation came from a scientist who supports the theory. Mojib Latif is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group that set the panic off with its 1996 report on global warming. According to Hudson, Latif concedes "that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years." Hmmm. Ten to 20 years is what I would call "the near future." Didn’t a certain former vice president of the United States win a Nobel Prize by pushing a movie that told us that the melting of the polar ice would cause sea levels to rise by up to 20 feet "in the near future?" </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/11/clouds_hang_over_the_global-wa.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGYzZTA5YWE3MDdkMTdkMmM1MTQxNmY1NmFlMTdiMjk= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:30:53 -0400 Britain Going Nuclear -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc0YzRkOWIxYTVjYWQyM2ZiMzZhNzIyYTRjMzA2Yzc= <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33821302/ns/world_news-washington_post/">Washington Post</a>: <blockquote> LONDON -- The British government unveiled plans Monday to launch one of the world's most ambitious expansions of nuclear-power capacity, calling for the construction of 10 plants to help meet surging energy demands in the era of global warming. After years of resistance to construction of nuclear-power plants, the British plan underscored how nations around the world are scrambling to find ways to generate more energy while slashing the emissions that cause climate change. To do that, nations including the United States are considering more reliance on nuclear power, which, while generating radioactive waste, produces almost no carbon emissions. To keep the lights on in Britain while meeting strict goals to slash emissions, the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown identified 10 sites in England and Wales for new nuclear plants, with the first expected to come online by 2018. Many of the plants are envisioned to replace aging plants that are set to be decommissioned in coming years and are a vestige of a period of accelerated nuclear construction from the 1950s to 1980s. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc0YzRkOWIxYTVjYWQyM2ZiMzZhNzIyYTRjMzA2Yzc= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:15:42 -0400 The Next Environmental Menace -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWQ0YmRkNDhmNzNiNmRmN2ZiN2FlY2Y0MzExNTBmNTc= <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/11/04/littering.golf.balls/index.html">Golf balls</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWQ0YmRkNDhmNzNiNmRmN2ZiN2FlY2Y0MzExNTBmNTc= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:30:43 -0400 Brrrrrrrrr -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmFhNzFiY2I3MDIwOWY1NjEzZjVhMTQzY2Q0YTVmYzI= <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=10&submitted=Get+Report">NOAA</a>: <ul> <li class="mainsection">Temperature Highlights - October</li> <li class="main">The average <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=110-00">October</a> temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.</li> <li>For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/dwm/index.php?map=sfc&begmonth=10&begday=1&begyear=2009&endmonth=10&endday=31&endyear=2009&submitted=Animate+Selection">a series of cold fronts</a>. Temperatures were <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Regionaltrank&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">below normal</a> in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.</li> <li class="main"><a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Statewidetrank&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">Statewide temperatures</a> coincided with the regional values as all but six states had below normal temperatures. <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">Oklahoma</a> had its coolest October on record and ten other states had their top five coolest such months. </li> <li><a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">Florida </a>was the only state to have an above normal temperature average in October. It was the sixth consecutive month that the Florida's temperature was above normal, resulting in the <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">third warmest </a>such period (May-October). </li> <li>The three-month period (August-October) was the coolest on record for three states: <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=025-00">Nebraska</a>, <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=014-00">Kansas</a>, and <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=034-00">Oklahoma</a>. Five other states had top five cool periods: <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif%20&id=023-00">Missouri (2nd)</a>, <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif%20&id=013-00">Iowa (3rd) </a>, <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=003-00">Arkansas (5th) </a>, <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=011-00">Illinois (5th) </a>and <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=039-00">South Dakota (5th) </a>. Every <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Divisionaltrank&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">climate division</a> in Kansas (nine) and Nebraska (eight) recorded a record cool such period. </li> <li>For the year-to-date (January - October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=01&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=110-00">43rd warmest</a>. No <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Statewidetrank&byear=2009&bmonth=01&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">state </a>had a top or bottom ten temperature value for this period. </li>  <li class="mainsection">Precipitation Highlights - October</li> <li class="main">The U.S. recorded its <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=110-00">wettest October</a> in the 115-year period of record. The nationwide precipitation of 4.15 inches was nearly double the long-term average of 2.11 inches. </li> <li><a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Regionalprank&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">Regionally</a>, two of the nation's nine climate regions (the <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=102-00">East North Central</a> and <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=106-00">South</a>) saw their wettest October. The <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=103-00">Central</a> region had its second wettest October, while the <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=105-00">West North Central</a> had its fourth wettest. This was the first month since December 2007 that no region had below normal precipitation. </li> <li class="main">Three states (<a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=013-00">Iowa</a>, <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=003-00">Arkansas</a>, and <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=10&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=016-00">Louisiana</a>) saw their record wettest October. <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Statewideprank&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">Fourteen other states </a>had precipitation readings ranking in their top five category. Only three states (Florida, Utah, and Arizona) saw below normal precipitation. </li> <li>Arkansas continued its remarkable run of wetness in 2009. The state has seen four months with top three precipitation ranks this year (May, 1st wettest; July, 3rd wettest; September, 2nd wettest; October, 1st wettest). As a result, the state's <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=01&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=003-00">year-to-date</a> average is the wettest in 115 years of record keeping. This contrasted with persistent dryness in <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries01&byear=2009&bmonth=01&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif&id=002-00">Arizona</a>, which saw its second-driest year-to-date period. </li> <li>The three-month (August-October) rainfall was record-setting for many <a class="rollover" href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=Divisionalprank&byear=2009&bmonth=08&year=2009&month=10&ext=gif">adjacent divisions </a>within Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. It is noteworthy that this occurred despite only one tropical cyclone (<a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=tropical-cyclones&year=2009&month=8&submitted=Get+Report#claudette">Claudette</a>, in August) making landfall in the region during this period. </li> <li>By the end of October, moderate-to-exceptional drought covered 12 percent of the contiguous United States, the second-smallest drought footprint of the decade, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. Major drought episodes in California and South Texas improved significantly. Drought conditions emerged across much of Arizona.</li> <li>About 45 percent of the contiguous United States had moderately-to-extremely wet conditions at the end of October, according to the Palmer Index (a well-known index that measures both drought intensity and wet spell intensity). This is the largest such footprint since February 2005.</li> <li class="mainsection">Other Items of Note</li> <li>According to the NOAA Midwest Regional Climate Center in Champaign, Illinois, more than half of the long-term stations in the Midwest had one of their five wettest Octobers on record, with one out of five observing its wettest. Combined with the cold, this delayed crop planting and stunted crop maturity. Corn development was as much as four weeks behind in places, and the soybean harvest was well behind schedule throughout the region.</li> <li>Two major snow storms hit the contiguous United States during October. The first struck the Upper Midwest October 9th through 13th, while the second blanketed the western Plains States October 27th through 30th. By month's end, 13.6 percent of the nation was under snow cover, according to NOAA's National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.</li> <li>Unusually cold and wet conditions across the middle of the country led to several snowfall records. Cheyenne, Wyoming observed 28 inches of snow during October, making this the city's snowiest October on record. North Platte, Nebraska recorded 30.3 inches of snowfall, making October 2009 the snowiest month of all months on record for the city. The previous record was 27.8 inches, in March 1912.</li> <li>October, like September, saw below-normal fire activity in all respects. A total of 3,207 fires burned about 158,000 acres in October, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center. Each of these values is below this decade's average for October. </li> </ul> <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=10&submitted=Get+Report"></a> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmFhNzFiY2I3MDIwOWY1NjEzZjVhMTQzY2Q0YTVmYzI= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:00:55 -0400 Warm Profiteer -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNiMDI0OTBhNmZlYjhmM2I4ZWMyOTVjM2VlY2RkNDc= A nugget from Tom Sowell's random thoughts <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M2ZjU0YWI1YzQzY2E5NDcxOGJmZjRiOWJlMmM1Mzk=">today</a>: <blockquote> My first column, more than 30 years ago, was titled “The Profits of Doom.” Recent news stories about the millions of dollars that Al Gore has made out of his “global warming” hysteria suggest that some things haven’t changed much in three decades. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNiMDI0OTBhNmZlYjhmM2I4ZWMyOTVjM2VlY2RkNDc= Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:00:12 -0400 PETA vs. Al Gore -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWMxNTUwM2E1NzlkNjE5MjJhMTY1NTQ2MDhlOTNiODU= Grab some popcorn and enjoy: <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="350" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> <param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cjl8JP0UWlA&feature" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cjl8JP0UWlA&feature"></embed> </object> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWMxNTUwM2E1NzlkNjE5MjJhMTY1NTQ2MDhlOTNiODU= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:15:03 -0400 Cash-for-Clunkers = Stimulus for Japan -- By: Henry Payne webmaster@nationalreview.com (Henry Payne) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTQwOTQ3NzljZDk5MzdiZTRlNzRiMzRhZmI0YWRjMWI= Clunkers greens foreign competitors’ bottom line (HP) Congress continues to pat itself on the back for its clunkers “stimulus,” hoping that no one notices the details. The latest embarrassment: Having spent $80 billion in taxpayer money to bail out Detroit, federal data <a href="http://detnews.com/article/20091109/AUTO01/911090361/">confirms</a> that Congress designed a clunkers taxpayer subsidy that boosted the sales of foreign cars. The disconnect comes from placing green religion over business sense. Were Congress really interested in helping domestic car companies, they would have made the clunkers rebate available to all vehicles, not just fuel-efficient ones (new cars had to get at least 22 mpg to qualify for the $4,500 rebate; trucks 18 mpg). After all, struggling Chrysler’s most competitive products are trucks, not small sedans. But determined to force its green morality on Americans, Congress punished domestic automakers by walling off their more profitable large vehicles from buyers. The result? Buyers flocked to the small cars Asian manufacturers do best. For example, according to NHTSA, when buyers traded in a Detroit-built “clunker,” 58 percent bought a new foreign car. When customers traded in a foreign car, by contrast, only 14 percent bought a Big Three vehicle. Congress is all for green, even if its means putting our Detroit investment further in the red. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTQwOTQ3NzljZDk5MzdiZTRlNzRiMzRhZmI0YWRjMWI= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:30:56 -0400 Gaia Is Great! Gaia Is Great! -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjAxNTAwNWM1MzM5ODRkOGU0MzgyMTUwNjRlNzJjZDc= <a href="http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/greenview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14838303&fsrc=nwl">The Economist</a> updates <a href=" http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWU2NWQ3NjJhNGYwYWI5YjUzZjYxMDdkYTI4NTJjYzU=">this</a> Chris Horner post: <blockquote> <h3>Environmentalism is given the same weight as religion in British employment laws</h3> “A BELIEF in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.” Those were the words of an English High Court judge, Mr Justice Burton, on November 3rd as he ruled that green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions. A person’s right to believe in anthropogenic climate change, and not be hounded out of his job because of it, is now enshrined in law. The case on which the judge ruled was that of Tim Nicholson, who used to be “head of sustainability” for a residential-property firm called Grainger. Mr Nicholson was relieved of his duties at Grainger in July 2008 and in March of this year was told by a tribunal that he could pursue an unfair-dismissal case, believing, as he did, that he had been sacked on the grounds of his eco-minded beliefs. Mr Nicholson claims, for example, that other executives stymied his attempts to devise a carbon-management system for the firm by failing to give him the necessary data. He also accused Rupert Dickinson, the firm’s chief executive, of “contempt” for his green views. Mr Dickinson, for example, made an employee fly from London to Ireland to bring him a BlackBerry that he had left behind. </blockquote> So when can we expect "denier" to be replaced by "infidel"? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjAxNTAwNWM1MzM5ODRkOGU0MzgyMTUwNjRlNzJjZDc= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:00:15 -0400 Chrysler Pulls Plug on Electrics -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDQ2ZWFiODNmNjdhMjAyMTMxZDZiOGFiOTEzYmU2NmE= <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573126,00.html?test=latestnews">Fox News</a>: <blockquote> Chrysler has disbanded a team of engineers dedicated to rushing a range of electric vehicles to showrooms and dropped ambitious sales targets for battery-powered cars set as it was sliding toward bankruptcy and seeking government aid. The move by Fiat SpA marks a major reversal for Chrysler, which had used its electric car program as part of the case for a $12.5 billion federal aid package. As late as August, Chrysler took $70 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a test fleet of 220 hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, vehicles now scrapped in the sweeping turnaround plan for Chrysler announced this week by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. </blockquote> Can the Chevy Volt be far behind? <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDQ2ZWFiODNmNjdhMjAyMTMxZDZiOGFiOTEzYmU2NmE= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:15:46 -0400 Buy American Products of Suspect Value -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWUwY2QzMWUyMzhjYTc0ZTAzMTMwYTFmNDhiMjYyMDc= <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/09/schumer-calls-review-millions-stimulus-funds-aid-foreign-firms/">Chuck Schumer, green-tech protectionist</a>: <blockquote> U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer on Monday called for a "comprehensive" review of all renewable energy projects seeking funding from the economic stimulus package, following reports that $849 million in U.S. grants have gone to foreign wind companies in the past two months alone. The New York Democrat first intervened last week, writing a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu urging him to deny stimulus funding to a Texas wind farm that would rely on wind turbines made in China. The $1.5 billion project would create up to 3,000 jobs in China but according to one report only 330 jobs in the United States, most of which would be temporary. Schumer spokesman Josh Vlasto told FoxNews.com that the senator is calling for a review of "all pending green energy projects" seeking stimulus funds to ensure they create jobs in the United States. Schumer said in a statement Monday that the United States should not be giving China a "head start" in the quest for alternative sources of energy. "Our domestic clean-energy sector has the potential to emerge as a global leader and it is counterproductive to invest U.S. stimulus funds in Chinese companies rather than our own," Schumer said. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWUwY2QzMWUyMzhjYTc0ZTAzMTMwYTFmNDhiMjYyMDc= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:00:49 -0400 When the Real Wall Came Tumbling Down -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODUxM2E1OTVhNjZiM2MzNTUyNGJiOWZkNjUwMTY0NDg= Apropos of <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmM2Y2M3MmZlNTk5MzFhYjBjNGIyNTFhZDAxZGY1MTI=">my post</a> last week about Chancellor Merkel’s unseemly appeal before a joint session of Congress, calling on us to tear down the metaphorical wall holding us back from committing economic suicide and institutionalizing socialism here where all other attempts have (largely) failed, please note CEI’s effort celebrating today’s 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. <blockquote> Today, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, CEI offers a video telling the story of the day that liberty triumphed over the death and oppression wrought by Communism. I hope you will post it, write about it, or send it around, especially for those among us who are too young to remember it first-hand. Also, let me know what you think of our video effort to convey this crucial story in a few brief minutes. View the <a href="http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=7724602%26msgid=214888%26act=2ZYN%26c=174876%26admin=0%26destination=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253D6bw5pFiTeb0" target="_blank">video</a> on CEI's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ceidotorg">YouTube channel</a>.) Read about the significance of this Berlin Wall anniversary -- "one of the greatest in the history of human freedom" -- in an <a href="http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=7724602%26msgid=214888%26act=2ZYN%26c=174876%26admin=0%26destination=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.openmarket.org%252F2009%252F11%252F09%252F21797%252F" target="_blank">OpenMarket.org note by CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr</a>. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODUxM2E1OTVhNjZiM2MzNTUyNGJiOWZkNjUwMTY0NDg= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:18 -0400 Independently Inaccurate -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjdjMGZmMjY4OTJlOWQwNDRkZDYzNWEzODk1YjUxM2Q= The Independent has a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/bureaucrats-clash-on-shape-of-climate-deal-1817259.html">piece</a> illustrating why readers have lost faith in it as a news source, called "Bureaucrats clash on shape of climate deal." It opens with the following. <blockquote> Bureaucratic detail should be the last thing that prevents an agreement to save the planet from climate change. After all, the outline of the issue is simple: every government in the world now accepts that the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted from human sources will lead to a disastrous overheating of the atmosphere, if it is not checked (emphasis added). </blockquote> While being frivolous on its face for cocktail-party substance -- regurgitating received if unsupportable wisdom (e.g., Kyoto guarantees quantified emission cuts by Party nations, it is "binding," Bush "withdrew" the U.S. from the never-joined Kyoto when his administration changed U.S. policy) -- the article also repeats the mantra that "the imperative is clear, and recognised by all," citing two 2007 political statements as substantiation. This reads an awful lot like an effort to convince oneself. For post-2007 clarity, maybe this writer for the fading Indy -- a lad who, incidentally, cobbled together a story ostensibly premised on discarded (and dog-offal-smeared) paper <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjZkYTQ0MWFjOGExZDgxOWRhMzFmNjMwMDVhYzg4YTQ=">stolen from my trash</a> by Greenpeace -- should read <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWFhYzMwNzZlYTVkYjUzZDk2YjVhMzI2MzVlY2Y2MTA=">Planet Gore</a> more often. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjdjMGZmMjY4OTJlOWQwNDRkZDYzNWEzODk1YjUxM2Q= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:00:18 -0400 Go Nuclear -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzMxNWQxNmI2YzVkMGUzMzBlMDY0NzkxY2ViNWMzNTk= Dr. Aris Candris, the CEO of Westinghouse Electric, writes in today's WSJ: <blockquote> As America climbs out of one of its worst recessions in decades, we must keep in mind that long-term economic growth requires an abundant, affordable supply of electricity. By 2030, electricity demand in the U.S. is expected to grow by 21% from its current level, according to the U.S. Energy Administration. To meet our needs we have several options. One is to increase our dependence on fossil energy sources. Unfortunately, this will only add to the environmental burden caused by burning carbon-based fuels. Another option, the Obama administration's goal, is to increase the supply of energy sources that reduce the country's carbon footprint. These sources include solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and geothermal energy, as well as new domestic sources of natural gas, which burns cleaner than oil or coal. Toward that end, the proposed Senate climate-change bill, sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and John Kerry (D., Mass.), provides incentives to electric companies to use energy sources that reduce carbon emissions. The bill also expands federal loan guarantees to support the financing of new nuclear plant projects. These loan guarantees are crucial for providing the financial security that's needed to build advanced nuclear energy plants. These new plants will promote energy independence, improve our country's economic competitiveness, and help provide a cleaner environment for future generations. To be sure, the U.S needs to embrace all forms of renewable and sustainable energy technologies whenever possible. But the simple, unavoidable truth is that all renewable energy sources produce only a small percentage of our total electricity output. Wind and solar combined, for example, account for less than 5% of the total U.S. electricity supply. It is doubtful that they can be scaled up to a degree that would make a significant impact on rising electricity demand over the short or intermediate term. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489702243465472.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzMxNWQxNmI2YzVkMGUzMzBlMDY0NzkxY2ViNWMzNTk= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:30:19 -0400 We Need a Climate Change Agreement Clean Water -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTk3NGQ3Y2YwMmRjMzk1YWUwZDI0NzJkOWVlZjc1ODY= The latest in Bjørn Lomborg's series on how "ordinary people view global warming" in today's <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574523493799731188.html">Wall Street Journal</a>. An excerpt: <blockquote> In the developed world, when we consider how best to help Bangladesh, our minds quickly turn to policies that would reduce the amount of carbon emissions to lessen the risk that global warming will lead to rising sea levels over the next 50 or 100 years. Mrs. Begum's biggest challenge is not what the sea level may do in five or 10 decades. She has a more modest request: "It would be a heaven's gift if a proper drainage system could be arranged in this area where all the drains are covered and do not overflow." Getting basic sanitation and safe drinking water to the three billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion a year. By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 trillion a year by 2100. These cuts will do nothing to increase the number of people with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Cutting carbon emissions will likely increase water scarcity, because global warming is expected to increase average rainfall levels around the world. For Mrs. Begum, the choice is simple. After global warming was explained to her, she said: "When my kids haven't got enough to eat, I don't think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about." One of Bangladesh's most vulnerable citizens, Mrs. Begum has lost faith in the media and politicians. "So many people like you have come and interviewed us. I have not seen any improvement in our conditions," she said. It is time the developed world started listening. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTk3NGQ3Y2YwMmRjMzk1YWUwZDI0NzJkOWVlZjc1ODY= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:00:12 -0400 Who Knew? -- By: Steve Hayward webmaster@nationalreview.com (Steve Hayward) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGY0MzlmMmRjZTQxZjgxYmU5ZDc5YjYzMDNiNmJmNTY= <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2314229-p2.html">That recycled paper might not be all that "green"?</a> Well, I knew, as did most market-oriented environmentalists -- but saying so back in the 1990s got you excommunicated from the green church. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGY0MzlmMmRjZTQxZjgxYmU5ZDc5YjYzMDNiNmJmNTY= Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:30:47 -0400 About Those Bike-Sharing Programs to Save the Planet -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmQ3NjY1YTg0NjMxZTQ1NjU5ZTI4YzFiZDY4OWY0YzA= <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/11/07/bikes_bright_idea_vs_human_nature/">The Boston Globe editors write</a>: <blockquote> When officials in Paris arranged to have 20,000 pricey bicycles placed at bike-sharing stations around the city, they were conducting an experiment both on a transportation system and on human nature. In two years, more than 80 percent of the bikes have been damaged or stolen. Some of the culprits, predictably, are thieves who see the $1,000 bikes as easy targets, but many others are disaffected youths who see an opportunity for vandalism. The lesson, it seems, is that successful bike-sharing depends upon residents being happier than many Parisians actually are. </blockquote> I thought the French led the world in that most important of metrics, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/business/global/15gdp.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1">Gross Domestic Happiness</a>? Anyway, you'd think this would end any discussion about American cities trying such a program. Think again: <blockquote> Still, that cautionary tale shouldn’t stop other cities from pushing forward with similar programs, as Boston hopes to do next summer. Nicole Freedman, the Menino administration’s director of bicycle programs, notes that the overall theft rate is higher in Paris than in Boston, and she takes heart in a 3 percent loss rate in Montreal. It’s entirely possible that, beneath a stereotypically dour exterior, Bostonians are more at peace with life than residents of supposedly carefree Paris. In any case, the likelihood that some bikes will go missing doesn’t alter the benefits of experimenting with a new form of transportation. </blockquote> Do the editors of the Globe not have calculators? 20,000 bikes at $1,000 a pop is a $20 million investment. According to their editorial, Paris lost $16,000,000 of their investment. Can Boston really afford this type of experiment? I bet they're glad those 20,000 bikes weren't out on the street when the Yankees wrapped up the Series. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmQ3NjY1YTg0NjMxZTQ1NjU5ZTI4YzFiZDY4OWY0YzA= Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:00:18 -0400 An Obama-Enron Energy Tax Compromise? -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjY5ZWU4ODRlYzlhNWY1NDg2MTVhNTI3ZmM5ODZhM2E= Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman and the Chamber of Commerce walk into a bar . . . <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Kerry-and-Graham-whip-up-compromise-on-global-warming-8485606-69184852.html">Washington Examiner</a>: <blockquote> Even as a Senate global-warming bill remained in limbo with Democrats refusing to delay a committee vote until an economic analysis was completed, hopes rose for a potential bipartisan compromise. The Senate, meanwhile, appears to be moving away from the bill, authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., which would require a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and would have the government sell the right to emit carbon dioxide. Even as Boxer conducted an unusual one-sided hearing on her bill in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Kerry, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., held a news conference to announce they are working on a compromise that might attract GOP votes and has earned a tentative endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Boxer supports this separate effort and made note of it during the hearing. She said the chamber's endorsement was "a game changer." Kerry, Lieberman and Graham released few details about the new bill, but said it would include a cap and trade proposal. They said it would also address increasing nuclear energy, more drilling and clean coal technology, all initiatives that are high on the wish list of Republicans willing to work on a climate change compromise. Kerry said he and Graham have already had meetings about the new proposal with White House officials, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjY5ZWU4ODRlYzlhNWY1NDg2MTVhNTI3ZmM5ODZhM2E= Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:30:34 -0400 Obama, Car-Market Clairvoyant -- By: Henry Payne webmaster@nationalreview.com (Henry Payne) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWRhNzcwNDc2YzFlOGJhMTAwNzg1ZDAzNjQ1YTAwZTU= Detroit -- In rolling out its plan for the future of Chrysler on Wednesday, Fiat executives dutifully stressed that the “New Chrysler” would be more fuel efficient -- hailing the tiny, 40 mpg, Euro-transplant Fiat 500 as a marquee car. After all, a precondition for Fiat’s no-money-down takeover of the ailing automaker was that it conform to President Obama’s prophecy for the auto industry. “Fiat has demonstrated that it can build the clean, fuel-efficient cars that are the future of the industry,” <a href="http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:8wLnqqLRXgYJ:scoop.chrysler.com/13500/chrysler/president-obamas-remarks-regarding-chrysler%E2%80%99s-restructuring/+obama+and+chrysler+and+fiat+and+fuel-efficient+car&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">announced</a> the soothsayer-in-chief last April, upon handing Chrysler’s keys to the Italians. Coincidentally, October sales figures came out the same day this week that Fiat laid out its Chrysler plan, and greens were cheered by the fact that hybrid sales climbed to 2.9 percent of market share -- nearly where they were <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzlhMWIzZDFiNjE3YmUyZWUxNzZkMzFmZmVjYTBlYTk=">two summers ago</a> when gas prices hit $4 a gallon. But a closer look at the numbers raises more questions about whether more expensive hybrids and diesels will ever be more than a niche U.S. market -- rather than the norm predicted by the president (a prediction mandated by his 35.5 mpg requirements by 2015). Dozens of new hybrid entries have flooded the market in the last two years, but as the Toyota Prius goes -- so goes the hybrid market. The Prius (sales up 14 percent last month) still dominates the sector with a 55 percent market share. Both Honda (the Insight) and Ford (Fusion Hybrid) have brought impressive entries to market this year, wallpapering the airwaves with green marketing. Both products have been a disappointment. The Prius outsells the Insight by an 8:1 margin. “Honda’s Insight is a sales dud,” <a href="http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/hybrid-and-vw-diesel-sales-analysis-prius-outsells-insight-8-to-1-jetta-tdi-4-to-1/">writes</a> Paul Niedermeyer of Green Car Congress, “only modestly improving on last year’s Civic hybrid numbers. The Civic Hybrid (down 85 percent) is becoming irrelevant.” For its part, the Fusion Hybrid -- targeted at Toyota’s mid-size Camry Hybrid -- only seems to be stealing Camry sales rather than expanding the market. Camry Hybrid sales were down a staggering 50 percent in October. Furthermore, the Fusion seems to be stealing from its own nest as its SUV cousin -- the Ford Escape Hybrid -- saw sales drop 53 percent. All of this continues to raise “the question as to whether Ford’s hybrid program is anything other than a PR/EPA/Govt. fleet sales gambit, with volumes limited purposely because Ford’s hybrid costs likely exceed incremental revenue,” concludes Niedermeyere. It also raises the question as to whether President Obama has any idea what he’s talking about. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWRhNzcwNDc2YzFlOGJhMTAwNzg1ZDAzNjQ1YTAwZTU= Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:00:25 -0400 An Ill Wind -- By: Drew Thornley webmaster@nationalreview.com (Drew Thornley) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yzc5OTc0MzJjNjZhOTEwMDMwZWUxMmRlY2EyZjVmZmM= Apparently, I'm not the only one who has <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDI4MzFhNGI0YzNmYzQ2MmUzYWE3NGUzNGVjYzcyMzI=">qualms</a> about a plan to pay $1.5 billion for Chinese wind turbines to go up in West Texas. Sen. Chuck Schumer <a href="http://www.newsrunner.com/display-article/?eUrl=http%3A%2F%2Frochesterhomepage.net%2Fcontent%2Ffulltext%2F%3Fcid%3D132512&eSrc=WROC+8+-+Rochester+NY&eTitle=Texas+Wind+Farm+Leaves+Sen.+Schumer+Steamed">isn't a happy camper</a>. <a href="https://mail.nationalreview.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=4f15ce10a7214ed2ba053b9d503471a7&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.newsrunner.com%2fdisplay-article%2f%3feUrl%3dhttp%253A%252F%252Frochesterhomepage.net%252Fcontent%252Ffulltext%252F%253Fcid%253D132512%26eSrc%3dWROC%2b8%2b-%2bRochester%2bNY%26eTitle%3dTexas%2bWind%2bFarm%2bLeaves%2bSen.%2bSchumer%2bSteamed" target="_blank"></a> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yzc5OTc0MzJjNjZhOTEwMDMwZWUxMmRlY2EyZjVmZmM= Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:46 -0400 Op-Ed of the Day -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjlkMTkwZjgyYzM5MzUxNmM4OGExNDkwZjA3NjIyY2E= Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, writes in today's Washington Post: <blockquote> Lower-carbon future? Try natural gas. The public debate on climate change can seem beguilingly simple: alternative fuels good; fossil fuels bad. If we burn less of the latter and use more of the former, the argument goes, we will be well on our way to a lower-carbon future. But shaping our energy future will be more complex than simply using less fossil fuel and more alternatives. Getting to a lower-carbon world while also providing the increasing energy needed to power a growing economy requires a more nuanced approach. Renewable energy sources -- wind, solar, biofuels -- have an important role, and BP, the energy company I head, is investing significantly in all. Still, the shift to alternatives can't happen overnight. Global energy needs and the sheer scale of our business make this impossible. The issue, then, is not a choice between fossil fuels and alternatives but, rather, what combination can achieve the fastest carbon reduction at the lowest possible cost using available technology? Answering that question requires recognizing that not all fossil fuels are created environmentally equal. We can reduce carbon emissions significantly if we burn cleaner, less-carbon-intensive fossil fuels while also moving in a deliberate and affordable way toward alternatives and increased efficiency. Fortunately, there is a feasible path toward this goal. Seriously tackling carbon dioxide levels over the next two decades will require addressing the use of electricity -- and coal in particular. Electricity generation produces 41 percent of the CO2 the United States emits, the largest single source. Coal generates half of all U.S. electricity, but 80 percent of the resulting carbon. Coal has to be cleaned up or replaced. Is there a path to cleaner coal? In theory, yes: It's called carbon capture and storage (CCS), which essentially involves reverse-engineering a gas field, putting the carbon back in the ground rather than taking it out. (BP is a major investor in demonstration projects to test CCS at scale.) With government support, large-scale implementation of CCS could be achievable by roughly 2020. But even then, substantial costs will be associated with its use. What about nuclear power? All-out nuclearization, a la France, would be costly and difficult to achieve in the United States, and the environmental payoff would be slow. I don't think we can afford to wait. Until renewables gain a sizable share of the power sector, CCS becomes available, and nuclear energy ramps up, the only realistic option is increasing use of natural gas. Gas is far and away the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, generating at least 50 percent less carbon per kilowatt hour than coal, and almost zero sulfur oxides, mercury and particulate ash. And because gas-fired power stations can be easily switched on and off (unlike those fired by coal), it is the ideal complement to intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/05/AR2009110504329_pf.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjlkMTkwZjgyYzM5MzUxNmM4OGExNDkwZjA3NjIyY2E= Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:15:17 -0400 Headline of the Day -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWRmMzM4ODkyOTE1Zjc3NTZhMzAwMzk4NGMzNDczODg= Times Online: <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6905356.ece">All hope is lost for Copenhagen climate treaty, British officials say</a> An excerpt: <blockquote> A world treaty on climate change will be delayed by up to a year and is likely to be watered down because countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions are refusing to commit to legally binding reductions. British officials preparing for next month’s UN summit in Copenhagen said the best that could be hoped for was that national leaders would make “political agreements” on emission cuts and payments to help poor countries to adapt to climate change. These agreements would be non-binding, however, and could later be revised or rescinded by national parliaments. At pre-summit talks in Barcelona, the officials said the final agreement would not emerge until at least six months after the Copenhagen summit, which ends on December 17. They said they hoped another meeting would be convened by next December to allow leaders to sign the treaty. The admission that no treaty will be signed at Copenhagen marks the failure of the process agreed at a UN meeting in Bali in December 2007, when industrialised countries agreed to deliver a binding climate-change agreement within two years. The delay has angered developing countries, which say they are already suffering from man-made climate change. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWRmMzM4ODkyOTE1Zjc3NTZhMzAwMzk4NGMzNDczODg= Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:17 -0400 Conservatism and Conservation -- By: Edward John Craig webmaster@nationalreview.com (Edward John Craig) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2E4M2E2MTAyNjRhYTI0MzdmMjg1NWI3YzhlODk4Y2E= Historian Paul Johnson, writing in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/opinions-paul-johnson-current-events.html">Forbes</a>: <blockquote> People say that the election of Barack Obama and his pursuit of radical measures -- from state-run health care to unilateral nuclear disarmament -- marks the end of American conservatism. One Jeremiah, Sam Tanenhaus, has produced a predictable book, The Death of Conservatism. I do not sympathize with such defeatism. To begin with, conservatism is protean. One kind was neatly summed up by that bluff old Victorian the Duke of Cambridge: "It is said I am against change. I am not against change. I am in favor of change in the right circumstances. And those circumstances are when it can no longer be resisted." Then there are reactionaries. Margaret Thatcher is a good example. She did not agree with Winston Churchill's principle that Labour's nationalization program, introduced in the postwar period of 1945-51, could not be reversed. She simply reversed the program, privatizing British Airways, steel, water, electricity, gas and other industries. There are also romantic conservatives. These are the intellectual descendants of Edmund Burke, who see their views as creative and imaginative. They are quite happy to embark on change if it has the positive purpose of underpinning the security and stability of society. The outstanding recent American example of this is William F. Buckley, who left behind a school of his own, as well as his magazine, National Review. A fourth category is made up of economists, ranging from Milton Friedman to Friedrich Hayek, who identify conservatism with capitalism. They cannot be opposed to change as such, for the chief source of change is capitalism itself -- and never more so than today. The birth of industrial capitalism in the late 18th century was the biggest single upheaval in history. Moreover, it was merely the first in a series of technological transformations that continue at an accelerating pace. One has only to list these first four varieties of conservatism to realize that there is no possibility of its death. The instinct to resist change, to recover the past or to romanticize it are part of human nature and will always find political expression. Capitalism is merely a term for the investment of money in wealth creation. Conservatism, indeed, is so protean that one of its most powerful expressions is now found with the radical left. The noisiest single lobby in the world today is the Climate Change/Global Warming/Green alliance, of which the supposedly liberal President Obama is an enthusiastic member and which has the support of left-wing ideologues all over the world. This is essentially a reactionary movement, for its aim is to confine and even reverse capitalism, returning to a precapitalist arcadia in which woods and forests expand, the sea is no longer harvested, energy is strictly rationed and controls on human activity, especially wealth and job creation, are universal. It's no accident that this movement began as "conservation," an old form of resistance to change, and got its first impetus from the publication of Rachel Carson's romantic book The Sea Around Us. This form of conservatism has a new order of priorities, in which "preserving the planet" comes before the interests of mankind. Indeed, many of its supporters would prefer a pristine world in which Homo sapiens remained primitive or did not exist at all. Their faith, like most forms of political absolutism, is a substitute for genuine religion. In fact it is, in one sense, a crude form of religion -- pantheism, the worship of the Earth and all its manifestations. </blockquote> The rest <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/opinions-paul-johnson-current-events.html">here</a>. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2E4M2E2MTAyNjRhYTI0MzdmMjg1NWI3YzhlODk4Y2E= Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:30:04 -0400 Gamecock Gamesmanship, Uncloaked -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2RmMTYzNTkzMWIwY2VjZjdhOWY4NDgyOWI3YTk0MjM= Yesterday, at the Washington Times' day-long confab on climate policy -- featuring Sen. Inhofe, Rep. Markey and Czech Pres. Vaclav Klaus -- I was part of a panel which was asked by moderator Jeff Birnbaum to share our thoughts about Sens. Kerry and Graham's claim to be developing a way to "yes" on a climate bill, in apparent hopes of snatching defeat from the jaws of our looming victory. I responded in part by noting that Sen. Graham doesn't even seem to know what this loosey-goosey "framework" is, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11kerrygraham.html">gushing</a> as he does in the New York Times with Sen., Kerry about a critical component of it being something that sounds like cap-and-trade -- then having his Washington and South Carolina staffs, as well as outside consultants tell voters and the media that he doesn't support cap-and-trade, and never will. The latter comes from people who have called the office, and from locals -- as you'll read in the link below. Given such confusion, this sounds like something to stay away from until Sen. Graham either knows, or is willing to admit, what it is he's talking about. "<a href="http://cei.org/news-release/2009/11/04/us-chamber-caves-special-interests-energy-rationing-legislation">Pulling a Chamber</a>," and latching onto the vague notion (under immense pressure from large member companies and/or in desperate DC-style hope) that members of Congress won't snub you, even while on bended knee at fundraisers, for daring to be obstructionist -- others would call it having a survival instinct -- is of extremely curious appeal. Worse, however, the more the locals dig into <a href="http://www.fitsnews.com/2009/11/05/more-on-lindsey-grahams-left-leaning-bedfellows/">and tell us about</a> Graham's undertaking, the less there is to like. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2RmMTYzNTkzMWIwY2VjZjdhOWY4NDgyOWI3YTk0MjM= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:00:55 -0400 Expect a Boxer Rebellion -- By: Patrick J. Michaels webmaster@nationalreview.com (Patrick J. Michaels) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmVkZGJkZDE4MWNiNTJmYzY1Mzc1YTA4OTI3ODNiOGY= When it comes to climate change legislation, it's hard to figure what the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer could possibly be thinking. Less than 48 hours after citizens in New Jersey and Virginia turned around the last year's support of President Obama and his policies by a whopping 25 percent, Boxer rammed a cap-and-tax bill through her committee that is even worse than the one passed by the House last June. That House bill provoked the first angry "town hall" meetings -- everyone remembers them as being about health care, but they really started in response to climate legislation -- that culminated in Tuesday's landslides. How can Boxer not realize that forcing this bill out of committee is an even bigger slap against taxpayers and energy consumers? If anything, she has guaranteed the measure's failure on the Senate floor, where any chance that there will be 60 votes required to close debate has just evaporated. By doing this, she has taken the regulation of carbon dioxide away from the people's representatives and placed it in the hands of the unelected Environmental Protection Agency, which will be given its marching orders by climate czar Carol Browner. This will only incite more anger that government by the people is rapidly becoming government by czars. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmVkZGJkZDE4MWNiNTJmYzY1Mzc1YTA4OTI3ODNiOGY= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:45:27 -0400 Don't Believe the Hype -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ2ZTBhMTM2ZGY4NDM0YjhmMGE2ZTliNGYxNzRlMTQ= Only if the world leaders in Copenhagen are complete morons will they believe that today's committee vote <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE5A42WB20091105">means anything</a>: <blockquote> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A controversial climate change bill cleared its first hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, allowing President <a title="Full coverage of President Barack Obama" href="http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/barackobama">Barack Obama</a> to tout progress in the run-up to next month's global warming talks in Copenhagen. Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ignored a Republican boycott and used their majority to approve the legislation that would require U.S. industry to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. "I think this is a great signal for Copenhagen that there's a will to do what it takes to advance this issue," committee Chairman Barbara Boxer told reporters after her panel voted. The committee vote also came as international negotiators held a contentious climate change meeting in Barcelona, their final session before the Copenhagen summit starts December 7. But Democrats are likely to fall far short of their goal of passing legislation in the full Senate before Copenhagen as Boxer's bill lacks enough support for full approval. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ2ZTBhMTM2ZGY4NDM0YjhmMGE2ZTliNGYxNzRlMTQ= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00:58 -0400 Give Us $7B or We Kill the Trees -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjhlZGI4YTQ0ODRhYTAxZDc3ZDgzZjllOWJjYzFkY2Q= I think this is the sequel to the next Austin Powers movie . . . New Scientist: <a href="ECUADOR's unprecedented offer to accept payment for not extracting oil from beneath the Amazon rainforest is beginning to draw interest. The move could usher in a new way to both combat climate change and prevent damage to ecologically diverse and sensitive regions.">Pay us oil money, or the rainforest gets it</a> An excerpt: <blockquote> ECUADOR's unprecedented offer to accept payment for not extracting oil from beneath the Amazon rainforest is beginning to draw interest. The move could usher in a new way to both combat climate change and prevent damage to ecologically diverse and sensitive regions. More than two years ago, <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/WorldResources/yasuni-itt-initiative-presentation" target="nsarticle">Ecuador said it would abandon</a> plans for drilling in Yasuni National Park, one of the few pristine regions of Amazon rainforest remaining, if it was paid half of the $7 billion that it expected to earn from tapping the oilfield. "This was a major turning point in the 'drill, drill, drill' mentality," says Matt Finer, an ecologist with <a href="http://www.saveamericasforests.org/" target="nsarticle">Save America's Forests</a>, an environmental group based in Washington DC, which released its analysis of the initiative this week (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00587.x" target="nsarticle">Biotropica, DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00587.x</a>). <div class="quotebx bxbg"> <div class="quoteopen"> <div class="quoteclose"> <div class="quotebody lowlight" style="padding-left: 30px;">Ecuador said it would not drill if it was paid half of what it expected to earn from the oilfield</div> </div> </div> </div> No country has taken up Ecuador's offer so far, but Finer says there has been "increasing chatter" that Germany will pay about 20 per cent of the total. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjhlZGI4YTQ0ODRhYTAxZDc3ZDgzZjllOWJjYzFkY2Q= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:41 -0400 Down on the Farm -- By: William Tucker webmaster@nationalreview.com (William Tucker) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDc5MmI4MWIwYjk2NDcyZDFmZjgwZDE4NmQwY2Q2N2Q= To get an idea of the tomfoolery that lies ahead with Waxman-Markey/Kerry Boxer climate-change legislation, take a look at the “agricultural title” now being crafted by Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow. “Stabenow has been working for about 18 months on a farms and forests bill,” reports CQ Today. “It will probably be merged with broader climate change legislation that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and establish a market for trading government-issued pollution allowances.” Cap-and-trade in Europe has foundered since the trading of dubious “emissions credits” has eclipsed any serious effort in reducing carbon emissions. Western European countries have earned “credits” from closing antiquated industries in Eastern European or planting trees in Rwanda. There are even stories about factories built in China solely for the purpose of closing them down and selling the “emissions credits” to European nations. We may be about to see worse. Stabenow’s idea is to marry the interests of two of her constituents -- limping Rust Belt industries and ailing farmers -- into one big subsidy package. The farmers will earn emissions credits by not cutting down trees, not planting crops and maybe diapering cows. There is even talk of urban farming: “We have a lot of excess land in Detroit and Flint,” Stabenow told CQ Today. “We could develop farms and forestation that would be positive for the city.” “Stabenow envisions Michigan cashing in on an offset program,” says the report -- and who wouldn’t? “Depending upon how the program is structured, it could be cheaper for industrial polluters to purchase offsets than the government-issued emissions allowances.” With various government programs encouraging farmers both to grow and not grow crops and with climate legislation rewarding them for putting more land under cultivation and then taking it out again, the whole thing could turn into one vast pipeline of federal subsidies to Michigan and every other agricultural state. No wonder even skeptics such as Montana Democrat Max Baucus are starting to come around: <blockquote> Baucus said that developing a farm title with generous offset provisions for farmers may not, on its own, be enough to win his support for the bill. “But it’s important,” he said. “Everything helps.” </blockquote> So here’s a better idea. Why don’t we reward farmers not to produce the ethanol that now consumes 30 percent of the nation’s corn crop? Ethanol is doing absolutely nothing to reduce oil imports, probably loses energy as far as anyone can tell, drives up food prices, and actually increases carbon emissions by throwing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere that otherwise would have remained in the soil or the food chain for years or decades. So now we’d have a program that would pay farmers to stop causing environmental damage by allowing industries to escape carbon caps by encouraging farmers to put more land under cultivation where they would be paid not grow crops . . . well, we’ll let Senator Stabenow figure it all out. <div>-- William Tucker is author of <a href="http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/">Terrestrial Energy:</a><a href="http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/"> How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey</a>. </div> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDc5MmI4MWIwYjk2NDcyZDFmZjgwZDE4NmQwY2Q2N2Q= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:12 -0400 The Scoundrel's False Refuge of 'Certainty' -- By: Chris Horner webmaster@nationalreview.com (Chris Horner) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YThhMTVkNTdiMGU0MzgwZGU4ZWMzNGIyZDdjZmM5ODI= I have a <a href="http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2538">piece</a> in Energy Tribune that I decided to post after encountering a particular energy lobbyist who, like many, has spent too much time in Washington while at the same time seeming to have just ambled out of the Greyhound station on First Street. It is subtly titled, "The Four Horsemen of Cap-and-Trade defeatism: There's only one 'Certainty.'" Some who have followed business-group intrigue in recent days may find the thought exercise worthwhile. <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YThhMTVkNTdiMGU0MzgwZGU4ZWMzNGIyZDdjZmM5ODI= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:30:38 -0400 Re: Tastes Like Chicken, Only Cuddlier -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODhlMjU0YTU3YzI0NDBhNTUyMmZlNjU5YjJjNjYxYjM= <a href="http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/05/eat-your-pets-save-the-planet/">Washington Times editorial today</a>: <blockquote> Eat your pets, save the planet </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODhlMjU0YTU3YzI0NDBhNTUyMmZlNjU5YjJjNjYxYjM= Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:00:22 -0400 Analyzing Cash-for-Clunkers -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDk5Y2IxZTQ3Y2I3MjEwMDE4YTdmYTZkNmM2MThkMmU= <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cash_for_clunkers;_ylt=AqxpRJJH.slscbbCFqw4.R6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTM2dG50b2lhBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMTA0L3VzX2Nhc2hfZm9yX2NsdW5rZXJzBGNwb3MDNQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA2FwaW1wYWN0Y2x1bg--">So much for the environmental benefits of the program</a>: <blockquote> WASHINGTON -- The most common deals under the government's $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program, aimed at putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road, replaced old Ford or Chevrolet pickups with new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press. The single most common swap -- which occurred more than 8,200 times -- involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers. Owners of thousands more large old Chevrolet and Dodge pickups bought new Silverado and Ram trucks, also with only barely improved mileage in the middle teens, according to AP's analysis of sales of $15.2 billion worth of vehicles at nearly 19,000 car dealerships in every state. Those deals helped the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado -- along with Ford's Escape midsize SUV -- climb into the Top 10 most-popular vehicles purchased with the government rebates. The most common truck-for-truck and truck-for-SUV deals totaled at least $911 million. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDk5Y2IxZTQ3Y2I3MjEwMDE4YTdmYTZkNmM2MThkMmU= Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:30:25 -0400 Hilarity from Canada -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWViYTliZWFhZTY3YWEzYmU4NmQyMGU0MDhjMDBmNmE= A very funny spoof video on global warming from our friends in the warming north: <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="350" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> <param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ehMs9MHo-W4&feature" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ehMs9MHo-W4&feature"></embed> </object> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWViYTliZWFhZTY3YWEzYmU4NmQyMGU0MDhjMDBmNmE= Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:55:50 -0400 Winds of Change in Oregon -- By: Greg Pollowitz webmaster@nationalreview.com (Greg Pollowitz) http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDYwZGZiODFhMTY0Mzk4NTBmOWQwZjIxNzhmYjQxZmQ= Reader A.F. sends a follow up to <a href="http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjAwYTUwYWUxMzIxMzkzNmQ5YmVmMmZlNzJmMWIyYzU=">this post </a>on out of control alternative-energy spending in Oregogn. The <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/oregon_curbs_controversial_tax.html">Oregonian</a>: <blockquote> Oregon energy officials released new rules Tuesday aimed at curbing a controversial state program that grants lucrative tax subsidies for wind, solar and other renewable power plants. The changes are intended to rein in some of the runaway costs of the program by making it harder for one project to qualify for multiple tax credits and by giving the Oregon Department of Energy greater leeway to deny an application. The new rules also allow the state to withdraw the subsidy to a company that doesn't produce the amount of energy, conservation or jobs it promised in its application. The rules become effective immediately but don't apply to businesses that have already qualified for the tax credits. "We took this action because we wanted to preserve the program but also to make sure we were reducing the fast growth in the program and reducing its impact on the general fund," said Energy Department Director Mark Long. The announcement of the new rules comes on the heels of an investigation by The Oregonian that showed state officials lowballed the cost of the Business Energy Tax Credit program before asking the Legislature to boost the size of the subsidies. The investigation also showed little oversight or accountability in the way the credits have been handed out. </blockquote> <hr width=100% size=2> http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDYwZGZiODFhMTY0Mzk4NTBmOWQwZjIxNzhmYjQxZmQ= Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:00:37 -0400