OPEC: Oil prices will see "unlimited" rise if Iran is attacked

We could replace that 4 million barrels by allowing offshore drilling, or drilling in Alaska.

Our whole continent is suffering because the EPA has decided that we're not allowed. I am all for saving the enviroment but not at the expense of the economy falling apart. It's ridiculous.

The one thing that might sway the environuts is money. If we were to produce our own oil, the 750 BILLION we send to those wanting our destruction would stay in the US, enabling us to live while putting a crimp in their islamic (military) budgets.

Domestic drilling could make a dent years, maybe decades, from now. Even if places like Montana are as full of oil as advertised, production capacity doesn't just spring fully formed from the heads of oil men. And if four million barrels a day of oil is just so much finance, te salud...

There will be no attack on Iran; there's no percentage in it and we lack the muscle to make one successful. That said, I fully expect our covert operations and support of anti-government insurgent and terrorist groups in Iran to continue.

Bring it on! As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, $4 is the price point at which people start taking rational steps in response to the crisis, as opposed to just bitching about it. Right now, driving is down 4%. Keep it up, OPEC, and soon everybody will be telecommuting: the beneficiaries would be the WebEx's and NetMeetings of the world (I don't know whether they're dhimmi companies, but even if they are, funding them will be less destructive than funding Aramco.)

Also, for those in the know, how much of the current shortages are due to refining capacity, as opposed to actual OPEC outputs?

Domestic drilling could make a dent years, maybe decades, from now. posted by NotTelling.

All the more reason to start NOW, and it won't take decades. I'll give ya years, but not decades. They know where the oil is, they would have to set up infrastructure sure. We need more refineries, which would take some time to build, but not decades.

And need I mention that we should have done this years ago, like in the 70's, but OH NO, gawd forbid we may displace a few owls.

On the bright side, North Dakota residents are raking in the money with new oil wells...and more power to them. North Dakota is on pace to set a new production record this year. I wonder how many of the 4 million barrels that would be lacking will be made up by US citizens?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,374243,00.html

"oil prices would see an "unlimited" increase" says the head of OPEC. Now what type of hyperbole is that? Unlimited increase in price? Anyone with any sense of economics and human behavior knows that there is a price at which people will reduce their puchase of oil. Do these OPEC men believe that they cannot be hurt by that process also? If oil price increases drastically, demand will plummet and OPEC revenues will plummet too. So they can continue to pretend or believe that this transaction is a one way deal.

Follow the money. It certainly appears that Islamic terror and the threat of Iranian strangulation on stable oil supplies through the straights all greatly enhance the value of oil assets held mainly in Muslim hands. Aside from the myriad reasons why terror and Jihad are Islam's handmaidens, less frequently mentioned are the ways Islamic Jihad and Muslim betrayal and intransigence serve to increase the value of their hideous stranglehold on oil assets. Perhaps it's time for the developer and main customer of those oil assets to reconsider the fact that the security of the Muslim stranglehold on those assets is mainly asserted through our protection gurantees of those hideous Arab regimes.

We've upheld our part of the bargain by protecting them. But now we find them betraying their part by maintaining steady stable supplies. It's time to radically rethink our arrangements with the greasy treacherous snakes of the ME.

Domestic drilling could make a dent years, maybe decades, from now. posted by NotTelling.

I wonder. How much of that time is due to the limitations of oil-drilling technology, how much from construction of auxiliary infrastructure (pipelines, roads, etc.), and how much from government red tape?

l wonder how hight oil prices would go when iran bombs Israel and Europe, etc? rather see iran oblierated than Israel.

It is not higher prices for oil that are the main problem. American oil-consumers (and all others too, but the Europeans have managed over the past few decades to tax gasoline so that it has long been at least double the American price) need to be forced to endure higher prices for oil, which in any case are going to be inevitable because of the simultaneous decline in world production, and the seemingly unstoppable rise in demand from China and India.

Why should Americans want prices to be higher? We want them to be higher in order to force the governments of the Western world at long last to have a sense of extreme urgency, a sense of extreme urgency that they have not had, and in particular, in Washington, thirty-five years have been frittered away, in the belief that fgfto undertake all those measures, from subsidized nuclear reactors to subsidized solar energy and wind farms, and subsidies to mass transit, and a mass turning away from automobile, and changes in human behavior, including the implausible assumptions made about the pursuit of a happiness that has come to be defined with constant movement, and technological gewgaws, and lots and lots of stuff (which stuff forlornly piles up in houses, all over the place, with only the intermittent relief of yard sales and trips to the dump).

But wanting prices to be higher is not the same thing as wanting the revenues, or all of them, from those higher prices to go to almost entirely to our mortal enemies, the Arab and Muslim oil-producing states. The more we increase the price of oil ourselves -- we always have the power to make oil and make gasoline more expensive, but lack the power to make it cheaper -- that is the more we tax that oil, and that gasoline, the harder it is for the members of OPEC to enjoy the full price rise for themselves, for any rise naturally dampens demand, and dampening long-term demand diminishes the value of the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, of Iran, of Libya, of the U.A.E., and other oil states.

And one wants prices perhaps to jump, even temporarily, even higher, so that Iran's threat should be taken not as a threat but as a promise, a promise to do something that, far from hurting us, might be the only thing to jolt the American government, whichever party rules the roost, into action of the kind described in the second paragraph above.

And if one were keenly concerned not only about the economy, and not only about the increase in the money available to Muslim states and peoples to deploy in furtherance of Muslim interests world-wide, and that includes the premeditated programmatic spread of Islam, but also about anthropogenic climate change, and the swiftness and severity of that by-now unavoidable change, one might well regard not with alarm, but with a sort of grim pleasure, the possibility of a spike hike in the price of oil, sudden and sharp, that would be akin to shaking everyone up, as they have never been shaken before.

What the Iranians think of as a threat is, in the end, a threat to them, and to their long-term prospects as an economic power, and also to Saudi Arabia, that lives, and dies, by the price of oil, and the continued value, rising or falling, of its reserves. It was the late Shah who in the late 1970s predicted that within a decade Iran would become "the second industrial power of Asia" after Japan. Well, the Shah was deposed, and didn't live to see how wrong he was. Iran lives on oil -- oil, and some rugs, and some pistachio nuts. That's about it. Its economy is a permanent mess. Inshallah-fatalism helps explain it, and so does the despair, in Iran, of the most intelligent and those who still remain in Iran -- so many managed to leave after Khomeini and his epigones came to power -- that is, the most potentially productive members of society.

So go ahead. Make our day. Our climatic climactic grand climacteric day.

I doubt that OPEC lacks the capacity to increase production. I find it far more likely that OPEC wants to send us the message that when push comes to shove, they are against us as opposed to being with us.

The price of oil has risen to the level were we will begin to see cost cutting measures. As the price continues to rise, the incentive to develop alternative methods for the production of energy will also increase. This will be painful. I remember the embargo in 1973, and the high prices in the late 1970's. This situation looks worse, but the long term effects may be more permanent.

They can't replace four million barrels out of 87 million?

--

These are the people who gave us algebra?

Not four million barrels. Thirty-eight million.
About forty percent of the world's oil exports flow through the Straits of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to block this vital waterway. Most Muslim nations will be swimming in oil, since there won't be any way to get it to market, given their penchant for blowing up oil pipelines. The price may skyrocket but they won't see any benefit from it. Russia, Canada and Venezuela will reap most of the benefits.

Seems relatively straight forward: do nothing in the short term. Let economics play itself out.

IRAN is not going to attack anyone. It is so easy to spin up the Iranian military actions into provocative shadow consipiracies. Iran is avidly pursuing the very kind of sovereign state-defense build-up that pisses off The Superpower, but is also broadly supported by both her own people and the non-superpowers around her. Iran dreams of becoming the seat of Islamic greatness in the future, and to do that requires military strength, a kind of 'neotheocratic liberality', and a balance between the Wahhabi extreme right and the liberalized 'Western Muslim' movement. Thing is, geostrategically, they can do it.

THE ENRICHMENT of uranium is crucial for Iran: it is the 'blue ribbon' of achievement using perhaps espionage, but certainly too High Science, governmental procurement, operations and control. Whether Iran sticks to its intention of joining the world fissile power-grade uranium market or takes additional steps to super-enrich the stuff, is all part of being a second-world developing country, trying to make a place amongst the peers of the First world. If we were smart, we'd leave Iran alone, and moreover do the "Gorbachev / Reagan" thing. Embrace a new detante, recognizing that the semi-democratic mullocracy CAN be gently guided toward greater freedom, and that such as powerful, industrialized, energy-exporting, nuclear science capable country ... would be a great friend in the future.

ISRAEL isn't going to attack Iran either. They're acting like scared, nattering old women ... endlessly protecting themselves against a foe that isn't really a foe. Everone who wasn't born under a rock knows full well that if Tel Aviv is hit by a dirty bomb, a bio-weapon, or worst a nuke ... there is going to be QUICK retribution upon the party that promulgated the malicious murder. And the Middle East, and all parties in the world, really don't want that.

LEST IT IS FORGOTTEN - while it is awfully convenient to think of the Oil Cats as paddling around on seas of petroleum and spending truckloads of dollars, truth is that their economies are incredibly closely tied to the uninterrupted flow of monies from the West to pay for their liquid gold. Interrupt the flow of oil from some outlandish Middle Eastern Despitocracy and for us petrol jumps another 50% or 100%. We'll show dutiful outrage to our reps and senators, demanding yet more ANR and outer-banks Gulf drilling. Actuality is different: just as today's $4.79/gal fuel is 'driving' people to telecommute and to use public commuting services, so too would $8.99/gal petrol cause people to EMBRACE ultra-high efficiency cars, more public transportation, and ultimately giving the Oil Ticks a stiff-middle finger along the way.

BUT THE OIL CATS that were to have their production squashed in the cross fire, would no doubt be screaming to high heaven. Our economy might suffer a 3% setback. Theirs ... a 90% thwack. Oh sure (but with no history to support it), oh sure the fellow Islamic countries might make up for the intended victim's shortfall, but even that wouldn't last long. They've got their own mouths to feed.

Nope - I feel that IRAN is just in a long-term gamble for regional dominance. It has a lot of models to follow that do work: Indonesia, Turkey, much of India and of course urban Pakistan.

War? We've got the Great Sands of Iraq in our pocket. We don't need Iran's directly. The world does, but we do not.

PMK, do you actually think Iran would be able to pull this off? They try to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and their ships will be incinerated in moments.

People are way, way too paranoid about what Iran can do. Israel could take out its missile batteries in a matter of hours, maybe minutes, then really go to town on the nuclear facilities. The only real response would be setting off dirty bombs in Israel or the West, or possibly firing off a few missiles with biological weapons. And if that happens, you can say goodbye to Tehran.

This is all just BS sabre-rattling that won't amount to anything in the end. Same deal with Iraq, remember? All the leftist media crowed about was the great Republican Guard and how many casualties they'd inflict on the US in Baghdad. Gee, what happened there again?

I still think the best move would be a decap strike on the mullahs. Obliterate government buildings in Tehran and key military command centres, then hope the resulting uprising produces a sane, democratic government that gets Persia back to what it can really be without the stain of Islam seeping through every aspect of life.

Domestic drilling could make a dent years, maybe decades, from now. posted by NotTelling.

I wonder. How much of that time is due to the limitations of oil-drilling technology, how much from construction of auxiliary infrastructure), and how much from government red tape?

Posted by: Bigfoot

Most of it. I recently read that a major natural-gas pipeline, from the North Slope of Alaska to central Canada, had finally been given approval by all the gov't authorities involved. It was first proposed in the late 80's. Twenty years before construction even starts.
That's what destroyed the nuclear power industry in the U.S.. The anti-nuclear crowd whip-sawed the utilities and the construction companies in the courts for years, dragging out construction times to triple or more what they should have been, and multiplying costs. No utility could afford a plant that cost $4 billion and took 10 years to build, when it should have cost $500 million and taken 3 years.
And then there was the grandstanding governor in one of the northeastern states (NY, I think) who refused to approve any emergency evacuation plan for the area around a nuclear power plant. And so the completed plant stood idle for years, not producing a watt of power.

More comments in regard to the time framework:
At present the trans-Alaska pipeline is only used at about 1/2 capacity, so new production would need only the new wells and some short connection to the TAPL. The transport infrastructure is already there.
And as an example of how quickly things can be built, the Alaska Highway was built in less than a year, during WW2. Admittedly, for many years thereafter it was unusable by ordinary vehicles. But that was because the Japanese threat to Alaska never materialized, and it wasn't needed.

VIENNA: The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries warned Thursday that oil prices would see an "unlimited" increase in the case of a military conflict involving Iran, because the group's members would be unable to make up the lost production.

"We really cannot replace Iran's production - it's not feasible to replace it
good then may be the government will finally step in and nationalize the oil companies billons in profits each quarter should be enough to show anyone that the price of gas is being kept high by the oil companies and by speculators requlate both and start a Manhattan project to find a way to develop home grown affordable replacement for gas and desil

I drive for a liveing at night and i see no decrease at 131 a gallon in ny of people not driveing americans like the west are undisciplined i think some people arent eating to drive. second the question is not we need to drill here its why are we still on oil they say pure electric car batteries must be recharged by outlets i say why when car batteries recharge themselves the answer to the wests freedon is non fuel tech as long as we deal in oil we support opec and terrorists if we drill at home we will not reduce by 1 cent the price of oil.
Oil companies are not gonna gvive up oil its cheap for them to pull out i believe its become a national security issue its time to nationalize the oil industry and use cash to increase money into non fuel tech its also time to stop immigration start teaching our children and stop importing cheap labor .
With all the attention on terror we are missing a very grave threat to the us i believe we need to pay attention to.
Its called immigration illegal and legal laraza who mccain wrote kennedy mccain bill for illegals is a hate group whos leader been caught on tape talking about well exact quote do not worry about whitey soon we will havethe numbers to wipe him out congress has seen fit to give these guys an office in congress and they are adviseing mccain one of his top aids is a ex mexican official well laraza has announced in california they after amnesty will introtruce a bill to succeed california from us to mexico for there homeland aztlan they say after amnesty they will have the numbers and are flooding other states for same reason they say there are 12 millon illegals the goverment knowingly lie its 50 millon min by my account of federal border crossing numbers and those that go hame so since 1986 last amnesty we will lose this nation its critical right now we must stop mccain and obama we must demand new politicians to elect and if not we must rise it is time they are not listening .
declaration when a goverment no longer listens to its people its the right of the people to remove the goverment.support the second admendment they put it there for a reason so your goverment fears us and not us them.

Republican Guard - gone
Revolutionary Guard - next

"I still think the best move would be a decap strike on the mullahs. Obliterate government buildings in Tehran and key military command centres, then hope the resulting uprising produces a sane, democratic government that gets Persia back to what it can really be without the stain of Islam seeping through every aspect of life"-"Out of Aqaba" wrote'
The Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program must be stopped before it REACHES its goal.As far as DECAPPING the MULLAHS, Qom should have one Big BULLSEYE on it.

The last three years of my professional life were not really planned, but this is the result:

Three years ago I was commuting 37 miles one way to my job. I did plan to move closer, so I moved and reduced my commute to 17 miles. A forced job change reduced my commute to 12 miles. When I start my new job Monday (voluntarily), my commute will be four miles.

Beat that!

As with iraq and freeing them from a brutal dictator muslimsappreciate nothing even oppressed they believe in dominateing others if we strike iran we must expect muslims there to rise against us make no mistake islam is only rational in one sense thats hate of allothers you mustr understand the cultures mind for us to wipe out the mullahs would show weakness on the muslims they would hate us no like we should have done in iraq we need to underminbe them from with in quietly .

Hey, Spcbat, please get out of the text message mode, spend a few minutes and tidy up your comments. They are not readable. A few commas and a period or two would help.

Pelayo, LOL

Maybe we can sell him some vowels for his name?

I think Venezuela will cut us off and sell it to the highest bidder. If they avoid becoming actively engaged themselves. Iran gave them 2 billion Dollars for Soviet Military hardware. I would think Ineedajob would expect some kind of return on his investment.

Oil may not flow from the Gulf for quite some time if it comes to blows.

Iran will be in a position of using it or loosing it. I suspect they will use all the have, any way they can, for as long as we let them.

Flowerknife, as I recall, the Government started the vowels for Bosnia program during the Clinton years. I think the program ran out.

http://ifaq.wap.org/society/voweldeployment.html
and
theonion.com)

I have a 2 mile commute! If it wasn't so dangerous with vehicle traffic I'd bike to work whenever possible. Saving a little money isn't worth ending up dead, or permanently handicapped.

If development in Alaska had started in the mid 1990's (as was tried) some of those wells would be on line and production would be working towards 900,000 bbl/day.
No, oil fields are not developed overnight. Especially in deep water offshore areas, there is a tremendous amount of effort, time, and capitol required to construct the platforms, etc, needed.
Here locally there is an enormous amount of natural gas development and exploration going on. The drill frenzy has been going on for 10+ years and shows no signs of slowing down. That, too, has required time and a lot of initial investment capitol ($15,000,000-$20,000,000 per well). The wells can be drilled fairly quickly if a rig is available, but a gas well is useless without a pipeline- and pipelines are high priced and slow to build.
Our domestic oil and gas supplies will not be increased by a large amount overnight. It takes a sustained effort of exploration and development to keep production up and to develop new resources. It's hard to do when so many areas of our country are off limits. ...and as far as environmental "cleaness" goes, if I had the choice of having either oil well pumps or a solar cell factory in my back yard I'd take the oil well any day.

I'm all for conservation. I'm all for developing alternate souces of energy, but the idea of electric or hybrid vehicles completely replacing conventional vehicles anytime in the forseeable future is nuts. Not everyone drives a large vehicle simply because they want to do so. Some of us need them for work, and there is no replacement in existence or on the horizon. Encouraging the replacement of certain passenger vehicles is great where it'll work, but long-haul freight trains, trucks, tractors, and tugs run on petroleum-based fuels. 150 years of oil will not be replaced easily, quickly, or cheaply.

Our society will not exist without freedom of movement. Civilization will not exist without fuels for production and delivery of food and other goods. Most certainly we need to conserve and search for alternate methods of meeting our needs. For now, we need to get off our butts and make us of the resources we have here at home.

“I against my brother I and my brother against our cousin, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors all of us against the foreigner.”~Bedouin Proverb alert.

The Saudis *hate* the upstart Shi'ite Iranians, jockeying for regional power and the authority of the "Caliphate", with their proxies such as Hizb'allah, in the heart of the Sunni world, with a murderous hatred--hate them more than anything, that is, except Israel and the rest of the Infidel West.

Then they will close ranks with their "Muslim brothers".

Hugh wrote:

Iran lives on oil -- oil, and some rugs, and some pistachio nuts.
........................

The situation with pistacio nuts is quite instructive.

Pistachio nuts are Iran's largest export after oil. At one time, almost all of the US's pistachios, and certainly virtually all of the premium crop, came from Iran. After the Iranian hostage crisis Iranian imports to the US were banned. A few other countries, such as Turkey and Syria, do a small amount of pistachio cultivation, but are not in the same league as Iran.

Before 1979, California had a tiny pistachio growing industry, and most of the nuts were of fairly low quality. Well, that changed in a hurry. As of 2005, California's pistachio production was 140,000 tons to Iran's 190,000. California produces almost all U.S. pistachios, and about half of these are exported, mainly to China, Japan, Europe and Canada.

The first time I had the nuts after the ban, in about 1980, I was quite disappointed. Well, growers improved the quality all through the 1980s, and California now grows some of the finest pistachios in the world.

Now, I realize that the situation with oil is not exactly analogous, but still--I don't think we should consider ourselves in bondage to *any* product of those who have set themselves up as our enemies.

>Now, I realize that the situation with oil is not exactly analogous, but still--I don't think we should consider ourselves in bondage to *any* product of those who have set themselves up as our enemies.

Alaska�s Gull Island Oil Fields Could Power U.S. for 200 Years...Headline...

I read where wells have already been drilled, proven and capped.

Google
Gull Island oil...

Gravenimage, also the US pistachios are not dyed that red color that stained one's fingers. Improvements in handling negated the need for the dye, and the dye was used to hide blemishes due to being handled by people with dirty hands.

Product improvement brought to you by American capitalism.

Well pelayo and your hmm friend there maybe if you i dont know sprnt a little less time gerbil loveing mo boy and a little more time reading what i said maybe you to lover boys would understand what i wrote i know its hard with more then 15 words for you to comprehend what i wrote so maybe i dont know romper room chat might be a benifit for you what i write im thinking at thew moment there mo boy and basically i miss some commas so on and im sure you well when a kid where smacked around enough by the bullies for being a teachers pet but maybe this is not the place simp/.

I see a version of Molly Bloom's soliloquy has been introduced into this thread. And I detect the literary influence, as well, of the late (dying, in fact) Dutch Schulz. There is said to be a bridge in Istanbul where,if you stand there long enough, eventually everyone you've ever known will pass you by. Well, sometimes this site reminds me of that bridge.

As for drilling on american soil it would not drop the price one bit very simple they will charge market price all prices on furures whether drilled here or abroad will not lesson any price ya want to hurt the mullahs you want saudi arabia hurt you make oil useless and that answer is already here in tech we have had a very long time.
In the 1950s HOLLAND LAUNDRY N./Y. USED PURE ELECTRIC TRUCKS AND ONLY STOPPED USEING THEM WHEN CAR COMPANIES STOPPED MAKEING THEM WE CAN BE OFF ALL FUEL TECH BY THE TIME WE DO DRILL AND LIKE I STATED DRILLING WILL NOT EFFECT PRICE ONE BIT THEY STOPPED RECOVERING OIL IN TEXAS YEARS AGO CAUSE THEY SAID IT SOLD TO CHEAPEVEN IN TEXAS THEY WANT OIL EXPENSIVE.

"And if one were keenly concerned...about anthropogenic climate change, and the swiftness and severity of that by-now unavoidable change."

Come on Hugh, please say you haven't been conned by Al Gore and his ilk on this one.

Anthropogenic climate change has about as much fact behind it as the claim, "Islam is a religion of peace."

OPEC: Oil prices will see "unlimited" rise if Iran is attacked

Unlimited? Good! Double it! This is the best news the West could hear!

Maybe, it will induce American companies to bring the jobs home while we uncap our own oil reserves that are far more vast that in the Middle East!

Maybe the Middle East fairy tale is finally, FINALLY, at an end!

Good riddance M.E and opec!

Energy independence should consist of every method possible to obtain free or cheap energy.
From electric to solar to hydrogen, to super batteries, and super magnets, to chemicals, and any single thing that can possibly be developed. Some of this can only be done by industry and science, but we don't need them for everything. If you come up with anything, put it to use for yourself, and then tell friends and family how to do it. There are people on the internet (youtube especially) that are doing just that. Serious researchers, sharing their discoveries.
I am producing hydrogen gas, from devices I built, using information I got from YT, from people who are way ahead of me. What did I know about this when I started? Nothing. I did not know what I was doing, I still don't know what I am doing, but I can produce usable gas. Hydrogen that is. I have never let not knowing what I am doing stop me before, and I'm not going to start now.
The point is, many people have great inventive minds...We don't really have to be a slave to anyones oil, if we choose not to, and are dedicated in our resolve...Tesla, and Edison waited for no one, we can solve these energy problems ourselves...by waiting for no one.
I am putting together a new design at the moment. Type a little, tighten bolts a little. Some of my bolts may be little loose, but I'm not waiting either. Excuse me while I solder this electrical connection...

"'And if one were keenly concerned...about anthropogenic climate change, and the swiftness and severity of that by-now unavoidable change.'

Come on Hugh, please say you haven't been conned by Al Gore and his ilk on this one.

Anthropogenic climate change has about as much fact behind it as the claim, "Islam is a religion of peace.'"
--- from a posting above

For those who might be interested to read more about this matter, here's a quick half-dozen that come immediately to mind. The Coby Beck article, which lists many, if not all, of the objections that are endlessly recycled, also contains links to detailed answers to them, and is particularly useful.

1.

Martin Beniston, a Swiss climate scientist, who provies a helpful bibliography of papers from his own research group:

http://www.unige.ch/climate/Publications/Beniston.html#45

2.

James Hansen, head of NASA, who has been warning and warning for more than 20 years

The latest warning in testimony before Congress: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/dr-james-hansen.html

On the just-concluded G-8 summit

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080708-147233/Top-climate-scientist-blasts-G8-climate-pledge

3.

James Lovelock, author of “Gaia,” who may for many be a bit too jauntily to the climatic catastrophes to come: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

4.

Jesse Ausubel on why renewal sources of energy will not do the trick, and why nuclear energy must be relied on:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-07/ip-rew071907.php

5.

Coby Beck’s “How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic,” an exhaustive list of the recurring objections by so-called “skeptics” (a curious word for those who have proven themselves unshakeable True Believers in the notion that anthropogenic climate change is all, or almost all, hooey), together with links to detailed replies:

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm?blog_id=4159

6.

The website www.realclimate.org, one of the best on climate change for those willing to accept, and able to understand, presentations for a wider audience by scientists with a gift for divulgation, which is not the same thing as programmatic simplification of what cannot be simplified without doing violence to the data, and the theories that are proposed to explain the previously-collected data and to predict what data collected in the future will indicate.

and then again, just maybe it's the earth's cycle. Who knows, not me that's for sure, lol.

What I do know though, is that NOT drilling for oil is a sure way to keep our dependence on foreign oil. Not doing anything won't help our economy or the climate for that matter. Sitting around wringing our hands and "debating" just delays the inevetible, and that's why we have to start drilling now or suffer the consequences (as we already are).

I totally encourage alternative sources of energy. Thermal power, solar power, wind power, all fantastic options.

Hugh,

400 prominent scientists in 2007 alone disputed man-made global warming. Here are but two, who converted from believers to skeptics:

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top, young, award-winning scientists of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, recanted his belief that man-made emissions were driving climate change. "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye," Shaviv said in a February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the CO2 temperature link is only "incriminating circumstantial evidence." "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist," Shaviv noted, pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant," Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that "CO2 should have a large effect on climate" so "he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views." Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. "I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views," he wrote.

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa converted from believer in CO2's driving the climate change to a skeptic. "I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change," Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his "conversion" happened following his research on "the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific." "[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator)," Patterson explained. "Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances," he wrote. "As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate," Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion "probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not where activists want me to go." Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion [about climate change]. I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority," Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warming of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime," Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. "I think the proof in the pudding, based on what [media and governments] are saying, [is] we're about three quarters of the way [to disaster] with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. "The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."

Hundreds more here:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport

If only they all would read Coby Beck, eh?

Today, July 10, 2008, the Royal Society of New Zealand issued a Climate Change Statement. It was a good one, with one gigantic caveat.

At the end of the Climate Change Statement, the Royal Society of New Zealand lists the things that must be done:

"Reducing the future impact of climate change will require substantial reductions of net emissions of greenhouse gases. Major international policy changes would be required to deliver these reductions but various technologies exist to provide them:

*More efficient use of energy, e.g. better designed and insulated houses, more efficient appliances and industrial processes

*Renewable energy sources, e.g. hydropower, geothermal, wind, marine, and solar

*Lower-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas and the capture and storage of emissions from power plants

*More efficient transport and urban systems and the use of appropriate biofuels and other renewable energy sources to power transport

*Reforestation, reduced deforestation, and lower emission forms of agriculture"

Notice that there is no mention, none, of nuclear energy. But nuclear power plants are indispensable. They are the safest and surest forms of energy, and can supply far more, in the next decades, than any other source that is to replace fossil fuels. This is laid out in the piece by Ausubel to which a link is given in my posting above.

Here's the Climate Change Statement itself:

Introduction

The Royal Society of New Zealand convenes an expert committee on climate. The controversy over climate change and its causes, and possible confusion among the public, have prompted the committee to produce a statement to make absolutely clear what the evidence is for climate change and anthropogenic (human-induced) causes.

In summary, the statement says:

The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Measurements show that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are well above levels seen for many thousands of years. Further global climate changes are predicted, with impacts expected to become more costly as time progresses. Reducing future impacts of climate change will require substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Royal Society is charged by its Act with informing the public about science, and fostering evidence-based scientific debate. We hope this statement makes a useful contribution to public understanding of climate change.

The full version of the statement, with footnotes, is available at http://www.rsnz.org/news/releases/clim0708.php

The Statement

*The globe is warming, because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.*

There has been an overall upward trend in global surface temperature since the beginning of the 20th Century. Most of the observed global warming over the past 50 years is very likely to be due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere by allowing sunlight to reach the Earth's surface but trapping some of the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth. Human activities have increased the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide since the mid-1700s. More than half of the carbon dioxide concentration increase has occurred since 1970.

Human activities have also increased concentrations of aerosols (small "air pollution" particles) in the atmosphere. These may have partially offset the heating effect of the greenhouse gases by scattering some sunlight back to space.

*Natural factors also cause climate variations.*

Climate has always varied, over timescales of decades, centuries and millennia. Until recently these variations have had only natural causes – including changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, the shape of the Earth's orbit, the energy output from the sun, dust from volcanic emissions, and heat exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean (such as El Niño). This natural variability still occurs in addition to the human influences. Thus while the overall decade-to-century temperature trend is upwards, individual years can still be warmer or cooler than previous years.

*Further global changes are predicted. Many impacts are expected to be more costly as time progresses.*

Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would be expected for at least several decades, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. Additional increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, and resulting changes in climate, will occur over coming decades unless concerted international action is taken to substantially reduce emissions. Impacts will vary regionally but, aggregated and discounted to the present, they are very likely to impose net annual economic costs which will increase over time as global temperatures increase.

Measurements show that:

*Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased by 35%, 150% and 18% respectively since around 1750 .

*Air temperature (averaged over the globe's surface) has risen through the past 100 years. The linear warming trend from 1906 to 2005 was 0.74°C [0.56 to 0.92°C] .

*Globally-averaged sea level rose by 17 cm [12 to 22 cm] during the 20th century.

*Average northern hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely warmer than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the warmest in the past 1300 years.

*For the globally-averaged surface air temperature, 2005 and 1998 were the two warmest years in the instrumental temperature record (i.e. since 1850. Twelve of the thirteen years during the period 1995-2007 are the warmest since 1850).

*Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres.

*Spring peak river flows have been occurring 1 to 2 weeks earlier in basins with important seasonal snow cover in North America and northern Eurasia (based on observations over the period 1936 – 2000), due to earlier warming-driven snow melt.

*Arctic sea-ice summer extent has decreased at an average rate of 7.4% [5.0% to 9.8%] per decade since 1978.

*Observations since 1961 show the average temperature of the global ocean has increased to depths of at least 3000m, with decadal fluctuations superimposed on this long-term trend.

*The ocean has become more acidic because of uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

*For New Zealand the air temperature shows substantial year to year fluctuations, but shows a clear increase over time, with a linear trend in the country-wide average of 0.9°C between 1908 and 2006. The average sea level rise over the twentieth century was 16±2 cm. The number of frost days has decreased since the 1950s at many New Zealand sites.

Measurements and analyses show that:

*Present global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide far exceed pre-industrial values dating back at least 650,000 years.

*The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration since pre-industrial times are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change.

*About 2/3rds of these anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since 1750 are estimated to have come from fossil fuel burning and about 1/3 from land use change. About 45% of this carbon dioxide has remained in the atmosphere.

*The combined influence on the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system of all anthropogenic emissions between 1750 and 2006 is likely to be at least 5 times larger than the influence of changes in solar output over the same period.

*Very energetic volcanic eruptions (such as that of Mt Pinatubo in 1991) can place small particles high in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and leading to cooling for a few years.

*Increasing atmospheric temperatures lead to an overall increase of water vapour in the atmosphere. Water vapour is itself a strong greenhouse gas, so this amplifies the warming effect of the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

*The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas, consistent with warming and observed increases of atmospheric water vapour.

Projections for the 21st Century from the IPCC's 2007 assessment (assuming no substantial efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) include:

*An increase in globally-averaged surface temperature of 1.1 to 6.4°C by 2100 .

*A globally-averaged sea level increase of 18 to 59 cm by 2100. However these projections do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor the full effects of dynamic changes in ice-sheet flow, so do not provide an upper bound for possible sea level rise.

*More heat waves, fewer frosts, and more heavy rain events are very likely.

*The area affected by droughts is likely to increase through the 21st Century.

*Increases are likely in the peak wind and rain intensity in tropical cyclones

Projections for New Zealand based on these global projections suggest :

*A New Zealand-average warming of 0.2 to 2.0°C by 2040 and 0.7 to 5.1°C by 2090. Fewer cold temperatures and frosts, and more high temperature episodes.

*A stronger west-east rainfall gradient (wetter in the west and drier in the east) in winter and spring, and an increasing risk of extreme rainfall as the century progresses.

*Increasing drought risk during this century in areas which are currently drought-prone.

*An increase in New Zealand-averaged sea level of the same order as the IPCC global projections.

*Natural year to year variations in New Zealand's climate will be superimposed on top of these projected anthropogenic changes.

Some potential further risks are being quantified by ongoing research:

*Some studies suggest substantial parts of the Greenland ice cap, and perhaps of the West Antarctic ice sheet could melt over the coming 1000 years. Global average sea level at the height of the last interglacial about 125,000 years ago (when average polar temperatures were around 3°C to 5°C warmer than now) was likely 4-6 m higher than at present.

*Models indicate some slowing of the oceanic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is very likely during the 21st Century. The MOC carries warm water into the North Atlantic where it cools, sinks and then spreads through the other ocean basins at depth

*As the globe warms, the oceans and biosphere may become less efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide, leading to a larger fraction of the anthropogenic emissions remaining in the atmosphere.

Reducing the future impact of climate change will require substantial reductions of net emissions of greenhouse gases. Major international policy changes would be required to deliver these reductions but various technologies exist to provide them:

*More efficient use of energy, e.g. better designed and insulated houses, more efficient appliances and industrial processes

*Renewable energy sources, e.g. hydropower, geothermal, wind, marine, and solar

*Lower-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas and the capture and storage of emissions from power plants

*More efficient transport and urban systems and the use of appropriate biofuels and other renewable energy sources to power transport

*Reforestation, reduced deforestation, and lower emission forms of agriculture

ENDS

The full list of committee members is at http://www.rsnz.org/advisory/nz_climate/

Global warming, who did it?

China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have stated that they are not going to cut emissions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_g8

Without their cooperation, we will sacrifice our economies on the global warming altar.

I will stipulate in this instance that humans are responsible for the current climate warming trend. I will assume that the spike in CO2 started this and I am responsible. However, even if CO2 levels were reduced to their 1492 levels tomorrow, the current temperature trend will be fueled by increased levels of water vapor. It is a positive feedback loop. The warmer the average temperature, the more water vapor is in the air. The higher levels of water vapor will increase the air temperature and so on. My point is that there is nothing that can be done by merely reducing CO2.
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/ccm/0108_watervapor.htm

if we want to reverse the warming trend we can start putting more soot into the atmosphere or all you religious types can pray for more volcanic activity. Penatubo caused a three year cooling trend.

The warming trend will continue, especially if the "developing countries" do not cooperate. The earth has been warming and cooling long before man arrived. Most climate computer models do not factor variations in solar intensity. Some research indicates that solar variations are the real culprit. There does not seem to be any cooperation between the "solar radiation" scientists and the "CO2" scientists. So far I have not seen too much research into the affect of solar radiation in these computer models.

Poor ole me only has a BS in mechanical engineering from a lowly land grant university and 38 years experience in designing systems that make life comfortable and safe (HVAC), so what the hell do I know. As I said, it's all my fault.

OutOfAqaba,

I don't think Iran is talking about blockading the Straits with ships. They're trying to make navigation impossible. Will oil tanker crews want to subject themselves to missile barrages?
Maybe it's all bluster but I think we would be foolish to underestimate Iran's desire for conflict and its willingness to create one, like when Iranian speedboats swarmed US naval vessels, in a manner reminiscent of the Cole bombing. What civilian tanker crew will want to subject itself to that?
I also think it's funny hearing OPEC tell us how bad it will be for us when Iran is unable to pump oil. They still think it will be business as usual for them in the Strait of Hormuz. They're that dense. In the event of a war, the only countries that could count on brisk business would be those that don't rely on the Strait of Hormuz or pipelines that run anywhere near Iran.
And what if the Straits weren't blocked? Should we assume that the US navy will shepherd every boat through to sea even during a war? It won't happen, barring a preemptive strike on Iran that does away with the entire leadership - in all areas. Their missile, nuclear and naval capability would have to be wiped out. What are the odds of that happening?

A poster above adduces as counter-evidence to the "theory" of anthropogenic climate change the statements of two people. One of them, Nir Shaviv, is not a climatologist at all but an astrophysicist. And both of them focus on C02, but even without getting to their supposed evidence, I note that one of the themes at www.realclimate.org is that those who attempt, still, to play the skeptic, they keep focussing on C02 alone without recognizing that C02 is only one among several greenhouse gasses.

I know some of the people who have, most reluctantly, over several decades, had to come to some grim conclusions. They aren't idiots; they aren't wild men; they aren't part of some left-wing economic conspiracy designed to destroy our splendid corporations. I see that even Bjorn Lonborg has come around, and rather casually conceded that what he has been arguing against for so long he now accepts, and has moved on to another topic: to wit, does a cost-benefit analysis suggest that it is really "worth it" to take action to mitigate the effects on the climate of human activities, or should we just accept it and have one big beach party, possibly with Annette Funicello and big blankets and bingo, all to keep us just as occupied as we can be?

I've read your reply. Quaere: Have you read any of the articles at any of the links I provided? Have you glanced, even, at Coby Beck's list of the "skeptic's" arguments, and the detailed replies to them?

Youth wants to know.

When government money is available to study a problem, the problem gets immediately worse. As scientists keep talking about a climate catastrophe, the more government money gets doled out to study the problem, and the problem gets worse.

"The sky is falling; gimme some money and I'll study the problem." "I don't know when it will fall, but the Falling Sky Research Institute needs more money to find out."

Let's the price of oil be damned. We'll move to diesel coal and nuclear power. The USA has 200 years of coal diesel and Canada has a 1000 years of uranium.

Let's make North America energy independent. End the war in Iraq, pull all development support from the Middle East, invest it all in coal diesel and nuclear power plants until we can build some space based solar power.

This is all doable. Once the Middle East has no oil economy all they have left to sell is figs and tourism. Let's tell OPEC to Fig-Off!

I mentioned in my reply just above that C02 is only one of the greenhouse gasses, but at the time was unaware that the lasted article to be posted at www.realclimate.org was on this very subject:

7 July 2008

CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, and greenhouse effects are not the only CO2 problem
Filed under: Oceans Greenhouse gases Climate Science— gavin @ 7:59 PM

The title here should strike a familiar theme for most readers. Climate forcings do not just include CO2 (other greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use, the sun, the orbit and volcanoes all contribute), and the impact of human emissions often has non-climatic effects on biology and ecosystems.

First up last week was a call from Michael Prather and colleagues that the production of a previously neglected greenhouse gas (NF3) was increasing and could become a significant radiative forcing. This paper was basically an update of calculations done for the IPCC combined with new information about the production of this non-Kyoto gas.

Most of the media stories that picked this up focused on the use of this gas in a particular manufacturing process - flat screen TVs. Thus the headlines almost all read something like "Flat-screen TVs cause global warming"! (see here, here, here etc.). Unfortunately, very few of the headline writers read the small print.

NF3 is indeed a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 (as are methane, CFCs and SF6 etc.), but because it is much less prevalent, the net radiative forcing (as with other Kyoto gases) is much smaller. Unfortunately, no-one has any measures of the concentration of NF3 in the atmosphere. This is likely to be increasing, since production has stepped up rapidly in recent years, but the amount of gas that escapes to the air is unknown. Manufacturers claim that it is only a very small percentage - but historically such claims have not always been very reliable. However, it is almost certain that NF3 has not caused a significant amount of global warming (yet).

The one issue that many stories did get wrong was in the comparison with coal. Prather's paper compared the effect of the entire global production of NF3 being released into the atmosphere with the CO2 impact of one coal-fired power station. Since that is the maximum estimate of the current effect, and only matches a single power-station, the subtlety of the comparison got a little lost on the way to "Flat screen TVs 'worse than coal'" story….

Needless to say, no-one should be throwing away their flat screen TVs because of this (it's not in the use of the TV that causes a problem), but manufacturers will likely need to step up monitoring of NF3 leakage or switch to an alternative process which some have already done.

The second story getting some attention, is the ocean acidification issue. As we've discussed previously, the increased take up in the oceans of human-released CO2 is rapidly increasing the acidity (lowering the pH) of the oceans, making it more difficult for many carbonate-producing organisms to produce calcite or aragonite. These organisms include corals, coccolithophores, foraminfera, shell fish etc.

Both of these issues are relevant to the ongoing climate change discussion and it's good to see the media picking up (albeit imperfectly) on these ancillary discussions. But as with the "North Pole" lightning rod discussed last week, there always needs to be a hook before something gets wide press (the 'tyranny of the news peg' as ably described by Andy Revkin). In the first case, there was a link to a popular consumer item and in the second, there has been a concerted effort to get the ocean acidification issue higher up the agenda.

The fact of the matter is that most of what goes on in the sciences is completely (and usually correctly) well below the radar of the public at large. But when there are discoveries and issues that do have public policy ramifications, getting the public to pay attention often requires finding just these kinds of resonances. Now if there was only a way to make sure the story underneath was accurate…."

Hugh, I did look at Beck's articles. He does not go into the "CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas" argument at all, and in fact spends quite a bit of time and effort re-emphasizing the validity of CO2 measurements to bolster the anthropogenic global warming argument.

As for the "rebuking" of an astrophysicist for not being a climatologist, that sounds an awful lot like rebuking Spencer's arguments because he's not a "Professor of Middle Eastern Studies", no?

Still, those were just 2 out of over 400 scientists cited in that link, many of whom are indeed climatologists.

I assume these guys too just need to read Coby Beck's stuff?

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. "First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!"

Atmospheric scientist Dr. James P. Koermer, a Professor of Meteorology and the director of the Meteorological Institute at Plymouth State University dismissed man-made global warming fears. "Global warming hysteria is based to a large extent on the unproven predictions of climate models. These numerical models are based on many simplified approximations of very complicated physical processes and phenomena," Koermer wrote to EPW on December 3, 2007. "My biggest concern is their [computer models'] lack of ability to adequately handle water vapor and clouds, which are much more important as climate factors than anthropogenic contributors. Until we can realistically simulate types of clouds, their optical thicknesses, and their altitudes, which we have a difficult time doing for short-term weather forecasts, I can't have much faith in climate models," Koermer wrote.

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, took climate modelers to task for their projections of future planetary doom in a February 28, 2007 post on Climate Science. "I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society. In all regular engineering professions, there exists a licensing authority. If such an authority existed in climate research, I contend, the vast majority of climate modelers would vainly attempt certification. Also, they would be unable to obtain insurance against professional liability," Tennekes said. (LINK) Tennekes also unleashed on the promoters of climate fears in a January 31, 2007 article. "I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding", he wrote. "I am angry about the Climate Doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the Doomsday hype, I am angry at Paul Crutzen for his speculations about yet another technological fix, I am angry at the staff of IPCC for their preoccupation with carbon dioxide emissions, and I am angry at Jim Hansen for his efforts to sell a Greenland Ice Sheet Meltdown Catastrophe," he explained. (LINK) Tennekes has also blasted Gore and the UN in the Dutch De Volskrant newspaper on March 28, 2007. "I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting - a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number - entirely without merit," Tennekes wrote. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached. We cannot run the climate as we wish," Tennekes said. "Whatever the IPCC staff thinks, it is not at all inconceivable that decreasing solar activity will lead to some cooling ten years from now," he concluded. (LINK)

Research physicist John W. Brosnahan develops remote-sensing instruments for atmospheric science for such clients as NOAA and NASA and has published numerous peer-reviewed research, as well as developed imaging Doppler interferometry for sensing winds, waves, and structure in the atmosphere. "Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling -- all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by the cyclical variations in solar output," Brosnahan wrote to EPW on December 10, 2007. "I have not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of the current global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case," Brosnahan explained. "Even though these computer climate models do not properly handle a number of important factors, including the role of precipitation as a temperature regulator, they are being (mis-)used to force a political agenda upon the U.S. While there are any number of reasons to reduce carbon dioxide generation, to base any major fiscal policy on the role of carbon dioxide in climate change would be inappropriate and imprudent at best and potentially disastrous economic folly at the worst," he concluded.

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada and former director of Australia's National Tidal Facility and professor of earth sciences, Flinders University, reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. "I started with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself," Murty explained on August 17, 2006. "I switched to the other side in the early 1990s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously," Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."

French climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at University of Jean Moulin and former director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment (CNRS) in Lyon, is a climate skeptic. Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming - Myth or Reality? - The Erring Ways of Climatology. "Hardly a week goes by without some new scoop ... filling our screens and the pages of our newspapers," Leroux wrote in his book. The media promotes the view that "global warming caused by the greenhouse effect is our fault, just like everything else, and the message/slogan/misinformation becomes even more simplistic, ever cruder! It could not be simpler: if the rain falls or draught strikes; if the wind blows a gale or there is none at all; whether it's heat or hard frost; it's all because of the greenhouse effect, and we are to blame. An easy argument, but stupid!" he explained. "The Fourth Report of the IPCC might just as well decree the suppression of all climatology textbooks, and replace them in our schools with press communiqués. ... Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up' - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts' and ‘sea level rises,' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!" he wrote. "The possible causes, then, of climate change are: well-established orbital parameters on the paleoclimatic scale, ... solar activity, ...; volcanism ...; and far at the rear, the greenhouse effect, and in particular that caused by water vapor, the extent of its influence being unknown. These factors are working together all the time, and it seems difficult to unravel the relative importance of their respective influences upon climatic evolution. Equally, it is tendentious to highlight the anthropogenic factor, which is, clearly, the least credible among all those previously mentioned," he added. (LINK)

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of the University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. "At first I accepted that increases in human-caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor, etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,' but with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation," de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. "I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute," he added. "One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people," de Freitas concluded. De Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases."

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It goes on and on.. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport

Apply whatever filter you'd like; brilliant, educated scientists the world over are skeptical about man-made global warming. Hence, I, simply a layman in such matters, am skeptical too.

And going against the grain and being skeptical indeed takes courage due to the way research funding works, just as you've written about over and over with regard to middle-eastern studies. It's not easy to be skeptical of man-made global warming.

Hugh - I'm with you on this one.

If nuclear is what it takes to put an end to the obscene profits raked in by the jihad enablers, nuclear it will have to be; and everything else in the energy efficiency and renewable energy line (the Israelis are doing brilliant work and could do with more investment to support their R & D).

A further point. Those of us who have contacts in the environmental movement (we call them 'greenies' in Australia) should be hammering home, at every opportunity, the demonstrable fact that Islam has an appalling history of environmental devastation to go with its history of social and cultural devastation.

The greenies, the ecologists and biologists, should be in the van of the counter-jihad. People need to remember what happened to a gravely endangered species, the Arabian oryx, once the sheiks got hold of jeeps and machine guns...You have mentioned, before now, Arab sheiks coming to Pakistan expressly to hunt an endangered species, the bustard, in open defiance of laws for the protection of such creatures.

I recall, in 'Legacy of Jihad', appalling stories from the jihad in India, of Muslim armies cutting down whole forests in order to extract the Hindu and animist refugees from among the trees, so they could kill them.

The texts that Bostom unearthed from accounts of jihad and Muslim occupation practices in the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria and Anatolia demonstrate a similar practice of creating scorched earth; permanent desolation; a running down of the resource base. Jihad raids on the coasts of southern Europe specialised in burning crops, pastures and forests, year after year after year.

The Ottomans put a tax on trees; thus creating an incentive for people in the Levant to cut down trees rather than planting them.

Saddam Hussein deliberately destroyed a unique ecosystem - the otter-haunted reed-beds of the Tigris-Euphrates delta - in order to subdue and destroy the 'Marsh Arabs' who lived there.

I recall hearing stories of how the Taliban, in order to destroy resistance to their domination, sent war parties to burn standing crops, burn barns full of harvested grain, and worst of all, to chop down orchards upon orchards of fruit trees just prior to harvest...and those sent to do the destroying, were not even permitted to eat the fruit. An obscene orgy of destruction, in a country already reduced almost to desert, in which every living, fruiting tree should have been precious. There is natural biodiversity; there is also agricultural biodiversity...in Afghanistan, who knows what genetic treasures of ancient varieties of peach or apricot or citrus have been annihilated by the jihadis' mindless pursuit of absolute power at the cost of life itself?

There is A. Carlebach's unforgettable paragraph, which you brought to our attention some time ago, describing the effect of 1200 years of Islam on eretz Israel:

"There were many great cultures here, and invaders of all kinds. All of them -- even the Crusaders -- left signs of culture and blossoming.
"But on the path of Islam, even the flies have died". [original source: Ma'ariv, 7.10.1955].

"On the path of Islam, even the flies have died".

Words that UNESCO, that the IUCN, that the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Nature Conservancy Council, and all other such bodies, need to be hearing, that they may learn, mark, inwardly digest, and act accordingly.

I know some of the people who have, most reluctantly, over several decades, had to come to some grim conclusions. They aren't idiots; they aren't wild men; they aren't part of some left-wing economic conspiracy designed to destroy our splendid corporations.

Well, they aren't presenting their case to the average Joe very well then either. By not presenting a convincing case, they leave the gates open to all kinds of unenforceable & fraudulent schemes, not to mention international extortion:
Billions wasted on UN climate programme, Energy firms routinely abusing carbon offset fund, US studies claim
or
Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs

The hypocritical carbon footprint of the spokespeople for this 'science' do wonders for skeptics.

Your mention of Nir Shaviv reminded me that Shaviv, who has been insisting at least since 2002 that solar activity is the chief cause of the observable climate change, was one of those who appeared as a “skeptic” on that made-for-television effort, “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the one broadcast on Channel 4 in Great Britain.

That television film, intended to present the view that “global warming” is indeed a “swindle” was roundly criticized by scientists afterwards, and among the critics were two who had, like Shaviv, in fact been used by Durkin, the film’s producer, as two of the supporting cast for his thesis – that global warming is a “swindle.”These two were Carl Wunsch, at MIT, and Egil Friis-Christensen, a Danish scientist. Both were angry with the misleading and tendentious use of their scientific work.

In the case of Wunsch, he complained that his work was so distorted, offered as evidence for the very opposite of what he, Wunsch, had considered it to be. And the Dane Friis-Christensen, though not quite so angry as Wunsch at the film maker for his dishonesty, described the film – about science and scientists – as “not scientifically accurate.” That may seem mild; it is not.

Here’s something about the film found at Wikipedia, with the references retained in the text so that they can be checked. While Wikipedia can be wildly inaccurate, it can also be very good indeed, when you have the ability to check or see that what is relied on is largely quotation from others, as in the case of this controversy over the television film:

“Following criticism from scientists the film has been changed since it was first broadcast on Channel 4. One graph had its time axis relabelled, the claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans was removed, and following objections about how his interview had been used, the interview with Carl Wunsch was removed for the international and DVD releases of the programme.
Other scientific arguments used in the film have been described as refuted or misleading by scientists working in the relevant fields.[5][18] Critics have also argued that the programme is one-sided and that the mainstream position on global warming, as supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialised nations and other scientific organisations, is incorrectly represented.[5]
Reactions from scientists
• The IPCC was one of the main targets of the documentary. In response to the programme's broadcast, John T. Houghton (co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002) assessed some of its main assertions and conclusions. According to Houghton the programme was "a mixture of truth, half truth and falsehood put together with the sole purpose of discrediting the science of global warming", which he noted had been endorsed by the scientific community, including the Academies of Science of the major industrialised countries and China, India and Brazil. Houghton rejected claims that observed changes in global average temperature are within the range of natural climate variability or that solar influences are the main driver; that the troposphere is warming less than the surface; that volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning; that climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change; and that IPCC processes were biased. Houghton acknowledges that ice core samples show CO2 driven by temperature, but then writes that the programme's assertion that "this correlation has been presented as the main evidence for global warming by the IPCC [is] NOT TRUE. For instance, I often show that diagram in my lectures on climate change but always make the point that it gives no proof of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide."[5]
• The British Antarctic Survey released a statement about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: "A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years." Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4's editorial standards, the statement says: "Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct." It uses the feedback argument to explain temperatures rising before CO2. On the issue of volcanic CO2 emissions, it says:
A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO2 are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO2. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO2 concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions.[19]
• Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist. He wrote, "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO2 and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."[20]
•
• The Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the film. In it, Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:
Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future.[21]
• Thirty-seven British scientists signed a letter of complaint, saying that they "believe that the misrepresentations of facts and views, both of which occur in your programme, are so serious that repeat broadcasts of the programme, without amendment, are not in the public interest. In view of the seriousness of climate change as an issue, it is crucial that public debate about it is balanced and well-informed".[22]
• On 5 July 2007, The Guardian reported that Professor Mike Lockwood, a solar physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory had carried out a study, initiated partially in response to The Great Global Warming Swindle, that disproved one of the documentary's key planks — namely that global warming directly correlates to solar activity. Lockwood's study showed that solar activity had diminished subsequent to 1987, despite a steady rise in the temperature of the Earth's surface. The study, to be published in a Royal Society journal, used temperature and solar data recorded from the last 100 years.[23]
In a BBC interview about this study, Lockwood commented on the graphs shown in the documentary:
All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that ... You can't just ignore bits of data that you do not like.
• Volume 20 of the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society presented a critique by David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Coughlan.
The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the current state of knowledge in climate science… Many of the hypotheses presented in the Great Global Warming Swindle have been considered and rejected by due scientific process. This documentary is far from an objective, critical examination of climate science. Instead the Great Global Warming Swindle goes to great lengths to present outdated, incorrect or ambiguous data in such a way as to grossly distort the true understanding of climate change science, and to support a set of extremely controversial views.[24]

• A public forum entitled “Debunking “The Great Global Warming Swindle"” was held at the Australian National University in Canberra on 13 July 2007, at which scientists from the Australian National University, Stanford University, USA, and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies exposed what they described "as the scientific flaws and half-truths in the claims of climate change skeptics"[25]

Criticisms by the film's contributors

Two of the scientists featured in the film, Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis-Christensen, have since stated that they disagree with the way their contributions were used.

Carl Wunsch

Carl Wunsch, professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT, was originally featured in the programme. Afterwards he said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed.[26][3] He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two."[27] Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action[27] and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.[28] The production company denied that he had been misled and that correspondence to Wunsch had clearly stated the programme would 'examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2'.[3] Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."[27] Wunsch has since said that Durkin "clearly quite deliberately understood my point of view but set out to imply, through the way he uses me in the film, the reverse of what I was trying to say" [4].

Although Wunsch has admitted that he finds the statements at both extremes of the global change debate distasteful [3] he wrote in a letter dated March 15, 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."[3]

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunsch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:

"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."[26]

Wunsch has said that he has received a letter from the production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled. Wunsch refused.[29]
Following Wunsch's complaints, his interview material was removed from the international and DVD versions of the film.

On December 7, 2007, reacting to what he claimed were new and further distortions by Durkin, Wunsch stated that Durkin made a false statement about Wunsch's reasons for demanding his material be removed[5]:

"Durkin says that I reacted to the way the film portrayed me because of pressure from my colleagues. This is completely false. I did hear almost immediately from colleagues in the UK who saw the film who didn't berate me. They simply said, "This doesn't sound like you, this seems to be distorting your views, you better have a look at this".

During the interview, Wunsch restated and strengthened his critique of Durkin's "Swindle" on ABC's Lateline after the channel screened the film:

"I'm somewhat troubled that TV companies around the world are treating it as though this were a science documentary. It's not. It's a tendentious political propaganda piece of the sort I really could imagine the Bush Administration in this country could have put out on its own to throw raw meat to their believers. It's not a science film at all. It's a political statement."

Eigil Friis-Christensen

Eigil Friis-Christensen's research was used to support claims about the influence of solar activity on climate, both in the programme and Durkin's subsequent defence of it. Friis-Christensen, with environmental Research Fellow Nathan Rive, criticised the way the solar data were used:

We have concerns regarding the use of a graph featured in the documentary titled ‘Temp & Solar Activity 400 Years’. Firstly, we have reason to believe that parts of the graph were made up of fabricated data that were presented as genuine. The inclusion of the artificial data is both misleading and pointless. Secondly, although the narrator commentary during the presentation of the graph is consistent with the conclusions of the paper from which the figure originates, it incorrectly rules out a contribution by anthropogenic greenhouse gases to 20th century global warming.[4]

In response to a question from The Independent as to whether the programme was scientifically accurate, Friis-Christensen said: "No, I think several points were not explained in the way that I, as a scientist, would have explained them ... it is obvious it's not accurate."

Here’s a bit more from www.realclimate.org about Wunsch and his email exchange with the producer of “The Global" :

1. 9 May 2007 at 1:36 PM

Carl Wunsch has published an email exchange with Durkin, the producer of that phoney documentary.
Durkin does not respond well to critique. “You’re a big daft cock,” he wrote to journalists and scientists.

Durkin also asks why the issues raised in his wonderful opus have not come up in the “hours and hours of shit programming on global warming shoved down our throats by the BBC?”
“Go and fuck yourself,” he ends.
Seems like a nice guy. I’m sure that’s why Wunsch is publishing the emails, since Durkin did him such a nice favor by selectively editing an interview.”

Finally, one more thing about Nir Shaviv should be known. Shaviv may still insist that solar activity correlates well with global warming – see, at www.realclimate.org, “Fun with correlations” – a phrase which itself is not the most accurate way to describe the many climate changes that result from man’s activities, which some have suggested might better be described as “climate turbulence,” but even Nir Shaviv himself now agrees – I went to his Hebrew University website, and poked around – that

1)not only is there global warming (many “skeptics” have kept denying even that, claiming a misreading of the data, or problems in its collection

and

2) that a large part of that global warming – Shaviv says between 1/3 and ½ of it – is due to human activity.

That’s quite a concession on his part. I expect further concessions, as time flies.

"Well, they [climate scientists such as those I listed above, or those who regularly appear at www.realclimate.org] aren't presenting their case to the average Joe very well then either. By not presenting a convincing case, they leave the gates open to all kinds of unenforceable & fraudulent schemes, not to mention international extortion."
-- from a posting above

There are plenty of things the "average Joe" doesn't understand, and can't. One of my arguments for setting up special courts to try terrorism cases is based on that -- the "Average Joe" who makes up with "Average Jane" the Average Jury, can't quite grasp the nature of Jihad, the duplicity of taqiyya, the texts, the tenets, the everything, just as the "Average Joe" can't understand the complexities of tax or patent cases, which is why special tax and patent courts exist.

It is not for want of trying, of patiently explaining, by many highly articulate scientists, that the "Average Joe" fails to understand. There is so much free-floating nonsense in the world we live in, that it would drive any intelligent sober scientist crazy, if he thought the validation of his work depended on whether or not it was understood by the "Average Joe."

Scientists, for example, have to face the fact that what Christie Brinkley, and Peter Cook, will take up all kinds of the "Average Joe's" attention, as decided aforehand by our cruel and ruthless mind-dictators who run all the television channels, and many of us, having been slowly idiotized over the decades, will sit and watch with deep interest. Or we will wonder whether The Bachelorette should choose Jason, or Jessie, or whether A-Rod has been faithful to his wife, or has taken up with Madonna, or with yet one, or two, or ten other girls whom neither his wife nor Madonna knows about. And so on, to the end of television time, and a few winks must be caught in order to get up and go to work, and think only about that, until tomorrow, after work, same time, possibly same station -- but given the contents, it hardly matters.

Did the work of Watson and Crick depend for its validation on the understanding of it by the "Average Joe"? Who decided that the Ptolemaic theory was wrong, and the Copernican right? Who validated the data of Tycho Brahe? Who decided that Pasteur had a point, or Marie Curie, or Albert Einstein? Did a show of hands approve of P. E. M. Dirac? What about Mandelbrot, De Sitter, or Grigori Perelman?

The tragedy of the whole thing is that we are dealing with matters that affect us all, our world, our lives, our everything, and most of us, 99.99% of us, really are so unqualified to judge, and so have to rely on other things we know, including what we know, or don't know, about the collection of data, and the careful study of that data, and about modelling, and constant refashionig of theories, holding them up for inspection and criticism. The stakes are high, and we are facing catastrophe because the will of the people is what elects the officials who can do something, take measures that matter, and so many of those people are indifferent, or bored, or don't believe it because they don't want to believe it, and so they cling at the straws which are in their vie not straws, but giant logs, and huge powerful economic and political interests, those who produce, and those who sell, and those whose jobs depend upon factories or artifacts that rely on that oil, or gas, or coal, have been ready and able to spend money, heedless of the long-term consequences, consumed with short-term greed, traitors to the natural world, and to mankind both, and their children or grandchildren will not be able to buy themselves out of the consequences.

They try, and they try, and they try to make things clear. A few years ago, the head of the Senate Committe on Energy was one Sen. James Imhofe, from Oklahoma, a state where oil interests have traditionally been powerful. Senator Imhofe held hearings, not hearings that would offer the mounting evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but hearings that would be devoted to showing that the whole climate change business was some made-up nonsense. Oh, you should go back and listen to the kinds of things now-former Senator Imhofe used to say. It must have left climate scientists with a feeling of hopelessness and despair.

But they keep trying to make us here.

It's no different, really, from this site. We keep saying and saying and saying the same obvious things about Islam. And some hear and many do not. And we keep trying.

And we can't worry about, or begin to doubt our own sanity, just because some "Average Joes" can't be reached. Tant pis pour eux.

There is another objection stated above. To wit: in the haste by international groups to do something, they have created some programs that have been riddled with fraud and waste.

Here's the kind of thing the poster had in mind:

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.

Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.

Credits from the project are being bought by European companies and governments who are unable to meet their carbon reduction targets.

The market for CDM credits is growing fast. At present it is worth nearly $20bn a year, but this is expected to grow to over $100bn within four years. More than 1,000 projects have so far been approved, and 2,000 more are making their way through the process."

But what conclusions do we draw from this? That anthropogenic climate change does not exist? If the methods initially chosen to deal with the problem are supposed to be free from all human error, including the error of forgetting to factor in precisely all the ways the system created can be fiddled, or otherwise we will simply forget about anthropogenic climate change and in a fit of pique take our marbles and go home, that does not exactly make sense.

I can add to the examples of idiocy. The Bush Administration made a big hoo-ha about ethanol. It turns out that ethanol requires a lot of energy to produce, that farmland is now being turned over to growing corn for ethanol, that switchgrass and other crops would be much more efficient and cheaper sources of ethanol, and so on. I assume the Bush Administration, which has done so little, and understands so little, about this matter, wanted to be seen to be doing something, and what better way than pushing ethanol, to be assured of the votes of congressmen from the farm states, including the influential Senator Grassley.

Things really are at that level.

And that is the problem. We need, on this matter, not the usual politics, but ruthless and enlightened despots, who can be permitted to ignore politics and what the head-counting of "Average Joes" would result in.

There isn't time or space for that kind of sentimentalism. Democratic impulses sometimes are the right ones. But not, ordinarily, in something like this.
=

Dr. Hendrik Tennekes brings up an interesting point. What board certifies a climatologist? Where can I find a Registered Professional Climatologist? A manicurist has a license to trim nails, and a manicurist has to pass a test. And a climatologist? These climatologists are lobbying for more research money while they are making doomsday claims based on a computer program (garbage in, garbage out?). NOAA will only predict the path of a hurricane five days in advance, and then they assign a probability to that prediction.

All the indications are that the Earth's atmosphere is warming, and it has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. At the same time,the Mars atmosphere appears to be warming. There are two competing theories about Mars that I know of.

How long will the warming trend continue? I do not know, Hugh does not know, and anyone who claims to know is just looking for a Government research grant. Why are they trying to milk the Government cow? I suspect that they are afraid that they will be forced to do the weather forcast on some TV station in North Dakota or American Samoa.

NASA Administrator Not Sure Global Warming A Problem
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Administrator_Michael_Griffin_Not_Sure_Global_Warming_A_Problem_999.html

Don't challenge global warming dogma:

NASA Chief Assailed for Climate Comments
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10613389

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html

Excerpt:

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."

"When government money is available to study a problem, the problem gets immediately worse. As scientists keep talking about a climate catastrophe, the more government money gets doled out to study the problem, and the problem gets worse."
-- from a postiing above

Ah, the voice of no-nonsense gradgrindism or babbittry is heard in the land.

We all know, don't we, that a lot of nonsense goes on in colleges, in universities, in research institutions. There are fads and fashionable fallacies. See Martin Gardner. And much of that nonsense was mocked by the late and lamented Senator William Proxmire, with his public ridicule of some of the research that government money was used to fund. And you, or I, or anyone, could mock plenty of things today. And we could also add to our list of things to mock by looking not just at what the government supports, but what foundations run by the gullible or those impressed with the fashionabe have and do support, including not only science projects, but all kinds of literary and historical "studies" that would make Braudel or Momigliano or Empson or Leo Spitzer wince.

But so what? That's what a mass idiotized democracy often ends up with. Nonetheless, a lot of important work is also funded.

And anyone who suggests that those engaged in the study of climate change have had it easy, because so many powerful economic interests are on their side, should think again. Is it true that solar energy companies, the ones that went under (like Newton Becker's pioneering Luz in California) because they didn't have the clout to get the necessary subsidies that would, for all of us, have been a good thing, the same solar energy industry that had such a tough time preventing the removal of what tiny credits are available (see Congress, last week), or the wind energy companies that can't even get a wind farm off Nantucket approved because it would spoil the view (by the way, Nantucket's a low-lying sandbank, and witin a few decades, by the next gigantic hurricane, it may disappear under the waves, if drastic measures are not taken -- you heard it here first), when all the oil companies and the coal companies and the gas companies had on their side were their poor little ineffectual selves, and the entire automobile industry (which kept on board the take-no-real-action-and-don't-tax-gasoline brigade the powerful many-termed Democratic Congressmen Dingell and Conyers), and so we are expected to believe that the reason so many people have started to study global warming or, better, anthropogenic climate change is that that's where the money is, and those who are "skeptics" just can't get funded.

Not Six Impossible Things To Believe Before Breakfast. Not Five, not Four, not Three not Two not even One.

Please.

I only have time to pick this one little nit.

"Nantucket's a low-lying sandbank, and witin a few decades, by the next gigantic hurricane, it may disappear under the waves, if drastic measures are not taken"

What measures?

riprap? sea wall? gasoline tax?

I'll see your one scientists and raise you two.

Scientists Disagree On Link Between Storms, Warming
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900354.html

Global warming and hurricanes -
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/hurricanes-global-warming-47041302?src=rss?kw=istExcerpt:

"The art of hurricane prediction, even just a few weeks ahead of a season, is young. Scientists readily acknowledge that the list of unknown influences on hurricane activity is likely to be long."

Art, not science? I presume that all of the influences on Earth's climate are known.

"'The art of hurricane prediction, even just a few weeks ahead of a season, is young. Scientists readily acknowledge that the list of unknown influences on hurricane activity is likely to be long.'

Art, not science? I presume that all of the influences on Earth's climate are known."
-- from a posting above

If this is an attempt to refute, or deride, or undercut something I wrote, I can't quite figure out what that something is. Did I write something that suggests that I presume -- you are presumably mocking that presumed presumption of mine when you write "I presume that all of the influences on Earth's climate are known" - that "all of the influences on Earth's climate are known"?

I never wrote that. I never hinted at suggesting at implying a belief that "all of the influences on Earth's climate are known." Never.

As for hurricanes, Kerry Emanuel has written and spoken (I've attended one of his lectures, and I have taken advantage of other means to find out his latest thoughts on anthrogenic climate change and, specifically, on hurricanes) on the likelihood that a slight rise in the temperature of water in the Gulf can change, not the frequency, but rather the ferocity, of a particular storm.

We are all aware that climate scientists do argue about, and sometimes change their minds about, this or that particular predicted effect. For example, there have been different views on whether or not the melting of arctic ice would lead to the forming of a new ocean current with that icy water, a current that might become powerful and push the Gulf Stream away from its present path. Some spoke about the possible cooling of Great Britain and Ireland as a result. I gather that this is no longer a worry, but there is another prediction about Great Britain that offers another kind of worry: that it may become hotter and wetter, and that too will pose problems.

Effects, or predictions about the effects, of global warming, can and do change as more is learned, as more data is gathered and models constructed, and jettisoned or modified. Things are happening right now to the arctic ice, and even to the ice on the antarctic shelf. And as things happen, new information is acquired. And theories evolve, and new predictions of what's to come, at what rate.

But so what? That doesn't make these modifiers-of-their-own theories scientists into global warming skeptics or grist for the GWS mill. It doesn't make them part of the rapidly-diminishing group that insists that human activities have not played a major role in dramatic changes in the earth's climate, that are occurring and speeding up.

One of your links is to an April article by Emanuel apparently modifying -- but only slightly -- his previous views. The popular press as usual exaggerated the whole thing, and his presumed "reconsideration," and simplified, and misreported. It's standard operating procedure whenver climate questions are covered. The people who are the victims of such misreporting get used to it, even if it still manages to annoy, or worse than annoy, them. At the same website, is another article not by Kerry Emanuel, published in mid-May, that re-confirms the view (which had not really ever been abandoned by Emanuel) that hurricane intensity will be affected. Intensity alone, and not, apparently, frequency of hurricanes.

When I attended a public lecture on the subject of hurricanes several years ago that Emanuel gave, one whose intended audience was not fellow scientists or MIT students, but those not necessarily adept in any area of science, he discussed the collection of data, in the distant past, and the past, and the present, about hurricanes, and different ways that that data had been or could be interpreted, and what one might reasonably make of it all. I remember being struck by his insistence that not frequency, but only intensity, of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico would be affected by the rise in the ocean's temperature of about 1 degree centigrade. He explained why this would affect the intensity of a particular hurricane, but I can't reproduce everything he said. But even if he decided that hurricanes, or their Asian equivalent, typhoons, were affected this way, or not affected that way, or that they were affected a lot, or only a little, and if other scientists working in the same area agreed, or disagreed, or disagreed and then agreed, this would not represent a denial of global warming, of the human activities (the most important being the burning of fossil fuels) that have had a now-recognized effect in the sudden increase in such warming, and the appropriate time-frame (the effects today are not from activities today, but from activities that began with the Industrial Revolution, but especiallyin the last fifty years).

The claim or hinted suggestion that if scientists don't have all their ducks in a row, and can't predict absolutely everything, or can't modify their theories as to particular effects without throwing the whole notion of anthropogenic global warming into doubt, is merely curious, but does not convince. There's plenty still to learn about the likely effects of anthropogenic climate change, and predictions to revise. But that fact does not undercut the understanding of how certain human activities have brought on that phenomenon now known as that same "anthropogenic climate change."

Credits from the project are being bought by European companies and governments who are unable to meet their carbon reduction targets."

This is nothing but a socialistic communist program at taking money from those who produce to those who cannot or will not. l am sick of hearing about "carbon footprints" credits, this global nonsense is nothing more than highway robbery. another way for politicians to control the rank and file working stiffs. We can drill for more oil in N.Amer. and and bring in more nuclear power, and for greenies, bring on wind/solar power to make them feel better.
ps enough hot hair in DC to create enough energy for the coast! The earh has heated and cooled off from the time begining, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, but to get along with changes.

Assuming that global warming is for real, can we try and recoup some of that money by selling the OIC trillions of carbon credits? That way, divert cash that would otherwise go into the jihad, and maybe pay off the national debt.

Also, given that countries like India, China, Brazil have stated that developing countries shouldn't be held responsible for carbon emissions (even though Beijing or Calcutta are far more polluted than LA ever could be), why assume that anything can be done about global warming, even if we were the ones guilty of causing it?

Hugh - as I've said, I'm with you.

And let's reflect that if the USA and some others were to remove all the jizya they currently pay to, say, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, inter alia, and redirect that considerable sum to , for example, Israel, with half comprising a flock of F22s and other useful things, and the other half given expressly to people like the founder of Luz (he has not given up, he is still hard at work, in Israel), and other very, very bright Israelis to engage in research into renewable energies and cleaner nuclear and much more efficient solar and redesigning public transport, and other associated aspects of what Judaism might broadly call 'tikkun olam'...well, I'm sure the whole planet would benefit.

Hugh, your comment about Nantucket led me to think that you believed that a warmer climate meant bigger hurricanes. The computer programs are still being modified because the hurricane predicting folks have been shown to be alarmists based on their forcasts in 2005. The last two hurricane seasons showed them to be very, very wrong. It is now July, and we have had ony two named storms. If they can't get hurricane programs reliable, what does that say about predictions of future climate change based on a computer model?

Why am I so dubious? I have seen the bad application of a computer program cost a company I worked for $75,000. I replaced two air handling units because an engineer input one wrog number.

"I drive for a liveing at night and i see no decrease at 131 a gallon in ny of people not driveing americans like the west are undisciplined"

What's that you're spouting about "discipline", Mr. No Punctuation?

I work for a living in a factory, on a split shift (noon to 9:30pm). Yes, I could take a bus to within a mile of my workplace, which is sixteen miles from my home. However, the buses have stopped running before my last work hour.

You know what I think? I think you "drive for a liveing" {sic} transporting other people, and you don't have to pay for your own gas. You simply set your rates to gouge your customers for it.

Until you have to pay for my gas, or any other "americans", you can shove your opinions of how undisciplined other people are, right into your...tank.

I did make a mistake in my mention of Nantucket. I meant to write "sandbar" not "sandbank."

We need to stop using Fossil Fuel so the rest of the World can pollute with impunity. We need to walk so others can have a chance to drive a Car. We need to stop heating our homes so the 3rd World can. We have to go back to using Sickles to mow our lawns so that others can borrow our Mowers.

Feel free to make additions, to the adjustments in your life, your willing to make, to save Mother Earth, for others enjoyment.

Global Warming, right up there with the Weather report. About as reliable as looking out the Window yourself.

The people who predicted we would be in a new Ice Age some 30 years ago were presented as "smart" people with the "papers" to prove it.

What happened?

flowerknife: no-one is asking you to live like it was the 18th century.

But what's so awful about, say, *walking* to the corner shop, or the local post office, rather than driving, or walking to school with one's children? I live within walking distance of the primary school that my younger children attend. Why would I bother to drive, when I can walk instead, enjoy fresh air and sunlight, peek over the fence at people's gardens, and get my daily dose of healthy exercise into the bargain? And I'm not racking up a fuel bill!

Is it really so onerous, to don a jumper inside the house, or put an extra blanket on the bed, rather than turn the heating up?

Why would it be such unbearable hardship, to open a few windows and doors in summer, if you live in a warm climate zone, rather than turning the aircon on full blast?

I live in a subtropical environment. For six months of the year it is H.O.T. I do have an airconditioner. But I reserve its use for those limited periods when the humidity is extremely high and the maximum is 33 Celsius and upwards. The rest of the time, well, I leave all the doors and windows open, use a simple fan, and wear less. When it's hot, sure, I feel hot; when it's cold, well, I put on more clothes.

What's wrong with getting a little hot and sweaty, in summer? Hey, it's summer! What's wrong with putting on a beanie and woollie slippers, in winter? Is that primitive and uncouth?

I can understand northern hemisphere people, what with snow and sleet and fog, using clothes driers in winter. But we Australians can generally survive without driers. I don't feel my human rights are impaired by my reliance on a plain old outdoor washing-line, the famous Hills Hoist.

What would be wrong with requiring architects and builders to design houses, shops and offices better, so that they didn't have to be completely artificially cooled, heated, lighted and ventilated, all year round?

Truly well designed buildings are pleasant to look at, warm in winter, cool in summer, full of light, and with a pleasant flow of air, and do it all with minimal - or no - burning of fossil fuels.

Energy efficiency measures DO NOT automatically mean we all have to live like inhabitants of third world slums. That is the single biggest furphy that the oil and coal lobby has managed to foist upon us.

Just as the idea that bicycles are ridiculous, and that ONLY the private motorcar is an acceptable method of getting anywhere at all (unless, of course, one takes a plane) and that any form of public transport - train, bus, tram - is inherently inefficient and always and everywhere grossly unpleasant and impossibly expensive, has been assiduously encouraged by the automobile industry.

Right now, the trucking industry in Australia is screaming for fuel subsidies...whereas the obvious, sensible thing to do is to dust off and improve our long-distance rail and sea freight, such as worked perfectly well right up to the 1940s and 1950s.

None of this costs jobs: it merely shifts them from one sector to another. None of this damages human health or quality of life.

Indeed, cities with fewer cars = cities with less smog, particulate pollution and noise, and cities that are safer and pleasanter for cyclists, and for pedestrians, especially the young and the elderly. The easier and safer it is to walk or cycle, the more people will do so.

My mother grew up in a Queensland coastal town in the mid 1930s. The geography was flat, the roads were wide. Morning and evening the roads were crowded with gentlemen heading to and from work...cruising nonchalantly by on their bicycles. Mum was impressed by the way some of them managed to ride 'no hands' whilst reading the paper... Oh, poor fellows, they were SO deprived and wretched because they had bikes rather than cars!

An energy efficient society can be perfectly practical and pleasant ...and those who walk, or cycle, or combine such, with public transport, will be fitter and less fat. The ancient art of people watching, of the evening promenade, and of conversation with strangers or neighbours, could be revived.

You might also ask an astronomer about what they call "light pollution", the lighting up of modern cities far beyond anything actually required for street-level safety; and how this is depriving today's city dwellers of the beauty of the night skies.

Real energy efficiency is win-win: less money to the obscene House of Saud and the mullahs, and healthier, cleaner, less noisy and more liveable homes and cities.