"CO2 is plant food"

"Plants, as far as I know, are still, still bending toward the light, and if we dance until the heart explodes, it'll make this place ignite."

~MGMT, "Flash Delirium"

"CO₂ is not a pollutant; it is green plant food."

~Pierre R. Latour

"The current focus on carbon dioxide has nearly run its course, as it has been clearly shown that it is not harmful. In fact, the slight increase in its tiny concentration will assist agriculture and help to feed the starving people of the world."

~Edward B. Boyle, Jr.

Alas, the world is far more complicated. While it's true that a higher concentration of CO₂ would, in a vacuum, improve plant growth, the overall effect on agricultural yields requires a bit of work to tease out.

The changes in climate wrought by more carbon dioxide will improve yields in some areas while hurting yields in others. A recent study published in Science examined the effects of changes in CO₂ concentration, temperature, and precipitation on the yields of the four stapliest of staple crops--corn, wheat, rice, and soy--from 1980 to 2008. They estimated that globally, climate change improved rice and soy yields by 2.9% and 1.3%, while corn and wheat yields declined by 3.8% and 2.5%, respectively. These changes caused global food prices to increase by 6.4%.

Another study concluded that by 2030, 370 million people, mostly those who are already poor and vulnerable, will experience reduced crop yields due to climate change.

Furthermore, higher levels of CO₂ will affect different plants differently. The yellow starthistle, "the worst weed of the West", would grow 600% larger in elevated concentrations of CO₂ compared to only 15% for native plants.

So yes, there is a seed of truth in the claim that carbon dioxide is yummy plant food. But the effect of more CO₂ on agricultural yields is overall a negative one.

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas

Gas prices are averaging $3.96 a gallon nationally and a record-breaking $4.26 a gallon here in Michigan. Some families spend over 13% of their income on fuel. And yet oil companies receive $4 billion annually in subsidies from the federal government. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Valero Energy, ConocoPhillips, and even BP have all received tax breaks from the IRS.

This is ridiculous. (Even more ridiculous is that we knew this was a problem during the 1970s oil embargo and yet we have spent the last 3 to 4 decades DOING NOTHING.) And gas is going to get even more expensive as demand increases, especially from the burgeoning economies of China, India, etc., and as remaining oil supplies dwindle and become harder both to access and to refine.

So here's what we do: End oil subsidies and put that money into R&D and subsidizing clean energy. The sooner our economy is based on renewable energy instead of being shackled to dirty, foreign oil, the better.

Dear Congressman Hoekstra

Your recent "Perspective" is an interesting example of empty political posturing. You express your opposition to a cap-and-trade program that would regulate CO₂ emissions, which you call a "job-killing National Energy Tax." Yet you also want to promote renewable energy to reduce both our dependence on foreign oil and pollution to the environment.

I agree that we should encourage clean energy, but how exactly do you propose to do this? We could discourage carbon-emitting energy sources by taxing them or instituting a cap-and-trade program, but you clearly believe that would kill jobs. Alternatively, we could subsidize clean energy, but we would have to institute a "job-killing" tax to pay for it to avoid being irresponsible and increasing our national debt. Or we could mandate that utilities must produce a certain proportion of their electricity from renewable energy in a one-size-fits-all regulation. But that would ignore regional and other differences and would not allow companies to behave as rational, economic actors.

As your constituent, please tell me how you plan to promote clean, renewable energy. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too just because it's an election year.

Sincerely,

Wolverine

Note: This is not the first example of Hoekstra's disingenuousness.

The American Power Act

Much has been said about the American Power Act, introduced to the Senate on May 12. It would incentivize more offshore drilling and nuclear power. It would limit the EPA's capacity to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. And it does not nearly reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough.

Some of these complaints are misleading: For instance, the American Power Act only limits the EPA's ability to regulate under the Clean Air Act because it establishes a cap-and-trade system for large carbon emitters. EPA would deal with these emitters under the American Power Act, while still reserving the ability to regulate other emissions, like automotive emissions, under the Clean Air Act.

And in spite of these complaints, the American Power Act deserves our support. It finally sends a signal that the United States will regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Such a signal is needed for entrepreneurs to invest in researching and implementing green energy. Indeed, it is precisely what they are waiting for.

And yes, it does not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions enough. But it is much easier to establish the cap-and-trade framework and adjust later on. And as Joe Romm reminds us, this is exactly what happened with the Montreal Protocol and the Clean Air Act(s).

Yes, the bill is flawed and we should lobby the Senate to improve it. But those flaws should not prevent us from taking the first real step to fight global warming and passing this bill.

Will All Great Neptune's Ocean Wash This Clean?

BP is lowering a dome into the Gulf of Mexico in an attempt to capture oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank over two weeks ago. The dome would work like a funnel in reverse; oil would rise to the top of the dome and be pumped to a ship on the gulf surface.

BP was apparently exempted from conducting an environmental impact assessment on the rig after it was concluded that a massive oil spill was "unlikely." Now this is probably true; according to American Petroleum Institute director Erik Milito, "There have been in excess of 30,000 Gulf of Mexico wells drilled in the last 40 years and there hasn’t been a major spill [ed: I'm gonna let him finish, but Ixtoc I was one of the greatest spills of all time.] so I’d say the safety rates were good." Still, the fact that there is at least some probability of a significant oil spill should require an impact assessment.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has responded by calling for a "pause" in pursuing legislation on climate change. According to The New York Times, Graham "said that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had heightened concern about expanded offshore drilling, which he considers a central component of any energy legislation. Mr. Graham also said that Democratic insistence on taking up immigration policy before energy had chilled his enthusiasm for any global warming measure."

Sorry, Senator Graham, but limiting offshore drilling or at least regulating it more tightly after an unexpected explosion kills 11 and spews thousands of barrels of oil into an ecologically sensitive area of the Gulf of Mexico seems like a rational response to me.

How Convenient!

Who else? Quoth Rush Limbaugh:

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. … Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade, that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Of course! It is a little too convenient that an oil rig explodes, dumping barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico right when environmentalists are starting to protest expansions to offshore drilling. Just like 9/11 was a little too convenient for an administration searching for a pretext to go to war with Iraq. They must have been inside jobs! What's that, Rush?

Well said, Rush. You are "a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance." Why don't you learn something about environmentalism or at least probability before you go off making claims without evidence? Last word from Justin Gardner:

For some reason…I don’t think folks who have spent their lives defending the environment would deliberately cause one of the worst environmental disasters in our lifetime just to get legislation passed that they felt was inherently compromised.

Call it a hunch.

Nothing for Something

Earlier this month, President Obama announced a plan to open much of the Atlantic and Arctic seaboards for offshore drilling. Most view it as a means to get Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate on board for a climate-change bill. But given that the Republican-bloc strategy is to oppose everything that Obama and the Democrats propose, this move raises fears that--in the words of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)--that Obama is "giving up something for nothing."

But perhaps Obama is being craftier that Menendez lets on. The move may convince a few moderate senators to vote for a climate bill. Or it may make it easier to paint Republicans as unthinking, obstinate reactionaries who care more about scoring political points than making good-faith attempts to improve the country. This should give Democrats a useful political argument for the 2010 mid-terms, also theoretically making it easier to pass a climate bill.

Now here's the kicker: Most of the land offshore won't be open for drilling until 2012. Who knows what the economics of energy will be like then, especially if a bill passes in 2010/2011? It may not be worth the cost to energy companies to explore and drill offshore, in which case Obama would be getting something for nothing.

But these are high stakes, and the fact remains that we can't drill our way out of global warming. We can't even drill our way to energy independence. The only solution is to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and even nuclear energy. So let's make sure that in the course of his political gamesmanship, Obama does not lose sight of that.

The Politics of Language (of Global Warming)

So I'm not going to talk about health-care reform. Everybody else is talking about it, and I'm not very knowledgeable about what's in the bill to begin with.

Instead, I'm going to take you back to a little over a month ago when the East Coast was covered with the white, fluffy stuff - no, not purebred, Persian cats - in the great "Snowpocalypse."

Conservatives were thrilled. Quoth Sean Hannity, "It’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories." And then there's this:

Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is a funny, funny man.

This flies in the face of both logic AND science. First, it doesn't make sense to draw conclusions about a broad (in space and in time) pattern based on a single event. Second, even if you could reach a larger conclusion based on this event, it is not clear that "global warming is a hoax" would be that conclusion. Because of increased moisture in the air, more severe snowstorms are exactly what you would expect from global warming. (h/t)

But part of the problem lies in the term "global warming" itself. A relatively cool summer may be partly behind the public's decreased belief in global warming. Of course, the average temperature will not monotonically increase year after year; there will be some natural variation. However, someone might infer from the phrase "global warming" that it would, and they'll change their opinion with the weather forecast.

But what is the alternative? "Climate change," the heir apparent, is simultaneously clearer (This is a trend in climate, not weather.) and vaguer. (How is it changing?) This vagueness may be an advantage: an increase in severe snowstorms would be more compatible with "climate change." However, neither imply a sense of danger or urgency. But "climate chaos" or "global weirding" both sound silly, and I doubt either will catch on. "Global warming" or "climate change" is the phrase that we are stuck with.

Dear Congressman Hoekstra

Your recent "Perspective" on the EPA's decision to designate carbon dioxide as a pollutant is worryingly disingenuous. First, you write that the "ruling makes it even more difficult for businesses seeking to grow and create jobs to predict what future energy costs will be, therefore discouraging growth." On the contrary, the designation indicates that the future price of fossil fuels will be higher, creating a market incentive to develop clean-energy technologies.

Second, three sentences taken out of context from thousands of private emails do not "cast doubt" on the science behind global warming. The much ballyhooed phrase "hide the decline" refers to the divergence problem: Tree ring data suggest that temperatures have been declining since the 1960's, even though we know from actual temperature readings that the planet has gotten warmer since then. Indeed, the last ten years were the warmest decade on record.

The science is clear: The planet is getting hotter, and human greenhouse-gas emissions are to blame. If you disagree with the Obama Administration's actions, please tell me what positive action you think we should take instead of misinforming your constituents.

Sincerely,

Wolverine

Silver Lining

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is estimating that CO₂ emissions will fall 2% in 2009, the largest drop in 40 years. The IEA attributes 75% of the decrease to the global recession.

This shows that the best way to reduce emissions is simply to reduce consumption. For instance, reducing the number of pregnancies is "five times as cost-effective as deploying low-carbon technologies." I'm not saying that we should enforce draconian limits on childbirth, but providing condoms and birth control to developing nations would reduce everything from environmental damage to the spread of AIDS to fighting over limited resources. (It's no coincidence that Rwanda has the highest population density in mainland Africa.)

And on that note, Happy Peace Day.

Even Smart People Can Be Stupid

So I was reading The Bent, a quarterly publication by Tau Beta Pi, like a good enginerd, and one of the letters made my blood boil. It was written by Pierre R. Latour, who worked on the Apollo Program, and was part of the back-and-forth on global warming that's been raging for nine issues. Let's go through some of it:

1. Earth's temperature is a property of a distributed, dynamic chemical process control system. A thermostat reduces variations about a desired set point by feedback manipulation of significant energy flows.

This letter was written by an engineer to an audience of engineers, and even though I'm an engineer, I don't know what he just said. Maybe it's because I'm the wrong type of engineer (civil, not chemical like Mr. Latour) or maybe it's because I'm still a lowly undergrad. Either way, this paragraph doesn't actually say anything, and merely serves to make Mr. Latour sound smart.

2. Earth's average atmospheric temperature is unmeasurable...

Okay, it's true that we couldn't take the temperature of every single point on Earth and calculate the exact average. But we could sample a bunch of points on Earth and get a good guess and a margin of error. If the sample average changes beyond the margin of error, then we can be confident that the actual average is changing. Apparently Mr. Latour never took a statistics class.

No professional control engineer would accept responsibility for engineering Earth's thermostat. His first duty is to do no harm...

First, I don't think anyone wants to engineer a global thermostat. A thermostat, as Mr. Latour was probably trying to say in his first, jargon-filled paragraph, responds to the current temperature. I want my apartment to be between 68^o and 78^o. If it's hotter than that, turn on the AC; colder, the heat. That's a thermostat. The response to global warming is closer to, "Hey, the heat's been on for a while. Let's turn it down before it's 90^o in here."

Second, you would think that "first do no harm" would be an argument to stop pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere. Under this guise, if you don't know what it will do, you shouldn't do it. The Earth seemed fine before we started pumping it out.

3. While Earth's temperature has been warming slowly for 25,000 years and drifted up 0.6^oC from 1975-98, (0.026^oC/year), [sic] it stopped increasing since 1998...

Hmm, the "unmeasurable" global average temperature increased 0.026^oC/year between 1975 and 1998? Interesting. And while the Earth's temperature does fluctuate naturally, there has been a sharp increase that started, incidentally, about the same time as the Industrial Revolution:

4. The melt rate of ice is proportional to atmospheric temperature, not the derivative of temperature [i.e. how fast the temperature is changing, for the calculus-deprived]. Ice melts because its surface is warm, not warming. A glacier shrinks because it is warm; [sic] even if it is cooling.

Wow. And if its surface keeps warming, it will be warm enough to melt.

5. The prime mover of Earth's energy balance and temperature is the sun. Atmospheric CO₂ lags ocean and atmospheric temperature because its solubility decreases with temperature, just like champagne bubbles do. So temperature changes cause CO₂ changes, not the other way around.

You know where else the sun acts as the prime mover of temperature? A greenhouse. But a greenhouse wouldn't be as warm without the glass. A greenhouse is, of course, in no way analogous to the effect to which it lends its name.

And temperature changes causing CO₂ changes doesn't automatically discount "the other way around." You would think a systems engineer would have heard of a feedback loop.

6. CO₂ is not a pollutant; it is green plant food. Its greenhouse-gas effect is irrelevant and benign. H₂O vapor effects are 1,000 times greater. The greenhouse-gas effect is essential for life...

Most of what Mr. Latour says here is true; he just fails to understand the concept "too much of a good thing." Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect are both essential for life. (Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be about -17^oC.) Water is essential for Mr. Latour's life, but I doubt he wants me to pump 27 trillion kg of it into his house every year.

And it's true that the contribution of water vapor to global warming is higher than that of carbon dioxide, but the effect of adding more of it into the atmosphere is not as dramatic as that of CO₂. First, more water vapor means more clouds, which increase the Earth's albedo, reflecting sunlight back into space and reducing the amount of heat that reaches the earth in the first place. Second, increasing water vapor concentrations won't close the atmospheric window. (The greenhouse effect happens when molecules in the atmosphere absorb electromagnetic radiation, trapping it in Earth's atmosphere. But molecules absorb electromagnetic radiation only at particular wavelengths. Water, for instance, absorbs wavelengths around six microns, and practically none of that escapes the Earth's atmosphere. There is little in the atmosphere that absorbs in the 8-12 micron range. CO₂ does.)

8. By March 16, 2009, more than 700 international scientists have testified to the Senate's environment and public works committee,...debunking any claims of scientific consensus for anthropogenic global warming (AGW)...

While it's true that belief in AGW is not universal among scientists, 84% of scientists "think that earth is getting warmer because of human activity."

No benefit-cost financial analysis...has been provided...

Really? What's this?

11. It has been clear since 2006 that AGW is a scheme to tax people with CO₂ caps...

Really? Global warming is an elaborate hoax to provide political cover for taxing businesses? Since when have politicians put this much work into anything?

Besides, if they wanted to tax business, there are better things on which to base the taxation, like revenues or profits. I'd hope that the Democrats aren't such Milquetoasts that they have to invent an elaborate hoax and convince millions of people of its veracity before they are comfortable enough to enact a simple tax.

After the end of his letter, it says that Mr. Latour graduated from college in 1962, which means he's around 70 now. If he's wrong, he won't be the one who has to live with the consequences.

Coming Up ACES...Almost

On June 26, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act (aka Waxman-Markey) by a vote of 219 to 212. ACES has come under fire from both the right and the left. Some environmental groups, including Greenpeace, oppose the bill because it does not go far enough. (While they have a point, I support the bill because it appears to be the best we're going to get and could spur better legislation in the future.)

The right has meanwhile responded with, "AARGH!!! THIS BILL IS GOING TO KILL THE AMERICAN ECONOMY!!!! APPLE PIE WILL NEVER TASTE GOOD AGAIN!!!"

Well, they're wrong. But let's look at their claims and take them apart one by one:

This bill will cost American families exorbitant sums of money. The CBO estimates that the average American household will have to pay an extra $175 per year by 2020 in direct costs, or about 0.2% of post-tax income. The EPA estimates it will cost $1100 per year by 2050. Even if you claim that those numbers would be higher, it's important to remember that Americans will be making and spending more by then anyways. ($164,348 per year in 2050)

It's important to note that the costs borne by households vary because of progressive subsidies and varying usages. The poorest fifth would actually receive a net $40, while the richest 20% would pay $245 in 2020. Costs also vary by state in ways that might affect Senate votes:

This bill will make manufacturing in the United States more expensive. Companies will outsource. First of all, it doesn't seem like companies are too thrilled to employ Americans in manufacturing in the first place. It's easy to make this claim and then blame all future outsourcing on ACES, though they might have moved even if ACES had not been passed.

More importantly, the consequent goal should not be to avoid adopting stringent environmental regulations in the United States. It should be to make foreign countries adopt more stringent environmental regulations. This will ameliorate environmental problems and level the economic playing field. Obama has an opportunity to do just that at Copenhagen. China and India, presumably the countries that has the right-wingers most concerned, have an incentive to do so: they will be hit hard by global warming.

Global warming is expected to reduce global GDP by only 5% anyways. GDP should not be our main concern. Nate Silver shows how 81 countries, accounting for 2.8 billion people, could be wiped off the face of the earth and the global economy would only suffer a 5% hit. These countries mostly lie in sub-Saharan Africa or the tropics, incidentally the same places that would suffer the most from global warming.

This bill will increase prices, reducing consumption and thus production. Yeah, well, that's the point. Currently, we produce too much greenhouse gas pollution. We do this because the cost of emitting is external to the company doing the emitting. The company accrues all the benefits of producing thingamajigs but the cost of the resulting pollution is borne by everybody. By internalizing these costs, i.e. making the company bear these costs, a more economically efficient amount of pollution will be produced. Cap-and-trade is an ingenious, market-based solution to a classic market failure.

Now, the bill moves to the Senate, where I'm hoping it will be improved. But that's like hoping that a tornado will come along and clean my apartment.

A Stern Warning

Last month, the British Treasury released the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Some findings:

• "The benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting." The annual cost of not acting will likely be 5% of global GDP and could reach 20%. In comparison, meaningful actions need only cost 1%.
• "The most vulnerable – the poorest countries and populations – will suffer earliest and most, even though they have contributed least to the causes of climate change."
• Stabilizing greenhouse gas levels below 550 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2e) would alleviate most risks. Current atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases are at 430 ppm CO2e and are increasing by 2 ppm CO2e per year.

Governments around the world, especially the United States, must take action soon to avoid irreversible damage. A global framework like the Kyoto Protocol should be established. Cap-and-trade systems should be instituted; international carbon markets would be more effective, as they will allow third-world countries to develop while still limiting overall emissions. Countries should make a serious commitment to combat deforestation.

The Stern Review warns that economic disruption caused by global warming could be on the scale of that caused by the Great Depression or World War II. Whatever specific actions are taken, one thing is clear; those actions must be taken immediately.

Palin Problems

Personally, I think Sarah Palin is a terrible choice for McCain's running mate. But the general public seems to disagree. Palin embodies the conservative myth of small-town America. And McCain is now leading among white women 52% to Obama's 41%, when they were basically tied a month ago. (Some of this is probably attributed to a post-convention bounce, so don't worry too much, but worry a little.) And she's received 10% more press attention than Obama last week, and nine times more than Biden. (Who's the real celebrity?) So, for all of you enamored by the Palin story/myth, here are the facts.

THE TOP TEN REASONS TO DISLIKE SARAH PALIN:

10. She may have odd political affiliations. Her husband Todd was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party from 1995 to 2002. The AIP advocates greater state sovereignty for Alaska, and some members, including its founder Joe Vogler, have advocated secession. (Rumors have circulated that she supported Pat Buchanan in 1996 and 2000. These appear to be untrue.)
9. She taxes your oil. Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in the U.S. Perhaps because Alaska makes 89% of its revenue on four different taxes on oil. Enough for every Alaskan to get a $3200 check from the state government last year.
8. She was for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it. Thanks, then no thanks. When running for governor, she was asked if she supported the bridge. She answered, "Yes...The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.” Congress stripped the appropriations bill of language saying the $233 million had to be used for the bridge, so Alaska still received the money.
7. She supports shooting wolves from helicopters. I'm not making this up. She even offered a $150 bounty per wolf.
6. She charges the state more than a "crusader for fiscal rectitude" should. Governor Palin received per diem allowances, intended to cover travel costs, when she stayed at home, which is perfectly legal if not exactly in accordance with her principles.
5. She supports teaching creationism in public schools. Of the three candidates running for governor of Alaska in 2006, she was the only one to support it.
4. She believes humans are not responsible for climate change. She even sued the Bush Administration for listing the polar bear as an endangered species because it would hamper drilling for oil and gas in Alaska.
3. She is inexperienced, making her an especially odd choice for McCain, seeing how his best attack against Obama was Obama's inexperience. (For those keeping score, Obama has spent four years in the Senate, and Palin has been Alaska's governor for two.) And it's telling that she thinks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are taxpayer-funded, especially when they hold 80% of the country's mortgages and are being bailed out by the Treasury Department.
2. She tried to ban books from the Wasilla library. She asked the librarian how one would ban books from the library, particularly Go Ask Alice (about drug use) and Pastor, I Am Gay. When the librarian refused to answer the question, she was fired then reinstated after a public outcry.
1. She does not support abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.

Changing Climate, Stagnant Politics

So, we haven't posted in a while, which of course means that nothing important happened in the past nine days.

Except the brief life of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. The act, which I first heard about on Monday, would have (1) created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases--in my opinion, the best way to limit such pollution--and (2) allowed states to have tougher environmental regulations than the federal government, which California tried to do, but the Bush Administration's EPA denied California this right last December.

And now the bill has been filibustered to death. The supporters of the bill were 12 votes shy of the 60 necessary to invoke cloture and end debate. (Both Sens. Levin and Stabenow voted for cloture.) Senators will now wait until next year, when they will have a more supportive president and hopefully a more favorable legislature, until they try again.

Also on the climate change front, the NASA inspector general released a report stating that "political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years." Shock.

On a lighter note, there's a wolverine in Michigan's thumb!

The '01E Wolverine, North Campus, U-M, munching on the head of an Easter Bunny. (4/5/08)

Let's Do It

The Energy Department released a report yesterday that said that wind power could supply 20% of the nation's energy by 2030. Wind power currently supplies 1% of our energy. To achieve the 20% goal, the amount of electricity produced by wind would have to jump from 16 to 300 gigawatts per year. Such growth is predicted to decrease natural gas consumption by 11% and decrease coal consumption by 18%, removing 825 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. "This is the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road."

Such growth is not without its challenges. It would require improving turbine technology, constructing power lines from high-wind areas to high-usage areas, and opening new areas to wind development. But we must move away from fossil fuels, and as this report shows, wind energy can play a prominent role in moving toward a sustainable future.

For more.

A Heretic? Or a Sell-Out? Maybe Both.

The founder of Greenpeace said Tuesday night that "there is no proof global warming is caused by humans," but the relationship is likely enough that it's time to rely more on nuclear power.

This comes from IdahoStatesman.com.

Patrick Moore says while he believes Earth's atmosphere is changing of its own accord, "true believers" like Al Gore ought to endorse more nuclear power plants in an effort to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. Of course, Moore says, that's just a precaution. In case global climate change is man-made. He says building more nuclear power plants to reduce the effect of coal emissions on the atmosphere would be akin to purchasing fire insurance. We purchase that insurance, he says, on the slim chance our house will burn down. We ought to shut down coal plants on the slim chance that they're contributing to global warming.

What?

Pardon me while I double-take.

Could we be any more wishy-washy? First he says the relationship is likely enough that we ought to fire up more nuclear power plants. Then he says the correlation between the actions of humankind and climate change is actually very low.

While I agree that we ought to rely more on nuclear power, I don't think Moore has a very good chance of convincing those "true believers" he talked about that it's a good idea.

I think any eco-credibility he had is going up in smoke. But at least it's not contributing to global warming, right?

Why won't environmentalists take Moore, the founder of Greenpeace, seriously? Greenpeace was founded to protest nuclear testing. Now who does he work for? He's a representative of the Clean Air and Safe Energy Coalition. That coalition happens to be backed, in large part, by the nuclear energy industry. This might explain Moore's argument that other alternative-energy sources don't have as much potential as does nuclear energy.

Moore says he's simply realized with the help of science that nuclear energy is a better route to sustainability. Critics say he's just sold out.

While I laud Moore for his position, I want to make two points about this case. The first is that the money trail is important to take into consideration, obviously. This leads to the second point.

While the money trail is important, it's not enough in this case to dismiss Moore's position, and malign him as a heretic. This seems to be the major tactic of the "true believers" of the global warming movement when confronted with a dissenting opinion: discredit and destroy.

An Inconvenient Smear

CBS is set to air an interview this Sunday with former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore, touching on those darn naysayers who still refuse to believe global warming (or global climate change, whichever fits your paradigm) is caused by man.

I mean, come on, how can anybody believe it's not, right? But how did we ever get out of any Ice Ages, which we know dominated our planet throughout its history, if man wasn't there to begin the process? How is Mars experiencing global warming? Surely, Sojourner and the other rovers don't release a substantial amount of greenhouse gases! One answer to both questions lies in understanding Milankovitch cycles, which cause planets to wobble in their orbits. This wobbling, in turn, causes variations in temperature (enough to change the course of an ice age). It's a cosmic coincidence that both Mars and Earth are at a point in which Milankovitch cycles have brought both planets out of ice ages.

To be frank, I don't care that Al Gore says this. What really gets my goat is that he compares people who doubt humankind's involvement in whatever is going on to "the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat...That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off." (On a side note, does he include 9/11 or JFK conspiracy theorists in this group?) I personally take offense to that! Why is it acceptable that he may slander and insult me and others who share my viewpoint on the sole basis that we disagree with him? If we are akin to the camp who believes the world is flat (and does anybody really believe that anymore?), I will go so far as to compare the erroneous Nobel Peace Prize-winner to the Church authorities who gagged Galileo when the astronomer so boldly declared the heliocentric theory of the solar system. The motives between the two groups are strikingly similar, when it comes down to it; both entities, specifically Mr. Gore and the myopic Church authorities of their time, are threatened by any dissenting argument. Such debate has the power to remove the pedestal from under their feet, and it appears Mr. Gore has recognized this and has resorted to alarmism.

So where does that leave us? Well, for starters, the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, has said he would like to see Al Gore and other providers of "carbon credits" (or contemporary indulgences, forgiving ecological transgressions) sued for fraud. This is especially crucial after Heidi Cullen, a Weather Channel big-wig, said in 2006 that meteorologists who debate mankind's contributions to global warming ought to stripped of their American Meteorological Association licenses. Have those meteorologists and climatologists become the Galileos of our time?

Only time will tell whether any lawyer has sufficient cojones to take on the task of calling out Mr. Gore.

It's All in the Paradigm

I have to give a shout out to the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com/) for this one.

Anybody with at least slight misgivings about all the fuss regarding global warming might be interested to know that, according to a column by Lorne Gunter in the NationalPost.com on February 25th (http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289), the northern hemisphere is currently experiencing an uncharacteristically cold winter. The article reports that based on data from the US National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for American cities in January '08 was three tenths of a degree Fahrenheit cooler than the average of that month for the twentieth century.

Whats more, Toronto was smashed with seventy centimeters of snow two weeks into this month, breaking the record of 66.6 cm. That record dates back to 1950, and was the total for the entire month - not just the first half.

Asia has been hit hard, as well. China is experiencing the worst winter there in a century, and the article says cities there have been brought to a standstill. Power lines were brought down by snow and ice, and conditions were too harsh to hazard any repairs, leaving residents with out power for as long as several weeks. According to the article, with all things considered, Siberia, Mongolia, China, in addition to northern North America, are covered in more snow than those continents had been since 1966.

Finally, the most notable and important tidbit concerns that arctic sea ice that we hear so much about. Records indicate that substantial amounts of that ice have been lost due to global-warming-induced melting. In fact, melting has caused the reduction of the ice to the lowest point on record. However, you might be intrigued to learn that these records only date back to 1972. Surely, thirty-six years is nowhere near an adequate amount of time to determine a trend for as grand a system as global climate.

Of course, somebody is going to tell me that after the warming, there's going to be cooling. After all, that's how it happened in The Day After Tomorrow. But according to Bernard Goldberg, author of Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right (HarperCollins, 2007), the debate over global warming hasn't always been about global warming. In fact, in regards to the "global climate change" debate, as you may have noticed it is increasingly called as of late, a study by the Business and Media Institute shows that the New York Times and Time magazine have interchangeably run stories about global cooling and global warming for more than a century, beginning with cooling in 1895, warming in 1933, back to cooling as late as 1975, and back to the warming paradigm, which we are currently hearing about (see pages 67-69). In short, they don't know what they are talking about, and there is no way for anyone to be sure. Earth's weather makes up such a complicated system that it is folly to believe that any trends could be identified in a thirty-year sample, despite the argument from some.

My point isn't that we're about to tumble head first into an ice age. It's that Mother Nature has far more up her sleeve than we can correctly evaluate in such a short time span. Before we make stupid decisions regarding the need to reduce our carbon footprint (and how to do so), following the example of a man who buys "carbon credits" from his own company, we need to realize that there are much larger natural forces at work. Surely, it would be egotistical folly to say that our understanding of said forces can be derived from slivers of time, taken as samples that are supposedly representative of the entire climatic history of our planet.