In this editorial, James Hansen argues that if the Canadian tar sand are developed, it will be "game over" for the climate. "If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."

Michael Chrighton came up with the idea that global warming is a religion. Watch him stammer his way through an interview with Charlie Rose when asked to defend his position on global warming.

Robert Nelson thinks Earth Day is a pagan holiday and has written a long and rambling article trying to justify the idea that environmentalism is a religion. He would like to prohibit the teaching of  some aspects of science dealing with greenhouse gases and environmental science on the basis that it would be "teaching a religion". As he says: "

The issue posed by environmentalism today for those who believe in the separation of church and state is the following: Does it make sense constitutionally to prohibit the teaching and embrace of Judaism and Protestantism in official public settings, while permitting the government establishment - as taught in the public schools - of this new secularized Protestantism: the religion of green, the religion of Earth Day.'

"It is unlikely that all of Oklahoma's recent earthquake clusters can be attributed to human activities, state geologist G. Randy Keller says in a position statement released Monday." Dr. Keller said linking earthquakes to human activity "requires careful examination of a large amount of complex data and does not happen quickly."

Yes, Oklahoma has a state geologist who is also a petroleum geologist. And, he has chosen his words carefully. The USGS has just released a report that it is likely that the increased incidence of earthquakes is caused by man's activities.

A group of Skeptics once managed to take over an editorship at a peer-reviewed journal  and publish articles hostile to mainstream climate science. With the help of politicians and large funding sources, the hostilities have continued to this day.

Skeptics: Science values its skeptics as they make science strong and they sometimes make valuable contributions by opening new fields for investigation. True skeptics follow the methodologies and the ethics of science, which requires they subject their work to review by their peers and divulge conflicts of interest. There are some skeptics, particularly in the areas of climate science, who violate the ethical principles of science for money and power. To separate those from true skeptics, they will be designated here as “Skeptics”. They are usually just ignored by scientists, but there are problems when a Skeptic becomes a journal editor. 

Journal editors are almost completely responsible for seeing that articles are properly reviewed and scientifically sound before they are published. Some journals, such as  Energy and Environment, cater to Skeptics such as Sallie Baliunas, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Roger Pielke Jr., Willie Soon, and Steve McIntyre; who publish articles there that would not be accepted by legitimate journals. The editor, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, once said “the journal I edit has tried to keep this debate [climate scepticism] alive”.  Articles published in Energy and Environment are not taken seriously, but Skeptics hostile to climate science once managed a takeover of a reputable journal. An analysis by John Mashey showed the Skeptics managed to publish fourteen articles in Climate Research before they were caught gaming the peer review system.

Takeover: The takeover began in 1997, when Chris de Freitas became an editor at the reputable journal, Climate Research. There were 10 editors for the Journal and each worked independently, so it was possible for one editor to shepherd papers through the peer review process and see that they were published. The first paper  from a Skeptic, edited by de Freitas was by Patrick Michaels. The paper seemed to agree with the scientific findings of the IPCC reports, but it cast doubt at the end by concluding “this finding, instead adds further support to the emerging hypothesis that the Earth’s climate is not necessarily changing in a deleterious fashion”. Over the next six years, Chris de Freitas edited and published a series of fourteen papers by Skeptics who were interested in developing Dr. Michael’s “emerging hypothesis”. The articles caused so many complaints from scientists that some of the other editors questioned Dr. de Freitas about the quality of the papers he edited. He replied that they were on a “witch hunt”.

Restoring Order: The hostile takeover was uncovered after the fallout over a paper written by Sally Baliunas and Willie Soon. The paper reviewed the literature on the climate science of the last 1000 years, and concluded that the global warming in the 20^th century was not unusual and that natural forces, rather than man’s activities were the cause. An important piece of their evidence was the Medieval Warm Period, which they claimed was warmer worldwide than the latter 20^th century. But there was obviously something wrong with the paper. There were no accurate temperature records in Medieval Times, the Americas had not yet been discovered, and much of the Southern hemisphere was unknown. Proxy records from multiple sources show that the Medieval Warm Period amounted to only a small hump in the Earth’s temperature record. Shortly after its publication, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) issued a press release from thirteen of the scientists whose work was used in Baliunas and Soon’s paper, saying Soon and Baliunas seriously misinterpreted their research. The thirteen scientists then coauthored a paper explaining exactly why the Baliunas and Soon paper was in error.

 All this caused quite a furor at Climate Research. Five members the editorial board eventually resigned in protest and the newly hired chief editor, Hans von Storch stated the paper had serious errors and should never have been published. Tom Wigley, who often reviewed papers for Climate Research, wrote, “I have had papers that I refereed (and soundly rejected), under De Freitas’s editorship, appear later in the journal—without me seeing any response from the authors.” All this was followed by an unusual public statement from the publisher, acknowledging flaws in the journal’s editorial process. Under pressure, Chris de Freitas resigned shortly thereafter, and papers from the Skeptics stopped appearing in Climate Research.

Extended Hostilities: That should have ended the matter, except that some politicians found the conclusions of Baliunas and Soon’s paper to be advantageous to the fossil fuel industry to whom they owed allegiance. Political pressure was put on regulatory agencies to accept the results of the paper, in spite of its obvious flaws and distortions. The EPA was unwilling to include the paper in its assessment of climate science, so Sen. James Inhofe (R – OK) scheduled a meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee to examine the paper.

At the EPW hearing, Michael Mann represented the scientific viewpoint, presenting evidence from multiple sources showing that the Medieval Warm period was not uniformly worldwide and resulted only in a small hump in the Earth’s temperature record. Dr. Soon stood behind his work and, in response to a direct question about his funding sources, testified that he had not received any funds that might have biased his objectivity. However, the paper lists the American Petroleum Institute as a major source of funding. Documents received later from the Smithsonian Institution in response to FOIA requests, revealed that since 2001  Dr. Soon has received over $1 million in funding from oil and coal interests.

Sen. Inhofe was upset by the turn of events and tried to get him fired – Michael Mann that is. At Sen. Inhofe’s insistence, the University of Pennsylvania, a Quaker University, conducted two investigations into Dr. Mann’s research and found no misconduct. A 2010 Science article reviewed the investigations, declaring “Michael Mann is cleared, again. “ Dissatisfied with the ruling, Sen. Inhofe has tried to get the attorney general to charge Michael Mann with fraud. It doesn’t get much more hostile than that. Sadly, for the first time in history, scientists are collecting a legal defense fund to defend scientists against political attacks. And even worse, the scientific opinion of the senior member of our Environmental and Public Works Committee is based on a paper that would not have passed freshman English.

 (c) 2012 Que

Rising seas fueled by global warming have doubled the risk of so-called once-a-century floods, according to a trio of environmental reports released Wednesday.

These new reports -- one from the non-profit group Climate Central and two others published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters -- offer a detailed picture of where the most severe risks are along coastlines of the contiguous 48 states.

Science is about using observation and reason to understand the physical world. Some people are suspicious of computer models and theories; so here is some of the the basic data in pictures and graphs.

Ice core data gives a good picture of what has happened to the Earth in the last several ice ages. Please note that the concentration of CO2, which amplifies the effect of the Milankovitch cycles, did not rise above 300 ppm in the warmer interglacial periods - but now the CO2 concentration is  392 ppm – much higher than any time in the ice core record:

CO2: Man is now putting about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. About half of it dissolves in the ocean and they have become 20% more acidic in the last century. Much of the rest stays in the air, and  CO2 is building up in air:

Temperature: CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth, and NASA’s graph shows how its increase is changing the Earth’s temperature:

The Sun: The current global warming is often wrongly attributed to an increase in intensity of the sun. The sunspot activity does not show up above the noise in the temperature record above and the solar irradiance increased slightly until 1960 and has declined slightly since then.

 Arctic Ice: Many of the changes in the Earth are subtle but here is one of NASA’s pictures  which clearly shows  how the Earth is changing:

 Arctic ice:  These two graphs show how both the extent and the volume of the Arctic ice is changing.

      Arctic ice volume at each years minimum.

 Antarctica: Research by Steig and by O’Donnell  show that Antarctica is warming. The warmer oceans result in more snowfall which increases the inland glacier mass, but the erosion of ice by the warmer oceans is causing an overall loss of ice mass.

Antarctic Ice Mass from GRACE satellite data.

 Greenland: The Greenland ice sheets are also beginning to decline.  

Ocean Level Rise: The melting ice sheets and thermal expansion is causing the oceans to rise by about 3 mm per year which, though it seems small, amounts to an increase in ocean volume of 1190 cubic kilometers/yr.

     Rise in Sea Level.

 Severe Weather: Warmer temperatures increase both the rate of evaporation and the energy and moisture in the air. This increases the risk of severe weather, droughts, and wildfires. Large insurance companies such as Suisse Re now consider global warming a risk factor as there has been a fivefold increase in billion-dollar weather events in the last 30 years.

Droughts: Below is the Palmer Drought Index which includes most of the continental areas used for food production. Zero represents average rainfall and -4 represents extreme drought. After 1980, drought conditions have grown worse worldwide, and no one disputes the effect of droughts on food production.

Note : This post was updated on 04/03/2012 .

(c) 2012 Que

 The photo at the right, shot from Apollo 11 as the Earth rose over the moon, reminds us of how beautiful the Earth is.  It also reminds us, that though the Earth seems large to us, our space is limited and our resources are finite. What will happen when the Earth is full?  

  The human population just reached the milestone of 7 billion people. Our population has been growing at the rate of about 2% each year which means that the population will double about every 35 to 40 years. If we do not reduce our birthrate or experienced some great catastrophe, the population will reach 14 billion by 2050 and 28 billion by 2090. It is rather hard to imagine what the Earth would be like with that many people and is almost assured that that will not happen. Estimates are that the number of people who can live comfortably on the Earth is around 9 billion. That estimate may be off a few billion if you include advances in food production and measures to reduce our rate of pollution. However, it should be clear that at some point the human population will grow larger than the Earth’s ability to support it. What will happen then?  

 That has never happened before to the human population, but there are examples in nature where population is limited to a small area, such as bacteria in petri dish. When the nutrients are gone, so are the bacteria. There are a few examples of mammalian populations where the species is confined to a small area and the natural predators are eliminated, such as a Moose population established on Isle Royale in Michigan, where there were no wolves.  The moose population grew rapidly until almost all the vegetation on the island was depleted and then the moose population declined dramatically due to starvation and disease. One of the best examples is this case study of the deer population on the Kaibab Peninsula in northern Arizona.

In 1907 the deer population was unusually low with only 4,000 head. The carrying capacity was 30,000 at this time, so a massive campaign was waged against the natural enemies of the deer. Between the years of 1907 and 1923, the natural predators of deer (mountain lions, wolves and coyotes) were eliminated by hunters in order to increase the deer population. As the following graph shows rather dramatically, the deer population increased rapidly to 100,000 by 1924, but then died off rapidly to a mere 10,000 by 1939. Because of severe overgrazing by excessive populations of deer, the carrying capacity of this region was reduced to approximately 10,000 in 1939, and the deer population was reduced accordingly.

The graph at the right shows what happened to the deer population during this period. When the carrying capacity of the environment is exceeded, natural populations do not reach an equilibrium point and stay there.The result is a massive die off, and the population is decreased below their original carrying capacity. The Earth has a carrying capacity for man, and though we are not exactly sure when we will reach it, it will undoubtedly be within this century. What will happen then?

(c) 2012 Que 

This year the contest was carried out on three websites and the votes were combined and tabulated to determine the person who has most affected the environment through word or deed.

The 2011Environmental Hall of Fame Winners:

The winner is James Hansen, with 51% of the votes. His efforts opposing the XL pipeline played a pivotal role in delaying a decision and hopefully preventing the construction of the pipeline . Award: A massive presence at the 2012 Citizen's Climate Lobby International Conference, July 22 - 24, in Washington D.C. . Make your travel plans now.

Runner-up was the EPA  (31%)  for standing firm in its efforts to protect the environment in spite of the political pressure it has received. Award: A duplicate of Captain America’s Shield. Though Captain America’s Shield was fictional, the EPA's need for a shield is not. Please write your representatives about the need to protect the EPA from political attacks.

The Tulsa World (14%) was 3rd for showing great courage in defending  climate science and refuting Sen. Jim Inhofe’s claim of "victory in his efforts to debunk man-made global warming as a hoax." Their editorial stated:” While there are scientists and politicians on both sides of the issue, those who see climate change as a genuine threat are mostly scientists and most of those who deny it are politicians.” Award: I'm renewing my subscription and I hope that if you live in the Tulsa area you will also.

Joe Romm (3%), Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and maintains Climate Progress , an outstanding source of accurate climate science information. Award: Apparently, not many who took the poll read Joe Romm's columns. As an award we should correct that, so please click the link above and read some of his well-written articles.

The 2011 Hall of Shame Selections:

First place goes to Halliburton (Cheney), with 57% of the votes for the Halliburton clause in the Clean Water Act. This clause provided a loophole that allows the composition of fracking chemicals to remain secret, thanks to Cheney. Apparently, voters were dismayed that Congress could be manipulated to provide an exception to the law for a special interest at the expense of protecting the public. Prize: A big glass of water from a well next to a hydrofracking operation.

Runner up was Congressman Joe Barton of Texas,( 17%) for his apology to BP about how they were treated after the Gulf Oil spill and for trying to ban energy-efficient light bulbs because they contain mercury, even though he had fought efforts to stop mercury pollution by industries. Prize: A copy of his failing grades on the League of Conservation Voters Scorecard and, hopefully, a decline in the number of votes he receives in the next Congressional election.

There was a tie for 3rd and 4th place between Dr. Jane Lubchenco,(13%) for using bad data to set fishing catch limits and for not adequately policing BP’s drilling plans or their cleanup operations in the Gulf. Prize: A corexit oil shake. If you live on or near the gulf, please shake up a sample of the gulf water and mail it to her. It won't hurt if she gets several. 

                                                                                    and

Forbes Magazine (James Taylor)(13%) for a ridiculously misleading article, New NASA data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism, that described climate scientists as “alarmist” 15 times. Award: A copy of the book Ethics And Journalism and a complete ban on ever using the words 'alarmist' again. I will see that they get a copy of the book and I hope you will write Forbes (readers@forbes.com) about the ban and express your opinion of the article.

It is important that we keep in mind those who are heroes and villains to the environment. I wish to thank those who provided the nominations, the prize suggestions, he insightful and often humorous comments, and the votes to determine the winners. As this years goes by, please take note of those you wish to nominate for the 2012 awards.

Apparently it pays well to be a climate skeptic. The leaked Heartland Institute budget shows that the president and CEO, Joseph Blast, earns $145,000 a year, 2 or 3 times as much as most University or government scientists. Although Anthony Watts' Surface Station Project has been thoroughly discredited by the American Geophysical Union, he will receive $88,000 to continue it. His new project is to establish a website to take NOAA's temperature data and display it in graphical form. Interestingly, NASA already provides that.

Fred Singer will receive $5000 per month to tell us again that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and Craig Idso will receive $11,600 per month to explain the wonders of increased carbon dioxide on plant growth, although world food crops seem to be declining. Bob Carter received a measly $1667 per month to claim that we don't know the cause of global warming but he thinks it's natural. His take is low because he has been challenged to prove that and so far has produced one weak, easily rebutted article.

Congressman John Sullivan (R-OK) held a town hall meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma where he discussed the budget, gridlock, entitlements,  energy issues, EPA regulations, jobs, and the XL pipeline. The article gives Congressman Sullivan’s positions, comments and questions from the audience, and compares the authors views to Congressman Sullivan’s.

Congressman John Sullivan conducted two town hall meetings in Tulsa on January 26, 2012. The first was held at Tulsa Community College’s Metro Campus where a number of his constituents challenged Sullivan’s views. That meeting was reported  by the Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbeil in, “Sullivan town hall-goers applaud Obama speech”.  The afternoon meeting, which was held at the Hardesty Library in South Tulsa, had a much more partisan crowd. Congressman Sullivan’s opening remarks were much like those at his Sand Springs meeting last November. At the Hardesty meeting, he did not give people the opportunity to applaud Obama’s speech, he just criticized it. When people tried to point out the errors in his criticisms, they were interrupted by people shouting,” Ask a question”. Sullivan was there to hear what his constituents thought, but apparently his supporters did not want to hear anything good about the President.

Gridlock: Congressman Sullivan likened Obama to a football coach who gives a great locker room talk but doesn’t win. It was a bad analogy as the coach cannot win without cooperation from the players, and many players in Congress seem more interested in beating the coach than winning for the country. Every winning team needs a reasonable budget, but many Congressmen have insisted on cutting taxes and 206 legislators, Sullivan included, have signed Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes. He blamed the President and the Democrats in the Senate for the gridlock, saying that the house had sent the Senate 26 bills that were not enacted. However, most of those bills contained a “poison pill”. For instance, H.R. 3630, the badly needed Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2011, also had a provision to delay implementation of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, to hinder the EPA, and to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. It is hardly fair to blame the Senate when they are not sent clean bills.

 Energy : Congressman Sullivan said that we needed the XL pipeline to create jobs and claimed that it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly – and that the only problem was just a few miles through Nebraska wetlands. The problems are actually much greater.  They involve destruction of the boreal forests in Canada, pollution of Canadian rivers, acquiring the water and energy needed to process tar sands, and the carbon emissions the project would cause. Then, it is still not clear how many jobs it will actually create, who will profit from the project, and whether much of the oil will be shipped to foreign countries, possibly without being taxed as some of the refineries are in a tax-free zone.

 The Congressman said he has introduced legislation encouraging the development of natural gas as a fuel. He pointed out that natural gas provides about three times as much energy and costs much less than gasoline. Natural gas is plentiful in Oklahoma and developing the infrastructure to use it as a fuel would help Oklahoma’s economy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That is about the only positive contribution that Congressman Sullivan has made on environmental issues. Using natural gas would also significantly decrease our carbon emissions – but the Congressman did not mention that as he does not accept the scientific research on climate change. His supporters claim to be conservatives, but it is hard to imagine how they could support someone who is not also a conservationist. Congressman Sullivan scored a 9% on the League of Conservation Voters scorecard (see page 52).

Audience Questions: The wife of a veteran told of the problems her husband had getting help from the Veterans Administration and asked if Sullivan could help. Congressman Sullivan said he would see what he could do. I hope he can help that veteran, but it is not likely that all the veterans needing help will get it if we cut the budget as Congressman Sullivan wanted. The veteran was certainly a good man, and when pressed to speak, he said that it would really help if people would recycle more. He pointed out that we throw away a lot of things that are still useful and that by recycling them we could create a lot of jobs and save our resources.

 Another woman complained that the EPA’s rules about Freon were making it difficult to get the refrigerant needed for their air-conditioning business. Congressman Sullivan took it as an opportunity to criticize the EPA and the Obama administration, apparently unaware that those rules had been signed into law by President Reagan.

A CPA in the audience brought it to the Congressman’s attention that the low interest rates were hurting people who had their nest egg in savings accounts and CDs. He also pointed out that the mandatory IRA withdrawals required at age 70 1/2 are making people withdraw the money that they may need to save for later in life. The Congressman agreed that some changes need to be made there.

 When the Congressman was asked about who he would like to see as the Republican presidential candidate, he said he would support whoever could beat President Obama. A member of the audience tried to point out that there were other things more important than beating Obama, and that the President and his wife were good role models and examples of family values. She was almost drowned out by disagreements from the audience.

 Entitlements: There was a time when Republicans were fiscal and environmental conservatives. Congressman Sullivan said he wanted to cut what he calls “entitlement programs”, but one of his own supporters set him straight by pointing out that those were “earned benefits”, not entitlements. I want my children and grandchildren have the same benefits I did, and I want them to have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink and a beautiful Earth to enjoy. They are entitled to that.

 

<------ Vote for Both Here   -------->

Nominees:

The four top candidates for each award have been selected from the nominees.Please vote ( twice, once for each category )for the nominees, described below, who you think have most affected the environment through word or deed. If you wish, please post a reason for your vote and a suggestion for other suitable gifts for your favorite candidate. Some great gifts have already been proposed. The author will buy the gifts from his copious blogging earnings, so please don’t worry about the expense.

The poll will close on February 28th.

 Hall of Shame Nominees:  

Ø     Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Head of NOAA – For using bad data to set fishing catch limits and for not adequately policing BP’s drilling plans or their cleanup operations in the Gulf. Prize: A corexit oil shake.

Ø     Halliburton (Cheney), for the Halliburton clause in the Clean Water Act. It is a loophole in the Clean Water Act that allows the fracking chemicals to remain secret, thanks to Cheney. Prize: A big glass of water from a well next to a hydrofracking operation.

Ø     Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, for his apology to BP about how they were treated after the Gulf Oil spill and for trying to ban energy-efficient light bulbs because they contain mercury, even though he had fought efforts to stop mercury pollution by industries. Prize: A copy of his failing grades on the League of Conservation Voters Scorecard .

Ø     Forbes Magazine (James Taylor) for a ridiculously misleading article, New NASA data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism, that described climate scientists as “alarmist” 15 times. At was classified as news, though it was clearly an opinion article. Award: A copy of the book Ethics And Journalism and a complete ban on ever using the words 'alarmist' again.

Hall of Fame Nominees:

Ø     James Hansen, whose efforts opposing the XL played a pivotal role in delaying a decision and hopefully preventing the construction of the pipeline (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). Award: A massive presence at the 2012 Citizen's Climate Lobby International Conference, July 22 - 24, in Washington D.C.

Ø     The Tulsa World, for showing great courage in defending  climate science and refuting Sen. Jim Inhofe’s claim of "victory in his efforts to debunk man-made global warming as a hoax." Their editorial board’s statement is classic:” While there are scientists and politicians on both sides of the issue, those who see climate change as a genuine threat are mostly scientists and most of those who deny it are politicians.” Award: (Suggestion?)

Ø     The EPA, for standing firm in its efforts to protect the environment in spite of the political pressure it has received. Award: A duplicate of Captain America’s Shield.

Ø     Joe Romm, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and maintains Climate Progress , an outstanding source of accurate climate science information. Award: (Suggestion?)

   The poll will close on February 28th.

There is evidence that the authors of a recent paper may have gamed the peer review system to publish a biased climate science paper.

 

The Review Process: When a paper is submitted to a journal for publication, the editor removes the name of the author and sends the manuscript to several experts in the area, usually three, for review. The editor keeps the names of the reviewers confidential. If an error is found, the reviewer’s comments are returned to the author with suggestions for corrections. It is a good system for ensuring the quality of research publications, but even then papers are sometimes published that contains errors. The reviewers may miss an error, a biased editor may publish the paper in spite of flaws, or authors may exploit loopholes in a journal’s rules to get a paper published. Some journals allow the author to suggest names of reviewers and the editor often picks reviewers from the list. Most scientists submit names of reliable reviewers as it is an embarrassment to have errors found in their paper after publication. However, even if the papers are properly reviewed, the practice can bring accusations of “pal” review. Since reviewer’s names are kept confidential by the editor, it is difficult to know for sure whether that may have happened. However, there is evidence that the authors of a recent paper may have gamed the system by suggesting a set of reviewers that shared their bias. See what you think.

The paper: Last July 25th, Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell authored a paper in the rather specialized technical journal, Remote Sensing, titled “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance“.  The paper claimed “The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations.”  It seems that only an expert in climatology would know what that means or what its implications were, but in three days a sensationalized version of the paper appeared on internet sites, in major business magazines, and in news articles in major newspapers. Millions of people likely read about the paper.

The Publicity: The renewed public interest in science should have made climate scientists pleased; however, they were not. Beneath the technical language is a claim that the climate sensitivity to CO2 has been misinterpreted by climate scientists because of natural cloud variations. Were it true, it would mean that natural forces, not man, were responsible for much of the observed global warming. That idea had been examined before and found to be inconsistent with the evidence, but the idea is one that some climate skeptics have been promoting. And, they are part of a well-funded pipeline that carries misinformation about climate science to major news outlets before all the facts can be known.

Forbes: One main branch of the misinformation pipeline runs through the Heartland Institute, where James Taylor is listed as a senior fellow. James Taylor once wrote articles for the tobacco industry suggesting that secondhand smoke was not harmful, and he has now turned his talents to denying the ties between rising CO2 levels and global warming. Inexplicably, James Taylor has been hired by Forbes magazine to write on energy and environmental topics. James Taylor picked up on Spencer’s paper and wrote an article for Forbes titled, New NASA Data Blows Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism. Not only was the title inaccurate and misleading, but the article was clearly an opinion article, miscategorized as news.  The editors of Forbes might not have known that Spencer’s “NASA Data” was the same data that climate scientists use to reach a very different conclusion, but perhaps they should have noticed that no reasonable news story would describe climate scientists as “alarmists” 15 times. The business community considers legislation that would reduce our carbon emissions to be anti-business, and business newspapers such as Investors Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes often are biased toward the skeptic’s position. The bias shows up in story selection, opinions miscategorized as news, a disproportionate number of skeptics articles on opinion pages, and  in sensationalized headlines. From Forbes, the article was picked up as a news story by other business magazines, Yahoo! News, MSNBC, and skeptic’s blog sites, which had a field day with the article. It is sad that millions will have read the distorted article, but few will ever read the climate scientist’s rebuttal. The article will soon sink into obscurity,  but it will have accomplished it’s purpose, which was to spread doubt about climate change.

Reproducibility: Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is not the only requirement for a paper to become accepted as part of the science literature. The research must stand up to the scrutiny of other experts in the field and it must be reproducible by other scientists with comparable knowledge and skill. Spencer’s paper reached the news media before climate scientists had a chance to respond, but they soon found a number of obvious errors in the paper. Trenberth and Fasullo summed it up:”The model has no realistic ocean, no El Niño, and no hydrological cycle, and it was tuned to give the result it gave. The bottom line is that there is NO merit whatsoever in this paper.”  Given time, A.E. Dessler analyzed Spencer’s paper in detail and published a rebuttal. The abstract in Geophysical Review Letters reports the key points of his paper:

• Clouds are not causing climate change;
• Observations are not in disagreement with models on this point;
• Previous work on this is flawed;  ( referring specifically to Spencer’s paper in Remote Sensing).

Clearly, Spencer’s paper had serious methodological flaws and was not reproducible. How did the paper get through Remote Sensing’s peer review process? The answer would likely not have been found, except for the publicity.

The Catastrophe: The editor of Remote Sensing, who had been trying to build the reputation of the Journal, considered the publicity a catastrophe. The instructions in Remote Sensing asks authors to suggest five reviewers, and it is possible that Spencer could choose five skeptics.  The editor would not have to pick from those, but apparently in this case he did.  In the next issue of Remote Sensing, the editor, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, resigned and issued a public apology for this article saying, “With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate skeptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements.” “The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extent also in the literature, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. “ And he concluded, “But, as the case presents itself now, the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.”

(c) 2012 Que 

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. ... Sir Isaac Newton

 Peer review:  Every scientist’s work depends upon the evidence and reasoning of all the scientists who preceded him. To ensure that previous work is reliable, scientific journals have established a peer review process to ensure that published papers are free of errors in reasoning and methodology. Normally,when a paper is submitted for publication, the editor of the journal removes the name of the author and sends the manuscript to a number of experts in the area for review. The editor keeps the names of the reviewers confidential. In case an error is found or corrections suggested, the reviews are returned to the author with suggestions for improvement. When the reviewer's concerns are addressed to the editor's satisfaction, the article is published. It is a good system for ensuring the quality of research publications, but in a few cases ways have been found to game the system.           

Biased Editors: The editors of journals published by major science organizations are chosen for their expertise in the area and for their fairness. However, any organization may publish a journal and claim their articles are peer-reviewed.  For example, a recent op Ed article in the Tulsa World claimed "Climate predictions must be science-backed". That's certainly true, but the author claimed his opinion was backed by a “a peer-reviewed article based on NOAA  data which proves that CO2 may not be the cause of global warming.”  However, no peer reviewed article reaching that conclusion could be found. When I contacted the author for his source, he referred me to an article by Ferenc Miskolczi published in Energy and Environment. Though Miskolczi's article is based on NOAA's data, it finds that adding CO2 to the atmosphere does not change its spectroscopic properties - a conclusion violating the laws of physics. Miskolczi's article was criticized by van Dorland and Forster, who wrote: "Miskolczi (2010) theorizes that atmospheric CO2 increases cannot be a cause of global warming. We show his theory to be incorrect both in its application of radiation theory and from direct atmospheric observations." How did such a paper get published?

The editor of a journal is almost completely responsible for seeing that articles are properly reviewed and for deciding if they should be published. Sourcewatch says that Energy and Environment is a peer-reviewed social science journal published by Multi-Science and the editor is Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, who is described as a reader in geography. Many climate change skeptics such as Sallie Baliunas, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Roger Pielke Jr., Willie Soon, and  Steve McIntyre publish articles there that would not be accepted in major journals. Sourcewatch says the editor admits in an article published online that "the journal I edit has tried to keep this debate [climate scepticism] alive". She also states “I’m following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway ... But isn't that the right of the editor?"

Not really, if you want to claim to be a peer reviewed science journal.

 Who wants to kill the electric car? Apparently, a lot of people do. During the 1920’s, the Milburn electric cars were popular, particularly with the ladies who didn’t like cranking gasoline engines to start them.  In 1928, General Motors bought the Milburn out and it disappeared. In 1996, the EV1 electric cars appeared on roads in California. They were quiet and fast and produced no exhaust fumes. They were manufactured by GM under a mandate to reduce vehicle emissions. Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost completely gone. A documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car , determined that the batteries were not the problem but that the culprits were mainly oil companies who stood to lose enormous profits if EV sales took off and GM, who didn’t think they would make enough profit from the car. If GM had developed and improved the EV1, they might not have gone bankrupt.

House Of Cards: Much of the damage to the EV1 was done by misinformation directed at politicians, regulatory agencies, and the consumer. The same campaign is being used against the new crop of electric cars. In a  Seeking Alpha article , Why The Electric Vehicle House Of Cards Must Fall, John Petersen continues the tactic. First, Mr. Petersen determines the value of an electric car by using an “analysis that starts with a $19,000 gasoline powered vehicle, deducts the costs of unnecessary internal combustion drivetrain components and then adds the incremental costs of necessary electric drivetrain components.” This analysis found a $38,800 cost for an electric vehicle. That cost analysis is something like taking a conventional oven, stripping it, and adding parts to convert it to a microwave. There are many hybrids and electric cars on the market that have an MSRP much less than $38,800. The price of the vehicles will certainly come down, but there is little chance for price negotiations as there is a high demand for the vehicles.

The article goes on, “Electric drive proponents are selling a house of cards based on fundamentally flawed assumptions and glittering generalities that have nothing to do with real world economics. Their elegant theories and justifications cannot withstand paper, pencil and a four function calculator.” However, Mr. Petersen bases his economic analysis on his $38,800 cost and a list of subsidies from what he calls an “extraordinary article”, The Real Costs of Alternative Energy by Alex Planes . Fortunately for the future of electric cars, Mr. Planes’ real costs are extraordinarily misleading.

Subsidies: Mr. Planes says, “a clear-headed look at the true costs of energy is something many — including our political leaders — sorely need.” He goes on,“Subsidies are just one of the costs of supporting alternative energy, but are they worth it?” Using U.S. Energy Information Administration data, Mr. Planes calculates the subsidies to energy sources in terms of the dollars per barrel of oil equivalencies. The subsidies he comes up with are coal: $0.39, oil and gas: $0.28, solar: $63, and wind $32.59. Based on his values, he says renewable energy’s costs to the government are “in some cases so high, and the actual energy returns so low, that it hardly seems worth the investment. Solar’s pitiful slice of American power use — less than a single day’s worth of oil consumption — is underwritten by enough taxpayer money to simply buy most of the power outright and provide it to taxpayers for free.”

True Cost? The reason Mr. Planes article is extraordinarily wrong is that he does not really give you the “true cost” of the use of fossil fuels. The true cost  of a resource includes not only the price but also the cost of cleaning up the environment and disposing of the waste. Fossil fuels dispose of their waste by releasing it into the air which causes damage to the environment and health problems for many Americans. We are in effect subsidizing the fossil fuel industry by the cost of allowing them to freely discharge their wastes into the environment. Any effort to determine the “real cost” of subsidies should include health and environmental costs. Mr. Planes says in the comments section of his article that he perhaps should rewrite his article to include what he calls the external costs. In the meantime, many people are using his incomplete analysis to disparage sustainable energy sources.

A Truer Cost: It may be difficult to come up with an exact value for the real subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, but it is possible to estimate their magnitude.  Estimates by the World’s top economists, such as Britain’s Nicholas Stern, are that right now it would cost about 2% of the world’s GDP to mitigate environmental damage – but if delayed, that amount could rise to 20% or more of the world’s GDP by 2050 and put us at risk of an environmental catastrophe. Using 2% of the US GDP for 2010 would give an environmental cost of $291 billion. The American Lung Association  estimates that the EPA’s proposed  guidelines for particulates could prevent 38,000 heart attacks and premature deaths, 1.5 million cases of acute bronchitis and aggravated asthma, and 2.7 million days of missed work or school. They estimate the economic benefits associated with reduced exposure to soot to reach as much as $281 billion annually. Those two add up to about $572 billion, and when divided by the 13541 million barrels of oil equivalent for given in Mr. Planes article for coal, gas and oil together amounts to  an additional subsidy of $42.52 per barrel of oil equivalent. The subsidies to wind electric energy and not look so bad if you actually use fossil fuels: $43, solar: $63, and wind: $32.59. The calculations are rough and do not include all the environmental and health costs, but they do give us an idea of how much we are subsidizing the fossil fuel industries by ignoring the damage to people’s health and the environment. Then there is the added risk of an environmental catastrophe.

 Disclosures: In an apparent effort to be evenhanded, as required by Motley Fool, Mr. Planes then concludes, “Wind and solar power have their drawbacks, but continue to make notable improvements year after year. However, neither option can yet provide the clean, constant, and convenient power the world demands. Natural gas offers the best opportunity for the near term. It’s plentiful, well-developed, and efficient, and will take on greater importance as dirtier hydrocarbons lose market share. “ Mr. Planes then offers you a free analysis of an “exciting opportunity to play the natural gas boom, by investing in a small company turning our oil-guzzling vehicle fleet into clean-burning natural gas machines.” He disclosed that he holds no stock in natural gas vehicles, but he may not be disclosing a bias against renewable energy. He refers to one of Robert Bryce’s books in his paper and his analysis sounds much like those in Mr. Bryce’s “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green Energy’ and the Real Fuels of the Future”. In Mr. Bryce’s  5 Myths about Green Energy, he attacks green energy using false comparisons, misquotes, scientific inaccuracies, and the omission of pertinent facts. It is not surprising that  Mr. Bryce is not a fan of green energy as he is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which receives large donations from the Koch Foundation and Exxon/Mobile.

 Mr. Petersen’s four function calculator must not have a fact checker as, using his inflated cost of an electric car and Mr. Plane’s analysis, he finds, “The law of economic gravity cannot be ignored and will not be mocked. Shiny new electric vehicles from General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Tesla Motors and a host of privately held wannabe’s like Fisker Motors and Koda are doomed to catastrophic failure. Their component suppliers will fare no better. There is no amount of political or wishful thinking that can change the inevitable outcome.” Apparently, using a more realistic value for subsidies will not change Mr. Peterson’s outcome either, as when the flaws in his analysis were posted as a comment on his article, he replied he was only interested in “hard authoritative numbers”.  

Obscenity? Mr. Petersen goes on, “The ultimate obscenity is that a conversion from gasoline drive to electric drive will not reduce the total amount of energy used in transportation. It merely shifts the energy burden from lightly subsidized oil and gas to more heavily subsidized energy from coal, nuclear and renewables.”  Not really. The amount of energy used would be reduced even if using electricity from traditional coal fired power plants to charge the electric vehicle. Coal-fired power plants have a thermodynamic efficiency of about 30%. Electric motors are now about 90% efficient in converting electric energy to work and when considering friction, power line transmission losses, energy lost when the batteries are charged, and the energy gained by regenerative braking, the overall efficiency of using coal to run electric cars comes out around 20%. Internal combustion engines have a thermodynamic efficiency of about 15% but drive train losses reduce that to an overall efficiency around 10%. These efficiencies are reasonable as a  paper by Stanford University  comparing “source to wheel efficiencies” rated the electric Tesla at 1.145 km/MJ of and the gasoline powered Honda Civic at 0.515 km/MJ. At current prices, that figures out to about 5 cents/mile for the Tesla and about 12 cents/mile for the Honda.

  Using sustainable energy sources to charge the batteries would be the ideal case as the energy source to wheel efficiency would be about 60 to 80% and the carbon emissions would be greatly reduced.  There would be a substantial savings in energy  and carbon emissions even if using electric cars charged using coal-fired power plants. Electric vehicles have the added advantage that the infrastructure to charge the batteries is already in place. The electric car does not seem to be built on such a house of cards as Mr. Peterson’s article suggests.

 (c) 2012 J.C. Moore

Key Points:

• Clouds are not causing climate change;
• Observations are not in disagreement with models on this point;
• Previous work on this is flawed ;

Previous work refers to papers by Spencer in Remote Sensing and by Lindzen in Asia Pac. J. Atmos. Science.

Critics of climate research dubbed the stolen CRU E-mails incident “Climategate” to discredit climate scientists. But, was it more like Watergate or Stargate?

This article was written over a year ago, but there has been a release of another batch of e-mails,  dubbed Climategate II. Those e-mails were apparently stolen at the same time but were not considered  sensational enough to be distorted and released with the first batch.

The Incident: Last year, hackers broke into the computers of England’s Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and stole 10 years of e-mails exchanged between the scientists. The stolen e-mails were released to media sources and posted online with claims the CRU scientists engaged in illegal and unethical acts.(1) Words taken from the e-mails made it appear that the CRU scientist scientists ‘tricked” the data, “hid a decline in data”, “withheld data”, “changed data” and “tried to keep dissident scientists from publishing” . The CRU scientists have been roundly accused of wrongdoing by AGW skeptics, opposition politicians, uninformed bloggers, and dissident scientists who roundly criticized the CRU scientists for ethical violations and illegal acts. Phil Jones, the CRU director, stepped down and called for a full and independent review of the incident. Critics of the CRU scientist’s research have dubbed it “Climategate”, saying it is a huge scandal that undermines all the climate research on global warming.

Watergate: It is certainly not like Watergate. The Wategate thieves were caught and punished and those who masterminded the plot were publicly disgraced. In Climategate, the thieves have been hailed by some as heroes and the victims of the theft have been vilified. Just before the U. S. Senate was to vote to ratify the Kyoto treaty, an article was published in the Wall Street Journal that proclaimed” Science Has Spoken, Global Warming Is a Myth” that was meant to derail approval. The article turned out to be a hoax.(2) The timing and nature of the release of the CRU e-mails would suggest that the real purpose of “Climategate” may have been to derail a meaningful treaty on climate change at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting.

Why does it matter? The CRU scientist’s research has long been the center of a heated controversy about whether the observed rise in Earth’s mean temperature since 1900 was caused by man or whether it is just part of the normal pattern caused by natural forces. Measured values of the Earth’s mean temperature began in about 1850 and CRU scientists’ research was an effort to extended the Earth’s mean temperature data back to before measurements were taken. They did so by examining proxy data such as tree rings, coral growth, and ice core samples. Their research showed that the temperature of the Earth was reasonably stable from about 1000 A.D. until 1900 when it began to rise rapidly to the present. Their graph was dubbed the “hockey stick graph” from its shape. Opponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have derided the graph and tried to vilifiy the CRU scientists as their research showed the Earth’s recent warming trend was caused by CO2 from burning fossil fuels rather than cycles in nature.

The Hackers: Those critical of the scientific work by the CRU scientists have been gleeful about the hacked e-mails and some even claimed that the hackers are heroes. One story claimed the hacking was justified since a request for the e-mails under the freedom of information (FOI) act was refused due to insufficient reason. The reluctance to release data was possibly because Phil Jones, the CRU director, had once released his raw data for a 1990 research paper to a former London financial trader, Douglas J. Keenan. Keenan combed through the data and then tried to have the FBI arrest Jones’ co-author for fraud. An investigation later cleared them of any wrongdoing. Under the FOI act, the next step would have been to seek redress in the courts – not by hacking the CRU computers.

A rather ridiculous claim was that since the science research was funded by public money, the public had a right to the documents. Military research is done with public money and those who think its OK should try hacking into the Pentagon. Another story claimed that the e-mail release was a public service done by a whistleblower. However, the timing speaks against that interpretation as many of the documents are 10 years old. A whistleblower should possibly have blown the whistle back when an alleged ethical offense occurred rather than just weeks before the Copenhagen Convention. The latest theory, since the e-mails were first released from a server in Siberia, is that professional Russian hackers were responsible. It would be interesting to know who might have paid them.

An impartial look: Many of the claims against the CRU scientists have been shown to be words taken out of context. Many people know mathematical “tricks” that are an aid in calculation and are certainly not meant to fool anyone. The “decline” was not a decline in temperature but referred to a “decline” in the number of samples available. Every measuring instrument must be standardized, and data is often corrected after being taken to bring it in line with the standardization. The paper the CRU scientists were trying to suppress had errors but was published anyway. Climatologists are aware of the errors but the discredited paper still has a claim to authenticity to the public as it was published in a refereed journal. To clear up the matter, Phil Jones has stepped down and called for an independent investigation but that will not be completed before the Copenhagen Convention and the charges are “out there”.

The Associated Press examined the e-mails to see what the truth might be in the matter. (3) Five reporters and seven scientists with credentials in research ethics, climate science, and science policy examined the 1,073 E-mails stolen from climate scientists. The Associated Press concluded that although the E-mails show the CRU scientists stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data, the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked. Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science upon reviewing the E-mails summed up the scientists position saying he saw “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations.’” Also, Daniel Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University added “This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds.” Several formal investigations into the allegations have cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.

Note added 8/23/2011: As of today, eight independent formal investigations have been completed and none has found  any incidences of scientific misconduct by the the scientists involved. The hackers, who are clearly crimnals, have not been caught. Those who engaged in libel against the scientists have not been charged, and I know of none who apologized.   

Stargate: So, rather than being like Watergate, the e-mail scandal was actually more like Stargate, fictional fantasy. It should, however, be a reminder to every scientist to be professional in what is put in e-mails. The critics should be chastised as those accused are usually presumed innocent until guilt is proven. The CRU scientists were clearly tried in the press and many “news reports” amounted to little more than sensationalized speculation. The accusations by dissident scientists are particularly egregious as scientist’s ethical codes say that:” Public comments on scientific matters should be made with care and precision, without unsubstantiated, exaggerated, or premature statements.” However, the critics were in a hurry as Copenhagen was approaching.

(1) For a description, see: http://www.pewclimate.org/blog/gulledgej/thanksgiving-i%E2%80%99m-thankful-we-base-policy-decisions-peer-reviewed-science-instead-emai

(2) The hoax is described at http://jcmooreonline.com/2009/09/05/the-%E2%80%9Cglobal-warming-is-a-myth%E2%80%9D-hoax/

(3)http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRa5F7Lv_zO0ZKaHmbQENlyV3KdgD9CHUS980

(c) 2010 Que  

Each year, this site takes a poll to find those most deserving of recognition in the Environmental Hall of Fame and the Environmental Hall of Shame. Nominations are now open for those who have most affected the environment by words or action. With the ongoing  debate about environmental regulations, a number of possible nominees should be easy to find.  Please place your nomination in the comment section. If you wish, you may  include a short reason that your nominee should be chosen and suggest a suitable gift if they win. 

For example, Congressman John Sullivan might be nominated in the Hall of Shame category for introducing a bill in Congress that would require the EPA to do a cost-benefit analysis  for every rule it makes. His legislation would create a huge amount of paperwork for the EPA and would make its job impossible to do, which seems to be his goal. A suitable gift might be a large piggy bank in which to keep the donations that action has earned him. Or, Congressman Frank Lucas may be nominated in the Hall of Fame category for acknowledging that climate change might affect our food supply. A suitable gift might be a crystal ball, so that he can show other members of the Congress what the future might look like if we do not act to mitigate climate change.

Nominations will be taken until January 31st, 2012. The nominees will then be  listed  and this site will conduct a poll in February to determine the winner in each category.   The  2011 year’s winner in the Environmental Hall Fame category will receive the “Most Noble Prize in Environmental Science” and a  suitable gift. The winner in the Hall of  Shame category will receive the “Ignoble Prize”and a gift also.  Past years winners and their gifts were:

                      Hall of Fame    -    Gift                                             

2010        RealClimate.org  - A recommendation from this site. ( Priceless)  

2009        Benno Hansen,  ThinkAboutIt Blogger - A Subscription to Science News.           

                      Hall of Shame    

2010         Koch Brothers - A petition to the Wizard of Oz for a social conscience.

2009         SpaceGuy,  Newsvine Blogger - The movie Wall-E, his view of the future of Earth.

You may suggest a suitable prize for your nominee. Please be imaginative, as particularly thoughtful or humorous  nominations will  be recognized and published on this site.

(C) 2012  Que  

Scientists often criticize the media for not presenting the facts about climate change. Today, the Tulsa World showed great courage for defending the science and refuting Sen. Inhofe claim of "victory in his efforts to debunk man-made global warming as a hoax."

Their statement is classic:

While there are scientists and politicians on both sides of the issue, those who see climate change as a genuine threat are mostly scientists and most of those who deny it are politicians.

What will the weather be like in the future? Dr. Heidi Cullen, noted climatologists and author of the book The Weather of the Future , gave a public talk in Tulsa explaining how global warming is causing the weather to be more extreme. She explained why our future holds an increasing number of extreme weather events unless we act to reduce our carbon emissions.  There was an article in the local Tulsa world newspaper announcing the talk, however,  there was no follow-up article describing the talk or her research on climate change. That is certainly something many Tulsans need to hear. To correct the newspaper's oversight, the author sent the following letter to the editor, which outlined the main points of her talk. The topic was apparently controversial, as there were a number of comments on the letter.

In her talk, Dr. Cullen explained how global warming is changing our climate. Climate describes the average weather, and research shows the Earth’s average weather has been changing. It is difficult to recognize the pattern of change and only by analyzing millions of weather and temperature records is it possible to see the pattern. Over the last century, NASA’s temperature records show that the Earth’s temperature has increased by about 1°F. That has increased the energy in the atmosphere and the moisture in the air over the oceans. That combination is causing our weather to become more extreme, as you have probably noticed from the events that have happened lately.

Dr.Cullen explained that climate is complex, made up of both natural and man-made factors, and the scientific research has been directed toward identifying the contributions of each. Carbon dioxide was identified in the 19th century as one component of the atmosphere that helps warm the Earth. Our activities have increased the CO2 concentration in the air by 37% since then, and undoubtedly much of the recent warming has been caused by man. Detailed studies of extreme weather events have shown that global warming contributed to their severity. Although that may seem bad news, the upside of that is that if we are responsible for it, we can change it.

The first step in that process is to immediately begin to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel energy sources. Dr. Cullen outlined what our energy needs will be by 2050 and showed how we can reduce our carbon emissions and meet our energy needs by then with mostly renewable sources. She explained that building the infrastructure for renewable energy will create jobs and contribute to our economy. Rather than considering the cost of doing so a mortgage on future generations, we should consider reducing pollution and developing sustainable energy sources as an investment in our future.

(c) 2011 Que  

An Associated Press journalist draws on decades of climate reporting to offer a retrospective and analysis on global warming and the undying urge to deny.

The headline on the 1975 report was bold: "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening.

No one knows for sure why the solar panel manufacturing company, Solyndra, went bankrupt or what it means, but Congress is now investigating the matter. Though it will be useful to know what went wrong, bankruptcies in these tough economic times are not unusual. It is not clear why Congress is investigating the matter, but if the investigation is used for political purposes, it may delay our development of renewable energy resources. This could further hurt our economy and actually cause the loss of jobs.

In spite of the fact that the Solyndra bankruptcy may have cost 1000 jobs, that is a small amount compared to the hundred thousand plus workers who now work in the solar energy business in United States. Solar energy is one of the fastest growing industries and this article estimates that the use of solar energy will increase fivefold by 2020. If the United States does not invest in the production of solar panels, it is almost certain that other countries will. China has set aside $34 billion to be invested in the production of solar panels. The $500 million in loan guarantees to Solyndra is rather small compared to that amount.

 Unfortunately, the US investment in solar energy may be derailed by  Congress.  In spite of the other problems facing our nation, Congress has now launched a Congressional investigation into the Solyndra bankruptcy. It would seem that the investigation is politically motivated with the goal of embarrassing the Obama administration and derailing our efforts to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel. The Department of Energy has made a number of loan guarantees for investments in green energy projects and this is the only one which has had a serious problem. A number of large and savvy investors put over $1 billion into the Solyndra, so it cannot be claimed that it was was a bad investment or that the company was created by the Department of Energy. Also, the political ramifications are not quite clear as this timeline for the loan approval process for Solyndra shows it started in 2005 under the Bush administration.

(c) 2011 Que 

Talking points seemed to outweigh facts in last night's debate. Here is Perry's comment on global warming:

 PERRY: On global warming, "The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet, to me, is just, is nonsense. ... Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeopardy."

THE FACTS: The scientific consensus on climate change is about as settled as any major scientific issue can be. Perry's opinion runs counter to the view of an overwhelming majority of scientists that pollution released from the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the planet. The National Academy of Sciences, in an investigation requested by Congress, concluded last year: "Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by human activities, and poses significant risks to humans and the environment."

Science is about using observation and reason to understand the physical world. Some people are suspicious of computer models and theories; so here is the basic data about global warming in pictures and graphs.

Ice Ages: In the past, the Earth’s temperature has varied from the Ice Ages to the much warmer temperatures of the interglacial periods.  Ice core data gives a good picture of what has happened to the Earth’s temperature in the last half million years, as shown by the blue line. The changing temperatures are attributed to the Milankovitch Cycles, small variations in the Earth’s orbit that cause the Earth to receive different amounts of sunlight. The Earth becomes slowly warmer during the periods where the solar energy increases. As the Earth begins to be warmed by sunlight, CO2 becomes less soluble in the ocean and the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases, which further amplifies the warming since CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

                                 http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif                                 

As you can see in the graph, the red line shows how intricately the CO2 concentrations and temperatures are related. The CO2 concentration drops to about 180 ppm during the glacial periods and rises to about 290 ppm during the warmer interglacial periods. As the far right of the graph shows, we are now in an interglacial period that began about 6000 years ago and the Milankovitch Cycles predict that Earth should slowly cool for the next 20,000 years - but it is warming instead.  The red line on the far right side of the graph shows that the concentration of CO2 is now approaching 390 ppm, far higher than 300 ppm observed in any previous warm periods.   

Current CO2 Levels: In the past, the warming oceans released the CO2 as a natural process. However, man is now putting about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. Much of it stays there and the Keeling curve below shows how CO2 is building up in air. In 2011, the CO2 concentration reached 387 ppm, far higher than it has been for perhaps 2 million years.  

 http://susty.com/image/keeling-curve-carbon-dioxide-parts-per-million-co2-summer-uptake-by-trees-plants-soils-graph-red-line-illustration-image.jpg 

Earth’s Temperature: Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth. NASA’s graph below shows how its increase is changing the Earth’s temperature. Though the Earth’s mean temperature varies widely from year to year, the graph on the right is a moving average that allows you to see the trend in the temperature much easier. The effect of particulates, which cool the Earth, can be seen around 1991 when Mount Pinaturbo exploded. The flat place in the graph from about 1940 to 1970 is attributed to particulates generated by World War II, atmospheric atomic bomb testing, and postwar industrialization – before particulate emissions were regulated.

                                                           htp//data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/fig2.gif

Effect on the Earth: Scientist tell us that th the increasing CO2 concentration is leading to a warmer Earth, more extreme weather, melting glaciers and polar ice, crop failure, droughts, and wildfires. We have  certainly experienced many of those things recently, which should make us think about what effect our activities are having on the Earth. Many of the changes in the Earth are subtle, but here are two of NASA’s pictures that clearly shows how the Earth is changing. Between 1979 and 2003, about 30% of the Arctic ice has disappeared.

This has greatly affected the way of life of the native Inuit who live and hunt on the Polar ice.  While they may adapt, their way of life and culture, which sustained them for centuries, will be destroyed. The Polar bears, uniquely adapted to live in on the Polar ice, have been put on the threatened species list because their habitat is clearly declining.  As their habitat disappears, so will be the Polar bear. It is something man should think about – as our habitat is deteriorating, also.

(c) 2011 Que 

“Pictures of the polar region from 1979 and 2003 clearly show that about 30% of the Arctic  ice has melted. This has greatly affected the way of life of the native Inuit who live and hunt on the Polar ice.  While some may adapt, their way of life and culture, which sustained them for centuries, will be destroyed.”

Although arguments still rage about whether the Arctic sea ice is disappearing, the disappearance is a fact of life for those who live near the Arctic Ocean.   The photos clearly show that the Arctic Sea ice is disappearing. A recent TulsaWorld article described how the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice has affected the lives of the native Inuit people in Greenland. Ice which used to be 2 meters thick in the winter, now grows only a few centimeters thick, far too thin to allow dogsleds to go to the nearest town, 50 miles away across the bay. They can no longer venture onto the ice to hunt for seals or walrus, a mainstay of their diet,  nor can they go out on the ice to fish. The Polar bears they sometimes hunt have no fat, as the bears cannot swim to the ice packs to hunt, and they sometimes prowl the villages looking for food.

Drilling for oil has picked up in the area as the ices disappears, but so far little oil has been found. Exploration continues, and if oil is eventually found, it carries the possibility of  economic development. But it also carries  the possibility that an oil spill, almost impossible to clean up in the icy  environment, would destroy much of the ocean life the natives now depend on for food. The sad thing is that they are being forced to change a way of life that sustained them for centuries. While some may adapt, their way of life and culture will be destroyed, and many will likely end up among the poor and unemployed.

(c) 2011 J.C. Moore

 Arctic ocean, Climate Change, Environment, global Warming, greenland, inuit, native-people, oil-drilling, Polar Bears, Polar ice, sea-ice

The photo shows how the Arctic Sea ice has disappeared, affecting the lives of the native people in Greenland. The sad thing for the people is that they are being forced to change a way of life that sustained them for centuries. While some may adapt, their way of life and culture will be destroyed and many will likely end up among the poor and unemployed.

In 1998, the US refused to ratify the Kyoto Treat which would have limited the release of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, into the atmosphere. The refusal was based mainly on the supposed financial costs, which were highly inflated, without adequately considering the costs of ignoring the problem.  On a per capita basis, the US emits six times as much CO2 as any other country. Without our participation and leadership, the world has failed to stem the release of CO2 into the air and scientists tell us that this is leading to a warmer Earth, more extreme weather, crop failure, droughts, and wildfires. We have  certainly experienced many of those things recently and it should make us think about what our failure to ratify the Kyoto Treaty may mean to us.

Three weeks ago the local Cleveland American’s front-page story was about the heat wave and the drought. Channel 6 Weather reported that this year Oklahoma set a record for highest temperatures of any state, ever. Recently, NASA reported this has been the hottest decade since records began in 1880, with 2010 and 2005 tied for the hottest years. A recent poll of climate scientists found that 97% of those active in research agree that the Earth is getting warmer and the main factor is man’s release of carbon dioxide into the air. The other 3% of the scientists get enough publicity to keep most of us confused, especially since the climate scientists cannot claim certainty in their predictions, but only increased chances.

A recent paper from the University of Colorado predicted that global warming would cause higher probabilities of extreme weather, heat waves, droughts, crop failure, and wildfires. We’ve certainly seen all that happen this year. Last week, the Cleveland American’s front page story was on the devastating wildfires in the surrounding Pawnee County. Around 15,000 acres of our county burned, 40 homes when up in flames, one person died, and many were injured.  It stretched the resources of our emergency services to the limit and had it not been for the heroic efforts of our firefighters, many of them volunteers, the devastation would have been much worse.

Skeptical scientists, and many of our politicians, dispute the scientific evidence and claim there is not really a problem. They say that efforts to stop global warming will cause us too much inconvenience and expense. We might want to think about how inconvenient and expensive it is for us to lose our crops, homes, and in some cases our loved ones?

The Scientific Consensus: All the major scientific organizations in the world have endorsed a  statement similar to that of the American Chemical Society:

”Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing rapidly in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosol particles. There is very little room for doubt that observed climate trends are due to human activities. The threats are serious and action is urgently needed to mitigate the risks of climate change.” 

  This urgent message continues to be mainly ignored by the public and our politicians. This seems strange as scientist’s trustworthiness is  highly rated  by the public, with 84% having a favorable view of scientists .  In spite of the scientist’s warning, a  Gallup poll found American’ s concern about global warming has fallen from just three years ago, when 66%  said they were worried about the problem, to only 51% today   A recent CNN  poll  found that 97% of scientists who are actively engaged in research in climate science agree that global warming is occurring and the primary cause is man’s activities. There is clearly a scientific consensus on the matter, but the public seems confused on the issue. That is because the 3% of the climate scientists who do not agree with the scientific consensus receive an inordinately large amount of publicity.

The Misinformation Pipeline: While skepticism based upon reason makes science stronger, many of the skeptics do not have that as a goal.  Many skeptics publish their articles in rather obscure journals where they are not peer-reviewed by competent climate scientists.  Occasionally, one of the skeptics has a paper published in a major journal, and though some of these make major contributions, many of them are later found to contain incorrect assumptions and errors. The errors are usually pointed out in letters and articles in the journals, and should require retraction or correction, but some of the skeptics have refused to do so, and instead launch attacks upon their critics. While other climate scientists are well aware of the errors, the general public is not, and they often remember the controversy  as evidence that “ the science is not settled”. These controversies, and erroneous results, are often delivered to the public through a well-funded misinformation pipeline. The pipeline carries the misinformation from the uncorrected or obscure journals articles to blog sites, through biased institutes and think tanks, and often into respectable newspapers and magazines. Spin is added along the way and the headlines are made more and more sensational as the information moves along the pipeline. What comes out of the pipeline often bears little resemblance even to the original article, but that matters little as the purpose of the pipeline is to spread doubt.

Speed is of the essence as it is important to get the message “out there” before it can be debunked. Because, once ”out there”, it is  difficult to correct it in the minds of the public. One good example of this is the controversy that arose over an article by Steig, et. al. which had been featured on the cover of Nature. Steig found that over the last fifty years, the Antarctic had been getting warmer by 0.1 C per decade. A year later, an article with the headline “O’Donnell et al 2010 Refutes Steig et al 2009″ appeared on many news and blog sites. However, O’Donnell’s paper was nowhere to be found. The source of the headline was traced to skeptic Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit website. It turned out that McIntyre was one of the authors of the paper, and he had circulated the phony headline over two weeks before O’Donnell’s paper was published. Now, that is fast. And O’Donnell’s article hardly refuted Steig’s, as he also found that Antartica was warming, but a slightly different geographical pattern.  

Tracing a Path: A more recent example was an article that appeared on MSNBC’s Newsvine blog site. The headline read:  New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism – Yahoo! News and it had the summary :

 ”The underlying physics does not support the James Hansen CO2 model and nor does the data. End of Story.”

That is certainly not accurate, as Hansen, the director of NASA, has published many peer-reviewed articles  based upon NASA’s data that show that CO2 is primarily responsible for global warming. It was unlikely that a single article published by climate skeptic Roy Spencer in the rather obscure journal, Remote Sensing, would blow a hole in anything. Nor was it the end of the story.  Tracing the story backwards shows how misinformation about global warming is rapidly spread through the news media. I reported this story to Newsvine as inaccurate and mis-categorized. The headline is sensationalized, and no reasonable news story would describe climate scientists as “alarmists” 15 times. However, Newsvine did not act as it was categorized as “news” by Yahoo!News. I contacted Yahoo!News and explained that it was a violation of journalistic ethics to categorize an opinion article as news. I received a reply quickly, but it mainly passed the buck to Forbes, saying:

“We are not responsible for the content contained within news articles or headlines from outside source providers. If you would like to report incorrect information provided in a news article from one of these outside source providers, please contact the publisher at www.forbes.com. “ I replied to Yahoo! News, suggesting that if someone there couldn’t make a decision about the matter, they might wish to change their name to Yahoo! News and Opinion so they would be covered in the future. I also sent a complaint to Forbes, but apparently Forbes is not very concerned as they have yet to reply. (1)

Forbes. The article in Forbes was written by James Taylor, who is listed as a fellow at the Heartland Institute. You may remember James Taylor, as he wrote a number of articles for the tobacco industry suggesting that secondhand smoke was not harmful. His article in Forbes was categorized as a news article since he claimed the information came from a “press release”. But when I clicked on the link to the “press release”, I ended up at a blog site run by Roger Pielke, a proverbial climate skeptic. There the supposed “news release” was titled: “Comments On The Paper ‘On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance’ By Spencer and Braswell 2011” . I suppose James Taylor considers Roger Pielke’s  comments as news, but not everyone feels that way. And, in case the reader missed the significance of  Pielke’s comments, underneath them he recommended a post on Roy Spencer’s blog site titled: ” Is Gore’s Missing Heat Really Hiding in the Deep Ocean?” Wait a minute! It was Spencer who wrote the original journal article and his blog article would indicate that Spencer might have a bias.

Spencer’s Paper: Spencer’s paper was published in a normally reputable but little-known journal, Remote Sensing . The article was listed as being peer-reviewed, but is unlikely that the article was peer-reviewed by anyone with an expertise in climate science. As soon as climate scientists had time to analyze the article, they found a number of errors. According to Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A&M University: “He’s taken an incorrect model, he’s tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct.” And, an analysis by climate scientists Trenberth and  Fasullo says in part:  ”The model has no realistic ocean, no El Niño, and no hydrological cycle, and it was tuned to give the result it gave. The bottom line is that there is NO merit whatsoever in this paper.” That about sums it up.

Timeline: The article may have had little scientific merit,  but the misinformation pipeline that delivered it was certainly efficient.  In this case, a paper titled “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance“, with significant errors, was published in Remote Sensing on July 25. It appeared as a “Comments on …”  article on Roger Pielke’s blog site on July 26, then passed through the Heartland Institute where it somehow became a “press release”. Along the way, it morphed into James Taylor’s article, New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism,  which appeared July 27 in Forbes, where it was now categorized as a news article. It then appeared on  July 28 on Yahoo!News and MSNBC’s Newsvine, again mis-categorized as news, with the title New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism – Yahoo! News.  Three days after publication, an erroneous and sensationalized version was on the major news network. Since then, a number of other blog sites and news sources have picked up the sensationalized version of the article and possibly millions of people have read it. Very few of those will read the climate scientist’s opinion of the article.The article will soon sink into obscurity,  but it will have accomplished it’s purpose, which was to spread doubt about climate change. And that’s why the public is confused.

Correcting the problem: The solution is for the news media to follow journalism’s ethics and to avoid bias. Media Bias  refers to censorship or propagandism on the part of particular news sources, where content is framed in the light of a preconceived agenda, such as favoring a station’s corporate economic interests, having a political slant, or sensationalism that tends to distort news to make it a better commercial “product.” The business community considers legislation that would reduce our carbon emissions to be antibusiness(2). Many business newspapers, magazines, and journals reflect that bias and even the leaders such as Investors Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes are often biased toward the skeptic’s position. The bias shows up in the news stories selected, opinions mis-categorized as news, selecting a disproportionate number of skeptics articles for opinion pages, and writing or allowing sensational headlines on the opinion articles. Yes, the editors have complete control over what op-ed pieces and letters are published and they often write the headlines for opinion articles. An egregious example of this is a Wall street Journal article titled “Science Has Spoken, Global Warming Is a Myth”. The article turned out to be a hoax , but it came right before the Senate was to consider the Kyoto Treaty and may have influenced the Senate to reject ratification. While the editors might not have known that the article was based on flawed science, they certainly should have realized that two biochemists, who had little experience in climate science, could not speak for all science on such an important matter. 

Journalism’s Ethics: Unethical practices by new sources is a great disservice to its readers and, in this case, to the entire world. It should certainly be expected that  journalists and news media follow the Ethical code of The Society of Professional Journalists, who believe that it is the ethical duty of the journalist to:

Seek the Truth and Report it: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

It is a principle of professional ethics that anyone who practices the profession, whether a member of the professional organization or not, is bound by the code of ethics of the profession. In this case, the ethical code would apply to anyone who claims to reports the news, even bloggers.

(c) 2011 Que

Note added 9/3/2011:  In the latest issue of Remote Sensing, the editor, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, resigned and issued a public apology for this article saying, “With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements.” “The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extent also in the literature, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.“

(1) It is a serious violation of journalism ethics to represent an opinion article such as this as a news story. Please let Yahoo know how you feel about this by reporting it as abuse at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/news/goodmorning_abuse.html;_ylt=AjGB0G9bUO5dvEQEn5l77lqAFiR4?from_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhelp.yahoo.com%2Fl%2Fus%2Fyahoo%2Fnews%2F&last_url=http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/news/index.html   

 It may also be reported as an ethical violation to Forbes at readers@forbes.com .

(2) That is not really the case. The LA Times reported that a group of International investors, responsible for more than $15 trillion in assets, issued a global warming warning. (2) They called for the world’s nations, particularly the United States, to move decisively to combat climate change or face the possibility of economic disruptions even worse than the global recession of the last two years. They also pointed out that “The economic opportunities are enormous for nations with the foresight to seize them while the risks of inaction are potentially catastrophic.”

Senator Jim Inhofe, the Senator from Oklahoma who never met an oil company executive he didn’t like, often proclaims that “Global warming is a hoax.” He often uses his Senate position on the Environment and Public Works Committee to attack climate science and to promote the interests of oil companies. He is upset that the Polar bear was put on the threatened species list, which protects the Polar bear’s habitat. Recently, Senator Inhofe sent a letter to Mary Kendall, the acting inspector general at the U.S. Department of Interior, pushing for further investigation of Dr. Charles Monnett, who Sen. Inhofe blames for the Polar bear being put on the threatened species list, although that is not the case.  It is clear what Sen. Inhofe  was thinking when he proclaimed, “As a result, critical habitat for the Polar bear was designated, which added additional layers of onerous regulations to oil and gas development in 187,000 square miles of land in Alaska.”

The September 2004 issue of National Geographic has satellite pictures of the Polar region taken in 1979 and 2003, which shows that over that period, the extent of the polar sea ice had declined 30%. Polar bears, whose hunting grounds are the sea ice, now have to swim many miles to reach the ice – when in the past they could simply walk onto it. Dr. Monnett, who is studying the Polar bear population, counted four Polar bears who had drowned because they were caught in a storm trying to swim to the sea ice to hunt. He reported that incident in a paper on the declining habitat of the Polar bear, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal. However his survey report only reported on the drowning of three bears, because only three were in the survey area. That is a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy, however, it led to a controversy about him inflating the number of bears in his research article.

Though that happened five years ago, the Interior Department has been put under political pressure to investigate the matter and they are doing so. As Sen. Inhofe wrote in his letter, “As ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), I am committed to ensuring that scientific integrity is upheld in the federal decision-making processes”. If he really means that, perhaps he should wait for the investigation, which is hopefully being done by unbiased scientists under proper procedures, to be completed before jumping to conclusions.

The Polar bear has become a symbol of all we may lose by failing to address our pollution problems adequately. The charges against Dr. Monnett are a politically motivated witch-hunt designed to punish scientists who disagree with Sen. Inhofe’s views on global warming. The polar bears were put on the threatened species list, not because of Dr. Monnett’s work, but because their habitat is clearly declining. As their habitat disappears, so will the Polar bear. It is something man should think about as our habitat is deteriorating, also.

(c) 2011 Que

While Congress is wrestling with the problem of keeping our country from going bankrupt, some in Congress and our business community are concerned with the serious problem of  – light bulb standards. The Investor Business Daily posted an editorial “Let There Be Lights” on 07/08/2011. (1)  Although it is an opinion piece, it does not represent an informed opinion. The article claims that the ban on incandescent light bulbs sums up everything that’s wrong with intrusive, nanny-state government. However,  there is no ban- just efficiency standards that some incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

It is interesting  that the The Republicans for Environmental Protection are opposed to eliminating the standards while Republicans in Congress, such as Joe Barton and  Michelle Bachmann are pushing  HR 91, a bill which is designed to scuttle the efficiency  standards. The Investor Business Daily editorial uses many of the  politician’s arguments, apparently without checking the facts.  The article starts :

”Energy: The ban on incandescent light bulbs sums up everything that’s wrong with intrusive, nanny-state government.”

But, there is no ban- just efficiency standards that some incandescent  bulbs cannot meet.  The Republicans for Environmental Protection are opposed to eliminating the standards and here is what they say:

“There is no light bulb ban. There never has been. The bulb ban rhetoric misrepresents a 2007 law that sets efficiency standards for general-purpose, screw-in light bulbs. In fact, new, efficient incandescent bulbs that meet the new standards are already on the shelves of your local Home Depot. That fact has not prevented Barton, Bachmann and others from pushing legislation, HR 91, to scuttle the new standards. It is likely that HR 91 will come up for a vote in the House over the next few weeks.” (2)

The Investor Business Daily opinion article goes on :

” As the law stands, the incandescent light, the greatest invention by America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison, will disappear at the end of this year. It is being replaced with an unproven substitute — the compact fluorescent light, or CFL — that is both politically foolish and bad science.”

 Eh? The incandescent bulb will not disappear. It will still be available in more efficient designs. And CFL bulbs for home use are based on the same proven technology as other fluorescent light bulbs.  I cannot think of a company, school, or public building that does not use fluorescent light bulbs to save energy and avoid maintenance costs.

The editorial also puts words in the mouths of proponents:

 “Proponents claim CFLs would provide lots of healthy light but use as much as 30% less energy. Not true.” And “- because CFL bulbs cost as much as 20 times more than the reliable old incandescent bulbs, consumers will pay through the nose for pretending to be green. “

The article would like for you to believe that CFL’s are only 30% more efficient but no proponent would claim that.  CFL’s are three to four times as efficient as regular bulbs and last about 10 times as long. As to cost, where do they shop? Many electric coops sell CFL bulbs for $1.00 and they are less than $2.00 at most discount stores.  I doubt if you can find an incandescent bulb for  1/20^th of that. And, over the life of the CFL bulb, it will save approximately $9.00 in operating cost over the ten incandescent bulbs it will replace.

Finally, the editorial wants you to be afraid:

“As for safety and disposal, the CFLs are downright dangerous. They contain toxins such as mercury, arsenic, lead and cyanide. You can’t just throw them out — they have to be recycled in a way that’s expensive.”

 Do they realize that much of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal contains a trace amount of mercury, lead, and arsenic  - but considering that we burn 7 billion tons of coal each year -  50 tons of mercury  and many tons of other heavy metals are emitted into the air annually. The mercury and other pollutants are carried to the ground by rain and much of them end up in our lakes and streams where they enter the food chain.  It’s true that CFL’s should be recycled, but even if you don’t, using them will keep much more mercury and other pollutants out of the environment. (3)

(1)    http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/577799/201107081902/Let-There-Be-Lights.htm

(2)    See : http://capwiz.com/repamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=51013516&queueid=7101172991 The article contains a link for you to contact your Legislator. 

(3)    http://jcmooreonline.com/2009/08/21/mercury-in-fish/

(c) 2011 J.C. Moore

Some people seldom get things right - but when they arew in Congress, they can do a lot of damage.  A group of GOP lawmakers, including Michele Bachmann (MN) and Joe Barton (TX), have stirred up—along with their talk radio and Fox News cohorts—public concern over what they say is a looming "ban" on incandescent light bulbs.

There is no light bulb ban. There never has been. The bulb ban rhetoric misrepresents a 2007 law that sets efficiency standards for general-purpose, screw-in light bulbs. In fact, new, efficient incandescent bulbs that meet the new standards are already on the shelves of your local Home Depot.

That fact has not prevented Barton, Bachmann and others from pushing legislation, HR 91, to scuttle the new standards. It is likely that HR 91 will come up for a vote in the House over the next few weeks.

The EPA has been charged with reducing the pollutants released into the environment, but they are meeting opposition from power companies, politicians, and people who want cheap energy, though other people’s health and the environment may suffer the consequences . The EPA is accepting comments on the issue through May 23, 2011.  (1)

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking a 95 percent reduction in emissions at three of Oklahoma’s coal-fired power plants. (2) This has brought howls from the utility companies and from Oklahoma’s politicians. Utility companies claim that installing scrubbers or converting to natural gas will cost them billions of dollars and drive the rates for electricity up by 10 to 12%. The utility companies have defined the costs for the plant conversions or upgrades in the worst possible terms, without considering the long-term savings of conversion to natural gas or the impact on people’s health.

EPA Stopping the EPA has been put forth as a Conservative and a Republican cause, but it really is neither. President Richard Nixon created the EPA to protect the environment as the United States developed industrially. The Clean Air Act was passed not only to reduce smog in our cities, but to ensure that the air was kept pure and clean in our national parks and wilderness areas. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the right to limit sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds, and particulates to ensure the quality of the air in our region. Limiting regional haze would have the added benefit of improving the health of people, wildlife, and plants in the region. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides are known to damage plants and those, along with small particulates, cause respiratory problems in people. Also, the particulates emitted contain mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium, dioxins, and radioactive isotopes, which are all health hazards.

Regional problem. The emissions from Oklahoma plants do not remain in Oklahoma, and some of the haze in Oklahoma likely comes from surrounding states, particularly Texas, which has a large number of unregulated power plants. Emissions from a source may remain in the air for many weeks and travel for hundreds of miles. Although each state in the region might wish to address its own air pollution problems, it is a regional problem and must be addressed as such. Some of the states in the region are regulatory averse, and may lack the political will to act in the matter. For instant, a fly ash disposal plant at Bokoshe Oklahoma was allowed to operate for seven years while it violated Oklahoma statutes and apparently caused health problems and possibly deaths among Bokoshe residents.

Cost. The main objection to limiting emissions at the power plants is the cost. However, the power plants have operated for years without paying the true cost of energy production, which should include the cost of limiting their air pollution. It also appears that the companies have overstated the costs, by as much as two or three times over the EPA estimate.  AEP reported $1.2 billion in profits last year and OG&E $292 million, so they can apparently afford to address the problem without passing all the costs to customers.

Timetable. Three years would be a reasonable time for the power plants to come into compliance. It has been known for several decades that the emissions are damaging to the environment and health, yet the companies did not act. Also, the EPA had previously informed the companies that they were out of compliance, yet they have failed to come up with a satisfactory plan. They should have made a move toward compliance long ago, and further stalling should not be allowed.

Alternate plan. The alternate plan of converting the power plants to natural gas is certainly an acceptable plan. Methane produces about 2 1/2 times as much energy per unit of carbon dioxide as coal. And, switching to methane would also alleviate the problem of properly disposing of fly ash, bottom ash, and scrubber sludge. Those, and carbon emissions will necessarily be regulated in the future. Addressing the haze, the solid and liquid waste, and the carbon emissions piecemeal will certainly be less effective and more costly in the long run. If the companies should choose to convert the plants to methane, the added benefits would justify an increase in the timetable of up to five years.

(1) Comments may be submitted to r6air_okhaze@epa.gov or at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/oklahoma_coal_pollution/?r=7901&id=21282-3213732-Kunk_Zx

(c) 2011 Que2646

Sen. James Inhofe (R –OK) is famous for his statement, “Global warming is a hoax”. The local Tulsa newspaper often carries letters giving the opposing viewpoint. For example, Corey Cohen, recently wrote, “Sen. Inhofe, please cease your effort to stop EPA’s ability to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The science of global warming and climate change is obvious and known. For example, excessive CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs heat reflected from the ground and traps that heat in the atmosphere, melting glaciers and ice and snow packs all around the planet. A given molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere has a life of approximately 100 years. The implications are fairly obvious: rising sea levels, loss of fresh water for humans and unpredictable growing seasons for Oklahoma farmers and their winter wheat crops due to atmospheric heating.” (1)

Mr. Jack Williams replied (2) by “pointing out a few facts”  to defend Senator Inhofe’s position:

“1. More than 31,000 scientists signed a petition opposing the concept of man-made global warming.

2. More than 100 top climate scientists have expressed their opposition.

3. A dozen recognized scientists from nine countries who initially were global-warming proponents have changed their opinion and now oppose it in light of recently published information.

4. Earth has undergone many cooling and warming periods during its history.

5. Carbon dioxide constitutes less than 0.1 percent of the atmosphere while water vapor, at least as effective a greenhouse gas as CO2, ranges from about 20 to 100 times its concentration, and is quite variable.

6. There has been no measurable increase in global temperatures during the past decade.

7. The polar bear population dramatically increased during the past decade, as has ice thickness on Antarctica.”

It’s always nice to get alleged facts in a numbered list, where it is possible to check them one by one.

Endorsements: Facts one, two and three, fall into  the category of endorsements, and as with many endorsement, it is not always clear how well qualified those who endorse the position are, or whether the numbers listed are significant. There are about 23 million graduates with degrees in science and engineering. If 31,000 scientists signed the Oregon Petition, that is about 0.13% of those – hardly significant. Even then, the petition appears to be a hoax. In 1989, the Petition was mailed to thousands of Bachelor of Science students. It was formatted to appear as if it came from the National Academy of Science, but the organization quickly responded that the information was misleading and “the petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.”  The mailing collected 17,000 signatures and 14,000 have been added since. Most anyone could sign it, many who signed were misled, and many were not scientists at all, as it is possible to get BS degrees in fields such as journalism, sociology, education, philosophy… (3)

Endorsements that matter: All the major scientific organizations in the world have endorsed a statement such as that of the American Chemical Society,  ”Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing rapidly in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosol particles. There is very little room for doubt that observed climate trends are due to human activities. The threats are serious and action is urgently needed to mitigate the risks of climate change.” (4) A recent CNN poll found that 97% of scientists who are actively engaged in research in climate science agree that global warming is caused by man. (5) There is clearly a consensus among scientists on the matter and those making policy would be wise to heed it.

Warming and Cooling: Point four is a fact, but it is not relevant to what is happening today. The Earth has in the past had many natural warming and cooling periods but the current warming trend is not part of those. In the  past, ice ages and warmer interglacial periods have occurred in roughly 100,000-year cycles. These are attributed to the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles are small variations in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit that cause the amount of sunlight the Earth receives to increase and decrease in predictable cycles The cycles predict that a slow cooling trend, which began some 6,000 years ago, will continue for the next 23,000 years. The current warming trend is too rapid and in the wrong direction for the Milankovitch Cycles to be the cause. (6)

Greenhouse gases: Point five is also a fact, but it incorrectly downplays the role of  CO2  in determining the Earth’s temperature. In 1956, G.N. Plass calculated (7) that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the air would cause a 3 to 4 C increase in the Earth’s temperature. Many dismissed his work, as it seemed impossible that CO2, which made up only 0.03% of the air, could have such a large effect on temperature. However, in 1997, J.T. Kiehl found (8) that, under clear sky conditions, CO2 accounted for 26% of the greenhouse effect – with water vapor accounting for most of the rest. More recent research (9) has confirmed their work, and CO2 has been labeled the “Control Knob” for the Earth’s temperature.  The Earth is warming because of the greenhouse gases we emit, and research finds the increase in CO2 is the main cause.

Temperature record: Fact six is based on the idea that 1998 was so hot, it couldn’t have been hotter since. However, NASA’s temperature record shows that 2005 and 2010 are tied for the warmest year on record and the last decade has been the hottest in recorded history – and the trend is yet upward (10). There have been attempts to discredit NASA’s temperature data by challenging the accuracy of the temperature recording stations, but a study of that issue by the American Geophysical Union found that claim to be false. (11) NASA has put men on the Moon and brought them home safely, and they certainly should be able to measure temperatures on the Earth correctly.

Polar Bears:  It’s true that the Polar bear population has increased, but not because the Polar ice is increasing. The bears were hunted nearly to extinction, and their population is increasing because restrictions were placed on hunting them from aircraft . Recently, Polar bears have been put on the threatened species list, not because of their numbers, but because their habitat is disappearing.  Satellite measurements of the Arctic sea ice have shown that both the volume and extent of the sea ice has decreased remarkably over the last 30 years. (12) Polar bears are uniquely adapted to live and hunt on the Arctic Sea ice. As it disappears, so will the Polar bears.

Claiming something as “fact” does not make it so. And, even facts can be misleading if the inferences drawn from them are in error.  If Senator Inhofe bases his position on facts such as those listed by Mr. Williams, it is easy to see why he incorrectly thinks global warming is a hoax.

(1)http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=62&articleid=20110313_222_G2_CUTLIN933913

(2)http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=62&articleid=20110403_62_G2_InhisM784632

(3) http://jcmooreonline.com/2010/01/29/the-oregon-petition-how-can-31000-scientists-be-wrong/

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#General_science

(5) http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-19/world/eco.globalwarmingsurvey_1_global-warming-climate-science-human-activity

(6) http://jcmooreonline.com/2010/12/31/science-global-warming-and-the-ice-age-mystery/

(7) http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#M_25_

(8) http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281997%29078%3C0197:EAGMEB%3E2.0.CO;2

(9) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.abstract

(10) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/fig2.gif

(11)http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD013094.shtml

(12) http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/NSIDC-12-10.gif

(c) 2011 Que2646

“We know who the culprit is, we just can’t prove it – yet.” Detective Dick Tracy

The Case. That statement could have been uttered by climate scientists. They know global warming is the cause of the more extreme weather events we are experiencing, but it is hard to prove it. Global warming has increased the energy and moisture in the atmosphere, and that combination makes conditions ripe for severe storms and floods. Certainly, hurricanes occur and intensify over low-pressure areas fed by moisture and warmer oceans. To be accurate, however, climate scientists could only say, “When weather events occur, global warming is likely to make them more extreme.” However, the case against global warming is growing stronger. A number of recent research papers have shown global warming is the cause of extreme weather events, and the business community, particularly insurers, are beginning to take notice. (1)

The Link. The vapor pressure of water is one of the most important factors in determining weather. Water will evaporate from the surface until the air above it reaches its saturated vapor pressure. The saturated vapor pressure depends only on the temperature, which makes temperature the determining factor controlling the amount of moisture that the air can hold. (2) If a mass of air saturated with moisture moves to higher altitudes or encounters a cold front and is cooled, the air becomes supersaturated, which leads to precipitation. Over the last century, the Earth’s average temperature has increased by about 0.8°C, which translates into an increase in the saturated vapor pressure of water of about 7%. When precipitation occurs, on the average, 7% more moisture is available. It is a reasonable conclusion that when it rains, it will rain more and when it snows, it will snow more. So strangely enough, global warming could actually lead to greater snowfall. However, it has been very difficult to prove, and certainly even more difficult to convince skeptics that that might be the case.

Floods. Two recent research papers have established a link between global warming, increased rainfall, and flooding. A recent paper in Nature (3) reported that the observed increase in rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 50 years and climate change are linked. The researchers analyzed the rainfall data in areas prone to flood and found that the rainfall has increased due to the warmer temperatures of the Earth. Their results “were based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analyzed with an optimal fingerprinting technique.” They also found that the models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming temperatures. Extreme precipitation in the future may be even more severe than now predicted.

The second paper, also published in Nature (4), has linked the increasing floods in England and Wales and global warming. The researchers generated several thousand climate model simulations of the autumn 2000 weather by using actual conditions and also by assuming conditions as they would have been had no greenhouse gas emissions or global warming occurred. They concluded that “the precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

Rivers in the Sky. Normally, when an air mass saturated with water moves ashore and is forced upward, it cools and precipitation falls until the clouds are no longer over-saturated. However, that is not the case for “rivers in the sky, weather patterns that carry a stream of air saturated with water into coastal regions continually for days. These “rivers in the sky”, cause flooding rains in coastal and inland mountains causing untold costs in property damage and human lives. One such river produced more than 40 inches of rainfall in the mountains of southern California in only four days in early January 2005. It caused widespread flooding and massive mudslides such as the one in La Conchita, California, which took 10 lives. The researchers say these “rivers in the sky” will become more common as global temperatures rise since warmer air means that the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. That is, unless global warming changes the weather patterns that produce them. (5)

Droughts. The link between global warming and droughts has not been yet established by research. Areas that receive little moisture from the oceans would not benefit from the fact that the air can hold more water. Though higher temperatures mean that more water evaporates into the air, it also means that the air can hold more moisture before becoming saturated. Areas that normally experience droughts are much more likely to have less rainfall in the future. This past year has seen droughts in Russia, China, and South America that have limited the production of grain and increased the chances that some species may become extinct. The heat waves in Europe in 2003 and 2010, that caused widespread crop failure and wildfires, may have been the worst in 500 years. Certainly, more frequent and extensive droughts may occur in a warming world. (6)

The Smart Money. The widespread damage caused by weather events related to global warming has caught the attention of the business community, particularly those who pay out insurance claims or invest large sums of money. Insurance companies ranked 2010 among worst years ever for climate disasters. Climate change is the culprit in many of the catastrophic natural disasters in 2010, according to insurance company Munich Re, one of the largest global insurance carriers. It added that trends are pointing to more frequent and riskier events in the future. (7) Recently, a group of International investors, responsible for more than $15 trillion in assets, issued a global warming warning. (8) They called for the world’s nations, particularly the United States, to move decisively to combat climate change or face the possibility of economic disruptions even worse than the global recession of the last two years. They also pointed out that “The economic opportunities are enormous for nations with the foresight to seize them while the risks of inaction are potentially catastrophic.”

(1) http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/intelligent-energy/studies-prove-link-between-human-activity-and-extreme-weather-events/4835/

(2) http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/relhum.html#c3

(3) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html

(4) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html

(5) http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2529.htm

(6) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110318091141.htm

(7) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=insurance-ranks-2010-worst-for-climate-disasters&page=2

(8) http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-climate-financiers-20101117,0,6204171.story

(C) 2011 J.C. Moore

The EPA has been charged with reducing the pollutants released into the environment, but they are meeting opposition from power companies, politicians, and people who want cheap energy, though other people and the environment may suffer the consequences.

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking a 95 percent reduction in emissions at three of Oklahoma's coal-fired power plants. This has brought howls from the utility companies and from Oklahoma's politicians. Utility companies claim that installing scrubbers or converting to natural gas will cost them billions of dollars and drive the rates for electricity up by 10 to 12%. The utility companies have defined the costs for the plant conversions or upgrades in the worst possible terms, without considering the long-term savings. Conversion to natural gas would eliminate the problem of coal combustion products such as acidic gases, mercury vapor, fly ash, and bottom ash. Although coal is cheaper than other fuels, it delivers less energy per unit of CO2 produced. Coal produces 314 kJ/mole while natural gas produces 890 kJ/mole, almost 3 times that of coal. Considering Oklahoma's abundant supplies of natural gas, it would make sense for Oklahoma to begin switching power plants to natural gas.

The power companies and the politicians have tried to define the problem as the cost of the "elimination of haze", as if there were no other environmental damage done by burning coal. That is because the elimination of haze under the Clean Air Act is all the EPA is presently empowered to do. Coal is 65 to 95 % carbon. What about the rest? Coal contains small amounts of mercury, chromium, lead, cadmium, arsenic, sulfur, particulates, and radioactive isotopes. Man burns 6 billion tons of coal each year, releasing millions of tons of pollutants into the air and leaving several hundred million tons behind in the coal ash. Some pollutants eventually find their way into the water, the food chain, and into us. Oklahoma has adopted limits on fish consumption because of high levels of mercury. For comparison, mercury is 100 times as toxic as cyanide, arsenic is 20 times as toxic, and chromium(VI) is 4 times as toxic. These three are also are carcinogenic and accumulate in tissue. Even exposure below the allowed levels increases the chance of cancer over time. The small town of Bokoshe, Oklahoma is located near an unregulated fly ash disposal site. The incidence of cancer among the residents of the town is extraordinarily high, though the power company claims there is no link between that and their fly ash.

The sulfur and nitrogen oxides released by coal combustion harms plants and produce acid rain. A recent article headlined "Pecan growers say coal-fired plant killing trees" described the plight of orchards downwind from a power plant with inadequate pollution controls. One farmer said his pecan crop dropped over the years from 200,000 to 8,000 pounds. The combustion of coal also releases 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. .Because of CO2, the oceans have become over 20% more acidic in the last century. That has lead to the destruction of coral reefs and endangered crustaceans and the phytoplankton that convert CO2 to oxygen. Without phytoplankton, life in the oceans would be impossible. The concentration of CO2 in the air has increased 38% as well. As a potent greenhouse gas, it is causing the Earth to warm, glaciers and polar ice to melt, and the climate to change in ways we will not always like. The Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA, ordered the EPA to make a determination as to whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The EPA has found, based on the best scientific evidence, that CO2 is an endangerment to public health and has moved forward to regulate it.

Oklahoma's politicians, such as Sen. Jim Inhofe and Congressman Dan Boren, are working on a solution- for the power companies benefit. They want to strip the EPA of some of its power to regulate pollution. They also claim it is a states rights issue, and that the EPA has no business regulating Oklahoma industries. However, the pollution generated by Oklahoma's power plants does not stay within its borders, nor is all the pollution in Oklahoma from Oklahoma sources. Much of it blows up from Texas, the state with the most power plants out of compliance. Acidic gases released by coal combustion, and even mercury vapor, can travel for thousands of miles before being brought to Earth by precipitation, and much of the CO2 will stay in the air for centuries. Regulation of carbon emissions needs to be done on a national and even international level. It is a bad idea to focus on short term economic costs while ignoring the environmental costs, such as polluting the Earth and letting rural Oklahoma become a dumping ground for the power companies' waste.

(C) 2011 J.C. Moore

The quality of the scenic Illinois River in Oklahoma is threatened by pollution from Arkansas’ poultry industry. A lawsuit to stop the pollution seemed certain to win, but it may be derailed by a huge influx of money into the recent Oklahoma elections.

A writer in India, Pabitra Mukhopadhyay wrote an excellent article (1) explaining how arsenic in some Wells in India were poisoning those who drank from them. He asked that I write an article explaining the chemistry of arsenic and how it might get into the groundwater. (2) A comment on that article suggested another possible source that I missed. Roxarsone, which has arsenic as the active ingredient, is often used to treat parasites in poultry and poses a risk to the environment.(3) The arsenic eventually ends up in the chicken droppings and, if disposed of improperly, in water supplies. That is probably not the source of the arsenic in India, but it may have implications for a lawsuit about the water quality of the Illinois River in Oklahoma.

The Illinois River begins in the Ozark Mountains in Northwestern Arkansas and flows through the scenic hills of Northeastern Oklahoma. It is a scenic river because of its sparkling clear water and the steep bluffs, rock formations, and large old trees along its banks. It is a favorite for water sports, fishing, camping, and canoeing and is considered a valuable resource for Northeastern Oklahoma. A dam built across the river forms Tenkiller Lake, one of the clearest and deepest lakes in Oklahoma and the water supply for many Oklahoma towns. Both the river and the lake have beauty and economic value to the state of Oklahoma and great efforts have been taken to ensure that the quality of the water remains high. This has caused contention with the state of Arkansas that has had a profound affect on the politics of Oklahoma.

 Lawsuits: As the population of  Northwestern Arkansas has grown, the amount of pollution entering the river has also grown, particularly the nutrients  that causes algae growth and degradation of the river. In 1977, Oklahoma formed the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission to see that the Rivers in Oklahoma retain their scenic value. The Commission tried negotiating with the cities and businesses in Arkansas to reduce their pollution. Some progress was made but the amount of phosphate and nitrate entering the river continued to grow. Finally, a lawsuit was filed in 1986 to stop upstream sources from polluting the river as it flows into Oklahoma. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling in Arkansas v. Oklahoma (1992), the Supreme court upheld Oklahoma’s water quality standards and ruled that the water quality standards of the downstream state must be implemented by the upstream state.(4) This established a very important principle as almost everyone lives downstream from someone.

 After the 1992 ruling, the Scenic River Commission was successful in negotiating with the point sources, mostly upstream businesses and municipalities, to reduce pollution entering the river. However, the amount of pollution in the river continued to grow, mostly from non-point sources related to agricultural use. Northwestern Arkansas has become one of the largest poultry producing areas in United States. The litter from the industry has been disposed of by spreading it on farmland, and nitrates and phosphates from it eventually finds its way into the water and into Illinois River. Oklahoma has not been able to negotiate with the chicken industry to reduce the amount of plant nutrients entering the river as the poultry industry says that the pollution is from many other sources. Finally, Drew Edmondson, the Attorney General  for the state of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against the poultry industry to settle the matter. It appears that the evidence and the case law is on the side of Oklahoma, but the case seems to hinge upon establishing whether the poultry industry can be cited as a major source of the pollution.

 Arsenic: This is where the arsenic enters into the story. If Roxarsone were used by the poultry industry in Arkansas, then surely some of the arsenic would end up in the water along with the plant nutrients. If arsenic were found in the river then that would be a clear indication that the source was the poultry industry. I sent a request to the Oklahoma Department of Water Quality asking if the water had been tested for arsenic. Here is the reply:

 "You are correct in that arsenic compounds are sometimes added to chicken feeds, and as such, have the potential to show up in streams, rivers, lakes, and groundwater in watersheds where chicken litter has been spread on the land surface.

Unfortunately, the poultry lawsuit that you referred to has not been resolved. It is my understanding that they did sample for arsenic as part of the suit, but that data is not readily available. This data collection was not completed by a state agency, so we don't really have access to it. However, even if I had the data, I probably wouldn't be able to share it with you until such a time as the lawsuit has resolved."

 Oklahoma Politics: Drew Edmondson, the Atty. Gen. of Oklahoma who filed the lawsuit, resigned last year to run for governor. He lost in the Democratic primary, partly because the poultry industry contributed heavily to his Democratic opponent and led a campaign to paint him as "anti-business". The poultry industry then donated generously to the Republican candidates as they considered them to be friendlier toward their interests. The Republican candidates won the races for governor and attorney general. Scott Pruitt, the new Attorney General, who received $15,000 in donations from the poultry industry, said he planned to review the case. The closing arguments in the poultry lawsuit were made before he took office, but it remains to be seen how actively he will defend the case or if he will find a reason to derail it. The new Governor, Mary Fallin, also plans to review the poultry lawsuit and she has proposed slashing the budget of the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission and consolidating it with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. These, they say, are just budgetary decisions and have nothing to do with the poultry company donations.  It remains to be seen how avidly they will pursue environmental issues in the state.

(1) http://water.thinkaboutit.eu/think5/post/the_water_of_death/

(2) http://jcmooreonline.com/2011/01/31/arsenic-and-the-water-of-death/

(3) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070409115746.htm

(4) http://www.illinoisriver.org/CEDocuments/Downloads_GetFile.aspx?id=121203&fd=0

(C) 2011 J.C. Moore

This year the contest was carried out on three websites and the results were combined. Your votes have been tabulated to determine the person who has most affected the environment through word or deed.

The 2010 Environmental Hall of Fame winner is RealClimate.org. As Physicist-retired said in his nomination, "This consortium of climate scientists has developed a comprehensive collection of data and analysis open to the public, with materials and discussions at basic, intermediate, and advanced levels of understanding. It is one of the most effective tools we currently have to combat – with real facts – the ongoing claims made by deniers." The site will receive the Most Noble Prize in Environmental Science, a heartfelt thank you, and a recommendation from the sites where this will be posted. Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kerry were tied for second place, and should receive, as Dowser said of Governor Swarzennegger a big "Thanks, for standing firm. May God bless you!"

The Environmental Hall of Shame recipients are the Koch Brothers. They could use the publicity as they have been secretly funding candidates who oppose environmental regulations through their Americans for Prosperity Organization. They also clandestinely fund a number of think tanks that produce white papers, written by scientists with compromised ethics, that dispute the scientific research on climate change. They will receive the "Ignoble Prize in Environmental Science" and in the spirit of Oz, we will petition the Wizard to give them a social conscience.

Second place goes to Jane Lubchenco. As one blogger put it, " I nominate her as a key player in the cover up of the death and destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, and in the vilification of those Marine Scientists who have concluded that there is a huge amount of oil left in the Gulf." Her nominators were certainly the most creative in proposing prizes, and their names have been omitted, just in case. The proposed awards included: "The golden Tar Ball award . Yes , a big trophy cup over flowing with tar balls." "A picture of ten moon's hanging over the side of an oil stained shrimp boat , with a For Sale sign on the shrimp boat." "The old oil from every thing you will change the oil in this coming year. Cars, boats, motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles whatever sits in your garage or drive way. Think of it as a new form of recycling. Mail it to her." Finally, someone wished to combine Jane's award with Tony Hayward's: "An all expense paid yacht trip for the two across the Gulf at the height of the spill, with an eternal flame lighting the bow."

Hall of Fame Nominations and Percentage of Votes :

RealClimate.org – For providing facts to counter the propaganda by climate change deniers. (45%)

Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger – For helping defeat Proposition 23, an effort to gut California's environmental laws and heavily funded by Texas oilmen. (27%)

Senator John Kerry – For his efforts to usher a Cap-and -Trade bill through the U.S. Senate. (27%)

China – For making real efforts to develop alternate energy sources. (0%)

Hall of Shame Nominations and Percentage of Votes :

The Koch Brothers, owners of Koch Oil – For slowing progress on a sound energy policy by funding climate change deniers. (46%)

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Head of Noaa – For her role in the Gulf oil spill, being in bed with the oil companies she was to regulate, and damage to the fishing industry. (38%)

Tony Hayward, ex-chairman of BP – For decisions leading up to the oil spill and for saying, "I want my life back." after his decisions may have cost 11 others theirs. (8%)

China – For surpassing the U.S as the number one country in pollution emissions. (8%)

Remember, check www.realclimate.org for the facts on climate science. And, keep in mind those who you wish to nominate for the 2011 Awards, which will be held next December.

The U.S. has been unable to make much progress on environmental issues because of opposition by our Republican leaders. They have inflated the cost while ignoring the benefits, labeled environmental issues as "liberal" to discourage support by conservatives, spread false "science facts", and biased voters against a cap-and-trade approach by labeling it cap-and-tax. Besides being reminded about integrity, they also need to be admonished to follow President Reagan's example.

Many Republicans recently celebrated Ronald Reagan's hundredth birthday as he is considered a unifying figure who skillfully blended principle, pragmatism, and service to the nation. He was a thoughtful, traditionalist conservative who was mindful of our stewardship obligation to future generations. He preserved many wilderness areas so they could not be damaged by economic development. The way he solved two pollution problems should set an example for Republican politicians today.

During the 1980s, scientific evidence mounted that the CFCs from spray cans and refrigerants were damaging the ozone layer. The layer filters out UV light which can cause skin cancers and environmental damage. Reagan ignored the political disputes, the ideological posturing, and the claims of economic disaster - and followed the advice of the scientists. He signed into effect the Montreal protocol, banning emissions of CFCs into the atmosphere. The economic catastrophes never came to pass and the ozone layer is recovering.

When Canada became alarmed that emissions from Northeastern power plants were drifting into Canada and acidifying their lakes, Reagan proposed a market solution to the problem. He devised a cap-and-trade system whereby polluters had to pay by buying credits while companies who reduced their pollution would receive credits. In spite of initial complaints, the system worked well and it cost far less than the power companies claimed it would - and none went out of business.

The scientific evidence has become clear and convincing that man's release of CO2 is causing our climate to change, endangering the environment and the health of future generations. Yet, many of our Republican leaders are unwilling to accept the scientific evidence. The industries involved are saying it will be too costly, and some are claiming it will ruin our economy. The cap-and-trade system put forward to address the problem is stalled by political controversies. Our current Congressional leaders, particularly those who would ignore science or derogatorily call Reagan's system "cap-and -tax", should look to Reagan as an example.

(C) 2011 Que2646

If the ice on Antarctica melts, the oceans will rise several meters, inundating low islands and coastal regions. There is a controversy about the rate at which Antarctica is warming.

The headline read "O'Donnell et al 2010 Refutes Steig et al 2009″. Wow! Steig's work had been featured on the cover of Nature (1) when he found that over the last fifty years, the Antarctic had been getting warmer by 0.1 C per decade. I wanted to see how it was possible that Steig was wrong, but O'Donnell's paper was nowhere to be found. My search led me to the Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit website. Yes, McIntyre claimed, a peer reviewed paper in J. Climate had refuted O'Donnell. After wading through some verbiage about the failure of the scientific peer review process and the evils of "Climategate", the truth emerged. McIntyre was one of the coauthors of the paper and had access to it, though it had not yet been published.

It is considered bad form among scientist to claim that your paper refutes another scientist's. That is best left for other scientists to decide. It is even worse to do so before your paper is published. There is a prohibition in scientific ethics about making premature and exaggerated claims to the public. Apparently, McIntyre missed that, as he did the same thing in "Climategate" . He claimed the climate scientists were guilty of hiding data, not sharing their raw data, of colluding to keep skeptics from publishing, and of using the peer review process to keep skeptics from publishing. This is, for lack of a better name, the " Twisted Science Theory". Five investigations into "Climategate" found no scientific misconduct. Apparently, McIntyre believes in getting his version of the facts "out there" before the truth can be discovered.

The Feud: But, did O'Donnell's paper prove the Antarctic was not warming? No, not at all. The refutation claim is part of a running feud McIntyre has with Michael Mann, a coauthor of Steig's paper. The dispute started much earlier when, after repeated complaints of scientific secrecy, Mann had released the raw data from one of his papers to Steve McIntyre. McIntyre recalculated the results and claimed to have refuted Mann's work. McIntyre had a bit of trouble getting his work published in a peer-reviewed journal, but after much complaining, the Geophysical Research Letters finally published it. Shortly after its publication, Peter Huybers found McIntyre's paper to have errors that, when corrected, led to results similar to Mann's. That should have ended it, but the dispute became a political football when Congress intervened. Congress rejected the National Academy of Science's offer to investigate the matter and instead chose Edward Wegman, a statistician from George Mason University. Wegman relied heavily on McIntyre's work and opinions, he refused to answer scientists' questions about his methods, and he produced a flawed report. Wegman is now himself under investigation by George Mason University for alleged plagiarism and improper research methods.

The Refutation: McIntyre should certainly get some credit for proving Sir Walter Scott's "Tangled Web Theory". However, by being a coauthor of a paper in a respected, peer reviewed journal, McIntyre has clearly refuted his own "Twisted Science Theory". McIntyre's involvement in O'Donnell's work and his premature claims of "refutation" made me wonder if McIntyre might have introduced bias into O'Donnell's methods. I contacted O'Donnell and asked about his funding, McIntyre's role, and whether he considered his paper a refutation of Steig's work.

The Scientific Controversy: O'Donnell was very honest and professional in answering my questions. He explained that the idea for the paper arose from a series of posts on McIntyre's blog and the replies on RealClimate. He explained: "The paper would not likely have happened had I not been presented a challenge by both Dr. Steig and Dr. Gavin Schmidt at the RealClimate blog." "None of the four of us have advanced degrees and none of our degrees are in the geosciences ". "Steve McIntyre's function with respect to the paper was to ensure that, to the best of our ability, we made the best possible use of the available data". The work did not have external funding and the authors contributed the work, the expenses, and even the page charges from their own pockets.

O'Donnell's Reply was very diplomatic. Whether his paper could be considered a refutation or not, he said, depended on what you considered important about Steig's work. The essence of his reply was:

" 1. If you consider the focus in Steig et al.'s abstract 'Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported' – with the conclusion that the warming in West Antarctica cannot be solely explained by an increase in the circumpolar westerlies, then I feel that characterizations of either 'refutation' or 'rebuttal' are appropriate.
2. If you consider the overall picture of Antarctica presented by Steig et al. to be the most important – e.g., overall positive trends, though not significant for East Antarctica or the continent, more warming in the Western half than the Eastern – then 'improvement' is appropriate. One must exclude the seasonal analysis, however, as the seasonal differences between our paper and Steig et al. are both significant and physically important in terms of the dynamics driving Antarctic climate.
3. If you consider the mathematical method used by Steig et al. to be the most important, then either 'improvement' or 'rebuttal' would be appropriate, though I would lean toward 'improvement'. There are two definite mathematical errors in the Steig analysis. One of the errors has a negligible impact on the results; the impact of the other is significant. However, the largest differences between the Steig et al. result and ours arise due to using objective criteria for parameter choices rather than heuristics."

He continued,

"I always viewed the challenge as a friendly one (as, I believe, did Dr. Steig). Dr. Steig was quite helpful in my email communication with him when we were attempting to exactly replicate his method. Regardless of the language used by anyone, our paper is only important if it enhances the understanding of what has happened with Antarctic climate and prevents similar mathematical mistakes from being propagated. In terms of the larger picture, the characterization of 'refutation' or 'improvement' is less important than the question of whether our paper has made a contribution."

Steig's Reply: Now that O'Donnell's paper has been published (2), Eric Steig has posted an analysis of O'Donnell's paper on RealClimate (3). He explained the differences in the two paper's methods, gave credit where he thought O'Donnell had improved on his work, and explained where he thought O'Donnell was in error. His evaluation of the work was summed up in his statement:

" As one would expect of a peer-reviewed paper, those obviously unsupportable claims found in the original blog posts are absent, and in my view O'Donnell et al. is a perfectly acceptable addition to the literature. O'Donnell et al. suggest several improvements to the methodology we used, most of which I agree with in principle. "

Antarctica Is Warming: This reasoned debate stands in sharp contrast to McIntyre's assertions. The exchange between O'Donnell and Steig is an excellent example of the kind of open academic debate that underlies every significant research conclusion in science. I would not consider O'Donnell's paper a refutation, but an addition to our understanding. The significant point to me, and they both seem to agree, is that Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, is warming.

(1) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/full/nature07669.html

(2) http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1

(3) http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/

I liked the water cycle video in the post. . It reminded me of hearing the rain against the window and watching the river run by endlessly. It would be a shame to let the river be polluted so those downstream will not be able to enjoy it as I do. The author is certainly right. If we let that happen, it will happen because of ignorance and a lack of political will.

The author is certainly correct about the economics of using ethanol. It has less energy per gallon than gasoline, it is heavily subsidized, and it uses up crops that could be used for food. This analysis seems to ignore another problem, which is that it takes a lot of energy to produce the ethanol and that ethanol combustion also produces carbon emissions. It also ignores the carbon emission factor for gasoline. If oil companies had to pay to mitigate the damage to the environment, gasoline's true cost would be a lot higher than listed in the article. And, it does not appear to include state subsidies for oil production, which are quite high here in Oklahoma.

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay has written an excellent article focusing attention on a serious environmental problem, that of arsenic in drinking water. Some areas of the U.S. have high arsenic levels in groundwater, but they are in less populated regions that have been able to find other sources for drinking water. However, many of the tube well drilled in Bangladesh and West Bengal, the adjoining Indian state, bring water to the surface that is highly contaminated with arsenic. The problem is serious as it was not discovered for a long time, and many people have been sickened or died from arsenic poisoning. Many more have been exposed to levels that will cause further health problems. Exposure at even low levels may cause cancer later as arsenic is a potent carcinogen. While Pabitra's article dealt with the arsenic situation in general, this is an account of the physical and chemical processes related to arsenic contamination in ground water.

Arsenic is a reactive metalloid that is rarely found uncombined in nature. There are at least 50 minerals that have arsenic as a component. Most of these occur in areas that have had volcanic activity in the past. Weathering breaks down the minerals and streams pick up the arsenic compounds and carry them along. Evaporation, particularly in desert areas, will concentrate the arsenic compounds and the arsenic concentration may become very high in pools and shallow lakes. In many areas, the minerals eventually becomes covered with sediments so that they do not affect surface waters. However, water in aquifers still may come into contact with the minerals and leach out the arsenic compounds. Wells drilled into those aquifers will bring arsenic to the surface and the arsenic levels in the water may be too high for safe drinking water.

Human activities such as mining brings arsenic minerals to the surface, and leaching from mine tailings contaminates surface waters and shallow aquifers. Mobilization of arsenic in the sedimentary aquifers has been attributed to changes in the geochemical environment due to agricultural irrigation. In deeper wells, elevated arsenic concentrations are associated with compaction caused by groundwater withdrawals. A more recent concern is that our increasing use of coal may lead to increased levels of arsenic in groundwater. Coal contains an average amount of about 14.5 parts per million (ppm). That is a trace amount but since we burn about 4.5 billion tons of coal each year, coal mining brings about 67,000 tons of arsenic to the surface each year. When coal is burned, the arsenic ends up mostly in the coal ash, which is then disposed of in landfills, cements, and even by agricultural use. Once in the environment, some of the arsenic ultimately finds its way into the groundwater.

Arsenic in water is in the form of either As(V) compounds, called arsenates, or As(III) compounds, called arsenites. As(III) species are more toxic than As(V) species. However, one form may be converted into the other by chemical reactions depending on the environment. Oxidation converts As(III) to As(V) and reduction reactions convert As(V) to As(III). Water tests do not discriminate between the forms of arsenic and water standards usually have a standard for the total arsenic level of no more than 10 parts per billion, though some areas have even stricter standards. For comparison, the standard for cyanide in drinking water is around 200 ppb, so arsenic is about 20 times more toxic than cyanide. Also, arsenic is bioaccumulated and a carcinogen and the chances of poisoning or cancer goes up as the total exposure over time.

Toxicity: Arsenates are chemically similar to phosphates, and their toxic effect is expressed by interfering with reactions involving phosphates.Arsenate toxicity occurs when it replaces phosphate in the oxidative phosphorylation processes. This leads to mitochondrial impairment and inhibition of glycolytic energy metabolism, which causes cell damage and muscular weakness. Many biological systems carry out reducing reactions that convert As(V) to the more toxic As(III). As(III) is more reactive and forms strong bonds with functional groups such as the thiolates of cysteine and the imidazolium nitrogens of histidines. Arsenic toxicity depends on its chemical form and some plants and animals accumulate arsenic as relatively nontoxic organoarsenic molecules. Plants grown using water high in arsenic may not themselves be toxic.

Arsenate is predominant in water containing high levels of dissolved oxygen, while As(III) species occur under more reducing conditions such as found in deeper wells and anaerobic environments. The distribution of arsenite-oxidizing bacteria in upper layers and arsenate-reducing bacteria in different depths of the sediments may impact the arsenic release into nearby tubewell groundwater.

Removal: Metal arsenites are much more soluble than the corresponding metal arsenates. Arsenates are more likely to be removed from water by being adsorbed by solid phases, such as sediments and soils. As(V) compounds exist in water in ionized forms that may be removed by precipitation with many metal ion, principally iron ions. In the pH ranges found in drinking water, As(III) exist as H3AsO3 which does not ionize enough to combine with metal ions, so As(III) is hard to remove by normal precipitation methods.

To overcome this problem, a very innovative and cost effective arsenic removal technology has been devised at Jadavpur University by Dr. Bhaskar Sengupta, and his colleagues. The method, subterranean arsenic removal (SAR), uses aerated groundwater that is recharged back into the aquifer to create an oxidation zone. The oxidation zone created by the aerated water boosts the activity of the arsenic-oxidizing microorganisms and oxidizes As(III) to As(V), which is then precipitated by the iron ions present in the water. No chemicals are used and the method has a very long operational life. (5) This method shows great promise in making the water well contaminated with arsenic safer to drink.

Please vote for the person you think has most affected the environment through word or deed. The 2010 winners in the in the Environmental Hall of Fame poll will receive the "Most Noble Prize in Environmental Science" and a suitable gift. The winner in the Environmental Hall of Shame category will receive the "Ignoble Prize in Environmental Science" and also a mostly suitable gift. The poll will close on February 15th.

If you wish, please post a reason for your vote and a suggestion for a suitable gift for your favorite candidate. Some great gifts have already been proposed and they will be mentioned when the winners are announced. The author will buy the gifts from his copious Newsvine earnings so please don't worry about the expense.

Hall of Shame Nominees:

> Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Head of Noaa - For her role in the Gulf oil spill, being in bed with the oil companies she was to regulate, and damage to the fishing industry.

>Tony Hayward, ex-chairman of BP - For decisions leading up to the oil spill and for saying, "I want my life back."

>China - For surpassing the U.S as the number one country in pollution emissions.

>The Koch Brothers, owners of Koch Oil - For slowing progress on a sound energy policy by funding climate change deniers.

Hall of Fame Nominees:

> China - For making real efforts to develop alternate energy sources.

> RealClimate.org - For providing facts to counter the propaganda by climate change deniers.

> Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger - For helping defeat Proposition 23, an effort to gut California's environmental laws and heavily funded by Texas oilmen.

>Senator John Kerry - For his efforts to usher a Cap-and -Trade bill through the U.S. Senate.

The concentration of CO2 in the air is increasing rapidly due to our use of fossil fuels. Since plants require CO2, it would seem that the CO2 increase would be good for plants. However, that is a great simplification as the increased CO2 levels may not be good for most plants or for mankind.

CO2: Around 1900, Arvid Hgbom found that factories were emitting about the same amount of CO2 as all the world's volcanoes. This worried some people - but they were told not to worry, the plants and oceans would soon take up any excess. However, that has not been the case. We have destroyed many of the forests that take up CO2. Our factories and other activities now are emitting thirty billion tons of CO2 each year, around 200 times as much CO2 as all the world's volcanoes. The CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid, which has made the oceans 20% more acidic in the last century. This has damaged the coral and phytoplankton that take up CO2. Also, since CO2 is less soluble in the more acidic waters, the oceans are losing their ability to take up the excess CO2. Measurements by Charles Keeling of atmospheric CO2 levels have shown that the plants and the oceans are not taking up the CO2 nearly as fast as we are producing it. The concentration of CO2 in the air has increased rapidly over the last century, from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 385 ppm, a 38% increase. It would seem that one bright spot might be that the higher CO2 level would be good for plant growth. However, that may not be the case.

Historical Data shows that the concentration of CO2 in the air has varied widely over the Earth's history, from over 7000 ppm in the Paleozoic era to a low of 180 ppm during ice ages. Ice core studies show that during the last four ice ages, the CO2 concentration was about 180 ppm during the cold periods and rose to about 280 ppm during the warmer interglacial periods. Warmer temperatures occur at the same times as the higher CO2 levels, so it is difficult to sort out the effect on plants caused by CO2 changes from those caused by temperature changes. Ancient plants that grew at higher temperatures and CO2 levels during the Paleozoic Era adapted to the drop in CO2 level and temperatures near the end of that era by developing leaves. Ancient leaved species, such as Ginko and Magnolia, when exposed to higher levels of CO2, change their leaf structures. Other plants have adapted by changing the altitude at which they grow. For the last 6000 years, we have been in an interglacial period. The Earth's temperature has been relatively stable and the CO2 concentration has been about 280 ppm, except for the last century.

Plant Growth: According to Dr. Surendra Singh, a biologist with a background in botany, modern plants have adapted to the 280 million ppm CO2 concentration that has existed over the last thousands of years. There is no reason to believe that the increasing CO2 concentration would be better for plants as CO2 is seldom the limiting agent in plant growth and seed production. Plants also require water, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, sunlight, and trace elements. Over-fertilizing, over-watering, or putting a shade plant in bright sun will harm the plant. More is not always better, and the increasing the CO2 levels might harm plants that are not adapted to higher CO2 levels.

Greenhouses: Commercial greenhouses have found that adding CO2 helps plants grow better. Some people claim that that proves CO2 stimulates plant growth, but that is not necessarily true. In an enclosed greenhouse, the plants quickly deplete the supply of CO2 if more is not made available. That may also be the case with hydroponic gardeners, who claim better production at higher CO2 levels. Specific crops may do better at the higher levels of CO2 - if all the other nutrients are supplied at an optimum level and plenty of water is available. That is not possible for plants in the outdoors. We do fertilize many crops, but doing so depletes the soil of other nutrients and there is an energy cost in producing and spreading the fertilizers.

Experiments: It is difficult to do outdoor experiments on the effect of CO2 levels on crop growth, but a few have been done. One experiment found that wheat grown at higher CO2 levels has more leaf mass and more kernels; however, the kernels are smaller and have less nitrogen, making them less valuable as a food source. In another experiment, higher CO2 levels in wheat used for grazing correlated with lower nitrogen in the leaves, making the crop less suitable for grazing. Agriculture experts are saying that the result of increasing CO2 levels coupled with increasing temperatures will lower crop yields or quality. That has been found to be true in rice production, and rice is a staple for half the world. In an inadvertent experiment, we have found that some invasive species, such as Kudzu, are well adapted to the increasing temperatures and CO2 levels. They have prospered and are expanding their range northward.

Certainly, plants need CO2, but to say more CO2 will make all plants grow better is a great supposition and oversimplification. The Earth's atmospheric CO2 level is now 385 ppm, possibly higher than it has been in the last 20 million years, and it is increasing every year. By pouring more CO2 into the air each year, we are conducting a great experiment with unknown results. What will happen if the production from agricultural plants decreases significantly?

In the early 1800's, scientists began a search for the cause of the ice ages. That search has led to a discovery of the factors that affect the Earth's temperature, an understanding of the current global warming, and the solution to the mystery of the ice ages. *

The Data: Science is a way of understanding nature by using observation and reason. Man has always been keenly interested in the weather, but temperature records before 1850 were mostly historical accounts of storms, heat waves, or when bodies of water froze. Thermometers came into use in about 1850, allowing more accurate temperature records. One of the most useful records is NASA's graph of the Earth's annual mean temperature, which was compiled from ships logs, weather stations, and satellite measurements. It serves as a scorecard for telling whether the Earth is getting warmer or cooler. NASA's data has small random variations from year to year because of factors such as sunspots, weather events, ocean currents, and particulates from volcanic eruptions. However, NASA's graph shows that the Earth's temperature has clearly trended upward since 1880 - with the exception of a curious plateau from 1945 to 1975 followed by a steeper rise in temperature. The Earth's mean temperature is now 1.3 F higher than in 1880, and the last decade has been the hottest on record. Any theories or causes put forward to explain the global warming trend must be consistent with the temperature observations.

Possible Causes: Nineteenth century scientists realized from geological evidence that the Earth had gone through many ice ages that alternated with ages of warmer climate. Much of the early research on global warming was a search for the cause of the ice ages. Scientists found that many small variables cause the Earth to warm and cool, but the main three causes are the Sun, particulates, and greenhouse gases.

The Sun's output seems to have been reasonably stable over the last several million years. Satellite measurements over the last 30 years have shown that while solar radiation has declined ever so slightly during that time, the Earth continued to warm - so clearly changes in the Sun's output is not the cause of the recent warming. The amount of sunlight the Earth receives does, however, depend on the Milankovitch Cycles. These cycles are small variations in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit that cause the solar insolation, the amount of sunlight the Earth receives, to vary slightly in predictable cycles. Ice core data shows that ice ages tend to occur in roughly 100,000-year cycles that match the timing of the Milankovitch cycles. The temperature between the ice ages and the warm periods, however, are much greater than would be caused by the changes in solar radiation alone. Though a clue to the cause of the ice ages, the Milankovitch Cycles are not the cause of the current warming. They predict a minor cooling trend, which began some 6,000 years ago, will continue for the next 23,000 years. The current warming trend is too rapid and in the wrong direction for the Milankovitch Cycles to be the cause.

Particulates cause the Earth to cool by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. The role of particulates in cooling the Earth became apparent in 1816 when ash from the explosive eruption of Mt.Tambora caused that year to be called "the year without a summer", worldwide. The curious plateau in NASA's temperature record from 1945 to 1975 was primarily caused by particulates from sources such as WW II, atmospheric nuclear testing, and increased industrialization. Research during the early 1970's showed a huge increase in aerosol particulates from power production, factories, and vehicles - and some alarmists even speculated that we might cause another ice age. Particulates are visible and cause immediate health problems, so by 1980 most industrialized countries had restrictions on particulate emissions. Particulates cannot be the cause of global warming, but reducing their sources can cause the temperature to rise as can be seen in the temperature record after 1980.

The Greenhouse Effect was discovered in the early 1800's when scientists realized that the Earth was kept warm at night because the atmosphere trapped invisible heat rays rising from the surface. Around 1860, John Tyndall identified the invisible rays as infrared radiation and found the main gases that trapped the heat rays to be water vapor and CO2. The amount of water in the air remains relatively constant because of the water cycle. When the humidity is low, water evaporates, and when the humidity gets too high, it rains. However, CO2 has no such restrictions. Since CO2 makes up only a few hundredths of a percent of the air, it was at first dismissed as a possible cause of warming, especially since it was thought that plants and the oceans would absorb any excess.

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius, while still pursuing the idea that variations in CO2 might be the cause of the ice ages, laboriously calculated the effect of cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half. He found that doing so would lower the temperature of Europe by 4-5 C, perhaps enough to bring on an ice age. He also found that doubling the amount of CO2 might raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 6-7 C. No one was concerned as Arrhenius' model of the atmosphere was very crude and it was inconceivable that the amount of CO2 in the air could ever double. Some scientists speculated that man should intentionally add more CO2 to the air to ward off another ice age.

As models of the atmosphere improved, a number of scientists tried to get a better estimate of the effect of doubling the amount of CO2 on the Earth's temperature, but the increasing complexity of the models made the calculations daunting. A breakthrough came with the development of computers. In 1956, G.N. Plass calculated that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the air would cause a 3 to 4 C increase in the Earth's temperature. Many dismissed his work, as it seemed impossible that CO2, which made up only 0.03% of the air, could have such a large effect on temperature. However, in 1997, J.T. Keihl found that, under clear sky conditions, CO2 accounted for 26% of the greenhouse effect - with water vapor accounting for most of the rest. More recent research has confirmed their work . Clearly, CO2 could have a significant effect on the Earth's temperature if it was increasing. But was it?

CO2: In 1900, Arvid Hgbom calculated the amount of CO2 emitted by industrial sources and, surprisingly, found that man was adding CO2 to the atmosphere at roughly the same rate as volcanoes. No one thought much of it as, at that rate, it would take centuries for the amount of CO2 to increase significantly. However, after a protracted heat wave during the 1930's, Guy Callendar re-examined previous temperature and CO2 measurements and found not only that the Earth was getting warmer, but also that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were increasing rapidly. Callendar's work was mostly ignored, but a few scientists began monitoring the concentration of CO2 more closely. Their results were sporadic but, by 1958, Charles Keeling had established accurate procedures for measuring atmospheric CO2. His lab was eventually moved to the Mauna Loa observatory, far away from most CO2 sources. His graph showing how CO2 varies with time, now called the Keeling curve, proved to be an important piece of evidence. It showed that the oceans and plants were not taking up CO2 nearly as fast as man was producing it. Over the last century, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 385 ppm, a 38% increase, and the Earth's temperature has risen by 0.8 0C, well in line with Plass' prediction. The role of CO2 as the major cause of global warming had been convincingly established. There is yet one more piece of evidence that confirms that conclusion.

Ice Ages: It was now possible to solve the mystery of the ice ages. The Milankovitch cycles alone cannot explain the changes in the Earth's temperature during the cycles, but the process becomes clear if CO2 is included. The ice core data shows that the concentration of CO2 falls to about 180 ppm during an ice age and rises to about 280 ppm during the warm part of the cycle. The changing CO2 concentration happens because the solubility of CO2 in water varies with temperature. In the part of the cycle where the Earth is warmed by the increasing solar radiation, the oceans release CO2, which further amplifies the warming by the greenhouse effect. In the part of the cycle where the solar energy decreases, the oceans cool, the CO2 dissolves again, and another ice age begins. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is the "control knob" for the Earth's temperature - and we have now turned the knob up to 380 ppm and are moving it even higher. The Earth will surely get warmer.

* Much of the historical data came from this excellent AIP article.

(C) 2010 J.C. Moore

Few topics have engendered as many claims and counterclaims of media bias as has global warming. Certainly, there is much bias in the reporting of climate science and that is the main reason the average person is confused or misinformed. The issue of climate change and the media was the subject of a 2006 Senate hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. It is a good place to start to examine the matter.

Media Bias generally refers to accusations of either censorship or propagandism on the part of particular news sources, where such content is framed in the light of a preconceived agenda. Relevant categories of bias include favoring a station's corporate economic interests, having a political slant, or sensationalism that tends to distort news to make it a better commercial "product."

The Hearing: The hearing was chaired by Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK). In his opening statement, he accused the media of over-hyped reporting, of subverting its role as an objective source of information on climate change into the role of an advocate, and of hyping scientifically unfounded climate alarmism. Apparently no testimony was needed.

It was an interesting cast of characters who testified before the committee, two climate skeptics, a climatologist, a science historian, and an oil company lobbyist.Their testimony and the author's short comment on each follow below:

Dr. R. M. Carter is a marine biologist and well known author from Australia. Dr. Carter testified that his research showed that throughout history, the rise in global temperatures had proceeded rising carbon dioxide concentration. His claimed that some natural cause must be causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, which released the carbon dioxide.

Comment: After the hearing, he was challenged by climatologists to produce any research showing the natural variablilty he claimed, but none has yet been produced. He also should have been aware that the recent CO2 increase has come from the billions of tons of fossils fuel burned each year by man. It is interesting that Senator Inhofe was interested in the media bias in Australia.

Dr. Daniel Schrag is a climatologist from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. He testified that there is no serious debate about whether the Earth will warm as carbon dioxide levels increase over this century – as it will. The burning of coal, oil and gas, and deforestation are playing a significant role in increasing CO2 levels. The current level, in excess of 380 parts per million (ppm), is higher than it has been for at least the last 650,000 years, and perhaps for tens of millions of years. We know from Lonnie Thompson’s work on tropical glaciers that this warming is not part of any natural cycle.

Comment: His testimony represents the accepted scientific viewpoint on global warming. Skeptics would claim there is still a serious debate, that the science is not settled, and that man is not the cause of global warming. His testimony contradicted that of Dr. Carter on natural causes and he backed it with a reference to the research.

Dr. David Deming is a geophysicist from Oklahoma University. He reported that his research on oil well borehole temperatures showed a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. He also claimed that the Earth’s temperature has not gone up in the last 10 years and that the Earth was entering a cooling period.

Comment: The one degree temperature rise he reports is consistent with NASA's data but NASA's data also shows that 1998 and 2005 have been record highs and that the trend is clearly upward. Dr. Deming is a controversial figure and he has been removed from most of his teaching duties at OU because of his unorthodox views.

Dr. Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California. She testified that in1983, the National Academy formed the Nierenberg committee to examine the scientific evidence of global warming. The committee accepted the scientific conclusions, but declined to view global warming as a problem, predicting that any adverse effects would be adequately remedied by technological innovation driven by market forces. This prediction has not come true as technological innovation has not saved the homes of the citizens of Shishmaref, Alaska, nor stopped the acidification of the world’s oceans, nor prevented the melting of polar ice.

Comment: The testimony was an accurate account of the history and points out some of the effects of global warming on the oceans and the lives of native Alaskans. The village of Shishmaref, inhabited for 400 years, is facing evacuation due to erosion from waves now allowed by disappearing sea ice, and the thawing of coastal permafrost (7). Skeptics would claim that there is no global warming so there was no need for markets to respond, that the melting ice is natural, and the oceans are only more acidic by 0.1 pH unit. (Note: That means they are 20% more acidic.)

Dan Gainor is a Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow and Director of the Business & Media Institute (BMI). He testified that journalists claiming to provide the “truth” on climate change are criticizing America for its stance on the issue and on the Kyoto treaty, while ignoring the billions of dollars such an agreement would cost America. The media is obsessed with Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Let's recall the media's irresponsible position, when roughly 30 years ago they reported a new ice age was coming and we would all freeze to death.

Comment: He claims journalists reporting the scientific view on global warming are unpatriotic and anti-business. Of course, BMI was formed to combat media bias against America’s free enterprise system and expose the anti-business agenda of environmental extremists. He is correct that some reporters sensationalized the "new ice age", but after 30 years, he and others are still using the incident to discredit the press and science. His attack on Gore's movie was unfounded. Interestingly, in 2007, Dr. Carter was the star witness for the plaintiff in Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education, who sought to prevent the educational use of An Inconvenient Truth in England. The court apparently did not agree with Dr. Carter and ruled that, though the film had some errors, it was substantially founded upon scientific research and fact and could be shown.

Was the hearing biased? It would seem balanced in that two of the four scientists who testified represented the scientific side and two were skeptics. However, it was actually heavily weighted toward the skeptic side. A CNN survey found that 97% of climatologists who are active in climate research say the Earth is warming and humans play a role, yet two of the four scientists who testified do not agree. Dr. Carter and Dr. Deming have research records in other fields that give them credibility as scientists but they are also journeymen for climate skepticism who can be counted on to deny global warming. Dr. R.M. Carter claimed the warming was from natural causes though he has not published or produced any research to back his claim, though asked. Dr. David Deming claimed the Earth warmed until 1998 and then entered a cooling trend. NASA's data shows that 2005 was the warmest year on record so that is clearly not right.

Dan Gainor's testimony was not balanced by an opposing view and there was not really testimony from journalists. The witnesses might have included Eric Pooley, deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek. He thinks that the press misrepresented the economic debate over carbon cap and trade, failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader, and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate.

The purpose of the hearing was seemingly to discredit the journalists and the scientists who do not agree with Senator Inhofe's views. In his opening statement, he named and criticized a number of journalists and news organization who had been critical of him or his views, but those accused were not there to defend their views. Senator Inhofe claimed the press was not accurately reporting the "hard science", though his beliefs are inconsistent with the "hard science" produced by scientific research. His stance on global warming, which he has stated many times is "Global warming is a hoax".

Is the media biased? The "media" includes many sources, but overall the answer seems to be "Yes". The media likes to sensationalize stories to attract attention and it often moves on without correcting the errors it commits. The story about the "Coming Ice Age" is an example . Few scientists believed that story at the time, but some editorial writers are still pointing to it as a failure of science. TV weather reporters often claim that a particular weather event is caused by global warming. That cannot be proven but it keeps the controversy stirred up and provides easy targets for skeptics. There is also a rush to be first with a story before the matter has been investigated as in the case of Climategate. After all the controversy, charges , and countercharges, the investigations cleared the scientists of scientific misconduct. But, once a story is "out there", it can never be taken back.

The media also has a general bias toward the status quo. It's easy, it involves little risk to the newspaper, and it is fine with those who have a financial or political interest in continuing the status quo. In 1997, the Wall street Journal, published an article titled "Science Has Spoken, Global Warming Is a Myth". The article turned out to be a hoax , but it came right before the Senate was to consider the Kyoto Treaty and may have influenced the Senate to reject ratification, maintaining the status quo.

The press also presents stories as controversies to catch readers interest. They sometimes try to present both sides, even though there is little evidence to support one side. This is certainly true in the case of global warming where all the world's major scientific organizations have endorsed statements that global warming is occurring, that it is caused mainly by mans' activities, and it is causing undesirable changes in the environment. Sometimes the press doesn't try to present both sides. Newspapers often report politician's statements critical of climate science without balancing it with a scientist's opinion. One example would be that many newspapers print Senator Inhofe's famous statement "Global warming is a hoax." but never point out that all four scientists at his hearing, even the skeptics, testified that the Earth was warming. Another point of view was expressed at the hearing by committee member Senator James Jeffords (I-VT) who said "I can only say that I am sorry that I was not able to do more to change the minds of the few skeptics that remain in our nation. The climate is warming, it is due to human activity, and only a change in human behavior will ensure that my grandchildren will not suffer the consequences."

Journalism Ethics: The solution to much of the bias would be for journalists and news media to follow the Ethical code of The Society of Professional Journalists, who believe that it is the ethical duty of the journalist to:

Seek the Truth: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

It is a principle of professional ethics that anyone who practices the profession, whether a member of the organization or not, is bound by the code of ethics of the profession. In this case, it would apply to anyone who reports the news.

(c) 2010 Que

The greenhouse effect is a well established scientific principle. Both the science and the data show that global warming is caused by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.

Greenhouse Effect: Most gardeners know how greenhouses work. In the daytime, the sun’s radiation (visible and UV) comes in through the glass and warms the plants and soil. The glass stops the heat radiation in the infrared (IR) region from passing back through and the greenhouse stays warm enough to keep the plants from freezing, even at night. The Earth works much the same way except greenhouse gases, primarily water and carbon dioxide, play the role of the glass and trap some of the leaving IR radiation. Winter nights on Earth would be very cold without greenhouse gases.

Earth’s Energy Balance: Of the Sun’s energy coming to Earth, 30% is reflected immediately back into space by particles in the air, by clouds, and by the surface. Another 20% is absorbed by the atmosphere where it runs the weather cycle. The remaining 50% heats the land and oceans. All the absorbed heat is eventually radiated back into space as infrared radiation. It’s a balanced energy budget, 100% in and 100% back out. Anything that reflects more light back into space, such as an increase in particulate matter in the air, would cause the Earth to cool. Anything that delays the energy’s trip back to space, such as an increase in greenhouse gases, would cause the Earth to warm. There are many small things that affect the Earth’s energy balance, but the main three are the Sun, particulates, and greenhouse gases.The ash from the explosive eruption of Mt.Tambora in 1816 caused that year to be called the year without a summer, worldwide.

The Sun: Certainly a change in the Solar radiation the Earth receives would cause a change in the Earth’s temperature. Small wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, the Milankovitch Cycles, are variations in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit. They affect the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives in predictable cycles. Both scientists and skeptics agree that these cycles are responsible for the Ice Ages that occur in roughly 100,000-year intervals. In the part of the cycle where the Earth receives more solar radiation, the oceans slowly warm and release CO2. The CO2 further amplifies the warming by the greenhouse effect. As the Earth moves into the part of the cycle where it receives less solar radiation, the oceans slowly cool, the CO2 dissolves back into the oceans and another ice age starts. The patterns of wobble in the Earth’s orbit are predictable and the model predicts that a minor cooling trend, which began some 6,000 years ago, will continue for the next 23,000 years. The current warming trend is too rapid and in the wrong direction to be a part of the Milankovitch Cycles.

The Sun also has cycles where its output varies slightly such as Sunspots activity. They cause the amount of solar radiation to vary in approximately 11-year cycles. However, the effects of Sunspots are so small that they do not show up above the other small variations in NASA’s temperature record.(see below). Long term variations in the Sun’s intensity are not responsible for the current warming. Satellite measurements of solar radiation show that the solar radiation reaching Earth has declined slightly over the last 30 years – yet the Earth still warmed.

Temperature Data: The best temperature data we have clearly shows the Earth is getting warmer. NASA has compiled the Earth’s average temperature for each year since 1880 by using ships logs, weather stations, and satellite measurements. In the graph below , each square dot shows how far that year’s average temperature was above or below the 1970 value. Although the data varies widely from year to year because of random factors such as sunspots, weather events, ocean current, and particulates from volcanoes and man's activities, the trend is clearly upward. The solid red and blue lines are moving averages, which make the trend easier to follow.

Graph: See above, or for a larger version, click here >. NASA/JPL/GISS

Temperature Trend: The greenhouse effect links some of the causes of the temperature trend to man’s activities. The trend took a turn upward in about 1920. That was when the automobile, industrialization, and energy production began further increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in the air. The trend was flat from about 1945 to 1975 and that can be attributed mostly to particulates. There was an increase in particulates after 1945 from many sources such as WW II, atmospheric nuclear testing, and increased industrialization. Research during the early 1970's showed a huge increase in aerosols from power production, increased industrialization, and vehicles and some alarmists even speculated that we might be causing another ice age. Particulates are visible and cause immediate health problems so by 1980 most industrialized countries had restrictions on particulate release. During the period from1945 to 1975 the CO2 concentration had continued to rise but its effect had been masked by the particulates. Reducing the particulates in the air allowed the full effect of the CO2 to be felt, causing the Earth's temperature to begin to rise again. The effect of particulates and the reliability of the temperature record can clearly be seen in the graph above. In 1991, Mt. Pinaturbo erupted spewing about 10 cubic kilometers of ash into the air which caused an immediate 0.3 °C temperature drop for the entire Earth, lasting until about 1995.

Causality: Although the greenhouse effect is a well accepted principle, skeptics sometimes claim the correlation between global warming and CO2 does not constitute causality. However, G.N. Plass, in 1956, calculated the climate sensitivity of the Earth to CO2. He found that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the air would cause a 3 to 4 °C increase in the Earth’s temperature. A number of more recent studies have confirmed his work and have shown that, though the concentration of CO2 in the air is small, it accounts for about 25% of the greenhouse effect. No natural occurrences such as volcanoes, sunspots, fires, or dust storms can account for the major trend in the data. Certainly, the increasing amount of CO2 in the air is causing the Earth to warm.

Man’s Role: Man’s activities, mainly through deforestation and burning fossil fuels, have released large amounts of CO2 into the air. In the last century, man’s emission of CO2 from fossil fuels have increased to over 30 billion tons annually and the concentration of CO2 in the air has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 385 ppm. The processes that remove carbon dioxide from the air takes decades or longer so as the carbon dioxide concentration slowly built up, the Earth became a better greenhouse. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is now 38% higher than in 1880 and the Earth’s temperature is about 0.8°C (or 1.3 °F) higher. Clearly, man’s activities are mainly responsible for increasing the CO2 concentration in the air – and the increasing CO2 concentration is causing global warming.

(C) 2010 Que

Humans are extremely adaptable but the rapid ( on a geological scale) global warming we are experiencing may overload our capacity to adapt. Anyone concerned about the future of their grandchildren should read this article. The stresses include:

Temperature extremes
Rapid changes in the weather
Heat Stress
Nutritional Stress
Disease Stress

Each one is explained in the article.

Wikileaks has shed some interesting light on the behind the scenes dealing at the COP-15 and COP - 16 meetings. "Take a peek at the PDF file containg (almost) all the original cables with COP15, COP16, UNFCCC and IPCC being mentioned."

These are not great pictures, but I was not planning to write an article when I took them the day before Thanksgiving this year. But, they have a message. One shows our redbud tree that budded into green leaves as if it were Spring after going dormant for the year. The pear tree still had pears and green leaves not yet bitten by frost. They reminded me of my family's Thanksgiving photo taken in front of my dad's apple tree in1998. We were all in shirtsleeves and the apple tree still had green leaves, as it had not yet frosted that year. My father, then 88, said that never in his memory had a frost been so late. It turned out that 1998 was one of the hottest years on record but this year may set a new record. It is interesting that two of the latest frosts in our area in almost a century have occurred after Thanksgiving - and in the past 12 years.

Other subtle changes have taken place in my lifetime. We used to be in gardening zone six but we are now in zone seven. That means we are now having warmer winters, later frosts, and earlier warm-ups in the spring. Several times our fruit trees bloomed during a false spring in February only to have the blossoms nipped by a later freeze. We have a longer growing season which sounds good. That also means a longer season for insects and pests and they have shown up in greater abundance. Our gardening is a hobby so it is not a serious matter if we lose a crop to early freezes or pests. We recently have had record rainfall in the spring and three years ago the ground was wet for so long it drowned some of our fruit trees. But, we are now experiencing dryer weather in late summer and early fall - and the redbud tree in the picture had its leaves turn brown by September from dry weather. Scientists cannot predict the weather but only that the warming Earth will cause weather to become more extreme - and we seem to be observing that.

The signs of a warming Earth are sometimes subtle and it is rather hard to tell if that is the cause of changes we see. Biologists are telling us that some species are extending their range to the North. We now have fire ants and armadillos which were not around when I was growing up. I recently found some Kudzu growing over at the lake and some along a fence near my house. Kudzu is an invasive plant that chokes out other vegetation and kills trees; it thrives in higher CO2 levels and warmer temperatures. I certainly hope it doesn't get started here. And sadly, the quail which were plentiful during my childhood have disappeared from the hills and fields in this area. Some say foraging armadillos are responsible by destroying their nests, but no one really knows for sure. I'm not sure the quail's disappearance had anything to do with global warming but they have come to symbolize for me that subtle changes are taking place. It's sad that good things may change and my grandchildren may never be aware of the things that are gone.

There is sound scientific evidence that the Earth is warming and those who long denied the evidence have now shifted their message, saying we should "just adjust". I'm not sure what that means, but those of us who live in the Midwestern United States will probably be able to do so. It may be more difficult for other people in the world. The people of Kashmir are concerned that the glaciers that feed their streams in the summer are receding - making less water available. The Sherpa of Tibet are worried that their villages may be flooded by lakes that now form each summer from melting glaciers . The lakes are held back by ice dams and, if a dam breaks, it will be a catastrophe for their villages. The Inuit in the Arctic are having to move their coastal villages to keep them from being eroded away by wave action of open seas which were year round ice before. Their inland villages are threatened as well as the permafrost upon which some were built now becomes a quagmire in the summer. Telling the people whose lives will be changed forever by global warming to "just adjust" seems a little hollow.

Each year, this author takes a poll to see who the readers think is the most deserving person to receive recognition in the Environmental Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame. Nominations are now open for the person who has most affected the environment by words or action. With the debate on environmental regulation coming up, a number of possible nominees should appear. Please post your nominations for the Environmental Hall of Fame and for the Hall of Shame along with a short reason that your nominee should be included. You may also suggest a suitable gift for them if they win.

Nominees will be taken until January 15, 2011 and the nominees will then be listed and a vote taken. The 2010 year's winner in the Environmental Hall Fame (or Shame) category will receive the "Most Noble (or Most Ignoble Prize) in Environmental Science" and a suitable gift. For instance, while last year John McCain might have deserved a framed picture of a trout swimming upstream in the Fame Category, this year he might deserve a picture of a trout flip/flopping on the bank in the Shame category. Let us hope that, after the election, he will flip back in and continue upstream. In the Hall of Fame category for instance, John Kerry might receive a gold star for his work on environmental legislation or Arnold Schwarzenegger might receive a model electric car for promoting the bigger ones.

You may suggest a suitable prize for your nominee. Please be imaginative, as particularly thoughtful or humorous nominations will be recognized.

(C) 2010

"Many man made disasters are caused by a failure of ethics."

Disasters: Most man made disasters are sudden with explosion, fires, deaths, and highly visible damage. The public is outraged, the incident is investigated, blame is assigned, and laws are made to prevent it from ever happening again. It is not the same with the climate change disaster taking place. It is happening slowly, with thousands and thousands of CO2 sources, and its full effect will not be known for generations. Who is responsible for preventing the disaster? Although many individuals take responsibility on a personal level, many businesses put their short term profits first, and politicians lack the will or do not want to offend their big donors.

Scientists now have clear and convincing evidence that the climate is changing but their role, however, is limited to education and research. It is the engineers who have the knowledge and the power to respond – as they design, build, operate, and approve every major project. It may not be fair to put such responsibility on the engineers, but their ethics requires it. The most important responsibility of engineers in performing their duties, according to the Engineering Code of Ethics, is to

"Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public."

Many disasters at first seem to be failures of engineering, technology, or materials, but on further examination the real cause is often found to be a failure of ethics. Two recent major disasters could have been prevented or the damage mitigated if the engineers had followed – or been allowed to follow - their code of ethics. When technological disasters happen, the first question should be" Where were the engineers?".

The Gulf Oil Disaster: To satisfy our need for oil, we have had to search wider, drill deeper, and take greater risks. The Deepwater Horizon platform was a technological marvel, capable of drilling oil wells where the ocean was a mile deep. As British Petroleum was completing its Maconda Well from the platform, an explosion and fire occurred. Eleven men were killed and 17 injured by the explosion and fire. The platform eventually sank, breaking the pipe. The blowout preventer, designed to shut off the oil flow in case of such a disaster, failed. Over 4.5 million gallons of oil poured into the Gulf before the flow could be stopped. The environmental damage to the oceans, wildlife, and estuaries from the oil and from the million gallons of corexit, a toxic detergent sprayed to break up the oil, may not be known for decades.

There were a number of key decisions that led up to the disaster that should have been approved by the engineers. Any one of them, had it been made with engineering ethics in mind , could have prevented the disaster or ameliorated its effect on the workers and the environment. BP claimed the explosion was caused by the gas released at the sea floor warming as it rose to the surface. However, the gas would have expanded and cooled. Clearly, there was a source of ignition at the surface. Why weren't the ignition sources that might lead to an explosion eliminated. The workers quarters could have been explosion proof – why weren't they? Why did Halliburton proceed with cementing the well when the results of the pressure tests were inconclusive? Why was a particular type of cement used on the well, when it had given inconclusive performance tests? Who made the disastrous decision to replace the drilling mud with seawater? Why were problems with the blowout preventer not addressed? Were early efforts directed at trying to save the well or to prevent a major oil spill disaster? Were efforts directed toward covering up the disaster rather than trying to mitigate the environmental damage? And the list of questions goes on. The most critical of which is why BP ever started drilling in a very risky and unstable zone alongside a salt dome.

Obviously, what happened cannot be changed but, as the investigation into the cause continues, it is important to know who made the key decisions and why. The role of the management in the decision making was to make a profit for the company and to weigh the benefits and risk against the costs. The role of the government in the disaster is clouded by the cozy nature of the relationship between the regulators and the oil companies it was charged to regulate. The role of the engineers should have been, first and foremost, to protect the public.

The Challenger: It was a different type of disaster, but it has some important lessons as the Challenger Space Shuttle is one of the most studied disasters. Most people think that an engineering failure led to the disaster, but in fact, it was a failure of ethics. One difficult problem in the design of the space shuttle was how to transport the large fuel tanks to the launch site. Morton Thiokol won the contract by designing fuel tanks that could be transported to the site in sections and sealed back together with rubber O-rings. The O-rings were effective down to 40°F, but below that, the rubber stiffens and its ability to seal the tanks had not been tested.

The January 1986 Challenger launch was to carry Christa McAuliffe, the teacher the year, into space. The weather had been cool and uncooperative in Florida that January and there had been several delays in the launch. President Reagan was planning to include the education aspect of the shuttle launch in his State of the Union speech and, for that and other reasons, pressure was building on the shuttle team to proceed with the launch. However, the temperature was predicted to be 29°F on the morning of January 28 and the engineers strongly recommended against the launch. The decision whether to launch was the responsibility of Bob Lund, the vice president of engineering for Morton Thiokol. On the advice of his engineers, he recommended against the launch.

However, Jerald Mason, the general manager of Morton Thiokol, called a meeting to discuss the decision. He asked Bob Lund to "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." He was asking Lund, in effect, to put aside his engineering ethics and weigh the very unlikely possibility of an accident against the public relations benefits of launching on schedule. Apparently, that argument worked as Lund approved the launch, despite the fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of the operational specifications. At 59 seconds into the launch, the O-rings failed and the rocket exploded, plunging the Challenger into the ocean and killing all seven astronauts. It was the worst disaster in the U.S. space program's history.

"Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public." In our increasingly technical world, the public, you, me and everyone else, must trust our safety to the engineers who design, test, and make decisions about the products we use. Engineering schools now include the study of professional ethics in the curriculum and try to convey to students their importance. However, in some instances, engineers do not follow their ethical code because of financial rewards, job security issues, peer pressure, or company loyalty. Many ethical violations are discovered and investigated only when they lead to a major disaster. But, what about environmental disasters whose full effect may not be be known until far into the future? It is particularly important that engineers begin to see protecting the environment as part of their ethical obligation to protect the public.

(c) 2010 J.C. Moore

The Earth goes through cycles of warming and cooling that occur about every 100,000 years. The present global warming we are experiencing is not part of those cycles. Is the cause natural or is it man’s activities?

The Earth is getting warmer. NASA has compiled the Earth’s annual mean temperatures since 1880 by using ships logs, weather station, and satellite data. Their data shows that the trend in the Earth’s temperature has been mostly upward and that the Earth is now about 1.3 °F warmer than it was a century ago. Scientists point to an increase in greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use as the major cause, but skeptics claim the warming observed is natural. The Sun, clouds, particulates, volcanoes, and greenhouse gases all affect the Earth’s temperature. The question is “What part does each play in global warming and what part does man play?”

Energy balance: The Earth has a solar energy balance. Of all the Sun’s energy coming to Earth, 30% is reflected immediately back into space by the surface, particles, and clouds. About 20% is absorbed into the atmosphere where it runs the weather cycle.The remaining 50% heats the land and oceans. All the absorbed heat is eventually radiated back into space as infrared radiation. It’s a balanced energy budget with 100% of the incoming energy eventually going back into space. Anything that reflects sunlight into space, such as an increase in particulate matter in the air, would cause the Earth to cool. Anything that increases the amount of sunlight received or delays the energy’s trip back to space such as greenhouse gases do, would cause the Earth to warm. What factors influence the energy balance?

The Sun: Solar radiation from the Sun seems to have varied little over the last million years. The Sun has Sunspot cycles where its output varies slightly and causes the amount of solar radiation to vary in approximately 11-year cycles. Increased sunspot activity causes the Earth to warm. However, the effect of Sunspots is so small that they do not show up above the other small variations in NASA’s temperature record. Long term variations in the Sun’s intensity does not seem responsible for the current warming. Satellite measurements of solar radiation show that the solar radiation reaching Earth has declined slightly over the last 30 years – yet the Earth still warmed.

Milankovitch Cycles: Small wobbles in the Earth’s orbit such as variations in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit affect the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives. Both scientists and skeptics seem to agree that these cycles are responsible for the Earth’s change from warmer to cooler periods and for ice ages that occur in roughly 100,000-year cycles. In the part of the cycle where the Earth receives more solar radiation, the oceans slowly warm and release CO2. The CO2 further amplifies the warming by the greenhouse effect. As the Earth moves into the part of the cycle where it receives less solar radiation, the oceans slowly cool, the CO2 dissolves back into the oceans and another ice age starts. The patterns of wobble in the Earth’s orbit are predictable and the model predicts that a minor cooling trend, which began some 6,000 years ago, will continue for the next 23,000 years. The current warming trend is too rapid and in the wrong direction to be a part of the Milankovitch Cycles.

Clouds: Clouds have a dual role. They cool the Earth in the daytime by reflecting solar radiation back into space but they also warm the Earth by their greenhouse effect. First frosts are more likely to occur on cold clear nights. The average cloud cover over the entire Earth remains relatively constant from year to year but cloud cover may increase as a feedback to the warming oceans. Clouds could be considered to be a cause of the current warming trend only if the average cloud cover could be shown to have increased over the years.

One unusual theory tries to do just that. It claims that the number of cosmic rays from the stars that strike the Earth is increasing. That would lead to more clouds since cosmic rays produce charged particles in the atmosphere that seed clouds. It’s an interesting theory, but there is no data showing that the number of cosmic rays are actually increasing cloud cover. Also, there are plenty of particulates in the air to seed clouds and any effect from cosmic rays would be small in comparison.

Greenhouse gases: If the Earth had no atmosphere, its average temperature would be much colder. Most of the Sun’s energy comes to Earth as light in the visible and ultraviolet region of the spectrum but it leaves as heat energy in the infrared region. The atmosphere’s clouds, water vapor, and CO2 traps some of the infrared radiation headed into space and directs it back to Earth, helping to warm the Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect, as it is similar to the effect that keeps greenhouses warm on cold nights. Recent research shows that about 75% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds and the rest is due mostly to CO2.

Water vapor is removed from the air whenever it rains so the average amount of water vapor in the air remains somewhat constant from year to year. However, the amount of CO2 in the air has been observed to be increasing. Measurements of the concentration of CO2 in the air have shown that it has increased from 280 ppm to 385 ppm in the last century. The physicist G. N. Plass determined the effect of the increase of CO2 on the Earth’s temperature. In 1956, he calculated that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the air would cause a 3 to 4 °C increase in the Earth’s temperature. A number of more recent studies have confirmed his results but the most important thing is that the rise in temperature he predicted 50 years ago in consistent with the increase in temperature we have observed. Certainly, the increasing amount of CO2 is a main factor global warming. But, is the increase in CO2 natural or man-made?

Volcanoes: Although impressive, the amount of heat released by volcanoes has a minuscule effect on the Earth’s temperature compared to that of the particulates and greenhouse gases they release. Particulates reflect sunlight back into space and cause the Earth to cool while the greenhouse gases released cause the Earth to warm. Particulates from large eruptions, such as Mt. Pinaturbo, cause a very quick decline in the Earth’s temperature. However, the particulates settle out or are removed by rain in a few years after the eruption stops. The CO2 released by the eruption causes greenhouse warming for a long time as it persists in the air for many decades. Volcanoes, however, play a small role in the current global warming compared to man. Man’s activities currently emit about seven times the particulates and 150 times the CO2 as all the world’s volcanoes together.

Fossil fuels: Since the 1800′s, scientists have been concerned with whether our use of fossil fuels might affect the temperature of the Earth. Burning carbon fuels releases large amounts of CO2, and there was speculation about whether an increase of CO2 in the air might actually change the energy balance of the Earth. Recent research has shown that CO2 plays a very important role in global warming and one scientist even labeled CO2 the “control knob” for the temperature of the Earth. The amount of CO2 man releases into the air is no longer minuscule as our emissions amount to 30 billion tons of CO2 each year. The concentration of CO2 in the air has increased from about 280 ppm to 385 ppm and the Earth’s temperature has increased by 1.3 °F. Clearly, CO2 is the main factor in global warming and our use of fossil fuels is the main cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2.

It’s not natural: Climate scientists agree. In 2004, a survey of 928 climate papers published in Science found that none of the authors argued for a natural explanation of global warming. So there we have it. Global warming is not caused by volcanoes, clouds, sunspots, changes in solar output, or cosmic rays from the stars – and it is not part of the natural cycles of nature. As much as we may dislike the idea, the major cause is man.

Climate change and global warming are often used interchangeably. In the final analysis, understanding what is causing both is the most important thing.

The term climate change and global warming are often used interchangeably as they refer to the same environmental problem. Some people prefer to use climate change as climate is more evident to us and climate change is not as controversial as global warming. It is probably okay to use either term, but for those who like precision in language, we will take a tour through climate science to sort out the difference.

Climate and Weather: It is said that no one can predict the weather and that is true as no one can predict very far in advance whether it will rain or storm or how cold or hot it will be. However, if we observe the weather of a region over a long period of time, a pattern emerges. That pattern is the climate and, though we cannot predict the weather accurately, we have a much better chance of predicting climate. If we observe such things as the high and low temperatures, the amount of rain, when the first frost and the last freeze usually occurs, a pattern emerges. The climate is quite important to us as it determines the crops we grow, the types of house we build, and the clothing we wear. Climate determines the plants, animals, and insects that live in our region and even the types of health problems and diseases. The factors that determine climate have been observed to vary slowly with time and we expect the climate in a region to remain relatively stable over long periods.

Climate Change: In the last century, and particularly in the last three decades, we have noticed that climates in many regions of the Earth are changing. The daytime high temperatures are higher, the nighttime lows are warmer, the patterns of drought and rainfall have changed, and storms seemed to have become stronger. Frost occurs later in the year and the last freeze occurs earlier, which has caused gardening zones to move. The ranges of many species of plants, animals, insects and bacteria have shifted, and there has been invasions of non-native, sometimes invasive, species into new areas. Our observations have shown that the climate is definitely changing, and those changes are sure to have consequences for us.

Global Warming: Since the early 1800′s, scientists have been concerned with whether our use of fossil fuels has affected the temperature of the Earth. With an increasing understanding of the role greenhouse gases play in stabilizing the temperature of the Earth, scientist wondered whether burning fossil fuels might affect the energy balance of the Earth. Burning carbon fuels releases carbon dioxide, CO2, which they knew to be an important greenhouse gas and there was speculation about whether an increase of CO2 in the air could actually cause the Earth to warm. Critics of the idea argued that water was a much more important, that the relatively small amount of CO2 in the air would not make a difference, and that the amount of CO2 man produced was minuscule compared to what was already there.

The Role of CO2: With a better understanding of the atmosphere and the advent of computers, G. N. Plass in 1956 was able to calculate the climate sensitivity of the Earth to CO2. He found that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the air would cause a 3 to 4 °C increase in the Earth's temperature. A number of more recent studies have confirmed his work and have shown that, though the concentration of CO2 in the air is small, it accounts for about 25% of the greenhouse effect. Certainly, increasing the amount of CO2 in the air should cause the Earth to warm. In the last century, our emission of CO2 has increased from a minuscule amount to over 50 billion tons annually and the concentration of CO2 in the air has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 385 ppm. But, has that caused global warming?

The Temperature Scorecard: The temperatures over the Earth vary widely from place to place with the weather and the season. However, the temperature of a particular place measured over a long period of time has a pattern and we can use the pattern as a scorecard. There are temperature records that go back to about 1850 and these have given us a way to keep track of whether the Earth is warming. By using ships logs, weather stations, and satellite measurements, NASA has compiled the Earth's annual mean temperature from 1880 to the present. Though it varies widely from year to year, the Earth's annual mean temperature shows an upward trend and the Earth is definitely getting warmer.The scorecard shows that over the last century the Earth has warmed about 1.3°F, which does not sound like much. However, since that is the average over the whole Earth, it represents a tremendous amount of energy and it is the energy in the atmosphere that drives our weather and determines our climate.

So there we have it, a cause and effect relationship. Climate change is caused by global warming, which in turn is caused by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and the CO2 is increasing because of our use of fossil fuels. Though it is probably irrelevant whether we call it climate change or global warming, it is very relevant that we understand the relationships and think about our role. The way we use fossil fuels has consequences for us and for the rest of the species on the planet.

(c) 2010 J.C. Moore

In Hal Lewis' resignation letter to the American Physics Society, he went on a rant against the organization and climate science. The APS has responded to explain why Lewis' statements were inaccurate. WWUT examines the APS letter and puts their spin on the response. It's an interesting study in how ridiculous climate deniers can be.

One particularly misleading item in WWUT's response was"The IPCC says these feedback effects are in aggregate large and positive, giving rise to their most recent estimate of 2 to 4.5 deg. C for doubling, with a most likely value of 3 deg. C. However, a substantial body of other research points to a much lower value, much closer to the zero feedback value of 1 deg. C, or even lower. " There was,of course, no reference cited as there is no "substantial body of knowledge" based on research that shows that the IPCC is wrong.

And, of course, the Earth does not care if man becomes extinct.

George Wills latest excursion into climate science (1) was inspired by the American Scholar which had on the cover "The Earth Doesn't Care if You Drive a Hybrid" and Robert B. Laughlin's essay inside "What the Earth Knows." (2) George Will likes to look at things in terms of geologic times as it obscures the damage man is doing to the Earth. He summarizes Laughlin's article as:

"What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth. We must, Laughlin says, think about the earth's past in terms of geologic time."

George Will is also afraid that environmental regulations will inconvenience him, so he loved the quote from the article:

"Buy a hybrid, turn off your air conditioner, unplug your refrigerator, yank your phone charger from the wall socket—such actions will leave the end result exactly the same."

I can imagine Mr. Will beaming as he was able to quote a Nobel Prize winning physicist, albeit in theoretical physics, who agreed with him. Yet, you might wonder, what will that "end result" be?

And, Laughlin says:

"Someday, all the fossil fuels that used to be in the ground will be burned. After that, in about a millennium, the earth will dissolve most of the resulting carbon dioxide into the oceans. But most models, even pessimistic ones, envision a thousand-year carbon dioxide pulse followed by glacially slow decay back to the pre-civilization situation."

Oops! Wait. Do we want to return to "pre-civilization"? There must be more that Mr. Will missed. Oh yes, Mr. Will would never quote this:

"Carbon dioxide from the human burning of fossil fuel is building up in the atmosphere at a frightening pace, enough to double the present concentration in a century. This buildup has the potential to raise average temperatures on the earth several degrees centigrade, enough to modify the weather and accelerate melting of the polar ice sheets. Governments around the world have become so alarmed at this prospect that they've taken significant, although ineffective, steps to slow the warming. "(2)

Laughlin offers a reason for the ineffectiveness:

"Experts are little help in the constant struggle in this conversation to separate myth from reality, because they have the same difficulty, and routinely demonstrate it by talking past each other. Respected scientists warn of imminent energy shortages as geologic fuel supplies run out. Wall Street executives dismiss their predictions as myths and call for more drilling. Environmentalists describe the destruction to the earth from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Economists ignore them and describe the danger to the earth of failing to burn coal, oil, and natural gas. "

He left out columnists like Mr. Will who help spread the myths and some of our politicians who spread misinformation and refuse to take timely action – while somehow finding time to take large donations from those who are profiting from the status quo.

Laughlin goes on:

"And the damage to the environment is exacerbated by the real problem, which is human population pressure generally – overharvesting, habitat destruction, pesticide abuse, species invasion, and so forth. Slowing man-made extinctions in a meaningful way would require drastically reducing the world's human population. That is unlikely to happen".

So, Robert Laughlin says it is likely that the Earth will get warmer, the oceans more acidic, and we will exhaust our fossil fuel supplies – and then the Earth will return to the equilibrium upset by man's activities. Man's effect will be but a mere blip in the geological history of the Earth. And, of course, the Earth does not care if man becomes extinct. Then, the only lasting change we will have made in Geologic time will be the loss of the species we take with us.

(1) http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-it.html?gt1=43002

(2) http://www.theamericanscholar.org/what-the-earth-knows/

Of course the Earth knows nothing and cares not what happens in the future since it is inanimate. Robert Laughlin says that In Geologic time, man's activities will be but a blip in the history of the Earth. As for the time of man, he notes that the Earth will get warmer, the oceans more acidic, and we will exhaust our fossil fuel supplies and then the Earth will return to the equilibrium upset by man's activities. Man's effect will be a mere blip in geological history and, of course, the Earth does not care if man becomes extinct.

In this opinion piece, Robert Bryce claims wind power often enough leads to higher carbon emissions."The wind industry has achieved remarkable growth largely due to the claim that it will provide major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There's just one problem: It's not true. A slew of recent studies show that wind-generated electricity likely won't result in any reduction in carbon emissions—or that they'll be so small as to be almost meaningless."

The truth is that conservation and environmental stewardship are core conservative values.

It is hard to imagine how someone can be considered a Conservative if they don't want to conserve the most important thing we have, the environment. They claim that they actually do, but not just now, not in that way, or not if it might cost a little. They also try to perpetuate the myth that conservation and environmental protection are liberal causes to justify their opposition. The truth is that conservation and environmental stewardship are core conservative values. (1)

It is even harder to imagine why the Republican Party would embrace the ideals and arguments of those non-conservationists. Our past Republican leaders have been strong advocates for environmental stewardship and they were responsible for enacting some of our most significant environmental legislation. (2)

Theodore Roosevelt believed that conservation was essential for keeping America strong and he was responsible for the permanent preservation of many of the unique natural resources of the United States. As he said, "To waste, to destroy, our natural resources … will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them."

Richard Nixon enacted many of the nation's landmark environmental laws, which he saw as a means of unifying the nation. The EPA was created under Nixon's leadership. "Clean air, clean water, open spaces -- these should once again be the birthright of every American." "...we must strike a balance so that the protection of our irreplaceable heritage becomes as important as its use. The price of economic growth need not and will not be deterioration in the quality of our lives and our surroundings."

Barry Goldwater, dubbed "Mr. Conservative", was a gifted photographer who produced beautiful pictures illustrating his beloved Arizona landscape. He put his finger on it when he said : "While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment."

Ronald Reagan signed 43 bills preserving a total of 10.6 million acres of wilderness. He was instrumental in U.S. ratification of the Montreal Protocol -- which dramatically reduced depletion of the upper atmosphere's protective ozone layer. He developed a cap-and–trade system that prevented our acid rain form blowing into Canada that cost much less than even the government estimated. As he communicated: "If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources." "I'm proud of having been one of the first to recognize that states and the federal government have a duty to protect our natural resources from the damaging effects of pollution that can accompany industrial development."

John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, proposed a pragmatic national energy policy based upon good stewardship, good science, and reasonableness. He cosponsored cap-and-trade bills in the Senate in 2003, 2005, and 2007 and, as he said then, "A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. And the highest rewards will go to those who make the smartest, safest, most responsible choices." And he was right. Having to pay the true cost of fossil fuel use is fair and would create incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Cap-and-trade was once considered to be the market solution to reducing carbon emissions. When popular, a number of key Republicans, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on record as endorsing the policy. Even Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), only two years ago, while supporting a version of a cap-and-trade bill in the Massachusetts legislature said:"Reducing carbon dioxide emission in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine. Passing this legislation is an important step … towards improving our environment." (3)

But somewhere amid lobbying, big donations from power companies, and criticisms from so called conservatives who don't really want to conserve much, the Republicans have backed off the cap-and-trade concept. They are now claiming it would cost each U.S. household $3,100 a year, a cost that has great sticker shock but is totally inaccurate. Dr. John Reilly, the MIT economist whose work was used to get that number, has criticized Republicans for distorting his work. (4) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would average about $175 per household (5) and estimates are that associated savings would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade. (6). A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences details the high economic costs of inadequate environmental legislation, such as reduced streamflow, rainfall, and crop yields (7). Estimates by the World's top economists such as Britain's Nicholas Stern (8) are that right now it would cost about 2% of the worlds GDP to mitigate environmental damage – but if delayed, that amount could rise to 20% or more of the world's GDP by 2050 and put us at risk of an environmental catastrophe.

The misinformation, the damage to the environment, and waste that would be caused by not acting should alarm traditional Republicans. However, according to the Republicans for Environmental Protection, the GOP establishment has lost sight of its "core conservative values, largely due to the influence of corporate lobbies and political leaders beholden to them for campaign support, and in opposition of the willingness of populist Democrats to embrace environmental protection. The result has been a polarizing battle that is not at all about the advance of conservative principles, but rather the advance of special interest political agendas." (1)

(1) http://www.rep.org/index.html Republicans concerned about the environment may wish to check out this Republicans for Environmental Protection website.
(2) The quotes below came from http://www.conservamerica.org/quotes.html
(3) http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-29-remember-when-republicans-liked-cap-and-trade/
(4) http://flavcountry.blogspot.com/2009/05/mit-economist-john-reilly-calls.html
(5) http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=300
(6) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38130006/ns/politics-capitol_hill/
(7) http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15536630
(8) http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINDONESIA/Resources/226271-1170911056314/3428109-1174614780539/SternReviewEng.pdf

"BP's blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is not yet plugged for good, and work on what's been touted as the permanent solution will need to continue, the federal government said Friday".

This is a letter from a small businessman sent to the Wall Street Journal. It was not published but the letter has merit and has been posted here with the author's permission.

The Wall Street Journal has published many articles on climate change. Most all claimed the science was unreliable and discredited the scientist, some whose emails were stolen. However three investigations have cleared the scientist. I have both a major in Journalism & Business and I am ashamed of the yellow journalism the Wall Street journal has discredited itself with in this area. Is it that Rupert Murdock's News Corporation backs the skeptics; is it his desire for sensationalistic headlines; or, is it the paper has incompetent or biased writers and editors in the area of climate science?

I fear the one paper I buy almost daily at the newsstand and depend on for business information has lost its credibility. How can I make reasonable business decisions without undistorted facts. I have been a businessman for 30 years in the oilfield through boom and bust. How can I depend on the world's top business paper if it does not investigate and check its facts. Now, the question is "Can I depend on your paper to give me the facts I need for my small oilfield drilling service to survive?"

At this juncture, I wonder if I can count on the Wall Street Journal to make your grievous errors right? At age 57, I hope so for my children's and my grandchildren's sake. I want them to have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink at a cost of 4/10 of 1 percent of their income in the future, as I do now.

A Drilling Fluid Engineer

A Winning Flip: I can remember when Republicans liked Cap-and-trade. (1) For instance, John McCain cosponsored cap-and-trade bills in the Senate in 2003, 2005, and 2007 and, during his 2008 presidential campaign, proposed a pragmatic national energy policy based upon good stewardship, good science, and reasonableness. As he said then,

"A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. And the highest rewards will go to those who make the smartest, safest, most responsible choices."

And he was right. Having to pay the true cost of fossil fuel use is fair and would create incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Cap-and-trade was once considered to be the market solution to reducing carbon emissions. While popular, a number of key Republicans, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on record as endorsing the policy. Even Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), only two years ago, while supporting a version of a cap-and-trade bill in the Massachusetts legislature said:

"Reducing carbon dioxide emission in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine. Passing this legislation is an important step … towards improving our environment."

But somewhere amid lobbying, big donations from power companies, and criticisms from so called conservatives who don't really want to conserve much, the Republicans are now calling it cap-and-tax, essentially making fun of what was once their own idea.

The Sticker Shock Distortion Flop: In an effort to kill the bill, Republicans such as Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) are now claiming cap-and-trade would cost each U.S. households about $3,100 a year, a cost that has considerable sticker shock. However, that number was fabricated by doing some misleading additional math on a MIT study. Dr. John Reilly, the economist who authored the study, has criticized Republicans for distorting his work (2). In his words,

"It's just wrong, It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin." Not only is it wrong, but he said he told the House Republicans it was wrong when they asked him. "That's just not how economists calculate the cost of a tax proposal", Reilly said. "The tax might push the price of carbon-based fuels up a bit, but other results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices." Moreover, he said, consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form.

What Is the Uninflated Cost? The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the entity responsible for providing Congress with nonpartisan analyses of economic and budget issues, estimates that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or an average of about $175 per household. That figure includes the cost of restructuring the production and use of energy but it does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the associated slowing of climate change. Households in the lowest income bracket would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020 while those in the highest bracket would see a net cost of $245. Overall, net costs would average 0.2 percent of households' after-tax income. (3) That doesn't seem so bad, particularly as the CBO experts also estimate the climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade. (4)

The High Cost of Doing Nothing: The cost of doing nothing may be unacceptably high in the long run because of resource scarcity, environmental damage, and the risk of reachng catastrophic tipping points. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences details the high economic costs of reduced streamflow, rainfall, and crop yields (5). Estimates by the World's top economists such as Britain's Nicholas Stern (6) or the US's Paul Krugman (7) are that right now it would cost about 2% of the worlds GDP to mitigate environmental damage – but if delayed, that amount could rise to 20% or more of the world's GDP and put us at risk of an environmental catastrophe.

A Flip is Needed: What is it worth to have clean air, clean water, a more sustainable economy, and a less risky future? Can we risk doing nothing? We need a flip by our Republican leaders.

(1) http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-29-remember-when-republicans-liked-cap-and-trade/

(2) http://flavcountry.blogspot.com/2009/05/mit-economist-john-reilly-calls.html

(3) http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=300

(4) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38130006/ns/politics-capitol_hill/

(5) http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15536630

(6) http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINDONESIA/Resources/226271-1170911056314/3428109-1174614780539/SternReviewEng.pdf

(7) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University scientist who served on the international research panel on global warming that shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, died Monday. Schneider studied climate change for decades and charted its effects on wildlife and ecosystems in the United States.
He advised every presidential administration from Nixon to Obama.
Schneider was an influential public voice in arguing the manmade causes of climate change, defending the IPCC reports, and answering the skeptic's claims. The world will surely miss him.

Anthony Watt's interview: It's a powerful story. In an interview with Tom Minchin titled " Doomed Planet" (1), Anthony Watts tells how he went from a simple student questioning the reliability of Purdue's weather station to a science skeptic saving the world from "Noble Cause Corruption". Watts, editor of the anti-science website Wattsupwiththat, is now on a tour of Australia where he is spreading his message to the faithful for $25 a ticket. As one of Anthony Watts' followers commented on the interview:

"Anyone who is an engineer or scientist can understand what turned Anthony from a believer in anthropogenic global warming to a skeptic."

That's apparently money, influence, fun, and perhaps a little revenge.

Watt's Career: Watts began his career at Purdue University where he studied Meteorology and Engineering. He has not been forthcoming about how long he attended, whether he graduated, or whether he is "AMS Certified", as sometimes claimed. After he left college, he worked as a radio and TV weather presenter until he founded Whatsupwiththat (2), a website that posts anti-science literature and commentary. Whatsupwiththat is rife with misquotes, cherry-picking, unsubstantiated claims, title inflation, attacks on scientists, and distorted research. (3) Still, Watts has a number of faithful followers who apparently are made up of disgruntled ex-scientists, those excluded from science by the required rigor, those who profit from the status quo, and members of institutes and think tanks funded by fossil fuel companies.

The Surfacestations Project: Watts has limited credentials in the field of climatology and, though amateurs sometimes make great discoveries, that is not true in his case. While at Purdue, Watts worked part time at their weather temperature collection site. Building on that experience, Watts has established the Surfacestations Project, a study of weather stations aimed at discrediting NOAA's temperature data. To counter his repeated attacks on the scientific data, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) did a thorough study of the temperature stations and found that their results were reliable (4). Watts lost any credibility he might have gained as a scientist when the AGU asked him to participate in the research – and he declined. And, though the Surfacestations Project is now completely discredited, Watts is still collecting donations to fund it.

The AGW Conspiracy: To justify his attacks on science, Watts claims there is a worldwide conspiracy of scientists which distorts his True Science, the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) conspiracy. There are advantages to inventing a worldwide conspiracy to explain why Skeptics can't get their ideas published? It's not the lack of credible research, it's "censorship" by the AGW who controls the peer review process. Skeptics can't get funding? It's not lack of reasonable and competitive research proposals, it's because the AGW controls the government and its funding processes. Skeptics can't make unfounded Climategate charges stick? It's because of the AGW whitewash. Skeptics can't get their claims to agree with scientific evidence and reason? It's because the AGW controls Reason. ??? Wattsupwiththat?

Watt's goes on in the interview:

"I think that if you want skeptics to have an even keel in the debate, skeptics need to push their position more often and that means writing more letters to the editor, to newspapers, to magazines and trade journals and to scientific journals."

The skeptics would, of course have a more even keel in the debate if they did the research necessary to back up their claims. Instead, they repeat disproven hypotheses, dispute peer-reviewed research without evidence, personally attack scientists, and refuse to follow the methodology or the ethics of science.

Noble Cause Corruption: Watts has even found a psychological disorder to explain the AGW's motives… Noble Cause Corruption, a malady once reserved for law enforcement vigilantes. According to Watts:

"A less obvious but perhaps even more threatening type of misconduct in law enforcement is Noble Cause Corruption… Noble Cause Corruption is a mindset or sub-culture which fosters a belief that the ends justify the means…. The officers who adopt this philosophy lose their moral compass. Noble Cause Corruption is a belief that what you're doing is so much more important than what anyone else is doing because your cause is noble, you're saving the planet, and because you're saving the planet, you are doing it for the good of mankind…. And so all of those things combine to put a blinder on you as to what you're really doing."

That's a nice bit of sophistry. Scientists who wish to be good stewards of the Earth are actually, according to Watts, guilty of Noble Cause Corruption. If that is true then his followers, who would let the Earth be destroyed through ignorance and greed, are guilty of a much worse malady called Ignoble Cause Corruption. If we believe Watts and his followers, then we may indeed end up the "Doomed Planet".

(1) http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/06/anthony-watts-interviewed
(2) wattsupwiththat.com
(3) Some examples, but not nearly an exhaustive list, are
•Wattergate: Tamino debunks "just plain wrong" Anthony Watts
•Hits charade: WattsUpWithThat hypes itself with dubious webstats, while lowballing other blogs
•Watts not to love: New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one
•FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC
•WattsUpWithThat says it has "nothing to do with the dreaded Climate Change" and "has an unappreciated benefit"!
•http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/27/climate-sceptics-global-warming
•http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/29/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week
•Exclusive: New NSIDC director Serreze explains the "death spiral" of Arctic ice, brushes off the "breathtaking ignorance" of blogs like WattsUpWithThat
•Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)
•Must read from Hansen: Stop the madness about the tiny revision in NASA's temperature data!
•Exclusive: New NSIDC director Serreze explains the "death spiral" of Arctic ice, brushes off the "breathtaking ignorance" of blogs like WattsUpWithThat
•http://nyghtshayde.newsvine.com/_news/2010/03/19/4040277-message-to-anthony-watts?last=1269186136&threadId=819176&sp=0&pc=25#last_1
•.
•.
•.
(4) Menne, Matthew J.; Claude N. Williams, Jr., and Michael A. Palecki. Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres (American Geophysical Union)http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf

Complaints about "scientific secrecy" are disingenuous: There is very little secrecy in science. Scientific papers are presented and openly debated at meetings where anyone can attend. The peer reviewed papers include the data, the results, and the reasoning and are available at public libraries and many are now online. Also:

Researchers are required to keep records of their research so that any other scientist with comparable training and skills could reproduce the research. The "reproducibility" of the research is an important factor in the reviewer's evaluation of the research. The public has a right to information produced by publicly funded research and that may be requested through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Usually a "Gatekeeper", such as the project's director, is designated to handle FOIA requests. That Gatekeeper has a responsibility to see not only that the public's rights are upheld, but also to see that the FOIA process is not abused and that the scientists are protected. (1)

Only a few things are kept confidential and only then to preserve the integrity of the peer review process. The main barriers preventing a better understanding of science by the public is not "secrecy", but poor science education, the lack of responsible and informative reporting by the media, and an ongoing campaign to spread misinformation by those who find the conclusions of science inconvenient to their ideological or financial interests.

It is not too early to start thinking about a nominee for the 2010 Environmental Hall of Fame/ or Shame. Please post your nomination, the reason that the nominee should be included and, if you wish, a suitable gift they might receive if they win. A link or reference to their accomplishments or misaccomplishments will increase their chance of being included in the final poll. Because of controversies surrounding last years nominees, nominations for Newsvine members will not be accepted.

At the end of the year, Nominees will be listed and a vote taken. The winner in each category will receive the "Most Noble (or Most Ignoble) Prize in Environmental Science" and a suitable gift. For instance, while John McCain might have deserved a framed picture of a trout swimming upstream in last years Fame category, this year he might deserve a picture of a trout flip/flopping on the bank in the Shame category. Let us hope that, after the election, he will flip back in and continue upstream. The winner in the Hall of Fame category will receive the "Most Noble Prize in Environmental Science" and a suitable gift as well. For instance, John Kerry might receive a gold star for his work on climate legislation or Arnold Schwarzenegger might receive a model electric car.

You may suggest a suitable prize for your nominee. Please be imaginative as particularly thoughtful or humorous nominations will receive recognition.

Sixteen Oklahoma lakes were found to have species of fish with mercury levels above the level considered safe for unlimited consumption and much of the mercury is from coal fired power plants. The concentration was highest in predator fish that are at the top of the food chain, according to the report released by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality..

Much of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal contains a trace amount of mercury but, considering that we burn 1.05 billion tons of coal in the United States annually, about 50 tons of mercury is emitted into the air each year. That mercury is carried to the ground by rain and much of it ends up in our lakes and streams where it enters the food chain. Some of it eventually ends up in game fish - even in areas that have no natural mercury sources. Climate change is not the only concern about our use of fossil fuels.

Sophists: Lord Mockton has proven himself to be a sophist. Originally, a sophist was someone wise or clever. With the rise of Democracy in Athens, sophists found it profitable to serve aspiring politicians. For a fee, they would argue on behalf of their patron or provide constructed arguments, or talking points, if the politician wished to appear learned. Expert Sophists claimed that, by skilled argument, they could convince an unwary citizen that black was white.

The Hearing: Recently, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming met in Washington to decide what actions Congress should take to ensure our energy dependence and a sustainable environment.. (1) Some of the U.S.'s best scientists in atmospheric science, oceanography, environmental science, climatology, and ecology were called to testify before the committee. They testified that the Earth was indeed warming at an alarming rate, that the cause was primarily CO2 from man's activity, and that undesirable changes were taking place in the Earth. Those observed changes were melting glaciers and ice caps, rising oceans, acidification of the oceans, invasions of undesirable species, and extinction of species. Their testimony was based on the best scientific evidence and was consistent with a statement on climate change adopted by every major scientific organization in the world. Things looked bad for the fossil fuel industry and those who received large donations from them. Clearly, some sophistry was needed.

Lord Monckton's Credentials: The minority party in Congress called as their only witness Lord Monckton from England. His resume says he is a member of the House of Lords, that he was a science adviser to Margaret Thatcher, and that he has a peer reviewed paper on climate sensitivity in the well respected journal of the American Physical Society (APS). He is now the Chief Policy Adviser at the Science and Public Policy Institute. Lord Monckton is extremely qualified to deliver the message he brought. It was as misleading as his resume.

Oops: Strangely, Lord Monckton is not exactly a Lord. He claims to be but, to set the matter straight, the House of Lords has stated that

"Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords."

And, Lord Monckton is not a scientist so he was more of an economic advisor to Margaret Thatcher. One of his main projects was a policy that contributed to the UK's version of the recent housing bubble called by some the "Right to Buy" scheme. Lord Monckton has written no "peer reviewed article". In response to his claim, the APS reaffirmed its position that climate change was occurring and pointed out that Monckton's article was in a newsletter of the APS Forum that carries the disclaimer that

"This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed."

The APS further added a disclaimer to the top of Monckton's article stating:

"Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."

Finally, Lord Monckton does actually advise the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI). It is an organization critical of government actions to prevent climate change that recently morphed from the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, an Institute that had received over $1 million in funding from Exxon/Mobil. Some of the SPPI's members are scientists with compromised objectivity who are affiliated with other institutes funded by the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon/Mobil, and interests happy with the inaction in Washington.

The Testimony: Lord Monckton's testimony was consistent with his credentials and a number of articles have been written debunking his claims. (3) A few inaccuracies are listed below to give the flavor of his testimony:

Levels of CO2 : For instance, he compares today's CO2 levels with those from 750 million years ago when they were 300,000ppm and then argues

" Therefore, today's CO2 concentration, though perhaps the highest in 20 million years, is by no means exceptional or damaging. " … "It is also known that a doubling of today's CO2 concentration, projected to occur later this century would increase the yield of some staple crops by up to 40% (lecture by Dr. Leighton Steward)."

The problem is that 750 million years ago was about 745 million years before man and modern plants appeared on the scene. The increase in CO2 concentration from 280 ppm to 380 ppm in the last century will have an unknown effect as the Earth's plants and animals are adapted to levels less than 300 ppm. The higher CO2 levels and warming climate seem to favor invasive species, such as Kudzu. The Dr. Leighton Steward he refers to has never done any plant research. Dr. Leighton Steward is a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company (formerly known as Enron), and he is an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute.

Ocean Acidification: According to Lord Monckton:

" It has been suggested that the oceans have "acidified" – or, more correctly, become less alkaline – by 0.1 acid-base units in recent decades. However, the fact of a movement towards neutrality in ocean chemistry, if such a movement has occurred, tells us nothing of the cause, which cannot be attributed to increases in CO2 concentration."

However, the "0.1 acid-base units" he refers to is a pH scale, which is logarithmic. A decrease of 0.1 unit means the oceans are now over 20% more acidic than a century ago and the cause is most certainly CO2. Adding CO2 to soda makes it acidic and CO2 is certainly doing the same to the oceans. If the oceans get much more acidic, the coral, the fisheries, the shellfish, and the oxygen-producing plankton that give life to the oceans are threatened.

Temperature Consensus: Again, according to Lord Monckton

"There is no consensus on how much warming a given increase in CO2 will cause."

Not exactly. Over 50 years ago, G.N. Plass calculated that doubling the CO2 concentration would bring a 3 to 4°C rise in the Earth's temperature. (4) There have been a number of more accurate calculations since then but they all are in agreement with the range Plass calculated. Also, those calculations are in general agreement with the rising temperatures we are now observing.

"Just Adapt": Lord Monckton finally gets to the point he was invited to make

" First, it would be orders of magnitude more cost-effective to adapt to any 'global warming' that might occur than to try to prevent it from occurring by trying to tax or regulate emissions of carbon dioxide in any way."

There we have it. Rather than reasonably addressing climate change, Lord Monckton, and some politicians, wish for us to just "adapt to it". Not really understanding science, Lord Monckton missed one small thing that might become important to England. As the Earth's temperature increases, the large amounts of fresh water from the melting ice sheets may cause the Gulf Stream to shut down. Without the heat being brought across the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream, England would plunge to glacial temperatures with average winter temperatures of -25oC. I hope Lord Monckton is still around so he can tell his countrymen to "just adapt".

(1)http://republicans.globalwarming.house.gov/Publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2797
(2) Much of Lord Monckton's background can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley
(3) See, for instance: http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090327/congressional-hearings-amateurs-invited-confuse-climate-science or http://www.skepticalscience.com/Abraham-shows-Monckton-wrong-on-Arctic-sea-ice.html
(4) Plass, G.N. (1956d). "Carbon Dioxide and the Climate." American Scientist 44: 302-16 , or see the review article at: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#M_25_

Where were the engineers? At the Deepwater Horizon , a number of key decisions may have led to the disaster and affected the outcome. The role of the management in the decisions was to make a profit for the company and to weigh the benefits and risk against the costs. The most important responsibility of the engineers in performing their duties, according to Engineering Code of Ethics, was to

" Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public." (1)

Some of the decisions that should be examined as the investigation continues are : Could the ignition sources for the explosion have been avoided? Why were the workers quarters not explosion proof? Why did Halliburton proceed with cementing the well when the results of the pressure tests were inconclusive? Who made the disastrous decision to replace the drilling mud with seawater? Why were problems with the blowout preventer not addressed? Were early efforts directed at trying to save the well or to prevent a major oil spill disaster? Obviously, what has happened cannot be changed but, as the investigation into the cause continues, it is important to know who made those key decisions and why they were made the way they were. When those key decisions were made, where were the engineers?

The Challenger, a Different Disaster. One of the most studied disasters is that of the Challenger Space Shuttle. (2) Most people think that an engineering failure led to the disaster, but in fact, it was a failure of ethics. One difficult problem in the design of the space shuttle was how to transport the large fuel tanks to the launch site. Morton Thiokol won the contract by designing fuel tanks that could be transported to the site in sections and sealed back together with rubber O-rings. The O-rings were effective down to 40°F, but below that, the rubber stiffens and its ability to seal the tanks had not been tested.

The January 1986 Challenger launch was to carry Christa McAuliffe, the teacher the year, into space. The weather had been cool and uncooperative in Florida that January and there had been several delays in the launch. President Reagan was planning to include the education aspect of the shuttle launch in his State of the Union speech and, for that and other reasons, pressure was building on the shuttle team to proceed with the launch. However, the temperature was predicted to be 29°F on the morning of January 28 and the engineers strongly recommended against the launch. The decision whether to launch was the responsibility of Bob Lund, the vice president of engineering for Morton Thiokol. On the advice of his engineers, he recommended against the launch.

However, Jerald Mason, the general manager of Morton Thiokol, called a meeting to discuss the decision. He asked Bob Lund to "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." He was asking Lund, in effect, to put aside his engineering ethics and weigh the very unlikely possibility of an accident against the public relations benefits of launching on schedule. Apparently, that argument worked as Lund approved the launch, despite the fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of the operational specifications. At 59 seconds into the launch, the O-rings failed and the rocket exploded, plunging the Challenger into the ocean and killing all seven astronauts. It was the worst disaster in the U.S. space program's history.

"Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public." In our increasingly technical and complicated world, we often use products and devices designed by engineers. The public, you, me and everyone else, must trust our safety to the engineers who design, test, and make decisions about those products. Engineering schools now include the study of professional ethics in the curriculum and try to convey to students their importance. However, in some instances, engineers do not follow their ethical code because of financial rewards, job security issues, peer pressure, or company loyalty. Often, small ethical violations go unnoticed and unreported unless, or until, they grow into a major problem. Many violations are only discovered and investigated when they lead to a public relations fiasco, a death, a lawsuit, or a major disaster. It is imperative that engineers steadfastly hold paramount their duty to protect the public. Engineers who violate their ethical code and managers who override the engineer's decisions on safety should be financially and criminally liable for the disasters they cause.
(1) http://www.nspe.org/Ethics/CodeofEthics/index.html

(2) http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/shuttle/shuttle1.htm

"Our energy needs will best be served by a mixture of traditional and alternate energy sources and we should not let Mr. Bryce's opinions keep us from developing the alternate sources."

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has written a number of entertaining books and articles about the energy industry. However, his latest book, "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future" (1) is an attack on "Green Energy". It is not surprising that he is not a fan of green energy as the Manhattan Institute receives large donations from the Koch Foundation and Exxon/Mobile. That may not mean he is biased, but Mr. Bryce's latest article "5 Myths about Green Energy" (2) would make one wonder. He uses false comparisons, misquotes, scientific inaccuracies, and the omission of pertinent facts to try to make his case. Most myths are based on a small element of truth, but what Mr. Bryce claims as "myths" are mostly true and he has had to stretch to find reasons they are myths.

You can judge. His five myths are:
Myth 1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all. Actually, they are. If you trace the energy back to its source, you will find that all fossil fuel energy originally came from the sun's energy. Photosynthetic green plants formed fossil fuels by converting CO2 to carbon compounds and oxygen over many millions of years and it is stored beneath the Earth. Wind energy and hydroelectric energy come from the Sun as well and using solar energy directly cuts out carbon as the middleman. That avoids many of the problems we have today with diminishing supplies and environmental damage from fossil fuel use.

Mr. Bryce criticizes solar and wind power for the "huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy". It seems a stretch when he compares the watts/area of wind farms with that of a gas well. What is the area of a gas well? And, what would he make of the Gulf oil spill that has produced no energy but covers an area the size of New Jersey? Mr. Bryce also says "Because the wind doesn't always blow, utilities must use gas- or coal-fired generators to offset wind's unreliability. The result is minimal — or no — carbon dioxide reduction." Actually, no one is denying the need for back-up sources but surely the alternate energy placed on the grid reduces the need for an equivalent amount of energy from fossil fuels.

Trying to make his point, Mr. Bryce goes on "Denmark, the poster child for wind energy boosters, more than doubled its production of wind energy between 1999 and 2007. Yet data from Energinet.dk, the operator of Denmark's natural gas and electricity grids, show that carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2007 were at about the same level as they were back in 1990 before the country began its frenzied construction of turbines." Wrong. The truth is that Energinet.dk's 2007 Environmental Report says that from 1990 to 2007, CO2 emissions in Denmark were not flat but had an overall reduction of 23% . For comparison, the US's CO2 emissions rose by 19% during that time.

2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes. You would think this would be about importing 70% of our oil from the Middle East – but it's not. It is about importing rare earth metals needed for green technology from China. Mr. Bryce does not mention that we now import the metals anyway and that reducing our use of these as catalysts in the fossil fuel industry would more than make up for increased use in green technology. Also, perhaps, we should not consider our biggest creditor "unsavory".

3. A green American economy will create green American jobs. It's true, as Mr. Bryce claims, that many of the manufacturing jobs for solar panels and windmills have gone abroad because of high labor costs in the US. However, for many years, the US did not have a sound energy policy and certainly did not promote the development of green energy. If the US had subsidized the production of alternate energy sources at even a fraction of what it subsidized the fossil fuel production, many of the green jobs would have stayed at home. Still, some manufacturing is done here and the installation, maintenance, and the business end of green energy cannot be outsourced.

Mr. Bryce also brings up the fact that the use of ethanol fuel only created 27,000 jobs rather than the 136,000 jobs a lobbying group predicted. A lobbyist's claim is a strange standard to measure by and he neglects that ethanol was necessary to replace the lead and MTBE as antiknock compounds in gasoline.

4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil. While admitting that the electric car "has long been recognized as the ideal" because it "is cleaner and quieter" and "much more economical" Mr. Bryce criticize them because" the same unreliability of electric car batteries that flummoxed Thomas Edison persists today". Mr. Bryce does not seem to realize that there have been a few improvements to batteries since Edison, such as the lithium ion battery he mentions in the article. He claims another problem is that "the GAO reported that about 40 percent of consumers do not have access to an outlet, near their vehicle at home". Eh? Is there a serious shortage of electricians or extension cords? He also claims that electric cars are sidelined "by physics and math". One of Bryce's best is "Gasoline contains about 80 times as much energy, by weight, as the best lithium-ion battery." He neglects to say that you can use gasoline just once while the battery can be recharged hundred of times. Besides, a battery is just a storage device - one that can convert energy to work much more efficiently than an internal combustion engine.

He does say, "Sure, the electric motor is more efficient than the internal combustion engine. " Isn't efficiency what it is about? The internal combustion engine is about 10% efficient at converting heat to work. A fossil fueled power plant, including transmission losses, is about 25% efficient, and electric motors are about 90% efficient. Considering that, electric cars are over twice as efficient in converting fuel to work. If alternate energy sources are used to produce the electricity, we reduce our demand for oil even more.

5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green. Mr. Bryce says "Over the past three decades, the United States has improved its energy efficiency as much as or more than other developed countries" …" except Switzerland and Denmark, and the United States achieved it without participating in the Kyoto Protocol or creating an emissions trading system like the one employed in Europe." He compares the reduction in CO2 emitted per dollar of GDP as a basis for this claim. He does not mention that we have much further to go. The US has 6% of the world's population but uses over 30% of the world's energy.

His plan for the future is: "The United States will continue going green by simply allowing engineers and entrepreneurs to do what they do best: make products that are faster, cheaper and more efficient than the ones they made the year before." I could almost agree with that if we subsidize all energy sources at the same level and charge each source fairly for pollution it produces. Our energy needs will best be served by a mixture of traditional and alternate energy sources and we should not let Mr. Bryce's opinions keep us from developing the alternate sources.

1) Bryce, Robert, "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future," Public Affairs Pub. (2010)
2)http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?no=subj&articleid=20100502_222_G3_Applie677893
3) http://www.energinet.dk/NR/rdonlyres/EC3E484D-08D5-4179-9D85-7B9A9DBD3E08/0/Environmentalreport2008.pdf

Mr. Robert Bryce delivers a scathing but misguided attack on green energy. He attacks solar and wind power, claims green energy will not reduce our dependence on unsavory regimes or create jobs, that electric cars will not reduce our dependence on oil, and that the US does not lag behind other countries in going green. Mr. Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

The old tactic in the debate on climate change was denial. Some skeptics claimed that the Earth’s temperature was not rising while others claimed that any increase observed was not from man's activities. However, the mounting scientific evidence from many fields of science can no longer be effectively denied. The latest IPCC report (1) shows that the Earth’s mean temperature is rising, that the temperature increase is changing the environment, and that the changes are caused by man’s activities. Scientists are concerned that politicians are not getting the message and every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed a statement concurring with the IPCC’s conclusion. Clearly, denial was no longer an effective option and a new tactic was needed by those profiting from the status quo.

The new tactic is being championed by Lord Nigel Lawson, a British politician who fought for years to keep British Parliament from supporting the Kyoto Treaty (2). His new book on the subject, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, admits global warming is occurring and that man is responsible. However, he claims that it is impossible to do anything about it, that to try would cost too much, and that a little global warming is actually a good thing. That might be true for those who live in damp, dreary England, but the book overlooks or minimizes many of the problems associated with climate change. Lord Lawson says that we shouldn’t worry as we and the Earth will adapt: "Over the past two-and-a-half-million years, a period during which the planet's climate fluctuated substantially, remarkably few of the earth's millions of plant and animal species became extinct. This applies not least, incidentally, to polar bears, which have been around for millennia, during which there is ample evidence that polar temperatures have varied considerably."

The book is highly touted by some but it blithely ignores the work of many scientists and ecologists who conclude: “Many plant and animal species are unlikely to survive climate change.” (3) A recent study at Harvard “suggests quite decisively that non-native and invasive species have been the climate change winners. Invasive species can be intensely destructive to biodiversity, ecosystem function, agriculture, and human health. In the United States alone the estimated annual cost of invasive species exceeds $120 billion.” (4) As to polar bears, they have recently been put on the threatened species list because their habitat, the Arctic ice, is disappearing. Polar bears have become uniquely adapted over many thousands of years to survive and hunt on the pack ice. It is unlikely that they, and many other species, will have time to adapt to the climate changes predicted to occur over the next century.

Even if a warmer Earth were a good thing, it is not good that our oceans are becoming more acidic, the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting, species are becoming extinct, and invasive species are proliferating. Our use of fossil fuels is putting 30 billion tons of CO2 into the air annually along with mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates, and radioactive isotopes of radon. Those end up in the air, the water, and the food chain. We are now finding mercury in fish where there are no natural sources and many places have limits on consumption. The oceans are now 20% more acidic and the coral, fisheries, shellfish, and oxygen-producing plankton are threatened. Ignoring those problems will not make them go away.

So, the new tactic is just a call to inaction. Rather than addressing climate change, Lord Lawson wishes for us to ignore it and adapt to it. He does miss one small thing that might become important to England. The large amounts of fresh water from the melting ice sheets may cause the Gulf Stream to shut down. Without the heat being brought across the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream, England may plunge to glacial temperatures with average winter temperatures of -25oC. England might have a little trouble adapting to that. No one knows the future, but we will be better off fashioning it rather than just letting it happen to us.

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1)http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spm.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Lawson
3) http://www.nature.com/nature/links/040108/040108-1.html
4) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203111626.htm

Some male frogs, when exposed to just 2.5 ppb of atrazine, take on female characteristics, grow female organs, and reproduce. Note that the EPA water standard for atrazine in drinking water is 3ppb, higher than the concentration in the experiment.

It is easy to calculate the approximate doubling time for compound interest, credit card debt, or population growth. A simple rule of thumb to get doubling time is to divide the growth rate into 70. For example, an investment at 7% compound interest would double in 70/7 = 10 years. After 10 years, a $100 investment would double to $200, in another 10 years it would double again to $400, and in 10 more years to $800. Not bad. This will also work for credit card debt. If your interest rate is 20% and you only make the minimum payment, your debt will double after 70/20 = 3½ years. You might think again about buying an expensive item on your credit card if you realize that a $1000 purchase, unless paid off, will cost you $2000 after 3 ½ years and $4000 after 7 seven years. Everyone with a credit card should know this simple rule of thumb.

The rule also works for population growth. The world now has about 6 ½ billion people and the rate of growth is about 2%. That means that the Earth's population will double in about 70/2 = 35 years to 13 billion people. It will then double again in 35 more years to 26 billion people. If you think the roads are crowded now, just wait until 2080. Unlimited growth is considered good for business as the number of consumers just keeps going up. However, we should realize that the current growth rate is unsustainable, as at some point we will begin to run out of resources. Economists say the law of supply and demand insures we will never actually run out of resources. As the supply decreases, the resources will just become increasingly expensive. Nevertheless, those who have little money will soon run out of resources. Then what, wars over resources? Also, our contribution to air and water pollution increases with our population growth. Studies of populations in nature show that when a population exhausts its resources or strangles in its pollution, the population doesn't just reach equilibrium and stop. There is a massive die off.

In the past, population growth was considered a good thing. More people meant more workers, more soldiers, and more offspring to carry on our values and our genetics. Times have changed, but the old thinking remains. Some countries that have reduced their population's growth have been criticized as being "weak". Other countries have claimed efforts to help them with population control are an attempt at "genocide". Many religions have prohibitions against certain birth control practices. And, many businesses see an increasing number of consumers as more profit. Nevertheless, the path we are on is unsustainable and we must control our population growth. How to do that is the problem.

Certainly, it must be done through education. We firmly believe in our right to choose how many children we have and our right to act in ways consistent with our religious beliefs. Perhaps if people realized that we are on an unsustainable path, they would make personal decisions to help ensure the survival of their descendants. Perhaps people would not bring more children into the world than they can feed and care for if they had the knowledge and methods to avoid doing so. There is a method of birth control acceptable to most every religious belief and the world's religious organizations must help to educate people in those practices and the necessity of using them wisely. Finally, those who profit from increasing population growth should realize that developing a sustainable economy is in their best interest. What is the point of amassing wealth for your descendants if they cannot live comfortably on the Earth?

George Will in his article "Perils of a Bright Idea" criticizes the use of compact florescent light (CFL) bulbs. He has apparently not thought this through. Would he rather have mercury in his light bulbs or in his fish?

I heard a critic of global warming say that if you broke a CFL, mercury would spill out. Being curious, I went right home and broke one to see. I could not find the mercury so I looked up the amount. It is about 4 milligrams per light bulb – an amount less than the size of the period the end of this sentence.

Much of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal contains a trace amount of mercury but, considering that we burn thousands of tons of coal each year, about 50 tons of mercury is emitted into the air each year. That mercury is carried to the ground by rain and much of it ends up in our lakes and streams where it enters the food chain. Some of it eventually ends up in game fish - even in areas that have no natural mercury sources. If you eat fish every Friday, by the year's end, you'll have eaten about four times as much mercury as there is in one CFL bulb.

CFL's are about four times as efficient as regular bulbs and last about 10 times as long. I cannot think of a company, school, or public building that does not use fluorescent light bulbs to save energy and avoid maintenance costs. CFL's for home use are the same technology. Using CFL's will actually cut the amount of mercury entering the environment.

At the beginning of the article, George Will defines the meaning of the word "fervent" for us, as in "fervent talks on global warming". I'll spare you the definition of "subtle" but I have noticed a subtle change in one of George Will's positions. Last year, he was saying that the Earth had not grown warmer in the past 10 years. That was never true but now he claims the Earth has not grown warmer in the last 11 years. Why the change? George Will will have to explain it to you. Invite him over for a fish dinner and discuss it. Then take everyone out to see WALL-E , which will give you an idea of what our future might hold if we follow George Will's advice on environmental issues.