Report on economic impact of climate change by ex-cheif economist of WB

[xrayzebra]

^^Another little article on "warming" I found interesting.

Thursday, August 17, 2006
New data shows ocean cooling
By DENNIS AVERY and ALEX AVERY
The world's oceans cooled suddenly between 2003 and 2005, losing more than 20 percent of the global-warming heat they'd absorbed over the previous 50 years. That's a vast amount of heat, since the oceans hold 1,000 times as heat as the atmosphere. The ocean-cooling researchers say the heat was likely vented into space, since it hasn't been found stored anywhere on Earth.

John Lyman, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, says the startling news of ocean cooling comes courtesy of the new ARGO ocean temperature floats being distributed worldwide. ARGOs are filling in former blank spots on the world's ocean monitoring system – and vastly narrowing our past uncertainty about sparsely measured ocean temperatures.

Lyman says the discovery of the sudden ocean coolings undercuts faith in global-warming forecasts because coolings randomly interrupt the trends laid out by the global circulation models. As Lyman puts it, "The cooling reflects interannual variability that is not well represented by a linear trend."

The new ocean cooling also recalls several NASA studies in the past five years that found a huge natural heat vent over the Pacific ocean's so-called warm pool, a band of water thousands of miles wide, roughly astride the equator. Studies coordinated by Bruce Weilicki, of NASA's Langley Research Center, found that when sea surface temperatures rise above 28 degrees C, Pacific rainfall becomes more efficient. More of the cloud droplets form raindrops, so fewer are left to form high, icy, cirrus clouds that seal in heat. As a result, the area of cirrus clouds is reduced, and far more heat passes out into space. This cools the surface of the warm pool, the world's warmest ocean water.

Weilicki's research teams say that the huge natural heat vent emitted about as much heat during the 1980s and 90s as would be expected from a redoubling of the carbon dioxide content in the air. They used satellites to measure cloud cover and long-range aircraft to monitor sea temperatures.

Layman says the sudden ocean coolings particularly complicate the problem of separating natural temperature changes from man-made impacts on the Earth's temperature. The impact of human-emitted CO2 has been assumed to ac ulate in a straight-line trend over many decades.

Meanwhile, since the 1980s, the Earth's ice cores, seabed sediments and cave stalagmites have been revealing a moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle linked to solar irradiance. Temperatures jump suddenly and erratically 1 to 2 degrees C above the mean at the la ude of Washington, D.C., and New York City for centuries at a time, and more than that at the Earth's poles.

Temperatures vary hardly at all at the equator during the 1,500-year cycle, and Bruce Weilicki's NASA heat-vent findings seem to indicate why. The warm pool of the Pacific acts like a cooking pot, with its "lid" popping open to emit steam when the water gets too hot.

The more we look, the more we learn about the Earth's complex climate forces – though not much of the new knowledge comes from the huge, unverified global circulation models favored by the man-made warming activists.


Oh, my, did he say "Unverifed". Oh, my.......


RNR, is this just one man's opinion or a scientific finding? Oh, my!

[xrayzebra]

And then you have this article, which says.....well what is it saying?




Mercosur
Friday, 17 November


Unprecedented warming cycle and declining sea ice in Artic



The Arctic is undergoing a substantial and unprecedented warming despite sporadic signals of a cooling trend reports an international panel of scientists. (Who says you cant have it both ways?}



"For the last six years, Arctic temperatures were above average," said Jim Overland, an oceanographer at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle and one of the authors of "State of the Arctic", the report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The area in the Arctic covered by sea ice is declining, vegetation is now growing in tundra regions previously hostile to such growth, and the glaciers at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet are sliding away faster than ever, the panel said.

Yet ocean and atmospheric patterns in the Arctic are still shifted around owing to natural cycles (or less-than-natural perturbations such as climate change), he said, which means short-term or localized measurements can give results that can, taken alone, indicate cooling.

"The Arctic has large region-to-region differences" Overland said and these transient, regional cycles that involve cooling could be masking the overall warming trend. Evidence of thickening of the ice sheet in some places, the slowing down of a wind-producing atmospheric cycle known as the Arctic oscillation and other pieces of the puzzle describing the Arctic environment have in the past been indicators of a cooling trend.

"There are these (cooling indicators) that the region is fighting back"

(Bet you didn't know that "Mother Nature" fights back, did you? She is a living, breathing thing, you know human)

said Jacqueline Richter-Menge, lead author of the NOAA report and a sea ice expert at the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire.

But although the ice sheet might be thickening in some places, there's no question that the geographic area covered by ice in the Arctic continues to shrink. (See I told you, you can have it both ways)

"It was alarmingly thin in 2000, but it has thickened a bit lately," said James Morison, a University of Washington oceanographer who regularly measures Arctic conditions as director of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Morison was not an author on this report.

The NOAA report is a consensus do ent reached by 20 experts from the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany and Poland, which merely reviews current data and agrees as to what is happening now to the Arctic.

Overall, the scientists agreed that the Arctic has been warmer by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit for the past five years; the extent of the sea ice in the polar regions has been shrinking; significant areas of permafrost are thawing; vegetation is spreading northward; and glaciers appear to be melting at a faster rate.




.........

Hope you enjoyed....

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Link your articles, Ray.

Yeah, that would be such a powerful article except that it's written by a non-scientist, non-climatologist lobbyist, which somewhat reduces his credibility on the matter. Dennis Avery is a well-known climate change and organic food skeptics at the Hudson Ins ute:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php? le=Dennis_Avery

His credibility is further reduced because he SPUN THE SOURCE ARTICLE!!!. Here is the actual scientific paper that some of the article is based on:

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/lyman/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

1. Introduction
With over 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the World Ocean is thelargest repository for changes in global heat content [Levitus et al., 2005]. Monitoring ocean heat content is therefore fundamental to detecting and understanding changes in the Earth’s heat balance. Past estimates of the global integral of ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA) indicate an increase of 14.5 × 1022 J from 1955 to 1998 from the surface to 3000m [Levitus et al., 2005] and 9.2 (± 1.3) × 1022 J from 1993 to 2003 in the upper (0 – 750m) ocean [Willis et al. 2004]. These increases provide strong evidence of global warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced by anthropogenic influences [Gregory et al., 2004; Barnett et al., 2005; Church et al.,2005; Hansen et al., 2005].

While there has been a general increase in the global integral of OHCA during thelast half century, there have also been substantial decadal fluctuations, including a short period of rapid cooling (6 × 1022 J of heat lost in the 0–700 m layer) from 1980 to 1983 [Levitus et al., 2005]. Most climate models, however, do not contain unforced decadal variability of this magnitude [Gregory et al., 2004; Barnett et al., 2005, their Figure S1; Church et al., 2005; and Hansen et al., 2005] and it has been suggested that such fluctuations in the observational record may be due to inadequate sampling of ocean temperatures [Gregory et al., 2004]. We have detected a new cooling event that began in 2003 and is comparable in magnitude to the one in the early 1980s. Using high resolution satellite data to estimate sampling error, we find that both the recent event and the cooling of the early 1980s are significant with respect to these errors.

5. Discussion
This work has several implications. First, the updated time series of ocean heat content presented here (Figure 1) and the newly estimated confidence limits (Figure 3) support the significance of previously reported large interannual variability in globally integrated upper-ocean heat content [Levitus et al., 2005]. However, the physical causes for this type of variability are not yet well understood. Furthermore, this variability is not adequately simulated in the current generation of coupled climate models used to study the impact of anthropogenic influences on climate [Gregory et al., 2004; Barnett et al. 2005; Church et al. 2005; and Hansen et al., 2005]. Although these models do simulate the long-term rates of ocean warming, this lack of interannual variability represents ashortcoming that may complicate detection and attribution of human-induced climate influences.

Changes in OHCA also affect sea level. Sea level rise has a broad range of
implications for climate science as well as considerable socioeconomic impacts
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, 2004]. Diagnosing the causes of past and present sea level change and closure of the sea level budget is therefore a critical component of understanding past changes in sea level as well as projecting future changes. The recent cooling of the upper ocean implies a decrease in the thermosteric component of sea level. Estimates of total sea level [Leuliette et al., 2004; http://sealevel.colorado.edu], however, show continued sea-level rise during the past 3 years. This suggests that other contributions to sea-level rise, such as melting of land-bound ice, have accelerated. This inference is consistent with recent estimates of ice mass loss in Antarctica [Velicogna and Wahr, 2006] and accelerating ice mass loss on Greenland [Rignot et al., 2006] but closure of the global sea level budget cannot yet be achieved. New satellite observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE; launched in March, 2002 and administered by NASA and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt, GRACE will map Earth's gravity field approximately once every 30 days during its lifetime) should soon provide sufficient observations of the redistribution of water mass to more fully describe the
causes of recent sea-level change.

Finally, the estimates presented here are made possible only by recent
improvements in the global ocean observing system. The sharp decrease in the error since 2002 is due to the dramatic improvement of in situ sampling provided by the Argo array of autonomous profiling CTD floats, and the real-time reporting of Argo data made it possible to extend the estimate through 2005. Characterization of the error budget, which is of paramount importance in the estimate of such globally averaged quan ies, was made feasible by the long-term maintenance of high quality altimeter missions such as TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason. The issues relating to sea level rise and the global water budget can only be addressed when the record of satellite gravity measurement from GRACE achieves adequate duration. GRACE, Argo, and satellite altimetry are core components of the global ocean observing system. Failure to maintain any one of these observing systems would seriously impair our ability to monitor the World Ocean and to unravel its importance to the climate system.

See, Ray, here's one of your problems, which I've told you about before. You have to go to primary sources or you are relying on someone else's take on the evidence. The extracts above, from the primary paper, clearly illustrate that Lyman's work does not challenge anthropocentric EGW and rather are an attempt to add more data to the models. In his article, Avery twisted the words and intent of the study to his own purposes. Please put a link in so I can send it to Dr Lyman and inform him that Avery is misrepresenting his study in this way.

You can take down your little punching guy, I think I just knocked you out... again.

Thanks for posting the second article as it only supports what we already know - ice is thickening towards the pole, thinning rapidly further south. Your emboldening is a total sham. No scientists has said that there is uniform warming across the globe or across time - a few places will get cooler, and there will be year-to-year variability. As the last paragraph states:

Overall, the scientists agreed that the Arctic has been warmer by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit for the past five years; the extent of the sea ice in the polar regions has been shrinking; significant areas of permafrost are thawing; vegetation is spreading northward; and glaciers appear to be melting at a faster rate.

That article supports the anthro EGW theory. I have no idea why you posted it since it detracts from your argument. Want to know more about the impact of warming on the Arctic, wheck out the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:

http://www.acia.uaf.edu/

As for this:

"(Bet you didn't know that "Mother Nature" fights back, did you? She is a living, breathing thing, you know human)"

you are talking about GAIA, and if you really believe this you ought to read James Lovelock's 1980s book on it, or the update in 2000. Fascinating man, Lovelock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

You realise, of course, that Lovelock was one of the first scientists to raise the alarm about EGW back in the 1980s (or was it 1970s)?

Once again Ray, you have proven nothing but the fact that you don't have a clue what you are talking about, and nor can you research it properly. Please give up as you embarrass yourself. Or better yet, get a clue and pull your head out of the sand.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

BTW, has everyone seen the Mauna Loa CO2 curve?

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.php

It's a brilliant piece of science - you can see the general rising trend in CO2 level (because we humans produce so much more of the stuff than can be absorbed by the carbon cycle), but the neat little oscillations in annual cycles show THE EARTH BREATHING! In spring the atmospheric CO2 level declines a little as new plant growth fixes carbon from the air, then the level rises again in late summer-autumn-winter as tree growth slows and stops, leaves decay and CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. Very cool.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Hmmmm... con uous silence when the skeptics get caught out using their lying s bag tricks.

See, these people like Avery and Ebell and Milloy have no scientific or moral credibility. They read papers and then very selectively take a line here or there out of context to bolster their agenda, the facts be buggered. They are LYING S BAGS, and right above you is clear evidence of the tactics they use.

Notice that the article quotes Lyman once in inverted commas, suggesting that he has spoken to the author, which is clearly not the case since that line comes straight out of the primary paper. The line about the heat vent comes from a 2001 hypothetical idea by infamous climate change critic Richard Lindzen (one of the few skeptics who is actually a scientist) that hasn't been borne out by later research. They even get Lyman's name wrong later in the piece, later calling him "Layman". All-around shoddy work by co-opted souls desperate to support an agenda before any real consideration of the facts.

[Phenomanul]

Here's my mid-to-long term solution:

Invest heavily in reforestation programs... In fact sometimes I wish that the millions of dollars being spent on environmental lobbying would just get applied directly to the solution. You get the best bang for the buck by using nature's own Oxidation Machines. Biology 101: Plants remove CO2 from the air and release O2.

[Phenomanul]

Where is hegamboa when it comes to climate change? He has scientific credentials but only uses them in a religious context. Go figure.

Don't worry about me... OK. I don't live in the forum or live for the forum... I've got other things to do outside of it...

Thanks.

[xrayzebra]

Hmmmm... con uous silence when the skeptics get caught out using their lying s bag tricks.

See, these people like Avery and Ebell and Milloy have no scientific or moral credibility. They read papers and then very selectively take a line here or there out of context to bolster their agenda, the facts be buggered. They are LYING S BAGS, and right above you is clear evidence of the tactics they use.

Notice that the article quotes Lyman once in inverted commas, suggesting that he has spoken to the author, which is clearly not the case since that line comes straight out of the primary paper. The line about the heat vent comes from a 2001 hypothetical idea by infamous climate change critic Richard Lindzen (one of the few skeptics who is actually a scientist) that hasn't been borne out by later research. They even get Lyman's name wrong later in the piece, later calling him "Layman". All-around shoddy work by co-opted souls desperate to support an agenda before any real consideration of the facts.

Well RNR, guess it is just that your so smart and we are so dumb. So
Guess you win. Like ChumpDumper says: "We are Doomed".

And the next time one of your scientist admits, well, we made a little
mistake. I promise I wont say: "Told you so".

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Here's my mid-to-long term solution:

Invest heavily in reforestation programs... In fact sometimes I wish that the millions of dollars being spent on environmental lobbying would just get applied directly to the solution. You get the best bang for the buck by using nature's own Oxidation Machines. Biology 101: Plants remove CO2 from the air and release O2.

That's a small part of the solution, but that's all. We couldn't plant enough trees to absorb the CO2 we currently put into the atmosphere, let alone the future increase in CO2 emissions. Then you have the problem that trees only capture CO2 up to a certain point in their maturation, then they lose their potential as carbon sinks. When they die and decompose, they re-release the CO2 they absorbed earlier. As I said, it is part of the solution, but no a fix-all.

Actually, more importantly, and much easier to accomplish, would be to PREVENT FURTHER DEFORESTATION in countries like Brazil and Papua New Guinea. Anthropogenic deforestation results in roughly double the CO2 emissions of the world's fleet of cars and trucks. However, you have to give poor people an incentive not to destroy the environment, and that's where cap and trade comes in. I posted an article about this somewhere, but I can't find it.

The broader point is that there is no "one, simple solution" to a complex problem like EGW. It's going to take a mixture of adoption of renewable energy generation, tree planting, behaviour changes, etc.

Well RNR, guess it is just that your so smart and we are so dumb. So
Guess you win. Like ChumpDumper says: "We are Doomed".

And the next time one of your scientist admits, well, we made a little
mistake. I promise I wont say: "Told you so".

As I've said time and again Ray, it's not a matter of me being "so smart", it's a matter of integrity. Avery misquoted from Lyman's research to further his skeptical agenda. He used what Lyman reported in his paper out of context for his own political purposes, as I've clearly demonstrated above. That is simple intellectual dishonesty, and I didn't have to be very smart to find it - all I had to do was actually read the original research. You'd rather trust guys who have to perpetrate dirty tricks to build a flim-flam argument than the world's best scientific minds? That's your right, but to me that is absurd.

As for "we're all doomed", who said that? We're NOT DOOMED if we act now. That is the whole point of my posting this stuff here - to get people to think about their behaviours, the impact of their consumption on the world, the impact of their political decisions, and to do something about them. Pretending that "this is not my problem" is the worst thing any of us can do. We are all responsible for the choices we make, moreover we are responsible to future generations of human beings for the damage we are doing to what will be their environment.

You won't get to say I told you so, because I wouldn't be saying what I'm saying if the science wasn't irrefutable. It is I who will certainly say "I told you so" to you, although I wonder just what level of proof you need to believe that humans are impacting on our climate? I fear that nothing science could ever discover could sway you and your ilk from the comfortable inertia of your "opinions".

Oh, and do you not link your sources out of laziness, or is it to obscure the sources? Your mind-tricks do not work on me, Sith...

[xrayzebra]

That's a small part of the solution, but that's all. We couldn't plant enough trees to absorb the CO2 we currently put into the atmosphere, let alone the future increase in CO2 emissions. Then you have the problem that trees only capture CO2 up to a certain point in their maturation, then they lose their potential as carbon sinks. When they die and decompose, they re-release the CO2 they absorbed earlier. As I said, it is part of the solution, but no a fix-all.

Actually, more importantly, and much easier to accomplish, would be to PREVENT FURTHER DEFORESTATION in countries like Brazil and Papua New Guinea. Anthropogenic deforestation results in roughly double the CO2 emissions of the world's fleet of cars and trucks. However, you have to give poor people an incentive not to destroy the environment, and that's where cap and trade comes in. I posted an article about this somewhere, but I can't find it.

The broader point is that there is no "one, simple solution" to a complex problem like EGW. It's going to take a mixture of adoption of renewable energy generation, tree planting, behaviour changes, etc.



As I've said time and again Ray, it's not a matter of me being "so smart", it's a matter of integrity. Avery misquoted from Lyman's research to further his skeptical agenda. He used what Lyman reported in his paper out of context for his own political purposes, as I've clearly demonstrated above. That is simple intellectual dishonesty, and I didn't have to be very smart to find it - all I had to do was actually read the original research. You'd rather trust guys who have to perpetrate dirty tricks to build a flim-flam argument than the world's best scientific minds? That's your right, but to me that is absurd.

As for "we're all doomed", who said that? We're NOT DOOMED if we act now. That is the whole point of my posting this stuff here - to get people to think about their behaviours, the impact of their consumption on the world, the impact of their political decisions, and to do something about them. Pretending that "this is not my problem" is the worst thing any of us can do. We are all responsible for the choices we make, moreover we are responsible to future generations of human beings for the damage we are doing to what will be their environment.

You won't get to say I told you so, because I wouldn't be saying what I'm saying if the science wasn't irrefutable. It is I who will certainly say "I told you so" to you, although I wonder just what level of proof you need to believe that humans are impacting on our climate? I fear that nothing science could ever discover could sway you and your ilk from the comfortable inertia of your "opinions".

Oh, and do you not link your sources out of laziness, or is it to obscure the sources? Your mind-tricks do not work on me, Sith...

First, linking my sources, no it is not laziness
or is it to obscure the sources. It is because I
haven't figured out some of the complexities of
of the computer. I should have as I was a
cryptographer for many years, but that is a whole
different story. I am just getting old and maybe
I lied, I am lazy sometimes. And as an Aussie
you can understand the "scotch and water"
syndrome. Or better yet, a good old "fosters"
of course from my Aussie friends, yeah I have
a few, that isn't the best.

Like I told you once before, I reserve the right
to question any and all "scientific" information
proffered. It really isn't a political issue with me
in so many ways, and it is in others, it is just that
they want to be so damn right, when in so many
ways they are proven so damn wrong.

I can understand, really I can, your reluctance to
to acknowledge this. This is your bailiwick. But
I know in my career it was understood, that with
persistence and Patience that codes could be
broken, even those they were supposed to not
be prone to attack, they were. Anyhow. Just
let me conclude with, Google crypto and cps 2900
and you will find that computers put a lot of
folks out of business. So don't be too complacent
with the knowledge that you have attained.
Knowledge is never ending. It changes in
seconds.

By the way. Do you play golf? I am not great
but for an old man, I do pretty good and I know
most of the courses here in town. And I have
an extra set of clubs.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Like I told you once before, I reserve the right
to question any and all "scientific" information
proffered. It really isn't a political issue with me
in so many ways, and it is in others, it is just that
they want to be so damn right, when in so many
ways they are proven so damn wrong.

That is called advancement. As I explained before, we hypothesise on the available evidence, and as the evidence grows the hypothesis refines. I am so strident about EGW because, IMHO, and the opinion of the scientific community, the evidence for it has become overwhelming.

Sorry, my father plays golf, but not me. I can't get any clubs to fit as I am 6'7". Thanks for the offer though.

Oh, and Aussies don't drink Fosters. It's our iest beer, so we export it!

[xrayzebra]

Oh, and Aussies don't drink Fosters. It's our iest beer, so we export it!

Thats what they all say. That is why I stick to
..........oh, well. It isn't Fosters. But I do like
the scotch, it's really the water.....I prefer... well
it makes a good excuse.

[xrayzebra]

That is called advancement. As I explained before, we hypothesise on the available evidence, and as the evidence grows the hypothesis refines. I am so strident about EGW because, IMHO, and the opinion of the scientific community, the evidence for it has become overwhelming.

Sorry, my father plays golf, but not me. I can't get any clubs to fit as I am 6'7". Thanks for the offer though.

Oh, and Aussies don't drink Fosters. It's our iest beer, so we export it!

I have access to some clubs that would fit you.
Or we can always just play the 19th hole....
Honestly I do.....

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Thanks, but I have no game. No swing. No clue.

If I didn't have shot ankles, I'll take you down into the low post and mess you up though!

@ the thought of me and Ray playing ball!

[boutons_]

Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

By Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 25, 2006; A01

While the political debate over global warming continues, top executives at many of the nation's largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.

The Democratic takeover of Congress makes it more likely that the federal government will attempt to regulate emissions. The companies have been hiring new lobbyists who they hope can help fashion a national approach that would avert a patchwork of state plans now in the works. They are also working to change some company practices in anticipation of the regulation.

"We have to deal with greenhouse gases," John Hofmeister, president of S Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. "From S 's point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is S to say, 'Let's debate the science'?"

( another ing corporate liar. S and all the energy companies have been funding think tanks, agit prop, school books, films, etc, etc for years to fight scientific research proving global warming)

Hofmeister and other top energy company leaders, such as Duke Energy Corp.'s chief executive, James E. Rogers, back a proposal that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and allow firms to trade their quotas.

Paul M. Anderson, Duke Energy's chairman and a member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, favors a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. His firm is the nation's third-largest burner of coal.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the highest-profile corporate skeptic about global warming, said in September that it was considering ending its funding of a think tank that has sought to cast doubts on climate change. And on Nov. 2, the company announced that it will contribute more than $1.25 million to a European Union study on how to store carbon dioxide in natural gas fields in the Norwegian North Sea, Algeria and Germany.

These changes come as Democratic leaders prepare to take over key committees on Capitol Hill. Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), who calls global warming "the greatest challenge of our generation," will take the place of Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe refers to global warming as a "hoax."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the incoming Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, said he hopes to "do something on global warming." Even though the Bush administration's expected opposition might make the enactment of legislation unlikely in the next two years, many companies cannot put off decisions about what sort of power plants to build.

Duke Energy, for example, has not added significant power generation in two decades, and customer demand is rising 1 to 2 percent a year. The company has included a price for the carbon emitted in its cost estimates for a new coal-fired generating plant proposed for Indiana.

"If we had our druthers, we'd already have carbon legislation passed," said John L. Stowell, Duke Energy's vice president for environmental policy. "Our viewpoint is that it's going to happen. There's scientific evidence of climate change. We'd like to know what legislation will be put together so that, when we figure out how to increase our load, we know exactly what to expect."

One reason companies are turning to Congress is to avert the multiplicity of regulations being drafted by various state governments. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a group of seven Northeastern states, is moving ahead with a proposed system that would set a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions, issue allowances to companies, and allow firms to trade those allowances to comply with regulations.

California is drawing up its program. Other states are also contemplating limits. Even the city of Boulder, Colo., has adopted its own plan -- a carbon tax based on electricity use.

"We cannot deal with 50 different policies," said S 's Hofmeister. "We need a national approach to greenhouse gases."

( bull , what S , etc need is a way to return the Repugs to Congressional power so the emissions problem can be kicked down the road as long as the Repugs are in power)

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the federal government is obligated to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant; its decision could force the government to come up with guidelines.

( there ya, go, corporate ers. The Repug-packed SC will save your asses and define CO2 as non-poluting gas. Enjoy your $Bs in Repug-protected profits. )

Though many energy firms had already voiced support in recent months for federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the coming changeover in Congress has intensified the discussions.

"There have been many more folks wanting to engage on the detailed architecture of climate-change legislation," said Jason S. Grumet, executive director of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy. "The tenor, tone and the detail of discussions has changed in the last couple of months. Nobody's going to want to be the last company to come before the Congress and say, 'I've been opposing you for five years, but now can I have my piece?' "

( so what happens to the radical right sheeple-bots who have been indoctrinated to "believe" (don't hassle them with facts) Repug "science" that global warming is natural and not man-made?

Soviet "science", Repug "science", Genesis "science", all are self-serving total lying bull )

Some businesses are making new hires based on the assumption that legislative activity on global warming will increase in the coming months. Truman Semans, director of markets and business strategy for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said at least half a dozen of the companies that belong to the center's Business Environmental Leadership Council have recently hired staff members focused on global warming.

Not every energy company is planning to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the near future. TXU Corp. is planning to spend $10 billion to build 11 new coal-fired power plants, which would more than double the company's carbon dioxide emissions, from 55 million tons to 133 million tons a year. That increase in emissions is more than the total carbon dioxide pollution emitted in all of Maryland or by 10 million Cadillac Escalade sport-utility vehicles.

In an e-mail to The Washington Post, TXU spokeswoman Kimberly Morgan said that the company supports "a comprehensive, voluntary, technology-based approach to global climate change based on carbon intensity" that is both "flexible and cost effective."

( iow, "we'll ing do ing nothing about fukcing spewing as much ing pollution as we want to optimize our profits" )

"We are at a point in time where other states and businesses are starting to take global warming seriously," said Colin Rowan, spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental Defense. "California is heading toward the future, and TXU and Texas are sprinting full speed back to the 1950s."

The company's approach may pay off in the short term, but it may not last. "Over the next two years I don't think environmental policy is going to change radically," said Carl Pope, executive director of the advocacy group Sierra Club. But he added, "I think the environmental agenda and conversation will change radically."

Corporate America wants to be part of that conversation. Duke Energy's Stowell said: "Industry is coming together and saying, 'Okay, if we're going to do this, let's do this in a way that won't wreck the economy.' "

( wreck the economy, ha! iow, "let's do nothing in a way the leaves our polluting profits untouched" )

=======================

1000 new coal-fired plants world-wide are scheduled to be built in the upcoming years. Right now they are all going to be plants that emit Ms of tons of CO2 annually.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

As I have been saying all along, once coal and oil industry lobbyists, and the insurance industry (the world's risk assessors) have bought into Anthropocentric Climate Change, which they now have, the science must be pretty staggering, which of course I already know it is. We'll never get an apology from all the lying s bags out there who have been obfuscating the truth for so long though.

New coal fired power plants should literally be banned unless they include CO2 sequestration technology. Want more base-load power - build gas-fired plants. They are more flexible and efficient and produce 60% less CO2/unit of power. Otherwise, all our new generation capacity should be going into wind, solar, geothermal and tidal power.

boutons - your bracketted comments are spot on.

That final comment on wrecking the economy is such a massive furphy - renewable energy will actually create jobs and wealth over the long term, and it will be even bigger than the tech boom over the course of the next 50 years... if we ever get around to actually making it happen.

[xrayzebra]

I found this quite interesting and humorous.

RECORD COLD, FEWER HURRICANES: MUST BE GLOBAL WARMING

Mocking comment from Harvard by Lubos Motl

Eastern Australia hasn't seen this November cold for 100+ years: it was the coldest November day in a century. Recall that "November" in Australian can be translated as "May" in the U.S. Nevertheless, they have had mushy snow in Canberra, a blast of Antarctic magic. A goosepimply, teeth-chattering Sydney has another reason to shake its collective head at the weather gods today.

Nevertheless, intelligent journalists immediately explain us that cooler weather and fewer hurricanes do not lessen global warming trends because weather is not climate, just like religion is not faith. The climate and the climate change are not only independent of the weather but they are independent of all other things that can be measured, too.

More precisely, weather is only climate when it's getting warmer and when the hurricane frequency increases. When the weather is getting cooler and the hurricane rate is decreasing, weather is no longer climate. It follows that the climate is always getting warmer - QED Amen. That's why Kofi Annan can tell us that we, the skeptics, are out of step, out of time, and out of arguments. He is out of tune, out of touch, and out of mind, trying to build the 1984-style global government.

Want a link:

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/

Several more real interesting comments if you want
to read them.

[RandomGuy]

^^Another little article on "warming" I found interesting.

The more we look, the more we learn about the Earth's complex climate forces – though not much of the new knowledge comes from the huge, unverified global circulation models favored by the man-made warming activists.


Oh, my, did he say "Unverifed". Oh, my.......


RNR, is this just one man's opinion or a scientific finding? Oh, my!

Such models are indeed "unverified". The only way they could be verified is with the passage of time.

Here's a question for you:

Take a revolver with one bullet in it. I have an unverified statistical model that says you probably won't blow your brains out if you point it at your head and pull the trigger.

If I gave you $100, would you do so once?

[xrayzebra]

^^Only if you put the hundred on the table, do it
yourself six times, then I would.

So your saying, it is such a serious problem, we must
accept their theory. We just afford not too.

Real smart.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

As I have explained before, models evolve over time and are run in historical scenarios millions of times to see if they produce the actual observed historical outcome, as a means of improving accuracy. Modelling, like any engineering, is an iterative process. As the breadth of our knowledge increases, so does the accuracy of our models because we can factor in more variables more accurately. Models will always have confidence intervals and thus produce ranges of probable outcomes (eg. CO2 to 550ppm will result in a 1.1-3.2C increase in global temp).

cooler weather and fewer hurricanes do not lessen global warming trends because weather is not climate

Exactly. Weather is day to day, climate is long term observed trends over decades/centuries/millenia. The semantic games played by climate change skeptics don't change one bit of the scientific evidence.

This fits perfectly with global warming theory anyway, which states that there will be greater variability in weather and more extreme weather events. In Canberra, we also had the warmest August (ie. winter) that I can remember, with a fortnight over 20C (unheard of here - August ave is 12C).

Why are we even discussing this? Day to day or month to month trends don't mean much - trends over decades, centuries and millenia are the timescale on which EGW theory is based.

And as for the source, thanks for citing, but antigreen.blogspot is hardly credible science. It is opinion. In scientific debate, opinion mean nothing. Empirical evidence is the currency.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Ray, how do you explain the oil and coal companies now bowing to the weight of scientific evidence and asking for market certainty (ie. a gloabl cap and trade system or a carbon tax)? It is diametrically against their interests to do so, so why would they unless they accept that the evidence is now so strong that they look like idiots by trying vainly to refute it?

How does that fit in your skepticism? The guys who've fed you all your falsehoods are now admitting they were wrong.

[RandomGuy]

^^Only if you put the hundred on the table, do it
yourself six times, then I would.

So your saying, it is such a serious problem, we must
accept their theory. We just afford not too.

Real smart.

No. The potential consequences of failure in this case are catastrophic.

We have fire insurance on our houses for a reason. We don't expect our houses to burn down, but we pay money in case it does, so that we haven't lost anything.

This is the same concept. We hope and don't expect the earths climate to change catastrophically, but we invest a little bit to lower the possibility that it does.

Is that really unreasonable?

[xrayzebra]

Well RG and RNR. I would like for you to read this little article I lifted from the
same site I posted in post #69 above. Now you tell me if the guy from India has
a point or not.

"IMMEDIATE STEEP REDUCTIONS OF CO2 EMISSIONS TURN OUT TO BE A FANTASY"

Immediate steep global reductions in the emissions of the chief greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, turn out to be a fantasy. This was made plain by a panel discussion today which featured the release of a report by the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies. The panel aimed to outline the "economic case for action on climate change," but the realities of global poverty overwhelmed it.

First, the CEPS report itself with the fetching le, Revisiting EU Policy Options for Tackling Climate Change, was a kind of Stern Review-lite. The Stern Review released by the British government the week before the Nairobi climate conference convened argued that avoiding climate change must begin now and was surprisingly affordable. It achieved that conclusion by among other things positing a very low discount rate so that investments made now to avoid climate change look cheap when compared to the costs of adapting in the future to climate change. The CEPS report also applied a relatively low discount rate and included measures for the "social costs" of externalities and for valuing energy security. The CEPS report amounted to interesting intellectual exercise that focused on the sorts of expensive actions that already rich countries can afford to take even if they turn out to be economic dead ends.

The CEPS report made the magnitude of the proposed reductions clear. In order to make sure that the CO2 concentrations do not rise beyond 550 parts per million in the atmosphere by 2050, the current annual level of global emissions of 33 billion tons of CO2 would have to be slashed by 25 billion tons by 2050. A drop of around 70-80 percent. However, if no emissions reductions policies are put in place, the CEPS report notes that global emissions would rise from 33 billion tons of CO2 today to 51 billion tons by 2050. For comparison, the European Union's Kyoto Protocol reductions amount to 400 million tons of CO2 by 2012.

Next, Surya P. Sethi, the principal energy policy advisor to the Indian government, showed that the CEPS study is basically an exercise in climate change policy whimsy. Sethi began by reviewing the development challenges faced by India. He pointed out that 50 percent of its people have no access to electricity; cooking was the largest use of energy for 75 percent of households; and 70 percent of cooking was done using traditional biomass, wood and dung. In addition, 35 percent of India's people live on less than $1 per day and 80 percent live on less than $2 per day. He pointed out that lack of access to modern energy supplies correlates with high infant mortality, low life expectancies, high gender inequality, and low literacy rates.

Sethi then noted that India's economy must grow at 8 percent per year for the next 25 years in order to lift the bottom 40 percent of its people to a decent standard of living. He pointed out that India was falling behind in achieving it Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty due to persistent energy shortages. "Energy is central for development. Our energy consumption must go up," declared Sethi. Today India uses 471 million tons oil equivalent (MTOE) of energy each year of which 327 MTOE is primary commercial energy. The rest comes from burning traditional biomass. In order to achieve its poverty reduction goals, Sethi asserted that India needs to grow its energy supplies by 4.3 to 5.1 percent per year and to consume 1536 to 1887 MTOE by 2031. (For comparison the US consumes around 2300 MTOE annually now.) "India will need to tap all available energy supplies and pursue all available energy efficiency technologies. For India it is not a choice between energy supply and energy efficiency. It is both." said Sethi.

Sethi contrasted India's current total primary energy supply (TPES) per capita energy use with other countries. TPES per capita is calculated as the energy equivalent of the amount of oil in kilograms (kgoe) a person consumes per year. In China the amount is 1090 kgoe, Brazil 1094, Denmark 3852, UK 3906, US 7835, Japan 4052, and the world average per capita energy use is 1688. Where does India stand? The average Indian consumes the equivalent of 439 kilograms of oil. The eight percent annual economic growth that Sethi hopes India will experience over the quarter century would mean that the average Indian would be consuming between 1065 and 1279 kgoe in 2031. That's about what the average Chinese uses now and is only 70 percent of world's current per capita average.

Sethi said that India could cut projected CO2 emissions between 2012 and 2017 by 550 million tons at an additional cost of $25 billion for more energy efficient technologies. However, he pointed out that the Indian government spent that amount on its social and poverty reduction goals in the last five years. He then pointedly added, "I do not have the funds for both. My choice is to improve the lot of India's poor or reduce CO2 emissions so the developed world can breathe easier." Paying for the new energy efficiency technologies would also raise the price of power and thereby delay its delivery to the poor. Besides, Sethi observed, Indians already pay the highest rate in purchasing power parity terms for energy in the world. In fact, the average household spends one and a half times more on energy than it does on food. Finally, Sethi told me that even after implementing the most efficient energy conservation technologies over the next 25 years, India will still be emitting 4 times more CO2 in 2031 than it does today.

A Swede in the audience reminded Sethi that the Stern Review had declared that urgent action toward reducing CO2 emissions is needed now. Sethi's response made it clear that restricting the access to energy by world's poor was unacceptable. "You cannot tackle climate change unless you make dramatic lifestyle changes in the West," replied Sethi. I think it is a safe bet that few Westerners will decide for the sake of the climate to live like poor Indians. So humanity will have little choice but to adapt to any future climate change. Fortunately, economic growth makes that easier to do.

Tomorrow-the environment ministers finally gather here in Nairobi to ratify and complete what their underlings have been negotiating for the past week which, as far as I can tell right now, isn't much. A couple of side events intrigue me so I may cover sessions on climate and forests, the role of policies the enable adaptation to climate change once the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012, and another that asks if it is time to set a long-term global climate. The last is basically asking where humanity wants to set the planet's thermostat.

Source

[Winehole23]

Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.

“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/sc...mate.html?_r=1

[Winehole23]

Nike, which has more than 700 factories in 49 countries, many in Southeast Asia, is also speaking out because of extreme weather that is disrupting its supply chain. In 2008, floods temporarily shut down four Nike factories in Thailand, and the company remains concerned about rising droughts in regions that produce cotton, which the company uses in its athletic clothes.


“That puts less cotton on the market, the price goes up, and you have market volatility,” said Hannah Jones, the company’s vice president for sustainability and innovation. Nike has already reported the impact of climate change on water supplies on its financial risk disclosure forms to the Securities and Exchange Commission.


Both Nike and Coke are responding internally: Coke uses water-conservation technologies and Nike is using more synthetic material that is less dependent on weather conditions. At Davos and in global capitals, the companies are also lobbying governments to enact environmentally friendly policies.

same

[boutons_deux]

"companies are also lobbying governments to enact environmentally friendly policies."

as long as the companies profits aren't reduced. All y'all go fix the environment that we up.