consequences of global warming

Getting it partly right on weather vs. climate

by Michael Fumento on February 19, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

Eugene Robinson in today’s Washington Post protests that global warming skeptics are using the current (though very long) cold snap in the mid-Atlantic region, which encompasses the nation’s capital, to confuse weather – a short-term phenomenon – with climate.

Robinson, who last year won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, correctly notes that, “the Earth is really, really big. It’s so big that it can be cold here and warm elsewhere – and this is the key concept – at the same time. Even if it were unusually cold throughout the continental United States, that still represents less than 2 percent of the Earth’s surface.”

True enough. And he adds:

Those who want to use our harsh winter to ‘disprove’ the theory that the planet’s atmosphere is warming should realize that anecdotal evidence always cuts both ways. Before the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, crews were using earth-movers and aircraft to deposit snow on the ski runs – the winter had been unusually warm. Preliminary data from climate scientists indicate that January, in terms of global temperatures, was actually hotter than usual. Revelers participating in Rio de Janeiro’s annual carnival, which ended Tuesday, sweltered in atypical heat, with temperatures above 100 degrees. Fortunately, the custom during carnival is not to wear much in the way of clothing.

Again, true enough. And regrettably I once again missed going to the Rio Carnival, but hope springs eternal.

But here’s what he doesn’t say. His people have long played exactly the same game.

There’s a wonderful website that keep a more or less comprehensive list of all the things that warmists have attributed to “global climate change” – and mind you, the very term “global climate change’ was coined precisely to be able to tie any change, including things associated with cooling – to the effects of greenhouse gases. One glance at the site blows you away. I want you to click on this link right now and not continue with this blog until you have.

No. Stop. You didn’t click on the link. Do it now.

Okay, the point is made, isn’t it? It includes everything from “acne” to “yellow fever” with “short-nosed dogs endangered” in between. And there are lots of instances of weather change.

In fact, time and again cold weather and its fall-out, including blizzards, have been attributed to “global climate change.”

This is from an article of mine that appeared 13 years ago:

But there it was, the cover of the Jan. 22 Newsweek: “Blizzards, floods & hurricanes: Blame global warming.” There also was the New York Times front-page article by William K. Stevens headlined “Blame global warming for the blizzard” and a nationally syndicated article by environmentalist Jessica Matthews that ran under titles such as “Brrr, global warming brings our blizzard.”

Moreover, I note. Moreover, I say for emphasis, while this was a perfect opportunity for Robinson to show he was playing fair, he could have pointed out they’re doing it even now.

Moreover, Robinson could have seen it in his own newspaper from just days ago.

There it was, right in the headline of a column by uber-environmentalist Bill McKibben, “Washington’s Snowstorms, Brought to You by Global Warming.”

Time magazine also argues “climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.”

And of course I could go on and on, but point made.

If you live in the mid-Atlantic, don’t go out without a coat. But hypocrisy is a mantle never worn well.

U.N. Climate panel pummeled for misinformation, high and low

by Michael Fumento on February 15, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

From the very top of the earth to the bottom, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just can’t get it right.

I recently wrote of how the panel’s latest (2007) report, the one that split the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, was finally caught on what was an obviously false statement: That the glaciers atop the Himalayas would be melted by 2035 because of global warming. It would take an incredible amount of sustained heat to do that. The only question was what source the panel used, and that proved to be an off-the-cuff assertion by a global warming activist as reprinted in an environmentalist journal – with a mathematical error to boot!

Now it’s been revealed that the panel grossly overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level.

Its latest report says 55 percent of the country is below sea level, leaving it highly prone to flooding along rivers that would ostensible rise with warming temperatures. But Netherlanders can take off their clogs and relax. According to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, just 26 percent of the country is below sea level and 29 percent susceptible to river flooding. You can see a lot of pretty maps regarding the subject by the Dutch Ministry of Transport here.

The IPCC insists that it’s a minor point in a report 3,000 words long and doesn’t affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe. Of course it doesn’t, any more than does the Himalayan nonsense.

But this latest wooden shoe to the butt again illustrates that this allegedly thoroughly documented reports by the allegedly top experts in world has a nasty tendency to simply include anything that will make its case seem stronger. Taken in light of the recent “Climategate” revelations that scientists who came to the “wrong” conclusions had their materially systematically excluded from the report and other IPCC documents, it shows just how shaky this house of cards is.

Roundup of wisdom regarding the current weather icebox and the global warming debate

by Michael Fumento on February 14, 2010

in Global Warming

The Washington Post Sunday edition devotes a page to the discussion of what impact the current cold snap and immense amount of snow (a record in the nation’s capital) has and should have on the global warming debate generally and legislation specifically. Most of the space goes to the liberal but often thoughtful Dana Milbank, with snippets to others.

Score one for both science and humor when Milbank asserts “As a scientific proposition, claiming that heavy snow in the mid-Atlantic debunks global warming theory is about as valid as claiming that the existence of John Edwards debunks the theory of evolution.”

He’s right of course. For the zillionth time, weather and climate are two entirely different things. A hot year with a drought doesn’t prove the globe is heating up, much less than the alleged heating up is man-made. But the greens make such claims time and again. It’s no more valid for other to say a cold, snowy winter shows the opposite. That’s just the point Milbank goes on to make:

Still, there’s some rough justice in the conservatives’ cheap shots. In Washington’s blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard.

For years, climate-change activists have argued by anecdote to make their case. Gore, in his famous slide shows, ties human-caused global warming to increasing hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought and the spread of mosquitoes, pine beetles and disease. It’s not that Gore is wrong about these things. The problem is that his storm stories have conditioned people to expect an endless worldwide heat wave, when in fact the changes so far are subtle.

Other environmentalists have undermined the cause with claims bordering on the outlandish; they’ve blamed global warming for shrinking sheep in Scotland, more shark and cougar attacks, genetic changes in squirrels, an increase in kidney stones and even the crash of Air France Flight 447. [There's a website that lists over 600 things that have allegedly been caused by global warming, from "acne" to "yellow fever."] When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions about Washington’s snow — such as the Virginia GOP ad urging people to call two Democratic congressmen “and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend.”

Says Milbank, “Argument-by-anecdote isn’t working.”

The Post then asked “political and environmental experts whether the record snowstorms buried climate change legislation this year.” Here are some excerpts:

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Environmental Protection Agency administrator from 2001 to 2003; governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001; chair of the Republican Leadership Council

It shouldn’t, but it will. Among the reasons winter storms will make this issue more politically challenging are overreach and simplification – on both sides of the debate. “An Inconvenient Truth” brought the issue of climate change to the fore, but many of the charts implying that the world’s end is near were overly dramatic.

KENNETH P. GREEN AND STEVEN F. HAYWARD
Resident scholar and F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow, respectively, at the American Enterprise Institute

The corpus of climate legislation was already cooling before Snowmageddon. The cold wind that buried its chances this year didn’t come off the snow burying Washington: It came off horrific unemployment reports, lackluster economic growth, massive Tea Party rallies and vicious town hall meetings. After the breakdown in Copenhagen, the explosion of “Climategate” and the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats’ rapid pivot to focus on jobs was inevitable.

DAVID G. HAWKINS
Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate programs

Sorry, nothing worth excerpting!

DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
Democratic pollster and author

The recent bout of wintry weather and the overall political climate have almost certainly killed climate-change legislation this year.

The science that supports the causes and effects of global warming has become increasingly open to doubt and question. The weather this winter, particularly in the past week or so, makes it more difficult to argue that global warming is an imminent danger and suggests that global warming may well not be as inexorable a force as some believe.

Further, the political downside to supporting the legislation is unambiguous. Americans are primarily concerned with jobs and the economy. Any significant effort spent on other legislation will reignite charges, originally hurled during the lengthy and unsuccessful health-care debate, that the White House and Democrats in Congress are out of touch with voters’ needs.

EMILY FIGDOR
Federal global warming program director of Environment America

The snowstorms that ground the nation’s capital to a halt only underscored the need for bold action to fight global warming. Heavier, more frequent snowstorms are just what scientists predict in a warming world, as extreme weather events – whether blizzards or heat waves – become more common.

Well! I guess there’s something to be said for predictability!

ED ROGERS
White House staffer to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; chairman of BGR Group

There is global climate science and then there is the Global Warming Movement. The movement hijacked the science a long time ago, and it has had its share of setbacks lately. Its leaders have tried to stiff-arm their way past errors, lies, fraud, pointless tax increase proposals and some really peculiar posing in Copenhagen.

Now they have suffered a coup de grace: public ridicule brought on by a record-breaking blizzard blasting their East Coast home base. The movement was already dead in Congress for 2010 (its climate-change bill has been sidelined), but Snowmageddon buried it. How could it be that heat waves evidenced global warming, but so did a cold wave? The public isn’t buying it anymore.

In November, the public will give a cold shoulder to a bunch of intellectually frozen hypocrites who demand economic sacrifice to solve a problem that voters don’t see or feel. At least for a while, the left will have to think up a new way to dictate a lifestyle for the rest of us. Maybe now the science can continue without the clumsy overreaching of the movement’s priestly class.

And finally, on a different page, uber-environmentalist Bill McKibben argues that, yes, the cold weather and blizzards are the result of global warming. So it goes.

Cold, bitter winter is “proof” of global warming

by Michael Fumento on January 28, 2010 · 2 comments

in Global Warming

“Winter offered as proof of warming” declares a headline in the print edition of the Washington Post, although perhaps the irony of that  later struck the editors and they softened it a bit in the online edition to “Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says.”

Nothing especially outrageous here. The enviros have been doing this for years; indeed, it’s why they adopted the term “global climate change” so that any change in climate or even just weather – which obviously this is – can be portrayed as a result of man’s nefarious activities in putting greenhouse gases into the air. The report, incidentally, is from the National Wildlife Federation that makes money by promoting global warming in the same way that GM makes money selling trucks.

But folks are having trouble buying it. A poll released Mondaypoll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked respondents to rank 21 issues in terms of priority. Global warming came in dead last. It’s come in last before, but this time just 28 percent of those surveyed list global warming as a top priority, down from 35 percent in 2008.

Alarmism Has Consequences

by Iain Murray on March 2, 2009 · 4 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Precaution & Risk, Sanctimony

In a magnificent display of self-delusion, the green movement is holding a demonstration at the Capitol’s power plant today to protest the continued use of coal to keep people warm. Although I’d love to put the continued operation of Congress at the mercy of the weather, there is a more important point here. Coal is Affordable energy increases people’s income, keeps them in jobs, and keeps them alive. Here is a brief summary of some important research on the subject.

    The Human Consequences of Global Warming Alarmism

• Raising energy costs kills. According to a Johns Hopkins study, replacing ¾ of US coal-based energy with higher priced energy would lead to 150,000 extra premature deaths annually in the US alone.
• Reducing emissions hits the poorest hardest. According to the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, a cap and trade system aimed at reducing emissions by just 15 percent will cost the poorest quintile 3 percent of their annual household income, while benefiting the richest quintile.
• Raising energy costs loses jobs. According to a Penn State study, replacing 2/3 of US coal-based energy with higher priced energy will cost almost 3 million jobs, and perhaps over 4 million.

    More detailed points

• We are already seeing the adverse effects of global warming policies in the ethanol debacle. Ethanol mandates have not just contributed to the spike in the price of gas, but have also increased food prices. Steaks are up 5.5% from a year ago, chickens up 7.7%. These increased costs force the poorest to make hard choices.
• The ethanol mandates also demonstrate that consumer behavior can’t be fine tuned. As fuel and food prices increased, the choices people made showed that they sacrifice food for fuel. A survey by the Food Marketing Institute found that more than 40% of consumers changed their food-buying habits in response to high gas prices. That illustrates that energy is one of the most important purchases they make.
• Coal production is also fundamental to the US economy. The Penn State study found that by 2015, coal production, transportation and consumption will contribute $1 trillion to the US economy and provide 6.8 million jobs and $362 billion in household income.
• That same study shows pronounced regional variations. If coal production was curtailed by 2/3rds, California would be hard hit. It would lose $58 million in economic activity. California households would lose $22 million a year. And 339,000 Californians would lose their jobs.
• But the states of the Central US would be worst hit – Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas would lose 1.5 million jobs between them.
• Legislators must consider the unintended effects of their actions. If coal production is to be stamped out, the railroad industry in this country would probably collapse along with it. Without rail transport, other bulk commodities would rise in price. And they would increase congestion on the roads, which don’t have enough capacity to deal with freight transport as it is.

    Background: Lives Lost

The Johns Hopkins study (Harvey Brenner, “Health Benefits of Low Cost Energy: An Econometric Case Study,” Environmental Manager, November 2005) found the following:

An econometric model was applied to a hypothetical regulatory case study, whereby U.S. coal was replaced by alternative higher-cost fuels such as natural gas for the purpose of electricity generation. The model was used to estimate the premature mortality associated with increased unemployment and reduced personal income. The adverse impacts on household income and unemployment due to the substitution of higher-cost energy sources were estimated to result in 195,000 additional premature deaths annually

The results from this hypothetical case study may be scaled to apply to specific policy initiatives affecting the U.S. coal-based electricity generation sector. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that climate change bills currently before the U.S. Congress—such as Senate Amendment No. 2028, rejected by the Senate in 2003 and again in June 2005—could result in the displacement of up to 78% of U.S. coal-based electricity generation with higher-cost energy sources. The methodology employed here suggests that, absent any direct mitigation measures to offset expected decreases in employment and income, implementation of such measures could result in an annual increase of premature mortality rates by more than 150,000.

    Background: Job, Income and Economic Impacts

The Penn State study (Rose, A.Z., and Wei, D., “The Economic Impact of Coal Utilization and Displacement in the Continental United States, 2015,” Pennsylvania State University, July 2006) found the following:

Assigning equal weight to each of the two energy price scenarios, we estimate that U.S. coal-fueled electric generation in 2015 will contribute:

• $1.05 trillion (2005 $) in gross economic output;
• $362 billion in annual household incomes, and
• 6.8 million jobs.

We also estimated the prospective net economic impacts of the “displacement” of coalfueled electricity generation at assumed levels of 66% and 33% from a projected 2015 base.

These levels of displacement are consistent with some of the potential impacts of major environmental policy initiatives in climate change or other areas. In these cases, we again calculated backward linkage and price differential effects to determine potential negative impacts on each state’s economy.

Additionally, we calculated potential positive economic benefits due to the operation of replacement electricity generation of various types. In all states, the net effect of displacing coal-based electricity was negative for the “high-price” scenarios, and in nearly all states, the net effect was negative for the “low-price” scenarios…

Assigning equal weight to the high- and low-price scenarios, we estimate the average impacts of displacing 66% of coal-fueled generation in 2015 at:

• $371 billion (2005 $) reduction in gross economic output;
• $142 billion reduction of annual household incomes; and
• 2.7 million job losses.

Assigning equal weight to the high- and low-price scenarios, we estimate the average impacts of displacing 33% of coal-based generation in 2015 at:

• $166 billion (2005 $) reduction in gross economic output;
• $64 billion reduction of annual household incomes; and
• 1.2 million job losses.