Questions answered

By Sherry Seethaler

July 19, 2007

QUESTION: Given the amount of fossil fuel being burned, one would expect a measurable consumption of atmospheric oxygen, where the emissions are CO2 and water vapor. Will this occur eventually?

Also, barometer readings that measure atmospheric pressure are not changing. Where are the cumulative emissions of millions of tons of greenhouse gases?

ANSWER: Only within the past two decades has it become possible to measure the small changes in oxygen concentration due to the burning of fossil fuels. These measurements are difficult because the background concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is so large. Oxygen makes up nearly 21 percent of the atmosphere, a concentration more than 500 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.

Very sensitive measurements show that the burning of fossil fuels is consuming atmospheric oxygen. The decline is about a ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Combustion of fossil fuels yields carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O). The atmospheric concentrations of both gases are increasing. But because the oxygen atoms in both gases come from atmospheric oxygen, only a portion of the emissions (the carbon and hydrogen from fossil fuels) is “new” mass being added to the atmosphere.

The mass of the atmosphere would increase by the mass of fossil fuels burned if the chemical equation for combustion were the sole factor to be considered. However, only about two-thirds of the carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere. The oceans absorb the remaining carbon dioxide, which reacts with water to form carbonic acid.

Taking into account the uptake of carbon dioxide by the ocean, the mass of carbon dioxide and water vapor being produced is roughly equal to the mass of oxygen being consumed. Although these calculations are not precise because the burning of fossil fuels also involves other chemical reactions, any pressure changes caused by the burning of fossil fuels are small compared with normal fluctuations in atmospheric pressure.

On the other hand, global climate change has had measurable effects on the density of different layers of the atmosphere. As Earth's surface has warmed by a fraction of a degree, at higher altitudes (30 to 50 miles), the atmosphere has cooled by several degrees and contracted. Since this pulls the intervening layers downward, the density of the atmosphere where satellites orbit (above 100 miles) has declined. With less drag, satellites will stay aloft longer, but so will potentially damaging spacecraft debris.

Sherry Seethaler is a UCSD science writer and educator.

---

me@rescam.org

Up Against the Warming Zealots

Martin Durkin says his British documentary rejecting the idea of human-caused global warming has survived last week's roasting by the ABC | July 21, 2007

WHEN I agreed to make The Great Global Warming Swindle, I was warned a middle-class fatwa would be placed on my head.

So I wasn't shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it was broadcast on ABC television last week, although I was impressed at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted, by the response of the Australian public.

The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I have been trying to understand why.

First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are told the global warming theory is robust. They say you'd have to be off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it's definitely true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish documentary-maker - who clearly must be as mad as a snake - who steps out of line?

I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical scrutiny by the media. After all, it's the theory of global warming, not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate policy on its head.

The apparent unwillingness of Jones and others at the ABC to give airtime to a counterargument, the tactics used to minimize the ostensible damage done by the film, the evident animosity towards those who questioned global warming: all of this served to give viewers a glimpse of what it was like for scientists who dared to disagree with the hallowed doctrine.

Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on.

All this backward-looking bigotry has found perfect expression in the idea of man-made climate disaster. It has cohered a bunch of disparate reactionary prejudices (anti-car, anti-supermarkets, anti-globalisation) into a single unquestionable truth and cause. So when you have a dig at global warming, you commit a grievous breach of social etiquette. Among the chattering classes you're a leper.

But why are the supporters of global warming so defensive? After all, the middle classes are usually confident, bordering on smug.

As I found when I examined the basic data, they have plenty to be defensive about. Billions of dollars of public money have been thrown at global warming, yet the hypothesis is crumbling around their ears.

To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.

Then there's the ice-core data, the jewel in the crown of global warming theory. It shows there's a connection between carbon dioxide and temperature: see Al Gore's movie. But what Gore forgets to mention is that the connection is the wrong way around; temperature leads, CO2 follows.

Then there's the precious "hockey stick". This was the famous graph that purported to show global temperature flat-lining for 1000 years, then rising during the 19th and 20th centuries. It magicked away the Medieval warm period and made the recent warming look alarming, instead of just part of the general toing and froing of the Earth's climate.

But then researchers took the computer program that produced the hockey stick graph and fed it random data. Bingo, out popped hockey stick shapes every time. (See the report by Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Virginia and others.)

In a humiliating climb down, the IPCC has had to drop the hockey stick from its reports, though it can still be seen in Gore's movie.

And finally, there are those pesky satellites. If greenhouse gases were the cause of warming, then the rate of warming should have been greater, higher up in the Earth's atmosphere (the bit known as the troposphere). But all the satellite and balloon data says the exact opposite. In other words, the best observational data we have flatly contradicts the whole bally idea of man-made climate change.

They concede that CO2 cannot have caused the warming at the beginning of the 20th century, which was greater and steeper than the recent warming. They can't explain the cooling from 1940 to the mid-'70s. What are they left with? Some mild warming in the '80s and '90s that does not appear to have been caused by greenhouse gases.

The whole damned theory is in tatters. No wonder they're defensive.

The man-made global warming parade, on one level, has been a phenomenal success. There isn't a political party or important public body or large corporation that doesn't feel compelled to pay lip service. There are scientists and journalists (a surprising number) who have built careers championing the cause. There's more money going into global warming research than there is chasing a cure for cancer. Many important people and institutions have staked their reputations on it. There's a lot riding on this theory. And it has bugger-all to do with sea levels. That is why the warmers greeted my film with red glowing eyes.

Last week on the ABC they closed ranks. They were not interested in a genuine debate. They wanted to shut it down. And thousands of wonderful, sane, bolshie Australian viewers saw right through it.

God bless Australia. The DVD will be out soon.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

More Fun:

Open Letter To Kansas School Board

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.



In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

P.S. I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget. Remember, we are all His creatures.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Feel-good politics of global warming

ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
NEWSWEEK

July 25, 2007

My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a “hippie car,” and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are “hippies.” Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But like hippies, they're making a loud lifestyle statement: We're saving the planet; what are you doing?

This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius' advantage is its distinct design that pronounces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It's a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can't be distinguished from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.

The Prius is, I think, a parable for the broader politics of global warming. Prius politics is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Politicians pander to “green” constituents who want to feel good about themselves. Grandiose goals are declared. But measures to achieve them are deferred – or don't exist.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the champ of Prius politics, having declared that his state will cut greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (about 25 percent below today's levels) and is aiming for an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. However, the policies to reach these goals aren't yet formulated; that task has been left to the Air Resources Board. Many mandates wouldn't take effect until 2012, presumably after Schwarzenegger has left office. As for the 2050 goal, it's like his movies: make-believe. Barring big technological breakthroughs, the chances of reaching it are zero.

But it's respectable make-believe. Schwarzenegger made the covers of Time and Newsweek. The press laps this up; “green” is the new “yellow journalism,” says media critic Jack Shafer. Naturally, there's a bandwagon effect. At least 35 states have “climate action plans.” None of this will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from present levels.

Even if California achieved its 2020 goal (dubious) and the United States followed (more dubious), population and economic growth elsewhere would overwhelm any emission cuts. In 2050, global population is expected to hit 9.4 billion, up about 40 percent from today. At modest growth rates, the world economy will triple by midcentury.

Just to hold greenhouse emissions steady requires massive gains in efficiency or shifts to non-fossil fuels. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that, under present trends, worldwide energy use will rise 45 percent from 2003 to 2020. China accounts for a third of the increase, all developing countries for four-fifths. Even after assuming huge improvements in energy efficiency (better light bulbs, etc.), McKinsey still projects an increase of 13 percent in global energy demand.

But we've got to start somewhere, right? OK, here's what Congress should do: (a) gradually increase fuel economy standards for new vehicles by at least 15 miles per gallon; (b) raise the gasoline tax over the same period by $1 to $2 a gallon to strengthen the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and curb driving; (c) eliminate tax subsidies (mainly the mortgage interest rate deduction) for housing, which push Americans toward ever-bigger homes. (Note: If you move to a home 25 percent larger and then increase energy efficiency by 25 percent, you don't save energy.)

I support these measures, because we should do them anyway. We should limit dependence on insecure foreign oil. Tax subsidies cause Americans to over-invest in oversized homes. But practical politicians won't enact these policies, except perhaps for higher fuel economy standards. They'd be too unpopular.

Prius politics promises to conquer global warming without public displeasure. Gains will occur invisibly through business mandates, regulations and subsidies. That's why higher fuel economy standards are acceptable. They seem painless. It sounds too good to be true – and is. Costs are disguised. Mandates and subsidies will give rise to protected markets. Companies (utilities, auto companies, investment banks) will manipulate rules for competitive advantage. There will be more opportunity for private profit than public gain.

The government's support for ethanol is instructive. In 2006, 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop went for ethanol; the share is rising. Driven by demand for feed and fuel, corn prices have soared. With food costs increasing, inflation has worsened. The program is mostly an income transfer from consumers to producers and ethanol refiners. Americans' oil use and greenhouse gases haven't declined.

Deep reductions in greenhouse gases might someday occur if both plug-in hybrid vehicles and underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants become commercially viable. Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

---

me@rescam.org

US to hold world talks on climate change

The Courier Mail, Aus
From correspondents in Washington DC
August 04, 2007 07:49am


US President George W. Bush has unveiled plans for global warming talks next month that will bring together the world's biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases.

Under pressure for tougher action against climate change, Mr Bush invited the European Union, the United Nations, Australia and 10 other industrial and developing countries to the September 27-28 meeting in Washington to work toward setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions.

Mr Bush was following through on his pledge in late May to convene a series of conferences with economic powers responsible for producing most of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The United States is the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only G8 country outside Kyoto, the UN-sponsored plan for cutting greenhouse gases. Australia is also not bound by the protocol.

Some environmentalists voiced scepticism about the conference, seeing it as a bid to deflect attention from UN efforts and evade international calls for strict US limits on emissions.

"In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it," Mr Bush said in his invitation letter.

He insisted the United States "is committed to collaborating with other major economies" on a new global framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But a senior US official said the administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps. Many climate experts say that without binding US targets, the chance for significant progress is limited.

Mr Bush agreed with leaders at a Group of Eight summit in June to make "substantial" but unspecified reductions in greenhouse emissions and to negotiate a new global climate pact that would broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond its 2012 expiration.

But Mr Bush has refused to sign up to numerical targets, insisting it would hurt US business as long as fast-growing countries like India and China remained exempt.

China and India are invited to the conference, together with Japan, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. The EU will include representatives from France, Germany, Italy and Britain.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the meeting, and US officials are confident all invitees will attend.

"We welcome US engagement in the international efforts to combat climate change," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Yvo de Boer, the head of the Bonn-based UN Climate Change Secretariat, also praised the planned talks but said the proof would be in the outcome.

John Coequyt, a policy analyst with Greenpeace, expressed concern the Washington conference would be used to "erode support for the process that's strengthening at the UN".

The talks, where the Bush administration will control the agenda, will take place three days after a UN summit on climate change in New York in which US policy on global warming may come under sharp criticism.

So the question I have is this: Will this meeting produce anything useful (assuming global warming/climate change is real)? Or will it just produce a lot of hot air?

---

Never surrender and never give up. In the darkest hour there is always hope.

Tangerines per Gallon

By David Foster, July 29, 2007

In a meeting with environmentalists, Elizabeth Edwards talked about the importance of buying locally-produced foods:

“We’ve been moving back to ‘buy local,’” Mrs. Edwards said, outlining a trade policy that “acknowledges the carbon footprint” of transporting fruit.

“I live in North Carolina. I’ll probably never eat a tangerine again,” she said, speaking of a time when the fruit is reaches the price that it “needs” to be.

Being the kind and considerate person that I am, I don’t want the Edwards family to unnecessarily forego the pleasures of tangerine-eating. Therefore, I’ll try to help them out by calculating a vital economic and environmental parameter which shall be known as tangerines per gallon.

This is a very rough and preliminary analysis; tangerine experts and transportation experts are invited to chime in with more data.

Tangerines weigh about 1/4 pound each. As near as I can tell, the tangerines consumed in the U.S. come mostly from Florida, California, and Spain. There are four possible ways for them to get to market: truck, train, ship, and air.

According to the Association of American Railroads, trains move freight with an average efficiency of 423 ton-miles per gallon. The AAR also puts railroad fuel efficiency at 3-4 times that of trucking. I’ll use 400 tmpg for rail, and 100 tmpg for truck.

The Edwards residence is near Chapel Hill, NC. Let’s move some tangerines to his local store–first, from Florida. For this simplistic analysis, assume the shipment originates in La Belle, FL, which is 763 miles away from Chapel Hill–I’ll round it up to 800. So we have 8 gallons of fuel used per ton of tangerines, or 1000 tangerines per gallon.

If the shipment goes by rail, the TPG number will be much higher. The rail haul will consume only 2 gallons of fuel per ton, but I’ll assume 100 miles of truck shipment to get the fruit to and from the railheads, adding 1 more gallon. We’re now up to more than 2600 tangerines per gallon.

For West Coast tangerines, I calculate 266 TPG by truck and 941 TPG by rail. (Some companies is making a major push to get a higher proportion of the west-to-east fruit/vegetable traffic moved to the rails.)

But what if the Edwards tangerines come from Spain? We’re now talking ship or plane, and the fuel consumption estimates for these modes are harder to pin down. Combining estimates from several sources, I feel we can conservatively estimate 500 ton-miles per gallon for sea transportation and 7 tmpg for air freight.

According to an analysis from 1998, virtually all U.S. tangerine imports from Spain come by sea. So let’s ship the Edwards tangerines from Valencia and bring them in at Wilmington, NC. This should be about 5000 miles, consuming 10 gallons per ton, and haul them 160 miles to Chapel Hill, for another 2 gallons. Result: 666 tangerines per gallon.

If the tangerines do go by air–which seems unlikely–then fuel consumption from Valencia to Charlotte will be about 714 gallons, with another gallon for trucking to Chapel Hill. Result: 11 tangerines per gallon,.

So, it seems likely to me that the Edwards family is getting somewhere between 400 and 1000 tangerines per gallon. (Truck from Florida, blended truck/rail from West Coast, or ship from Spain.) Worst case–air freight from Spain–they’re still using less than a tenth of a gallon per tangerine consumed.

It’s interesting to compare these results with the “local” case. Suppose that a miracle occurred and tangerines began to grow in North Carolina. Even then, though, it’s doubtful that there would be tangerine groves adjacent to the Edwards place. If the tangerines are raised by a farmer 60 miles away, and he brings 500 lb of them to market in a pickup truck getting 20 mpg, then he is using 3 gallons of fuel each way–6 for the round trip–which equates to 333 tangerines per gallon. This is worse than truck from Florida, worse than rail from California, and worse than ship from Spain. Obviously, the numbers for the local alternative would improve–a lot–if we assume that the pickup truck is actually filled to capacity, or nearly so, but that’s not always easy to do under conditions of small-scale production and distribution.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

How Organic Food Contributes to Climate Change
By Robert Wager, 08 Aug 2007


As the world's policymakers and business elites look to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one economic sector due for a closer look is agriculture. What many people presently view as a 'green' agriculture choice is, upon closer examination, deeply environmentally suspect.

Most people do not realize that agriculture is a major contributor to atmospheric CO2. Further, different types of agriculture have very different CO2 emission profiles. The widespread adoption of modern agricultural biotechnology products have allowed farmers to maintain yields while reducing CO2 emissions.

Like all animals, soil micro-organisms "breathe out" CO2. In fact soil respiration contributes approximately 20 percent of all land-based CO2 emissions.

The United Nations estimates a 2-5 degree C increase in global temperature in the next hundred years. Couple this with research that showed a 5 degree C increase doubles CO2 emission from soil and it becomes clear agriculture must be included in future CO2 reduction strategies.

Soil management by farmers is important. Tillage practices can have a major effect on the levels of soil CO2 emissions.

Organic agriculture controls weeds primarily by ploughing. The microbial respiration rate is increased every time a plough churns up the soil. When compared to no-tillage, mould-board ploughing doubles CO2 emissions from the soil.

Along with microbial production of CO2, tractors burn huge amounts of diesel fuel pulling metal ploughs through the soil. Research has shown that a conversion to no-tillage practices can save up to 32 litres/hectare. With no-tillage farming practiced over millions of hectares, there is a huge reduction in the amount of CO2 produced by tractors.

The UN estimates that the conversion from conventional ploughing to no-tillage agriculture would store carbon in the soil at 300 kg/hectare/year. The US and Canada are world leaders in no-tillage agriculture. The advent of genetically modified (GM) herbicide tolerant (HT) crops has allowed farmers to use highly effective, low environmental impact herbicides instead of the plough for weed control.

Over the past ten years US farmers have eagerly adopted GM crops with 84 percent of corn, 90 percent of soy and 85 percent of cotton now planted with GM varieties. In Canada, farmers have increased no-tillage canola from 0.8 million hectares to 2.6 million hectares. Ninety five percent of this acreage is planted with GM herbicide tolerant canola.

Like tillage practices, the type of fertilizer used can have a large effect on CO2 emissions. Conventional agriculture relies on synthetic fertilizers while organic farms primarily use manure. Synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers depress soil respiration rates. Conversely, research has shown that the use of manure fertilizer increases soil respiration rates and therefore CO2 emissions by 2-3 fold.

Some have suggested a complete conversion to organic agriculture. But, on average, organic agriculture produces 30 percent less per hectare than conventional farms. If we were to convert entirely to organic agriculture, we would need at least 30 percent more farmland. Significant amounts of the remaining wilderness would have to be ploughed under to maintain current food production levels.

The conversion to organic farming would also require a tremendous increase in animals to generate manure fertilizer. Anyone who has ever been near the back end of a cow knows this would significantly increase a different greenhouse gas.

The organic food industry proudly states double digit increases in sales each of the last few years. However the world is not black and white and research has demonstrated there are significant environmental consequences of this success.

Organic farming practices generate significantly greater CO2 emissions while producing less than conventional agriculture. On the other hand, growing genetically modified crops allow the farmer to reduce CO2 emissions while maintaining yields.

Research has demonstrated soil and water conservation benefits of genetically modified HT crops. It is now clear that these products of modern biotechnology can also help farmers reduce agriculture based CO2 emissions.

The public is calling for "greener" options in every industry. But when it comes to agricultural CO2 emissions, the "greener" option may not be what people think.

The author is a technician at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo BC Canada.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Wrongly subsidizing corn, ethanol

PETER SCHRAG
THE SACRAMENTO BEE

August 10, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must welcome the heat she's getting for wobbling on the farm and energy bills. Having caved in to Detroit on fuel economy standards and compromised with Midwest agro-plutocrats on crop subsidies for millionaires, she's shown that she's more a pragmatic Baltimore pol like her father than a knee-jerk San Francisco liberal. That'll serve her well.

Both the farm and the energy bills won approval in the House in the past couple of weeks. Both are monuments to waste, stupidity and policy distortions going back generations – longer in the case of the ag subsidies.

Pelosi says she hopes the Senate energy bill, which contains a sharp increase in fuel economy requirements – from roughly 25 miles per gallon to 35 – for cars and trucks, will prevail over the House version when the two are reconciled. She said it almost the same day we learned that for the first time ever foreign models were outselling Detroit.

More significant, maybe, is the fact that the farm law – and agricultural policy generally – is morphing into an energy program. The bill, HR 2419, which calls itself the “Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2007,” has oodles of incentives for the development and transportation of renewable fuels.

The link is corn – already subsidized to the tune of billions – since corn is the source of ethanol, which refiners are now required by federal law to mix into almost everybody's gasoline. The theory is that gas blended with ethanol doesn't emit greenhouse gases in the same concentrations as regular gas, and that it reduces dependence on imported oil. In fact, it does little of either.

Nor does the theory calculate the impact on food prices or the environmental impact of growing the corn and producing the ethanol, not only in greenhouse gas emissions from farm equipment, but from the trucks, ships and trains that haul the ethanol (nearly all of which comes from Midwest corn) for delivery to refineries.

Because of its corrosive qualities, it can't be shipped through pipelines. The farm bill passed the other day contains a string of programs aimed at developing pipelines for ethanol transport. But that may never be economically feasible.

Corn cultivation also requires enormous quantities of water and fertilizer that generate polluting runoff into rivers and groundwater. And while ethanol does reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also generates smog-producing pollutants such as nitrous oxide that have a wide range of health and environmental effects.

Since the feds subsidize corn ethanol (a tax credit of 51 cents for every gallon of ethanol blended into gas) in addition to the regular multibillion-dollar corn subsidy, and since Congress protects corn ethanol with hefty tariffs to prevent the import of cheaper Brazilian ethanol, ethanol, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complains, enjoys a triple subsidy. Some $600 million annually comes from highway funds.

Every major presidential candidate, even Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who once called ethanol “highway robbery,” has been to Iowa, the nation's leading producer of corn, to cheer for ethanol. Given the fact that most experts believe the future of bioenergy lies in “cellulosic” technology – ethanol from biomass, switchgrass and various forms of ag waste – the cheers for corn ethanol are far more political than they are scientific.

When California moved its presidential primary to Feb. 5, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saw it as a chance for Californians to challenge candidates on their vows to Iowa voters – he mentioned ethanol in particular. Most of our political seers seem to believe that rather than diminishing the clout of the traditional early primary and caucus states, the glut of February primaries is likely to increase their influence. Still, it might give Californians a chance to be heard. We're the ones paying the price.

Last week, the University of California energy experts at Berkeley and Davis whom Schwarzenegger commissioned to develop a California “low-carbon fuel standard” issued a cautiously optimistic report indicating that the state could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fuel by 10 percent by 2010. The goal, though ambitious, they said, was possible.

But one of the report's two authors, Alex Farrell, director of Berkeley's Transportation Sustainability Research Center, also acknowledged that their assignment was only to look at fuels, not at engine design, fuel economy or broader policy changes.

And it's there – in improved transit, in tolls and other forms of demand management on roads and bridges, in higher fuel taxes – that the real possibilities lie. Classic economic liberals, people we call conservatives, argue that if government didn't meddle so much, the market would take care of the problem.

But attaching a cost to depletion of the ozone is virtually impossible. So is costing out the foreign policy consequences of empowering hostile foreign governments with our petrodollars. We all seem to want to check global warming and our energy dependence on Venezuela, Nigeria and the Middle East. The question is: What are we really willing to pay for that, and how soon?

---

me@rescam.org

Ouch...

A Report from the Global Warming Battlefield
By Roy Spencer : 15 Aug 2007

In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.

I'm talking about the other side - the global warming alarmists.

First, NASA's James Hansen and his group had to fix a Y2K bug that a Canadian statistician found in their processing of the thermometer data. As a result, 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record in the United States - 1934 is. The temperature adjustment is admittedly small, yet there seemed to be no rush to retract the oft-repeated alarmist statements that have seared "1998!" into our brains as the rallying cry for the fight against global warming.

Then, the issue of spurious heat influences on the thermometers that NOAA uses to monitor global temperatures has reared its ugly head. Personally, I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Ordinary citizens are now traveling throughout their home states, taking pictures of the local conditions around these thermometer sites.

To everyone's astonishment, all kinds of spurious heat sources have cropped up over the years next to the thermometers. Air conditioning exhaust fans, burn barrels, asphalt parking lots, roofs, jet exhaust. Who could have known? Shocking.

Next, my own unit and I published satellite measurements that clearly show a natural cooling mechanism in the tropics which all of the leading computerized climate models have been insisting is a warming mechanism (Spencer et al., August 9, 2007 Geophysical Research Letters).

We found that when the tropical atmosphere heats up from extra rain system activity, the amount of infrared heat-trapping cirrus clouds those rain systems produce actually goes down. This unexpected result supports the "Infrared Iris" theory of climate stabilization that MIT's Richard Lindzen advanced some years ago.

No one in the alarmist camp can figure out how we succeeded with this sneak attack. After all, there isn't supposed to be any peer-reviewed, published research that denies a global warming Armageddon, right?

But these volleys have not gone unanswered. From the other side of the battlefield, Al Gore and Newsweek coordinated an assault on a few skeptics with all kinds of guilt-by-association accusations. They allege that a few scientists were offered $10,000 (!) by Big Oil to research and publish evidence against the theory of manmade global warming.

Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same, but in support of manmade global warming. Apparently, that's okay since we all know that the federal government is unbiased and there to help, whereas petroleum companies only exist to force us to burn fuels that do nothing more than ruin the environment.

Little damage was done by the Gore-Newsweek assault, though, since the attack amounted to little more than a verbal "Well, your mama wears Army boots!" It didn't help matters that the magazine's own columnist, Robert Samuelson, published a follow-up article saying the allegation of bribes offered to scientists "was long ago discredited" and that "the story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading."

Next, I'm happy to report that we skeptics have been getting a steady stream of new recruits. In the last year or so, more and more scientists have been coming out of the closet and admitting they've had some doubts about this whole global warming thing.

In fact, chances are that your favorite TV weather person is a closet skeptic (unless it's Heidi Cullen). But please observe the "don't ask - don't tell" rule. Most broadcast meteorologists are not ready for the public embarrassment that would accompany their outing.

And lastly, I have been heartened by new scientific intelligence that we skeptics have been gathering. I can predict there are more surprises to come, with some pretty powerful tactical weapons yet to be deployed. Climate scientists are beginning to question long held assumptions - which is almost always the first step toward a major scientific discovery. So stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way, in the interests of a fair fight, the next time someone sees Al Gore, could you ask him to stop calling us "global warming deniers"? I don't know of anyone who denies that the Earth has warmed. I'm sure this has just been an honest misunderstanding on Mr. Gore's part, and he'll be more than happy to stop doing it.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Double Ouch...

Red faces at NASA over climate-change blunder

The Toronto Star: TheStar.com

Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble
August 14, 2007
DANIEL DALE
STAFF REPORTER

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial. Even the Canadian who spotted the original flaw says the revisions are "not necessarily material to climate policy."

But the revisions have been seized on by conservative Americans, including firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh, as evidence that climate change science is unsound.

Said Limbaugh last Thursday: "What do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA ... is in the scientific community with false data."

However Stephen McIntyre, who set off the uproar, described his finding as a "a micro-change. But it was kind of fun."

A former mining executive who runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, McIntyre, 59, earned attention in 2003 when he put out data challenging the so-called "hockey stick" graph depicting a spike in global temperatures.

This time, he sifted NASA's use of temperature anomalies, which measure how much warmer or colder a place is at a given time compared with its 30-year average.

Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations.

McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review.

"They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Al Gore: The Climate Crisis:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7243389866689882461

---

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Revised temps stir skeptics of 'warming'

August 15, 2007

WASHINGTON – NASA has slightly revised its record of average annual temperatures in the United States since 2000 – modifications that researchers say are insignificant but that some conservative commentators and bloggers have seized upon to assert that global warming has been hyped as a problem.

The revisions, which were first posted on the Web site of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, stemmed from an error noticed by Canadian blogger and global warming skeptic Stephen McIntyre. James Hansen, director of the institute, said McIntyre brought the error to the institute's attention, and the error was corrected.

Hansen said the error involved adjustments to average annual temperatures after 2000 and that the corrected figures show that the past six years were 0.15 degrees centigrade cooler than reported. Hansen said the change is insignificant in terms of global warming and changed the overall global mean temperatures by 1 one-thousandth of a degree.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh used reports of the revisions to argue that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by scientists with liberal agendas.

– The Washington Post

---

me@rescam.org

Realities in fighting global warming

By Robert J. Samuelson
NEWSWEEK

August 15, 2007

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism.

A recent Newsweek cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as “good guys vs. bad guys” can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

If you missed Newsweek's story, here's the gist. A “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” This “denial machine” has obstructed action against global warming and is still “running at full throttle.”

The story's thrust: Discredit the “denial machine,” and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

The global-warming debate's great unmentionable is this: We lack the technology to get from here to there. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 doesn't mean it can happen. At best, we might curb growth of emissions.

Consider a 2006 study from the International Energy Agency. With current policies, it projected that emissions of carbon dioxide (a main greenhouse gas) would more than double by 2050; developing countries would account for nearly 70 percent of the increase.

The IEA then simulated an aggressive, global program to cut emissions based on the best available technologies: more solar, wind and biomass; more efficient cars, appliances and buildings; more nuclear. Under this admitted fantasy, global emissions in 2050 would still slightly exceed 2003 levels.

Even the fantasy would be a stretch. In the United States, it would take massive regulations, higher energy taxes or both. Democracies don't easily adopt painful measures in the present to avert possible future problems.

Examples abound. Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, we've been on notice to limit dependence on insecure foreign oil. We've done little. In 1973, imports were 35 percent of U.S. oil use; in 2006, they were 60 percent. For decades we've known of the huge retirement costs of baby boomers. Little has been done.

One way or another, our assaults against global warming are likely to be symbolic, ineffective or both. But if we succeed in cutting emissions substantially, savings would probably be offset by gains in China and elsewhere.

The McKinsey Global Institute projects that from 2003 to 2020, the number of vehicles in China will rise from 26 million to 120 million, average residential floor space will increase 50 percent and energy demand will grow 4.4 percent annually. Even with “best practices” energy efficiency, demand would still grow 2.8 percent a year, McKinsey estimates.

Against these real-world pressures, Newsweek's “denial machine” is a peripheral and highly contrived story. Newsweek implied, for example, that Exxon Mobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and Newsweek shouldn't have lent it respectability. (Exxon Mobil says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.)

The alleged cabal's influence does not seem impressive. The mainstream media have generally been unsympathetic; they've treated global warming ominously. The first Newsweek cover story in 1988 warned “The Greenhouse Effect. Danger: More Hot Summers Ahead.” A Time cover in 2006 was more alarmist: “BE WORRIED, BE VERY WORRIED.”

Nor does public opinion seem much swayed. Although polls can be found to illustrate almost anything, the longest-running survey questions show a remarkable consistency. In 1989, Gallup found 63 percent of Americans worried “a great deal” or a “fair amount” about global warming; in 2007, 65 percent did.

What to do about global warming is a quandary. Certainly, more research and development. Advances in underground storage of carbon dioxide, battery technology (for plug-in hybrid cars), biomass or nuclear power could alter energy economics.

To cut oil imports, I support a higher gasoline tax – $1 to $2 a gallon, introduced gradually – and higher fuel-economy standards for vehicles. These steps would also temper greenhouse gas emissions. Drilling for more domestic natural gas (a low-emission fuel) would make sense. One test of greenhouse proposals: Are they worth doing on other grounds?

But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: We simply don't have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale – as Newsweek did – in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

---

me@rescam.org

The bet on climate

By Jon Anda

August 16, 2007

As the policy debate over climate change unfolds, the Big Bet gets lost in the rhetoric. Congress and the American people are being asked to place a bet on how sensitive the Earth's climate is to changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A wager on the low end could trigger the catastrophic events we all dread. The alternative, a policy that acknowledges how high and likely the risk really is, leads to the best possible future.

Policy experts seeking solutions to the threat of climate change are generally united on science but divided on policy. Some favor a carbon tax to drive changes in business practices and energy use; others favor a cap-and-trade system that puts a firm limit on carbon dioxide emissions and harnesses market forces to drive change.

What they have in common are the data. According to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would raise temperature by 3 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. With continued dependence on fossil fuels we are comfortably on track to exceed this doubling.

And 3 degrees is not in the middle of their likely range of 2 degrees to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That is because the odds are not even: higher temperatures are more likely than lower. These stacked odds derive from feedback loops in the climate: more ocean ice melts, the open water absorbs more heat from the sun, and melting accelerates; melting permafrost releases methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) and in turn creates more melting permafrost.

Carbon-tax advocates claim that simply setting a price for carbon dioxide will make it uneconomic to emit so much. This reasoning is similar to tobacco policy: more tax should mean less smoking. Since Congress is not inclined to pass a new tax, a new twist on this approach is a cap-and-trade system with a safety valve – meaning a price at which the cap is broken and emissions are simply taxed. The current legislative proposal with a safety valve feature (Bingaman-Specter) starts with a $12 per ton price of carbon dioxide, well below half the trading price for allowances in Europe for 2008 through 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.

Safety valves and carbon taxes say to innovators: invent low-carbon dioxide technology if you can operate within the government price limit. Similarly, they say to emitters: If you don't want to risk using new technologies then just buy allowances from the government until you are sure. Either way the result is the same: less technology and more emissions.

These advocates also believe something very different about the odds outlined by the IPCC. They believe that since both costs and benefits are uncertain, it's better to take the risk on climate than the risk on the economy. Their policy is to limit the resources devoted to mitigating the risk and hope the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.

Advocates of a hard cap on carbon dioxide and a robust emissions trading system – like the major corporations in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership – believe that betting the planet on a tax guessing game is simply too risky. Instead, they realize that mandatory emission reductions of 1.5 to 2 percent a year over 40 years brings the 60-to 80-percent reduction needed to stabilize temperature somewhere near a 2 degrees Celsius rise. They also see this time frame as gradual enough for private enterprise to develop efficient low-carbon technologies that deliver a huge competitive advantage if they are invented here. In short, cap-and-trade advocates would rather bet on innovation than bet the planet.

Cap-and-trade advocates also know that beating the odds means getting developing countries to join in emissions reductions. Creating a robust emissions trading market in the United States and linking it with Europe's trading system would create the strength-in-numbers needed to get caps from the developing world. As some have suggested, we might eventually require importers from countries without a cap to purchase allowances for the emissions content of their goods.

With a carbon tax or safety valve, advocates claim we can contain the cost of climate policy. True. But there is no free lunch. These methods of cost containment are synonymous with technology containment. And high-quality jobs containment.

A carbon dioxide market can manage costs efficiently if it has three key design attributes: breadth, flexibility and continuity. Breadth means an economy-wide program, including verifiable offsets, and one eventually linked to other trading systems globally. Flexibility is about letting emitters bank and borrow allowances to manage their own opportunities to abate emissions cheaply. Continuity means small annual reductions over a long period, such as 2 percent per year over 40 years. The bottom line is this: Incenting the cheapest reductions as soon as possible is the best way to contain costs and get technology.

Many in the fossil fuel business wouldn't mind a carbon tax that limits the price increase of their product and inhibits competing technologies from coming into the marketplace too quickly. Yet the auto industry, through years of resisting higher fuel economy, certainly hasn't benefited from such short-term thinking. It is hard to create technology winners if our policy precludes losers.

Climate is a manageable risk if we act now. We can't afford to start with what we can afford. Harnessing market forces for innovation would create technology options, and a more stable climate, for future generations.

Anda is president of the Environmental Markets Network at Environmental Defense (www.environmentaldefense.org).

---

me@rescam.org