From Project Syndicate
COPENHAGEN – When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six meters (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.
Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 meters (80 feet), with a six-meter rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”
Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased . Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4 millimeters (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)
This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the United Nations climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30 centimeters (one foot). This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30 centimeters is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.
Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.
Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.
It is depressing to see a scientist – even a highly politicized one – calling for a latter-day Inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable.
But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past ten years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the Western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.
A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies – a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem.
Hansen is not alone in trying to blame others for his message’s becoming harder to sell. Canada’s top environmentalist, David Suzuki, stated earlier this year that politicians “complicit in climate change” should be thrown in jail. Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style “international criminal tribunals” against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma. Clearly, this column places me at risk of incarceration by Hansen & Co.
But the globe’s real problem is not a series of inconvenient facts. It is that we have blocked out sensible solutions through an alarmist panic, leading to bad policies.
Consider one of the most significant steps taken to respond to climate change. Adopted because of the climate panic, bio-fuels were supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. Hansen described them as part of a “brighter future for the planet.” But using bio-fuels to combat climate change must rate as one of the poorest global “solutions” to any great challenge in recent times.
Bio-fuels essentially take food from mouths and puts it into cars. The grain required to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol is enough to feed one African for a year. Thirty percent of this year’s corn production in the United States will be burned up on America’s highways. This has been possible only through subsidies that globally will total $15 billion this year alone.
Because increased demand for bio-fuels leads to cutting down carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double them. The rush towards bio-fuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation.
Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.
We have to stop being scared silly, stop pursuing stupid policies, and start investing in smart long-term R&D. Accusations of “crimes against humanity” must cease. Indeed, the real offense is the alarmism that closes minds to the best ways to respond to climate change.
Tilo Reber: “Hmm- a three year fluctuation in water vapor content of the atmosphere? What would cause such a fluctuation?”
First. The Holgates data shows that over a 3 years period, say, between 1996 and 1999, as well over several other 3 years periods, there was virtually no sea level increse at all, or even a sea level decrease! Only about 5 years before and after this there was twice as high sea level rise than average. So we got very fast changes in a short time perspective, almost correlating with the sunspot cycle. Empirically we also had no sea level rise during the hot El Nino in the late 90th, but on the other hand large amounts of water was “thrown” up into the air/atmosphere.
How can you think that this fluctuation in water vapor content of the atmosphere don’t affect the sea level? This fluctuation in absolute value is relatively small without impact over decades.
I did give you suggestions why the vater wapor content of the atmosphere changes, so I don’t think I shall answer your question and repeat it. Read my suggestions instead and, please, tell me why they are wrong. (However I repeat my suggestions in this answer…)
“Since the temperature trend has been down over the last few years, I would think that the atmosphere would hold less water, not more.”
No. Due to results from the Aqua satellite the atmosphere hold less water when it’s warm (which btw shall falsifies the climate models):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html
If the Aqua satellite is correct, which we can assume, the short term fluctiation (with a period of a decade), in which sometimes the sea level even gets lower (how do you explain this with your warming hypothesis alone?), is at least partly explained, since we also have a proved (even by IPCC approved) temperature fluctuation over the sunspot cycle.
Finally:
Declining sea level in a short period of time should be impossible if the temperature of the atmosphere each year during a sunspot cycle (= during a “sea level fluctiation cycle”) is above an equilibrium which has made the sea level over time constantly risen since the early 19th century.
How do you explain sea level rise in the cold 60th, but not 1985 or 1998? And also, how do you explain that in the 60th we had twice as large sea level rise than average, which occured — just like now a days and before then — every about 11th year.
Thus, there is a need for another explanation for the short period sea level fluctuations, and since the atmosphere contains so much water, and that the water content of the atmosphere is proved to vary (the oposite way than you think) my suggested hypothesis isn’t that bad! But your suggestion, that only the temperature of the atmosthere makes the sea level fluctuates, is falsified by my paragraphs above. I think you understand that.
[Tiny little correction: “But your suggestion, that only the temperature of the oceans (which I guess you assume is affected by variations in the atmostheric temperature) makes the sea level fluctuates, is falsified by … paragraph above.”.]
Gore’s Law — As The Facts Prove More ‘Inconvenient’ The Extremist Hype Will Grow! (As opposed to the Gore Effect.)
David
Economists study math. Lots of math. Perhaps more than most scientists.
They most certainly study statistics more than most scientists.
OK, I’m getting raked over the coals because of the distinction between accuracy/precision. But my original point is getting lost, that although I am happy to see sea level decline, Hansen/Gore/alarmists have made much about sea level rise accelerating and dooming ocean properties much faster. This question, as I understand it, is the most pressing question in the global warming debate. Lomborg says SLR is now declining, but the alarmists have been chanting a “rising” song for years. But I’ve read that there is a discrepancy between measured levels of tidal gauges and satellites, and there’s even been suggestions of calibration problems with the satellites. Then someone said yesterday that Morner was upset that a correction factor had been added to satellite readings to get to a higher sea level rise number. My point is that the whole satellite measurement may be off (or maybe the numbers are getting cooked?), even if they happen to show what appears to be some sort of precision every time. Tidal gauges have been showing, as I understand it, SLR on the order of 1.0-1.8mm/yr depending on who you believe, but 3.3mm for the past few years from the satellites seems suspicious. I wonder if they want everyone to believe that some fantasized Antarctica and Greenland melting are really doing it to us. It just seems to me that something as serious as the “hockey stick” fiasco may be going on here.
“Lake Superior was down 19 inches last summer. I wonder if 19 inches * 31,700 sq. miles ( 82,100 sq. km) of Lake Superior’s area adds up to in mm of sea level?”
The area of the oceans is 335,258,000 sq km.
(http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/oceans.htm)
So 19 inches of water on Lake Superior, if spread out over the oceans would amount to .0046 inches or about .12mm.
BTW Lake Superior’s level is controlled by gates on the St. Marys River at Sault Ste. Marie. http://www.great-lakes.net/lakes/ref/supfact.html
Why would anyone listen to Bjorn Lomborg?
Lomborg deliberately takes comments made by James Hansen, David Suzuki, and Mark Lynas out of context in order to bolster his laughable claims of an Inquisition. He is also quite deceptive in his characterizations of sea-level rise in reference to statements by Gore and Hansen.
This is typical Lomborg- a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. He is relying on the same rhetorical device of imagined persecution that creationists and other junk science purveyors use.
His statement regarding the IPCC AR4’s projections of sea-level rise are the most telling. It is impossible to tell whether he didn’t actually read the report, he doesn’t understand it, or he is deliberately lying about what it says, but the plain fact is that his interpretation of it is garbage.
REPLY: Why would anyone listen to Al Gore or James Hansen? They both make claims that are proven untrue, and Hansen calls for the trials of people that are on the other side of the debate.
thingsbreak. What is wrong about Lomborgs interpretation of sea level data? A decline in sea level rise is much more likely than an increase, and among the reasons for this is growin glaciers and cooling. (Note: This isn’t rhetoric.)
Also you don’t have to call Lomborg a creationist type. I’m sure Hansen alredy has called sceptics flat earth society people (Gore has) and things like that. You are just too predictable in your invectives towards a man which can see- and has described problems of the alarmistic viewes on global warming.
I think you can either accept rational pro and con argumentation or choose to avoid them and find yourself among the losing global warmers who refuse rational debates.
I find you, using words as laughable and with no facts, profoundly rhetorical.
(This is maybe too provokative?)
Why would anyone listen to Al Gore or James Hansen?
I wouldn’t listen to Gore, presumably some would because he has been getting briefed on the issue for 20+ years. Why would anyone listen to James Hansen?? Is this a joke? Sometimes the comments section of this site feels like a parallel universe. James Hansen is an incredibly respected and highly-awarded scientist heading one of the top scientific institutions in the world. That might be a reason why those agreeable to arguments from authority would want to listen to him.
They both make claims that are proven untrue
I’m not particularly interested in Gore, but please tell what statements that have been proven untrue Hansen has made.
Hansen calls for the trials of people that are on the other side of the debate.
This is patently false. Read the link. Hansen isn’t saying anything about those who disagree with the mainstream view, he specifically was talking about those, like in the tobacco industry, that engaged in deliberate disinformation campaigns to protect their profits at the public’s expense.
Not even close to those simply “on the other side”.
REPLY: Let’s see, for Hansen, sea level rise hasn’t met his projections, it is in fact falling, and he’s randomly adjusting a century worth of station data, using a single data point in 1995 from satellite night imagery, where no adjustment is required, for starters.
As for your defense of Hansen’s call for show trials that “they aren’t on the other side of the debate” that is just bogusly disengenuous. Your reference to tobacco is more emotional than fact.
I’m glad to see you won’t listen to Gore, but Hansen fails the smell test on several levels, he is no longer a scientist, but has now made himself into a political activist on par with Gore. They BOTH should be ignored. A political activist should not be the gatekeeper of data.
thingsbreak–
Lomborg’s books are carefully crafted, detailed and meticulously footnoted. The notion that Lomborg has merely tossed off a few opinion pieces could only come from someone who hasn’t bothered to do any research. Lomborg’s approach is always substantive and original.
Lomborg’s first book did not deny AGW but pointed out the obvious facts (a) that the science and data only support a lukewarmist outcome not a Hansenesque catastrophe and (b) draconian political assaults on the energy economy are environmentally counterproductive–there are better choices. For that he was hounded and attempts were made to strip his professional credentials. He speaks of the Inquisition first hand.
His characterization of sea level rise in AR4 is exactly right. (You know, it’s actually on line!! http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm. )
Gore did say 20 feet. It’s even in Wikipedia which never permits AGW skeptics a say so it must be True.
And Hansen expressly says we are heading to conditions that will see a rise over 20 meters. His article comparing the present to a past period when sea levels were that is here: http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19526141.600&feedId=climate-change_rss20
Lomborg is right on all points…so..let’s arrest him!! The bastard.
What is wrong about Lomborgs interpretation of sea level data?
Which set? The satellite or IPCC projections?
A decline in sea level rise is much more likely than an increase, and among the reasons for this is growin glaciers and cooling. (Note: This isn’t rhetoric.)
If it “isn’t rhetoric”, presumably you are basing this on something other than bare assertion, and I’d appreciate knowing what.
Also you don’t have to call Lomborg a creationist type.
I didn’t call him a “creationist-type”, I said he was employing the same faux persecution tactic as creationists and provided a supporting example. I kind provide many more.
I’m sure Hansen alredy has called sceptics flat earth society people (Gore has) and things like that.
How sure are you?
You are just too predictable in your invectives towards a man which can see- and has described problems of the alarmistic viewes on global warming.
Lomborg is a waste of time. If someone wants to legitimately undertake some scientific or economic work to argue against IPCC findings, GREAT! Penning op-ed screeds that are blatantly misrepresenting other people’s statements doesn’t advance a thing and only provides ammunition for those that are blindly following the mainstream. Attacking things Hansen, Suzuki, Lynas et al. didn’t even say doesn’t illustrate “problems of the alarmistic viewes[sic’]”- good science does.
I think you can either accept rational pro and con argumentation or choose to avoid them and find yourself among the losing global warmers who refuse rational debates.
There was nothing rational about Lomborg’s op-ed. I’ve seen rational arguments against policy-making in response to climate change, and this was far, far from it. I don’t understand “warmers who refuse rational debates”. Neither science nor policy are settled by debate. They are settled by accumulation of available evidence.
I find you, using words as laughable and with no facts, profoundly rhetorical.
I rebutted Lomborg’s assertions where applicable. There isn’t much I could have done with it, given that it was overwhelmingly an excercise in rhetoric itself (albeit a poor one).
(This is maybe too provokative?)
You’re welcome to your opinions.
Let’s see, for Hansen, sea level rise hasn’t met his projections
Citation?
he’s randomly adjusting a century worth of station data, using a single data point in 1995 from satellite night imagery, where no adjustment is required, for starters.
That’s a criticism of methodology not “a claim he made that was proven false.”
As for your defense of Hansen’s call for show trials that “they aren’t on the other side of the debate” that is just bogusly disengenuous.
How so? I read his statement in full, in context, and it was plainly clear that he was not talking about skeptics, or for example people on this site:
Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions.CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.
Your reference to tobacco is more emotional than fact.
First, that wasn’t my reference. Secondly, do I really need to reference all the common players (Seitz, Milloy, AEI, Cato, CEI, Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, etc.)?
but Hansen fails the smell test on several levels
Parallel universe.
.he is no longer a scientist
Really? He seems to be doing a lot more science than Lomborg et al. are these days…
A political activist should not be the gatekeeper of data.
Whether you like it or not, James Hansen is not some discredited political activist to 99.99% of people on Earth. He is the head of GISS, an award-winning, publishing scientist, and someone who is in no way required to keep his personal opinions to himself outside of his workplace.
If you’ve ever spoken to Dick Lindzen or seen him in action, you’ll see that he has no problem throwing his Sloan title around while making completely unscientific claims about worldwide conspiracies about government regulation of carbon emissions. And yet I’ve never seen a single complaint about that despite all of the antipathy mustered against Hansen for far less.
REPLY: We aren’t talking about Dick Lindzen , no diversions. Hansen has been proven wrong on adjustments, take a look at Climate Audit or one of John Goetz posts here. Hansen has been on stage with Gore on invitation, for a rally, and he lobbies state governments to not build new power plants, that’s political activism. He can’t have it both ways, being a gatekeeper of data and political activist for a cause using that data is a conlfict of interest.
Both of these were Hansen’s, I dropped some html somewhere:
Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions.
CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.
REPLY: Hansen- “In my opinion” nobody else is calling for such, thus Hansen is an outlier. Look at BP, big alternate energy program. Hansen’s appeal as an emotional activist is a conflict of interest to his role as scientist, where he is keeper of the data used to push the agenda he supports.
For anyone interested in the sea level debate and how satellites estimate sea level rise, there’s a very readable discussion (although slightly dated) by John L. Daly in 2001 pertaining to satellite altimeters, the mechanisms and problems of measurement. As I said previously, I’m happy that Lomborg is reporting a decrease in SLR in this post, but I’m concerned about the previous years where alarmists have been claiming runaway SLR that threatens our coasts. His article at http://www.john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm puts all the problems of satellite measurement into perspective, especially for the rank amateurs out there like me. It’s entitled “TOPEX-Poseidon Radar Altimetry: Averaging the Averages”. If you read this, you will gain a better appreciation of why the divergence in readings between satellite and tidal gauges over the past few years might be occurring.
We aren’t talking about Dick Lindzen , no diversions.
He seems like a useful counterexample to me. If Hansen is “guilty” of being a political activist, and therefore not a scientist, I fail to see how Lindzen isn’t guilty of the same. To ignore one and not the other is nothing more than a double standard based upon which side of the argument one prefers. I don’t see the problem with what either are doing.
Hansen has been proven wrong on adjustments, take a look at Climate Audit or one of John Goetz posts here.
You said made statements that have been proven false. I am looking for an example. [Reply: Look them up yourself]
Hansen has been on stage with Gore on invitation, for a rally, and he lobbies state governments to not build new power plants, that’s political activism.
And he quite clearly states that he is speaking as a citizen when he does so. I’ve read several of the letters where he does so.
He can’t have it both ways
According to who?
being a gatekeeper of data and political activist for a cause using that data is a conlfict of interest.
If someone can prove misconduct on his part, so be it. Until then he is doing nothing wrong.
Hansen- “In my opinion” nobody else is calling for such, thus Hansen is an outlier.
Did read Lomborg’s Op-Ed before reprinting it? His entire point is that there is a vast “Green Inquisition” calling for the same. [Of course, once one actually tracks down the statements being made, none of them refer to skeptics and all of them refer to those and only those who are deliberately and knowingly engaging in actions or inactions detrimental to the public welfare.]
Look at BP, big alternate energy program.
Assuming BP’s CEO(s) didn’t engage in deliberate disinformation campaigns, Hansen’s comment doesn’t apply, nor to any other person who wasn’t doing the things Hansen explicitly names.
Hansen’s appeal as an emotional activist is a conflict of interest to his role as scientist
You keep saying this, but I’m not sure why. I am unaware of any requirement of any scientific body that Hansen is a member of that requires him to censor himself in his personal life.
he is keeper of the data used to push the agenda he supports.
Do you honestly believe that if A) Hansen wasn’t the ostensible caretaker of GISTEMP that it would not show similar warming to the HadCRUT or NCDC anomalies? or B) That if Hansen was not the ostensible caretaker of GISTEMP but knew exactly what he does now he would not hold the same opinions about CO2e goals we need to reach?
REPLY: Yes Hansen is not an ostensible caretaker of data. He uses the data to push the agenda, that’s not only a conflict of interest, but I believe a lapse in professional ethics.
I never said “censor”, you did.
“And he quite clearly states that he is speaking as a citizen when he does so.” Your argument about “private citizen” is absolute rubbish. Just because Hansen says “I’m speaking as private citizen” somehow negates his publicly funded research? Truly you are gullible if you believe that.
Once you become a public figure, you can’t just take off one hat and put on another at will when speaking about the issue that made you a public figure. If Hansen had no connection to global warming research he would never have been invited by Gore or be lobbying the Iowa legislature. He can’t just “be” a private citizen lobbying on GW after using public research money to elevate himself to international celebrity on the GW issue.
If Hansen was invited someplace to speak about something he does as a hobby in his private life, coin collecting for example, then he’d be a “private citizen” in that venue. Being invited to speak at a political activism rally about fruits of your AGW research from a publicly funded government position, does not entitle him to be a “private citizen” in that capacity just because he says so. Your argument is deeply flawed.
Show me where Richard Lindzen has gone on stage, spoke about AGW, and said I’m a “private citizen not speaking as a learned scientist”. Show me where Lindzen has lobbied state legislatures with private letters with his home address, rather than his university one, and said “I’m speaking as private citizen only”.
The preface of Lomborg’s book is illuminating. He is a self styled left wing Greenpeace Activist. He ran across Julian Simon’s statements about how a free market would deal with shortages and that the Earth was in a lot better shape than Lomborg’s Greenpeace fellow travelers were saying. (See the famous wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager ).
Mr. Lomborg went back to Denmark determined to prove that Simon was wrong (“We expected to show that Simon’s talk was simple American right-wing propaganda”.) Since he was a statistics professor, in 1997 he put his graduate students on evaluating the same statistics that Simon had used.
A funny thing happened when they did a serious evaluation of the data.
For the most part, Mr. Lomborg’s students proved that Julian Simon was right.
I suspect that it came as quite a shock to Mr. Lomborg when he realized that his basic understanding of the environment was based on half truths, innuendos and out and out lies. It takes someone of exceptional character to realize that magnitude of error in his basic beliefs and to stand up in dissent. With his long time and strong associations with the Greenpeace movement, his book could also be compared to a “thesis nailed to the church door”.
Mr. Lomborg has been branded a heretic and suffers all the fury of the True Believers.
I think that Mr. Lomborg still has a few holdovers of liberal “conventional wisdom” (e.g. everybody knows that nuclear power is bad and AGW really does exist). But he has been honest enough evaluate the data, such as it is, and to reject the hysteria of the activists. As an economist, he evaluates courses of action based on the data and estimate their costs and benefits so that the most beneficial one can be chosen.
Makes sense to me.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
George Tobin-
You either didn’t read Lomborg’s Op-Ed, or you didn’t read my breakdown of it. Not sure which, but it sounds like the latter.
MikeEE ,
“But this is exactly what the AGW crowd does when it claims the multitude of scientists involved in the IPCC report agree with what it says.”
Yes, true. Lomborg is a scientist, known for changing his mind when he realizes he is wrong, and hence I found it worthwhile to notice him to the fact that very few people have commented on sea level rise within the IPCC process.
Right now agriculture doesn’t have time to debate this issue. We are all figuring out how to change what we plant, recoup losses, stave off bank foreclosures, etc to make up for the two short COLD growing seasons (2007 and now 08) that have wrecked havoc with crops from apples to wheat and everything in-between. I used to say that you should buy wine now (if you can find anything from 07) from the upper states. I now have to include California. The two short growing seasons combined with other natural disasters has pretty much devastated two years of farming. With global warming, agriculture was doing damn good! But over the past two years we haven’t had *&@ur momisugly*^*(%^ global warming anymore, we have had COLD weather! And now our crops are not going to provide many of us with any kind of living anymore! Sorry. It just gets me mad.
We have had an eerily white haze most of the day right down to the ground and it is colder than last month and 20 degrees colder than last year! We are at 70 blankety-blank degrees in the middle of the @ur momisugly#$%&* afternoon here in Enterprise, Oregon!
Pam,
Though I think global cooling may be necessary to reset the craziness going on, I sympathize with your problems. Perhaps a brief cool spell will be all that is necessary.
Bjorn Lomborg:
> Because increased demand for bio-fuels leads to cutting down
> carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net
> effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double
> them. The rush towards bio-fuels has also strongly contributed
> to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30
> million people into starvation.
The U.S. & European ethanol biofuels programs shouldn’t have been implemented. Brazil pulled it off using sugar cane but also ran into large problems with the program in the 1980’s. Other cellulosic sources of ethanol are feasible without impacting crop allocation or forest stocks. Cattails can grow in brackish water (they are halophytic) & a good pickup truck load of cattails can yield 40 gallons of ethanol within a day. The practicality of large-scale production, however, is questionable in my mind.
One benefit of biodiesel is that it is low in soot & sulfate emissions. Jatropha has been touted as the least expensive of biofuel (biodiesel) sources and presumably grows well even on marginal land. But although drought-resistant, jatropha could just as well divert croplands as well.
http://images.inquirer.net/media/opinion/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/images/pic-09090207410429.jpg
There are other better-suited oil xeriscape oilseeds however, including the colocynth vine from the Middle East/N. Africa and the NW Mexican ‘Caribe’ (Cnidoscolus angustidens Torr.). Although their oil content is half of jatrophas, the risk of cropland diversion is much lower using oily desert plants like like colocynth and caribe. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1999/v4-257.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH9-45GMGVW-36&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9c5492c74df5bf130337b06bb4d09ab6
Soils can be amended using terra prete (agrichar) which lends to a net CO2 uptake.
Run straight veg. oil in your car w/out preprocessing:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Vegetable-Oil-Two-Tank-Conversion.htm
Jatropha problems in PHillipines:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view_article.php?article_id=87461
Jatropha data:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Jatropha-for-Biodiesel-Figures.htm
Same thing here in Seattle, Pam. The radio weatherfolks are happily proclaiming “We might hit 70 today!” We should be in the high 80s, nearing 90 at the hottest part of the day.
thingsbreak: I rebutted your claims about Hansen’s vituperative polemics. Hansen has called for trials of energy execs. Hansen is more than just a research scientist, his work is funded via NASA/GISS. AFAIK that makes him a public employee and should be enjoined from making such statements in public fora.
It’s not b/c Hansen’s science is wrong, but b/c Hansen’s rhetoric is invidious and divisive by nature. Such desultory Philippics won’t help your cause, now will it? In fact such statements only serve to exemplify the zealotry and desperation of which the skeptics accuse environmentalists.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf
“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
AND
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html
“…CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. If their campaigns continue and “succeed” in confusing the public, I anticipate testifying against relevant CEOs in future public trials.
Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children…”
Hansen means it when he says “crime” and “conviction.” And if we don’t pass a runaway climate to our children, would trial & conviction of CEOs console us? What of the current and future coal & oil magnates in China, India or Africa?
thingsbreak:
The question remains simply: What is the climate sensitivity to CO2?
With average solar irradiance clearly trended to dim by a net of -0.2 to -0.3 degr. C. by 2025 (Solanki, Hathaway, others) & the additional offsets offered from soot & ozone mitigation (another -0.3 degrC) we may widen the window of opportunity against any serious risk of AGW.
So if climate sensitivity is high then an accelerated program of CO2 mitigation is paramount. If climate sensitivity falls below 2.5 degrees C., then a protracted program in due course is warranted. If it falls below 1.2 degrC, then other pressing priorities should be addressed first.
The quandary is this: How serious is the risk & how costly the remediation? Is it even feasible to reduce CO2 emissions in the USA by 80% by 2050, when that target would bring per capita CO2 emissions to below 18th Century levels? If the first 50% of remediation cost might prove acceptable, each remaining decrement of remediation might prove more and more costly to hit the final 80% target. Consider that cost overhead that could go to other greenhouse agents such as soot & ozone which already have feasible and cost-effective remedies in hand.
William Nordhaus projects expensive early remediation in “A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies” as does Bjorn Lomborg. Nordhaus projects that if we front-load remediation costs too much we’ll end up forcing opportunity costs to an unsustainable level. A Kyoto cost backlash is already being seen in Japan & Europe (esp. Britain), exemplifying how the feasibility of energy transformation is limited at this point in time.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494
As for a “green inquisition,” have we forgotten Robert Kennedy Jr.’s notorious statements about the treasons of the skeptic politicians or industrial apologists? Or Joe Romm’s call for Dr. Jeff Marque’s dismissal from the APS newsletter? Or ACORE President Michael T. Eckhart’s threats to ruin Dr. Marlo Lewis’ career? Or Al Gore’s description of AGW skeptics as flat-earthers?
It looks completely like a green inquisition to me, and the angry rhetoric its agitprop. This kind of bellicose rhetoric does nothing to convince skeptics that AGW is a threat, instead it sends up warning flags that behind the polemics lies an insidious agenda that has nothing to do with either global warming or the environment.
Or will James Hansen testify at the trial for the Chinese communists who – assuming CO2 is such a danger – knew full well the climate impact of burning so much coal? Under the aegis of the Kyoto-based UNEP UNFCCC CDM programs, China and other nations can sell carbon credits for efficient coal power. But if our coal execs build new efficient plants, they’re guilty of something?
CO2 is not our original sin, I reject the constant claims that everything causes global warming and global warming causes everything. And given the choice between empowering the Earths multitudes with cheap energy as opposed to a world ruled by authoritarian ecocrats so absolutist they decry even efficient and small autos like the Tata as a bane (even though it’s a huge step up from 2-stroke trike scooters), I think people would rather rule in a self-made climate hell than serve in a green heaven of self-righteous and pious zealots.
I think his science IS wrong if it tells him that a runaway greenhouse effect can occur. If it was going to occur it would have long ago and the Earth would never have recovered.