SEE UPDATE BELOW FROM MONCKTON
I’m out of the political loop, and have no way of judging the merit of the claim, so I’m just going to link to this story. If it is true, it shows just how bad the treatment of different viewpoints has become in Washington. Perhaps Lord Monckton can give a comment or two here to either bolster or refute this story.
Report: Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing
Thursday, April 23, 2009 By Marc Morano
‘House Democrats don’t want Gore humiliated’
Climate Depot Exclusive
Washington DC — UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.
“The House Democrats don’t want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”
UPDATE 8:30PM PST Lord Monckton weighed in on this story in comments. I thank hi for his candor and for telling his story firsthand here. He writes:
Once again I’m most grateful to Anthony Watts and his hard-working team for their kindness in exposing the less than democratic tactics of the Obama Democrats. The story circulated by the indefatigable Marc Morano is – as one would expect – accurate in every particular.
Early this week the Democrats told the Republicans they would have a “celebrity witness” for this morning’s hearing on the Waxman/Markey Bill, but they would not say who. The Republicans immediately contacted me and asked if they could tell the Dems they too were putting forward an undisclosed celebrity witness – me.
When the Dems eventually revealed that their “celebrity” was Al Gore, the Republicans told them I was to testify at the same time. The Dems immediately refused to allow the Republicans their first choice of witness. By the time they had refused, my jet was already in the air from London and I did not get the message till I landed in the US.
At first the Dems tried to refuse the Republicans the chance to replace me with a witness more congenial to them, but eventually – after quite a shouting-match – they agreed to let Newt Gingrich testify. The former Speaker of the House gave one of his best performances.
I attended the session anyway, as a member of the public, and tried to shake hands with Gore when he arrived, but his cloud of staffers surrounded him and he visibly flinched when I called out a friendly “Hello” to him.
His testimony was as inaccurate as ever. He repeated many of the errors identified by the High Court in the UK. He appeared ill at ease and very tired – perhaps reflecting on the Rasmussen poll that shows a massive 13.5% swing against the bedwetters’ point of view in just one year.
My draft testimony will be posted at http://www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org shortly, together with a brief refutation of Gore’s latest errors.
Finally, I have never said what one of your less polite correspondents has said I said about HIV. However, in 1987, at the request of the earliest researchers into the disease, I wrote articles in journals on both sides of the Atlantic recommending that AIDS should be treated as a notifiable disease, just like any other fatal, incurable infection. Had that standard public-health measure been taken – immediate, compulsory, permanent, but humane isolation of the then rather few carriers – many of the 25 million (UNAIDS figures) who have died and the 40 million who are currently infected and heading for death would have been spared. Sometimes, unfashionable points of view are right, and sometimes ignoring them can be a matter of life and death.
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I think that the only way to counteract such a escatological myths campaingning, which will surely lead to the ending of occidental civilization as we know it, is to oppose it with all the REAL scientific data about the solar minimum we are in. Those who can reach a wide audience, as Lord Monckton, should forget talking about the “competitor´s product” and start telling everybody about the real science facts we are experiencing regarding the sun´s minimum.
Michigan’s Rep. Dingell tells the truth: click
The fallout should be interesting. See the comments that follow Dingell’s statement. You’ll see that we’re not alone here, like the alarmist contingent wants us to believe.
I will also add my thanks to Lord Monckton, and my apologies for our rude Congress.
This debate is the reason I (an environmental engineer) am going to Law school. I only hope it’s not all over before I get out in 3 years.
Keep up the good work everybody!
Adolfo, what would those facts be regarding the Sun, and I am assuming you mean your list of facts as to the direct and demonstrable affect of the Sun on the trend we have seen this century, both up, and the recent downturn, in Earth’s global mean temperature. I haven’t found any.
There are lots of run-of-the-mill, terribly unromantic, but very plausible theories about trade winds and oceanic oscillations, as well as good, correlational data to back them up. But I must admit, it is very 5th grade stuff. Nonetheless, it is there.
Fuelmaker (07:07:48) :,
Thanks for the information on ethanol. Having looked for information I am well aware there is much conflicting information. Or should I say that misinformation abounds. While I believe there are better choices for bio-fuel than corn, I also think it is one part of a larger equation that can reduce our dependencies on imports. I’d much rather pay farmers than Chavez or already rich sheiks. The farmers will in turn spend that money in ways that can only help the struggling economy.
PS. Let me add my thanks to Lord Monckton for his efforts. Not only this week, but over several years. I am hopeful the events that have transpired will make obvious the political nature of AGW.
First I would like to thank Lord Monckton for his efforts to bring some actual truth to the AGW (Since that didn’t work out, climate change..) debate. I read his work in the letter posted last week, and it was well done and concise. I would also like to apologize for the Democrat’s behavior this week. They are truly the spoiled undisciplined idiot children of America. Please do not let their lack of class and basic courtesy offend you. Many of us don’t think much of them either. I feel that not only should you be compensated for your carbon footprint, you should be invited back with full press coverage, as well as being compensated as if it were a paid speaking engagement for both trips.
As long as our thoughts are being soiled by the presence of algore,and his settled science, let’s approach this scientifically. Let’s take the coasts where they want the carbon sequestration, carbon taxes, no coal, and so on, and let them live their dream. Let us folks in the middle have it our way, and we will revisit it every 10 years or so. If you want to be taxed on your prosperity and the very air that you breathe, go right ahead and show us what a great idea it is. Take half of the population and lead by example. Should you be successful, your schemes will spread throughout the land to a willing and grateful populace who have learned from your wisdom and leadership. More likely it will turn out like the rest of the liberal schemes that have come to fruition in the ghettos of New Orleans, Detroit and every other major city in the USA, or in the crumbling state of California. In a true science, there is a control and there is an experiment, let’s do it that way here too. This is too important to get all of the way wrong, and the half that does, got what they asked for.
The same democrats have big plans to tax all forms of energy along with the air that we breathe and the critters that we eat. It is not about the science, it is about the money and the control. They seek to tightly control the root of our prosperity, controlling the population through a scarcity of resources. Included as a bonus in all of this is socialism, world governance under the UN, population reduction, and all kinds of other nifty stuff. The agenda is too important to be clouded by science or truth. It has nothing to do with climate or environment, except to the AGW movement’s ovine followers and foot soldiers, to which it is a religion.
Energy is prosperity, and the only thing that separates us from a 1800s lifestyle. To tax something means to impede it, like taxing your engine going up a big hill in a car. To tax energy is to impede prosperity. That must sound good to an America loathing democrat.
Fuelmaker (07:07:48) :
First of all, thank you for your various references to my question about historical CO2. I am seriously disillusioned about the historical CO2 basis for AGW (and at 49yo with 2 ex-wives and 4 children, that is not common, sorry WAAAAY OT).
The famous “hockey stick” fraud almost killed AGW. I believe the dissemination of the fact that they turned the sawtooth CO2 record into a leading hockey stick could really finish the job. Beck should get some kind of prize for exposing the fraud. The conspiracy to find BOTH temperature records and CO2 records to prove the AGW theory is pretty clear to me now. Anthony, the previous threads on this were so lively, can you start another one or even provide a resource to spread the word more forcefully?
Second, and also OT. I am an agricultural engineer and have worked in energy for my whole career. This is not the place to snipe at each other about your pet peeves regarding subsidies. I currently manufacture wood fuel for home heating and do not want any subsidies, because that will just mess up the market with a bunch of stupid money building bad projects until the politics changes.
I did business with Kinder Morgan, they are a great company. They will ship ethanol or blends as soon as standards and regulations are changed to allow it. There is nothing magical about ethanol that makes it impossible to ship by pipe. It is just extremely hydrophilic, in fact it is used as a dryer. Small quantities of water from the atmosphere can cause big problems because the ethanol will come out of solution if it absorbs too much water in a gasoline blend.
Corn ethanol is a competitive fuel, even without the tax break. I am happy to burn the starchy part of corn to run my car instead of importing it from Hugo Chavez. I came very close to restarting an ethanol plant in Florida to convert low value byproducts into fuel.
I can give you lots of info on ethanol economics if you want, but this is not the place and I do this to feed my family. In short, to make a gallon of ethanol, fermentation does not require any energy, distillation requires about 2% of it’s energy, and dehydration to fuel purity requires about another 2%. Of course, you would be stupid to burn your finished product to make low quality heat, that is why you use a cheaper fuel source like a landfill gas, wood chips, or coal. The biggest fuel use at most plants is drying the valuable, high protein byproduct. You shouldn’t “charge” this against the ethanol production, and the best plants feed the wet byproducts to eliminate that cost”.
Fuelmaker
Thanks for your views.
I am interested in more background on ethanol production, maybe you could write a short article containing all key information?
I’m always open for a revised view!
Ron de Haan (01:33:05)
“Roger,
Just for the record, does this mean that the policy makers are out to destroy the Californian economy as a main objective or is this a case of ultimate stupidity?”
Ron, I am not sure. At times, it appears that the policy-makers and regulation-implementers want a growing, robust economy with good-paying jobs for all, AND a clean environment. At least, that is what they say they want. Then, they enact legislation like AB 32 and all its sub-parts. As far as I know, it has not been discussed on WUWT, but there is another major economy-killer legislation in California, The Green Chemistry Initiative. I tell the audiences in my speeches that AB 32 will be known as the “Bill that Killed California.”
As Confucius said, “I used to listen to what a man said, and trust that he would do what he said. Now, I still listen to what a man says, but watch carefully what he does.” It is far more important to watch what the policy-makers do, rather than what they say.
My theory is that the greeny-weenies will not be happy until California’s economy consists of nothing more than tourism and government. And probably some hamburger joints and posh coffee shops and boozerias.
Last year, Mexico produced 3.2 Million barrels of oil/day. By March, they were down to 2.65 Million bpd. They use 2.1 mbpd, domestically. That means their exports to the US are down from 1.1 Million barrels/day, to 0.55 mbpd.
This is being repeated all around the world. Venezuela is steadily falling. The North Sea is plunging. England is now a net oil Importer. Canada’s oil production is flat. Russia is Declining. Nigeria is declining.
China’s consumption is rising at the rate of about 1.0 Million bpd, EVERY YEAR.
Telling people that are still smarting from $147.00/barrel oil that renewable/homegrown energy is a BAD thing might not be the way to win allies over to your anti-AGW cause.
The common suspicion is that the anti-AGW camp is, basically, a big oil-financed operation. Railing against solar/wind/biofuels to someone who, last year, was paying $4.25/gal for gasoline only reinforces that opinion.
Roger, you must be referring to the “Corn Plus” plant in Winnebago, Mn. I, correctly, stated that they obtain 50% of their process energy by burning the syrup (thin stillage) from their DDGS. That IS what they do. That brings their energy from nat gas down to about 16,000 btus. I have, already, referenced Poet’s Chancellors Plant that obtains all of their process energy from landfill gas, and waste wood.
We had the worst “growing weather” last year in decades, and we “put away” a record 1.7 Billion Bushels.
You can rail against CARB if you want to, but people in LA realize that the air quality improved, significantly, in S Ca after 5.7% ethanol was introduced into the fuel supply. It had nothing to do with CO2, of course. It was the reduction in Carbon Monoxide (which leads to ozone formation in the lower atmosphere.) The thing is: people want “cleaner” air, and ethanol delivers it.
People, also, don’t like spending a Billion Dollars/Day, and American Kids’ Lives supporting the oil business in the Middle East (I drive MY flexfuel Chevey on 85% ethanol) No one DIES for MY fuel, and MY money stays in the U.S. of A.
Ron de Haan (14:20:36) :
Nobody protested the flight-tax.
The public simply traveled from airports located in Belgium and Germany.
The only protests came from the Airport Holding and KLM, but only after they were confronted with decreasing passenger numbers.
Why protest if you have work-around as the ultimate protest, voting with your feet? The fact that Dutch travelers where relocated by travel-agencies and airline operators like Ryan-air is the just one of the reasons that this tax failed.
KLM, Transavia (also Dutch) and Air Farce protested, and Ryan Air, Volare Airlines, Corendon, El Al Cargo stopped flights from the Netherlands, Easy Jet reduced the number of flights, other organisations that protested: ANVR, MNP, Nederlands Bureau voor Toerisme & Congressen, Chamber of Commerce and VNO-NCW, especially that last organisation is very important since it is the Dutch employers’ federation and they represent some 80% of the smaller companies in the Netherlands and nearly all the larger companies.
No protests?
Kum, we went round and round before, and you are pretty smooth but you can’t get around four points: Mandates(central economic planning) are perverting, Subsidies(tax money better spent by the Invisible Hand) are impoverishing, biofuel(domestically from corn and internationally from palm oil) is an environmental horror show, and land diverted from feeding livestock and people raises the price of food. Sorry, you just don’t escape those truths.
==========================================
You want the money to stay here? Drill, Baby, Drill.
==========================================
And please, ‘No Blood for Oil’ is the tiredest leftist meme of all. Furthermore, wars classically, commonly, have been about the means to energize a polity, but that was way down the list in the Middle East. Get real here.
==============================================
Kum Dollison (08:43:50) :
….and Brazil has discovered a SEA OF OIL in front of Rio de Janeiro. Nature is plentiful and we are too small and too few to make any substantial change in nature, we are but an almost undetectable mold on earth´s surface. Next time you travel look downwards through the airplane´s window.
No one DIES for MY fuel, and MY money stays in the U.S. of A.
No one you know or care about.
Kum Dollison:
Do you REALLY want me to copy verbatim what you wrote earlier on WUWT regarding ethanol, and how you had to duck and cover on the energy use?
The fact is that I told YOU that the MN plant was burning syrup, and they were therefore claiming some galaxy-shaking breakthrough on energy. Nope, not even close. Energy input remains the same.
Please, do not believe and spew forth the misleading (and flat-out wrong) claims of ethanol lobbyists.
The facts are clear: fuel-grade ethanol requires as much or more energy than is produced. No weasel-words can overcome that simple thermodynamic fact.
For you to support the ethanol fuel industry clearly identifies you as an AGW true believer.
Kum, I tire of responding to your nonsense. Let me give you some facts, with sources, so you can learn how this is done. You are repeating tired old (and disproven) Liberal talking points with your nonsense about the U.S. spending $1 billion per day for Middle Eastern oil. Your numbers are off (on the high side) by a factor of about 10. It is interesting, too, that the Liberals’ mantra of $700 Billion per year is now (according to you) down to half that. Moving the goalposts, are you?
The fact is (from EIA, see source below) that the U.S. imports merely 2.3 million barrels of oil per day, on average, from the Persian Gulf (Middle East). At current prices of around $50 per barrel, that represents a cash flow of $114 million dollars per day, not $1 billion per day as you so wrongly stated.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mttimuspg1m.htm
I also drive a flex-fuel vehicle, and refuse to run any E85 in it, ever.
You are also very wrong about the air quality in Southern California, and why it is cleaner today than 20 years ago. There are many factors, and oxygenates in gasoline is merely one. Higher CAFE standards, older cars off the roads, catalytic converters, electronic engine controls with oxygen sensors, and CARB reformulated gasoline all played key roles, as well as aggressive regulations on non-mobile sources including PM10 and NOx sources.
Nature transforms, recycles, for free organics (all plants, our bodies, plastics, etc) into several products: Methane, propane, butane, oil, bones into phosphate rock, Gore´s CO2 into calcium carbonate,etc.
Let us stop pretending what we are NOT. You americans have enough gas and oil to export so don´t follow such moron´s ideas, more proper of anthropopithecus than of thinking human beings.
Such CO2 foolness is simply preposterous. The air (out of which CO2 it is just 3.85 PER TEN THOUSAND) can not hold heat compared to liquid water (3227 times less) or ground (2000 times).
The GWrs.guys are cheating you for an unknown secret interest or simply because of some psychotic mass infection, something like the “cargo cults” of the pacific islands´tribes, a kind of peculiar creed that you americans are too prone to.
Your piece is the only one I could find in-line !!! Thanks so much for writing it up. Spread the word
Kum: “It was the reduction in Carbon Monoxide (which leads to ozone formation in the lower atmosphere.)”
Ethanol (C2H5OH) when it burns produces THE SAME:
C2H5OH + 3O2 = 2CO2 + 3H2O
So THERE YOU HAVE THE SAME CO2 YOUR AL LOVES!!!
You see?, some rolly polly out there is cheating you all
It is unbearably stupid!!
Fuelmaker (07:07:48) :
on ethanol economics – “fermentation does not require any energy”
Perhaps in homebrew, but at industrial scale it most certainly does. Let
For 1 tonne corn the energy content is ~19GJ/tonne
Ethanol Yield ~ 380L/tonne
Energy content ethanol =23.4MJ/L
380 x 23.4 = 8.9GJ
Net Energy Yield only 46% of what you started with and that is before you add the energy used in processing.
Kum Dollison (08:43:50),
There is no doubt that $147.00 oil and $4.25 gasoline is a rock-solid datum, and that instability & assorted ugliness in the Middle East underscore the point.
However, I think the rock-solid datum upon which anti-AGW folks base their attack on expensive forms of renewable/homegrown energy, is the option of relatively cheap coal in ample domestic supply.
We have ready solutions to major parts of the energy equation, right here at home, but they are being suppressed, nay, persecuted, on the basis of CO2 release which anti-AGW people do not think is a problem that we should hamstring ourselves to solve.
Ethanol is fine by me, except for the need to raise overall energy costs to make it more viable. Give coal free rein in the market place, and ethanol tends to drop out of the running. So alcohol is ‘artificially’ supported, by rigging the game to exclude a superior contributor to the energy-budget.
I’m not especially ‘tender’ to air-pollution, but when I first drove into Los Angeles in the early 1970s in my open-top Austin-Healy Sprite, I would have donned one of our Navy Oxygen Breathing Apparatus get-ups, if I’d had one. It was bad.
It hasn’t been that bad in a long time. LA started doing the easiest, cheapest, and most-significant things to improve their air, and it’s improved steadily ever since. Notwithstanding that their Basin still develops very strong thermal inversions, holding all the crud down near the ground … a condition they knew about, before embarking upon a world-class urban development program.
I don’t doubt that increased ethanol in gas does make a noticeable improvement in the LA air. What I would question, though, is whether LA Incorporated (and other over-dense urban enterprises) has a reasonable claim to expect the rest of the nation to essentially underwrite the clean-up of a problem they brought upon themselves, and which they appear unwilling to address at anything approaching the root causes.
We’re being hoodwinking into accepting higher energy costs that could be mitigated by using coal, because certain kinds of goals can be achieved only by escalating energy-costs – even if it has to be done as a scam. In our present context, the key scam-datum is that CO2 is dangerous & unhealthy, and that coal is an excessive CO2 contributor.
Anti-AGW people don’t buy that CO2 is a problem.
Gosh, comment-Preview would sure be a big relief! 😉
I have written my Congressman, he has responded, and he does not support AGW, Gore or thier agenda. They may get away with it, but they will not do it unanimously nor with popular support. The only thing melting right now is support for Global Warming. They will get no help from the Sun, which now stands in defiant revolt.
Kum Dollison (20:57:13) :
1) “Ron, E85, burned in a smaller, higher compression engine will give BETTER H.P/Mileage than gasoline. It’s a function of E85’s 113 Octane Rating.
2) 240 Million cars in the U.S. are burning some amount (2% to 10% to 85%) ethanol, and NO gasline/freezing problems are being reported.
3) Gasoline is much more Volatile than ethanol.
4) Ethanol emits NO proven carcinogens (although, formaldehyde in large concentrations has been suspected,) however, Gasoline gives off BENZENE, a Big-Time Carcinogen.
5) A kernel of corn is 1/3 starch, 1/3 CO2, and 1/3 proteins, nutrients. The ethanol process only uses the starch. All of the proteins, and other nutrients are preserved (plus, some extra are picked up from the yeast.) That’s why a pound of distillers grains will yield 33% more weight gain than a pound of corn – Univ. of Nebraska.
6) We have about a Billion Acres in the U.S. that can be used for Agriculture. After allowing for distillers grains, we used about 13 Million for ethanol this year. This replaced about 7 percent of our gasoline use.
Oh, and we took about 5 Million Acres OUT of Production this year. And, carried over a record 1.7 Billion Bushels of Corn. The current price of corn is about $0.07/lb”.
KUM DOLLISON,
I am reporting from European experiences with bio fuels.
Since the introduction of ethanol gasoline blends and diesel ethanol blend/ biodiesel ethanol blends there are major problems.
Ethanol is HYGROSCOPIC, it attracts water and water dissolves salts, causing corrosion.
I am sure these problems will fade away if car manufacturers choose the right materials but today the problems are simply there and they don’t go away.
Ethanol compared to gasoline certainly not generates the helath/environment improvements as advertised by the stakeholders.
The other aspect I mentioned, the low flash point of ethanol is a real serious safety risk.
People wear ever more nylon clothing and they are cause static electric charges very easily, especially during the fuel stop at the tank.
As stated, no adaption or additional security measures have been taken and can only advice that if you make a fuel stop at a fuel station, to be extra careful and don’t leave any persons in the car when fueling.
Also the road transportation of ethanol is in need of adaption because an ethanol fire needs a different approach compared to a gasoline fires.
Fire squads need additional equipment and training to deal with those kind of fires.
Ethanol mixed fuels kills the injection systems
Freezing fuel lines have been reported in Europe but the big bulk of problems occured with bio diesel.
Have a look at this Stanford Research on E85 about Human Health Evaluation
and the other article about Diesel/Ethanol blends.
The third link is about water use.
The last link is the safety sheet for ethanol
The experience in Europe, all the arguments presented by Roger and the fact that ethanol fuel would not exist if it was not for the AGW Hoax and the massive grant programs makes my case.
There are much more viable and cheap clean fuel options like Liquid Petroleum gas which can be used to clean up the particle emissions in diesel engines and boost the milage and gasoline cars, especially the big trucks that perfectly run on this clean cheap fuel without any grants.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145904.php
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYH/is_23_5/ai_80193597/
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145904.php
http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/ET/ethyl_alcohol.html