PRESS RELEASE Contact:
Christine Hall, 202.331.2258
U. S. Chamber Caves to Special Interests on Energy-Rationing Legislation
CEI Invites Small Businesses to Join With CEI to Fight Kerry-Graham
Washington, D.C., November 4, 2009 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute responded today to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s announcement that it will now support energy-rationing legislation by calling on small businesses to drop their Chamber membership and join CEI in fighting this catastrophic legislation.
In a November 3 letter to Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Chamber announced that it would now support legislation based on a recent New York Times op-ed by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“It appears that the Chamber has caved under enormous pressure from some of its biggest member companies. They have reluctantly enlisted in the effort to reward these big special interests with gigantic windfall profits at the expense of consumers and small businesses,” said Myron Ebell, CEI Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy.
“We invite small businesses whose interests are no longer being well-represented by the Chamber on this critical issue to drop their membership in the U.S. Chamber and join us at CEI in fighting against all energy-rationing legislation, even so-called compromises that only partly wreck the economy. We welcome their support. We will not capitulate,” said Ebell.
“In its letter, the Chamber repeatedly cites the Oct. 14 Kerry-Graham op-ed in The New York Times as the reason for cuddling up to cap-and-trade,” noted CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. “But the Kerry-Graham column was a hopelessly confused muddle.” (Dr. Lewis explains why it is a muddle here.)
- To support CEI’s efforts to defend consumers from needless energy taxes, visit CEI.org/support, or contact Al Canata.
- Read more on energy policy and global warming at Globalwarming.org
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Vincent says:
But when the eccentricity is small, the difference in insolation between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere summers is small…and it is the insolation during the Northern Hemisphere summer at moderately high latitudes that is thought to be important in determining whether the ice sheets can grow.
Until Mann et al.’s work, there had been no attempt to construct a global…or even hemispherical…temperature record. For certain regions, there may have been times in a broadly defined ~500 year period denoted as the MWP when temperatures were higher than today. However, the periods of warmth tended to be asynchronous in different regions and hence the global or hemispherical average for that period shows a broad shallow bump rather than a narrow steep rise as it does today. Even the oft-cited plot that appeared in the first IPCC report, which was only really schematic and based mainly on estimates from Europe, did not show the MWP to be any warmer than the late 20th century once one extends the plot from where it left off (1970 or there-abouts) to the present day using instrumental temperatures.
Indiana Bones says:
These sharp events, which are likely large changes in climate in different regions (and even different signs in different regions) but perhaps not so much in the global mean seem to have occurred during glacial conditions or the transformation out of them and may be due to cataclysmic events such as the failure of a large land sheet ice dam that caused a huge influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic.
P Walker says:
I give up. 😉
Derek D says:
I’ve elaborated on it before. As has Real Climate ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/ ). As has the IPCC.
As for the Steve Milloy ploy, that is a gimmick based on the fact that science does not operate by proof but by the weight of the evidence. Hence, with Milloy as judge and jury, the evidence will never be sufficient. If you don’t believe this, see this similar prize offered: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind.html
Indiana Bones says:
See, for example, http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/11/13/2418491.htm
Weather events can steepen or lessen a linear trend in one season. So Joel, tell me again how this whole shebang is somehow not weather!
Here is an example of how a weather event can steepen a long-term trend, thus confusing the different between climate change and weather.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Folks, the gorebots have their marching orders. They’ve been wound up and aimed in this direction:
“We’ve got to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period!”
So a little honesty is called for at this point, to counteract the following contortions pretending that the MWP was not a global event. Joel Shore spins as follows:
Well, that’s just not true. But marching orders are marching orders. It is very easy to refute the revisionist history claiming that the MWP was not global. I’ll leave the deconstruction to an acknowledged expert on the subject:
So we can see what’s happening here. Hundreds of studies have shown that the MWP was a global phenomenon. Those studies further debunk Mann’s MWP Hokey Stick — and they debunk the credibility of anyone else pretending that the MWP didn’t really happen.
This is just sooo suicidal! American Capitalists, where are you???? – Robert Wood
There are very few if they are large. – pyromancer
Got it in one. Thanks to the hostile raiders in the 80’s and the WTO in 1995 the USA doesn’t have much industry left. and most is not OWNED by Americans.
Statistics showed in 1990, before WTO was ratified, “..Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP…” – http://www.fame.org/HTM/greg%20Pickup%201%2010%2003%20report.htm
This is a sampling of the industries with over 50% foreign ownership, according to Source Watch http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foreign_ownership_of_U.S._corporations
* Sound recording industries – 97%
* Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage – 79%
* Motion picture and sound recording industries – 75%
* Metal ore mining – 65%
* Wineries and distilleries – 64%
* Database, directory, Book and other publishers – 63%
* Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product – 62%
* Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment – 57%
* Rubber product – 53%
* Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing – 53%
* Plastics and rubber products manufacturing – 52%
* Other insurance related activities – 51%
* Boiler, tank, and shipping container – 50%
* Glass and glass product – 48%
* Coal mining – 48%
A real eye opener isn’t it. But it gets worse. The Department of Homeland Security says “…80% of our ports are operated by Foreigners and they are buying and running US bridges and toll roads…” – http://www.alabamaeagle.org/issues.asp?action=form&formID=2105&recordID=131006
“..An analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries shows the world’s finances are in the hands of a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first report of global concentration of financial power ..” – http://www.insidescience.org/research/study_says_world_s_stocks_controlled_by_select_few
The “harmonization” {see http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm122049.htm} of first world agriculture laws with WTO wishes resulted in a massive transfer of land ownership from private to corporate worldwide. But the greedy cartels running the World Trade Organization are not satisfied with part of the cake they want it ALL.
“..Up for grabs at the negotiating table is worldwide privatization and deregulation of public energy and water utilities, postal services, higher education and state alcohol distribution controls; a new right for foreign firms to obtain U.S. Small Business Administration loans; elimination of a list of specific U.S. state laws about land use, professional licensing and consumer protections, and extreme deregulation of private-sector service industries such as insurance, banking, mutual funds and securities…” – http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0305-02.htm
Smokey,
A skeptical person would ask, “What evidence has Demming given to back up that claim of the person who wrote the e-mail saying, We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’?” Has Demming ever produced this e-mail so that we can read it? How do we know he did not mis-read, mis-remember, or misrepresent what was actually said?” A true-believer simply takes Demming’s claim at face-value.
You linked to one study (published in two places) that claimed to review the evidence from other studies. The two places that this paper appeared are (1) “Energy and Environment”, which is not a serious peer-reviewed journal and which is only received by a handful of libraries throughout the world and (2) a small climate science journal, where its publication caused a scandal because many of the editors, including the person just about to assume the role of Editor-in-Chief (Hans Von Storch) found the study to be seriously flawed and to state conclusions that were not supported by the data in the study, and these editors resigned from the journal en-masse. By the way, the publisher of the journal also admitted that the publication of this paper was an error…The only real point of disagreement between the publisher and those that resigned was whether or not this mistake was a one-time thing or evidence of more serious problems with the editorial policies of the journal. (See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Storch ).
Now you link to a junk-science website which reviews the literature from their own biased point-of-view and furthermore does not address the main issue that is that one can’t just point to random studies of temperature in some random places showing warmth at some random times and then conclude anything about the global or hemispheric average temperature.
If you want to read the actual scientific views regarding the current state of temperature reconstructions, you have to actually go to respected scientific reviews, such as the NAS one: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676 (If you want to continue to believe what you want to believe irregardless of what the scientific community believes, you can just keep reading what you are reading, but don’t expect anyone outside your small cadre of true-believers to listen to what you have to say.)
Joel Shore (07:58:38) :
If you want to read the actual scientific views regarding the current state of temperature reconstructions, you have to actually go to respected scientific reviews, such as the NAS one: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
————–
I think I’ll wait for the post-Briffa era edition before I order my copy.
Joel Shore,
So now you are cravenly implying — based on zero evidence — that Dr Deming lied in his testimony to Congress. That is as reprehensible as most alarmists ad hominem attacks; when they lack the facts, they attack the person.
For those following Joel Shore’s endless commenting throughout the work week, I should make something clear: this debate is not between people who believe the globe is heating up and those who think the globe is cooling. That is what the alarmist contingent wants everyone to think. But it is a false comparison.
The real debate is over the fact that the alarmist contingent has taken a scientifically dubious position, and they refuse to disclose the empirical evidence it’s based on; it’s a secret, see? Skeptics are expected to trust them.
On the other side of the debate, skeptical scientists [which include all honest scientists] take the properly skeptical position that the alarmist contingent’s CO2=CAGW claims are based on non-empirical evidence, like their always inaccurate computer models, and on their published opinions, which reference other opinions in their clique in a circular argument, and on their adjusted, massaged, altered, cherry-picked and missing data, etc.
This is not good enough for scientific skeptics. Skeptics demand the full and complete public archiving of all raw data and all methodologies used. But the alarmist crowd fights tooth and nail to withhold the data that they base their conclusions on. Their deliberate stonewalling is dubious, deceitful, and directly contrary to the scientific method.
For the umpteenth time: Skeptics have nothing to prove. It is the job of the purveyors of the hypothesis that CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming to transparently provide all of the raw data and methodologies they used to arrive at their conclusions.
But rather than cooperate, they stonewall requests for information. That means they have something to hide. They are hiding the empirical evidence that they assure us verifies their CAGW claim. [Always remember that computer models, and grant sniffing papers, etc., are not empirical, real world ‘evidence’. Raw data is evidence.]
The fact that climate alarmists continue to withhold raw data and obstruct requests for cooperation at every opportunity is a red flag to every honest, skeptical, questioning scientist. Like a platoon of Elmer Gantrys, climate alarmists are saying “Trust us.” But what scientific skeptics hear them saying is: “You should buy this pig in a poke.”
So the real argument isn’t whether the temperature is going up or down, or whether CO2 will lead to runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. The real question is: why does the alarmist crowd refuse to abide by the scientific method by hiding their actual raw data and methodologies? Why do the rest of them keep silent when their pals refuse to share information? That information is necessary for falsification; hiding the necessary information is extremely suspicious.
What skeptics are saying is: “Convince us.” Show us exactly how you arrived at your CAGW conclusions. Show us all of your data, from start to finish.
But the climate alarmists refuse to cooperate. They view scientific skeptics as the enemy, threatening their grant gravy train, rather than viewing skeptics in their proper role: seeking the truth through the scientific method. The truth is what matters in science, and withholding information means they are withholding what is necessary for finding the truth.
Climate alarmists are not going to convince skeptics of anything until they provide complete and total transparency every step of the way. When information is requested, every honest scientist has an obligation to promptly provide it. Until they do, skeptics will remain rightly skeptical of their questionable claims. There is just too much money and control at stake to accept the alarmists’ plea to ‘trust’ them. First, cough up the data. Start diligently following the scientific method. Then, the climate alarmists will start to be seen as something other than shifty propagandists pushing a self-serving agenda.
Joel Shore (19:13:15) :
For example the Younger Dryas cooling of 12,000 years ago. This event began and ended within a decade and for its 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder.
These sharp events, which are likely large changes in climate in different regions (and even different signs in different regions) but perhaps not so much in the global mean seem to have occurred during glacial conditions or the transformation out of them and may be due to cataclysmic events such as the failure of a large land sheet ice dam that caused a huge influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic.
Joel, your standard rebut relies on appeal to authority. As this reply incorporates no such appeal, only imaginative speculation, I conclude that your answer is really, “I don’t know.” Even if an ice dam failed it would be evidence that abrupt climate change has occurred in the past as a result of natural phenomena and not by any action of man.
“Furthermore, the amount of greenhouse gases that we are putting into the atmosphere are understood to be enough to overwhelm the orbital effects that trigger the ice age – interglacial cycles. See, for example, http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/11/13/2418491.htm“
In your defense of this statement you reference a link to an interpretation of a paper “Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability,” Nature 2008 Crowely and Hyde. As it remains behind a pay-wall I could not read the entire paper, however the abstract draws absolutely no conclusion in support of your link or your statement. Instead, the authors predict a rapid expansion of the Eurasian ice sheet and “permanent mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere glaciation,” in the near geologic future. i.e. your authority predicts a rapid transition to the next ice age with no mitigating effects of CO2 man-made or otherwise.
To further support the argument that CO2 plays little or no role in Earth’s glaciation processes here are two studies – one suggesting extremely high levels of radiocarbon 14 during the last ice age, and another showing CO2 playing zero role in the lengthening periodicity of glaciation.
http://uanews.org/node/4815
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/06/22/carbon-dioxide-not-to-blame-in-ice-age-mystery.html
Together Joel, this suggests unkempt attention to detail or an overt effort to disinform those who read your posts. Marching orders?
philincalifornia:
Bah…I haven’t been following this whole saga in gory detail since it is not the aspect of climate science that I find most interesting, but it appears that, like most of McIntyre’s stuff, it is a way overblown making of mountains out of molehills. See http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/30/briffa-teaches-but-will-mcintyre-ever-learn/ and references therein.
Smokey says:
No…I gave three possibilities: “How do we know he did not mis-read, mis-remember, or misrepresent what was actually said?” You know, I am being skeptical…just like you want everyone to be. Oh, never mind, we are only supposed to be skeptical about certain things.
You mean like attacking S. Robert Lichter and dubbing the STATS poll a “push poll” when you don’t like the results (even though that organization has much stronger ties to the Right than the Left)?
(1) Just repeating something doesn’t make it true. You can keep thinking that you and your so-called “skeptic” friends have no responsibilities and the responsibility always falls on someone else. (I thought that you conservatives believed in personal responsibility…Or is that just for other people?) However, the fact is that the science has advanced well beyond that point and in fact AGW is a part of the accepted scientific theory in the field of climate science. So, sorry, but you cannot dictate to the scientific community what they should do…Or, you can try, but they will simply ignore you, as they should.
(2) The data and methodologies have been provided to the extent that they are required by journals, funding agencies, and the like. In many cases, scientists have gone well beyond these requirements, which I think is great and should be encouraged, although it should not be required just because there are a group of people who feel the rules should be different for them than for everybody else. What Briffa, for example, did not do is violate agreements with collaborators by releasing their data when they had shared their data in confidence with him; instead, he referred McIntyre to these collaborators to ask for the data directly. McIntyre apparently got this data and then (under some pretty lame excuse that he wasn’t absolutely sure it was the right data), he apparently continued to pretend that he didn’t have the data and to demand that Briffa provide him with it.
Indiana Bones says:
Your point being what exactly?
I don’t have access to Nature either. And yes, everything in the paper is not in the abstract. That is why I linked to that news article that discusses this aspect of their paper in more detail.
Those articles don’t make the argument that CO2 plays little or no role in Earth’s glaciation processes here are two studies. The first study simply discusses a spike in the carbon-14 isotope and I am not sure how it relates to anything that you want to relate it to. The second study discusses whether or not CO2 played a role in the change in the periodicity of glaciation about 1,000,000 years ago is a very different question…and one that I think remains unsettled at any rate. (No one paper can be definitive, particularly when it is so new that other scientists have not yet had the time to react to it.)
My goal is to inform. I leave the disinformation to others, some of whom seem to be quite skilled at it. And, I take marching orders from noone.
Joel:
My first point is that abrupt climate change of the order now being touted as caused by AGW, occurrs as natural variation in the past.
A careful reading of the ABC article interpreting the Crowley paper fudges what Crowley says. Had CO2’s insular effect against oncoming ice age been a focus of the paper – it would have been in the abstract. It was not.
The two studies I cite both attest to the theory that atmospheric CO2 levels have little to do with the onset or continuance of ice ages or glaciation.
Thank you for acknowledging who you do take your orders from: I have long been an admirer of Mr. Noone, making it hard to decide the better of his two works: “A Kind of Hush, or Mrs. Brown…” This explains in part your rogue behavior and recalcitrant posts.
http://www.peternoone.com/
Indiana Bones says:
As I pointed out before, we don’t have a very good idea of what the global temperature change was and there seems to be some thinking that it was quite small even though regional changes were large. But, whether or not this is so, I don’t really understand what you think this proves. We know that significant climate variations occurred in the past and, in fact, this provides evidence of just how sensitive the climate system is to perturbations and also raises potential issues such as whether the warming that we are causing could lead to a slowdown or shutdown of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation.
Well, it turns out that one can find a copy of the full paper on the web (with the help of Google Scholar, which is an excellent resource): http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/MSc/gisSociety/news/Crowley_Hyde_Nature08-1.pdf The issue is not a major focus of this particular paper but is something that they mention:
Indiana Bones says:
Frankly, that seems to be grasping at straws. As for the paper regarding the change in the periodicity of the glacial cycles, it would certainly be testament to CO2’s large importance if it were responsible for this change in periodicity but I hardly think the conclusion (of that particular paper) that it was not responsible implies that CO2 plays no significant role in the ice age – interglacial cycles. (From estimates of the various radiative forcings involved, CO2 is believed to be responsible for about 1/3 of the temperature change between the glacial and interglacial periods…and is also believed to play an important role in sychronizing the behavior in the two hemispheres.)
And, I see no connection whatsoever with the paper that discusses a past spike in the isotope C-14. Here is the full paper (although you probably need a subscription, which I do have for Science, to read it..You could also try Google Scholoar): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5526/2453 and here is a “Perspectives” article discussing it: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5526/2443 On skimming through them, I see no support whatsoever for your interpretation. In fact, the only reference to current issues involving CO2 in the paper seems to be this:
Indiana Bones says:
🙂
Joel,
a C14 spike may indicate an unusual cosmic anomaly or function as a proxy for raised atmospheric CO2 levels. Generally, radiocarbon techniques indicate atmospheric levels of CO2 as recent as 10,000 years ago are much higher than consensus assumes (190-250 ppm) 1.4B years ago atmospheric CO2 was as much as 200 times today’s levels. 45 – 34 million years ago the atmospheric carbon dioxide level was up to five times greater than today…
“The Eocene-Oligocene is considered to be one of the major transitions in Earth’s climate, witnessing the first major expansion of the East Antarctic Ice sheet,” Schouten, Eldret et al, Geology.
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/147
According to ancient sea surface algae that were recently isolated in deep sea drill core, this rapid expansion of ice was also accompanied by CO2 levels averaging 1500-2000ppm.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050622134142.htm
Thus we have evidence that cooling and expansion of ice sheets has occurred in the past even in very high atmospheric CO2 conditions. This tells us the IPCC projections of warming due to doubling CO2 – invoke climate dynamics unseen in the geologic record.
Indiana Bones says:
How do you conclude this? This does not seem to be even remotely related to any of the conclusions that the authors of that study reached…and is, of course, in contradiction with ice core data for CO2 levels during that time (measured in different ice cores from multiple locations).
That would be ~7-8% of the earth’s atmosphere! Are you sure about that? I have seen estimates of as much as 10-20 times today’s levels but I don’t think I have seen estimates of 200X.
Yes…And, it was also generally quite a bit warmer during that period.
This study that YOU linked to actually provides more evidence of the correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures. As the article explains:
Indiana Bones says:
In fact, the evidence is that the CO2 levels were initially high and then dropped and at about the same time the climate cooled dramatically, so in fact, they provide more evidence of the close correlation between CO2 and temperature. (Of course over tens of millions of years, one also has to start to worry about other effects such as changes in continent locations, oceans currents, mountain ranges, etc. These become even more important as one goes back hundreds of millions of years.)
And, here just for good measure is a short piece summarizing what paleoclimatologists believe the record to show http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821 Their conclusion is “the climate system is very sensitive to small perturbations and that the climate sensitivity may be even higher than suggested by models. “
Joel:
“That would be ~7-8% of the earth’s atmosphere! Are you sure about that? I have seen estimates of as much as 10-20 times today’s levels but I don’t think I have seen estimates of 200X.”
I too found it a bit heavy handed but:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030918092804.htm
Joel:
“In fact, the evidence is that the CO2 levels were initially high and then dropped and at about the same time the climate cooled dramatically, so in fact, they provide more evidence of the close correlation between CO2 and temperature.”
This is why I cite the Geology study demonstrating the rapid cooling taking place prior to the drop in CO2. You know by now that the majority of geologists who study Earth over geologic time – disagree with the suggestion that CO2 drives temperature.
You may have already seen Rothman’s paper and graph indicating little or no climate change from CO2 in the strontium record over 500My:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123620/figure/F4/
His conclusion (less consensus waiver) is, “The resulting CO2 signal exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climatic variations at tectonic time scales.”
Of course in modern times we see a steady yet slow rise in CO2 at a fraction of its past volume, likely the result of ocean outgassing whilst recovering from LIA.
I think we can all agree that there is an urgent need to transition from old fossil energy to renewable energy sources. The campaign to do so claiming catastrophic global warming is an outdated idea whose behavior, like that of excessive energy consumption – needs amending.
Indiana Bones:
Interesting…although that comes with some pretty large errorbars. He says it is somewhere between 10 and 200 times today’s levels.
I don’t see where it says that or even claims to have good enough time resolution to conclude that. It is certainly possible that the cooling began before the CO2 level dropped, as is believed to have been the case for the glacial – interglacial cycles, but I’d be a bit surprised if they had good enough time resolution back so far to determine this.
And, you know this how? In fact, both the American Geophysical Union, the European Federation of Geologists, the Geological Society of America, American Quaternary Association, and the International Union for Quaternary Research have all issued statements that basically concur with the IPCC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change ). (The American Association of Petroleum Geologists, American Geological Institute, and American Institute of Professional Geologists have issued non-committal statements.)
Most scientists in the field believe that the causal relationship between temperature and CO2 levels works both ways and that is why they have tended to stay quite tightly correlated with each other.
Given the uncertainties, poor time resolution, and the fact that over such timescales there can be considerable changes in other climatic influences such as locations of continents, mountain ranges, ocean currents, I think the correlation is actually not too bad. Clearly, more work is needed over these long time periods both to get better data and to understand the other factors that influence the climate on these geologic timescales. However, this has little impact on what we would expect on the short timescales that we are interested in.
That is just silly talk. The current rise in CO2 is due to our emissions. The evidence on that is incontrovertible. The oceans aren’t outgassing CO2; they are in fact absorbing it…and without such absorption by the oceans and the biosphere, the rise in CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution would have been about twice as large.
Well, I am glad that we both agree on what we should be doing as far as energy sources. However, independent of that, I think it is necessary to get the science right.
“Well, I am glad that we both agree on what we should be doing as far as energy sources. However, independent of that, I think it is necessary to get the science right.”
As do I. Thank you for a productive dialog.
IB
Indiana Bones,
Thank you for same!