This may be perhaps the first time I’ve embraced an article from the Yale Environment 360 forum, the opener reads:
Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.
Al Gore’s latest book where he had to photoshop in some hurricanes comes to mind.
The NCDC sponsored climate change report where they photoshopped in a flooded house also comes to mind.
And, yes even the snowstorms reportedly caused by global warming this winter are also reminders of how common this bogus linkage to weather is.
From:
Green think tank tells environmentalists: Leave climate change science behind
By Ben Geman
Leaders of a contrarian environmental think tank, The Breakthrough Institute, have a way to get beyond the climate science wars: Break the link between global warming research and the push for low-carbon energy.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, in a new essay in Yale Environment 360, [Titled: Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate] argue that environmentalists are too eager to link natural disasters and dangerous weather to man-made climate change.
…
They write:
Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.
The essay also suggests that climate advocacy and research have become too intertwined, with environmentalists seeking to represent the science as “apocalyptic, imminent, and certain.” The science has been harmed as a result, they argue, stating:
Greens pushed climate scientists to become outspoken advocates of action to address global warming. Captivated by the notion that their voices and expertise were singularly necessary to save the world, some climate scientists attempted to oblige. The result is that the use, and misuse, of climate science by advocates began to wash back into the science itself.
…
The Yale Environment 360 website has a comments section below the articles. Look for a lively response to their new piece.
DirkH,
I have always thought that the Greens, if they really wanted to pursue it, should pursue a “decarbonization” of energy on its own merits – particulate pollution (haze) is a bit of a downer, for example, when I go to places like the Grand Canyon or Big Bend National Park (Big Sky Country as we call it)
If they can convince people on the real merits then more power to them. Just don’t make crap up and – worst of all in my book – try and scare monger little kids with “ZOMG we’re all gonna die” scenarios that are at best worst case scenarios (at worst complete and intentional scams).
TBH, I don’t think it would even come close to working but hey, be honest about it. That I can support.
I have spent my whole working life in nuclear power. I can assure you that the accident at TMI was not sabotage. It was a combination of design deficiencies and operator error, as these things usually are, e.g. Exxon Valdez, etc. Also, since we generate essentially none of our electricity in the USA from oil, the expansion of nuclear will have little or no effect on our demand for oil.
Peak oil theory is idiotic The price of oil, or anything else, is largely determined by monetary policy, in particular the growth of the money supply. Money supply growth has been high since the beginnings of the housing crisis. All you have to do is look at the price of other commodities. Are we also running out of gold, silver, sugar, copper, etc?
[quote openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :]
Talk to any one from New Orleans.
[/quote]
Hurricane Katrina was a category 3 storm, which makes it middle of the road. Katrina was an unprecedented political failure, not an unprecedented natural force.
[quote openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :]
I am not claiming to know all the facts
[/quote]
Good thing, since your entire post is nothing more than repeating the gossip you’ve seen on TV. I simply don’t have the time to go through it and explain why you’re wrong on basically everything you say.
But if you want the public to be educated, start with yourself.
I guess the conclusions of this “Green Think tank is a kind of breakthrough but I simply don’t agree with the entire focus on a low carbon economy.
We simply need carbon fuels, not only to produce steel, aluminum, glass, concrete and other construction materials.
We need oil to produce plastics, clothing, pesticides, fertilizer, medicine, resins, paints, you name it.
For the current and next generation we don’t need to focus on energy at all and we certainly don’t need the climate gang on our shoulders meddling with the very basis of our economies.
Energy in fact is a non item because we have plenty of it.
We have cheap shale gas available to power highly efficient natural gas fueled power plants for a very long time.
We have plenty of oil available, we can generate gasoline from coal and sulfa free diesel from natural gas.
We already know how to handle and burn these fuels without negative effects for the environment and our health. We only need to apply those technologies world wide and further optimize efficiency.
Even if we don’t further optimize efficiency rates, there won’t be a peak oil situation for a long time.
We have all the time in the world available to further develop real innovating technologies that is not only able to replace fossil fuels, fulfill our energy needs, but also our need for raw materials and food production and help humanity through the onset of the next ice age.
The best way is to invest in new propulsion technology for space exploration and power generation.
In terms of time we are at the brink of real quantum jumps in development that are currently underway.
Future technology will enable us to manipulate matter on a molecular level and it will enable us to produce any material we need in any required quantity.
Power and energy will be a spin off of such a process so we will also have sufficient energy available for fresh water production from sea water where ever we need it and hydrogen for transportation.
Within a few decades from now we will look back and laugh about this period in time especially about those who are prepared to role back our civilization for individual profits, power and the desperate attempts to “save the planet” that needs no saving.
I see a bright future for all of us only threatened by wacko politicians, politicized science and a frightened public putting their trust and faith into the hands of the wrong people.
These folks have nothing better to do than stir up $#!t, in order to satisfy their own paranoia and greed. If they can’t do it in the political arena, they will do it in legal arena. Nuisance lawsuits such as those being brought (below) are the stock in trade. Of course their logic is absurd, since the end point of their argument would be that “man-made global warming” (by definition “man-made”) is the result of human existence and therefore everyone on the planet is guilty of being a public nuisance. I wonder if they could get a volume discount on lengthy stays at the Padded Walls Hotel if they went thru Orbitz?
Quote:
Environmentalists, unable to squeeze “cap and trade” rules through the U.S. Senate, have a new strategy for combating what they believe is man-made global warming:
They’re going to sue.
They’re revving up their briefs and getting ready to shop for judges who will be sympathetic to their novel claim that the companies they believe contribute to global warming are a “public nuisance.”
The environmentalists allege that individual companies are responsible for climate change because they have emitted greenhouse gases during the course of their operations. Those gases, they say, have “harmed” them by fostering Hurricane Katrina, eroding the shorelines of America’s coasts and causing global warming.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/29/global-warming-advocates-threaten-blizzard-lawsuits/
jorgekafkazar (17:54:10) :
Yes, the Chinese and EU are getting our coal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-commodities-exports-on-the-rise-2009-10
Who’s getting the best of that deal?
Scott (16:46:37) :
I definitely agree. Energy conservation, sustainability, minimizing pollution, etc are good things, but the repeated tying of these things to global warming messes things up royally.
I gotta disagree with you Scotta.
1. Energy conservation only makes sense in economic terms. Buying twisty bulbs is uneconomic given the light output and energy savings, over their lifetime.
2. Sustainability is unsustainable. The Earth, even the Solar system, is NOT sustainable. The Sun will grow to red Giant size in a few billion (5-15?) years time. It’s not even clear the universe is “sustainable”.
3. Minimize pollution is good, but only up to a point, and at what level is it pollution rather than natural environment. For example, it was good to get rid of the London smogs. But, there is a natural level of organic compounds in the atmosphere; or arsenic in lakes; or lead or uranium in the soil, or radon in the basement. It is folly to attempt to reduce “pollution” to, or even below, natural levels. Just because we can measure it to parts per billion and we know if we give mega-doses to rats for a year, they die, doesn’t make it pollution.
openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :
“You really want to challenge that we are ruining our environment? Really? Talk to any one from New Orleans. True, global warming was not the culprit there, but the rather the destroying of wetlands for profit.”
We were warned for two generations about what would happen in New Orleans if a major hurricane came ashore there. The levees were designed for a fast moving category 3 hurricane and Katrina was a slow moving storm. The city had to be constantly dewatered to keep it from flooding when it wasn’t even raining. Much of it is below sea level for goodness sake. Storm surge did not damage that city, flooding beyond the design capabilities of the levees did.
openunatedgirl,
Couldn’t agree more – and I think Anthony might say the same thing. Out of all the ways we could spend our time, effort and money regarding environmental issues… “decarbonization” of the economy might just be the absolute worst way we can spend it.
For me at least, I am not applauding their goals, just their apparent intent to have the conversation on honest terms.
And why are we having China build our clean-coal technology?
http://cleantech.com/news/4381/china-huaneng-plans-clean-coal-expo
So much for those ‘green’ jobs.
openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :
New Orleans was built below sea level and the levees weren’t rebuilt – opposed by enviromentalists. Go drown in your crypto-socialist misanthropy.
I remember saying back in late November (and in this forum, I believe), that I give AGW another nine months of momentum. That was based on the time between Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speach and his resignation. This latest news , methinks, is right on schedule!
“openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :
[…]
To address the overall tone of this message board, I would like to say that I am completely depressed by the majority of your comments. You really want to challenge that we are ruining our environment? Really?”
You shouldn’t be that depressed, openunatedgirl. I’ve lived through the 70ies in Germany. We had lead paint, leaded gasoline, lots of carbon monoxide and SO2 from the smoke stacks, acid rain, all kinds of funny chemicals for cleaning and other purposes that have lots of C atoms forming funny rings, asbestos in the school buildings i learned in (funnily one day they were cordoned off), in the army i used a cleaning chemical on tanks that was verboten a few weeks later (cancer causing it was they found out after we had exhausted the stuff) and on and on and on it goes… Birds of prey were nearly extinct because DDT made their eggs crack more easily.
All these problems have been solved, long before any wind turbine or PC panel was erected. Car catalysts, prohibition of lead in paint and gasoline, prohibition of asbestos, DDT, desulfurisation of power plant chimney exhaust.
Nothing to do with renewable energy. Germany has become a rather clean country and the only awful smell you get in some places is when you’re downwind from a brewery. And that is probably not even toxic.
Just install some filters on your power plants and you should be done. If you don’t already have that. Doesn’t cost that much.
Monique (18:34:38) :
“Green think tank tells environmentalists: Leave climate change science behind”
Wow. The first major crack from within.
————————–
Reply:
Yup. Who’d want the albatros of “climate change science” around their neck? Now, not even the AGWers!
For the record, I agree with Poptech.
This quote….is worth repeating again….and again. The true CRUX of the matter.
“Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.”
And it also has served to undermine legitimate environmental concerns, such as pollution, habitat destruction, and the disastrous overfishing of the world’s oceans.
One day soon…it will be a matter of historical record…as to the scam of CAGW and thus Al Gore…for the duration of his life…will never, EVER be taken seriously…again.
No loss! And good riddance!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Greens pushed climate scientists….”
So Greens are now pushing their Trial Lawyers along with their EPA comrades and activist judges… they don’t need college kids anymore.
The day climategate happened they knew they lost the science battle, the day glaciergate happened and the world actually read IPCC AR4, they knew they lost their momentum and the battle for the worlds collective mindset.
So now they’re going to see if they can win the money battle. Watch out everyone, just when you least expect it, someone will walk up to you and say, “Smile, you’ve been sued by a Greenie!”
Maybe I was just agreeing to part of openunatedwhatshername.. on second read at least
The important part here is *oppurtunity cost*, for each dollar we spend on X we do not spend it on Y (unless, of course, the government has gone completely out of control and just printing money with no thought to its repurcussion… but that would never happen amirite? 😛 )
That’s what I was trying to get at. To reclaim the wetlands around New Orleans we’d need to shut down the dredged out deep shipping lanes of the Mississippi River – what effect do you think that might have? As others have pointed out, New Orelans had its own economic equation when it came to the levee system, which in hindsight was a complete miss. The wetlands had nothing to do with the storm surge overtaling the levee system through Lake Ponchetrain.
As DirkH mentioned, there are many *very* effective ways by which money can be spent on environmental issues… but they should be debated openly and honestly.
I see no breakthrough. All I see is certain folks distancing themselves from a theory they were only too happy to blindly embrace, defend and use to the max for their own ends until such time as that theory fell on hard times. I find it telling that these mental giants only began their retreat when it became clear that Ma and Pa Kettle were no longer buying that crap.
“NickB. (19:14:47) :
DirkH,
I have always thought that the Greens, if they really wanted to pursue it, should pursue a “decarbonization” of energy on its own merits – particulate pollution (haze) is a bit of a downer, for example, when I go to places like the Grand Canyon or Big Bend National Park (Big Sky Country as we call it)”
Probably you mean sulfate and black carbon particles. As i said in my comment to openunatedgirl, both can be filtered. The sulfur can be filtered with flue gas desulfurization, PM10 and other black carbon particles can be removed with catalysts. In Germany, Diesel is cheaper than gasoline due to less tax – don’t ask me why the tax is lower but it is so – that’s why german carmakers all have a lot of Diesel cars to offer. They now get equipped with catalysts that filter the carbon particles out and when the filter is full they burn the collected particles to CO2. I guess similar filters are used in power plants as these particles are cancerogenous, the smaller the worse.
We have a cogeneration plant near the city center of Braunschweig, my home town. All that you see coming from the smoke stack is some condensed water vapour. You get a little industry snow from it in winter. The plant runs on coal and gas, i think.
R. de Haan (19:17:07) :
Good post Ron.
magicjava (19:15:52) :
[quote openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :]
“Talk to any one from New Orleans.”
“Hurricane Katrina was a category 3 storm, which makes it middle of the road. Katrina was an unprecedented political failure, not an unprecedented natural force.”
I certainly agree about the unprecedented political failure part, magicjava. However, even though Katrina was technically downgraded to a three by the time it made landfall, it was no ordinary three.
It carried with it the energy (especially storm surge and battering wave action) of its recent past, as a strong category five.
The weaknesses of the Saffir-Simpson scale are coming to light. Case in point, in 2008, Ike was a technically a two when it hit Texas, but it carried with it the storm surge energy of a strong four. And the extreme damage on the Bolivar peninsula bears this out.
Also, back to Katrina, the person citing New Orleans was off, as you said, but more than the reason there was political and infrastructure failure in New Orleans. The REAL damage was to the east of New Orleans, on the Mississippi coast, which was obliterated by the worst storm surge since Camille (and in some cases worse) in 1969.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Quoting DirkH (17:26:25) :
“Actually, no. Energy companies would go for the cheapest energy, and that is hydrocarbons for at least the next 500 years or so (oil, coal, gas, and now huge amounts of shale gas becoming economical).”
Commenting:
First off, you have to be British to use such condescending phrases as “actually, no”. But I digress.
Natural Gas has always been the cleanest fuel of all. Now, we find that we can extract it directly from the gas bearing shale that everyone knew was the Source Rock of the gas they drilled in natural traps above said shale. They never thought they could extract that gas because the shale is impermeable. (i.e., it won’t give up the gas).
Now, with new technology, researched and developed at great (private) expense in North Texas, it is not only possible, but feasible and economical. There are some people (are you one?) that would stand in the way of this huge clean cheap energy that we have in the US (and you Lymies have in your little islands, too, it seems) in abundance.
Or would you rather have those windmills that by all accounts are (besides being inefficient and unreliable) noisy to the point of lunacy for those forced to live near them? Perhaps solar panels would be of more interest in the London fog?
encouraging:
29 March: BusinessGreen: James Murray: “Climategate” blow fragments corporate response to global warming
Survey reveals more than half of respondents believe “jury is still out” on the urgent need to tackle climate change
That is the conclusion of a major new survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which polled more than 540 senior executives…
The survey, which was sponsored by the Carbon Trust, IBM, Hitachi and software company 1E, found that just over half of respondents believe the “jury is still out” on the urgent need to tackle climate change, while 32 per cent of companies polled said they do not yet have a coherent strategy in place to address energy use, an increase of seven percentage points on last year.
Moreover, just 12 per cent of businesses said they were introducing new green products to keep up with rivals, and seven out of 10 respondents said that carbon reduction policies are primarily driven by public relations issues…
But report co-editor Chenoa Marquis said that the findings represented “good news for GE, Siemens and those companies that are moving ahead with low-carbon products as they have an opportunity to open up a gap on their competitors.”
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2260372/climategate-blow-fragments
Are you comforted by the “Yale to Greens” essay? I am not. The article can be summarized as; “the greens lied and global warming died”. Now that the “cats out of the bag” they say that we only did this to save the planet from carbon pollution. And we are to say, OK all’s forgiven. Not me. Their agenda is still clear and has been stated over and over. They want to create a new society that depends on governmental control, that is devoid of capitalistic ventures, and in which wealth is redistributed by taxing the rich. Oil and coal companies are obstacles to their destroying our free enterprise economy. Yet oil and coal are the only way wealth can be created in underdeveloped countries. The rich politicians want to control small countries by giving carbon credits to the leaders of small countries who will steal all the money from their poor. How does one justify trusting a group that collectively lied to us for 20 years by fabricating a global warming hoax that we are all going to die from exhaling a few parts per million of CO2 to the atmosphere and who are intentionally undermining the development of wealth in underdeveloped portions of the planet? Their “mea culpa” hides their real intensions to control the world’s economy. I won’t buy it!