NPR helpfully weighs in on climate change and the upcoming election. Even though a certain party has had super-majority control of the Congress and the Executive branch for the past 2-years (and done nothing on energy/climate policy), NPR blames the real boogeymen and women: GOP candidates not-yet-elected and, of course author George W. Bush. Their arguments, aside from being of the typical straw man variety, go back to the age-old meme: if only the knuckledraggers and flat-earthers would get with the program and accede to the demands of the enlightened (NY Times John Broder summarizes that argument, dutifully). From NPR, which is known for impartial analysis:
The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.
That’s a scientific fact.
Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.
That too, is a fact.
And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree.
Ken Buck, the GOP senate candidate in Colorado admits he’s a climate change denier. Ron Johnson, who leads in the polls of Wisconsin’s senatorial race, has said that “it is far more likely that [climate change] is just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”
And when Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, was asked whether human activity contributes to global warming, she said, “I don’t have an opinion on that.”
Conservatives in Congress are turning against the science behind climate change. That means if Republicans take control this November, there’s little hope for climate change policy.
Today’s climate change denial trend isn’t new. Years ago, when President George W. Bush was in the White House, scientific data on climate change was censored, and some scientists and top-level policymakers resigned in protest.
Scientific Findings Dismissed
For 10 years, Rick Piltz worked as a senior official for the Global Change Research Program — the main governmental office that gathers scientific data on climate change carried out by U.S. researchers.
“It was an office where the world of science collided with the world of climate politics,” Piltz tells NPR’s Guy Raz.
In the spring of 2001, Piltz was putting together a major report for Congress. The report would include clear evidence that tied carbon emissions to a rapid shift in global temperatures.
Piltz says his team was told “to delete the pages that summarized the findings of the IPCC report. To delete the material about the National Assessment of climate change impacts that had just come out.”
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the international body that collects climate research from countries around the world. The National Assessment was a similar report that covered research from U.S.-based scientists. In both cases, the result was conclusive: Climate change was happening and human activity was speeding it up.
But the Bush White House didn’t buy it.
“The expertise had come together to make pretty clear and compelling statements, and to say that you didn’t believe it was to say that you didn’t want to go along with the preponderance of scientific evidence,” Piltz says.
The science was being politicized. Over the next four years, almost every report Piltz and his team put out was heavily edited. References to climate change or carbon emissions were altered or even deleted.
By 2005, Piltz couldn’t take it anymore. He resigned and told his story to The New York Times.
A Conservative Who Spoke Up — And Paid The Price
It’s a big deal for Republicans in Congress to say they believe that humans are heating the planet.
“People look at you like you’ve grown an extra head or something,” says Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina.
Inglis has represented South Carolina’s 4th District for the last 12 years, but this one will be his last.
In June, Inglis lost the primary bid to Tea Party-backed Republican candidate Trey Gowdy, who accused him of not being conservative enough.
For the longest time, Inglis says, education, health care issues and the environment have been Democratic issues, while taxes and national security have been Republican issues. Inglis says that’s not right.
“As a Republican, I believe we should be talking about conservation, because that’s our heritage. If you go back to Teddy Roosevelt, that’s who we are.”
Inglis paid the price for speaking out about the importance of conservation and climate change.
He admits he may have “committed other heresies,” such as voting for TARP and against the troop surge. “But the most enduring problem I had, the one that really was difficult, was just saying that climate change was real and let’s do something about it.”
Inglis, who also voted no on cap-and-trade, tried to make climate change palatable for conservatives. He proposed a revenue-neutral tax swap: Payroll taxes would be reduced and the amount of that reduction would be applied as a tax on carbon dioxide emissions — mainly hitting coal plants and natural gas facilities.
Inglis also tried to connect the issue of climate change with the issue of national security. “We are dependent on a region of the world that doesn’t like us very much for oil. We need to change the game there.”
Inglis even stressed the need to hold the oil and coal companies accountable for their environmental practices.
Accountability, he says, “is a very bedrock conservative concept — even a biblical concept.”
Even though Inglis won’t be coming back to the Hill to serve another term, he hasn’t lost hope in climate change policy. The choice, Inglis says, is clear.
“Do we play to our strengths? Or do we continue to play to our weakness — which is playing the oil game.”
Tackling Climate Change Takes Both The Left And The Right
Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, says it is a tragedy that conservatives are turning their back on the science behind climate change.
“On this issue maybe more than most, we need that interplay of liberal and conservative,” he says. “Liberals are good at sort of pointing the way forward in kind of progressive new directions and conservatives are good at providing the anchor that says human nature won’t go along with that. That back and forth has been very useful.”
If Republicans take control of the House this November, McKibben says, he doesn’t see a future for climate change policy.
“Look, the Democrats — with a huge majority — couldn’t pass climate change legislation even of a very, very weak variety this year, so I doubt there’ll be any action over the next two years.”
That is, unless conservatives decide to team up with liberals.
“We desperately need conservatives at the forefront of the fight,” McKibben says. “The sooner that conservatives are willing to accept the science, the reality, the sooner we can get to work with their very important help in figuring out what set of prescriptions, what combination of market and regulation will be required in order to deal with the most serious problem we’ve ever stumbled into.”
Heating exhaust gases to remove the stack plume reminds me of our political “leaders” mandate that coal fired power stations only use low sulfur coal. They now burn sulfer in the exhaust stream so the electrostatic precipitators capture the fly ash!
Dang it watching “Elvira the Mistress of the dark “and meant to say:
“and blow you up”!
Elvira is distracting….
The only thing I learned on reading the NPR screed is that their writers and editorial board don’t know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide. That’s an extreme form of scientific illiteracy.
John from CA says:
October 24, 2010 at 11:01 am
“If the entire human contribution is less than 4%, how can anyone make this statement?”
“Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.”
They are entitled to their *opinions*.
JDN says:
October 24, 2010 at 8:29 am
All this social unrest, revolution, and experimentation took place during
and at the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA), which ran from roughly 1350
to 1850 A.D. America’s agrarian society gradually evolved into one with
an agrarian/industrial and rural/urban dichotomy.
Thoreau was writing 60 years after most of the original States had set their
respective Constitutions and 50 years after the U.S. Constitution, with the Bill
of Rights tacked on, was adopted. The Ordinance of 1787 abolished slavery
as a practice in our Northwest Territory (the areas now known as Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota).
Thoreau was conceived during The Year Without Summer (1816)
and born July 12, 1817.
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1849), and Walden, or Life in
the Woods (1854) were written at the end of a period of social
experimentation involving Fourerism and, in particular, the Phalanx
movement in all it’s various flavors in the 1840s.
Charles Dickens, another writer of note, had already had a financially
successful go at damning the rise of industry and capitalism and.
surreptitiously, at the governments that allowed it’s advent. His British
Empire was just starting to thin at it’s expansionist edges. Since Thoreau
was a serious subscriber and participant in the Romantic movement in
America he had to revolt against the founding Fathers who
grew up during the “Age of Reason” (1700-1770) and their collective values.
As before:
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and later, Henry David Thoreau, all
subscribed to the notion, “That government is best which governs
least.”.
Roger Knights (above) has a good grasp of Paine’s general philosophy
on governments… and the distrust of government woven into the
“American” system
Paine and Jefferson resisted overbearing government to the point of
successful revolution . Thoreau bitched about government
and resisted paying his poll tax.
Que es mas macho ?
@ur momisugly Grumbler says:
October 24, 2010 at 2:36 am
—–
I’ve worked a bit in GDR, they have very strict air pollution controls on their stack gases. This plant likely burning a hard coal (vs. the ugly soft-stuff that the East Germans used to burn), followed by particulate removal with electrostatic precipitator & wet scrubbing to remove sulfur.
Please see: http://www.power-technology.com/projects/walsum/
It looks ugly, but most of what we see coming out of the stacks is water, at a higher temperature than out of the parabolic cooling towers (note atmospheric mixing patterns). There certainly are traces of particulates & other material that constitute classic “smoke,” but I don’t think this plant is a nasty one.
We have some nasties in the Chicago region, grandfathered in & patched together by Midwestern Generation and ComEd. Even those don’t show much of a “smoke” plume unless you catch them at the right time.
China, on the other hand….
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Climate-Change-Issues-Wednesday-Sept-1-2010-photo-chimney-coal-fired-power-plant-emit/ss/events/sc/120203climateissues/im:/101008/481/urn_publicid_ap_org22159917a32047dcad2414c703e896e8/
Oops, sorry, meant Federal Republic of Germany! My bad, GDR is long gone, thank God! Nasty place…I worked in a few of the Warsaw Pact states, glad they are gone.
FWIW, Funding of NPR is explained here:
http://hubbub.wbur.org/2010/10/22/npr-funding
In the early 1900’s it was the liberal William Jennings Bryant who lead the charge against Darwin’s theory of evolution. Bryant felt Darwin’s idea violated the liberal view of a cooperative society. (Most recent opposition to evolution religious based. The Republican Party decided to co-opt this originally non-political trend, to it’s shame.) Today many conservatives feel, wrongly, that climatology threatens the free enterprise system. Now this has become a dogma among them.
While it is true that there are “greenies” who want to use AGW as an excuse for socialistic causes, this has nothing to do with the science and real solutions are likely to include nuclear power and market based GHG trading schemes – to the “greenies” horror. What better way to discredit the socialist left than to use the market and engineering technology to solve the greatest problem humankind is facing? But the dogmatic cycle, started and fueled by oil and coal money, has taken on a live of its own to everyone’s detriment.
Here in Minnesota we listen to MPR which must stand for Muslim Public Radio, every time I tune there is some story about how great Muslims are. Their Sunday morning show “Speaking of Faith” is about every faith except Christianity. So last week when they fired Juan Williams for his remarks I was not surprised.
In regard to : NPR Funding
Burch Seymour says:
October 24, 2010 at 2:26 pm
FWIW, Funding of NPR is explained here:
http://hubbub.wbur.org/2010/10/22/npr-funding
I found this comprehensive analysis of NPR funding in the comments section. Attribution to: Brent on October 23, 2010, at 1:33 PM
Let me help you with some research. Your either misleading listeners or you havent looked into how NPR’s primary funding is from the Federal gov. Hey just ask NPR’s political action committee that actively lobbies congress for additional funding. More information on that in a moment.
Hope I can post my research here all in one comment, here it goes.
http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html
I. Public Radio Stations that are members of National Public Radio (NPR)
“Stations receive support from several sources – listener contributions, corporate sponsorship, in-kind and direct support from universities (for those licensed to a college or university), foundation grants and major gifts, grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and in some cases state and local governments. “
Note: Most of NPR’s revenue comes from Public Radio Station members that ARE directly funded by the federal government. Federal funds are indirectly paid to NPR by member stations.
• Direct funding by Federal, State and Local Gov. (5.8%)
• Publically funded University’s (13.6%)
• Corporation of Public Broadcasting (10.1%).
• Indirect public funding by Universities (13.6%)
That’s 29.5% of the total Public Radio Station revenue stream comes directly or indirectly from government.
All income for public radio is income tax exempt and “donations” are tax deductible charitable contributions. If they were private companies, they would be required to pay 35% federal income tax on revenue.
Note: Corp. of Public Broadcasting (CPB) received 25million from congress in 2010 as a bailout. $25 million for CPB for “fiscal stabilization grants to public radio and television stations, which have experienced a downturn in revenues due to the recession that has resulted in job losses and reductions to local programming and services.” In addition, the conference report included language providing that “fiscal stabilization grants shall be awarded to public radio and television licensees no later than 45 days after enactment of this Act based on the guidance outlined in House Report 111-220.”
http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/2010stabilization/
CPB approx. 500 million per year in federal funding.
II. National Public Radio’s Sources of Revenue
“NPR, Inc and NPR Foundation are 501c (3) organizations and are each required to file Form 990. In addition to the Forms 990, NPR and NPR Foundation are each required to file form 990T to report unrelated business income. “
“NPR’s revenue comes primarily from fees paid by our member stations, contributions from corporate sponsors, institutional foundation grants, gifts from major donors, and fees paid by users of The Public Radio Satellite System. We receive no direct federal funding for operations. The largest share of NPR’s revenue comes from program fees and station dues paid by member stations that broadcast NPR programs. “
Note: this is true, they receive direct funding by entities that ARE Federally funded. Misleading but technically/legally correct.
“Program fees and dues paid by our member stations are the largest portion of NPR’s revenue.” (approx. 79% of total revenue). “This includes fees paid to air the NPR newsmagazines, other programming we produce and distribute, and annual member dues.”
a. Programing Fees 40%:
i. Annual member dues make up 3% of total Programming Fees :
“Annual member dues make up the balance of program fees and dues, contributing about 3% of the total program fee and dues; this is set at a flat rate.”
“Payment of dues entitles stations to be represented by NPR before Congress and regulators, and extends to them rights to NPR programming, digital distribution, and other services.”
Note: NPR’s Political Action Committee to lobby congress for federal funding of member stations.
b. Annual Member Dues 1%:
Note: Indirectly Federally funded income
• Dues are paid by the publically funded member stations.
c. Distribution Services 8%:
“NPR’s Distribution Division operates the Public Radio Satellite System. They collect revenue from stations and producers that use its platform for broadcast distribution, (nearly every organization in the public radio community). In addition, the PRSS offers excess capacity to both public radio and non-public radio users for private networks to keep the cost of distribution as low as possible.”
Note: Indirectly Federally funded income
• Revenue from Distro. services comes from Federally funded public radio community.
• NPR’s Distro. Services income is tax exempt due to its non profit status.
d. Grants & Contributions 10%, NPR Foundation Support 2%, NPR Foundation Endowment Distributions 5%, and Investment Income 4%:
Indirect federal support; charitable contributions are tax deductible charitable contributions by the “donor”.
Note: Indirectly Federally funded income
• NPR’s nonprofit status means income from Investments and income received by both NPR foundations are tax free.
e. Other Revenues 4%:
“Other revenues include facility rental income, NPR-branded consumer products, and license fees.”
Note: Indirectly Federally funded income
• NPR does not have to pay income taxes on this revenue.
By the way I think many of the excellent preceeding comments could provide double informational duty by posting them at NPR’s comment section:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130776747
Lloyd
Bomber The Cat (Oct. 24 at 4:11)
“To say that there is no such thing as a greenhouse effect is an argument that gives sceptics a bad name, as Owen rightly points out.” No, actually its the other way around. Robert W. Woods coldframe experiment put to rest the idea that internal re-radiation has anything to do with heating a green house. Instead the sun simply heats the air in a physically confined space, the main component of which is a greatly reduced air exchange.
“The term ‘greenhouse effect’ may not be the most appropriate since it confuses Enneagram to devise his own theory based on panes of glass. This is not how it works.”
Oh, really and I quote ” Fourier maintained that the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hothouse because it lets through the light rays of the sun but retains the dark rays of the ground. This idea was elaborated by Pouillet.” — From “On The Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground”. Written by Svante Arrhenius. Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pages 237 – 276. Or how about this little gem. Quote “In the early 19th century Fourier found the atmosphere to be acting like a glass of a hothouse, letting through light rays of the sun but retaining the dark rays from the ground. That dark thermal radiation is absorbed by atmospheric trace gases, now called greenhouse gases”. Sound Familiar? The quote is from the introduction to Philpona and crew on radiative forcing, Geophysical research letters Vol. 31, 2004. The is one of the main papers referred to on the Skeptical Science(not!) website.You are apparently ignorant of what your side is actually saying. Dark rays! And they call this science! You, sir apparently are the confused one (along with all the other warmistas).
Maybe we can kill the Corporation for Public Broadcasting too.The FCC is the regulatory arm of the gov’t and the CPB (AFAIK) deals with content.
More CO^2 = more vegetation
More vegetation = more humans who can live without handouts.
Regessives can’t have that.
Owen says,
“Try the surface temperature data collected over the past 100 years and the direct CO2 data since the 1950′s and ice core data going back earlier. You might also want to look at the RSS and UAH microwave data of tropospheric oxygen, and compare that warming with the surface warming data. Take a look at the NSIDC September report and look at September ice minima over the past 40 years. There is plenty of data out there, data of different types that are all internally consistent. You need to spend more time with actual data and less time with an easily available ideology that supports what you’d like to believe.”
Owen, you have quoted us a lot of data and observations, which may have some sort of correlation with what you believe.
However when I studied statistics, I remember clearly that in my very first class as a freshman at university, our lecturer spent some time belabouring us with examples of how correlation was never proof of anything. He did a good job because I never forgot that fact.
Unless you have some insight or empirical data that supports a particular hypothesis as to the CAUSATION of the observations you mention, (which I would definitely be interested in hearing about), I suspect you better look towards your own analysis of the data instead of accusing me of succumbing to that “easily available ideology that supports what you’d like to believe.” syndrome you mention.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
As for gutting spending in the Reagan-Bush years: The NASA Budget: 1081-1993 (RR and GHWB years: + 65% in constant dollars), 1993-2002 (-11%), 2003-2008 (latest available) + 11%. The component shifts need more analysis. The statements about censorship of contrary opinion is ironic, given the degree to which Hansen, and GISS have operated as advocates while government employees. People at the cabinet level can be forgiven, as they are policy makers; but the others use government time to put out one side and actively collude to suppress contrary opinions.
I couldn’t find reliable number on NOAA. Climate Science did generally increase, I believe; but President Obama has definitely increased funding for climate-related research a lot throughout government. I don’t think the work is particularly well directed, which is why looking at gross spending is less important than looking at priorities.
Those of you who say that NPR does not present both sides of the climate change debate simply don’t listen very often. When they discuss climate change on Science Friday, they usually invite a climatologist who says we are heading towards catastrophe by about the year 2050, and, they have one who puts the catastrophe at about 2080.
I know Bob Inglis personally and I am here to tell you today that he is a bonafide idiot. Both his kids are working for big democrats and sadly they have all drunk the koolaid. He is a lawyer and does not have a bone in his body capable of understanding anything scientific. He had become fixated on getting along in Washington so it was time for him to leave.
Also I meant to add that Bob Inglis was not representing the wishes of the residents of the 4th district of South Carolina so we fired him. He was known as congressman clueless and I have told him so to his face.
Re the ‘greenhouse effect’. Why is there all this emphasis on IR? (And CO2 is insignificant even in this.) Isn’t it the general heat capacity of the atmosphere that makes earth so habitable?
Could those who understand such things take a look at this page on the IR absorption by oxygen and nitrogen?
http://www.spinonthat.com/CO2_files/O2_N2_IR_absoption.html
To anyone who cares:
Cooling towers, both natural and forced convection, emit steam. Whether that steam is visible or not depends on the atmospheric conditions it is emitted into. The picture shows natural convection cooling towers. Stacks without scrubbers emit mostly invisible vapors. If a coal plant is fitted with scrubbers then the stack also emits large amounts of steam. This appears to be the case in the photo.
rbateman says:
October 24, 2010 at 5:29 am
It is fair to say that, over geologic time scales, C02 follows temperature somewhat, but is not correlated directly to it.
Mostly wagging its tail with temperature change, it on occasion will sit down and refuse to budge.
One very eye-opening example is between 120,000 BP to 113,000 BP where, in the Vostok Ice Core, C02 remained stable while temperature fell 5 C. This is repeated verbatim between 238,000 BP to 231,000 BP.
C02 is the dog along for the hike, running back & forth, but is clearly not the master.
========================
Repeated for effect. Of all your descriptive writing on here, Robert, this is one of the best.
I tend to gravitate towards illustrations canine so you got my Scooby Doo attention on this one. Rrrroooooo?
Nice job.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Regarding the photo caption:
“Obligatory belching smokestacks spewing (steam?) Credit Martin Meissner/AP”.
Steam, which is water in its gaseous form, is invisible; I agree, the picture probably depicts water vapor.
Peter
Mike says:
October 24, 2010 at 3:08 pm
‘…… to include nuclear power and market based GHG trading schemes –…….’
So you trade being dependent on foreign oil for dependent on foreign carbon credits?
What type of energy policy is that? That type of mine set is nothing more than rent seeking.