Bush calls for greenhouse gas targets by 2008

Apparently there a no politicians remaining who are able to withstand the political pressure of the climate change alarmists.

Via the Financial Times: Bush in U-turn on global warming

George W. Bush on Thursday unveiled a striking about-face on global warming, calling on the world’s leading economies to join the US in agreeing a global target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions before the end of his term in office.

The US president was speaking just ahead of a G8 summit at which climate change was expected to be high on the agenda of European governments. He explained that his apparent conversion – which follows almost seven years of having rejected precisely the road he outlined – was prompted by new scientific findings.

But Mr Bush made no pledge on the size of emissions cuts that the US would be prepared to sign up to and gave no indication of a timeframe. The White House also ruled out carbon trading as the way to cutting emissions.

Too bad for Al Gore. Looks like he won't be making $billions selling carbon indulgences under the Bush administration.

Environmental campaigners accused the president of cynically seeking to circumvent the Kyoto process, which the United Nations is seeking to renew at talks in December. Others accused him of a ploy to derail tougher European proposals.

Mr Bush said: “Science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it.

“By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases.”

The US favours reliance on technology and the removal of trade barriers to spread that technology as opposed to the European approach of cap and trade and an unworkable 2 Degree C temperature cap.

Reuters video.

Update: more from Global Warming Hysteria:

There are growing signs that it is not the United States that is isolated on international climate politics, but the Europeans. Apparently, neither the Americans, nor China, nor India, and possibly not even Russia, are swinging in behind Europe's position.

The Ontario-California "deal"

There's lots of criticism of the deal Ontario Premier Daltom McGuinty announced yesterday with the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. From the Globe & Mail:

The oil industry warned yesterday that consumers will pay more at the pump and that Ontario could become more dependent on foreign oil under a new "low carbon" fuel standard being adopted by the provincial government. (...)

In an agreement signed yesterday with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. McGuinty committed the province to adopt the fuel standard, which would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from the province's transportation fuel by 10 per cent by 2020.

Oil industry officials said the fuel standard would encourage the province's refiners to substitute imported, light crudes for the heavier grades from Western Canada that have more carbon and require more energy to refine into gasoline. The lighter grades are considerably more expensive than the heavier grades.

"The Ontario policy eventually will result probably in more reliance on foreign oil," said Alain Perez, president of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, which represents the refining end of the business. And that's a problem "given the political volatility of the places the oil has to come from," he said.

Alan Lloyd, a former head of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said the low carbon fuel standard is a clear threat to producers of heavy oil and the oil sands, especially if more states and provinces adopt it. "Part of the rationale here was to try to discourage the use of some of the heaviest oil, which is loaded with carbon," he said.

Anyone who would sign a deal making us more reliant on more expensive foreign oil when we have abundant supplies right here in Canada has no business sitting the Premier's office in Toronto. Hey Dalton, I bet they love you out in Alberta California.

Chicken Little lays an egg

via the Peterborough Examiner:

Editorial - Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 00:00

Re "Myth makers exposed" (Column, May 25) -

I am one of those "talk radio" hosts that David Suzuki refers to in his rant that you chose to print last Friday. The pompous arrogance of the man is incredible!

He states that, "Talking to these people is hard because they come armed with obscure-sounding references about things like the 'medieval warm period,' 'solar flares' and 'hockey-stick' graphs. They seem so sure of themselves that the media still routinely feature these so-called global warming skeptics in opinion articles, television interviews and especially on talk radio."

"Talking to these people is hard"??!!!

What he doesn't say is that he routinely avoids honest debate on the science of global warming. Until I see him accept the challenge to openly debate the science with people he calls "so-called global warming skeptics," (people like Dr. Tim Patterson, professor of Paleo-climatology, Carleton University; Dr. Fred Michel, director of Carleton University's Institute of Environmental Science; and Tom Harris, executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, all who have been on my show), I will continue to describe Dr. Suzuki as a phony and a chicken! A Little Chicken! A Little Chicken who tells people the sky is falling and then runs away when asked to debate his outrageous claims with learned scientists who know the science he pretends to be an expert on, better than he does!!

JOHN COUNSELL

"Late Night Counsell"

Don't hold your breath waiting for Suzuki to partake in an honest and open debate.

NASA administrator says global warming ain't no stinking problem.

Here comes the rain, kids. NASA administrator says global warming ain't no stinking problem via Prometheus:

NPR just sent out a press release previewing a Steve Inskeep interview airing on tomorrow's Morning Edition with NASA Administration Michael Griffin. The title of the press release? How about

NASA ADMINISTRATOR MICHAEL GRIFFIN NOT SURE THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS A PROBLEM

Ok. The rest of the press release goes on to say [my bolds]

May 30, 2007; Washington, DC – NASA Administrator Michael Griffin tells NPR News that while he has no doubt “a trend of global warming exists, I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.” In an interview with Steve Inskeep airing tomorrow on NPR News’ Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin says “I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

there's more...

Kyoto's Dog blog

The Conservatives launched an new website today to criticize the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and his inaction in support of Senate Reform. The new site is called NotaLeader.ca.

As part of the new website the Tories have created a blog - supposedly written by Citizen Dion's dog "Kyoto".

Recognizing a good play on words when they see one, they've named it Kyoto's Dog Blog. Now that's a neat name for a blog!

Update: the new website was accompanied by the release of new radio and TV ads. Video clip 1 Video clip 2 Video Clip 3

Economy up 3.3%, CO2 emissions down 1.3%

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration. [blog]

(...)

In 2006 the U.S. economy grew 3.3 percent, a fact President Bush touted yesterday as he hailed the government's "flash estimate" that the country's carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 78 million metric tons last year.

Source.

Also: Recreation Industry’s Gravest Threats Come from Global Warming “Solutions,” Senate Hearing Reveals

Apollo 15 data and Earth's energy budget

Shaopeng Huang, geophysicist with the University or Michigan is calling for an international effort to develop and deploy monitoring stations on the moon for the study of terrestrial climate change.

Science Daily — Poets may see "a face of plaintive sweetness" or "a cheek like beryl stone" when they look at the moon, but Shaopeng Huang sees something else altogether: the ideal location for a network of observatories dedicated to studying climate change on Earth.

Using data from an Apollo 15 experiment whose original intent was thwarted by unanticipated lunar surface conditions, the University of Michigan geophysicist recently showed that surface temperatures on the near side of the moon accurately record important information about Earth's climate system.

Based on his analysis, recently published online in Advances in Space Research, Huang is calling for an international effort to develop and deploy monitoring stations on the moon for the study of terrestrial climate change.

Global climate change is driven by an imbalance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from Earth. Without understanding the climate system's inputs and outputs---its so-called energy budget---it is impossible to tease out the relative contributions of natural and human-induced influences and to predict future climate, Huang said.

But detecting changes in the energy budget is difficult with existing ground-based and space-borne technologies, he noted. Fortunately, instruments left behind by the Apollo 15 astronauts---all U-M alumni, incidentally---inadvertently provided just the necessary measurements.

(...)

On the near side of the airless moon, where Apollo 15 landed, surface temperature is controlled by solar radiation during daytime and energy radiated from Earth at night. Huang showed that due to an amplifying effect, even weak radiation from Earth produces measurable temperature changes in the regolith. Further, his revisit of the data revealed distinctly different characteristics in daytime and nighttime lunar surface temperature variations.

This allowed him to uncover a lunar night-time warming trend from mid-1972 to late 1975, which was consistent with a global dimming of Earth that occurred over the same period and was due to a general decrease of sunlight over land surfaces. (Widespread ground-based radiation records from that period show that solar radiation reaching Earth's surface during that period decreased significantly, for reasons that are not completely understood.)

Huang's study demonstrated that signals from the energy budget of Earth's climate system are detectable on the moon and can be useful in monitoring and predicting climate change.

For that and other reasons, the moon is the perfect place for a system of observatories, Huang said. "As the sole natural satellite of Earth, the moon is an enduring platform without complications from atmosphere, hydrosphere or biosphere, and could provide records of Earth's radiation budget that would complement ground-based and man-made satellite records."

full article

h/t

Some inconvenient science

for the climate change alarmists - via Peter C. Glover at Global Warming Hysteria:

"Science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21st century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

Conclusion from: 'Climate Science: Climate Change and its Impacts' a report by National Center for Policy Studies, USA. For the full report go here. For an insightful WSJ op-ed article about the report go here.

Interview with Dr. William Gray

At Headline Earth Katie Fehlinger interviews meteorologist, hurricane expert and global warming skeptic Dr. William Gray.

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps | Weather Radar

Hot Air Study Melts Global Warming Theory

Steven Milloy via Fox News

Global warming alarmists may want to expedite their efforts to hamstring the global economy with greenhouse gas regulation. A new study touted as showing that we’re not sufficiently panicky about manmade carbon dioxide emissions actually supports the exact opposite conclusion.

“Warnings about global warming may not be dire enough, according to a climate study that describes a runaway-train acceleration of industrial carbon dioxide emissions,” USA Today shrieked this week.

The study authors reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the rate of manmade carbon dioxide emissions was three times greater during 2000 to 2004 than during the 1990s.

Since increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels allegedly are causing global warming, the new study must mean that global temperatures are soaring even faster now than they did during the 1990s, right?

Wrong, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Climatic Data Center.

By overlaying the atmospheric carbon dioxide trend onto graphs of near-surface temperatures, surface temperatures and ocean temperatures, it is readily apparent that ever-changing global temperatures aren’t keeping pace with ever-increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

more...

Climate Momentum Shifting?

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

From a May 15 post on Sen. James Inhofe's website at US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

the List.

[Another] State climatologist not jumping on global warming bandwagon

Another state climatologist has spoken out about the lack of consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), this time at Mississippi State University. From the Commercial Dispatch Online:

Many people who saw “An Inconvenient Truth,” a global warming documentary featuring Al Gore, immediately became very concerned about global climate change and impending weather disasters.

Don't count state climatologist Dr. Charles Wax of Mississippi State University as one of them.

“First off, there isn't a consensus among scientists,” Wax told the Columbus Rotary Club Tuesday. “Don't let anybody tell you there is.”

Wax spent much of his presentation telling the audience how the global climate is cyclical. It's always gone through periods of warming and cooling. As for cries of impending doom, Wax says there's tons of data on both sides - and man's ever-changing weather monitoring capability further clouds the picture.

“I wouldn't want to be called a skeptic,” Wax said. “I have been called non-reputable (by people who believe differently).”

The climate is changing, Wax admits - but it's always changing and always has.

“I don't know if it's going to rain Thursday or not. Certainly I don't know what the temperature is going to be in 2050,” he said.

Wax said political and policy confusion have fueled the debate over global warming, and changes in the way weather is tracked have added to the confusion.

“In 1957, all the thermometers (the government uses to track temperatures) were moved from fields onto airports,” Wax said. “It went from the Weather Bureau, which supported agriculture, to the Department of Commerce. Cities are hotter. (If you look at the numbers) you'll see a major climate change in 1957 alone.”

Wax showed Rotarians graphs of climate trends over 11,000 years, pointing out the cycles global temperatures have gone through. He said the rise of civilization coincided with a warming period.

“There was a little ice age from 1400 to 1800,” Wax said. “We're warming back up, but it's not nearly as warm as it was 2,000 or 7,000 years ago.”

One can only wonder if Dr. Wax will face similar experience as these two other state climatolgists.

Update: Associate State Climatologist Fired for Exposing Warming Myths

University of Washington climate scientist Mark Albright was dismissed on March 12 from his position as associate state climatologist, just weeks after exposing false claims of shrinking glaciers in the Cascade Mountains.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D) had asserted in a February 7 Seattle Times editorial, "the average snow pack in the Cascades has declined 50 percent since 1950 and will be cut in half again in 30 years if we don't start addressing the problems of climate change now."

Albright knew from his research that the Cascade Mountains snow pack had not declined anywhere near what Nickels asserted, and that the snow pack has actually been growing in recent years.

h/t.