Great editorial by Bret Stephens concerning Al Gore's "Kennedyesque" challenge that the United States be "100% zero-carbon electricity in 10 years." The simple fact is it was far more feasible to put a man on the moon than attain Gore's goal, especially when Gore himself opposes both nuclear and hydroelectric power.

In 1995, the U.S. got about 2.2% of its net electricity generation from "renewable" sources, according to the Energy Information Administration. By 2000, the last full year of the Clinton administration, that percentage had dropped to 2.1%. By contrast, the combined share of coal, petroleum and natural gas rose to 70% from 68% during the same time frame.

Now the share of renewables is up slightly, to about 2.3% as of 2006 (the latest year for which the EIA provides figures). The EIA thinks the use of renewables (minus hydropower) could rise to 201 billion kilowatt hours per year in 2018 from the current 65 billion. But the EIA also projects total net generation in 2018 to be 4.4 trillion kilowatt hours per year. That would put the total share of renewables at just over four percent of our electricity needs.

Mr. Gore's argument would be helped if he were also willing to propose huge investments in nuclear power, which emits no carbon dioxide and currently supplies about one-fifth of U.S. electricity needs, and about three-quarters of France's. Britain has just approved eight new nuclear plants, and the German government of Angela Merkel is working to do away with a plan by the previous government to go nuclear-free.

But Mr. Gore makes no mention of nuclear power in his speech, nor of the equally carbon-free hydroelectric power. These are proven technologies -- and useful reminders of what happens when environmentalists get what they wished for.

Mr. Gore's case would also be helped if our experience of renewable sources were a positive one. It isn't. In his useful book "Gusher of Lies," Robert Bryce notes that "in July 2006, wind turbines in California produced power at only about 10% of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at about 17% of their rated capacity." Like wind power, solar power also suffers from the problem of intermittency, which means that it has to be backed up by conventional sources in order to avoid disruptions. This is especially true of hot summers when the wind doesn't blow and cold winters when the sun doesn't shine.

And then there are biofuels, whose recent vogue, the World Bank believes, may have been responsible for up to 75% of the recent rise in world food prices. Save the planet; starve the poor.

None of this seems to trouble Mr. Gore. He thinks that simply by declaring an emergency he can help achieve Stakhanovite results. He might recall what the Stakhanovite myth (about the man who mined 14 times his quota of coal in six hours) actually did to the Soviet economy.

Labels: climate, energy, global warming, Gore

[AFP] Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday.

Recent evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us," climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said.

There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years, he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Oh really..? Seems to me just glancing at today's climate headlines would lead one to believe that no matter how much Al Gore claims there's a consensus backing catastrophic global warming, well, there just isn't.

Let's start with "Snow Accumulating at "Amazingly High Rate" in Antarctica," brought to you by none other than John Tierney of the NY Times! (I guess I can't tag this post with "media bias" today, heh heh heh.)

There's new evidence from an Antarctic ice core that the popular image of the melting poles doesn't quite fit reality at the southern one. Elizabeth R. Thomas of the British Antarctic Survey and colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that snow accumulation has doubled since 1850 in the western Antarctic peninsula, and that the trend has accelerated in recent decades.
Next, from Reuters, "Warming may reduce hurricanes hitting U.S." So, even if one believes the Earth is warming as part of some unnatural cycle (I do not), there are those who can demonstrate that it certainly won't increase hurricanes in quantity or veracity, as Mr. Snakeoil Gore would have you believe.

I'd urge all readers (all three of you) to check out the Canadian National Post's "The Deniers" series by Lawerence Soloman. "When I began," Soloman wrote, "I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies... Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change."

[Lawrence Soloman:] A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.

Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world's most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 "planetary emergencies," among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being "Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry ( e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone)."

Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right.
Make sure you check out the series, it's a great debunker to the climate scaremongers.

Labels: climate, global warming, Gore

Here's a great roundup of past predictions of apocolypse that didn't pan out. In short: more free markets, less Al Gore.

[Investors Business Daily] In 1798, a country parson named Thomas Malthus published a book in which he calculated that human populations were growing faster than the world's ability to feed them. It wouldn't be long, he reasoned, before the world would be afflicted with " sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague." In short: mass death.
He was, of course, spectacularly wrong.

True, population did increase, geometrically even. But it didn't lead to misery. Far from it. Today, we are wealthier, healthier, better-housed, better educated than ever — thanks not to U.N. bureaucrats, but to our ability as free men and women to think clearly about problems, and solve them.

Yet, according to the U.N.'s new "Geo-4 Report," our environmental problems, a result of unchecked population growth and wealth, are so extensive that, as the London Times put it, "they must be treated as a top priority if they are to be solved."

Check your wallets and your freedom at the door. For this is the old line used by environmental extremists of all types: Things are so bad we can no longer put off what must be done. Of course, you'll have to give up some income and freedom — and maybe even your right to bear children — but, hey, the environment's at stake.

Excuse us, but this seems like another attempt to foist centralized, global control over the prosperous, dynamic and fast-growing economies of the world — an attempt to shake us down and radically alter Western lifestyles, to get us out of our deluxe cars and designer clothes and onto bicycles and into bearskins.

It's a bad idea that just won't go away. In the 1960s, biology professor Paul Ehrlich revived Malthus with his best-selling "The Population Bomb." "In the 1970s," he warned, "the world will undergo famines — hundreds of million of people are going to starve." His solution: Immediate population control, mandated by law.

Ehrlich was followed by the Club of Rome's "Limits To Growth," and by President Carter's equally alarmist "Global 2000" report. They, too, were utterly wrong. Yet, they influenced a whole generation of green activists who came to think of humanity as a disease — a "cancer," in Ehrlich's word — that had to be cut out.

Unfortunately for them, far from despoiling the world and leading lives that are "nasty, brutish and short," we're thriving. As the late economist Julian Simon noted, people are the ultimate resource. More people means more brains — more problem-solvers for humanity's ills. Population isn't a curse; it's an opportunity.

This is why the Malthusian view of the world is so wrong. And why Simon and his followers are right to say not only is the world not getting worse, but by virtually any measure it's getting better.

In "The Improving State of the World," for instance, scientist Indur Goklany notes that worldwide life expectancies have more than doubled — from 31 years to 67 — in just the past century. In poor countries, the share suffering from chronic hunger plunged from 37% in 1970 to 17% in 2001, even as population soared 83%.

Even the definition of "poor" has changed, because average annual incomes in poor countries have more than tripled in real terms since 1950. Just since 1981, the share of the world's population living in poverty has been halved, from 40% to 20%.

Yes, we have social and environmental problems. But the alarmists would have us don straitjackets and then force-feed us solutions under the rubric of "sustainable growth" — a kind of friendly fascism that leads to greater poverty and loss of liberty.

We prefer what's worked before: free markets, free minds and free people, working democratically under the rule of law.

Labels: climate, folly, global warming, Gore

John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize) responds to questions by CNN anchor Miles O'Brien:

O'BRIEN: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?

CHRISTY: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that -- I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here -- that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities.

And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.

O'BRIEN: So, what about the movie ["An Inconvenient Truth"]; do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?

CHRISTY: Well, there's any number of things.

I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is -- well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.

O'BRIEN: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?

CHRISTY: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing. And when we build -- and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets -- we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place.

For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.

Labels: climate, global warming, Gore

The Science and Public Policy Institute finds not a mere 9 factual errors in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, but 35.

Labels: climate, global warming, Gore

Titled: Not Nobel Winners, this tongue in cheek op-ed underscores how great a joke the Nobel Peace Prize has become.

In Olso yesterday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.

Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.

Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.

Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.

Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.

Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations.

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

Labels: academic bias, climate, global warming, Gore

[UK Times] A High Court judge today ruled that An Inconvenient Truth can be distributed to every school in the country but only if it comes with a note explaining nine scientific errors in Al Gore's Oscar-winning film.
Read the nine errors here.

Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming, Gore

In a 1994 legal memorandum, assistant attorney general Walter Dellinger reached a similar conclusion about Vice President Gore, determining that the vice president's office is not an "agency" for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. Dellinger's opinion pointed out that "the Vice President has no constitutional or statutory responsibilities as an executive branch officer," and that therefore general references to executive-branch entities are not sufficient to include the vice president.

Dellinger's 1994 memorandum wasn't met with accusations that Al Gore was "above the law." That's because, back then, a media reaction wasn't being stoked and scripted by Rep. Henry Waxman, the combative California Democrat.
-- Kate O'Beirne, NRO

Labels: Cheney, Clinton, Executive Privilege, Gore