The New Ice Age

Do you think all the weather-related deaths around the world mean the end is near? The answer is a flat "NO." Apparently, the number of deaths from the weather has actually dropped dramatically, despite what we hear in the media.

And, global warming? Not quite. Get ready for our next "Little Ice Age" now on its way. Cloudy, cold days will make solar ineffective and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen to the wind for potential wind-power. To keep you and your family warm, consider the U.S.’s huge stock piles of oil, gas, coal and the possibility of nuclear power. If only the White House and Congress would allow us to find them. If you’re a skeptic about an upcoming "ice age" and the world becoming a frigid, difficult place to live and thrive in, take a look

at what’s ahead.

By Dennis T. Avery

The death toll from recent “extreme weather events” has been sharply declining since the 1920s, as my valued colleague Indur Goklany has valorously pointed out. Air conditioning, flood control, earthquake proofing and better weather forecasting have all helped. Despite vast media coverage, extreme weather now causes only a half-percent of global deaths. A large part of the gains came through crop production increases using fossil-fueled industrial fertilizers and irrigation pumps. This meant the world had fossil-fueled food to share with countries suddenly caught by devastating (but short- term) drought or flood.

But Indur neglected one aspect of extreme weather events—the “little ice ages.” They are the flip side of the 1500-year warming cycle. The last one began in 1300 AD and ended in 1850, recent enough that many of our great-grandparents had to cope. We don’t know when the next one will come, perhaps not for another 300 years—but when it does, “Look out!”

As an example, civilizations collapsed around the world, simultaneously, 4200 years ago—in southern Green, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and China. The nomads on the Asian steppes gave up their seasonal farming, put their huts on wheels, and simply followed their herds seeking ever-scarcer grass. This massive drought—driven by a “little ice age”— lasted 300 years!

Egypt had more food security through its early history than anyplace else, but it collapsed in famine and political chaos three times between 4200 and 1000 BC—all of them during “little ice ages.” The Nile floods were also far below normal during the cold Dark Ages (450-950 AD) and during our recent Little Ice Age.

How many people would starve if agriculture failed again, suddenly and simultaneously in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, India, and China—for 300 years? What future Huns would come knocking on the city gates? Would plague-infected rats again move in?

The “little ice age” climates are inherently less stable and more violent than the warming intervals. The Netherlands was hit by massive sea floods three times in 50 years as the Little Ice Age began. Each of these floods drowned more than 100,000 people. Will the Dutch levees hold in the next “little ice age”? What about New Orleans in a far less stable climate?

As we today enjoy the stable weather of a sunlit interglacial global warming, we had best not forget the massive disasters during the cold phases of the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle. In the last 160 years, we have not only become, used to the piddling “disasters” of a global warming phase, but smug that we have been able to rescue small countries with our technology. Fossil fuels have competently carried food aid to famine victims during small, short famines. But, in a future Little Ice Age, the summers will cloudy, cold, interrupted by early frosts and hailstorms—for several hundred years.

We invented high-yield farming at the end of the Little Ice Age, to reduce the death toll from the persistent crop failures. But the world’s population since 1850 has risen from perhaps 1 billion to 6.6 billion, and may rise by 2 billion more before it peaks about 2050. Where would we move the at-risk populations?

Global vegetation has sharply increased with today’s additional sunshine and favorable rain patterns—plus the added plant fertilization due to more CO2 in the atmosphere. What if the climate turns suddenly cold and unstable and the oceans suck more of the CO2 out of the atmosphere?

We should take full advantage of the favorable climate we have been granted to increase research on high-yield agriculture, biotechnology, water conservation and other advances now only dreamt of. We must make true improvements in energy technology (not erratic windmills and solar panels that will be even less effective in a cloudy little ice age than today).The greatest danger to the future population is to be unaware that the good period will not last.

For a million years, humans have been using the warming periods to advance civilization. We are comfortable, well fed, and not competing for caves because those who came before us advanced human society each time the climate provided a few hundred years of safety. Should we do any less for those who will come after us?

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

Climate Change: Attacking Science and Scientists

Never one to look at the science that OPPOSES his big push on man-made global warming, former VP Al Gore continues to whine and blame everybody else (the U.S. Senate, the right-wing media, "professional deniers") for the fact that not ALL science backs up his bizarre beliefs. He says, "The battle is not over."

Oh really?

Gore Concedes on Climate This Year

Speaking about the likelihood of climate bill being passed by Congress in 2010, Al Gore told a conference call of supporters tonight that, “this battle has not been successful and is pretty much over for this year.” Gore bitterly denounced the Senate and federal government stating several times, “The U.S. Senate has failed us” and “The federal government has failed us.” Gore even seemed to blame President Obama by emphasizing that “the government as a whole has failed us… although the House did its job. [emphasis added]”

Gored urged his listeners to take the “realistic view that they had failed badly.” Gore said that “Comprehensive legislation is not likely to be debated” and that a “lame duck debate” is a “very slim possibility indeed.” (N.B. We thought, because Gore told us, that “the debate” was over.)

Gore said “the government was not working “as our founders intended it to” and laid more blame at the feet of fossil fuel interests who conducted a “cynical coordinated campaign” with “unprecedented funding” and “who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars just on lobbying.” He criticized “polluters” for “dumping global warming pollution into the atmosphere like it was an open sewer.”

Gore blamed the skeptics for “attacking science and scientists.” “They [the skeptics] did damage and cast doubt,” Gore said.

Asked why the alarmists were ineffective in addressing Climategate, Gore bitterly blamed a “biased right-wing media… bolstered by professional deniers.” Gore claimed the Wall Street Journal published 30 editorial and news articles about Climategate and “not a single one presented [his] side of the science.”

Speaking about the post-2010 prospects for a climate bill, Gore tried to boost morale by stating that “the battle is not over” and that “we [alarmists] have no choice but to win the battle.” Gore said that “reality is [the alarmists] ally” and then, among other things, blamed recent flooding in Nashville and the Russian heatwave/forest fires on global warming.

He concluded by observing that “it is darkest before dawn” and “we have not yet begun to fight.”

In a warm-up discussion before Gore addressed the call, National Wildlife Federation chief Larry Schweiger referred to the skeptics as “enemies” and that he hoped the alarmists would “outlive the bastards.”

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Probably Not the "Hottest Year"

The off-shore drilling moratorium, the proposed cap & trade taxes, (or shall we say the energy penalty for being American?), and the continued, unsubstantiated claims of man-made global warming...we Americans need to know the truth about what all this will cost each and every one of us every day.

With more than 14 million Americans unemployed today, can you imagine what $7 per gallon gas will do to the economy?

We're not lucky enough to travel on Air Force One (or Two for a luxury vacation in Spain), or chopper six miles on Marine One to speak about how the economy continues to crash...we just pay for those flights. That's in addition to filling our own gas tanks to get to work if we HAVE a job. You get the drift.

If you had any questions about the existence of global warming, and whether it's YOUR fault, take a look at THIS...

It’s a Desperate Time for the Global Warming Campaigners
James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean.

Should we be alarmed? Probably not very.

My esteemed colleague Art Horn, at the Energy Tribune blog, has blown the whistle on Hansen and GISS. He points out that GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic! It has hardly any thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle. GISS estimates its arctic temperatures from land-based thermometers that supposedly each represent the temperatures over 1200 square kilometers. That’s a pretty heroic assumption.

Meanwhile, the Danish Meteorological Institute is publishing sea-surface temperatures from the Arctic showing a cooling trend in the Arctic oceans during melt season since about 1993. Clearly, we have no accurate measure of the real temperatures and trends in the Arctic at this moment. Probably that’s not very important. The Russians say that the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. The files of the New York Times, in fact, are filled with stories from the 1920s and 1930s, clearly showing that the Arctic was as warm then as now.

But this is the moment when proposed energy taxes would start to scuttle 85 percent of the energy which powers the modern world and its lifestyles. Global climate alarmists, Hansen among them, are playing a desperate and short-sighted game of “pass the energy taxes.”

President Obama says energy taxes are a high priority—perhaps high enough to ramp up his “health care reform” strategy. In a lame-duck Congressional session, after the November elections, Congress persons who had already lost their seats, would vote to saddle America with energy taxes that would triple our electric bills and, according to a Harvard study, drive gas prices to $7 per gallon.

The energy taxes are intended to make fossil fuels expensive! The idea is to deliberately drive fossil fuel prices high enough to force us to stop using them. Then we’re supposed to depend on costly and erratic solar and wind power. (Biomass can never produce much energy: biofuel crops would take too much land, and we can’t make ethanol out of cellulose sources.)

The man-made global warming believers have invested 20 years in their campaign to convince us of CO2-driven climate calamity. To their chagrin, the earth’s temperatures started to trend downward in 2007.

The sunspot index, which has a much stronger correlation with our thermometer record than CO2 (79% versus 22%) started predicting the cooling in 2000. The sun is still in a long cold-predicting minimum.

In 2008, NASA itself told us that Pacific had shifted into its cooling mode. The history of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation indicates a 30-year cooling phase, the opposite of the 1976–1998 warming trend.

They’re panicked about losing the whole ball game. They feel they must get an energy tax on the books before the earth has a chance to resume the recent-and-predicted cooling trend. They imagine that if the law gets on the books, a restart of the cooling wouldn’t push the next Congress to repeal the energy tax!

They might even be right, though it seems a stretch given the American people’s already-massive Obama-debt and the demonstrated history that tax cuts grow the economy and tax increases strangle it.

It’s a desperate time, not for the earth, but for the global warming campaigners.

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net.

What Happened to Ethanol?

With all the talk about “renewable” energy, have you wondered what happened to ethanol? Touted as the energy savior during the Bush administration, we don’t even hear a whimper about it under Obama’s leadership. It seemed to just go away.

But it’s baaack.

Read what CARE Energy Council Member Paul Driessen has to say about ethanol. We believe you’ll be shocked and outraged at what has been quietly happening behind the scenes while all the talk centers around wind and solar. Surprise: if these plans go through, energy will cost all of us more!

Dumb energy policies just keep coming
E15 ethanol mandates would bring huge benefits – for the few, at the expense of the many
If 10% ethanol in gasoline is good, 15% (E15) will be even better. At least for some folks.

We’re certainly heading in that direction--thanks to animosity toward oil, natural gas and coal, fear-mongering about global warming, and superlative lobbying for “alternative,” “affordable,” “eco-friendly” biofuels. Whether the trend continues, and what unintended consequences will be unleashed, will depend on Corn Belt versus consumer politics and whether more people recognize the downsides of ethanol.

Federal laws currently require that fuel suppliers blend more and more ethanol into gasoline, until the annual total rises from 9 billion gallons of EtOH in 2008 to 36 billion in 2022. The national Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) also mandates that corn-based ethanol tops out at 15 billion gallons a year, and the rest comes from “advanced biofuels”--fuels produced from switchgrass, forest products and other non-corn feedstocks, and having 50% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum.

These “advanced biofuels” thus far exist only on paper or in laboratories and demonstration projects. But Congress apparently believes passing a law will turn wishes into horses and mandates into reality.

Create the demand, say ethanol activists, and the supply will follow. In plain-spoken English: Impose the mandates and provide sufficient subsidies, and ethanol producers will gladly “earn” billions growing crops, building facilities and distilling fuel.

Thus, ADM, Cargill, POET bio-energy and the Growth Energy coalition will benefit from RFS and other mandates, loan guarantees, tax credits and direct subsidies. Automobile and other manufacturers will sell new lines of vehicles and equipment to replace soon-to-be-obsolete models that cannot handle E15 blends. Lawmakers who nourish the arrangement will continue receiving hefty campaign contributions from Big Farma.

However, voter anger over subsidies and deficits bode ill for the status quo. So POET doubled its Capital Hill lobbying budget in 2010, and the ethanol industry has launched a full-court press to have the Senate, Congress and Environmental Protection Agency raise the ethanol-in-gasoline limit to 15% ASAP. As their anxiety levels have risen, some lobbyists are suggesting a compromise at 12% (E12).

Not surprisingly, ethanol activism is resisted by people on the other side of the ledger--those who will pay the tab, and those who worry about the environmental impacts of ethanol production and use.

• Taxpayer and free market advocates point to the billions being transferred from one class of citizens to another, while legislators and regulators lock up billions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and vast additional energy resources in onshore and offshore America. They note that ethanol costs 3.5 times as much as gasoline to produce, but contains only 65% as much energy per gallon as gasoline.
  
• Motorists, boaters, snowmobilers and outdoor power equipment users worry about safety and cost. The more ethanol there is in gasoline, the more often consumers have to fill up their tanks, the less value they get, and the more they must deal with repairs, replacements, lost earnings and productivity, and malfunctions that are inconvenient or even dangerous.

Ethanol burns hotter than gasoline. It collects water and corrodes plastic,
rubber and soft metal parts. Older engines and systems may not be able to handle
E15 or even E12, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect
engine, fuel pump and sensor durability.

Home owners, landscapers and yard care workers who use 200 million lawn mowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power gear want proof that parts won’t deteriorate and equipment won’t stall out, start inadvertently or catch fire. Drivers want proof that their car or motorcycle won’t conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines won’t die miles from land or in the face of a storm, and snowmobiles won’t sputter to a stop in some frigid wilderness.

All these people have a simple request: test E12 and E15 blends first. Wait until the Department of Energy and private sector assess these risks sufficiently, and issue a clean bill of health, before imposing new fuel standards. Safety first. Working stiff livelihoods second. Bigger profits for Big Farma and Mega Ethanol can wait. Some unexpected parties recently offered their support for more testing.

Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Joe Barton (R-TX) and Fred Upton (R-MI) wrote to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, advising her that
“Allowing the sale of renewable fuel … that damages equipment, shortens its life
or requires costly repairs will likely cause a backlash against renewable fuels.
It could also seriously undermine the agency’s credibility in addressing engine
fuel and engine issues in the future.”

Corn growers will benefit from a higher ethanol RFS. However, government
mandates mean higher prices for corn – and other grains, as corn and switchgrass
incentives reduce farmland planted in wheat or rye. Thus, beef, pork, poultry
and egg producers must pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers face
higher prices for grains, eggs, meat and corn syrup; and folks who simply like
affordable food cringe as their grocery bills go higher.

• Whether the issue is food, vehicles or equipment, blue collar, minority, elderly and middle class families would be disproportionately affected, Affordable Power Alliance co-chairman Harry Jackson, Jr. points out. They have to pay a larger portion of their smaller incomes for food, and own older cars and power equipment that would be particularly vulnerable to E15 fuels.
• Ethanol mandates also drive up the cost of food aid – so fewer malnourished, destitute people can be fed via USAID and World Food Organization programs.
  Biotechnology will certainly help, by enabling farmers to produce more biofuel crops per acre, using fewer pesticides and utilizing no-till methods that reduce soil erosion, even under drought conditions. If only Greenpeace and other radical groups would cease battling this technology. However, there are legitimate environmental concerns.
• Oil, gas, coal and uranium extraction produces large quantities of high-density fuel for vehicles, equipment and power plants (to recharge batteries) from relatively small tracts of land. We could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from Arctic land equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if ANWR weren’t off limits.

By contrast, 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol requires cropland and
wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, and for 21 billion gallons of advanced
biofuel we’d need South Carolina planted in switchgrass.

• Ethanol has only two-thirds the energy value of gasoline--and it takes 70% more energy to grow and harvest corn and turn it into EtOH than what it yields as a fuel. There is a “net energy loss,” says Cornell University agriculture professor David Pimental.
• Pimental and other analysts also calculate that growing and processing corn into ethanol requires over 8,000 gallons of water per gallon of alcohol fuel. Much of the water comes from already stressed aquifers--and growing the crops results in significant pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer runoff.
• Ethanol blends do little to reduce smog, and in fact result in more pollutants evaporating from gas tanks, says the National Academy of Sciences. As to preventing climate change, thousands of scientists doubt the human role, climate “crisis” claims and efficacy of biofuels in addressing the speculative problem.

Meanwhile, Congress remains intent on mandating low-water toilets and washing machines, and steadily expanding ethanol diktats. And EPA wants to crack down on dust from livestock, combine operations and tractors in farm fields.

“With Congress,” Will Rogers observed, “every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it’s a joke.” If it had been around in 1934, he would have added EPA. Let’s hope for some change.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.cfact.org/) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – black death.

Has Mexican Oil Peaked?

We always enjoy featuring the insights of Byron King and have benefitted from his expertise on CARE’s Monthly Conference Call. This piece caught our attention because of the title. Of course the word ‘oil” was a trigger, but “crashing” was more the hook.

The debate about so-called “peak oil” is ongoing and we’ve generally taken the side of “Yes, the low hanging fruit is gone, but there are so many new discoveries and resource expansion that we have enough oil for a hundred years at least.” So, “crashing” definitely got our attention--hopefully yours too!

Fortunately, this piece didn’t change our view, but unfortunately for America, who uses a great deal of the Mexican resource, they have not managed their industry well. Byron writes for an investment newsletter called Whiskey and Gunpowder and while we do not even pretend to give investment advice, we always find his perspective worthy of note.

Mexico’s Crashing Oil Industry
Mexico is a critical oil supplier to the United States. But Mexico’s ‘s oil industry is in crisis. Indeed the grim numbers come from no less a source than the Mexican Energy Ministry. Production statistics make it clear that Mexico’s overall oil output is declining rapidly--with the word “crashing” coming to mind as one views the chart.

One particular oil field is central to the problem. It’s called Cantarell. It’s a super-giant, offshore oil field that was discovered in 1976--based on a natural oil seep under about 150 feet of water, by the way.

After decades of production, Cantarell is getting long in the tooth. Oil output from Cantarell, is declining rapidly. Cantarell is depleting at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile, the yield from new Mexican oil fields is simply not making up the difference.

The Mexican government obtains about 40% of its national receipts from oil-related revenues. Yet due to falling oil output, especially from offshore, Mexico will likely cease being an oil exporting nation by 2015. This looming problem holds dire implications for the national balance sheet of Mexico, as well as--by implication--for U.S. energy and national security.

One obvious question is, Can Mexico rebuild its oil industry? Right now, there’s not nearly enough internal Mexican investment in exploration and new oil development. It’s quite evident that Mexico has under-funded what’s called “maintenance capital,” the funds necessary just to keep the day-to-day operations and equipment working.

Another problem is Mexico’s lack of success in discovering and developing new oil resources, despite its national jurisdiction over a large slice of the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

One major element of this lack of exploration success is that Mexico’s constitution severely restricts foreign participation in Mexico’s energy development. That is, foreign oil companies are banned from exploring for and drilling for oil in Mexico. Considering Mexico’s crashing oil output, it’s fair to ask if Mexico should change its approach to development.

Recently, I discussed these important issues with Ali Moshiri, President of Chevron Africa and Latin America Exploration and Production Company.

Here’s what I asked Mr. Moshiri about Mexican oil development, followed by his reply.

BWK: In the U.S. we’re seeing remarkable discoveries in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Could you share your views about what’s happening across the GOM, down in Mexico? Is there hope for deepwater oil helping Mexico reverse it’s decline rate for oil production?

AM: With Mexico, the new government reforms are in a positive direction. The fundamentals have to be decided by the Mexican government, which has to decide how they want to risk exploring their basin.

The Mexican government has to decide if they want to risk future exploration via Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos, the Mexican national oil company--NOC), or via the private sector. They need to recognize that if the private sector is going to get involved, it has to be via a meaningful way. A meaningful way would be via sharing the risk and the upside.

BWK: Do you think we’ll ever see large, new discoveries in the Mexican GOM areas?

AM: I personally believe that Mexico is under-explored. They’re lagging behind on exploration offshore, and they underestimate the complexity and what is required. It all needs to be reassessed.
If you look at the U.S. deepwater GOM, there was a long era (to get to) where we are today. And you cannot look at today, and say you are going to take the U.S. GOM and image it into the Mexican area.

BWK: So what do you think it will take for Mexico to accomplish the exploration, and find the potential resources that are out there?

AM: Number one is that (Mexico needs to allow) the flexibility that is required for private sector, for IOCs (international oil companies). It’s IOCs that are the ones who really know how to go from phased exploration into development.

Yes, you can find companies that can explore. But when you explore, and then you find hydrocarbons in 8,000 feet of water, the next step is how you can develop it. How much money do you need? You can say, well, you need X-millions of dollars (to) develop it. But how do I finance it?

It gets into capital efficiency. Capital efficiency would be, how do I go ahead and finance this project? By production sharing? Finance it by myself? Some other way? How do you finance the development? Those are things that we think need to be addressed in Mexico.

BWK: What about contractors? Do you think Mexico could accomplish its energy goals by hiring, say, service companies, or using large oil companies as contractors, to do the exploration, the seismic, the drilling and such?

AM: The IOC has to be perceived as a partner. You cannot perceive the IOC as a contractor. This is my personal opinion.

Working with the IOC as purely a contractor will slow down the process. You have to look at the IOC as a partner, and a partner meaning sharing the risks as well as the rewards.

If Mexico gets this concept, and understands it, I think the progress and the basin is good enough to do things in the right way, and (Mexico) can be able to catch up the U.S. GOM and the U.S. sector.

So according to Chevron’s Ali Moshiri, there’s hope the Mexican energy sector. If Mexico opens up to foreign risk-sharing, and makes a good use of the expertise of international oil firms, then the nation can increase its future oil output.

But Mexico needs to permit outside, independent oil companies to participate as partners in exploration and development. That means to share the risk and rewards. In other words, Mexico should leverage foreign capital and technology, while sharing the eventual oil production in an equitable manner.

Even then, if everything goes right, it’s going to be a multi-year project to restore Mexico’s oil output to what we’ve seen in previous years. From where things are now, it won’t be easy.

Byron King earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, graduated cum laude from Harvard University, served on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, and is a regulator contributor to the Whiskey and Gunpowder investment newsletter.

The U.S. Constitution, Global Warming, Environmental Protection

In order to discuss the role that the U.S. Constitution plays in determining the appropriate course of action regarding global warming and environmental protection, CARE has turned to former U.S. Senator (Represented New Mexico) and Apollo astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt. Our contributing writer uses his expertise as a former geologist to build the case that carbon dioxide is NOT the cause of an impending global warming disaster. Quite the contrary, his data-driven analysis strongly suggests that the greenhouse gas effect aids humanity by making the planet more habitable rather than less habitable. At one point he states that "All we really know at present is that natural variations in climate have been very complex, often extreme, and all before human industrial activity existed."

After considering the science behind climate variation, Senator Schmitt points out that local/state environmental challenges rather than global environmental degradation should become the focus of concerned citizens within the context of the 2010 election. The best way to achieve this is to apply the interstate commerce clause to environmental challenges and to resist attempts to erode constitutional liberties in the name of environmental ideology. This is an ideal read for those that wish to link sound science with meaningful public policy reforms.

Climate (Temperature) and the Constitution #3

Ten thousand years of natural, post-Ice Age climate variability should give pause to those who maintain that current slow global warming and carbon dioxide increases result largely from human use of fossil fuels. Public confidence in that position also suffers from the exposure of fraudulent academic and bureaucratic behavior aimed at overriding normal processes of skeptical scientific review and debate.

Observational data and interpretations related to global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide deserve close examination before taking irrevocable and dangerous regulatory actions. If there were no other factors affecting temperature at the Earth¹s surface, the balance between heat from the sun and heat re-radiated from the Earth to space would give an average surface temperature of about zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Centigrade). Not good. Fortunately, natural greenhouse heat trapping effects of atmospheric water and to a much lesser extent carbon dioxide and methane, add about 146 thermal watts per square meter (versus the Sun¹s irradiance of 1366 watts per square meter) so that the average surface temperature of the Earth becomes about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Centigrade), making the planet habitable rather than being a ball of ice covered rock and water with occasional volcanic eruptions.

Geological investigations indicate that over the last 600 million years average global surface temperature appears to have been buffered roughly at a maximum of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Centigrade). The last 53 million years being significantly colder than the previous average, as indicated by oxygen isotopes of shells in sea floor cores, but comparable to other cold periods in the geologic past. During this 600 million year period, major cold perturbations to about 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees C) occurred about every 150 million years. Over that period, carbon dioxide decreased from an estimated maximum of about 7000ppm 550 million years ago to minimum of about 300ppm around 300 million years ago (current level at 385ppm) without changing the long-term average temperature at the Earth¹s surface.

Around 43 million years ago, declining carbon dioxide concentration reached about 1400ppm, followed by three oscillations during the next 10 million years with amplitudes of about 1000ppm. Temperature apparently remained relatively constant during these ancient carbon dioxide oscillations except during the most recent when oxygen isotope ratios indicate a sharp drop in temperature 33.5 million years ago, that is, about the time ice sheets began to accumulate on Antarctica. Relative to today¹s values, declining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels remained relatively high (740-1400ppm) as Antarctica cooled.

About 22 million years ago, with its continued slow migration away from Africa, Australia, and South America, the ocean distribution and ocean currents around Antarctica began to resemble modern configurations, with partial deglaciation of that continent beginning about 14-15 million years ago. A particularly warm two million years for the tropical Earth latitudes developed about 4 million years ago even as sea surface temperatures slowly declined toward present levels. This seemingly contradictory situation apparently related to a long-term north-south expansion of the warm tropical ocean waters resulting in a factor of four reduction in the sea surface temperature gradient from the equator to at least 34ºN (~2ºC gradient versus ~8ºC, today) that lasted until about 1.5 million years ago. Along with disruptions of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, convective tropical Hadley circulation apparently slowed during this long period with both effects probably leading to significant global climate impacts.

About 2.75 million years ago, major ice ages began to oscillate with periods of warmth (interglacials). This occurred in spite of the concurrent anomaly in the tropical sea surface temperature gradient. Ten specific high latitude ice ages took place in the last million years, apparently correlated with a change in the dominant solar influence on cooling from the Earth's 41,000-year orbital obliquity cycle to its 100,000-year eccentricity cycle. A significant decrease in the overall concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide occurred at about the same time as this change in orbital influence with even greater, temporary reductions associated with each ice age; however, the reported data do not support a causal association of this decrease in carbon dioxide with the overall cooling during this million-year period.

Terminations of past ice ages appear to be associated with increased solar heating (insolation), as orbital influences changed, and not with triggering increases in carbon dioxide levels; although such increases certainly accompanied the terminations. Recent suggestions that increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide forced temperature changes and ice age terminations over the last 20 million years or so suffer from science¹s inability to adequately time-correlate changes in carbon dioxide levels with changes in global temperature, i.e., correlation does not, by itself, mean causation. As carbon dioxide release from the oceans due to warming lags warming by hundreds to thousands of years, no support exists for a conclusion that a specific natural carbon dioxide change forced a specific temperature change.

The lesson in these variations in values for atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature through geologic time, at least at a million-year or so time-resolution, appears to be that increases and decreases in carbon dioxide have not triggered global temperature changes as derived from fossil oxygen isotope ratios. Other long-term geological and solar-related phenomena may have overwhelmed any broad greenhouse effects related to carbon dioxide; or, alternatively, the proxies used for estimating ancient atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations may be invalid. All we really know at present is that natural variations in climate have been very complex, often extreme, and all before human industrial activity existed.

Studies of Antarctic ice cores indicate that Earth-surface temperatures several degrees warmer than present existed during the four preceding interglacials of the last 420,000 years. At a low time-resolution of 1000s of years, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere apparently did not rise above 290ppm (compared to 385ppm today), and its changes would appear to be correlated directly with temperature changes. On the other hand, high time-resolution ice core data indicates that both increases and decreases in atmospheric carbon dioxide lag associated increases and decreases in global temperature by hundreds to a thousand years for major long-term temperature variations. The rise or fall in average ocean temperature would be expected proceed any effect on stored carbon dioxide due to the oceans¹ relatively high mass and slow circulation.

A particularly prolonged warm period in the current interglacial between 9000 and 6000 years ago has been documented, most recently in oxygen isotopic analyses of Greenland ice sheet cores. That warm period resulted in significant thinning of Greenland¹s ice sheet to thicknesses within a 100m of those of today. Several other warm periods have occurred since, the most pronounced of which has been termed the Medieval Warm Period (500-1300).

Warm periods, sometimes referred to as "climate anomalies," of this nature were largely highly beneficial to fledgling human cultures.

After a century-long transition from the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age of 1400-1900 recorded the most recent interval of significant global cooling. Global cooling characterized the Little Ice Age in most regions, accompanied in some areas by droughts. By 1400, however, Artic ice pack had enclosed Iceland and Greenland and driven Viking settlers away from their farms on those islands. By the end of the 1600s, in response to the continued climate cooling, glaciers had advanced over valley farmlands cultivated as those same glaciers receded during the Medieval Warm Period.

Indeed, essentially all of the consequences of warming prior to 1300 reversed during the next several hundred years of the Little Ice Age.

Since about 1660, gradual global warming of about 0.9 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Centigrade) each 100 years has occurred, although decades-long cooling events have interrupted this trend. Antarctic sea ice, however, now has been expanding northward for about two decades after indications in the Law Dome ice core of an additional gradual decline between about 1960 and 1990.

Although the observational, historical, and geological evidence indicates strongly that global scale changes in the climate, ocean chemistry, and biological activity have roots in natural processes, the concentration of human pollution in local areas of the Earth have documented adverse impacts.

It remains increasingly in the economic and societal interests of the private sector and State governments to stop and reverse the unnatural changes for which they bear constitutional responsibility.

Private sector, State, and Federal control of their contributions to regional local pollution effects, and consumer, shareholder, and voter insistence on prevention and cleanup, form an integral part of the nation¹s future. Appropriate and restrained Federal regulation within the Founders¹ logically constrained intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, of the Constitution, that is, the Commerce Clause, can contribute greatly to the instigation of this new environmental ethic.

On the other hand, unconstitutional coercion will make matters worse while at the same time eroding essential liberties. The long road back to constitutional protection of the environment begins with the elections of 2010.

*****

Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the new Committee of Correspondence

Obama’s Deliberate Katrina

If you're fed up with the blatant incompetence of the federal government as demonstrated by its inability to contain the Gulf Coast oil spill, then you don't want to miss CARE's latest blog post. Our contributing writer is Paul Driessen, an established author that has long advocated energy policies that actually work. Paul builds the case that the Obama administration along with other elements of the federal bureaucracy is deliberately magnifying the severity of the Gulf Coast oil spill in order to ram through a malicious political agenda.

The federal thugs calling the shots have dismissed regulatory protections that could have helped prevent the oil spill, implemented regulations that hurt our economy and further damage our environment, "rejected 21 offers of help from 17 different nations" (in reference to the Jones Act), and have further politicized science to justify their draconian drilling moratorium. Paul's commentary is compelling and we're confident that you will never look at the role that the federal government plays in energy policy the same way ever again.

Bungling the BP Oil Spill Cleanup? Or Never Letting the Crisis go to Waste?

Back in May, a television news program asked me if I’d tell America the BP oil spill is President Obama’s Katrina. We discussed the spill’s causes, effects and cleanup effort, but I wouldn’t give them the “red meat” they were looking for. So I lost my 15 minutes of national fame.

Since then, it has become obvious that the Katrina analogy is inappropriate. The 2005 hurricane was marked by abject failures by the New Orleans mayor and Louisiana governor, and initially inept responses by FEMA and the Bush administration.

The 2010 oil spill is defined by yeoman’s efforts by Gulf Coast governors – and an Obama administration response that is leagues beyond inept. It is proactively incompetent and obstructionist, as though it is determined not to let this crisis go to waste – but to prolong and intensify the environmental and economic calamity, to advance its political objectives: shutting down offshore leasing and drilling, bringing the US oil industry into the automotive-banking-housing-healthcare sphere of federal control, forcing a massive shift to costly renewable energy, and ramming cap-tax-and-trade through Congress.

How else can anyone explain the litany of bureaucratic decisions that have squandered opportunities to shield beaches, fisheries and estuaries from the expanding slick, before hurricanes hammer cleanup efforts? Ponder this unconscionable malfeasance by the EPA, Corps of Engineers, Interior Department, Fish and Wildlife Service, OSHA, Justice Department, White House and Congress, which:

* Exempted BP from normal environmental reviews, from requirements that BP have viable plans in place and equipment on location to deal with any blowout and spill, and from oversight of its intended removal of drilling muds from the drillstem despite signs of dangerous pressure building in the well.

* Opposed surface and subsurface use of dispersants and rejected offers of dispersants from Britain.

* Compelled crews to employ 4-inch hoses to vacuum up oil by the quart, after President Obama objected that he “can’t suck it up with a straw.” Rejected state-of-the-art skimmers from the Netherlands, because the skimmers send a little oil back into the ocean, while collecting seawater mixed with oil, segregating the oil and discharging the water. (EPA demands that any water discharged from the skimmer be 99.99% oil-free. In other words, it demands that all the oil be left in the ocean, to be driven onto beaches and into sensitive estuaries – rather than permitting ships to collect 95% of the oil, and discharge the rest.)

* Rejected other state-of-the-art vessels, because the Jones Act prohibits the use of even specialized foreign crews in US waters. All together, says the State Department, the feds have rejected 21 offers of help from 17 different nations. (The president could waive the Jones Act, as President Bush did after Katrina, but apparently doesn’t want to offend his union allies.)

* Stands poised to reject help from the Taiwanese tanker-turned-skimmer, “A Whale,” which is now steaming toward the Gulf, to aid the cleanup – on the same bogus Jones Act and “pollution” grounds.

* Refused to allow the building of berms, because dredge and fill operations might cause environmental impacts – as though the massive intrusion of oil into marshlands would have no effect on wildlife.

* Forced Alabama to remove barriers it had installed to protect the state’s beaches, and move them to Louisiana waters.

* Appointed a scientific advisory board to assess the spill response – then falsely claimed the panel had approved the imposition of a drilling moratorium that was actually added to its recommended actions only after the scientists had signed off on the proposed plan. The drilling ban’s severe impacts on Gulf state employment and revenues were ignored by Interior and the White House, which likewise ignored a Federal District Court order to lift the moratorium until the matter could be fully adjudicated.

* Instead of coordinating an effective cleanup, appointed an oil spill investigation panel that includes the dean of the Harvard Engineering School, a former EPA administrator, the head of an anti-drilling environmental activist group, an anti-oil former US senator, and three others. Not one has actual expertise or experience in drilling or oil spill cleanup.

* Threatened criminal prosecutions, thereby chilling witness discussions and testimony, rather than working to learn what precisely went wrong on April 27 and coordinate a successful cleanup effort.

* Held congressional inquisition hearings, to grandstand, browbeat industry officials, and gloss over MMS regulatory and oversight failures – long before a factual investigation could be completed into the accident and response to it, and amid threats of criminal prosecution for anything witnesses might say.

To top it off, in the face of an environmental catastrophe largely perpetrated and perpetuated by a deliberately incompetent and intransigent federal government, rabidly anti-drilling Congressmen Waxman, Markey and Stupak have now introduced HR 5626, the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill requires that any company seeking a drilling permit must first guarantee that it could prevent any future blowouts; promptly stop any blowout, even if the blowout preventers and other measures fail; and drill a relief well within 90 days of any blowout.

This “domestic oil production prohibition” bill sets safety standards that are as impossible to meet, as requiring that all oil tankers prove they will never have an accident, even if they are forced to negotiate the obstacle courses that these same legislators intend to create off our shores, by installing thousands of wind turbines along our coasts. In conjunction with other anti-drilling initiatives, the bill would greatly increase the number of tankers coming to the United States with crude oil and refined products – thus increasing the number of major tanker accidents.

Even a six-month moratorium could cost 20,000-30,000 jobs in the Gulf Region. If HR 5626 and other measures are implemented, the ban could easily become permanent – destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. Once the big rigs leave, most won't be back for years, as they will be in high demand in counties that do want to drill. Meanwhile China, Cuba and other countries will be drilling in our backyard, off Florida for example, using their rules and technologies, tapping into US reservoirs, and threatening our coasts.

Anyone who’s read my book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power / Black Death, knows I am no fan of BP. It screwed up big time in the Gulf, cutting corners and failing to respond properly to tests and other signs of trouble downhole, further compounding its awful environmental and workplace safety record.

However, there is simply no justification for these actions by the Obama administration and Democrat Congress, which seem determined to magnify the crisis – to further hobble the nation’s oil and gas industry and the countless companies, workers, families, hospitals, schools and charities that depend on it. Indeed, America runs on reliable, affordable petroleum fuels for almost two-thirds of all the energy we consume. It counts on offshore oil for millions of jobs and billions in royalty and tax revenues.

Enough is enough. The Gulf States must take control of their energy, economic and environmental future. In the long term, this means conducting complete investigations into corporate and government failures – and imposing civil and criminal penalties for misfeasance and malfeasance, as appropriate.

In the near term, the Gulf States should make it clear that these are their beaches, estuaries, coastal waters, jobs and revenues – and they will no longer tolerate the abject failures that have defined the authoritarian federal takeover of this oil spill response effort.

The states have a right, and a duty, to make decisions about booms, berms, skimmers and every other aspect of the cleanup – based on what their experts advise, and perhaps regardless of what the EPA, Coast Guard or other federal agencies might say.

Only then will this nightmare be brought to an end.

Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/) and senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark) reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families.