Who Gets Hurt with High Energy Prices? Who Creates Them?

When you spend all day, every day, focused on energy, it is easy to think you have the bases pretty well covered. Therefore, when something new comes along, it catches your attention. Such was the case when the following posting landed in CARE’s in-box. It is easy to get so consumed looking at energy sources, alternative options, and possible climate change mandates that you overlook the immediate impact on society—today. This report looks at the Congressional Black Caucus and the effect rising energy prices have on the poor and minority families in America. Even if you can afford to heat your home this winter and fill your tank at the current prices, think about the cumulative results decades of legislators, regulators, judges and pressure groups have heaped on those who are less fortunate. Remember them when you encourage your lawmakers in one direction or another. Think of America’s poor and minority families when you cast your vote for president in the upcoming primary elections.

For a side-by-side comparison of the leading candidates’ positions on energy, please check out CARE’s November e-newsletter.

An Opportunity Squandered
The Congressional Black Caucus is shortchanging poor and minority energy consumers
A recent Congressional Black Caucus Foundation conference in Washington featured an “energy braintrust.” It promised a lively three-hour discussion by oil company, association, government agency and university executives, to “transform dialogue into action” and “bolster the relationships between the energy industry and African-American community.”

Sadly, the session moderator squandered the opportunity. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas knows the oil business and recognized that “energy is the foundation of our economy, the engine that drives the world.” But she arrived 40 minutes late, then posed for photos and bemoaned oil industry shortcomings. By the time she introduced the speakers, the session was half over.

The first panelist noted that many “public policy barriers” restrict exploration, production and delivery of needed energy. Several said more minorities and minority businesses must be involved in the energy industry, while others noted that US laws and policies raise energy prices, make excellent prospects off limits to drilling, and reduce opportunities for businesses and employment.

Rep. Lee did not pick up on any of these critical issues. Instead, she nodded as her “good friend,” the CEO of CITGO Petroleum, extolled Hugo Chavez and offered platitudes about “building bridges” between Venezuela and poor US communities.

After each talk, Mrs. Lee introduced other “good friends” in the audience – and her son, who “needs a job” – frittering away more time. The session ended with virtually no attempt (or time) to analyze the shortcomings of current US energy policies.

An hour later, presidential aspirant Senator Barack Obama declaimed that climate change is the most serious threat facing African-American families, and “environmental justice” demands that factories not be built in minority communities, because they might pollute.

The message was a politically correct regurgitation of Democratic Party and Sierra Club talking points. It was the same deficient analysis that brought us child welfare mothers “raising” children in fatherless families, schools ruled by incivility and violence, and uneducated youths suited for gangs but not jobs.

African America cries out for thoughtful leadership. Our country hungers to embrace a strong black candidate for national public office. Instead, our Black Caucus marches in lockstep with activists and legislators whose policies are disastrous for low income and minority families.

Energy is the “master resource,” on which everything else depends. Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, natural gas and transportation fuels make our jobs, health and living standards possible. They are the great equalizer, the creator of economic opportunities and true environmental justice.

Lock those resources up--cripple our energy sector with taxes, over-regulation, and ill-advised laws that make heating, driving and manufacturing more costly--and the poor suffer most. Destroy jobs, or make poor families pay an ever larger portion of their meager incomes for energy, food and clothing--and the hard-won victories for civil rights are quickly reversed.

Keep businesses out of neighborhoods blighted by slum dwellings and brownfields, and you take away jobs, health insurance, a stronger tax base for schools, environmental cleanups and a chance for the American dream. Lock up oil, gas and coal prospects, and there will be fewer job opportunities even in companies that are committed to diversity.

The Kyoto Protocol would reduce average global temperatures by 0.2 degrees by 2050. Pending congressional bills might achieve a 0.05 degree reduction – assuming CO2 drives climate change, which numerous scientists doubt. These symbolic gestures would raise energy prices for no environmental benefit.

America could get 20 billion gallons of gasoline a year from an area 1/20 the size of Washington, DC, in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Instead, lawmakers exult over getting 5 billion gallons of ethanol from an area the size of Indiana, and using some 4 billion gallons of fossil fuel to grow, harvest, process and transport the corn. Some want 15 billion barrels of corn-ethanol by 2022.

Legislators, regulators, judges and pressure groups have made a decade’s worth of oil and natural gas off limits. They’ve helped drive up energy costs more than $1000 per family since 2000, and caused every barrel saved through efficiency and conservation to be offset by oil locked up on questionable ecological grounds.

These energy deniers want to shackle the fossil fuel system we have, and replace it with a utopian system that isn’t even on the drawing boards.

This isn’t energy policy or environmental justice. It’s feel-good grandstanding. It would replace our free enterprise system with one based on government dictates, mandates, subsidies, and decisions about which companies, technologies and lobbyists win … and how much more consumers must pay.

These issues demand serious, robust debate. But the CBC isn’t even asking the right questions – much less providing leadership and challenging dominant liberal dogmas. The path it is taking betrays the gains that generations of civil rights champions fought so hard to achieve.
Let us hope this election season generates the healthy debate we so sorely need.


Roy Innis is national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, one of America’s oldest and most respected civil rights groups.

Is the Nobel Peace Prize Even Noble Anymore?

In 1895 when Alfred Nobel first conceived his award for peace, he had noble causes in mind: “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Surely someone who has met this noble goal is worthy of laud. In this posting, CARE’s Energy Counsel Member Dennis Avery looks at the diminished importance of today’s Nobel Peace Prize when compared with recipients of the past. Sure the cash reward would be nice, but most of today’s recipients don’t even need it. Other than the receipt of the dollars, would you want to be in the current company of Nobel Peace Prize winners?

Diminishing The Nobel Peace Prize
In 1964, Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading the non-violent crusade against racism and slavery—bettering not only America but the entire world.

In 1971, Willi Brandt won the Peace Prize for leading Germany’s peaceful reintegration back into the “world family of nations,” healing the destruction caused by Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolph Hitler with two World Wars that caused at least 70 million deaths.

In 1970, it went to my friend Norman Borlaug, the Green Revolution plant-breeder who: 1) saved 1 billion people from almost-immediate starvation, 2) prevented the plowdown of 16 million square miles of wildlands for more low-yield crops; and 3) just incidentally laid the foundation for the material abundance now spreading around the planet.

Now fast forward to look at recent Peace Prize winners:

In 1994, Yasser Arafat, the thuggish Islamic zealot who was lavishly paid to perpetuate Moslem/Jewish conflict in the Middle East. Arafat helped lay the groundwork for today’s round-the-world suicide bombings.

In 2001, The UN’s Kofi Annan: Did he end the genocide in Darfur? Stop the war in Kosovo? How about the billion-dollar UN corruption of Saddam Hussein’s “oil for food” program—assisted informally by his son?

Now we get Al Gore, a ho-hum U.S. politician catapulted to rock-star status by a moderate and natural global warming cycle, which has been hysterically inflated by the Green movement, willing media collaborators, and massive government funding for unproven computerized climate “models.” (Note: Mr. Gore’s movie has just been found guilty in a British court of 11 serious untruths and/or unsubstantiated claims.)

Gore says:
Ice core evidence shows rising CO2 levels raise earth’s temperatures. In fact, ice cores show the temperatures rising about 800 years before the CO2 levels go up.

Mt. Kilimanjaro’s melting glacier is proof of man-made warming. In fact, the melting is due largely to local deforestation.

The Antarctic ice is melting. Most studies say it’s stable or adding ice.

Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming. Historic records show far more major, landfalling Caribbean hurricanes per decade from 1700–1850, during the Little Ice Age, than now.

Global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, and cause an Ice Age in Europe. Recent studies offer no support to help Mr. Gore on this one.

Global warming is causing species extinctions and coral reef bleaching. In fact, not one species has gone extinct due to warming. Coral reefs adjust to new temperatures—by bleaching.

A study shows polar bears drowning due to vanishing ice. In fact, four polar bears drowned in a bad storm.

Greenland’s ice could melt suddenly, causing a dangerous rise in sea levels. In fact, it will take thousands of warming years to melt Greenland’s ice cap.

Global warming is drying up Africa’s Lake Chad. The UK government agrees this is not true.

Gore’s scary graphics show cities drowning in a 7-meter sea level rise, creating millions of refugees. In fact, the 20th century increase was 6 inches and we’ve seen no acceleration. Even the UN climate change panel doesn’t agree with Mr. Gore’s scenario.

Rising seas have forced people to flee Pacific islands to New Zealand. There is no record of any evacuation triggered by sea level rise.

Just one last question for our new Nobel Peace laureate: Why did most of our moderate modern warming take place before 1940 (with 1934 being the warmest year) and why haven’t we had any warming over the last nine years? Could it possibly be the moderate natural 1,500-year cycle revealed in the ice cores and seabed sediments?

DENNIS T. AVERY was a senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years, available from Rowman & Littlefield. Readers may write him at the Center for Global Food Issues (http://www.cgfi.org/) Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421.

Pay at the Pump or Pay at the Dealer

We’ve said it before, “We do not need the government mandating fuel economy standards.” In a free market system, the public votes with their dollars. When gasoline prices go up, the public demands vehicles with better mileage. But by requiring certain efficiencies by specified dates, technology is pushed to the limit and prices reflect the accelerated R & D. The results may not be any better than the washing machine debacle resulting from government regulations for higher efficiency. The result is a washing machine that costs twice as much but works half as well—according to Consumer Reports.

Yet, Washington forges ahead with plans for increased MPG regulation—what is called CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards. (See previous postings on CAFÉ Standards.)

Here Forbes Auto offers insight on what the consumer cost will be for these more strict standards. You’ll either pay at the pump or pay at the dealership. Why not at least give consumers a choice? Isn’t this the land of the free—as in free choice?

Better Fuel Economy Could Be Costly for Car Buyers
The government has yet to require higher fuel efficiency from the auto industry, but some manufacturers are already bracing for much stricter standards. Chrysler Group even went so far as to scrap plans for a new luxury vehicle that had been in the works.

Industry insiders insist consumers should be bracing too—for significantly higher prices and far fewer choices.

In July the Senate passed a bill that would increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for all passenger cars and trucks by about 40 percent. That would require automakers to raise the average gas mileage of their vehicles to 35 mpg by 2020. A proposal in the House would hold manufacturers to those standards as early as 2018.

The legislature is far from putting such changes into law. But observers say stricter standards—in some form—appear to be inevitable.

And buyers, beware. The impact on consumers is likely to be more than just the ability to get farther on a gallon of gas.

Consumers will end up paying for the more expensive technology that makes achieving the standards possible, said David Alexander, principal analyst for automotive systems at ABI Research in New York.

Dave Elshoff, a senior manager at Chrysler, said some cars could end up costing as much as 50 percent more. "Bringing our most fuel-efficient vehicle into the standards being proposed would add $5,000 to $7,000 to its price. And this is a $14,000 car," Elshoff said. "Consumers are gonna think twice about buying cars that expensive, which will hurt us."

Choice is also going to dwindle, both Alexander and Elshoff predicted.

Just the threat of stricter standards is already having an impact on production—at least for Chrysler.

The company is the first to order a change in its production schedule because of the possibility that stricter standards are on the way. It recently scrapped plans to build the Imperial, a large, luxury sedan that had been introduced as a concept vehicle at the 2006 Detroit auto show.

Elshoff gave two reasons for the decision: "One, volatile gas prices consistently well above $3 a gallon. Two, pending legislation in Washington."

Given those issues, Imperial's size made its demise inevitable, he said. "Any way you look at it, the concept car was based on our largest sedan. It was considerably big. Chrysler felt that there was no justifiable business case for a car like that with those two issues looming."

Ford spokesman Mike Moran said he thinks that car buyers are already making smarter, more informed decisions and are more willing to consider smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

"Addressing this issue is kind of like a three-legged stool. It's the vehicles, the fuels and the consumers. With the consumers it's more about what they are looking for or willing to purchase," Moran said.

His company's statistics show a shift in consumer spending toward more fuel-efficient vehicles. "There's been movement from the SUV area to crossover vehicles," he said.

Traditional SUVs employ truck architecture, while so-called crossovers employ car architecture. The crossovers can be more fuel efficient, in cases where they are lighter than the truck-like SUVs. "Consumers are making better choices [with regard to fuel economy]," Moran said. "I think we've seen a shift ever since [Hurricane] Katrina and with gas prices spiking."

Crossovers on the Upswing
Ford's statistics show that crossover vehicles have been the fastest growing category in the U.S. Industry-wide sales are up 18 percent in the first half of 2007. Annual sales have grown from about 500,000 in 2000 to 2.4 million in 2006. This year, sales will reach about 2.8 million and may go past the 3 million mark in 2008, the company said. At the same time, traditional SUV sales have been declining. Ford said that industry-wide sales of traditional SUVs likely will fall below 2 million units for 2007. The last time sales were that low was in 1995.

George Pipas, Ford's U.S. sales analysis manager, attributed this shift in consumer spending to various factors. It's part demographics and lifestyle needs, and part fuel prices, he said. Pipas said that baby boomers, who popularized SUVs in the '90s, are becoming empty-nesters. The utility of crossovers is what they prefer now, he said.

"This trend started long before Congress started to talk about new regulations, and even before gas prices began to increase," Pipas said. "I think higher gas prices encouraged people to think about what they really need a particular type of vehicle for, and in doing so probably accelerated a trend that was already underway."

"One thing that's possible for the future, which they've already done in Europe, is to switch from, say, a V6 gasoline engine to a four-cylinder with a turbocharger," Mike Omotoso, a senior manager at the market research firm J.D. Power and Associates says. "So you have better fuel economy but you still have the power with the turbo."

E85: Loophole or Credit System?
American manufacturers and the government have been touting E85, a fuel that is 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol, as a way to decrease dependence on fossil fuels and, specifically, foreign oil. Ethanol is made from organic material like corn or sugar cane.

Omotoso said some manufacturers are using E85 as a loophole to CAFE standards. "Manufacturers get extra credit for flex-fuel vehicles—ones that run on 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline," he said. "There's a formula where they average out the gasoline and ethanol fuel economy, so the CAFE miles-per-gallon number is actually higher than the real number. That helps offset the gas-guzzling SUV figures. Even though they make a large number of trucks, they have the flex-fuel vehicles to offset those numbers." This is how certain manufacturers get around having to pay penalties for not meeting current CAFE standards, Omotoso said.

Max Gates, regulatory affairs communications manager at Chrysler Group, said that manufacturers do accrue special credit toward CAFE standards through certain calculations of fuel consumption by flex-fuel vehicles. He argued that it's not a loophole but a credit system. "The government does a lot of incentives. A lot of times they just give cash to people, like they give to farmers to grow corn, which is made into ethanol," Gates said. "We don't get cash for building flexible-fuel vehicles. The incentive for us is a capped system of getting some credits under the CAFE rules. And frankly, we think that cap might be a little low. So we couldn't build a million flex-fuel vehicles."

Gates pointed to the fuel industry dragging its heels as one issue that is keeping E85 and flex-fuel vehicles from truly helping offset oil consumption. "There are 170,000 retail outlets for fuel in this country, and there are about 1,000 that dispense ethanol," he said. "Because the fuel is not available in this country, it isn't running on E85 anywhere near as much as it should be."

by Heather Ignall ForbesAutos.com

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The Ethanol Scam

Following a speaking engagement in Denver, an audience member forwarded this article on to us. Not only does the piece align with much of what we post here on the CARE Blog, it also introduced us to a new source—one you might be interested in: To the Point.

Additionally, in this posting Dr. Jack Wheeler offers a nice concise summary of the current ethanol situation, some stock advice, and a new word! Read on. We think you’ll want to pass this one on to all your friends. Of course, we believe that about everything we post—otherwise we not bother to share it with you. We liked it. We hope you do too!

A Roman Holiday for Ethanol
The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude (shay-din-froy-deh). It means someone being happy over someone else being unhappy. The only English equivalent is the term "Roman holiday," referring to the happy excitement Romans got over gladiators' suffering in the Colosseum.

It says a lot about us that we don't even have a word for this terrible and all too-common emotion. Yet all of us have probably experienced it at one time or another, and right now it's hard to resist it regarding folks who are biting the financial dust with ethanol.

Ethanol has always been a ludicrous rip-off. Ethanol combustion is carcinogenic (cancer-producing). It releases known carcinogens into the atmosphere: acetaldehyde, and peroxy-acetyl-nitrate/nitrite/nitrile, three powerful eye and lung irritants.

The argument that ethanol reduces tailpipe emissions is a fraud. With a modern car engine's oxygen sensors and computer-controlled fuel injection, there's no difference in CO (carbon monoxide) coming out your tailpipe with regular gas or ethanol.

Ethanol has only 2/3 the energy of regular gas, so you get 1/3 less energy per gallon, which means it adds 33% to the gas-per-mile cost of driving. But there's also the cost of ethanol transport, which is by truckload or railroad, much higher than by oil pipeline (which ethanol can't use because it can't handle any water contamination like oil can).

But corn farmers and Big Ag outfits like Archer-Daniels Midland wanted to scam taxpayers, so they forced ethanol mandates on us all so the gas in our car has to contain the stuff, and scammed us out of tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies because ethanol can't be produced for a profit without them.

It sure is wonderful to see anyone who benefited from this scam now losing their shirt.

As this recent story, Ethanol Boom Is Running Out of Gas, in the Wall Street Journal details, the glut of ethanol plants has caused a collapse of ethanol prices while the price of the corn from which it is made is rising. Thus many ethanol companies are now "under deathwatch."

So of course, the corn farmer lobby and ethanol producers are screaming for more subsidies from Congress.

They won't get them because a Nobel Prize winner has just pounded in the final nail in ethanol's coffin.

No - not the phony you just thought of, a real Nobel Laureate. Paul Crutzen of Holland is one of the world's premier atmospheric chemists who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995. He is currently a research professor in the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany.

The most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal in his field is the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics. Crutzen and his colleagues have just published in it a bombshell that blows up the enviros' case for ethanol, entitled N2O release from agro-biofuel production negates global warming reduction by replacing fossil fuels.

The study focused on N2O or nitrous oxide (the dentists' "laughing gas") as a proxy for overall greenhouse gas emissions as it is 300 times more insulating than carbon dioxide.

The study's summary states:
When the extra N2O emission from biofuel production is calculated in "CO2-equivalent" global warming terms, and compared with the quasi-cooling effect of "saving" emissions of fossil fuel derived CO2, the outcome is that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as bioethanol from corn, can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings.

How much more? Corn-based ethanol produced in the US has 50% more of a global warming effect than conventional gasoline.

This is stone-hard real science research by world class scientists. Watch the fireworks when Sen. Jim Inhofe unloads the science that ethanol increases global warming on the floor of the Senate, and puts it up on his blog that gets 100,000 hits a day. Watch how many doors to Senators' offices in the Russell, Hart, and Dirksen Buildings will be closed to ethanol lobbyists.

Goodnight, ethanol subsidies. Time to short ADM stock. Time for a Roman holiday with the corn lobby. Yes, sometimes schadenfreude is hard to resist.

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

Renewable Fuels Will Increase Prices to Consumers

Doesn’t the idea of renewable fuels sound great? After all, we all want to release our dependence on oil controlled by governments who are unfriendly to the civilized world. Growing it sounds like such a good idea. However before we totally buy into the renewable fuel plan, all sides need to be considered. Yes, environmental impact is important—who doesn’t want clean air and water? But cost needs to be a factor as well.

The House and Senate (at the time of this writing) have still not gotten together in committee to discuss a merging of the two different bills each passed earlier this year. So it is not too late for consumers/voters to express opinions

This posting comes to us from the Institute for Energy Research where Robert Bradley (one of our Energy Counsel Members) is President. Due to editing for brevity, please visit the Institute for Energy Research for the complete article.

In an attempt to alleviate concerns regarding energy independence, climate change, and high gasoline prices, Congress is expected to consider legislation this fall that would mandate the use of renewable fuels in the transportation and electric generating sectors. The Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent and statistical agency in the U.S. Department of Energy, released a study in September, requested by Senator Inhofe, that analyzes both a renewable fuels standard (RFS) in the transportation sector and a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in the electric generating sector. According to the EIA, these mandates would raise energy prices and reduce American economic output by $296 billion over two decades.

The mandates would establish a market for renewable energy credits. Companies would be required to hold credits in proportion to the amount of electricity they sell or the amount of motor transportation fuels they sell, by either producing the required level of renewable fuel or purchasing credits from other companies that generate a larger than required share. (See CARE’s September Newsletter for additional insight on the credits.)

According to the EIA, “achieving 25-percent penetration of renewable fuels in both electricity generation and motor transportation leads to higher energy prices as consumers substitute more expensive renewable fuels for less expensive fossil fuels.” Consumer energy prices rise steadily for the first 10 years of the projection, to 13 percent above expected prices. Higher delivered energy prices reduce real output for the economy, energy consumption, and, indirectly, real consumer spending for other goods and services due to lower purchasing power.

Gasoline and other petroleum products would cost more as oil refiners, blenders, and ethanol producers comply with the mandates, by producing almost 25 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol, 31 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol, and importing 9 billion gallons of ethanol from foreign markets in 2030, 5 years after the mandates must be reached. Gasoline prices are forecast to have a 61 percent increase (in 2005 dollars).

“Higher prices contribute to a reduction in transportation demand for liquid motor fuels on an energy basis” the EIA said. According to the EIA, “increasing the use of renewable motor fuels leads to higher overall consumption of primary energy, in part because of the significant use of energy in the conversion of biomass to ethanol.” Total energy consumption is up almost 4 percent relative to the baseline in 2025, while biomass consumption is up 192 percent. As a result, the cost of biomass rises from about $30 a ton in 2005 to over $88 a ton in 2030. Approximately 9.2 bushels of the total U.S. corn production in 2025 is used to make ethanol. “As a result, less corn is available for food and feed,” according to the EIA. Corn prices increase to $6.50 per bushel in 2025, compared to an average of about $2.50 over the prior two decades before the ethanol mandates began with the Energy Policy Act of 2005.In the generation sector, electricity prices are 6 percent higher than the baseline in 2030. About 70 percent of all new generating capacity built over the next 2 decades is renewable. The mandates reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They are 14 percent lower than the baseline in 2030, but still remain higher than 2005 levels, by 14 percent.

The EIA cautions, “This analysis suggests that, to comply with mandates, it will be necessary for electricity and motor fuel producers to dramatically increase their use of technologies that play a relatively small role in today’s energy markets. …Big changes in the energy system, especially when implemented quickly, come with numerous uncertainties, the impacts of which may not be fully captured in this study. For example, compliance with the mandates would require successful development and rapid deployment of new technologies, such as biomass gasification power plants and cellulosic ethanol plants, that are not commercially available.” The EIA analysis evaluates the impact of the mandates through 2030, the current time horizon of projections in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook. The report can be found through the EIA .

IER Distinguished Fellow Mary Hutzler provided this summary

Should Al Gore Give Back His Awards?

On the heels of the news story about Olympic athlete Marion Jones having to give back her medals as the presence of steroids nullified her victories, Al Gore is in the news twice in 24 hours. On October 11, a High Court judge in London found nine inconsistencies in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. The inconvenient ruling means the award winning film may not be shown to school children unless it is accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance the one-sided views. The Judge noted, the presence of “alarmism and exaggeration” and stated that it is an “apocalyptic vision.” Does this sound like a “documentary” to you? By definition, a documentary is “based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements” or “Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film” or “emphasizing or expressing things as perceived without distortion of personal feelings, insertion of fictional matter, or interpretation.” With these definitions and this new news in mind, does Al Gore deserve and Oscar for a “documentary?” The next day, October 12, Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. Czech President Vaclav Klaus says he is surprised Gore would get a peace prize, noting "The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct." Both of these awards seem to be wrought on convenient lies and both should be returned. What do you think?

Read the London Times article here.

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Judgment
Al Gore’s award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday.

An Inconvenient Truth won plaudits from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry but was found wanting when it was scrutinized in the High Court in London.

Mr. Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential candidate’s documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children. He agreed that Mr. Gore’s film was “broadly accurate” in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.

In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the classroom, Mr. Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the “apocalyptic vision” presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.

“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,” he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-Vice-President, Al Gore, whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.

“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.”

The analysis by the judge will have a bearing on whether the Government can continue with its plan to have the film shown in every secondary school. He agreed it could be shown but on the condition that it was accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Mr. Gore’s “one-sided” views.

The Government’s decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from Stewart Dim-mock, a school governor in Kent and a member of political group the New Party, who accused the Government of brainwashing children.

The first mistake made by Mr. Gore, said Mr. Justice Burton in his written judgment, was in talking about the potential devastation wrought by a rise in sea levels caused by the melting of ice caps.

The claim that sea levels could rise by 20ft “in the near future” was dismissed as “distinctly alarmist.” Such a rise would take place “only after, and over, millennia”.
Mr. Justice Burton added: “The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”

A claim that atolls in the Pacific had already been evacuated was supported by “no evidence,” while to suggest that two graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures over the last 650,000 years were an “exact fit” overstated the case.

Mr. Gore’s suggestion that the Gulf Stream, that warms up the Atlantic ocean, would shut down was contradicted by the International Panel on Climate Change’s assessment that it was “very unlikely” to happen.

The drying of Lake Chad, the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro’s snows and Hurricane Katrina were all blamed by Mr. Gore on climate change but the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence to prove there was a direct link.

The drying of Lake Chad, the judge said, was “far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and overgrazing, and regional climate variability”. The melting of snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro was “mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.”

The judge also said there was no proof to support a claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for icy habitats melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court was aware of were four that died following a storm.

Similarly, the judge took issue with the former Vice-President of the United States for attributing coral bleaching to climate change. Separating the direct impacts of climate change and other factors was difficult, the judgment concluded.

Despite finding nine significant errors the judge said many of the claims made by the film were fully backed up by the weight of science. He identified “four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC”.

In particular, he agreed with the main thrust of Mr. Gore’s arguments: “That climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (‘greenhouse gases’).”

The other three main points accepted by the judge were that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that climate change will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that it is entirely possible for governments and individuals to reduce its impacts.

Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

The Polar Bear Paradox

With the last posting on global warming ending with a note about public school teachers frightening little children with tales of cute polar bears dying because of global warming, it seemed appropriate to draw your attention to the plight of the global warming mascot. Not only are they supposedly dying from a loss of habitat, but as you’ll see, they are being killed by the native Inuit.

This piece, from the Business and Media Institute, addresses some of the media’s obsession with the polar bear. Be sure to click on the GMA link within the story. It is great fodder for discussion. What do you think?

Curbing Global Warming ... To Hunt Polar Bears
Now we must save the polar bear – so that we can kill it?

In the October 1 Time Magazine – an issue that is dedicated to “who owns the Arctic” – Managing Editor Richard Stengel compares two Arctic regions that have been affected by the warmer swing in temperatures in the northern regions of Norway and Canada.

Stengel reported on two different Arctic attitudes based on what two Time reporters are telling him. In Norway, the people are “delighted” because they are now able to harvest natural gas reserves. But people in Canada’s Nunavut territory are “not so sanguine.”

“In Resolute [in Nunavut territory], the native Inuit are not so sanguine about the benefits of balmy weather,” wrote Stengel. “One man invited [James] Graff [London-based senior editor of Time] to watch a videotape of his 16-year-old daughter killing her first polar bear, a rite of passage that is under threat as the melting ice reduces the bear population. For the Inuit, says Graff, ‘the idea that a warmer Arctic would be an easy place to live would occur only to someone from the South.’”

So, are we supposed to be saving the polar bear or hunting it?

Saving the lives of polar bears has been one of the focuses of global warming alarmism hysteria. On the September 18 “Good Morning America,” ABC’s global warming reporter Bill Blakemore stressed how important it was for the polar bear’s habitat that we curb greenhouse gas emissions.

If the polar bears are struggling because of global warming, they’re certainly not showing it according to at least one report. A study reported in the September 3 Telegraph (U.K.) showed the polar bears are thriving.

“There aren't just a few more bears,” said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals, to the Telegraph. “There are a hell of a lot more bears.”