Environmentalist and global-warming believer Bjørn Lomborg was not impressed with President Obama’s fact-challenged global-warming alarmism in his inaugural address. Lomborg writes in today’s WSJ: 

Climate-Change Misdirection

Fear-mongering exaggeration about effects of global warming distracts us from finding affordable and effective energy alternatives.

 

In his second inaugural address on Monday, President Obama laudably promised to “respond to the threat of climate change.” Unfortunately, when the president described the urgent nature of the threat — the “devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms” — the scary examples suggested that he is contemplating poor policies that don’t point to any real, let alone smart, solutions. Global warming is a problem that needs fixing, but exaggeration doesn’t help, and it often distracts us from simple, cheaper and smarter solutions.

For starters, let’s address the three horsemen of the climate apocalypse that Mr. Obama mentioned.

Historical analysis of wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%. Estimates published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that even with global warming proceeding uninterrupted, the level of wildfires will continue to decline until around midcentury and won’t resume on the level of 1950 — the worst for fire — before the end of the century.

Claiming that droughts are a consequence of global warming is also wrong. The world has not seen a general increase in drought. A study published in Nature in November shows globally that “there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.” The U.N. Climate Panel in 2012 concluded: “Some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia.”

As for one of the favorites of alarmism, hurricanes in recent years don’t indicate that storms are getting worse. Measured by total energy (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), hurricane activity is at a low not encountered since the 1970s. The U.S. is currently experiencing the longest absence of severe landfall hurricanes in over a century — the last Category 3 or stronger storm was Wilma, more than seven years ago.

The rest here.

Detroit – At Monday’s inaugural, President Obama declared global-warming mitigation a second-term priority. On Tuesday, a deadly arctic blast here in the Midwest was a reminder of how frivolous that pursuit is.

Saving polar bears may be fashionable among rich elites, but Detroit’s jammed shelters this week are evidence that cold weather threatens the poor among us. City shelters reported they were at capacity as the frostbitten homeless took refuge from the bitter cold. Exposure to sub-zero temperatures were blamed for four deaths in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Government’s primary role is to provide public safety, reliable infrastructure, and a safety net for the poor. Yet, the Obama administration’s global warming obsession shows how far Washington has strayed from core services.

While Detroit’s needy freeze, millions of federal dollars are going to the politically connected well-to-do. Inside the Detroit Auto Show this week, billionaire Elon Musk — one of America’s richest men — is displaying his latest Tesla electric SUV for the well-to-do, financed by a half-billion dollars in federal loans.

A Michigan State professor has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the impact of global warming on the state’s farming industry. And in Metro Detroit, hundreds of DTE Energy utility workers labored around the clock to restore power to freezing customers — even as Michigan renewable power mandates force utilities to divert monies to inefficient wind farm projects in the name of fighting warming.

Adding insult to frostbite, scientific studies show that, even if Obama and other world leaders managed to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 (a reduction that would devastate the American economy), it would only cut expected warming by a measly 7 percent. Washington pols may get good press for protecting polar bears — but the real climate victims are freezing in city shelters.

Washington Post:

Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.

“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.”

And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

The rest here.

Boeing’s new aircraft — the 787 — was grounded last week by the FAA while investigators try to figure out what’s causing the plane’s “green” lithium ion batteries to catch fire in flight. But why put batteries with a history of catching fire on an airplane in the first place? The answer is to cut fuel costs:

Lithium ion batteries let Boeing swap out heavy hydraulic systems in the airframe for lightweight electronics and electric motors to operate systems such as wing de-icers. That’s a key reason the Dreamliner burns 20 percent less fuel than other wide-body aircraft.

Investigators, however, still don’t know what’s causing the battery problems:

Japanese transportation officials appear to be focusing their investigation more directly on GS Yuasa, which is based in Japan. U.S. investigators appear to be focusing on the entire electrical system and how it interacts with the batteries. The FAA was concerned a few years back about the use of lithium-ion batteries, which are prone to overheating.

Hopefully for Boeing, it’s just a batch of bad batteries. But it might be worse. Peter Cohan writes in Forbes that the entire design of the aircraft could be flawed:

Sure the self-immolating batteries are getting plenty of attention at the moment. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, Japan‘s transport ministry said Monday that it inspected the headquarters of GS Yuasa Corp. in Kyoto — the maker of the batteries that burned up. Needless to say, before the battery problems go away, the cause of the fires must be identified and fixed.

But the other 90% of the 787′s problems may well be below the surface. As I wrote in You Can’t Order Change, there is a host of other troubling problems that spring from the original conception of the 787.

In the past, Boeing has outsourced manufacturing but maintained tight control over design. In that way, Boeing was able to make sure that the pieces that other companies made would fit together well because Boeing engineers understood what each part would do and how they would interact when the plane was flying.

But with the 787, Boeing departed from this approach. Instead — to save money and supposedly to boost quality and speed time to market — Boeing outsourced 60% of the design and manufacture to suppliers. This shifted the investment on to the suppliers who would only get paid once airlines started paying for the 787s.

But it also meant that each supplier of, say, the wings or the batteries that supplied power to the engines or auxiliary systems, would use their own approach to both the design and the manufacture.

For its part, Boeing assumed that its suppliers would share its commitment to quality and meeting ambitious delivery deadlines. But this did not happen and the 787 missed at least seven deadlines and went way over budget.

Furthermore, the 787 is made of carbon fiber material, rather than aluminum. This means that it should be lighter and able to maintain higher cabin humidity which improves air quality for passengers.

Using carbon fiber also means that Boeing has no previous experience with how the material behaves in flight. So it is hard to build software that will predict how, for example, the wing will maintain its hold on the fuselage during flight.

Moreover, I received reports from a Boeing insider back in 2009 on problems with the 787′s electrical and environmental control systems. The electrical system — that includes GS Yuasa’s lithium-ion battery – is manufactured by French company Thales SA, according to Reuters.

Cohan’s whole piece here.

From President Obama’s inaugural address yesterday:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. 

And don’t forget those global-warming-induced chilly temperatures!

As President Obama wouldn’t sign a single “executive order” on guns and relied on lesser “executive actions,” I’d put my money on “not much” getting done about climate change in his second term. Scientific American at least writes honestly that, yes, the president finally mentioned climate change in a big speech, he didn’t mention any specifics:

Now the question turns to what Obama can accomplish. His climate priorities are unknown and his address yesterday failed to set out his goals, but that could come later in his State of the Union address.

Stay tuned.

Tom Friedman, never one to miss an opportunity to herald China’s infrastructure when compared with America’s, is eerily silent on the pollution in Beijing. Bloomberg reports:

Pollution in Beijing soared for a second weekend as smog started to cover most of the city from late yesterday, prompting the government to warn residents to reduce outdoor activities and urge companies to curb emissions.

The city’s meteorological bureau issued yellow alerts for fog and haze while children and the elderly were advised stay indoors as the air became “heavily polluted,” according to Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center classifications. Readings of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the largest health risks, rose as high as 400 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of the city, compared with World Health Organization guidelines of no more than 25.

Bad air quality and pollution is prompting more Chinese to travel abroad for the weeklong Chinese Lunar New Year holiday which starts Feb. 9, state-run China National Radio said today.

Snow is forecast to fall in Beijing today and tomorrow which should improve the air quality, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing the local weather bureau.

Beijing ordered government vehicles off the city’s roads on Jan. 13 as part of an emergency response plan to ease pollution that engulfed the capital and left hospitals inundated with patients complaining of heart and respiratory ailments. It also told dozens of factories to temporarily halt production and construction companies to suspend work.

Official measurements of PM2.5 rose as high as 993 micrograms per cubic meter on Jan. 12. At 4 p.m. local-time today, the PM2.5 reading was 125 while the Air Quality Index was at 164, a level the government describes as “lightly polluted.”

‘Beijing Cough’

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which uses a monitor in its compound in the east of the capital, showed a PM2.5 reading of 71 at 4 p.m., down from 371 at 10 a.m. Its Air Quality Index reading was 154, down from 415.

Long-term exposure to fine particulates raises the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as lung cancer, according to the WHO. The official English-language China Daily newspaper said Jan. 14 that Beijing was becoming better known for “Beijing Cough” than it was for Peking Duck or Peking Opera.

To put an AQI reading of 415 in perspective, here is a chart provided by the EPA. Beijing is way down there in the maroon “don’t breath unless you really, really need to” zone.

And for even more perspective, Bakersfield, California has the worst air pollution in the United States. Earlier this year while Beijing’s AQI reached 755, the highest Bakersfield has reached in the past 12 months is 159.

Here’s what the pollution looks like in Beijing:

I would hope Tom Friedman keeps these pollution numbers in mind the next time he is marveling at the wi-fi access on some Chinese high-speed rail train. Would you rather breath or check Facebook, Mr. Friedman?

We on the right are often called anti-science whenever we question the latest breathless claim on the dangers of a warming planet. Take this piece from Newsweek, for example, where we’re warned that global warming will mean the end of pasta. Really, that’s what they wrote:

The End of Pasta

Temperatures are rising. Rainfalls are shifting. Droughts are intensifying. What will we eat when wheat won’t grow.

Now, if I were to challenge the above claim, I’m “anti-science.” But thankfully, there are real scientists like Bjørn Lomborg who are around to put articles like this one from Newsweek where they belong — in the trash. 

Lomborg writes:

Scare stories have been an integral part of the global warming narrative for a long time. Back in 1997, Al Gore told us that global warming was making the El Niño winds stronger and more severe. That has not happened. Greenpeace and many others have told us for years that we will see more violent hurricanes. In fact, over the last six years, global hurricane energy has dropped to its lowest level since the 1970s, while the United States has had the longest absence of severe hurricanes ever (Sandy was a “superstorm,” not a hurricane, when it hit the vulnerable East Coast in October).

But the scares do not stop there. The World Wildlife Fund declared in 2004 that polar bears would go extinct by the end of the century, and that the calamity would start in Hudson Bay, where they would stop reproducing by 2012. The bears are still reproducing. And stories abound of global warming bringing malaria to Europe or Vermont. But here, too, the evidence contradicts such fears; in fact, malaria deaths have dropped more than 25 percent over the last 10 years.

Dulles may close one runway to accommodate inauguration-bound private planes.

Only regular people have to worry about their carbon emissions and travel on — gasp — a commercial flight.

I hope the Washington Post does a follow-up piece on whose private jets are blocking the runway at Dulles, and then see how many of the private-jet travelers are in the “global warming is a coming apocalypse” camp.

Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute writes in today’s WSJ:

California Could Be the Next Shale Boom State

Thanks to the Golden State’s dire fiscal situation, don’t be surprised if the governor were to proclaim: ‘There will be oil.’

Could 2013 find California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown finally making the connection between fiscal challenges and energy markets? The Golden State is well positioned to become an exporter of hydrocarbons and enjoy a gusher of oil revenues. While many Californians will find that hard to contemplate, ideology bends more easily than the laws of physics and the imperatives of economics.

The $6 billion a year in additional income taxes Gov. Brown convinced Californians to approve in Proposition 30 last November won’t begin to solve the state’s fiscal problems. Last year’s State Budget Crisis Task Force, co-led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, estimated the state’s long-term debt at no less than $370 billion.

But California has Saudi Arabia-scale oil resources, notably in its largely untapped Monterey shale field, which stretches northeast for more than 200 miles from Bakersfield in central California. New technologies, especially smart, horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing, aka “fracking,” make that oil accessible, and cleanly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the Monterey shale field alone holds 15.4 billion barrels of oil, rivaling America’s total conventional reserves.

The rest here.

I’m skeptical, even with new water-free fracking technology, especially in a state that finds ways to use environmental regulations to stop “green” projects like solar, wind and high-speed rail. But just because I think California won’t do this, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be.

It’s like Think Progress’s puppy died. So tragic.

Via Mother Jones:

A Harvard academic has put the blame squarely for America’s failure to act on climate change on environmental groups. She also argues that there is little prospect Barack Obama will put climate change on the top of his agenda in his second term.

In a research paper, due to be presented at a Harvard forum next month, scholar Theda Skocpol in effect accuses the DC-based environmental groups of political malpractice, saying they were blind to extreme Republican opposition to their efforts.

Environmental groups overlooked growing opposition to environmental protections among conservative voters and underestimated the rising force of the tea party, believing—wrongly, as it turned out—they could still somehow win over Republican members of Congress through “insider grand bargaining.”

That fatal misreading of the political realities—namely, the extreme polarization of Congress and the tea party’s growing influence among elected officials—doomed the effort to get a climate law through Congress. It will also make it more difficult to achieve climate action in the future, she added.

The rest here.

For some reason, the cops now want to talk to him:

A close friend of star NFL wide receiver Kenny Britt was stabbed during a fight at a New Jersey birthday party and cops are looking to question the athlete about the incident.

Britt, who plays for the Tennessee Titans, dropped off the close pal at a hospital around 3:30 a.m. Sunday but refused to speak with police at the time and quickly left the medical center.

Britt, 24, returned to the party in Jersey City to retrieve his girlfriend. A short time later, a gunshot was fired at a first-floor apartment where the initial fight had occurred.

This is not Britt’s first brush with the law:

The talented but troubled athlete was suspended for the 2012 season opener after being charged with drunk driving at at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

In April 2011, he was arrested after allegedly leading police on a chase in his hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey.

The charges were reduced and he was fined, the Jersey Journal said.

Two months later, he was arrested at a Hoboken, NJ car wash when police spotted Britt holding a marijuana cigar.

He was fined $1,500 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service

You’d think the greens would eventually get together and figure out how not to oppose their own green initiatives, but alas. Not anytime soon by the looks of things:

State and regional leaders are at odds over whether a company that wants to build a 200 mph bullet train from Houston to Dallas should be required to conduct an environmental study that also includes rail stops in Fort Worth and either Arlington or Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

North Texas leaders say it’s crucial that the proposed Texas Central Railway stop not only in downtown Dallas but also in downtown Fort Worth as well as somewhere about midway between the region’s two dominant cities. That way, the high-speed rail line can pick up passengers from throughout the Metroplex instead of just the east side.

“I want it to run from Houston to Fort Worth, with a stop in Dallas,” Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes said.

But the Japanese-backed company that has proposed building the rail line, Texas Central High-Speed Railway Llc., is proposing to conduct only an environmental study from the outskirts of Houston to downtown Dallas. The Texas Department of Transportation supports that plan and is asking regional planners in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth to conduct separate environmental studies to figure out how the trains would connect in the inner cities.

In 2011, the state received a $15 million federal grant to study high-speed rail from Houston to North Texas. State officials argue that if Texas Central Railway can handle the costs of the environmental study along the mostly rural route from suburban Houston to downtown Dallas, then the grant can be spent in the metro areas.

“We’re trying to look at the best value – at what is the best way to use the money without being duplicative,” Phil Wilson, executive director of the Transportation Department, said Thursday before speaking to the 35W Coalition during an annual meeting in far north Fort Worth.

But many North Texas leaders disagree. Members of the Regional Transportation Council agreed more than a year ago that if a 200-mph train system can be built in the area, it must include at least three stations.

Splitting the project into separate environmental studies violates the spirit of that agreement, they said.

The rest here.

Tim Stanley writes in The Telegraph:

Al Gore’s strategy for saving the Earth seems to be to raise enough money to be able to buy it. After selling his failing Current TV company to Al Jazeera, Gore is suddenly a super rich man. Forbes analyst Ryan Mac says, “Taking into account taxes to be paid on the deal, possible earlier debt and the fact that Gore’s representatives declined to comment, Forbes conservatively estimates the former vice president’s net worth to be at least $300 million.” And how can Al Jazeera afford to hand over sums of money like that? Why, it’s bankrolled by the medieval kingdom of Qatar – which, in turn, makes its money out of black gold. The next time you see Al Gore on TV telling us how evil fossil fuels are, remember this: that fat gold Rolex on his chubby little wrist was paid for by oil.

But there’s another twist to this tail. Ryan Mac notes that this discovery of a rich seam of cash makes Mr Gore, “wealthier than unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney … Last May, Forbes estimated Romney’s net worth to be around $230 million.” Thanks to petrodollars, the secular saint of liberalism is now richer than its devil.

There’s nothing innately wrong with being mega rich, and Gore has never criticised Romney for his wealth. But throughout the presidential election, the entire American liberal movement berated Mitt for making too much money too unethically through private equity. His “vulture capitalism” was built on outsourcing and downsizing and rationalising businesses out of a workforce. But to Romney’s credit, he never claimed to be something he wasn’t and he insisted that his free market ideology could help other people make money, too. He also built his business from the ground up.

The rest here.

Details here.

There are arguments going back and forth if this is good or bad for the Times, but put the Times’s public editor firmly in the bad category:

Keeping Environmental Reporting Strong Won’t Be Easy

I’m a little late to this story, but it’s a good one: Mark Lynas, a prominent British environmentalist and a vociferous opponent of genetically modified organisms, has changed his view on the latter issue after, well, consulting the scientific evidence and realizing that the process has tremendous potential to help the environment, with very few downsides. The NYT reports on the Oxford Farming Conference lecture at which he delivered his speech last Thursday, with the preamble being this:

For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

Some of the meat of his admissions:

When I first heard about Monsanto’s GM soya I knew exactly what I thought. Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.

These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.

This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life.

He goes on to detail specific misconceptions which he explored and discovered to be untrue, for instance:

I’d assumed that it would increase the use of chemicals. It turned out that pest-resistant cotton and maize needed less insecticide.

Unclear how much research that should have taken him . . . but regardless, the news is heartening. This is not a major issue in America, where the environmental movement has maintained a certain disdain for GMOs but has not made a priority of banning them. But as Lynas admits, advocates like him led an incredibly successful campaign to ban GM crops in Europe and in other countries. Public opinion in Europe remains very hostile to the issue, which, as Lynas discovered, is in fact an incredible opportunity, rejected out of ideological and aesthetic concerns, to preserve our environment by producing food more cheaply, efficiently, and cleanly. Here’s to hoping his conversion might help begin reversing the situation in Europe.

Al Jazeera learns about the Gore Effect® the hard way:

AMMAN // Heavy rainfall, strong winds and snow lashed Jordan for a second day yesterday while other Middle East countries struggled with extreme weather.

The cold and wet weather hit Israel, where authorities were preparing for the possibility of snow in Jerusalem and, in Lebanon, where flood waters swept away a young boy.

Jordan, which is 92 per cent desert, is one of the driest countries in the world but authorities declared a state of emergency across the country in reponse to the rain.

Fhaid Tiameh, the assistant director at the centre for Jordan’s Department of Metreology, said the country had not experienced that much rain in two decades.

“The rainfall in the past few days was the best we had had since the winter of 1991-1992,” he said.

The rest here.

And looks to be cleaning house. National Journal:

The new top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has laid off almost all the professional staff—about a dozen—who worked under his predecessor, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., National Journal has learned.

This is a departure from the norm, Hill sources on both sides of the aisle tell NJ, where many professional committee staff members often remain through elections and other committee shuffles. To wit: The new chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has decided to retain about half of the staff who worked under the former chairman, now retired Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. Wyden announced his new staff, including many who worked for Bingaman, on Wednesday.

“My EPW staff did excellent work during my 10 years in leadership on the committee,” Inhofe told National Journal in an e-mailed statement Wednesday. “I trust Sen. Vitter has hired people he views will be of a good resource to his goals as the new Ranking Member and a representative of Louisiana.”

Among the staff let go were James O’Keeffe, a senior economist who had worked for the committee since 2005, according to Legistorm, an online database of congressional staff information. He focused on infrastructure issues, including the Highway Trust Fund, according to a source familiar with the committee workings. Todd Johnston, who worked on coal issues for Inhofe at the committee since 2007 and before that for former Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, was also let go.

Communication and staff directors are often let go during committee shakeups. These positions are more political than other policy-oriented positions, and the people holding these posts often build strong relationships with the senator they represent so it’s natural they would leave along with the senator.

The rest here.

And “dirty energy” also fattens your bank account, eh, Al? Gore tweets:

Here’s a good National Journal piece by Matthew Cooper from December that asks if Hagel, a “climate-change denier,” will maintain that stance if nominated as Secretary of Defense.