Penn Jillette on The Greenest Convention Ever

Yeah!

Hannah Montana: What is global warming? I don't know, I just sing about that.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
8/26/2008 4:57:38 PM

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, are big fans of Hannah Montana – and maybe there’s a reason why.

Teen star Miley Cyrus, known as Hannah Montana in the Disney Channel TV series television of the same name, is now crusading for global warming alarmism. But she admits she isn’t really sure what it means. Disney also owns ABC, a network that often hypes climate change alarmism.

Read more (link)

Edmund Contoski: Global Warming, Global Myth

Do you ever wonder how communism could last for 70 years in Russia? Surely there was plenty of evidence, for decades, that the system was failing: food shortages, declining life expectancy, increased infant mortality, low standards of living, primitive hospitals, and sanitation facilities lagging far behind those in Western Europe and America — not to mention pollution far worse than in the West. But to diehard communists, the facts did not matter. All the observable negatives of collectivism were trumped by ideology. The same is true of the ideology behind global warming.

Read more at Liberty Foundation (link)

Daniel Henninger: Mrs. Pelosi's Enviromania

What is the impact of high level of gas prices? Alternative energy? What a bizarre idea!

Daniel Henninger:

For years, hyperactive environmentalists have burned votive candles to the spirit in the sky, hoping she'd levitate energy prices high enough to make alternatives to oil economically feasible. That day has come. Result: The oil has hit the fan.

With gasoline over $4 and with life as they love it in the suburbs being shut down, did people call for the windmills? Nope. A heavy majority want to drill the bejeezus out of anywhere in America we can find familiar black slop.

No one has been hit harder by this unexpected truth than Nancy Pelosi and her green brigades.

Fearful of an up-or-down vote on drilling for oil in, of all places, our own country, the Pelosi House and Harry Reid's Senate shut down Congress. House Minority Leader John Boehner calls drilling the greatest issue Republicans have had in his political lifetime. A party flat on its back is ready to run on oil pumps.

More at WSJ (link)

Penn & Teller: Being Green

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

A job for Parsons descendants: British Kids Encouraged To Become “Climate Cops”

A leading British energy company blitzed the newspapers with full page colour advertisements this weekend which encourage children to sign up as "climate cops" and keep "climate crime case files" on their families, friends and neighbours.

The ads, run by Npower, promote a website at www.climatecops.com where "trainees" must complete three missions before they can join the "elite cadets" and "train to become a climate cop".

These missions basically consist of a barrage of eco propaganda which the child must simply engage in in order to be accepted as a special agent of the green brigade.

The site offers a selection of downloads, including a pack of “climate crime cards“, which instruct recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, encouraging each of them to build up a written “climate crime case file”.

"Report back to your family to make sure they don’t commit those crimes again (or else)!” one section states, before reminding recruits to keep a watchful eye on parents and even extend their web further. "What about the homes of aunts and uncles, or friends from school?" it suggests.

Read more: Steve Watson, Infowar.net (link)

Norwegian Meteorological Institute: There is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago

Piers Akerman:

The latest blow to the Government’s apocalyptic prophet is news from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.

According to the Barents Observer there are open areas in this area in most years during July - but this year the area is covered by ice.

A fortnight ago a Norwegian research ship, Lance, and a Swedish ship, MV Stockholm, got stuck in the ice in the area and needed to be freed by the Norwegian Coast Guard.

While one ice floe does not amount to a mini-ice age, the dramatic evidence runs counter to the mantra of the climate warming cult which has claimed the Arctic is becoming progressively free of ice.

Read more: The Daily Telegraphs Blogs (link)

Oooops! Bangladesh gaining land, not losing.

DHAKA (AFP) - New data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing, contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say.

Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually.

The rivers, which meet in the centre of Bangladesh, carry more than a billion tonnes of sediment every year and most of it comes to rest on the southern coastline of the country in the Bay of Bengal where new territory is forming, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, criss-crossed by a network of more than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30 percent of its food production.

Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country could be under water by the end of the century.

But Sarker said that while rising sea levels and river erosion were both claiming land in Bangladesh, many climate experts had failed to take into account new land being formed from the river sediment.

"Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that show some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea," Sarker said.

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More at News.Yahoo.com (link)

WSJ: Kyoto's long goodbye

President George W. Bush achieved some significant changes to the global warming status quo at the recent G8 summit in Japan. From today's Wall Street Journal: Kyoto's Long Goodbye:

One of the mysteries of the universe is why President Bush bothers to charge the fixed bayonets of the global warming theocracy. On the other hand, his Administration's supposed "cowboy diplomacy" is succeeding in changing the way the world addresses climate change. Which is to say, he has forced the world to pay at least some attention to reality.

That was the larger meaning of the Group of Eight summit in Japan this week, even if it didn't make the papers. The headline was that the nations pledged to cut global greenhouse emissions by half by 2050. Yet for the first time, the G-8 also agreed that any meaningful climate program would have to involve industrializing nations like China and India. For the first time, too, the G-8 agreed that real progress will depend on technological advancements. And it agreed that the putative benefits had to justify any brakes on economic growth.

In other words, the G-8 signed on to what has been the White House approach since 2002.

Read more...

Source: A Dog Named Kyoto (link)

Australian Scientist Doubts the Climate Doomsayers

David Evans, a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005:

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts.

Read more:
David Evans: No smoking hot spot. TheAustralian.News.com.au (link)

Phosphates and Nitrogen. Not global warming.

Ed Struzik, Canwest News Service, Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 (link)

EXCERPT: After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world.

Fifty years ago, no one knew what exactly caused algae blooms to appear on lakes and rivers. There was some evidence to suggest that carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous, which are associated with agricultural runoff and waste water, were responsible. But small-scale experiments weren’t able to show which were more important.

Schindler seemed to solve the problem when he and his colleagues conducted a number of groundbreaking experiments in northern Ontario in the 1960s and early 1970s. In a famous 1974 aerial photograph published by the journal Science, two portions of their experimental Lake 226 were highlighted. One side was treated with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous. The other was treated with just carbon and nitrogen.

The side receiving phosphorous rapidly developed a huge bloom of blue-green algae. The side not receiving phosphorous remained in near-pristine condition.

Schindler’s latest series of long-term experiments shows that nitrogen removal completely fails to control blue-green algae blooms. He proved this by manipulating nitrogen and phosphorus levels on Lake 227 for 37 years. Nitrogen control, he found, only encouraged algae blooms.

Read more…

Conclusion? Phosphates and Nitrogen. Not global warming. (link)

Marc Morano: Gore’s (Really) Inconvenient Timing (Part II)

Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. - Overheated claims: Scientists advocating for action are overselling the predictive capabilities of climate models – June 17, 2008 – (link)

‘No convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide…will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere’ – By Dr. Fred W. Decker, Professor of Meteorology at Oregon State University, signed the 2008 Oregon Petition dissenting from man-made climate fears. (LINK) & (LINK) & (LINK)

Thermometers Are Doing the Talking - by global warming author and environmental economist Dennis T. Avery – June 9, 2008 - (LINK)

‘Sun is the primary temperature driver’ – By Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1968 – (LINK)

Update: June 15, 2008: More Signs of the Sun Slowing Down - 'We continue to slide into a deeper than normal solar minima, one not seen in decades' By Meteorologist Anthony Watts – (LINK)
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Read more: Marc Morano: Gore’s (Really) Inconvenient Timing (Part II) (LINK)

Marc Morano: Gore’s (Really) Inconvenient Timing

RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS CHALLENGE CLIMATE CHANGE CONSENSUS - Russian scientists 'reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming' - The Hindu – India’s National Newspaper: July 10, 2008:

Excerpt: As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming. Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.” [...] When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having “no scientific foundation.” (link)

'Considerable presence' of global warming skeptics exist, science group admits – July 16, 2008 – Australian's The Herald-Sun

Excerpt: What consensus? The American Physical Society reports: There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. - So it has opened a debate, kicked off by Christopher Monckton: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity… More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful. (link)

India Issues Report Challenging Global Warming Fears – July 9, 2008

Excerpt: India issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008 disputing man-made global warming fears and declared the country of one billion people had no intention of stopping its energy growth or cutting back its CO2 emissions. […] The report declared: “No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.” (link)
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Read more: Marc Morano: Gore’s (Really) Inconvenient Timing – ‘Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008 (link)

A Climate Crisis? What?

New Christopher Monckton's paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered (link) demonstrates that later this century a doubling of the concentration of CO2 compared with pre-industrial levels will increase global mean surface temperature not by the 6 °F predicted by the IPCC but, harmlessly, by little more than 1 °F. Lord Monckton concludes –

“… Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chair (2004) of the New England Section of the American Physical Society (APS), has been studying climate-change science for four years. He said:

“I was impressed by an hour-long academic lecture which criticized claims about ‘global warming’ and explained the implications of the physics of radiative transfer for climate change. I was pleased that the audience responded to the informative presentation with a prolonged, standing ovation. That is what happened when, at the invitation of the President of our University, Christopher Monckton lectured here in Hartford this spring. I am delighted that Physics and Society, an APS journal, has published his detailed paper refining and reporting his important and revealing results.‘

“To me the value of this paper lies in its dispassionate but ruthlessly clear exposition – or, rather, exposé – of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. The detailed arguments in this paper, and, indeed, in a large number of other scientific papers, point up extensive errors, including numerous projection errors of climate models, as well as misleading statements by the IPCC. Consequently, there are no rational grounds for believing either the IPCC or any other claims of dangerous anthropogenic ‘global warming’.”

Read more: by Robert Ferguson at ScienceAndPublicPolicy.org (link)

Global warming: caused by aerosols?

What is the main effect on global warming?
Michael Asher (DailyTech.com) on a new research - influence of aerosols on European climate. (link)

A new study suggests much of that warming isn't due to global warming at all, but rather a decrease in atmospheric pollution as a result of clean air legislation. The cleaner air has fewer small particles known as aerosols, which tend to block sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface. A reduction in aerosols leads to an effect known as "solar brightening," which increases surface warming.

Citation: Ruckstuhl, C., et al. (2008), Aerosol and cloud effects on solar brightening and the recent rapid warming, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12708, doi:10.1029/2008GL034228. (link)

Abstract

The rapid temperature increase of 1°C over mainland Europe since 1980 is considerably larger than the temperature rise expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases. Here we present aerosol optical depth measurements from six specific locations and surface irradiance measurements from a large number of radiation sites in Northern Germany and Switzerland. The measurements show a decline in aerosol concentration of up to 60%, which have led to a statistically significant increase of solar irradiance under cloud-free skies since the 1980s. The measurements confirm solar brightening and show that the direct aerosol effect had an approximately five times larger impact on climate forcing than the indirect aerosol and other cloud effects. The overall aerosol and cloud induced surface climate forcing is ∼+1 W m⁻² dec⁻¹ and has most probably strongly contributed to the recent rapid warming in Europe.

Global Warming Has Ended – The Next Climate Change to A Pronounced Cold Era Has Begun

In a news conference held in Orlando, Florida today, Mr. John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, issued a landmark declaration on climate change. (link)

“After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun its next climate change. In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”

The Great Global Warming Dilemma: "Cap and Trade" vs. "Carbon Taxes"

How to eliminate carbon dioxide from atmosphere?

What a childish government's hobby to think about that! But seriously: if the governments want to do it, they would have to look at economic arguments. Two of light economic analysis of the "great global warming dilemma" offer Stephen Gordon and John Whitehead.

Stephen Gordon at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative (link):

What distinguishes the two is what happens to π - the difference between the price the consumers pay at B and what it costs suppliers to produce at Q₁. In the case of the carbon tax, the money goes to the government. But if output is capped at Q₁, that difference is pure profit: a permit to produce one unit of output allows its owner to collect a rent equal to to the difference between the selling price and the cost of production. If permits are traded, their price will be bid up so that their price will be equal to π. So where that money goes depends on how the permits are allocated in the first place. If the permits are simply given to existing emitters, then those profits are pocketed by the firms. If the permits are auctioned off, the price will be bid up to π, and the government gets the money.

John Whitehead at Environmental Economics (link):

In terms of the market failure, the negative carbon externality, both a carbon tax and carbon cap-and-trade will achieve the same level of increased efficiency by achieving the optimal abatement level at the minimum cost. The only difference is the distributional implications. The cost to the firm is lower for carbon cap-and-trade. The government receives tax revenue with a carbon tax. Both policies are preferred over techological or output standards (i.e., command and control regulation).

Australian Researchers Say: Gobal Cooling, Not Warming

Australian researchers are not convenient scientists: they assume global cooling!

By Michael Asher, DailyTech.com (link)
A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia is warning of upcoming global cooling due to lessened solar activity. The study, written by three Australian researchers, has identified what is known as a "spin-orbit coupling" affecting the rotation rate of the sun. That rotation, in turn, is linked to the intensity of the solar cycle and climate changes here on Earth.
The study's lead author, Ian Wilson, explains further,

"[The paper] supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years."

Global warming is sick-souled religion

By Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal (link)

Amount of scientists who belive in man-made global warming theory is shrinking. "NASA confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954."

But what is most considerable, Climate Alarmism spreads as a new ideological branch of socialism. And it is become a new religion.

Read article by Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, (link)

The Greenest (Stupid) Show on Earth: Democratic National Convention

By Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal (link)
The Great Democratic Final in green coat. Excellent paper on democratic green machinery.

Convention organizers hired the first-ever Director of Greening, longtime environmental activist Andrea Robinson. Her response to the mayor's challenge: "That terrifies me!"
After all, the last time Democrats met in Denver -- to nominate William Jennings Bryan in 1908 -- they dispatched horse-drawn wagons to bring snow from the Rocky Mountains to cool the meeting hall. Ms. Robinson suspected modern-day delegates would prefer air conditioning. So she quickly modified the mayor's goal: She'd supervise "the most sustainable political convention in modern American history."

Common Agricultural Policy: A wonderful world of social democracy

By Radovan Kazda, blog.sme.sk (link in slovak)

Who is the enemy of european farmers? Marginal right political parties or Emanuel Goldstein? European Commission will explain it to you. And the deliquent is: free market.
Let me quote what Commission means about free market in agriculture:

It is certainly not the time to abolish the CAP, as some have suggested. The market has a very important role to play, but left to itself, it will not care for our landscapes or respond to other public demands. And if we strip farming of all defences against occasional crises, we gamble with our food supply.

Read Press Release MEMO/08/422, June 20, 2008 (link).

A Tribute to George Carlin (1937-2008)

By Radovan Kazda
George Carlin (alias Filmore from the best modern fairy-tale recent times) speaks about that why we are here.

Carlin's show "The Planet is fine" read here and here.

George Carlin - Saving the Planet (The Planet Is Fine)

Conservative view on carbon taxes - debate

Jim Manzi, TheAmericanScene.com (link)
Reactions:
- Ryan Avent at gristmill.grist.org (link)
- Daniel Hall at CommonTragedies.wordpress.com (link)

Ronald Coase on Pigovian Taxes

Jim Manzi, TheAmericanScene.com (link)

Ronald Coase’s lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize in economics is very instructive. When discussing one of the two papers for which he won the award, The Problem of Social Cost, he had this to say:

I was exposing the weaknesses of Pigou’s analysis of the divergence between private and social products, an analysis generally accepted by economists, and that was all. … Pigou’s conclusion and that of most economists using standard economic theory was, and perhaps still is, that some kind of government action (usually the imposition of taxes) was required to restrain those whose actions had harmful effects on others, often termed negative externalities. What I showed in that article, as I thought, was that in a regime of zero transaction costs, an assumption of standard economic theory, negotiations between the parties would lead to those arrangements being made which would maximise wealth and this irrespective of the initial assignment of rights. … I tend to regard the Coase Theorem as a stepping stone on the way to an analysis of an economy with positive transaction costs. The significance to me of the Coase Theorem is that it undermines the Pigovian system. Since standard economic theory assumes transaction costs to be zero, the Coase Theorem demonstrates that the Pigovian solutions are unnecessary in these circumstances. Of course, it does not imply, when transaction costs are positive, that government actions (such as government operation, regulation or taxation, including subsidies) could not produce a better result than relying on negotiations between individuals in the market. Whether this would be so could be discovered not by studying imaginary governments but what real governments actually do. My conclusion; let us study the world of positive transaction costs.

Economics, environmentalism and price system

Arnold Kling, Econlog.Econlib.org (link)

"Economics and environmentalism both value efficiency and decry waste. Economics assumes that the price system works to measure and motivate efficient use of resources. Environmentalism assumes that the price system fails.
An alliance between environmentalism and economics is possible, in which the environmentalist argument becomes an argument that price signals are incorrect. In principle, taxes should be raised on products whose market cost does not reflect the resources that are used in their production and disposal."

The Waste of Nations

By Gordon Hector, Adam Smith Institute, AdamSmith.org (link)
How to recycle with Pay–as–you–throw (PAYT) systems?
© Adam Smith Research Trust 2007 ; Published in the UK by ASI (Research) Ltd.

Global Warming Economics - Facts vs. Myths

By Iain Murray, Competitive Enterprise Institute, cei.org (link)
Did you know that i) signatories to the Kyoto Protocol are not meeting their emissions reductions targets, ii) temperatures does not rise in tandem with greenhouse gas concentrations, iii) the costs of global warming policies can be feasibly borne, and may even pay for themselves in the long run, and iv) experience shows that cap-and-trade schemes can achieve good environmental outcomes by harnessing market incentives? A new study debunking myths over global warming.

Global warming is a dangerous religion

By John Brignell, numberwatch.co.uk, (link)
Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man. The activists now prefer to call it “climate change”.
This gives them two advantages: It allows them to seize as “evidence” the inevitable occurrences of unusually cold weather as well as warm ones; the climate is always changing, so they must be right.

Time to recycle recycling?

By Iain Murray, The Washington Times, washtimes.com (link)
Many of the other features of traditional environmentalism are actually at odds with global warming. Nuclear power is perhaps the best source of low carbon electricity. Genetically modified organisms can dramatically lower the energy needed to grow crops. And in fact, striking at the base of institutionalized environmentalism, it appears recycling can produce more carbon than new manufacture.

Al Gore and many other environmentalists may not appreciate is that recycling paper is actually a carbon positive process.

Environmental Myths Harm Our Planet

By Hans Bader, OpenMarket.org (link)
Locally-grown and produced food isn’t necessarily better for the environment, or more economical for society, than food produced elsewhere. It often costs more and results in more soil erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. It’s better for the environment for an Englishman to eat lamb raised in New Zealand than lamb raised in England.

Environmentalists Take Advantage of Natural Disaster - Blame Midwest Floods on Global Warming

By Joseph D’Aleo, Icecap.us (link)

In the latest in a series of predictable news stories gobbled up by an all too willing media, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, “Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin,” forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.

Carbon: Tax, Trade, or Deregulate?

Lynne Kiesling, Ronald Bailey and Fred L. Smith debate on climate policy, Reason.com (link)

"From an economic perspective, the problem of climate change is twofold. First, there are incomplete and uncertain property rights in the air. It’s ludicrous to imagine us each walking around with a bubble over our heads so that we can only breathe and use the privatized air sphere around us. Second, there’s a large number of affected parties. In the limit, some would argue the entire planet is affected."

In praise of carbon dioxide

By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Comment (link).
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green.

It's the food, stupid

By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, prospect.org (link)
The average American household burns through about 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases as a result of food consumption. By contrast, if your house has a car that gets 25 mpg and you drive 12,000 miles a year, that produces 4.4 metric tons of greenhouse gases.

FME Newsletter, No. 10: Structure of U.S. oil consumption, biofuels, Vaclav Klaus

By Radovan Kazda, blog.sme.sk (link)
1.) To the fans of the theory, that U.S. unleashed Iraq war because of oil, it is needed to remind that while U.S. import takes to 60% of its oil needs, a half of that is imported from Western hemisféry. Arab oil takes only 16% share, what is even less than imports from Africa. Official U.S. energy statistics inform. (link)

2.) By the way, biofuels. Food crises belongs to one of the few preferred policy theme, on those experts relatively consist: vigorous demand for food-stuff in China and Indies, drought down under, growth sickness absence beast, support biofuels, continens price and administration regulations adjustment. It says also famed economist Gary Becker on his blog, kept with Richard Posner.

Carbon Taxes vs Cap-and-Trade

By Mark Thoma, Economist's View (link)
"A review of the equivalence of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade."

Vaclav Klaus: From Communism to environmentalism

By NP Editor, Financial Post, NationalPost.com (link)
Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, presented his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, to the National Press Club in Washington this past Tuesday.
"I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember from my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it."

Recycling waste - what is the principled nature of recycling?

By Radovan Kazda, blog.sme.sk (link)
Recycling amends the law - organic landfill is considered harmful to the environment, which produce negative externalities ("social costs"). Government says that this is harmful to the "society" and it is therefore necessary to remove it. The result? The destruction of the free market, and creating an unnatural market.

FME Newsletter, No. 09: Vaclav Klaus, prominent sceptical scientists, Oregon petition project and a new peer-reviewed article in Nature journal

By Radovan Kazda, blog.sme.sk (link)
A few words about Oregon petition project, new peer-reviewed article in Nature journal, David Whitehouse's assertions in New Statesman, Marc Morano's list of 400 prominent sceptical scientists, book of Vacav Klaus „Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?“ and projection of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" film by Durkin.

Common agricultural policy: CAP it all

By David Cronin, guardian.co.uk (link)
Two markedly different messages have been delivered by the European Commission over the past few days. Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, stated that "we are going to have to make radical changes in our agricultural policies and practices" to tackle climate change. Yet less than 24 hours earlier his colleague, Mariann Fischer Boel, who holds the agriculture portfolio, announced (pdf) plans that could make Europe's system of farming even more ecologically destructive than it now is.

The Great Global Warming Race

By Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com (link)

Can global warming’s vested interests close the deal on greenhouse gas regulation before the public wises up to their scam? A new study indicates alarmist concern and a need to explain away the lack of actual global warming. Researchers belonging to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in Nature (May 1) that, after adjusting their climate model to reflect actual sea surface temperatures of the last 50 years, “global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations… temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.” You got that? IPCC researchers project no global warming over the next decade because of Mother Nature.

How to "clean up" the Slovak Land Fund

By Radovan Kazda, Hospodarske noviny (Economic Journal) (link)

Slovak Land Fund, along with Slovakian Woods and the Slovak water company to trinity of huge state organizations that manage state-owned natural resources. Their common attribute is very low accountability mechanisms decision, which limits media interest in them particularly in cases where the next corruption scandal appears.

In the case of the Slovak Land Fund of the organisation which decides on the management of nearly a quarter agricultural land in Slovakia. A smaller part of their scope represents the state-owned land (approximately 6% agricultural land in the Slovak Republic), which the Fund rented, sold or cast new owners as a replacement for the application of land restitution claims. The majority of (approximately 18%) constitute the land of unknown owners, who rented the fund agricultural use.

Status Quo on the Slovak Land Fund

During the sixteen years that have passed since the establishment of the fund, no government was able to amend the two relevant circumstances the performance of the Fund, which identified him to be an ideal tool for "drawing" state assets in favour of people who took power over the Fund. The first factor relates to control decision-making fund.

Personnel of the Fund, namely the Director-General, Management and Controll Board, is in political power of minister of agriculture and government, it means under the control of political parties, which are appointed by authorities at the time the fund in power. In terms of public control there is very important availability of treaties content. Fund since 2005, although he began to publish the names of tenants of land, but without the provision of the most important information about parcels and contract price.

Suspicion of corruption had broke "political tie" to Minister Jureňa. New Minister Zdenka Kramplová therefore put forward recently a proposal to amend the law on land fund. The proposal is responsive to strengthen public and political control over the Fund. Disclosure of the contents of all contracts of the fund about the lease and transfer of the fund's assets can contribute significantly to the strengthening of public control.

What to do with the Fund's Board

The problem remains with the creation of a new mechanism, eleven-membered Board of the Fund. By the amendment, six members will appoint a government and five National Council on the basis of proportional representation of political parties and political movements, for which they were members elected to the Slovak Republic. It follows that the authority to control the fund "will remain" paramount position for two nominanty opposition. But: Amendment of the Act does not address any particular second, more fundamental factor, which creates room for corruption in the fund. It lies in the current rules for valuation of land on which to conclude all of the lease land, the sale of state land and the transfer of spare land for restitution. The current land valuation rules are based in particular on the assessment of production characteristics of the soil, thus their potential for agricultural use.

The basic material for such a valuation of land are soil maps "site class ecological units", which arose in 70th in the last century and became the basis for the determination of solid, non-market price of land in the socialist economy. This system is now the basis for determining the price of land.

Price as a problem

High risk of corruption in the activities of the Fund resulting from the nature of governmental (official) prices. This is very far from flexible market prices, that are negotiated between private parties. When we compare data on the average market price of land disclosed in "Green Reports" and the price of the fund, the difference between market and the governmental (official) price of land is an average from two to three times higher. The difference between sales of private land and governmental land we can determine very difficulty, because the state contracts are not yet known. The current mechanism for determining the price, however, doesn't give good conditions for approaching the market prices. In the case of restitution, now we know content of some contracts, in which the difference between the government-determined and market price of land is estimated at several hundred times.
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FME Newsletter, No. 08: Lungless frog and pointless environmentalists

By Radovan Kazda, kazda.blog.sme.sk (link)

A few words about first lungless frog found, myths about NGO "Friends of the Earth" save-energy assertions, NGO "Wolf" proposal to allocate protected areas with no timber prodution (no cutting woods), governmental endeavour to establish an agricultural land extraction tax and conscience of Archbishop Jan Sokol.

Reform proposal: Slovak Land Fund

By Radovan Kazda, kazda.blog.sme.sk (link)
Why to reform Slovak Land Fund? A few words about Slovak Land Fund's budget, incomes and expenditures, board of directors, nomination principles for management members, principles of government's land ownership etc.

Environmental Disasters and Inconvenient Truths

By Richard Morrison, Competitive Enterprise Institute, cei.org (link)

In the new book The Really Inconvenient Truths, Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Iain Murray brings to light an especially inconvenient future: environmental activists are priming our world for a massive recession that will cause serious poverty and hardship while ruining the healthy environment we all want.

Government regulations increase the cost of doing business

By Kathryn Muratore, LewRockwell.com (link)
Government regulations, including those that are supposedly for environmental protection, increase the cost of doing business. Over the long term, it is conceivable that environmental regulations can bankrupt a nation, and there is some correlation of GDP and environmental impact, so the regulations may have a net negative effect on the environment. The statistics on such situations are convoluted, and can probably be used to prove the above statement wrong just as easily as proving it right.

Slovak environmental activists bound the government to trap

By Radovan Kazda, Sme (link)

In the period prior to the entry of Slovakia into the European Union, it was needed to integrate Slovakia into system of nature protection Natura 2000. In case of SPA (Special Protected Areas) Minister László Miklós entrusted creation of a methodology by which should be determined following the territory into the hands of a team of people working in non-governmental organizations. This team developed criteria, under which up to 25 percent of the territory of Slovakia gradually come under the scheme of the the prohibition of certain activities. It is the largest share SPA of all the European Union..
Payment of compensation is uncertain
The proposal was sent and subsequently approved by the European Commission, but it soon became the target of legitimate criticism. Owners of forests are of course, unhappy with regulations and they highlight the risk of inability to pay government compensation for restrictions on current land to the large territory, because these commitments the government fails to pay also in the current system of protected areas.
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Global Warming: News from the World of Sceptics I.

S. Fred Singer, Marc Morano and the „Gold Mouse Award", Habibullah Abdusamatov and the Sun, and the Czech conference on Global Warming. Read here.