Obama Administration Committed to Nuclear Power Generation, Gives $6.5 Billion Loan Guarantee to Vogtle Reactor Construction

It's all for " low-carbon energy future", says Obama's Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

Additional loan guarantee of $1.8 billion is still pending, according to the article below.

The Obama administration, in its quest for "low-carbon energy future", has invested and lost a fortune (taxpayers money) on dubious solar ventures (including infamous Solyndra). I guess the administration is now betting on a sure thing this time, on Toshiba/Westinghouse's A1000. The construction of two reactors using A1000 was approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February 2012 (still under Dr. Gregory Jaczko, who cast the only dissenting vote).

(Conversely, Toshiba/Westinghouse has cleverly betted on a sure thing - national government that will print limitless amount of fiat money and collect money from the vast tax farm - the rest of us. Smart move.)

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2/20/2014; emphasis is mine):

A $6.5B federal loan guarantee jolts Ga. nuclear power project

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Waynesboro, Ga. - The Obama administration signed off Thursday on a $6.5 billion loan guarantee to help Georgia utilities build the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in more than three decades.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz traveled to the sprawling Plant Vogtle site in east Georgia to announce the loan aid for Southern Co. and Oglethorpe Power. Another $1.8 billion loan for a third company involved in the plant, MEAG, is still in the works.

“This plant will be the economic engine for the state of Georgia,” said Georgia Power chief executive Paul Bowers. “We are proud to be the first utility to restart the nuclear renaissance here in America.”

The two nuclear reactors underway at Vogtle were supposed to be the first in a wave of new nuclear construction as part of a push toward cleaner energy when the Obama administration announced the aid in February 2010. But the boom never materialized.

Stalled efforts to limit carbon emissions, plunging natural gas prices and other stumbling blocks have delayed the loan four years and stalled a broader nuclear revival. Vogtle on Thursday became the first project to receive the federal loan guarantee since Congress established the program in 2005 to jolt the nuclear industry.

Critics pointed it out safety concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, and cited the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in the wake of an epic tsunami there.

“Fewer than three years have passed since the tragedy at Fukushima demonstrated that nuclear reactors can never be safe,” said Katherine Fuchs of Friends of the Earth. “Yet the president and energy secretary are ignoring its lessons.”

But Moniz said the federal guarantee is part of a broader “all of the above” effort to offer an range of alternative energy sources that could lower carbon emissions. He said he huddled with Georgia Power executives to reach a final agreement after years of delays.

“If we don’t move out with these kinds of projects, we won’t be ahead of the train,” said Moniz. “And we in the United States shouldn’t be running to catch up with the caboose.”

"Lessons" of Fukushima? What kind of lessons is Ms. Fuchs thinking of, I wonder, other than that "accidents can, and do happen at nuclear power plants".

But unless her organization starts to cite very specific lessons, Dr. Ernest Moniz will pay no attention, I'm afraid. It was Dr. Moniz who declared back in 2011 that "It would be a mistake, however, to let Fukushima cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits."

But "ahead of the train", Mr. Secretary? To be run over by the train, you mean?

The Obama administration has already allocated nearly a half billion dollars for the small modular nuclear reactor development, the effort spearheaded by the world 2nd richest man Bill Gates.

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Top Climate Scientists Say Alternative Energy Does Not Reduce Carbon, Urge Followers Back to Nuclear Power

Ah. It is as if the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident didn't happen. Or as some people say, it was never a nuclear accident because no one died from acute radiation exposure (see the past posts, here and here).

Not that I personally think much of so-called alternative energy, but using "global warming" to push for nuclear power, isn't it getting too long in the tooth?

From Real Science blog, quoting The Guardian article (11/3/2013; emphasis in The Guardian article is mine):

Open letter to environmentalists and world leaders says wind and solar power are not enough to diminish carbon emissions

Some of the world’s top climate scientists say wind and solar energy won’t be enough to head off extreme global warming, and they’re asking environmentalists to support the development of safer nuclear power as one way to cut fossil fuel pollution.

Four scientists who have played a key role in alerting the public to the dangers of climate change sent letters Sunday to leading environmental groups and politicians around the world. The letter, an advance copy of which was given to the Associated Press, urges a crucial discussion on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change.

The letter signers are James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist; Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution; Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tom Wigley, of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Top US climate scientists support development of safe nuclear power | Environment | theguardian.com

Environmentalists are terrified of nuclear power and fossil fuels, and now their heroes tell them that their only remaining hope is also useless. Time for Kool-Aid?

Why didn’t Hansen tell Obama about this before he invested billions in useless failed green energy companies scams?

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
27. Vestas ($50 million)
28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30. Navistar ($39 million)
31. Satcon ($3 million)*
32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

President Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Failures

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Scientific American: "Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe"

An article written by Gary Stix, editor and senior writer for Scientific American (3/17/2012; emphasis is mine):

Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single-topic issue on energy for Scientific American that included an article by Princeton University’s Robert Socolow that set out a well-reasoned plan for how to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet-livable threshold of 560 ppm. The issue came replete with technical solutions that ranged from a hydrogen economy to space-based solar.

If I had it to do over, I’d approach the issue planning differently, my fellow editors permitting. I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science. Since doing that issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. It’s the social engineering that’s the killer. Moon shots and Manhattan Projects are child’s play compared to needed changes in the way we behave.

A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”

The report summarized 10 years of research evaluating the capability of international institutions to deal with climate and other environmental issues, an assessment that found existing capabilities to effect change sorely lacking. The authors called for a “constitutional moment” at the upcoming 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in June to reform world politics and government. Among the proposals: a call to replace the largely ineffective U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly, at attempt to better handle emerging issues related to water, climate, energy and food security. The report advocates a similar revamping of other international environmental institutions.

Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human behaviors would be a sine qua non, but that kind of pronouncement also profoundly strains credibility in the chaos of the political sphere. Some of the things that would need to be contemplated: How do we overcome our hard-wired tendency to “discount” the future: valuing what we have today more than what we might receive tomorrow? Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries? How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.? Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?

Behavioral economics and other forward-looking disciplines in the social sciences try to grapple with weighty questions. But they have never taken on a challenge of this scale, recruiting all seven billion of us to act in unison. The ability to sustain change globally across the entire human population over periods far beyond anything ever attempted would appear to push the relevant objectives well beyond the realm of the attainable. If we are ever to cope with climate change in any fundamental way, radical solutions on the social side are where we must focus, though. The relative efficiency of the next generation of solar cells is trivial by comparison.

Brave new world. Instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting centuries.

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The Telegraph's Delingpole: "Wind farms: even worse than we thought…"

From decidedly "non-warmer" James Delingpole on wind farms (he calls " Bat Chomping Eco-Crucifixes") that:

ruin views, kill birds, cause bats to implode, destroy the British film industry, frighten horses, enrich rent-seeking toffs like David Cameron's father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield Bt, drive up electricity bills, kill jobs, create fuel poverty, cause old people to die of hypothermia, wipe out property values, drive people mad with strobing and noise pollution and enable smug liberal idiots to spout rubbish like "Oh, I don't mind them. Actually I think they're rather beautiful", but also by 2020 they're set to drive up consumer bills in the UK alone by £120 billion.

From The Telegraph (James Delingpole; 3/8/2012):

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has produced yet another devastating report: this time on the economics of wind farms. Turns out they're even worse than we thought.

Not only do the Bat Chomping Eco-Crucifixes (TM) ruin views, kill birds, cause bats to implode, destroy the British film industry, frighten horses, enrich rent-seeking toffs like David Cameron's father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield Bt, drive up electricity bills, kill jobs, create fuel poverty, cause old people to die of hypothermia, wipe out property values, drive people mad with strobing and noise pollution and enable smug liberal idiots to spout rubbish like "Oh, I don't mind them. Actually I think they're rather beautiful", but also by 2020 they're set to drive up consumer bills in the UK alone by £120 billion.

This is about ten times more than it would cost if we stuck to gas. (Which we have in abundance, just waiting to be exploited, in places like the Bowland Shale).

In the latest Spectator, Matt Ridley delivers the coup-de-grace. Here's a taste:

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world's energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron's government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. The biggest investors in offshore wind — Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens — are starting to worry that the government's heart is not in wind energy any more. Vestas, which has plans for a factory in Kent, wants reassurance from the Prime Minister that there is the political will to put up turbines before it builds its factory.

Some readers may occasionally detect in my coverage of wind farms a mild hint of contempt for those involved in the wind farm industry whether as lawyers (that means you Mrs Nick Clegg), paid propagandists/disrupters (see commenters, below), rent-seekers (yep, Sir Reginald) or corporatist blood-suckers feeding off the backs of innocent taxpayers.

One thing is certain: the arguments against wind farms are so abundant and well-known that ignorance is no longer a plausible excuse. If you're involved in the wind farm industry, you're a weapons-grade tosser, simple as that.

"Wind farms are beautiful" meme is in Japan also, despite the complaints from the residents who live near one of them and suffer health problems from the ultra-low frequency from the wind mills. I guess anything can be said to be beautiful after witnessing the wreckage at Fukushima I Nucleaer Power Plant.

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Bill That Will Create "Global Warming Tax" Wil Pass in Japan by the End of March

In case you are not aware, Japan is one of the last bastions of people who believe in anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. The majority of the population in Japan are quite willing to sacrifice their well-being if that reduces CO2 emission and save the mother earth.

From Yomiuri Shinbun (3/7/2012):

自民、公明両党の幹事長、国会対策委員長らが７日会談し、２０１２年度予算関連法案のうち、地球温暖化対策税（環境税）の創設などを盛り込んだ税制改正関連など４法案に賛成する方針を確認した。

Secretaries-general and Diet policy committee chairmen of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito Party met on March 7, and confirmed their parties' policy to agree to 4 tax bills [submitted by the Noda administration] in the bills related to the fiscal 2012 budget including the one that will create the tax for countermeasures against global warming (environmental tax).

これにより、４法案は月内にも成立する見通しとなった。

With their agreement, the 4 bills are likely to be passed within this month.

　一方、衆院議院運営委員会は７日の理事会で、１２年度予算案を８日夕の衆院本会議で採決することを決めた。与党の賛成多数で衆院を通過する見通しだ。自公両党は７日の会談で、同予算案に反対することを確認した。

Meanwhile, the Diet Steering Committee of the Lower House held a meeting on March 7, and decided that the fiscal 2012 budget would be voted on in the plenary session of the Lower House in the evening on March 8. The 2012 budget is expected to pass by the majority vote from the ruling coalition. The LDP and the New Komei Party confirmed in the meeting on March 7 to oppose the budget.

The budget is going to pass anyway, so the LDP and Komeito want to make a token stand that they opposed, a gesture enough to fool people into voting for them in the future.

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The Austrialian Is All For Nuke Plants Even After #Fukushima Disaster

saying "Fukushima looked ugly but the alternative is so much worse". Why? Well, global warming and CO2 increase, of course. Graham Lloyd of The Australian also claims the Japanese government has "responded with greater speed and precision to the Fukushima emergency than did their Soviet counterparts at Chernobyl, which was a much more serious accident."

Emergency? (Oh boy. That's like NISA calling the accident an "event"). The article was written before Japan upgraded the "emergency" event to a "Level 7" accident.

From The Australian's Graham Lloyd (4/9/2011):

THE Fukushima nuclear emergency has intensified the global climate change debate.

Japan's post-tsunami crisis has prompted an immediate reappraisal of ambitious nuclear energy plans in the booming markets of China and India and hastened the withdrawal of ageing plants in Western Europe, most notably Germany.

According to some calculations, if the world's nuclear ambitions are reduced because of Fukushima global carbon emissions could increase by an additional three billion tonnes by 2030.

Some believe this would be enough to push global temperature rises beyond 2 per cent and into a potentially calamitous upward spiral.

This has caused leading environmental campaigners, such as British author George Monbiot, to reappraise their attitude towards nuclear energy with some dramatic results.

Monbiot has not only changed from nuclear avoider to pro-nuclear campaigner he has taken on the long-standing figurehead of the anti-nuclear cause, Australia's Helen Caldicott.

"I'm very worried that the global response to what's happening in Fukushima will be to shut down nuclear power stations around the world and to cancel future nuclear power stations, and that what will happen is that they will be replaced by coal," Monbiot wrote this week.

And after years of campaigning against nuclear power, Monbiot now describes the exaggerated claims of the health impacts of radioactivity as akin to what he believes are the pseudo-scientific pleadings of climate change deniers.

"The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health," Monbiot wrote.

Monbiot cites a UN Scientific Committee report into the Chernobyl accident, which found that of the workers who tried to contain the emergency at Chernobyl, 134 suffered acute radiation syndrome; 28 died soon afterwards. Nineteen others died later, but generally not from diseases associated with radiation. The remaining 87 have suffered other complications, including four cases of solid cancer and two of leukaemia.

In the rest of the Chernobyl population there have been 6848 cases of thyroid cancer among young children arising "almost entirely" from the Soviet Union's failure to prevent people from drinking milk contaminated with iodine 131.

Otherwise "there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure".

Japanese authorities have responded with greater speed and precision to the Fukushima emergency than did their Soviet counterparts at Chernobyl, which was a much more serious accident.

(The article continues.)

The last paragraph quoted is a downright LIE. Amazing. There you go, Kan, here's your ally. Invite the reporters from this outfit to your presser and spread the good news that Fukushima is nothing.

The second to last paragraph is extremely questionable also, in light of the extensive studies to the contrary.

I suppose Australia is very safe from the radioactive plumes and contaminated water from Fukushima, being in the southern hemisphere, and has the luxury of still promoting the nuclear energy to save the world from the "global warming".

Never mind that millions of Japanese have had to breathe radioactive air and eat radioactive vegetables and fish. Small price to pay for saving the world from "global warming".

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Climate Experts in 2000: "Snowfalls Are a Thing of the Past"

As much of the UK and the continental Europe remain frozen shut, it is amusing for the non-warmers to re-read the article from March 2000 in which a leading researcher from University of East Anglia (of "Climategate" fame) proclaimed:

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

From Independent, 3/20/2000:

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

In case you haven't followed these scientists and their babbling, the narrative has shifted to "global warming produces extreme weather."

They don't give up easily, do they, the Algores of the world?

But as for the UK children not knowing what snow is, that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon:

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UK Telegraph: "Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world"

Remember the "global warming" disaster in Copenhagen last year?

So-called scientists, politicians, and representatives from big business who are very keen on profiting from the "global warming" to the tune of $12 trillion dollars are flying in on their fancy jets to Cancun, Mexico, to hold another "climate" conference in a super-fancy resort built on a strip of land that used to be a ecologically sensitive mangrove swamp with pristine beaches and rainforests.

These so-called scientists are already lecturing us that the developed countries like UK should be put on a rationing system just like during the World War II and halt any growth for 20 years to save the planet from the "global warming".

Talk about hypocricy.

And PR disaster.

UK's Telegraph reports:

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.

As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.

Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods

He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

...Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.

Sure, sure. I'm sure he will be delivering his excellent paper in a super-fancy resort in Cancun, if he can take the time off from his golf on a course designed by Jack Nicklaus or relaxing in a jaccuzzi eating shrimp.

By the way, Cancun means "a nest of serpents". Indeed.

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News That Has Gone Very Quiet Very Quickly

In no particular order...

H1N1 swine flu
Now the reports say WHO exaggerated the threat, influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. Oh really? What a surprise.

Global 'warming' and Climategate
The Gores are splitting, and CBS blames George W. Bush.

Panty-bomber on Christmas Eve last year and terrorists from Yemen (and US military's involvement in that country)
CIA later admitted he was allowed to board the plane under CIA's order. No matter. No one paid attention to that part. All we got out of this shady affair is the pornographic total body scan, thanks in part to the peddling by Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security chief.

Greece sovereign debt crisis
While Greece decided to sell off national assets to pay the bankers, evil 'speculators' have moved on to the next target, Spain. Italy next? Or France next? I guess they'll need a break before attacking a major country. Maybe take a detour in Hungary?

Heath care insurance "reform" bill actually passed and signed into law
Remember that one, which will force you to purchase insurance you don't want under the threat of fines because it is your right? ('Newspeak' at its best.) Doctors sure seem to remember that well, as an increasing number of them will be calling it quits. Canadians are finding out that the government-mandated health care is not really 'free' of charge. Duh. (Why do they think Newfoundland's minister came to the US for his heart surgery?)

Times Square non-bomber (if you can call that a bomb, you are scientifically challenged)
The news died off even quicker than the panty bomber. As a reward, Pakistan will be targeted by the Obama administration for "unilateral military action".

Second wave of mortgage default due to ARM reset
I don't think that even compares with the much bigger subprime disaster that's coming, via almost insolvent FHA and Ginnie Mae, both of which are fully backed by the US government (i.e. taxpayers).

Goldman Sachs civil and criminal charges
How can they be blamed for what everyone else was doing? By the way, according to Goldman, today's job number was going to be 700K. I guess they were just following the Obama administration's lead (that Friday's job number would be great). How can they be blamed for following Obama?

Audit the Fed
Senator Sanders blinked and watered down his bill in the last minutes to just a slap on the wrist, if that. He blinked on the day of 'flash crash'. Oh it's just a coincidence, isn't it?

'Flash crash' and (unwanted) attention on high frequency trading
Boy this story disappeared so quick. Nothing to see here (which is very true of the stock market - nothing is supporting it but algo bots working in milliseconds), move right along. Nonetheless, the SEC is implementing a new circuit breaker system starting next week, which I suspect will only benefit the high frequency traders more. (More on this later.)

Euro crisis and $1 trillion bailout plan
Remember this? It was announced on May 10 before the markets in Asia opened. The effect of the announcement lasted about 12 hours for euro. The currency closed at about 1.28 (against USD) on May 10. It closed today at 1.1964, the level last reached in 2006, despite incessant central bank intervention in the last 3 weeks.
.
North Korea's threat to go on all-out attack
I think it made the headline for a day or two. Poor Kim Jong Il, upstaged by the Israeli navy commandos only days later.

This must be the "new normal", in which one crisis every few days makes a peaceful, easy week. We would only panic when we have more than 3 or 4 reported crises per day. If they are not reported by MSM, we don't care, do we?

Move along, nothing to see here.

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World May Not Be Warming, Says Scientists

According to U.N.'s climate panel IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), "global warming" is "unequivocal".

Britain's Times Online tells us part of what kind of science has been behind the global warming: thousands of weather stations around the globe, monitoring the temperature change over the past 150 years.

You would think that's the solid, scientific data that you can't dispute. Far from it, it turns out.

World may not be warming, say scientists
(Jonathan Leake, Times Online 2/14/2010)

"The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

"In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

"It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

"“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

"The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

"These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. " [The article continues.]

Good, now even the scientists are talking about "urban heat island", which has been dismissed as urban myth, or worse, crackpot pseudo-science.

The article mentions different ways the weather stations could have distorted the number:

• weather stations sitting right next to air conditioning units
• weather stations on waste treatment plants
• weather station at Rome airport, catching jet exhaust fumes
• weather station next to an incinerator
• weather station surrounded by heat-generating buildings

What kind of science behind global warming? Is it a science?

By the way, if you are still worried about Himalayan glaciers melting away by 2035, as IPCC told you in 2007, rest assured. It was a typo that no one at IPCC caught. The person at IPCC who copied the original study must be dyslexic. It was 2350, not 2035. Duh.

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Bloomberg: French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax

After the disaster in Copenhagen, global warmers seem to have gone awfully quiet around the world. Now, the French constitutional court rejected a carbon emission tax as inequitable.

French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax
(12/30/09 Bloomberg)

"France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a web of exemptions violated the principal of equality and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.

"The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20.

"The tax, which would have started on Jan. 1, was set at 17 euros ($24.38) per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in September. To make the tax more palatable, he partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.

"In all, 93 percent of all industrial carbon emissions in France would have avoided paying the full tax, the constitutional court said in a decision published on its Web site. The tax would have fallen disproportionately on fuel for heating and cars, it said.

"“The court ruled that the system of exemptions, due to their extensive nature, were contrary to the objective of fighting global warming and contravene the principle of equality before the tax system,” the court said.

"The court rejected all the articles relating to the carbon tax in the government’s 2010 budget."

According to the article, it is the Socialist-led opposition who opposes the carbon tax in France, as hurting the poor and handicap employers.

The cap and trade scheme advocated by the U.S. administration and Democratic Congress is even worse. Polluting industries get to pass the cost of carbon credit to the consumers almost entirely, and the middleman (i.e. the government) get to skim off of the consumers by taking from some and giving it to others as subsidies and credits.

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Cooking Up Data on Global "Warming"?

Can we kiss "cap and trade" goodbye now?

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? (James Delingpole, 11/20/09 Telegraph UK)

"If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

"When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

"One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

In an odd way this is cheering news.

"But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."

The article continues to list some of their amusing emails.

James Delingpole has several deliciously-titled books like Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work.

Despite the article's title, he is realistic (that nothing of that sort happens any time soon) but at the same time thinks the tide is turning against Al Gores of the world:

"I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.

"The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

"Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight."

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Al Gore, Criminal Billionaire

In his testimony in Congress on April 24, 2009, former Vice President Al Gore sneered at a Congresswoman who simply asked him about his interests in green business (that include carbon trading venture with ex-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson), and went into a taunting tirade: "Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?" (Here's the link to the video. You can watch Al Gore's staff sitting behind him laugh and sneer as their boss does.)

Well, first, the Congresswoman was not asking whether or not there's something wrong with being a businessman in this country. Second, in your particular case Mr. Vice President, yes it is a crime, even if you won't be the first one to profit immensely from government connection. John D. Rockefeller did, J. P. Morgan did. It's a fine American tradition of crony capitalism, but don't tell us it's a rugged entrepreneurism. (Investing in Apple Inc.'s stocks doesn't make one an entrepreneur.)

Lew Rockwell seems to share my disgust.

Al Gore, Criminal Billionaire (Lew Rockwell, 11/4/09 LRC Blog)
[emphasis is mine]

"Al may become the first man to rip-off a cool billion through government carbon tyranny. When a man becomes rich in the market, it is because he has been highly successful in serving consumers. When a hereditary member of the power elite like Gore becomes even richer through the state, it means he has been very successful in pushing the faces of consumers into the mud. He promotes climate lies and then poverty-producing state intervention because of the lies, and then makes big bucks from special deals with companies he helped enrich through the state. What a monster."

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Democratic Party of Japan = Obama II

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which won the Lower House election in a landslide at the end of August, may be turning out to be almost an exact copy of the U.S. administration under President Obama.

Right before the election when I checked what's in their "manifest" (policies) and found some special legal consideration to help "transgenders" and the words like "community renewal" (no this is not ACORN, it's DPJ), I had a feeling that Japanese would regret their choice sooner than later. (After all, a significant number of voters voted against LDP, just like a significant voters here voted against GOP (Bush/Cheney).)

Right after their win, almost the first thing that their leadership did was to announce the creation by a cabinet order of a bureau directly under the control of the Prime Minister that is intended to be the center for devising and implementing the core national policies and directing bureaucrats in the ministries and agencies. Much like President Obama's use of presidential appointees, popularly known as Czars, whose functions overlap almost all aspects of the formal government departments and agencies.

I thought, "If this DPJ is Obama II, then the next thing they'll do will be to announce that they are going to tackle some dire problem head-on, and it will not be the economy."

Sure enough. I was right. Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of DPJ who's slated to become Prime Minister, wants to tackle green house gas effect. Oh boy.

25% Reduction Target [of Green House Gas] Will Damage the Economy, Ministers and Industries Worry (9/8/09 Yomiuri Shinbun, original in Japanese)

"Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama on September 7th announced Japan's target for reducing the green house gas in 2020 as "25% reduction from 1990 level". In response, ministers and industry leaders have expressed fear that the economy will be damaged by enormous cost that would be incurred in achieving such a target.

"Mr. Nikai, Minister of Economy,Trade and Industry, said in the press conference after the cabinet meeting, "To achieve such a target will be extremely difficult. It is not enough to simply express his hope. He needs to come up with the detailed process in order to achieve the target." Mr. Hayashi, Minister of Economy and Finance, also suggested that more deliberation and discussion is needed. "Environmental issues should not be at the expense of economy. We need more discussion within Japan before we proclaim it as a national policy."

"Cabinet Secretary Kawamura sounded skeptical in the press conference. "I am not sure we would be willing to proceed with the understanding that we won't be able to drive any car powered by gasoline."

"Industry leaders strongly fear that the heavy burden of new energy initiatives will fall on their companies, reducing their international competitiveness. Mr. Ito, president of Honda Motors wasn't too happy when he spoke in a conference on new technologies. "The target vastly exceed our plan. Extremely difficult to achieve." Toyota's president urged DPJ to reconsider. "Difficult target. We would urge [DPJ] to proceed cautiously."

"Environmental Minister Saito, who is from Komei Party which has the same reduction target as DPJ, was the only one who welcomed the DPJ's target. He said his party would be willing to cooperate with DPJ."

Komei Party, who was a junior coalition partner to LDP, is jockeying for a better position in the DPJ-led Diet.

Did Japan's economy take the gravest hit ever since World War II last fall, because of global warming? Japan's machinery orders dipped more than 9% in July, and the unemployment is all-time high (5.7% in July, which is measured differently from the U.S.). The current global recession revealed the same structural problems that Japan has had but were masked during the bubble years. It's the economy, Mr. Hatoyama!

And the first thing that this Prime Minister-to-be wants to do is to combat global warming. He also wants to make Japan more livable for foreigners, and wants to give the voting right to foreigners who live in Japan long enough. And help transgenders. And Cap and Trade.

Mr. Hatoyama's nickname is "space alien". Maybe he is. With the wacky wife of his, he may have been to Venus himself in a UFO to see the effect of green house gas. Good luck Japan, you'll need it.

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G-8 Leaders Declare On Temperature

I don't know if I want to laugh or cry.

ROME - July 8, 2009 -- World leaders agreed Wednesday that the global economy remains too shaky to begin rolling back massive stimulus measures right now. They also set a key goal in the fight against global warming, saying temperatures shouldn't increase more than 2 degrees Celsius.

The rest of the article is here.

So the G-8 leaders hereby declare that the temperatures shouldn't increase more than 2 degrees Celsius. And if they do? What if they decrease by 2 degrees? Why 2 degrees, not 1 or 3? And who are they to decide? (Have they consulted the sun?)

This is akin to the medieval Church declaring that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun circled around the earth.

This is also like the California legislature right now. They are issuing IOUs because they haven't been able to figure out how to fill the budget deficit, but the lawmakers are busy bickering over the small bills on fruits and juices.

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Q&A about Climate Bill, a la Associated Press

A news article from AP, or so I think, but the entire article could have been simply lifted from the PR literature published by the Democratic supporters of the climate bill (H.R. 2454) that passed the House today.

Questions and answers about the US climate bill (6/26/09 AP via Yahoo Finance) written by Dina Cappiello and Eric Carvin

You can read the article by following the above link. I particularly like the last Q&A that these writers created:

Q: Why is it so important to tackle global warming anyway?

A: Left untended, scientists say, global warming will cause sea levels to rise, increase storms and worsen air pollution. For these reasons, the Environmental Protection Agency recently concluded that six greenhouse gases pose dangers to human health and welfare. And politically, without U.S. action, developing countries like China probably will not agree to mandatory pollution limits.

Not all "scientists" say that, and certainly not all of them link all of global warming to human causes. China probably will not agree, without U.S. action? My humble guess is that China probably will not agree, with or without U.S. action. (Not only that, they will probably stop buying U.S. Treasuries to punish the U.S. for trying to impose limits on them.)

I love their very descriptive consequences of global warming: sea will rise, more storms will hit us... Sky will fall, stars will go dim, mountains will crumble, cow will jump over the moon, and little dog will laugh to see such sight..

In the meantime, we'd better hope it is indeed global warming, not global cooling, as some scientists do think (see my post from 6/23/09).

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Earth May Be Cooling, Not Warming

Now that's a heinous heresy, isn't it? (Now I loudly proclaim that I am not endorsing global cooling, lest a thought police comes after me.) [emphasis is mine]

The Solar Downturn
(by Richard Daughty, a.k.a. Mogambo Guru, 6/23/09 Lewrockwell.com)

"If you are one of those people who thinks that the Earth revolves around the sun and that the sun has important implications for life on earth, then I know that you are not a government employee, as everyone from the president, to the Congress, right on down to the municipal employee whose miserable job it is to clean up the filthy toilets after the government employees have messed them up, all think that they can overcome any obstacle – man-made, natural or wrath of a supernatural force – if only given more money in their salaries and budgets."

Oh boy, that's one long, loaded sentence.

"...as we mere mortals are connected to “cause and effect,” we are horrified at the news that the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has reported that “The Sun’s visible surface has been almost blank,” meaning that it is almost completely devoid of the usual activity of bubbling sunspots, and even more dramatically, “The Sun has been quiet for almost two years, the longest period of solar minimum in about 100 years.”"

"Perhaps that is why Junior Mogambo Ranger Phil S. sent a link to Telegraph.co.uk, where I got the headline, “Crops Under Stress As Temperatures Fall,” with the chilling subhead that “the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling.”

"The problem is the effect this cooling has on food production, especially since “Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year” an extreme of which is “US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.”"

The Telegraph article he cites is right here. Crops are failing in the US, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, UK, Ukraine. The Telegraph's article is just as exasperated (if less sarcastic) as Mogambo Guru:

"... One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.

"It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming. Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week."

Back to Mogambo Guru:

"Obviously, despite my best efforts to hide it, the Telegraph has discovered that I am an idiot, and it is kind of embarrassing when they have to repeat, for my obvious benefit, “In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century,” which I seem to remember means that unusual “low sunspot activity” is connected to cooler temperatures, which means lower crop yields, which means higher wheat prices, which means higher prices for food, which is the problem that makes me wake up screaming in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, reaching for an AK-47 with which to blast unseen inflation demons, only to discover that my wife has unloaded the thing while I slept!"

DBA (PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF) anyone? (No, I am not recommending or endorsing, in case they've already started blog policing...)

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