by Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Friday, 09 May 2008
Full text [here]
Excerpt from The Cost and Futility of Trading Hot Air:
With climate change, politics regrettably predominates. This time, there is a dangerous complication: politicized science. The surprisingly small group of scientists who started and still stir the “global warming” scare have undesirably close financial links with politicians and corporations. Yet the notion that “global warming” is so severe a threat that it demands major increases in taxation and regulation, coupled with deep, strategic cuts in the Western economies, would only be defensible if all of the following propositions were true –
1. “The scientists, politicians, and news media behind ‘global warming’ are honest”: They are not;
2. “The debate is over and all credible climate scientists are agreed”: It is not; they are not;
3. “Temperature today has risen exceptionally fast and above natural variability”: It has not;
4. “Changes in solar activity do not significantly impact today’s global warming”: They do;
5. “Greenhouse-gas increases are the main reason why it is getting warmer”: They are not;
6. “The fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse warming is clearly present”: It is absent;
7. “Computer models are accurate enough to predict the climate reliably”: They cannot be;
8. “Global warming is to blame for present and future climate disasters”: It is not;
9. “Mitigating climate change will be cost-effective”: It will not;
10. “Taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course”: It would not be.
Each of these ten conformist propositions, every one of which must be shown true before substantial policy changes can be considered advisable, is demonstrated to be questionable at best, false at worst.
There has been serious, serial scientific dishonesty, misrepresentation, and exaggeration. Increasing numbers of peer-reviewed papers are expressing open doubts about all of the main points of “global warming” theory. Today’s temperature is well within natural climate variability. The Sun’s activity is now declining from the recent 70-year-long solar Grand Maximum, during which the Sun was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar previous period in the past 11,400 years. Climate models have exaggerated the effect of all greenhouse gases on temperature, and have also increased the feedback multiplier by more than half in a decade, without explanation or justification. The models do not accurately represent major features of the climate, and it has long been proven impossible to predict the long-run evolution of any mathematically-chaotic object, such as the climate, unless one knows the initial state of the object to a degree of precision that, with the climate, is in practice unattainable.
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May 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather
The incineration of the Payette NF (and the Boise NF) did not go unnoticed by the local residents. The following words and photos are excerpted from Discover McCall Idaho, a local promotional website, and the McCall Star-News. Special thanks to Joe B. for providing the links. Satellite photo courtesy NASA.
July 19, 2007 [here]
Loon Lake Fire marches toward vacation homes — Secesh residents advised to evacuate
by Tecla Markosky, The Star News
Residents of Secesh Meadows northeast of McCall were advised to evacuate their homes on Wednesday in the face of the growing Loon Lake Fire. …
About 80 people attended a community meeting Tuesday night. Estimates says between 40 and 50 buildings are in the area occupied by between 50 and 100 part-time residents.
The atmosphere was congenial at the beginning of the meeting but immediately switched when the fire management team began its presentation. …
Bob Frye of the fire management team said firefighters can work to protect a home from igniting, but do not have the training to fight a house fire.
“If a house is on fire, it’s gone,” Frye said.
Elsewhere on the Payette, the Krassel Complex includes four lightning fires being allowed to burn through the forest where they can improve forest health, managers said.
These fires started on June 17 and may burn throughout the fires season as long as they continue to be beneficial, said Jack Horner, public information officer for the California team watching those fires.
July 26, 2007 [here]
Secesh residents breathe easier as Loon Fire quiets
by Tecla Markosky, The Star News
… Vern Peterson, a 20-year fulltime Secesh resident, said he is frustrated with the Forest Service over the management of the local lands.
“As thick as that forest is, the Forest Service knows that if they don’t de fuel it, we’re going to continue to have this problem,” said Peterson, a retired logger.
“Yet they don’t have timber sales,” he said. “This is totally out of control. It was a time bomb waiting to happen.”
Last weekend, Peterson had especially good visibility of the encroaching flames.
“My neighbors a few homes down could see the trees go off like roman candles,” he said.
Sept. 20, 2007 [here]
Acres burned this year blow away previous records
by Michael Wells, The Star News
This year’s forest fire season has shattered previous record years for both the Payette and Boise national forests.
Fires have burned 394,313 acres on the Payette forest as of Tuesday, Payette forest spokesperson Denise Cobb said.
The previous record on the Payette forest was 343,347 burned acres in 2000.
Fires have burned 243,316 on the Boise forest this year, Boise forest spokesperson David Olson said.The previous record on the Boise forest was 207,000 acres in 1992.
This year’s burned area represents 16 percent of the Payette forest’s 2.3 million acres and 9 percent of the Boise forest’s 2.6 million acres.
May 10, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: 2007 Fire Season, Federal forest policy
Since 1993 over a million acres of the Payette National Forest have been incinerated. In 1994 300,573 acres burned. In 2000 343,347 acres burned. In 2006 over 70,000 acres burned. And in 2007 a whopping 470,529 acres of the Payette NF went up in smoke. That’s 1.27 million acres in 4 of 14 years (I don’t have data for the other intervening years).
The Payette NF is 2.3 million acres in size, so using the data available, 55 percent has burned in the last 14 fire seasons. I have been told but cannot confirm (because I don’t have all the data) that the actual burn percentage is 70 percent .
The nearly half million acres of the Payette that burned in 2007 was more or less deliberate on the part of the US Forest Service. They planned it, and then carried it out.
Following the 2006 fire season (70,000 acres) USA Today ran the following article [here]:
Forest fire strategy: Just let it go, USA Today, November 2006
In the worst year for wildfires in nearly half a century, it may seem odd to celebrate how well some of them burned. But the Payette National Forest in central Idaho is doing just that.
“It was a real long season, but we got some nice fire effects,” says Sam Hescock, a fire management officer on the 2.3-million-acre forest where more than 150 fires this summer and fall burned about 70,000 acres. “We’re pretty happy with what we got.”
May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: 2007 Fire Season, Federal forest policy
The new W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking website has been reporting on major fires in the West since mid-April. The first fire covered was (is) the Trigo Fire southeast of Albuquerque, NM.
The Trigo Fire began on April 15 in the Cibola National Forest and by April 21 had grown to 3,750 acres and burned nine homes. The residents of Manzano and Torreon were ordered to evacuate by the Torrance County Office of Emergency Services. By April 26 the fire was 4,910 acres but 60 percent contained.
It was big news. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson toured the fire, as did a group of Congressional staffers. A FEMA declaration was issued. Community meetings were held. Over $5 million was spent on suppression.
But then attention deficit disorder set in. The news media went away, as did most of the firefighters. Bill Richardson went to Venezuela to hobnob with Hugo Chavez. And the Trigo Fire smoldered.
On April 30 winds gusted up to 50 mph and the Trigo Fire blew up. Embers blew over containment lines and the fire doubled in size in a matter of hours. The remaining few firefighters were overwhelmed. By May 2 the Trigo Fire was 13,700 acres and an additional 50 homes had burned. Some 600 families were evacuated from the Torreon and Tajique area. The Sherwood Forest subdivision was decimated.
The Southwest Type 1 Incident Management Team (Whitney) was called in. Over 800 firefighters arrived, but it was too late to save the homes.
May 7, 2008 | 3 Comments | Topic: The 2008 Fire Season
The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Yakima Herald-Republic. We post it in full:
Plea further extends Thirtymile tragedy
Yakima Herald-Republic Editorial [here]
In a New Year’s Eve editorial on the last day of 2006, we were willing to concede at the time that “four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied.”
That hope has been dashed now that a plea-bargaining deal has led to fire crew chief Ellreese Daniels pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Spokane Tuesday to two misdemeanor charges of making false statements to investigators.
The magnitude of the reduction in charges is staggering: In exchange, the government dropped four felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven felony counts of making false statements.
Sentencing is set for July 23.
“Like all plea agreements, there was a recognition of the evidence and the law as it exists,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said in an Associated Press report out of Spokane. “We feel this is an appropriate disposition of the case.”
Really? Will there ever be “appropriate disposition” of a case in which so many nagging doubts and unanswered questions remain? Four people died and the only person charged in the incident gets a plea-bargaining slap on the wrist and won’t have to face trial — during which a more complete story of what happened up to and during that fateful day could unfold during testimony.
Frankly, we’ve been less than impressed from the start with the federal government’s handling, at all levels, of the Thirtymile incident.
We also take note of the fact that Daniels was the only one to face criminal charges out of the fire near Winthrop that killed four Central Washington firefighters on July 10, 2001: Tom Craven of Ellensburg, and Karen FitzPatrick, Jessica Johnson and Devin Weaver, all from Yakima.
We remain convinced that Daniels must answer in part for the tragedy because he was directly responsible for the safety of his crew. But we also maintain that the blame for the Thirtymile debacle involves much more than just what happened on the fire line that day. Blame must also extend further up the chain of command and include a culture of stonewalling and cover-up so prevalent in the U.S. Forest Service at the time.
In addition, a September 2001 investigation by this newspaper revealed that the Forest Service broke more than a dozen of its own safety rules. Federal investigators came to an even more damning conclusion: The Forest Service had 28 rules in place to keep crews safe. At Thirtymile, 20 of them were broken, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The negligence, according to the original charges, included Daniels failing to prepare the crew for the possibility of being overrun by flames.
The fact he was singled out prompts memories of the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when Iraqi prisoners were mistreated by United States military personnel. Of 10 people convicted out of that debacle, none ranked higher than staff sergeant. That in a system noted for its chain of command that demands the following of orders.
Reforms within the agency were supposed to ensure a tragedy such as Thirtymile never happened again. Yet, seven firefighters have been fatally trapped since by forest fires in Idaho and California.
That’s not to simply say the lessons of Thirtymile have not been heeded. After all, we’re talking about a very dangerous line of work, one in which every possible step must be taken to ensure the safety of firefighters on the line.
But we also don’t totally agree with the fears of many in the firefighting community that the unprecedented prosecution of Daniels might send a chilling message into the ranks of his colleagues across the nation — that they could face felony charges if something similar happened on their watches.
Anyone responsible for neglect of duty that leads to tragic consequences should face such charges. In our system of justice, whether such charges are justified is determined in a trial with all the pertinent facts on display, not with plea bargaining.
The plea deal may have technically closed the books on the prosecutorial phase of Thirtymile. But the nagging question remains: Will justice ever be completely, and adequately, served in this case?
May 6, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Federal forest policy
A month ago (April 9) SOS Forests posted an essay entitled “Theory, Empiricism, Forests, and Global Warming Models” [here], in which I pointed out that global climate models are purely theoretical and based on zero empirical data. In contrast, I pointed out, weather prediction models are almost purely empirical.
The best weather prediction models are more empirical than theoretical. They look at current conditions (fronts, pressure gradients, jet streams, etc.) as they are cadastrally arrayed across the globe, and compare those to past dates when the same or very similar arrays occurred. Then the weather outcomes of the similar past conformations are examined, and used to predict the immediate future weather. Not much theory to that, more of a data mining of the past; hence the descriptor “empirical.”
That post was inspired by a discussion at William M. Briggs, Statistician Blog [here]. In the comments Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a contributer to Real Climate Blog (a extreme GW alarmist site [here]) stated:
First off, weather prediction models are not empirical searches for similar patterns in the past, instead they are very similar to climate models in formulation (though usually at higher resolution). The big difference is that they are run using observed initial conditions and try to predict the exact path of the specific weather situation. Climate models are run in boundary condition mode and try and see how the envelope of all weather situations is affected. The actual calculations are very similar and depending on the configuration, a climate model can do weather forecasts and weather forecasting models can do climate projections.
That statement is almost completely wrong. Weather prediction models are nothing like climate prediction models; the former are data-based, the latter are not.
The empirical/theoretical argument has been raised before, and to counter it climate modelers decided to incorporate some real world data, which they refer to as “initial conditions.” And what did they find using real data?
They found that their models predict that global warming is at least 20 years away!
May 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather
The Forest Foundation of Auburn CA and the National Association of Forest Service Retirees have issued a joint review of California forests. Their finding is that the lack of reforestation following forest fires is responsible for converting an average of 30,000 acres per year of forest to brush.
Nearly 150,000 acres of forest has been converted to brush over the last seven fire seasons in CA, not including conversion that has occurred in wilderness areas.
Recent homilies about “renewing the forest” with wildfire as uttered by obsequious government functionaries and power-grasping eco-terrorist BINGOs are supercilious, pusillanimous, and specious. Wildfires do not “renew” forests, they decimate and destroy forests and convert them to tick brush. Blood-sucking, disease-carrying tick populations thrive, but forest creatures lose their habitat when wildfires ravage forests. Those vegetation changes are permanent without intervention, because fire-type tick brush generates yet more fires that exclude trees.
But why should we wax eloquent on the subject, again and again and again? Let others carry some water. Kudos to the Forest Foundation and the National Association of Forest Service Retirees for their honesty and integrity. Here is the full text of the joint pronouncement:
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May 5, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Saving Forests, Federal forest policy
Science Mag, that bastion of political bias with occasional glimpses of actual science, published a garbled article which reviewed the blue-ribbon panel review of the languishing USFWS Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted. We have reviewed their review of the review, and present some clarifications for your illumination.
The article in question is Spotted Owl Recovery Plan Flawed, Review Panel Finds by Erik Stokstad, Science, Vol. 320, dated May 2, 2008. A parsimonious summary, all of one sentence long, is available [here]. But we shall provide you a little bit more than that. The article begins:
A blue-ribbon panel of scientists has confirmed major flaws in the proposed recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, a threatened species that has driven forest policy in the northwestern United States for nearly 2 decades. As did earlier reviews, the final one, by the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute (SEI) in Portland, Oregon, concludes that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS’s) plan does not put enough emphasis on protecting the owl’s habitat.
It also says that massive thinning of dry forests is needed to prevent habitat from going up in smoke—a recommendation that makes some environmentalists nervous.
Explanation: in 2006, fully 16 years after listing the northern spotted owl as an endangered species, the US Fish and Wildlife Service finally got around to drafting a Recovery Plan, something they should have done in Year One. It took a series of lawsuits to force them to do it.
But the Recovery Plan was fatally flawed, in that if it had been approved and followed, it would have been fatal to spotted owls, barred owls, owl habitat, old-growth forests, forests in general, rural economies, and various other species, communities, and institutions.
The USFWS’s Recovery Plan was dead in the water from the get-go, and everybody knew it. They withdrew it after a few weeks of high-pitched whining from all sectors. A private consulting company was hired to review the fatally flawed Plan. That company, the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute, appointed a “blue ribbon” panel and held a series of meetings. Their conclusion: back to the drawing board!
Ah, but with one added instruction: Stop Incinerating Spotted Owl Forests!!
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May 3, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests, Federal forest policy
Speaking of restitution…
The poor woman charged with accidentally cutting three trees on the Lake Tahoe lot adjacent to her own [see here], which unfortunately (for her) belonged to the US Forest Service, has agreed to a plea deal. Instead of 20 years in the Federal penitentiary (more than any recently convicted eco-terrorist received) she will pay a $100,000 fine and perform 80 hours of community service.
Although the homeowner was busted by thug enviro cop functionaries of the arson-minded Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the fine will be sucked into the bottomless maw of the arson-minded USFS. From KRNV TV [here]:
Plea deal in cutting of Lake Tahoe Forest Service trees
A plea deal has been made for an Incline Village woman who was charged with two felonies after she hired a company to chop down trees on national forest land to enhance her view of Lake Tahoe. The deal with federal prosecutors will likely keep her out of prison.
Patricia Marie Vincent, 57, will pay $100,000 in restitution and do 80 hours of community service in exchange for her guilty plea today to a lesser charge.
She was indicted in January by a federal grand jury in Reno on felony charges of theft of government property and willingly damaging government property. Vincent faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of those original counts if convicted. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Rachow agreed to drop the felony charges and charge her with one misdemeanor count of unlawfully cutting trees on U.S. land.
That crime carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison, a $100,000 fine and possible restitution. But Rachow said under the plea agreement, she would face a year of probation, 80 hours of community service and pay $100,000 in restitution, $35,000 of which would go to the U.S. Forest Service and $65,000 to the National Forest Foundation.
The ultimate sentence will be decided by U.S. District Judge Brian Sandoval on June 3.
In contrast, the incompetent pigs who burned down 254 homes last year at Lake Tahoe got off scott free. Oh yeah, that would be the nazi-like functionaries of the USFS, working in tandem with the nazi-like functionaries of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Funny how justice works in this country, or doesn’t work, or works for some power factions and gangs, especially powerful outside agencies of the bloated, corrupt, ruthless, legally-immune and dangerous-to-all Federal Government and their running dog, unelected, affiliate local gangs, but not for regular citizens.
May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: 2007 Fire Season, Federal forest policy
Three campers left their campfire unattended, and it erupted into a forest fire. The campers have been charged with Federal crimes and face jail, probation, fines, and restitution penalties.
The X Fire is burning on Tusayan Ranger District the near the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. It began April 29th and has consumed about 2,050 acres. The fire has been largely contained by Hot Shot crews and fire personnel of the Kaibab National Forest.
The three campers were apprehended without incident and have cooperated with authorities.
From the Arizona Republic in Flagstaff [here]:
Authorities track down trio suspected in X Fire
by Lindsey Collom - The Arizona Republic
When an unattended campfire touched off a 2,000-acre blaze just outside of Grand Canyon National Park Tuesday, it didn’t take long or much effort for authorities to track down the people believed to be responsible.
A trio of campers, visiting from Texas, returned the next day to the site in the Kaibab National Forest to retrieve a sleeping bag, court records show.
The three cooperated with authorities and, after being questioned, were summoned to appear in federal court in Flagstaff Thursday - even as fire crews continued to rein in the X Fire by dousing hotspots with water, digging at smoldering dumps and aerating the soil. …
The X Fire suspects could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail, five years’ probation and a $5,000 fine. A judge could also force them to pay what it cost to fight the fire. Murphy estimated the fire suppression tab to be $250,000 by Thursday morning.
Interestingly, the Kaibab NF spokesperson claimed that the X Fire has benefited the forest:
Meanwhile, Murphy says the forest is benefiting from the blaze, which has burned overgrowth and ground fuels while mostly sparing trees. Fire also releases nitrogen into the soil, promoting new growth.
“It’ll be nice again,” he said.
Also interesting is the fact that in 2006 Kaibab NF personnel burned 58,000 acres of that national forest in the Warm Fire, a whoofoo (Wildland Fire Use fire) that consumed 40,000 acres of old-growth ponderosa pine and Mexican spotted owl habitat. The Warm Fire was a deliberate act on the part of Kaibab NF personnel, and in direct violation of a Court Order and Record of Decision that prohibited such burning [see here for more about the Warm Fire].
Yet, in the case of the Warm Fire, no Kaibab NF personnel were charged with Federal crimes, jailed, put on probation, fined, or forced to pay restitution. The Warm Fire rang up a bill of over $7 million in suppression costs, ten times that in resource losses, and more $millions in subsequent forest rehabilitation expenses. That work has only begun, following a year of planning which also cost a pretty penny.
No one claimed that the stand replacing (total tree mortality) Warm Fire “benefited” the forest. Yet the perps went unpunished and are still collecting Federal paychecks.
All that is not an excuse or defense for the three campers who unwittingly started the X Fire. But whatever punishment the judge and jury apply to those three, something in excess of a hundred times more severe punishments should have been meted out to the Kaibab NF personnel responsible for the Warm Fire.
May 2, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: The 2008 Fire Season, Federal forest policy
