SOS Forests

The Great Global Warming Hoax

Presentation to the TEA Party rally held at The Oregon State Capitol, April 15, 2010

by Gordon J. Fulks, PhD

Thank you for inviting me.

One of the foundations of American Democracy has been an adherence to basic honesty. Unlike totalitarian regimes that tell their people what to think and strongly suppress dissent, we permit an open marketplace of ideas and absolutely guarantee the right of every citizen to speak freely.

Unfortunately we have seen openness and honesty severely curtailed in recent years by those politicians and their supporters who realize that it is MUCH easier to convince people to do things against their own best interests if they do not know the facts.

Through substantial domination of the mainstream media, they say that those who call upon their government to reform are morons in the case of Tea Party participants or both morons and deniers in the case of scientists who won’t go along with Al Gore’s Global Warming.

Discussions between partisans on both sides usually degenerate into a war of words that certainly proves that the political climate is warming, while the earth’s climate is actually cooling.

Fortunately a recent event, largely ignored in the American press, has dramatically changed the Global Warming debate. The highest ranking proponents of climate catastrophe were caught in a scandal that has become known as ClimateGate. It involved the release of e-mails where scientists were discussing ways to control the scientific debate to make sure that their ideas prevailed.

They had become a sort of climate-cartel, rigging the debate. The “utter honesty” required of all scientists had long since sold out to political expediency and government contract dollars.

Doctoring data and working with others to exclude competitors does not meet the standards for honesty in any profession. Misusing scientific publications to allow publication of papers favorable to a particular point of view, while excluding other points of view, is especially damnable in science, because it prevents both the wide dissemination of newer and better ideas and the retirement of ideas that have run their course.

Scientific societies and university administrations that have become so interested in the $99 billion federal dollars (your tax dollars) spent on Global Warming that they are willing to support the politically correct over the scientifically defensible. This has eliminated ALL corrective actions against substandard scholarship.

It has also led to many attempts to persuade people that science, like politics, is governed by authority or consensus. This flies in the face of the history of science where individuals, working outside accepted belief and far beyond the accepted authorities have carried the day.

One of the earliest examples was Galileo, who suffered greatly at the hands of the Roman Inquisition. Albert Einstein, who was but a clerk in a law office, took on the 19th century Physics Establishment in a huge way.

The fundamental logic of science assumes that there exists an objective reality which can only be ascertained by honest evidence from rigorous independent testing.

Hence, nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. And everything is open to re-examination if someone believes that it has not been settled right.

Politicians fail to understand that real science requires real evidence. They can continue to pretend that their hypothesis was proved long ago. While that approach may work in politics, but it does NOT work in science.

The central theme of all Warmers is that our climate started to come apart in the middle of the 20th Century, due to man’s burning of fossil fuels. The central piece of evidence presented is Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ graph which shows an uneventful temperature history for the earth going back a thousand years, followed by a dramatic upturn in the 20th Century. The Wegman report to the National Academy of Sciences cited serious analytical errors in this temperature reconstruction.

A more recent reconstruction from Keith Briffa showing the same dramatic upturn was found to be based largely on a single and very unusual tree. For a scientist to base his conclusions on a single tree that he knows to be unrepresentative, is in my opinion, pure scientific fraud.

If that is pure fraud, what is the truth?

Many studies have shown the earth was clearly warmer a thousand and two thousand years ago during both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods. During the Roman Warm Period just before the birth of Christ, the great Carthaginian General Hannibal was able to march war elephants across mountain passes in the Alps. Such a feat is impossible today because of snow in the passes.

The Medieval Warm Period allowed the Vikings to colonize Greenland. But in the colder period that followed, called the Little Ice Age, they were abruptly forced to leave or perish. They left behind one cemetery that is now permanently frozen because our climate is colder than it was then.

The earth started to slowly warm up from the Little Ice Age about 1830, and glaciers in the Alps started a gradual retreat that continued until recently.

Very recently we have seen glaciers in California, such as those on Mt. Shasta, grow dramatically.

Over the 20th Century, temperature data shows a globally averaged rise of about 0.5 C. Because this rise is so slight and the year to year variations so large, it is consistent with no net rise at all in the United States. There are two peaks in the United States temperature record, one during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and one at the end of the Grand Solar Maximum in the 1990s. The peaks are almost identical.

It became colder after the Second World War when we were greatly expanding our industrial production and escalating our burning of fossil fuels. But we did not warm up until the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1977 which we now realize was due to a periodic shift in the Pacific Ocean, not to carbon dioxide.

The essential thing to understand is that the oceans contain the vast majority of mobile heat on this planet, not the atmosphere and therefore largely control our weather year to year, decade to decade, and even century to century. Most people have heard of the year to year cycle we call El Nino. The El Nino this winter gave us a generally warmer than usual winter in the Pacific Northwest while giving the rest of the country harsh cold conditions.

Over much longer periods, our climate experiences transitions to and from substantial ice ages. It is no coincidence that human civilization developed during one of the interglacial periods. These usually last about 10,000 years and are followed by 90,000 years of cold. We have had our 10,000 years of good luck and now face a long ice age.

Will the next ice age arrive when everyone parks his Hummer or Ford Expedition in favor of public transit? Hardly.

Even the most fanatical Warmers agree that Milankovitch Cycles involving slight changes in the Earth’s orbit are responsible for our very repetitive ice ages. Al Gore says that carbon dioxide plays a major role in these. But he fails to tell you that carbon dioxide follows changes in temperature by nearly a thousand years and is therefore a follower not a driver of our climate.

What about all the climate models that are said to predict disaster? They have all been dismal failures.

The celebrated meteorologist from MIT, Professor Richard Lindzen, says:

Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.

One of the standard fall-backs for Global Warmers is to insist that even if their theory is wrong, they are still doing so many good things for the planet that they should be allowed to continue with their scam.

BUT their political plans call for vast new taxes on energy that will seriously harm the average taxpayer and seriously damage our already damaged economy.

Furthermore, enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide is a huge benefit to every green plant and contributes significantly to our ability to grow enough food for the 6.5 billion people on this planet.

Saving the world from carbon dioxide is not the issue.

Saving the world from scientifically illiterate politicians is the issue.

Thank you for listening.

Backroom Deal Brewing On Carbon Taxzilla

The biggest single tax in the history of civilization is about to be imposed by the Obama Administration and his Democrat cronies in Congress — without due process and using the same dirty tricks that were used to pass ObamaCare.

Carbon Taxzilla will smack every man, woman, and child with a $10,000 per year Godzilla of a tax, that will not change global temperatures one scintilla of a degree.

Algore’s massive carbon hoax/scam is about to come to fruition, and the result will be the flushing of the American economy down the proverbial toilet.

Taxzilla will not go through any Senate committee. It will not be read by any member of the Senate, much less the public, before a parliamentary end-around will make it law.

Already Obama henchman Rahm Emanuel has met with the Goreacle’s money men and Democratic leaders to plan the stealth legislative strategy.

The WaPo announced yesterday that Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman will slip Taxzilla into the hands of Harry Reid on April 26, not April 21 as we reported [here].

Senators will unveil climate bill April 26

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, April 15, 2010 [here]

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) will roll out their compromise climate proposal April 26, according to several sources.

While the date is a bit later than originally expected — many environmentalists had anticipated it would become public next week, in time for Earth Day next Thursday — the definitive date shows the senators are coming close to finalizing their package. …

Kerry, Liebermann and Graham will not be introducing their bill. Instead, Harry Reid will take it straight to the Senate floor and bypass the committees.

In Liebermann’s own words: “If we introduce [the carbon tax bill], it’ll get referred to committees,” Lieberman said. “We want [Majority Leader Reid] to be able to work with it and bring it out onto the floor as a leader whenever he’s ready.”

Reid to ‘Backroom’ National Energy Tax Bill

HUMAN EVENTS, 04/14/2010 [here]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is set to take charge of new legislation aimed at imposing a national energy tax on all Americans, according to Greenwire, the news service for all things environment (article available on the Senate Republican Environment and Public Works “EPW” Press Blog here.)

Called “cap-and-trade” or “climate change” or “global warming” legislation, the new attempt to place a crippling national tax on America’s energy resources is being cobbled together by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). According to the new report, the trio will not formally introduce the bill in the Senate when it’s unveiled next week.

“If we introduce it, it’ll get referred to committees,” Lieberman said. “We want him to be able to work with it and bring it out onto the floor as a leader whenever he’s ready.”

This opens the doors for more Reid backroom deals on the bill instead of going through the normal committee process. …

Backroom deals will be cut, and the normal Committee processes will be circumvented. The same game plan, secret deals made behind closed doors and stifling of open debate, that was used to pass ObamaCare will be employed by the same power elite for Carbon Taxzilla.

And for what? Taxzilla will not have any effect on mythical global warming or dependence on foreign oil. It will merely jack up prices on everything and send the economy into a tailspin.

There is a big rush to get Taxzilla into law before outraged voters send every Democrat packing next November. By then, the scammers hope, severe and irreversible damage will be done to America.

Did Native Americans Impact the Climate?

Researchers at Ohio University have found evidence that pre-Columbian Indians did a lot of landscape burning. The evidence includes carbon deposited in a stalagmite found in a cave near Buckeye Creek.

Study finds new evidence of pre-colonial land use patterns

Ohio University, Research Communications, Friday April 16, 2010 [here]

ATHENS, Ohio (April 15, 2010) – A new study led by Ohio University scientists suggests that early Native Americans left a bigger carbon footprint than previously thought, providing more evidence that humans impacted global climate long before the modern industrial era.

Chemical analysis of a stalagmite found in the mountainous Buckeye Creek basin of West Virginia suggests that native people contributed a significant level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through land use practices. …

One stalagmite does not make the case, but there is plenty of other evidence that human beings have been burning landscapes since we evolved from proto-humans. The Holocene is recent. The record of hominids and fire goes back 2 million years. We also know why our ancestors did all that burning:

The early Native Americans burned trees to actively manage the forests to yield the nuts and fruit that were a large part of their diets.

“They had achieved a pretty sophisticated level of living that I don’t think people have fully appreciated,” said Gregory Springer, an associate professor of geological sciences at Ohio University and lead author of the study, which was published a recent issue of the journal The Holocene. “They were very advanced, and they knew how to get the most out of the forests and landscapes they lived in. This was all across North America, not just a few locations.” …

This evidence suggests that Native Americans significantly altered the local ecosystem by clearing and burning forests, probably to make fields and enhance the growth of nut trees, Springer said.

This picture conflicts with the popular notion that early Native Americans had little impact on North American landscapes. …

The “popular notion” is changing, or has changed. We have called recognition of historical human influences on the environment a “paradigm shift”, so we are equally guilty of broad brush characterizations of the mass consciousness. To be completely fair, quite a few people have known all along that human beings burned landscapes just about everywhere on the planet. The shift from “quite a few” to “general knowledge” is difficult to track, however.

One question that remains controversial is whether setting continents afire every year altered the climate:

“Long before we were burning fossil fuels, we were already pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. It wasn’t at the same level as today, but it sets the stage,” Springer said.

This long-ago land clearing would have impacted global climate, Springer added. Ongoing clearing and burning of the Amazon rainforest, for example, is one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Prehistoric burning by Native Americans was less intense, but a non-trivial source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, he said.

Now hold on there, Dr. Springer. It can be established that fossil fuel burning is more intense today, but landscape burning is much less intense than in prior centuries and millennia. Prehistoric burning by Native Americans covered vastly more acres per year than are currently burned. The amount of sequestered carbon on the landscape is much greater today than it was 1,000 years ago in both the Americas.

Be that as it may, no causal connection has been established between atmospheric carbon and climate. There appears to be no correlation — as atmospheric carbon has increased during over the last 100 years, global temperatures have fluctuated up and down. Correlation is NOT the same as causation, but if there is no correlation then logically there can be no causation.

It is good to see that recognition of historical human influences is on the increase in the mass consciousness. We should not leap to conclusions, however, about the role of humanity in global warming.

The truth shall make you free

Note: this gem of an essay is reposted from a gem of a blog, JoNova.

JoNova, March 30th, 2010 [here]

Art Robinson is a rare man. He’s transcended and laid bare a creeping failure in the infrastructure of science over the past 50 years. He describes how government has usurped control of the quest for knowledge from private industry and individuals.

At the end of the day, what does being a scientist mean if there is nothing more to it than a certificate? Where is the code of conduct? Where are the professional associations standing up and decrying those who breach fundamental principles? What sense of duty and honor is left in science when high-ranking scientists can make dishonest statements, yet keep their jobs and reputations?

I was struck with Art’s description of the true scientist as someone for whom the most important attribute is honesty, and humility is inevitable, because they understand how little we comprehend, and where “the search for truth” as a lifelong calling, rather than a nine-to-five job.

The 10 page paper How Government Corrupts Science [here] is worth reading in full.

Below are some select parts that especially struck a chord with me.

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Global Warming Is To Blame For Everything

It’s global warming’s fault. No matter what it is, global warming did it. As reported [here]:

Among the items on the list: acne, alligators in Britain’s Thames River, brain-eating amoebas, childhood insomnia, the risk of an asteroid strike, attacks from killer jellyfish, the death of the Loch Ness monster, killer cornflakes, the extinction of salmon, and a change in the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

Also on the list: frogs with extra heads, frostbite, witchcraft executions, traffic jams, UFO sightings, a walrus stampede, an invasion of king crabs, indigestion, short-nosed dogs, and nuclear war.

An outfit called Number Watch has compiled a list of 756 dire outcomes allegedly caused by global warming. But they can’t keep up. Yesterday Science Daily presented #757: Swiss needle cast.

Forests at Risk: Swiss Needle Cast Epidemic in Douglas-Fir Trees Unprecedented, Still Getting Worse

ScienceDaily, Apr. 12, 2010 [here]

The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes.

What warmer climate? The climate in Oregon is the same as it has been for the entire Holocene. If anything, it is COOLER now than it was 6 to 9,000 years ago, albeit by only a degree or two.

Last December we reported [here] that glacial runoff from glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are enriching near shore marine ecosystems with organic debris. The debris has been carbon-dated and is 2,500 to 7,000 years old.

The evidence strongly suggests that forests existed along the Gulf of Alaska between 2,500 to 7,000 years ago but have been subsequently covered by glaciers. The crushed organic matter from those forests is being expelled by the glaciers there today. From 2,500 to 7,000 years ago the coast of Alaska was warm enough to grow forests. That is not the case today.

Neoglaciation has been occurring for the last 6,000+ years, ever since temperatures started to decline from the Holocene Climatic Optimum, entirely consistent with the decline in solar insolation due to Milankovitch cycles, which peaked ~10,000 years ago.

The Earth has been cooling for 6,000+ years as we head toward another Ice Age, a pattern that has been repeated ~18 times over the last 1.8 million years.

To make matters in Oregon cooler, 2 to 3 years ago the Pacific Decadal Oscillation [here] shifted into its cool phase, bringing cooler water to Oregon’s coast and cooling our weather patterns. Cooler, cooler, cooler cooler.

Hence, therefore, and ergo, it can’t be warmer weather that is causing the Swiss needle cast epidemic, since our weather here is cooler now.

Note: it’s 40 deg F right now. Which is a good thing because it didn’t frost last night on the fruit blossoms. However, we had hard frosts earlier this week and more are expected. Orchardists are smudging from Medford to Hood River.

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All this talk of forests as carbon caches just a smokescreen

By Bob Zybach, Guest Viewpoint, Eugene Register Guard, Mar 29, 2010 [here]

Some of the basic ideas presented by Susan Palmer in her March 16 article in The Register-Guard, “A great state of carbon caches,” need to be rebutted — in particular, the concept of managing a forest primarily for carbon storage.

First, however, some basic information.

Wood is not usually considered a “fossil fuel.” Federal forests in the United States total more than 190 million acres (not 19 million). And the Willamette National Forest probably contains about 164 metric tons of carbon per acre (not total).

The article’s errors in logic are less obvious.

Is this even news?

A well-known political advocacy group, the Wilderness Society, compiles a list of “the 10 U.S. national forests with the highest carbon density.” Nine of the 10 are in the Northwest; six are in Oregon, with No. 1 (the Willamette National Forest) being located primarily in Lane County. The Register-Guard prints these assertions on its front page and produces an editorial in support of the listing.

Why?

No one in history has ever managed a forest for “carbon density,” for a number of good reasons. What happened to jobs, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation as socially accepted forest management goals?

A “senior resource analyst” for the Wilderness Society is quoted as saying the Willamette “has always been seen as an especially productive forest,” but somehow its carbon density provides “yet another reason to refrain from cutting” its trees.

Does that even make sense?

A few years ago, local environmentalists were complaining loudly that the Willamette’s managers employed too many roads and clear-cuts, used too many herbicides, planted too many seedlings, suppressed all wildfires and did not do enough prescribed burning. Couldn’t that history be a more logical cause of its current high carbon density?

Why would the Wilderness Society favor the result of all those management actions, and then call for no management now? Is the Wilderness Society simply promoting its list to help justify an agenda to stop logging in all national forests?

The average citizen likely couldn’t care less about the “carbon density” of our local forests, and probably doesn’t even know what that phrase actually means. And for those of us who do know: So what?

Is carbon more valuable than fresh water, jobs, energy production, wildlife or recreational access? The idea of managing a forest for carbon storage makes no sense at all, given the increased likelihood that coniferous forests will burn catastrophically as fuels build over time.

Some people argue that storing carbon is important because it allows people to moderate or control the climate to socially desired conditions.

This idea is becoming less popular as more scientific information becomes available, but many (including some scientists) still subscribe to this concept. Is the Wilderness Society seeking to stop logging in order to (theoretically) control climate?

Then there is the reality that the Willamette National Forest’s “carbon stock” does not even equal two years of the nation’s carbon release due to fossil fuels burning.

Last summer’s Tumblebug Fire [here], the third-largest fire in the history of the Willamette National Forest, spread ash, smoke and carbon dioxide throughout the southern Willamette Valley. Over several weeks’ time it burned nearly 15,000 acres, destroyed about 5,000 acres of old growth spotted owl habitat and killed nearly $100 million worth of timber.

About 20 million tons of dead wood were created by this catastrophic event, oozing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment for years as the timber rots, with no plans to salvage any of it.

Wildfires such as the Tumblebug are one consequence of not actively managing our forests. Untended forests predictably are killed by bugs or erupt into catastrophic wildfires.

So what can be done to manage our forests to reduce their carbon outputs, as well as promote their other beneficial uses?

One answer might be to compare the condition of the remains of the Tumblebug Fire with another area of the Willamette: the Jim’s Creek restoration project [here].

On Jim’s Creek, old growth oaks and pine are being released from invasive (and profitable) fir trees. Native species are being encouraged to repopulate the area. And fire is planned to be reintroduced carefully, to maintain and protect these important characteristics.

Local jobs are being created to accomplish these results — to the benefit of local residents and American taxpayers — and the threat of wildfire and dying trees is significantly reduced. Active management produces desired results; passive management produces catastrophic events.

It would be nice to see Oregon’s forests promoted at some point as the U.S. Forest Service’s “best managed” forests. Having an advocacy group promote them as leading candidates to avoid management because they hold so much carbon is something else entirely.

If this development is news at all, it is certainly not good news.

Bob Zybach, a forest scientist with a doctorate in the study of catastrophic wildfires, is program manager for the Oregon Websites and Watersheds Project Inc., which can be found online [here].

Soils, CO2, and Global Warming

On March 24 the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) issued a News Release [here] that proclaimed the soils of the Earth are now giving off more CO2 because the Earth has warmed over the last 20 years.

Even soil feels the heat

Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms

Mary Beckman, PNNL, March 24th, 2010

Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in today’s issue of Nature.

The scientists also calculated the total amount of carbon dioxide flowing from soils, which is about 10-15 percent higher than previous measurements. That number — about 98 petagrams of carbon a year (or 98 billion metric tons) — will help scientists build a better overall model of how carbon in its many forms cycles throughout the Earth. Understanding soil respiration is central to understanding how the global carbon cycle affects climate.

“There’s a big pulse of carbon dioxide coming off of the surface of the soil everywhere in the world,” said ecologist Ben Bond-Lamberty of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “We weren’t sure if we’d be able to measure it going into this analysis, but we did find a response to temperature.” …

The research paper touted in the News Release is: Bond-Lamberty and Thomson, 2010. Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record, Nature March 25, 2009, doi:10.1038/nature08930.

Note: The PNNL is a Richland, WA, Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory “proudly operated by Battelle”. Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle) is “a charitable trust organized as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of Ohio. Battelle is exempt from federal taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code because it is organized for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes” [here].

In this essay I discuss whether there is any merit to the findings of the research paper.

Meta-Studies and the File Drawer Effect

The PNNL/Battelle/DOE study is a meta-study or meta-analysis. That means that the authors did no soil testing themselves. Instead they examined the studies of others (818 at last count) and “pooled” them.

All meta-analyses have inherent problems including the File Drawer Effect, also known as publication bias. Researcher-authors are more likely to submit for publication positive rather than inconclusive results. Journal editors are more likely to accept articles that report “significant” findings than research which finds no effect. Studies that find no effect are shoved in a file drawer; hence the name.

Publication bias is likely in this area of study especially, given the strong political/funding incentives to find climate change effects.

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Avoiding Carbon Myopia

Note: I’ve been telling you that global warming is an outrageous scam/fraud/hoax designed to rob you of your wealth, freedom, and livelihood. But you don’t need to trust me about that. Read what respected scientists have to say:

Willie Soon and David R. Legates. 2010. Avoiding Carbon Myopia: Three Considerations for Policy Makers Concerning Manmade Carbon Dioxide. Ecology Law Currents, Vol. 37:1.

Dr. Soon is an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Soon has written and lectured extensively on issues related to the sun and other stars and climate. The views expressed by Willie Soon are strictly his and do not necessarily reflect those of Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, or the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Dr. Legates is an Associate Professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware and his views are given as a university faculty member under academic freedom rights. He also serves as the Delaware State Climatologist.

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

TOWARDS A GLOBAL CARBON REGULATORY TRADING SCHEME

In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.

The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), [1] that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage.

While many scientists, including us, have observed some changes in climate, the hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy. In analyzing climate policy, decision makers should be cognizant of three key considerations regarding the impact of projected rises in atmospheric CO2: (1) policy choices likely will have no measurable effect on the occurrence of severe weather; (2) positive effects on ecosystems and biodiversity are likely and should be weighed against the negatives; and (3) carbon trading schemes (such as the one touted in Copenhagen) are unlikely to lead to a reduction in atmospheric CO2. …

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Coldest U.S. Winter in the Last 20 Years

Climate At A Glance [here]

Winter (Dec-Feb) Temperature

Contiguous United States

NCDC Climate Services and Monitoring Division

Summary of the past winter is provided by the National Climate Data Center figure, below, indicating that last winter’s (December - February) temperature in the contiguous United States was the coldest winter temperature of the last 20 years and that these winter temperatures have been trending downward at a rate of 0.47 degrees F per decade for the last 20 years.

Winter (Dec-Feb) 2010: 31.21 degF Rank: 1 (coldest)

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The Latest Fad in Enviro Lawsuits: Climate Change

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula suspended 61 oil and gas leases on BLM land in Montana the other day, because the BLM failed to review the lease sales for climate change.

Climate change cited as Mont. leases suspended

By MATTHEW BROWN, AP, Washington Post, March 18, 2010 [here]

BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal judge has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how oil field activities contribute to climate change.

At issue are the greenhouse gases emitted by drilling machinery and industry practices such as venting natural gas directly into the atmosphere.

Environmentalists - who sued when the Montana leases were sold in 2008 - argued the industry has allowed too much waste and uses inefficient technologies that could easily be updated.

Under the deal approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, the Bureau of Land Management will suspend the 61 leases in Montana within 90 days. They will have to go through a new round of environmental reviews before the suspensions can be lifted.

“We view this as a very big deal, if a modest first step, in the BLM addressing climate change in oil and gas development,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Erik Schlenker-Goodrich. “It’s quite a dirty process, but there are ways to clean it up.”

Plaintiffs in the case were the Montana Environmental Information Center, the Oil and Gas Accountability Project and Wild Earth Guardians.

A parallel lawsuit challenging 70,000 acres of federal lands leased in New Mexico remains pending.

Judge Molloy is the same guy who threw out wolf delisting, by the way. And WildEarth Guardians is one of the most litigious eco-extremists groups ever. Between 2000 and 2009, Forest Guardians (now known as WildEarth Guardians) filed at least 180 lawsuits in the federal district courts and at least 61 appeals in the federal appellate courts [here].

Put activist eco-judges and sue-happy EAJA hogs together with “climate change” and the entire US economy will soon be shut down by “rulings” from the loony bench. The specter of government gone insane looms in the offing.

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Active Forest Management Can Save the Entire Planet

The following interesting article appeared today in the New York Times. According to the authors, active forest management via prescribed burning can prevent “scorched earth” stand-replacing wildfires. As an added benefit, CO2 emissions due to catastrophic megafires would be significantly reduced, thus saving the globe from the terrible fate of global warming.

We demur from the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis, but we strongly endorse the implementation of restoration forestry to prevent the destruction of forests.

Forest restoration means active management to bring back historical cultural landscapes, historical forest development pathways, and traditional ecological stewardship to achieve historical resiliency to fire and insects and to preclude and prevent a-historical catastrophic fires that decimate and destroy myriad resource values. Those values include [here]:

1. Heritage and history
2. Ecological functions including old-growth development
3. Fire resiliency and the reduction of catastrophic fires
4. Watershed functions
5. Wildlife habitat
6. Public health and safety
7. Biomass energy
8. Carbon sequestration
9. Jobs and the economy

But if saving the planet from CO2 emissions is what floats your boat, then restoration forestry works for that, too.

Excerpts from the article, with emphasis added:

Study Calls for More Prescribed Burns to Reduce Forest Fire Emissions

By JESSICA LEBER of ClimateWire, NY Times, March 18, 2010 [here]

A new study offers a prescription to increase carbon storage in western U.S. forests: Use more controlled burns to prevent a completely scorched earth.

Increasingly, forest managers are setting so-called “prescribed” fires to clear out underbrush and small trees that, if left to accumulate, can quickly escalate a single spark into a catastrophic blaze.

Prescribed practices mimic the natural, smaller burns, caused by lightning or set by Indians, that were all but eliminated by decades of unnatural fire suppression. Today, in many Western forests, piles of fuels are just waiting for a spark.

Wildfires can also contribute to climate change. Because they are much more intense than prescribed fires, they often kill many old-growth trees that store the most carbon, a consequence that hazardous-fuel reduction programs are meant to avoid. No one before, however, has measured the carbon savings of better fire management on any large scale, according to Christine Wiedinmyer, the study’s lead author.

“We know that prescribed fire can burn less fuel than a large, stand-replacing wildfire. The question was how much? Is it enough that it should be a management technique worth perusing if you want to store more carbon?” asked Wiedinmyer, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

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Climate Change, Bioenergy and Sustaining Forests of Idaho and Montana

Thoughts and comments by Ned Pence
March 3 and 4, 2010
Boise, Idaho

The following are my thoughts and comments on a recent conference sponsored by the Society of American Foresters and the University of Idaho’s College of Natural Resource. Others involved were the Forest Service, the BLM, the Intermountain Forest Association, Idaho Conservation League, the Wilderness Society, Idaho Department of Lands, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and the Nature Conservancy. The Snake River Chapter of SAF deserves credit for the hard work that went into the conference. A similar convention was held in Missoula last fall.

I attended the conference seeking information on the possibility of a bioenergy industry utilizing forest fuels with the possibility of sustaining forests in the inland empire. Attendance at the conference were a mix of foresters, environmentalists, and persons involved in attempts at collaboration between the federal agencies, public, forest industry and environmentalists in an attempt to find a solution to the current gridlock of forest management on federal lands.

The stated purpose was, “This conference will help people connect with global-scale issues regarding climate change, renewable energy, and carbon emissions on forests in Idaho and Montana. Discussions centered on strategies for sustaining our forests and the services people expect from them.”

Sponsors recognized the “sustainability premise” identified as “the current and future conditions of our forests determines their ability to contribute to our society’s energy security, climate change mitigation, and resilience goals.” It was recognized that the current forested conditions put the forests at risk of stand-replacing wildfire and insect and disease outbreaks. A key statement of the conference was that forest management actions must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially desirable to be sustainable. It is felt by conference organizers that forest managers can take action to meet “sustainability” only by obtaining a “social license” through collaboration. A few collaborative efforts are currently underway in Washington, Idaho, and Montana and the conference had sessions to discuss what has worked well and not so well.

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NEPA Process to Include Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

THE CEQ announced today in the Federal Register that “climate change and greenhouse gas emissions” must be considered in future NEPA processes.

The Council On Environmental Quality (CEQ) is the Federal board charged with implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Enacted in 1970, NEPA mandates that Federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of their proposed actions before acting, principally through the preparation of Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) or Environmental Assessments (EA’s).

The announcement [Federal Register: February 23, 2010 (Volume 75, Number 35)][Notices][Page 8046] requests that public comments be submitted before the CEQ adopts the new “guidance” regulations.

The proposed new regulations also modify language related to Categorical Exclusions (CEs) and mitigation and monitoring.

More information is available at the following CEQ websites:

New CEQ NEPA Guidance [here]

In conjunction with NEPA’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, CEQ is publishing three draft NEPA guidance documents for review and comment. Below are links to the draft guidance documents and instructions for submitting comments:

- ESTABLISHING AND APPLYING CATEGORICAL EXCLUSIONS [here]

Comments are due 45 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.

Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa

- MITIGATION AND MONITORING [here]

Comments are due 90 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.

Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa

- CONSIDERING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE [here]

Comments are due 90 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.

Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa

Additional information is available at www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives

Global Cooling, Not Warming, Is the Problem

An excellent summary and discussion of Holocene temperature trends has been posted at JoNova Blog. JoNova is the creation of Joanne Nova, an Australian science writer, former TV host, and the author of The Skeptics Handbook [here].

Her recent post, The Big Picture: 65 Million Years of Temperature Swings [here], was written primarily by David Lappi, Alaska geologist and President of Lapp Resources, Inc.

Of special interest are two graphs derived from ice core proxies, one of Greenland temperatures over the last 10,000 years and one of Antarctica over the last 12,000 years. They clearly demonstrate that polar temperatures have been declining since the Hypsithermal of 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.

The next graph of temperature from the ice core for the last 10,000 years (the current interglacial period) shows that Greenland is now colder than for most of that period (vertical scale in degrees C below zero). We can see the Medieval Warm Period 800 to 1,000 years ago was not particularly warm, and the Little Ice Age 150 to 650 years ago was one of the longest sustained cold periods during this interglacial. We are now recovering from this abnormal cold period, and the recovery started long before anthropogenic greenhouse gases were produced in any quantity. … Our current warming is well within natural variation, and in view of the general decline in temperatures during the last half of this interglacial, is probably beneficial for mankind and most plants and animals. The graph clearly shows the Minoan Warming (about 3200 years ago), the Roman Warming (about 2000 years ago), and the Medieval Warm Period (about 900 years ago). Great advances in government, art, architecture, and science were made during these warmer times.

Graph by David Lappi based on GISP2 Temperature Reconstruction and Accumulation Data [here], NOAA icecore-2475, reported in Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226 [here]. Click for larger image.

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Global Warming: The Economics of a Scare

by Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D.

Presentation to Oregon Economic Roundtable, February 17, 2010

GLOBAL WARMING: THE ECONOMICS OF A SCARE

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

The scientific hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming has completely collapsed. That is to say, human emissions of carbon dioxide due to everything from the burning of coal and oil on a massive scale to the respiration of six billion humans on this planet are not now having any measurable effect on the global climate, nor will they likely EVER have catastrophic consequences. Although this is my conclusion, based on an excellent education and a lifetime of experience, science is not determined by what I say, nor by my seniority or pedigree.

Although 31,000 American scientists, 9,000 of us with PhDs, have signed the Oregon Petition Project against Global Warming hysteria, science is not determined by a popular vote. Although one of the signers was the late Dr. Edward Teller, one of the great physicists of the 20th century and another was Professor Richard Lindzen who is widely acknowledged as the greatest meteorologist alive today, science is not determined by hierarchy or authority.

How then can I be so sure of my conclusion? How is science determined, even if it is never completely settled? EVIDENCE! Any scientist is welcome to come up with a hypothesis about how the world works. A clerk from a patent office did so in 1905. He published papers on both his Theory of Relativity and the Photoelectric Effect. His name was, of course, Albert Einstein. Evidence supporting his explanation for the Photoelectric Effect was easily obtained but evidence for his Theory of Relativity was much more difficult to find, because among other things, radioactivity had not yet been discovered.

Einstein famously pointed out that “One man can prove me wrong.” No one did and he eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, when the Nobel Committee thought that there was then sufficient evidence to back up Einstein’s theoretical conjectures.

Proponents of Global Warming would like you to believe that their nearly two hundred year-old hypothesis is valid, if only because it has not been discarded over the centuries. But bad ideas seem to have a way of resurfacing every so often. WHY? We will get to that in a moment.

Proponents also will never accept Einstein’s comment that “One man can prove me wrong.” WHY? We will get to that in a moment.

Many scientists have pointed to fatal flaws in the Global Warming arguments. One of the simplest and therefore most elegant arguments comes from our own State Climatologist, George Taylor. Yes, I know that Governor Kulongoski forced George out, but he is still MY State Climatologist! George reasons that if Global Warming is really happening, then ALL observing stations should be seeing the warming. That is not the case, even in Oregon. Well sited and well maintained stations in rural areas do not show net warming. In contrast, urban stations show net warming in conjunction with the urbanization that has occurred around them. End of story. Localized warming is not Global Warming.

In science as in the law, the burden of proof lies with proponents, not opponents of a hypothesis. After spending a monumental 80 billion dollars in search of evidence to back up their conjecture, advocates have fallen back on substitutes for real evidence like computer simulations of the climate that seem real to the average guy but are no more realistic than a Hollywood movie. Aside from the fact that these simulations can easily fool the unwary, why do Global Warming proponents keep promoting them? … [more]