Move Over, OPEC—Here We Come

In energy, North America is becoming the new Middle East. The only thing that can stop it is domestic politics.

By ED MORSE   WSJ.COM

The United States has become the fastest-growing oil and gas producer in the world, and it is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s. Add to this output the steadily growing Canadian production and a likely reversal of Mexico's recent production decline, and theoretically total oil production from the three countries could rise by 11.2 million barrels per day by 2020, or to 26.6 million barrels per day from around 15.4 million per day at the end of 2011.

Whether the increase results in the U.S. reducing its imports or whether our net exports grow doesn't matter much to world balances. Either way, North America is becoming the new Middle East. The only thing that can stop this is politics—environmentalists getting the upper hand over supply in the U.S., for instance; or First Nations impeding pipeline expansion in Canada; or Mexican production continuing to trip over the Mexican Constitution, impeding foreign investment or technology transfers—in North America itself.

On top of this, the U.S. and Canada could see natural gas output rise by 22 billion cubic feet per day by 2020, with 14 billion of it coming from the Lower 48 states, four billion from Alaska and four billion from Canada. That's an increase of one-third, catapulting this continent into the ranks of significant exporters of liquefied natural gas.

These numbers provide a useful benchmark for measuring ways that policies could obstruct the pace of supply growth. We already have the experience of the BP/Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, which led to a moratorium on drilling in U.S. federal waters, and a revamping of the U.S. regulatory regime governing leasing, revenue collection and safety. As a consequence, U.S. deepwater production has fallen by more than 300,000 barrels per day since then.

Bloomberg

Drilling operations at Pembina oil field near Pigeon Lake, Alberta, Canada

North America already has become the most important marginal source of oil and gas globally. U.S. imports of crude oil and petroleum-product imports have been plunging. The U.S. reached its peak as a net petroleum importing country in 2005-06. Since then, crude oil imports have fallen by almost two million barrels per day. Because the U.S. has the largest refining sector in the world, as domestic demand has fallen it has become a net petroleum-product exporting country—exporting more than 1.2 million barrels per day by the end of 2011—the first time it reached this status since 1949. The U.S.'s growing crude output is affecting the price difference between the traditionally more expensive light sweet crudes (which yield higher-value products like gasoline) and heavy sour grades.

Excess Canadian crude oil produced from oil sands is expanding at a rate of one million barrels a day every five years. The more that's produced, the less of a market there will be for oil from Venezuela and some other OPEC member countries with similar-quality oil, requiring them to either curtail production or lower prices. Even if oil prices rise in the medium term, we expect 2020 prices to be no more than $85 per barrel, compared with today's prevailing global price of $125.

The economic consequences of this supply-and-demand revolution are potentially extraordinary. We estimate that the cumulative impact of new production and reduced consumption could increase real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 2%-3.3%, or by $370 billion-$624 billion, by 2020.

Of this estimate, $74 billion comes directly from the output of new hydrocarbon production alone. The rest is generated by multiplier effects as the surge in economic activity drives higher wealth, spending, consumption and investment effects that ripple through the economy. This potential re-industrialization of the U.S. economy is both profound and timely, occurring as the U.S struggles to shake off the lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis.

Equally remarkable is the potential impact on the U.S. labor market. We estimate that as many as 3.6 million new jobs may be created on net by 2020. Some 600,000 jobs would be in the oil and gas extraction sector, another 1.1 million jobs in related industrial and manufacturing activity, and the remainder in ancillary job sectors. Overall, the national unemployment rate could decline by as much as 1.1 percentage points from what it otherwise would be in 2020.

Another potentially dramatic consequence of the North American hydrocarbon revolution is the impact on the U.S. current account deficit. The deficit, currently running at negative 3% of GDP, may be reduced by anywhere from 1.2% of GDP to 2.4% of GDP. This would also have implications for the U.S. dollar, potentially helping it appreciate by 2% to 5% in real exchange-rate terms, reversing its long-term decline and maintaining its status as the global reserve currency of choice.

It is now possible to meet the goal of energy independence for the U.S. One consequence is a significantly lower vulnerability of North America—and the world market—to oil price spikes. But also significant are the geopolitical consequences of a weakened OPEC and of the potentially reduced importance to the U.S. of changes in oil- and natural gas-producing countries world-wide.

Mr. Morse is head of global commodities research at Citi and a former State Department official.

Green yet barren

Green yet Barren WSJ.com 3/19/12

You can't make a baby by hugging a tree.

By JAMES TARANTO

It's been more than 40 years since the first "Earth Day" in 1970 and close to a quarter-century since hysteria over global warming began. In recent decades schoolchildren have been relentlessly propagandized about "the environment." Turns out it hasn't worked.

"An academic analysis of surveys spanning more than 40 years has found that today's young Americans are less interested in the environment and in conserving resources . . . than their elders were when they were young," reports the Associated Press. The data come from a survey of college freshmen:

Researchers found that, when surveyed decades ago, about a third of young baby boomers said it was important to become personally involved in programs to clean up the environment. In comparison, only about a quarter of young Gen Xers--and 21 percent of Millennials--said the same.

Meanwhile, 15 percent of Millennials said they had made no effort to help the environment, compared with 8 percent of young Gen Xers and 5 percent of young baby boomers.

The AP's Martha Irvine goes in search of explanations. Jean Twenge, one of the study's authors and apparently an environmentalist herself, says: "We have the perception that we're getting through to people. But at least compared to previous eras, we're not." Mark Potosnak, an "environmental science" professor, blames, in Irvine's words, "skepticism--or confusion--about climate change," which "leads to fatigue."

But Twenge and Potosnak beg the question. We know from the study that today's freshmen are more blasé about "environmental" matters than earlier generations were. To say that green propaganda isn't "getting through" or that "skepticism" is common is a mere restatement, not an explanation.

Beth Christensen, an "environmental studies" professor, tells Irvine that compared with her college peers in the 1980s, "a lot of these students have very little experience with the unpaved world." Irvine reports that Christensen tries "to get her students out into marshes and onto beaches--and even coral reefs in Australia--to help them connect with a natural world many have only seen on television."

It is true that America's population has been urbanizing, not just in recent years but throughout the country's history. That's good for the environment. As Robert Bryce notes in City Journal, population density promotes efficient use of resources. That doesn't mean Christensen is wrong. It could be that even though today's young city-dwellers live greenly, their lack of exposure to nature leads them to think about it less. On the other hand, her anecdotal reports entail an obvious selection bias. Students who major in "environmental studies" surely are not representative of the apathetic majority.

Irvine also talks to two recent college freshmen, both 20 and both disdainful of their peers. Emily Stokes, who "wants to go into marine resource management," says she is "pretty frustrated a lot of the time" and calls her generation "narcissistic." Kelly Benoit, who "has worked with lawmakers in her state to try to ban the use of plastic bags," "went as far as calling her peers 'lazy.' "

It appears not to have occurred to Irvine to talk to anyone from the group whose attitudes she is trying to explain--to wit, non-environmentalist college students. The quotes from Stokes and Benoit may nonetheless have some explanatory power. It seems quite plausible that many of their classmates find their smug self-regard off-putting.

Reader Chris Papouras, who sent us this story, remarks: "My read on this is that the youth are realizing life will be tougher than it was for their parents, and are prioritizing accordingly." But the survey data run from 1966 through 2009, so that "most of the survey data available for Millennials was collected before the country's most recent recession hit." The same is true of all the data for the baby boomers and Gen Xers.

We have another thought as to why environmentalism seems to have peaked with the baby boom. The key is in that generation's moniker: "baby boom." The baby boomers' parents were unusually fertile, especially when compared with subsequent generations, including the boomers themselves. But the decline in fertility was not evenly distributed throughout American society.

This columnist has posited that the polarization of the electorate around the issue of abortion, combined with the direct effect of abortion itself on fertility, over the long term has a conservatizing effect on the electorate. We call it the Roe Effect. Although environmentalism is not sharply polarizing in the way that abortion is, it seems to us quite probable that a similar and overlapping effect is at work here.

Podcast

James Taranto on the greens' fertility problem.

After all, you can't make a baby by hugging a tree. Attitudes about "the environment" are very much tied up with attitudes about human fertility. The prevailing view on the environmentalist left is, and has been since at least the early 1970s, that to bring a child into the world is an act of violence against Mother Earth. Along with feminism, which devalued motherhood and women's domestic work, environmentalism motivated left-liberal baby boomers to have smaller families, or none at all.

If ideology drives one segment of the population to reproduce less, the effect compounds over time. Whereas big families get bigger with each generation, a childless couple (or single woman) is unlikely to have grandchildren either. The future belongs to the fruitful.

Related: The Ethics of Child Bearing and Climate Change

A simple disproof of the runaway greenhouse theory & basis of climate alarm

Commenter Carl Brehmer has produced a highly-recommended video of his scientific study of the effect of humidity on daily, monthly and yearly temperatures. The video explains in simple terms why the alarmist runaway greenhouse theory is impossible due to the negative feedback from water vapor.

Carl's comment on the Water vapor, not CO2, controls climate and acts as a negative feedback thread:

What an interesting example of synergy. I recently posted a video on YouTube that outlined the results of an experiment that I performed that showed the same results--the presence of water in a climate system produces an overwhelming negative feedback against diurnal changes in temperature and overall those climate systems that are more humid are on average cooler than arid climates. 

Beyond that, and something that I didn't get into in the video, is the fact that the phenomenon of "moist convection" that drives the strong upward convection currents that creates thunderstorms operates in direct opposition to the idea that warm moist air somehow resists the forces of nature that compel it to ascend and cool while it dwells near the surface of the earth driving a heating feedback loop. 

 

From Carl Brehmer's website: 


“An essential element of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is the positive “water vapor feedback” hypothesis.  That is, if something causes an increase in the temperature this will cause an increase in the evaporation of water into water vapor.  This new humidity will absorb more of the infrared radiation coming off of the ground.  This increased absorption of infrared radiation is believed to warm the air even further. This makes the air able to hold even more water vapor and this result in even more evaporation, which increases the humidity even further and the cycle starts over.  This is called a “positive” feedback, since water vapor is believed to amplify atmospheric warming.  Being curious about the truth of this hypothesis I designed a simple experiment to study the effect of rising and falling levels of humidity on soil and air temperature and discovered that 1) the addition of water to a climate system exerts a significant negative feedback against temperature changes night and day, 2) water vapor has the same graphical relationship to temperature that insulin has to blood sugar and insulin is known to exert a strong negative feedback against blood sugar levels and 3) over the course of time the addition of water to a climate system causes a perceptible drop in the yearly mean temperature.”

Full script of the above video:  Is Water Vapor Feedback Positive or Negative.pdf

New paper finds extreme droughts were more common 200-300 years ago

A paper published today in Environmental Research Letters uses tree-ring proxies to reconstruct drought conditions of the American Southeast from 1665 to 2010. The authors find "The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665."

Environmental Research Letters Volume 7 Number 1

N Pederson et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014034 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014034

A long-term perspective on a modern drought in the American Southeast

N Pederson^1,2,8, A R Bell², T A Knight³, C Leland^1,4, N Malcomb^1,5, K J Anchukaitis², K Tackett¹, J Scheff¹, A Brice¹, B Catron¹, W Blozan⁶ and J Riddle⁷

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AbstractReferencesSupplementary Data

Letter

The depth of the 2006–9 drought in the humid, southeastern US left several metropolitan areas with only a 60–120 day water supply. To put the region's recent drought variability in a long-term perspective, a dense and diverse tree-ring network—including the first records throughout the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint river basin—is used to reconstruct drought from 1665 to 2010 CE. The network accounts for up to 58.1% of the annual variance in warm-season drought during the 20th century and captures wet eras during the middle to late 20th century. The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665. Given continued growth and subsequent industrial, agricultural and metropolitan demand throughout the southeast, insights from paleohydroclimate records suggest that the threat of water-related conflict in the region has potential to grow more intense in the decades to come.

Water vapor, not CO2, controls climate and acts as a negative feedback

Physicist Daniel Sweger refutes the catastrophic AGW hypothesis in his paper The Climate Engine, showing that CO2 has a negligible effect upon climate and that water vapor acts as a negative feedback to global warming. Dr. Sweger uses data from 3 locales to show an inverse relationship between humidity and temperature. He notes, "In the positive feedback mechanism as proposed by the global warming proponents this behavior would be reversed. Then the data would show a positive relationship between moisture content and temperature. But it does not. As suggested before, data is the language of science, not mathematical models."

The data clearly shows that the relationship between the amount of water vapor in the air and temperature is negative 

From the conclusion of The Climate Engine:

The role of water vapor in determining  surface temperatures is ultimately a dominant one. During daylight hours it moderates the sun’s energy, at night it acts like a blanket to slow the loss of heat, and carries energy from the warm parts of the earth to the cold. Compared to that, if carbon dioxide has an effect, it must be negligible.

It is also clear from the data presented above that water vapor acts with a negative feedback. The data clearly shows that the relationship between the amount of water vapor in the air and temperature is negative; that is, the higher the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere the lower the surface temperature. In that regard, it almost acts as a thermostat.

As the air cools as a result of an increasing moisture content in the atmosphere, there is a decrease in the amount of water vapor produced by evaporation. Eventually this decrease of the level of water vapor being introduced into the atmosphere results in a decrease in moisture content. At this point more sunlight reaches the earth’s surface resulting in higher temperatures and increasing evaporation.

In the positive feedback mechanism as proposed by the global warming proponents this behavior would be reversed. Then  the data would show  a positive  relationship  between moisture  content and temperature. But it does not.


As suggested before, data is the language of science, not mathematical models.


About the Author
Dr. Daniel M. Sweger, AB (Physics, Duke University, 1965) and Ph.D. (Solid State Physics, American University, 1974) has been a research scientist at NIST, where he was active in a variety of research areas, including cryogenic thermometry, solid state and nuclear physics, and molecular spectroscopy. He also operated a computer software business and performed  consulting for the US Army. He is now semi- retired and is an adjunct instructor at National College of Business and Technology (www.ncbt.edu), where, among other subjects, he teaches Environmental Science.

Related: Water – direct evidence of negative feedback

Latest eco-scare from global warming: Arachnophobia

Add arachnophobia to the complete list of things caused by global warming: computer models have now been programmed to show that the brown recluse spider "might move north to states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and even New York" due to global warming.

Rotting-Ear Case the Work of Deadly Brown Recluse Spider
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
March 13, 2012— ABC News

The brown recluse spider got some bad press again this week.

Nikki Perez, a fashion merchandising student at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, described how she lost part of an ear and nearly her eye sight to the venomous arachnid.

"It was terrifying," she told the British Daily Mail newspaper. "It was spreading all over my head."

Perez, 21, was stung at the Amarillo airport and was later hospitalized for five days in September. Her head swelled to twice its normal size and she needed a skin graft to rebuild the ear that had rotted from necrosis.

The Daily Mail sounded an alarm about a University of Kansas study by graduate student Erin Saupe, saying the "deadly" spider was "spreading ... to a town near you."

The study was published last year in the online journal PlosOne

The spider's habitat is limited to the Southeast and Midwest, stretching from Kansas east to the Appalachian states.

But Saupe of the university's Geology and Biodiversity Institute used computer modeling to predict how it's habitat might move north to states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and even New York, dependent on climatic suitability for the species.

Spiders are, after all, one of the top 10 phobias.

But Rick Vetter, the nation's foremost expert on the brown recluse spider -- loxosceles reclusa -- said such media reports use "scare tactics," and 90 percent of the time a bite causes nothing more than a red mark on the skin.

"These are distorted reports ... hyperbolic media crap," said Vetter, a research associate in the department of entomology at the University of California-Riverside.

A Kansas home, for instance, was infested with 2,055 brown recluse spiders for a period of 17 years and "not one" in the family of four was bitten, according to one of his studies, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

He said gnarly photos of Perez's injuries looked authentic and he had known a 9-year-old who had lost an ear from necrosis. But such cases are rare.

The spider's venom -- sphingomyelinase D -- induces red blood cell destruction. Symptoms can include pain at the site of the bite, itching, muscle and joint pain, as well as vomiting and fever.

"My crusade is to stop stupidity in the medical community," Vetter said.

When doctors blame a skin lesion on the brown recluse, they might overlook other more serious conditions such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), diabetes or even lymphoma.

In a 2005 article he co-wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, Vetter cited 40 other conditions that can cause necrosis often misdiagnosed as a spider bite.

Vetter was so tired of doctors blaming the much-maligned spider, he started the Brown Recluse Challenge. Of 1,800 specimens sent to him, only 350 turned out to be the real deal. And all were from the Midwest.

A brown recluse bite can be life-threatening in 10 percent of the cases, but Vetter estimates there are only one or two deaths a year, typically in small children.

Brown Recluse Spiders Could Head North


Vetter worked with Saupe on her master's project, in which she tracked the spiders' predicted migration through "ecological niche modeling."


She used two models to predict the spider's range in 2020, 2050 and 2080, given the effects of global warming, concluding they might move north but those left behind would die off.

Kansas is a "hotbed" for these spiders, said Saupe, who has predicted that they might become extinct in the southern portions of their range by 2080 as the climate in their natural habitats becomes to warm and their mobility is restricted.

Joe Romm shuns open debate of climate science

The Joe Romm attack on meteorologist Joe Bastardi prompted the following comment by astrophysicist Joe Postma. Needless to say, the comment became yet another casualty of Romm's censorship and was not published:

Despite the alarmist monkey jumping and screeching going on here (we'll not mention the throwing), there really is a very rational, calm, scientifically valid, interesting problem to discuss at the heart of climate theory: the so-called greenhouse effect (GHE).

Did you know that climate science and the GHE bases all of its science on a model of the Earth which is flat?  You probably didn't, or you do but don't appreciate the problem there is in that.  It's a sort of well-kept but out-in-the-open secret.  Yes, they literally treat the Earth as if it is flat, from the simple models used to teach the theory, to the advanced computer programs which calculate atmospheric currents.  They treat the Earth as flat.  It is literally flat Earth science.

But does it make a difference?

Well, can you bounce a pancake?  Are we in the dark ages?

Yes it does make a difference.  Mathematically, in order to treat the Earth as flat, you have to reduce the power of sunlight - this is how it works out mathematically (explanatory links below).  If you want to treat the Earth as a flat disk instead of a spherical ball in order to make the math easier via that approximation, then mathematically it works out that you have to reduce the power of sunlight...to MINUS 18 degrees Celsius.  And it is also isotropic in that approximation: -18C worth of sunlight over the entire Earth at once.

"BUT WAIT", goes the standard theory based on this approximation, "it feels warmer than -18C!".  So they invent the Greenhouse Effect, and alarmingly scare you and tell you it's going to kill you if it increases in power by a negligible percentage.  In their alarmist theory, their supposed greenhouse effect, which they say allows all life to exist on the planet - a good thing, because it would keep the planet from freezing - is now suddenly going to destroy the planet and all life.

Of course, the truth is, the Earth is NOT flat, and Sunshine is NOT cold.  The Earth IS round and Sunshine IS hot.  Sunshine is actually +121C worth of hot.  Wow hey?  I bet climate science never told you that!  And obviously that really does make a difference: -18C worth sunlight can't melt ice.  How do you explain liquid water when sunshine has nowhere near the power to melt ice?  But they ignore that.  Wow...I guess the greenhouse effect is what gives me sunburns, and what sustains the entire oceans from freezing.

And this changes everything.  Now, sunlight CAN melt ice all by itself and sustain a liquid water planet.  And then given the latent heat of fusion of ice, you also have a temperature plateau (O Celsius) below which it is very difficult to ever drop below due to the simple gargantuan mass of ocean water.  Especially when you consider that said ocean water is heated with the REAL power of sunlight of around 100C, rather than the wrongly-approximated flat-earth-model power of -18C.

This link will lead you to my latest paper briefly explaining this problem in a way which is easy to understand:

http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Copernicus_Meets_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf

It is called "Copernicus Meets the Greenhouse Effect".  Within that paper is a link to my previous much more technical and lengthy paper called "The Model Atmosphere".

I am an independent researcher with many published papers in astrophysics and I have not received, nor have I ever desired or seeked to receive, financial compensation from anyone for the research and papers I have written on climate science and the greenhouse effect.  Any assertion to the contrary is an uninformed lie.

Another paper is coming which I hope will finalize the creation of a new real-time mathematical/physical model which uses the REAL value of hot sun-shine falling on a spherical Earth.  This model is shown as a diagram in the papers I mentioned above.  You can think of the diagram as a "mind-object" which, by its necessity of representing what actually physically exists (i.e. NOT a flat Earth and cold Sun, but a round rotating Earth and hot Sun), queues the physicist's mind into a mathematical paradigm which will correspond with reality.  A flat-earth model can't do that, by definition.

Mr. Bastardi has every prerogative to kindly and openmindedly question any particular facet of his field of expertise that he wishes.  Often times, the best science comes out of questioning what we believe are the most basic facts.  This is such an example.  -18C sunlight is a well-held assumption but it is also an approximation, and you will see that it is actually a faulty one.

As far as CO2 - there's never been any evidence it causes warming in any case.  The ice-core records show that CO2 is driven by temperature with no indication of feedback, and the modern record shows that temperature increased by itself at the end of the little ice-age with anthropogenic CO2 being insignificant until 100 years after that already started.  CO2 is plant food, and the most reasonable scientific conclusion on its presence in the atmosphere is that we need MORE of it.

Related: 

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/copernicus-meets-greenhouse-effect.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/03/understanding-thermodynamic-atmosphere.html

New paper finds decreased Arctic sea ice causes increased cloudiness

A paper published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds that decrease in sea ice leads to an increase in cloudiness in the Arctic. Clouds increase the reflection of sunlight (albedo) thereby cooling the Earth and acting as a strong  negative feedback to global warming. Although diminshed sea ice decreases albedo, the resulting increase in cloudiness may act as a natural homeostatic mechanism to stabilize Arctic temperatures.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L05705, 5 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL051251

A cloudier Arctic expected with diminishing sea ice

Key Points

• EFA method is valuable in providing quatitative assessment of feedback
• Decrease in sea ice leads to increase in cloud
• Further decline in sea ice will likely result in cloudier Arctic

Yinghui Liu

Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Jeffrey R. Key

Center for Satellite Applications and Research, NESDIS, NOAA, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Zhengyu Liu

Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Center for Climate Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Xuanji Wang

Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Stephen J. Vavrus

Center for Climate Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Arctic sea ice cover has decreased dramatically over the last three decades. Global climate models under-predicted this decline, most likely a result of the misrepresentation of one or more processes that influence sea ice. The cloud feedback is the primary source of uncertainty in model simulations, especially in the polar regions. A better understanding of the interaction between sea ice and clouds, and specifically the impact of decreased sea ice on cloud cover, will provide valuable insight into the Arctic climate system and may ultimately help in improving climate model parameterizations. In this study, an equilibrium feedback assessment is employed to quantify the relationship between changes in sea ice and clouds, using satellite-derived sea ice concentration and cloud cover over the period 2000–2010. Results show that a 1% decrease in sea ice concentration leads to a 0.36–0.47% increase in cloud cover, suggesting that a further decline in sea ice cover will result in an even cloudier Arctic.

The global warming bubble

Notable & Quotable

Robert Tracinski on the global warming bubble.

Robert Tracinski writing at realclearmarkets.com, March 6:

We are in the middle of what you might call a global warming bubble. It is a failure of the global warming theory itself and of the credibility of its advocates, but also a failure of the various "green energy" schemes proposed as a substitute for fossil fuels.

Take the sleek Tesla electric roadster, brought to you with about half a billion dollars in government-backed loans, which turns into an immovable "brick" if you run down its battery too far, say, by taking a long drive and parking it for a while.

The failure of the solar panel maker Solyndra has been followed by the bankruptcies of a variety of other government-subsidized green energy firms, such as Beacon Energy, which makes an energy storage device needed to smooth out the energy production of erratic "renewable" sources, and battery maker Ener1.

But maybe we're just not subsidizing green power enough, because surely you've heard—probably from Tom Friedman—that China is beating us to the future with its support for green energy. But China's solar energy firms are also heading into a slump and laying off workers. Part of the reason for the solar slump in China is that they were counting on generous subsidies for their product from the West, particularly Europe. In effect, the Chinese were manufacturing solar panels in order to cash in on subsidies from Western taxpayers. But now the subsidies are drying up.

A version of this article appeared Mar. 9, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Notable & Quotable.

New paper shows climate models suck

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate utilized the world's most commonly used computer climate model to "document model bias, and to explore possible future changes in air temperature, precipitation and snow cover over North America." The authors find that "large biases still exist in all analyzed fields [temperature, precipitation, and snow cover]".  Bias is defined as "an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives." The paper notes that future climate projections by the model assume these biases are valid and persist into the future, a huge assumption for which there is no evidence to support. In addition, different model runs and assumptions result in "considerable differences" in the magnitude of climate change projected. Furthermore, the model predicts a decrease in snow cover with rising greenhouse gases, which is in direct opposition to the empirical data:

Journal of Climate 2012 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00214.1

Projected 21st century changes in temperature, precipitation and snow cover over North America in CCSM4

Synte Peacock

National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder CO 80305, USA, (303) 497-1774

Abstract

Results from a suite of ensembles of 21st century climate projections made using the Community Climate System Model Version 4 (CCSM4) are analyzed to document model bias, and to explore possible future changes in air temperature, precipitation and snow cover over North America. Large biases still exist in all analyzed fields in this version of the model, and the necessary assumption in future climate projections is therefore that the bias persists into the future, such that the differences in a field between two time periods are meaningful indications of potential changes. Projected temperature increases show strong regional patterns with spatial similarities for all the emissions scenarios considered, although there are considerable differences in the magnitude of the projected change. Projections indicate an increase in total precipitation over much of North America for all emissions scenarios, with the exception of the South-West US. All of North America except parts of Northern Canada show a projected decrease in snow cover over the 21st century.

Windmills vs. Birds

Windmills vs. Birds   WSJ.com 3/8/12

About 70 golden eagles are killed every year by turbines at California's Altamont Pass, reports the LA Times.

By ROBERT BRYCE

For years, the wind energy industry has had a license to kill golden eagles and lots of other migratory birds. It's not an official license, mind you.

But as the bird carcasses pile up—two more dead golden eagles were recently found at the Pine Tree wind project in Southern California's Kern County, bringing the number of eagle carcasses at that site to eight—the wind industry's unofficial license to kill wildlife is finally getting some serious scrutiny.

Some 77 organizations—led by the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Endangered Species Coalition and numerous chapters of the Audubon Society—are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen the rules for the siting, permitting and operation of large-scale wind projects.

It's about time. Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America's oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.

But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years.

The renewed focus on bird kills is coming at a bad time for the wind industry, which is being hammered by low natural-gas prices and a Congress unwilling to extend the 2.2 cents per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit that has fueled the industry's growth in recent years.

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.

A pernicious double standard is at work here. And it riles Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who wrote the petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He told me, "It's absolutely clear that there's been a mandate from the top" echelons of the federal government not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws.

Mr. Glitzenstein comes to this issue from the left. Before forming his own law firm, he worked for Public Citizen, an organization created by Ralph Nader. When it comes to wind energy, he says, "Many environmental groups have been claiming that too few people are paying attention to the science of climate change, but some of those same groups are ignoring the science that shows wind energy's negative impacts on bird and bat populations."

That willful ignorance may be ending. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife recently filed a lawsuit against officials in Kern County, Calif., in an effort to block the construction of two proposed wind projects—North Sky River and Jawbone—due to concerns about their impact on local bird populations. The groups oppose the projects because of their proximity to the deadly Pine Tree facility, which the Fish and Wildlife Service believes is killing 1,595 birds, or about 12 birds per megawatt of installed capacity, per year.

The only time a public entity has pressured the wind industry for killing birds occurred in 2010, when California brokered a $2.5 million settlement with NextEra Energy Resources for bird kills at Altamont. The lawyer on that case: former attorney general and current Gov. Jerry Brown, who's now pushing the state to get 33% of its electricity from renewables by 2020.

Bats are getting whacked, too. The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that wind turbines killed more than 10,000 bats in the state in 2010.

Despite the toll that wind turbines are taking on wildlife, the wind industry wants to keep its get-out-of-jail-free card. Last May, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed new guidelines for wind-turbine installations. But the American Wind Energy Association quickly panned the proposed rules as "unworkable."

Given that billions of dollars are at stake, the wind industry's objections don't surprise Mr. Glitzenstein. And while the lawyer wants more thorough environmental review of proposed wind projects, what he's really hoping for is a good federal prosecution. So far, he says, the Interior Department has been telling the wind industry: "'No matter what you do, you need not worry about being prosecuted.' To me, that's appalling public policy."

Mr. Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book is "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future" (Public Affairs, 2010).

New paper shows major glacier was smaller than the present during the Medieval Warming Period

A paper published today in the journal Climate of the Past used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of trees uncovered in 2003 by retreat of a major glacier located in Southern Patagonia. The authors conclude that the glacier was smaller than the present during the Medieval Warming Period, and that the trees were covered by advance of the glacier during the Little Ice Age from 460 to 250 years ago.

Clim. Past, 8, 403-414, 2012
www.clim-past.net/8/403/2012/
doi:10.5194/cp-8-403-2012


Little Ice Age advance and retreat of Glaciar Jorge Montt, Chilean Patagonia

A. Rivera^1,2, M. Koppes³, C. Bravo¹, and J. C. Aravena^4
1Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECS), Valdivia, Chile
²Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
³Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
⁴Centro de Estudios del Cuaternario Fuego-Patagonia y Antártica (Fundación CEQUA) Conicyt Regional R07C1002., Punta Arenas, Chile


Abstract. Glaciar Jorge Montt (48°20' S/73°30' W), one of the main tidewater glaciers of the Southern Patagonian Icefield (SPI), has experienced the greatest terminal retreat observed in Patagonia during the past century, with a recession of 19.5 km between 1898 and 2011. This retreat has revealed trees laying subglacially until 2003. These trees were dated using radiocarbon, yielding burial ages between 460 and 250 cal yrs BP. The presence of old growth forest during those dates indicates that Glaciar Jorge Montt was upvalley of its present position before the commonly recognized Little Ice Age (LIA) period in Patagonia. The post-LIA retreat was most likely triggered by climatically induced changes during the 20th century; however, Glaciar Jorge Montt has responded more dramatically than its neighbours. The retreat of Jorge Montt opened a 19.5 km long fjord since 1898, which reaches depths in excess of 390 m. The bathymetry is well correlated with glacier retreat rates, suggesting that dynamic responses of the glacier are at least partially connected to near buoyancy conditions at the ice front, resulting in high calving fluxes, accelerating thinning rates and rapid ice velocities.

Final Revised Paper (PDF, 2075 KB)   Supplement (715 KB)   Discussion Paper (CPD)   Special Issue

LA Times flunks basic journalism to promote climate alarm

A recent Brookings Institution opinion poll asked Americans the vague question,

"Is there solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer?"

and found 62% agreed. The poll did not ask any questions about the cause or whether mankind is fully or partially responsible for global warming or climate change.

Nonetheless, the alarmist LA Times conflated and twisted the poll result to report that "62% of Americans now believe that man-made climate change is occurring."

More Americans now believe in global warming

By Dean Kuipers

February 29, 2012, 6:40 p.m.

After several years of finding that fewer and fewer Americans believed in man-made climate change, pollsters are now finding that belief is on the uptick.

The newest study from the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which is a biannual survey taken since fall 2008 and organized by the Brookings Institute, shows that 62% of Americans now believe that man-made climate change is occurring, and 26% do not. The others are unsure.

That is a significant rise in believers since a low in spring 2010, when only about 50% of Americans said they believed in global warming, but still down from when the survey first began, when it was at around 75%. The pollsters talked to 887 people across the country.

What’s caused the sudden rise? Mostly the weather.

“People, for good or for bad, are making connections in what they see in terms of weather and what they believe in terms of climate change,” said Christopher Borick, co-author of the survey. He is an associate professor of Political Science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania. His co-author is Barry Rabe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a professor at the University of Michigan.