[Guest post by DRJ]

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake was recorded in Northern California in the last hour. The USGS map shows the epicenter was approximately 35 miles east of Eureka CA.

Anyone feel it?

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Democrats will do anything to help consumers deal with rising gasoline prices … except agree to open up ANWR for drilling as President Bush suggested in today’s Rose Garden speech.

Here’s Democratic Majority Leader Reid’s response:

“Only President Bush could allow Big Oil to write our nation’s energy policy, guarantee billions in oil tax breaks and refuse to stand up to OPEC or crack down on price gouging, and then shirk responsibility for gas prices that have more than doubled and oil prices that have quadrupled since he took office. Only President Bush could be surprised to learn that gas was approaching $4 a gallon and then claim the White House is concerned about high gas prices. President Bush’s Rose Garden rhetoric will not lower gas prices for Americans struggling in a weakening economy; he must work with Democrats in Congress to invest in renewable energy and lessen our dependence on oil.

“Further, President Bush still hasn’t learned that his words alone will not remedy the housing crisis threatening thousands of Americans families each day. Favoring voluntary programs that help far too few, the President and Bush Republicans in Congress blocked Democrats’ plan to help as many as 600,000 homeowners facing foreclosure by affording them the same bankruptcy protections available to other Americans. His call this morning for Congress to act is disingenuous at best. Whether on energy policy, the housing crisis or our many other economic woes, this Administration and its Republican allies in Congress offer nothing but the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place.”

Only Democrats could conclude that putting Americans to work finding more oil won’t help our energy needs or the economy. Apparently they believe the only way to fix the “same failed ideas” is to give up oil and write new laws.

And we all know how well that works.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Merchants like Costco and Sam’s have rationed sales of some rices this week, and that has brought heightened attention to the possibility of world food shortages. Today’s New York Sun reports that food shortages, especially shortages in corn and grain production, may eclipse concerns about global warming:

“The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.

With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”

“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

One of the problems with many global warming advocates is their unwillingness to discuss the feasibility of their solutions. The general tenor of the discussion seems to be “No price is to great a price to pay to save the planet.” But the fact is that a price can be too great, especially if the solution starves the neediest peoples of the world.

H/T ROA.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas doesn’t seem to be a big supporter of the War in Iraq - he’s characterized it as a war to teach the Arabs a lesson after 9/11 - but there is one war he does support.

The War on Global Warming:

“The only way to get from here to there on slashing greenhouse emissions is by massively enforcing limits on consumption, which means heavy regulation, or much higher taxes. Or by developing breakthrough technologies, like a way to cheaply recapture carbon emissions or safer nuclear technology. (The technology has to be so cheap that China and India will buy it.) Higher oil prices will stimulate investment in alternative fuel sources, but every halfway believable estimate leaves us still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

It would be nice to hope that the scientists will solve our problems, and I pray for them. But the politicians will have to get involved and put the thumb of government on the scale-and then lean hard. That means calling for sacrifice-serious wartime sacrifice.”

Thomas realizes it will be hard to convince average people to fight this war since only the politicians and the elites seem to understand how important it is. There is, he says, an “enormous class divide” on global warming that elites and politicians understand but everyone else can’t understand or “can’t be bothered” with. As he puts it, when it comes to everyday Americans, “Slow food to most people means that the waitress at the local IHOP is falling behind.”

I’m a little slow but I think Evan Thomas just called me an IHOP hick.

I am and I’m proud of it. He should try it sometime.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Wheaton College sponsored a display of alternative fuel vehicles during a recent Earth Day event, and two brothers brought their Hybrid Prius that they modified to get 100 mpg:

“For some young men, the trunk is the perfect spot for a huge set of car speakers.

But brothers Andrew and Chris Ewert have put something far more powerful in the back of their parents’ Toyota Prius: a lithium-ion battery pack capable of dramatically boosting the hybrid car’s already impressive fuel efficiency.

Unlike a conventional gas-electric Toyota Prius, which gets about 55 to 60 miles per gallon of gas, the Ewerts’ so-called “plug-in hybrid” is capable of traveling about 100 miles per gallon.

And it only takes 35 cents’ worth of electricity from a standard power outlet to charge the extra batteries.

“We’ve gotten about a thousand miles off of one tank of gas,” Andrew Ewert said. “This is the future of cars. We strongly believe that this is where it’s headed.”

Here’s a video interview.

Pretty cool.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Researchers believe a big quake will hit Southern California in the next 30 years:

“The researchers found that the chances of a magnitude 7.5 or greater temblor in the next 30 years is 46%. They determined such a quake would likely occur in Southern California.

According to a report from the researchers, the forecasts were made by combining “information from seismology, earthquake geology, and geodesy [measuring precise locations on the Earth’s surface]. For the first time, probabilities for California having a large earthquake in the next 30 years can be forecast statewide.”

Hopefully the researchers are wrong but, if it does happen, the article states that damages may be more severe than in past quakes because of growing population and increased building on fault lines.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

MIT hurricane expert and global warming proponent Kerry Emanuel wants a do-over:

“One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this week unveiled a novel technique for predicting hurricane activity. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.

His changing views could influence other scientists.

“The results surprised me,” Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes but what that role is remains far from certain.”

Emanuel had originally concluded global warming would cause more powerful hurricanes or more active hurricane seasons, and his work may have contributed to the image of a hurricane in advertising for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth:

“Among the first to publish was Emanuel, who, just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, published a paper in Nature that concluded a key measurement of the power dissipated by a storm during its lifetime had risen dramatically since the mid-1970s.

In the future, he argued, incredibly active hurricane years such as 2005 would become the norm rather than flukes.

This view, amplified by environmentalists and others concerned about global warming, helped establish in the public’s mind that “super” hurricanes were one of climate change’s most critical threats. A satellite image of a hurricane emanating from a smokestack featured prominently in promotions for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.”

The articles notes that, after Hurricane Katrina, scientific articles that showed hurricanes were becoming more frequent and intense were highlighted while contrary papers were not:

“After the 2005 hurricane season, a series of other papers were published that appeared to show, among other things, that the most intense hurricanes were becoming more frequent.

What has not been as broadly disseminated, say Pielke and some hurricane scientists, is that other research papers have emerged that suggest global warming has yet to leave an imprint on hurricane activity. One of them, published late last year in Nature, found that warming seas may not increase hurricane intensity.”

Emanuel’s bottom line is “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

It’s good that Emanuel is willing to revisit this issue - a true idealogue wouldn’t - but instances like this reinforce the perception that some scientists let emotion overrule facts when it comes to global warming.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Today in Nashville, former Vice President Al Gore kicked off his campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

“Former Vice President Al Gore on Monday launched a three-year, multimillion-dollar advocacy campaign calling for the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s campaign, dubbed “we,” will combine advertising, online organizing and partnerships with grassroots groups to educate the public about global warming and urge solutions from elected officials.

“We’re trying to get a movement happening to switch public opinion so that our leaders feel, ‘Wow! We really need to make this a top priority issue,’” Alliance CEO Cathy Zoi told The Associated Press.”

Excitement and PR. Wow!

There was also this statement from Al Gore:

“When politicians hear the American people calling loud and clear for change, they’ll listen,” Gore, the former Tennessee senator and 2000 presidential candidate, said in a statement. Gore’s staff did not respond to calls seeking further comment.”

I think Gore kicked off another kind of campaign, too.

– DRJ

I’d say Rick’s piece sums up my feelings about as well as anything I’ve read in a while.

I’m no scientist. Neither is Nobel Prize winning global warming alarmist and hypocrite Al Gore. Nor are the legions of global warming deniers who are pointing to a stretch of cold weather as “proof” that global warming is a myth.

We are, most of us, not qualified in any way, shape, or form to make any kind of technical or scientific judgment on most of the evidence relating to climate change unless we happen to hold an advanced technical degree and are able to examine that evidence in its totality and not pick and choose headlines that bolster one’s political position on the issue.

The idiocy inherent in the prospect of myself or 95% of internet commenters – right and left – trying to hold a scientific debate on a subject where almost all of us are not scientists and where most of the evidence is couched in the arcane and mysterious language of scientific disciplines for which the overwhelming majority of us barely realize the parameters of study is self evident.

Not that this matters because at bottom, we who are unable to examine the evidence on the same plane as climatologists, meteorologists, atmospheric physicists, environmental scientists, and a hodgepodge of chemists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists end up simply believing one side or the other. Like religious fanatics, the two sides argue dogma while rejecting the other’s “beliefs” as apostasy.

Considering the stakes, this is madness.

Indeed.

Read it all, and thanks to voiceofreason2.

Global temperatures have dropped precipitiously in the past year, and global-warming skeptics have cited this data as evidence that global warming is a myth.

Regardless of what you think of global warming and its causes, that makes about as much sense as saying that this stock is going down in value because of the downward trend indicated by the oval in the center-right portion of this chart:

I tend to go with the analysis of this fellow, quoted in a New York Times article spotted by Allahpundit:

“When I get called by CNN to comment on a big summer storm or a drought or something, I give the same answer I give a guy who asks about a blizzard,” Dr. Schmidt said. “It’s all in the long-term trends. Weather isn’t going to go away because of climate change. There is this desire to explain everything that we see in terms of something you think you understand, whether that’s the next ice age coming or global warming.”

That makes a lot more sense than saying: “Sure is cold out today . . . take that, you global warming idiots!”

[Ducks]

[posted by Justin Levine]

Peter Suderman points to a must-read essay concerning why global warming has morphed into a false religion.

It serves as a great companion piece to the ‘The Infantilism of  Anti-Americanism’ that wrote about earlier. Both deal with the existential crisis among the Western affluent, and the different roads they can take to try and hide from their depression.

‘The Politics of Fear’ essay manages to encapsulate why I’ve felt Al Gore has made for such a sorry public figure. The man can’t contemplate living life without the adoration and aggrandizement of others within a larger social movement. First he sought it in Democratic politics. When that house of cards caved in on him, he sought refuge in the ‘meaning’ of global warming. His Nobel Prize will probably make him forever trapped in his own delusions. After all, its difficult  for even the bravest people to admit when much of their life has been built around a fraud.

Regardless of how many awards, riches or standing ovations Gore may receive for being a true believer, I will always think of it as a wasted life.

[posted by Justin Levine]

Climate Debate Daily - A great site that tracks the “consensus” over the issue of global warming. Recommended for bookmarking if you have any interest in the debate.

As the site itself states -

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