Ten Questions and Answers

Our local county has formed an Energy Committee and are seeking comments on various issues, so I've prepared the following responses to their inquiries.

1. Issues surrounding various proposed carbon taxes:

The deliberate choice to use the word “carbon” (as in carbon taxes) is an intentional attempt to confuse and misdirect the general public into thinking that carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the actual subject of discussion and is a harmless gas and an intentional byproduct of the combustion of coal (carbon) or natural gas, is “dirty,” like handling a chunk of unburnt coal, and might even cause black lung, like coal miners get when breathing in coal dust. The same special interest groups that wish to vilify carbon dioxide are hoping that a frightened public and government might impose an artificial cost, or tax, on the emission of carbon dioxide, which would directly increase the cost of generating electricity with conventional fuels, which would in turn make their products, “alternative energy” sources such as solar and wind power, more economical by comparison. Of course, the reality and science of the issue is that carbon dioxide (not “carbon”) is a harmless gas, does not cause black lung, does not cause “global warming”, and applying an artificial cost to the electrical power generation process would only be a thinly veiled program to transfer resources from the pockets of those who use electricity (hardest hit would be residential consumers living on fixed incomes and the commercial and industrial consumers that add value to our very weak economy) to special interest groups (GE’s stock has shot up over 60% in the past five years, for example.) The entire ideology behind the concept of “Carbon Taxes” is technically flawed and needs to be eliminated from public debate through education.

2. Costs of renewable resources:

Conventional generation sources, such as coal or natural gas, cost a nominal $1 per watt to construct anywhere in the world. Typically, large generation plants (300-3000 megawatts), with economies of scale, can be constructed in the United States for considerably less than the $1 per watt. “Alternative” energy resources cost considerably more, depending on the type. For example, a hydro-power generation plant would cost $1 per watt for the generation facility, before considering the costs of the civil works (dams, penstocks, etc.) which typically drive the total costs up to at least $5 per watt. Solar power (photovoltaic) typically costs $10 per watt for just the equipment, before considering the labor costs to install the equipment, which would tend to increase the cost by 50-100% to about $20 per watt. Another cost of renewable resources is related to the location of the resource. For example, geothermal plants have to be constructed at the location of the geothermal hot springs, which can be far from existing load centers and transmission lines, and therefore have considerable additional costs associated with the transmission of the power. Another cost of renewable resources is the life expectancy related to that resource and the resulting stranded investment; Geothermal pockets are notorious for cooling off in a relatively short time after the construction of the expensive generation facility. And perhaps worst of all is the availability of renewable resources; solar power is only available when the sun is shining, wind power when the wind is blowing, but demand for electricity also occurs when it’s dark and the air is still, which means that expensive duplicate conventional generation capacity would have to be built to back-up the renewable resources. Scale is another serious issue with renewable resources; utility grade generation comes in hundreds or even thousands of megawatts (1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts) while renewable energy tends to come in packets of hundreds of watts – a tiny fraction of the capacity required by consumers (a typical home will have a demand of 10-20,000 watts.)

3. Mandated energy portfolio standards and the potential consequences of such, including higher costs, diminished choices, loss of freedom, etc. Please state costs in easy to understand terms such as monthly or annual rate increases that would result.

Mandated renewable energy portfolio standards (RPS) are a highly effective method for government interference in the energy sector to reach catastrophic proportions in the shortest time possible. A typical RPS might mandate that a state receive 25% of their energy from renewable resources. An oversimplified illustration of the effects of this case would be as follows: the rate payers of that state would see their power costs rise from their present cost (call this 1.0 per unit) to the new cost described as:

75% @ 1.0 p.u. + 25% @ 20.0 p.u. = 4.75 p.u.

which means an increase in average energy rates of 475%! Unfortunately, the more complicated reality would be even worse since you wouldn’t be able to actually replace 25% of the generation capacity, since the backup conventional generation would still be required, but only 25% (at best) of the energy production, so you would still have some additional demand costs in this equation, likely taking the average costs up to 500% or higher. Further, the per-unit costs of the energy (1.0 for conventional and 20.0 for renewable) are the relative costs given today’s market when there is little demand for renewable energy. That ratio of 20:1 is likely to increase significantly as utilities in states with mandated RPS start to compete for limited renewable resources. Additionally, this oversimplified analysis does not include the additional taxes applied to the ratepayers that would be required to continue to subsidize the renewable energy resources. If anything can drive our limited remaining industrial and manufacturing sector to India, China, and Brazil, the 1-2 punch of the implementation of a mandated RPS and the increase in taxes can.

4. Municipal and Utility Company alternatives:

All utilities, private, municipal, or cooperative, should be required to develop and acquire the most economical power supply (electrical generation) possible while maintaining legitimate clean air standards (i.e. within allowable limits on particulates, SOx, and NOx.) Further, all utilities should be required to plan their power supplies beyond the short-term (5-years) and into the long range (20-30 years) to mitigate future power shortages.

5. Off peak usage:

Off-peak usage is one way to significantly improve the utility’s “load factor” – the measure of the utilization of the fixed assets, like generation, transmission, and distribution. All utilities must provide their commodity on-demand, at the instant that the consumer requires. In a system with a preponderance of residential customers, that means early in the morning and late in the evening, often producing load factors in the range of 20-40%. That means that the utility’s fixed plant is only utilized 20-40% of the time. If a utility can coax customers to consume energy during off-peak times, specifically during the day and at night, then the utility can improve its load factor, spread its fixed costs over a broader base, thereby decreasing the average cost of power. To this end, most utilities offer incentives to use power at off-peak times, in the form of off-peak rates. This allows the customer the freedom to choose to either pay more to use power on their own time frame, or to save money by shifting their power usage to off-peak times. This is a legitimate free-market solution to overcoming the problem of a low load factor. Any command-economy type solutions, like government mandating of off-peak usage historically has been proven to fail to achieve the desired results.

6. Efficiency & other conservation measures:

In a market-based economy, the consumer has the freedom to choose either to consume more goods and services for the market price, which tends to make the price increase with demand, or conserve (reduce their consumption), which tends to make the price decrease with the decreased demand. The consumer should always be allowed to make that choice based on the economic benefits or costs associated with each choice. Manufacturers of appliances already produce their products with a range of energy efficiencies with their associated costs, which allows the consumer to choose the best appliance for his application, given his own local energy costs. Governmental agencies that spend public money should always perform a serious cost/benefit analysis prior to adopting any efficiency/conservation measure, to avoid paying for flashy but uneconomical measures.

7. Energy development:

Utilities have the responsibility to meet the demands of the consumers in their designated service territories both today and in the future and as such are under an obligation to carefully plan for both power supply and delivery. And since such electrical infrastructure has a 30-year life (depreciation cycle) utilities should always ensure that all new plant constructed should meet the needs of its consumers for the coming 30 years. Also, since lead times for design, permitting, materials purchase, and construction are measured in years rather than months, utilities are under an equal obligation to start developing new energy projects (generation and delivery) years in advance. Elected leaders have an equal obligation to their constituents to see that permitting for such properly planned and justified energy development projects is facilitated.

8. Pollution comparables:

There is no energy development, energy consumption, or manufacturing process that is entirely emissions-free – not burning coal or natural gas for electricity generation, manufacturing compact florescent light bulbs with mercury, nor mining nickel for making Ni-Cad batteries for electric vehicles – everything contributes some pollution to the environment (nickel mining being the worst of the three cases above.) Fortunately for the environment in the United States, we solved most of the emissions problems in previous decades, with the implementation of unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters on our automobiles, “scrubbers” on our coal-fired power plants, and the whole “Pitch In” public service campaign that helped to raise public awareness and to reduce littering on our streets and highways. In recent decades our air emissions from power generation and gasoline powered automobiles has been largely reduced to harmless CO2 (beneficial to plants) and the attempts by the special interest groups to demonize CO2 in order to artificially create an increased market share for their “alternative energy” products is at the very least dishonest.

9. Capital costs and alternative sources:

As illustrated in point #2 above, the capital costs for energy generation range from conventional coal or natural gas fired generation, which costs an average of $1 per watt globally, up to $20 per watt for solar photovoltaic systems. If governmental agencies wish to encourage expensive and immature renewable energy technologies by subsidizing the capital costs, they should do so with open and honest mechanisms such as rebates or grants, paid for with tax dollars as approved by the voters. Governmental attempts to hide such grants, by passing Renewable Portfolio Standards, as in item #3 above, which force the utilities to purchase energy from (i.e. subsidize) expensive and immature energy sources, are misleading and dishonest.

10. Capacity and transmission – including issues surrounding rights-of-way and permitting:

As the County becomes ever increasingly urban, space to accommodate rights-of-way for transmission and distribution power lines becomes increasingly scarce. Accordingly, even though joint distribution facilities don’t make any sense, because the individual utilities in the county serve in distinct geographical areas, it only makes sense for the utilities to work together to create joint transmission facilities, that span from one area to another. Toward this end, a Technical Task Force was formed in the County in 1988 and currently plans and develops and operates transmission facilities jointly (to the extent practical.) These efforts should continue and should be encouraged when considering issues of rights-of-way and permitting.

Rant to a (patient) friend

Hey there Amigo,

Good to hear from you again. Here in Utah I’ve been up to my eyeballs with both technical and political work. On the political front my current battle is on the “alternative” energy front – our silly governor, who is making TV commercials with Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote their special interest agenda, is trying to impose a renewable portfolio standard on the utilities in Utah. No kidding. I’ve been driven to distraction with so many meetings up at the state capital in Salt Lake City. The proponents of this proposal keep saying that the electric rates in Utah are too low and that they should be artificially raised so that their solar and wind power projects would appear to be economical in comparison. They don’t care about the poor rate payers who are just trying to make ends meet in this current recession (that GWB is denying.) The muni’s are exempt from State law in Utah, and the IOU’s don’t care what their rates are, as long as they can collect their standard rate-of-return, so it falls to the three little piss-ant co-ops in the state to try to protect our members’ interests. It makes my blood boil every time some rich developer talks about taking money out of my little old grandma’s pockets just so he can peddle his products in a command economy situation rather than the free market that we supposedly espouse in this country.

These project developers, who want to set up alternative energy projects on my (and my Grandma’s) nickel, all point to man-made global warming as their justification. They never try to defend their position beyond adopting the Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger line of “the debate is over.” I know that’s what they’d like, since they can’t point to any scientific evidence to support their claims. I’m convinced that the truth of the matter is that I’m the only one in the room up in SLC that has actually read the scientific studies published on the subject, by the IPCC and the individual scientists that make up that panel. The other side seems to be getting their “science” strictly from Hollywood. During the lunch break at the last meeting, I went to eat with the activists from the mayor’s office and the solar lobbyists (including a professor from the U of U) and attempted to engage them in a friendly scientific discussion of the facts. They acted like I was the first person to attempt such a thing – their only response was that we’d just have to agree to disagree. On the facts?! I pointed out that we weren’t discussing religion or who was the greatest rock-and-roll guitarist, but hard cold scientific facts and that there was no room for disagreement, that the facts are what they are. They had no response.

So yes, the facts clearly show that, according to our measurements, the average global temperature has increased in the past 100 years or so, since the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the 1800’s. The facts also show that CO2 (a byproduct of fossil fuel fired electric generation and vehicle emission) is a green house gas. However, none of the science (discounting the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers, which wasn’t written by the scientists themselves and which contradicts the scientists’ actual findings) concludes that man’s emissions of CO2 have been significant enough to account for the global warming. In fact, the only correlation that anyone has been able to show with our increasing temperature (which is only increasing in the winter and in the Northern Hemisphere) is that with solar radiation, which is clearly beyond our control. So, what Utah’s and California’s governors are proposing is all pain for no gain.

The article that I sent you may be weak in ascribing motives to the man-made Global Warming alarmists, but I’m sure that the author is just basing that on his personal experience with his own family and friends; but then, that’s what we all tend to do: filter world events through the lens of our own experiences. As for me, I have a hard time figuring out why so many people are pressuring us to take such drastic and expensive measures to try to affect the weather, when the evidence suggests that we can do no such thing regardless of how much money we throw at it. I do know that NBC news is owned by GE and that GE makes many of the “green” devices being touted on the NBC nightly “news” shows. I also know that EPRI depends on external funding to survive and that the technological “solution” to man-made global warming that they’re touting will cost $2T (their figure = 17% of our GDP), a good percentage of which will certainly flow their way at least in the early R&D years. So, if I were to hazard a guess as to the motives behind this movement it would either be TV ratings (and hence, advertising revenues) and/or increased product sales. I have thus far resisted the urge to ascribe the more sinister motives that I’ve heard bandied about, like the resurgence of socialism after their failure in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

I’m not sure that you’re interested in chasing this topic as far as I have, or spending as much time reading on the subject (it is kind of dry), but if you wanted to read the boring details for yourself, I’ve posted all the links and reading lists on my blog.

As for our buddies overseas, like Bangladesh and Bolivia, which are both near and dear to my heart since living and working there, I agree that they have serious environmental problems that need addressing. However, I think we’re diverting funds from proven solutions into early adoption of expensive technologies based on an artificially induced demand. I am, of course, always open to and desirous of continuing dialog – just because I’ve come to a conclusion on the subject based on my reading to-date doesn’t mean my mind is closed to new information.

Well, I’ve gone on much too long. Sorry for the rant – it’s been that kind of month here sunny Southern Utah. You have a great weekend.

Un abrazo.

Note: I took the attached photo on my family trip to southern Chile in 2005. Watching lava bubble and boil was every bit as entertaining as watching ice (glaciers) melt.

Extreme Weather Alert!

Just this morning CNN presented a segment titled “Extreme Weather” in which they showed it snowing in New England today! In the middle of January, no less! Can you imagine? There were snow plows out and everything. Plus last week, on Christmas Day, on Anderson Cooper’s show (also on CNN) they showed a glacier in Chile that was shrinking in the summer heat (Chile being in the southern hemisphere and all) – they demonstrated this shrinkage with GPS measurements and everything. They took the measurements and then they said: “See? This proves that man is causing global warming.” I know I was convinced. At least, I was until my daughter pointed out that it might be more convincing if the glaciers were melting in Chile in the winter, or if they were sun bathing in New England in January. Also, they seem to have forgotten to explain how they linked the warm summer weather to something that man had done. Hmm… now I’m just confused.

And speaking of glaciers, the attached photo is one I took on our family Christmas trip to Patagonia back in 2005. It turns out that watching ice melt (glaciers calve) is as fun as watching lava bubble.

Powering our future or wrecking the economy?

Today (January 7, 2008) the New Zealand Herald printed a story in their business section about the greed and dishonesty currently fueling the push to subsidize "alternative" energy sources, rallied by Global Warming phobia, rather than follow a more reasoned and scientific approach to developing the fuel sources of the future. I'm sorry to see that my power engineer brethren in New Zealand are suffering under the same insane politicians and activists that we are suffering here in Utah. You can find the entire article at the following link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10485514&pnum=0.

Following is an excerpt from the story by Brian Leyland:

The draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government's conviction that climate change (more properly described as "man-made global warming") is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.

The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the "scenarios" and "projections" of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.

The surface temperature record used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world has not warmed since 1998. If cooling continues for a few more years then the hypothesis, the theories and the computer models supporting claims that CO2 causes dangerous man-made global warming, will have to be re-examined.

The strategy ignores the increasingly strong evidence that solar emissions related to the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays have a major influence on our climate. Unlike the carbon dioxide driven hypothesis, this theory explains climate change in the past and predicts that the climate will cool until 2030.

It seems to me that the Government has been badly advised. The primary duty of any scientific adviser is to report on the science objectively and to make sure that the politicians understand the uncertainties in the science.

It is for the politicians to decide how they will handle the uncertainties. Many climate scientists and other advisers have taken it upon themselves to hide the uncertainties from the politicians and to put forward supposition as fact. This is wrong and risky. For them and the nation.

A comprehensive and objective investigation into the credibility of the science underlying the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is urgently needed.
The primary aim of the National Energy Strategy should be to ensure that New Zealand has a reliable and economic supply of energy. This we can easily get from our huge reserves of coal. An alternative is nuclear power which has been endorsed by the IPCC.

There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of: no one can predict exactly where our energy resources will come from in 50 years time - any more than they could have done so in 1906 when Henry Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, it would have been faster horses."

History teaches us that human ingenuity and technology have the potential to provide sufficient energy for our needs. All that is needed to make sure that this happens is good science and common sense. The strategy lacks both.

The National Energy Strategy must be developed on a rational basis. It must recognise that meeting our legitimate needs for energy is important; minimising damage to our economy is important; and, most of all, it is important that we know exactly what it might be costing us - or what we are giving up - in order to meet the Government's obsession with dangerous man-made global warming and renewables.

Unless this is done, the strategy will turn out to be yet another expensive, misleading and futile exercise.

The strategy makes much of biofuels even though all the evidence points to the fact that growing crops to make biofuels is bad for the environment, deprives people of much needed food and in most cases does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The only beneficiaries are those that grow rich on the billions of dollars in subsidies paid for biofuel production.

New Zealand would be better off without a strategy than it would be with the one outlined in "Powering Our Future".

Support for it comes from those who believe that economic development is incompatible with the environment, those who see it as a way of making profits from carbon trading, those (like Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management company) who are pushing heavily subsidised renewable energy projects and those academics that see it as a bottomless source of research money and an excellent way of getting recognition, promotion and income.

The Government sees it as a way of making even higher windfall profits from Meridian and
Mighty River Power and gaining votes and exerting more control over the economy and our lives. And no one shows any concern for domestic and industrial consumers who will pay more and more for an increasingly unreliable power supply.

* Bryan Leyland is a power engineer and consultant.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming

It's only January 3rd but so far 2008 seems to be a banner year, at least with regard to the truth coming out about the lies of Global Warming. Today a Russian scientist, Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, wrote a great article on this very subject. You can find the complete text at: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html. In case you can't get that, here's what he wrote:

"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

"Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

"The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

"Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

"This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

"It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?

"Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.

"The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.

"Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.

"Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.

"Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

"Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

"Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.

"The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.

"What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow. Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that."

And just to round things out, attached is another photo that I took on our family vacation to New York City. This is from the lobby of the American Museum of Natural History which is dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt - it's a great quote from his speech given at the funeral for his son. For more from Teddy, see the March 2, 2006 entry in my other blog at: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/

NT Times Exposes Global Warming Myth

Today, on January 1, 2008, the New York Times science section printed an expose revealing that man-made Global Warming is a false alarm propagated by "availability entrepreneurs" like Al Gore, activists, journalists, and publicity-savvy scientists. Thia is clear evidence that the climate of opinion on alleged global warming is shifting in favor of skeptics/impartial scientists, especially since it comes from the New York Times, until now a fervent acolyte of climate change guru Al Gore and his doctrine of ongoing and disastrous climate change. You can read the entire article on-line at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. In brief, the article by John Tierney states:

"I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.
You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

"Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

"But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

"Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

"A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

"When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

'When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, it was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).

"When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.

"Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

"The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots.

“Many people concerned about climate change,” Dr. Sunstein says, “want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.”

"Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.

"Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, but they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents. Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.

"Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

"Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

"It was, of course, the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.

"In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”

“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."

If you can't access the link to NY Times.com, try this one to Newsmax.com: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/NY_Times:_Global_Warming_/2008/01/01/60981.html?s=al&promo_code=422C-1

(Note: I took the above photo on our family vacation to New York between 12/25/07 and 1/1/08)