McCain Wrong on Global Warming

This just illustrates the fact that this year's [2008] presidential election isn't between right and wrong, it's between bad and worse. I'm so discouraged.

A British editor and politician prominent in the discussion of climate change has written an open letter to John McCain criticizing statements the Republican candidate has made about global warming.

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who was an adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sought to keep Al Gore’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” out of public schools in Britain, and in March 2007 challenged Gore to a debate on climate change.

Now in his letter to McCain, published on the Web site American Thinker, Monckton calls manmade global warming fears “scientifically discredited” and advises, “Not for a single moment longer must you allow yourself to be distracted by the murderous foolishness of the climate alarmists.”

Monckton quotes a McCain statement that “we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures.”

Monckton, saying he bases his assertions on “peer-reviewed scientific literature,” counters, “For most of the past 600 million years, the temperature that most often prevailed globally is thought to have been 12.5 degrees higher than today’s temperature . . .

“From 1700 to 1998, temperature rose at a near-uniform rate of about 1 degree per century. In 1998, ‘global warming’ stopped, and it has not resumed since. Indeed, in the past seven years, temperature has been falling at a rate equivalent to as much as 0.7 degrees per decade.”

Responding to McCain’s statement that greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, “are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change,” Monckton writes, “Two-thirds of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is naturally present, and carbon dioxide occupies just one ten-thousandth more of the atmosphere today than it did 250 years ago.”

Monckton, who was an editor and writer with Britain’s Evening Standard newspaper, quotes McCain, “We need to deal with the central facts of . . . rising waters.”

He counters, “Sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago . . . The rate of increase has averaged four feet per century. Yet in the 20th century, when we are told that ‘global warming’ began to have a major impact on global temperature and hence on sea level, sea level rose by just eight inches.”

Then in a swipe at Al Gore, whom he does not mention by name, Monckton observes, “There is not and has never been any scientific basis for the exaggerated projections by a certain politician that sea level might imminently rise by as much as 20 feet.

“That politician, in the year in which he circulated a movie containing that projection, bought a $4 million condominium just feet from the ocean at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.”

Monckton also seeks to refute statements McCain has made on receding glaciers, melting polar ice sheets, extreme weather events, threats to polar bears, and more.

And in reference to the candidate’s stated support for efforts to control climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, Monckton tells McCain: "With every respect, there is no rational basis for your declared intention that your great nation should inflict upon her own working people and upon the starving masses of the Third World the extravagantly pointless, climatically irrelevant, strategically fatal economic wounds that the arrogant advocates of atmospheric alarmism admit they aim to achieve.”

Straight Talk About Energy Policy

I promised Kimball that I wouldn't post or editorialize about his paper - he was worried that I'd make him look too radical. So instead I will only reprint what other publications have already said about his paper:

Kimball Rasmussen, president and CEO of Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Utah G&T, gave a presentation this week to CFC employees at their Herndon, Va., headquarters based on his recent position paper, “A Rational Look at Climate Change Concerns and the Implications for U.S. Power Consumers.” The 50-page white paper does a skillful job of discussing NRECA’s “Our Energy/Our Future” campaign and explaining the complex science—and its inconsistencies and shortcomings—used to calculate the effects of global warming, referencing the recognized authority on global warming science, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Rasmussen acknowledges that global warming is occurring and that mankind’s activities contribute to it but advocates a thoughtful consideration of what to do about it based on the demand for electricity, the need for technology development, the costs associated with efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and the effect those efforts will have on rising temperatures.

Here are a few of the points presented by Rasmussen:

* The IPCC model is based on an average global temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius (range of 2 to 4.5 degrees) from a base calculation in the year 1750 to the expected temperature in 2100. This is due to a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere from 275 parts per million (ppm) to 550 ppm; the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 385 ppm.

* Climate change legislation is expected to be considered by the U.S. Congress. At a potential $50 per ton of CO2 settling price, a cap-and-trade program would cost the U.S. electric industry a staggering $100 billion per year—enough money to retire the net book value of every coal-fired plant in America within 3.5 years.

* The likely result of a U.S. cap-and-trade program is the exodus of U.S. industry and manufacturing to other parts of the world to reduce costs.

* If the United States were to develop enough renewable energy resources to replace current carbon-based resources within 10 years, as some have called for, we would need to duplicate the current amount of U.S. installed wind energy capacity once every 31 days for the next 10 years or build 1,247 new solar facilities similar to the 140-acre facility at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. (the third largest in the world) every month for the next 10 years. Neither outcome is possible.

* The United States emits about 6 billion tons of CO2 annually; the U.S. power sector emits about 2 billion tons of CO2 annually; and world CO2 emissions are approximately 30 billion tons annually. The U.S. percentage of annual global CO2 emissions is expected to decline over time.

* According to the IPCC formulae, if the United States were to shut down all of its fossil-fueled electricity within the next 10 years, the climate response would be a temperature decrease of just 0.07 degrees Celsius.

“I would hope that we could get past the extremes and apply reason and wisdom as we explore the best energy policy,” Rasmussen concludes in his white paper. “We should be cautious that international pressures do not overcome prudent domestic energy policy. An economically healthy America will have the best opportunity to develop technologies that can efficiently and methodically lead to a prudent transition from carbon resources. A misguided carbon tax, or cap-and-trade program, will grievously damage the U.S. economy, will accelerate the out-migration of heavy industry and will have no beneficial effect on future climate.”