The Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Chicago, Illinois on May 16-18, 2010 at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago. It will call attention to new scientific research on the causes and consequences of climate change, and to economic analyses of the cost and effectiveness of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As a co-sponsor, SEPP receives 20 free registrations to the ICCC and has 10 remaining. They are available to those who respond first to singer@sepp.org. Sorry, no free transportation or hotel room.
Quote of the Week
“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
~ Vaclav Klaus, President, Czech Republic, Blue Planet in Green Shackles
THIS WEEK:
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is launching a new web site, www.NIPCCreport.org. It is now going through its shakedown cruise. The objective will be to post the latest scientific literature that is of interest to the climate change community, particularly those who question IPCC claims.
This week, politics are tumultuous. Facing election, Prime Minister Rudd of Australia punted on “cap and tax” until 2013 showing that to him political survival is more important and the greatest moral imperative facing the world. New Zealand’s Environmental Trading Scheme (cap and tax) is facing opposition with the business community up in arms. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is moving away from any binding international agreements on cap and tax.
The British government is in the middle of an election campaign and thus far the parties are all ignoring environmental schemes and their costs to the citizens. And at this moment, the Democrats in the US Senate are schizophrenic. Should they pass a sweeping immigration law giving citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants in hopes of picking up additional voters? Or should they address the cap and tax bill disguised under any other name? It appears that politicians are beginning to realize that the citizens, “the great unwashed,” are becoming aware that the science is shoddy and the schemes are extremely costly.
ClimateGate continues but the great deference shown to those involved by the investigating organizations may be over. Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has demanded that the University of Virginia produce a swath of documents relating to Michael Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grantfunded climate research conducted while Mann was at UVA between 1999 and 2005. To most, it may not be illegal to manipulate data thereby falsify science. However to receive Virginia taxpayer money by doing so may be a violation of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayer Act. The caterwauling by the academic community should be most interesting.
In the interim, the US EPA continues its relentless march to control the US economy by demanding control of carbon dioxide emissions. In the name of ocean acidification, EPA is insisting on regulations to further control the run-off of water from rain. The logic is incredible. According to EPA, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase carbon dioxide in the oceans – thus lower the pH. Yet, EPAclaims that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes warming. As shown by the Vostok ice cores, warming results in increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, from ocean outgassing – warm water cannot hold as much dissolved gas as cold water. To the EPA, power and control take precedence over logical consistency.
A tour of the southwestern part of California’s San Joaquin Valley, once some of the most productive farmland in the world, reveals the triumph of Federal policy by such agencies. Last year the Federal government cut off 90 percent of the irrigation water to about 500,000 acres, about the size of Rhode Island. This killed tens of thousands of acres of crops and thousands of acres of orchards. Unemployment in thriving farming communities went up to 40%. For thousands of years, a hallmark of civilizations has been irrigating arid lands to make them bountiful. These agencies are engaged in a campaign against civilization and the American citizen.
The leaking oil well and the resulting oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico are terrible news for those who have been supporting offshore drilling. No doubt, extremists will seize upon this unfortunate event to try to prevent drilling everywhere.
SCIENCE EDITORIAL
#14-2010 (May 1, 2010)
by S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Some Serious Questions about Nuclear energy
The White House has announced the termination of the Yucca Mountain project to provide a long-term and safe ‘engineered disposal site’ for spent nuclear reactor fuel (what many enviros refer to as a ‘nuclear waste dump’). Presumably, the WH action will help Senator Harry Reid (Dem–Nevada) as he seeks reelection in November 2010 (or am I just being cynical?).
A 1983 law calls for such disposal by the US government, so here are some questions for Secretary of Energy Dr Steven Chu:
1. Is Yucca now irrevocably dead? Y/N
2. If YES, do you see another 20-yr search shaping up to qualify another site? Y/N
3. If NO, does DOE just ignore the law; can nuclear utilities stop paying fees to DOE, and claim a refund (approaching $20 billion)?
4. Do you have any clue what this WH plans to do?
5. Do you see this EPA ever approving any kind of disposal of spent fuel (aside from the status quo of on-site storage) – in view of exaggerated fears of minute amounts of radioactivity?
6. Is this lack of a permanent disposal site likely to result in lawsuits that can stop nuclear energy – or seriously delay it or drive up costs prohibitively?
7. In other words: Does cancelation of Yucca spell the end for a nuclear future for the US?