JEFFREY BROWN: On this Presidents Day, the Republicans who would be president drove home their points in key upcoming primary states. And the latest seeming front-runner drew crowds and criticism.

Rick Santorum’s rise in the polls continued today heading into next week’s primary contest and two weeks before Super Tuesday. The new Gallup tracking poll showed Santorum leading with 36 percent of Republican voters. Mitt Romney is eight points back at 28 percent. Next is Newt Gingrich at 13 percent. And Ron Paul comes in fourth at 11 percent.

Polls out yesterday showed Santorum ahead in Oklahoma and in Ohio, an upcoming Super Tuesday state where he grabbed support from the state’s attorney general, who previously endorsed Mitt Romney.

In Ohio today, the former Pennsylvania senator continued a line of attack against President Obama which he had begun yesterday, arguing that global warming is — quote — “not climate science, but political science.”

RICK SANTORUM (R): They have nothing to do with real cost-benefit analysis, real understanding of how we have to value both the environment and its impact on man and the world. They have radical ideas.

JEFFREY BROWN: Over the weekend, Santorum also drew attention for how he described — quote — “the president’s agenda” at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

RICK SANTORUM: It’s about some phony ideal, some phony ideal, some phony theology, oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yesterday, on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama campaign strategist Robert Gibbs said the comments went too far.

ROBERT GIBBS, Obama campaign strategist: I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line. It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems that we all face together as Americans.

BOB SCHIEFFER, “Face the Nation”: He’s the man of the hour in Republican politics.

JEFFREY BROWN: But that same day, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Santorum defended his remarks.

RICK SANTORUM: I wasn’t suggesting the president is not a Christian. I accept the fact that the president is a Christian. I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth by things that are — that frankly are just not scientifically proven. . .

JEFFREY BROWN: Meanwhile, Santorum’s Republican opponents continue to campaign in crucial Super Tuesday states.

In Ohio today, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney insisted he’s the only candidate capable of beating President Obama in November.

MITT ROMNEY (R): I have had the experience of leading. I have led four different enterprises. I happen to think that one of the criteria for selecting a president ought to be, has this person led something before? Our current president had not. And I think we’ve seen the consequence of that in some of the errors he’s made.

JEFFREY BROWN: In Tulsa, Okla., former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he’s not planning on drop out of the race any time soon. And continuing to focus on states with caucuses, Texas Rep. Ron Paul turned his attention on North Dakota.

Today, his campaign said it had raised $4.5 million in January. Nonetheless, most attention today was on Santorum, who has seen his stock rise since winning contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri three weeks ago. That scrutiny will only increase as his numbers rise in Romney’s home state of Michigan, site of one of next week’s two key primary contests.

And late today, the newest Gallup poll was released showing Santorum up by 10 points over Mitt Romney.

And we take a closer look now at Rick Santorum’s rise with Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA Today, and from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.

Susan, start with some context here. Who is Rick Santorum speaking to or reaching out to? And what kind of reception is getting on the trail?

SUSAN PAGE, USA Today: He’s getting a great reception among Republican primary voters. This is a group of voters that is very conservative, lots of Tea Party supporters. A majority of them in some states like Michigan say they are evangelical or born-again Christians.

So when he talks about public education or about global warming in the way that he’s doing, this has really drawn him big crowds and brought him to a standing in the poll and sustained a standing in the poll that is pretty remarkable.

On the other hand, there are big risks for him in audiences that are also hearing what he’s saying. And that would be more moderate Republicans and especially the people who you turn to when you’re the nominee in a general election, like independent voters and women voters. They may be hearing some of the things he’s saying and thinking, is this someone I would really feel comfortable with in the Oval Office?

JEFFREY BROWN: I’m also wondering after so many months where the economy was the main focus of all this, to turn to these kinds of issues — you just named some of them — but also in the past couple of days prenatal care, you mentioned public school education, birth control, health care mandate, does he see these as these issues in a sense, as opposed to economic issues?

SUSAN PAGE: The social conservative issues have been his calling card at the beginning, have sort of made him different, say, from Mitt Romney.

But he has been trying to look like a more three-dimensional candidate, to talk about foreign policy, for instance, policy toward Iran, to talk about manufacturing policy. I was with him in Detroit last Thursday when he addressed the Detroit Economic Club, talking about the deficit, talking about economic policy, talking about the manufacturing sector and how to encourage it.

And he’s had some appeal in his home state of Pennsylvania, as I’m sure Terry will talk about, with the kind of voters, the kind of blue-collar voters that predominate in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and in Ohio.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Terry Madonna, let me bring you in there. You’ve followed Santorum for a long time. Is this — the appeal to conservatives and talking about social issues, has that been part of who he is for as long as he’s been in politics?

TERRY MADONNA, Center for Politics and Public Affairs, Franklin and Marshall College: Yeah. Well, Susan is exactly right.

I mean, when he started, for example, in 1980, when he defeated an incumbent Democrat, no one gave then Senator Santorum — or then Rick Santorum, lawyer Santorum, a chance to win that race in a Democratic district. And he amassed lots of volunteers, many of whom were pro-life.

Then he won his Senate seat in 1994 with the help of the Christian coalition. And he was solidly pro-life. But the fact of the matter is, until you get to the late 1990s, it doesn’t become sort of an overarching, overreaching issue, compelling issue, the way it certainly has become in the last decade.

He talked about fiscal matters, government reform, tax policies. That’s what got him elected in 1990 to the House and what got him elected in 1994 in the Senate. The other thing that Susan points out that is, I think, very important, he’s the only one of the four Republican candidates who had the niche among social conservatives.

He could always sort of rely on them. And in the polls that I have done and others have done, Tea Party activists are overwhelmingly social conservatives. So, he could reach that blend of fiscal conservatism, small government, limited government, get rid of the deficits. at the same time, he could talk about social issues.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, Terry, what about as a legislator in the state and then in the Senate? What became the key sort of issues that he worked on or became associated with? One was welfare reform, right?

TERRY MADONNA: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, he was the floor leader for welfare reform.

By the way, that’s the first time we really see this aspect of sort of the religious issues, moral issues come to play, when he fought for and insisted on faith-based grants and tax cut — you know, use of the money in welfare to go to faith-based organizations.

As a senator he did — and his critics are accurate — he did fight and brought home hundreds of millions of dollars for Pennsylvania projects. He supported minimum wage. He was never cozy or close to the unions, but he was certainly helpful to U.S. Steel. He had worked on projects for the pharmaceutical and technology industries in the southeastern part of the state.

He was a typical sort of light-blue, if I can, senator who could not ignore the interests of the state.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay.

Well, now, Susan, you talked about some of the risks of getting into some of these issues. Now you have, of course, the other Republicans hitting back. You have, I guess what you would call the Republican mainstream sort of expressing some worry, some publicly, some, you know, behind the scenes. What are you hearing there?

SUSAN PAGE: I think there’s tremendous concern among Republicans in Washington, among elected officials, including members of the House who are going to run, be running with whoever the presidential nominee is in November, about Rick Santorum and his ability to appeal to a broader electorate than the electorate we see in, say, the Iowa caucuses.

I think there is talk about whether — if Rick Santorum wins in Michigan next Tuesday, that would be a catastrophic event for Mitt Romney and raise questions about a rather smooth path to the nomination perhaps for Rick Santorum. And would the Republican elites then try to step in, in some way, draft somebody new to get into this race?

Or could you get to a convention where no one had a mathematical clinch on the nomination and you might have negotiations about who was going to get that prize?

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Terry Madonna, I suppose one thing that Republican leaders would be worried about is exactly what happened to Rick Santorum in 2006. He lost, and he lost real big, right, in his home state. What happened there?

TERRY MADONNA: Yes, by — yes, by — well, yes, in 2006 by 18 points to Bob Casey.

Well, it was the — no doubt about it, the Democratic wave, the Iraq war election. There was also his social conservatism hurt him — back to Susan’s pointing, really hurt him in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where — Now, Sen. Casey was pro-life, just as Rick Santorum was, but I think Sen. Santorum’s outspokenness and some of the provocative things that he had said about gays, about abortion and Supreme Court decisions, and about women’s role in the work force, very provocative.

Sen. Casey used some of that against him in the campaign. And then there was his residency. He had a home in Virginia. Sen. Casey made the argument that he wasn’t a resident of Pennsylvania anymore and his kids were going to school, paid for by the taxpayers of Pennsylvania while they lived in Virginia. It was a cyber-school.

All in all, I mean, it wasn’t a good year for Santorum. It’s like the revolution had simply run away from him. And he lost in the vital areas of the states, in Pennsylvania and Virginia and Florida and Missouri, that — that Republicans are going to have — a Republican candidate is going to have to win or he’s not going to win the electoral votes of those swing states.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, Susan, just briefly, what about President Obama and his advisers? Do you sense they’re taking Rick Santorum a little more seriously now?

SUSAN PAGE: Well, taking him a little more seriously because he looks a little more serious.

But I have got to say that they continue to think that Mitt Romney is the stronger general election candidate. And the longer Rick Santorum stays in this beating up on Mitt Romney, that’s fine with them. If he ends up being the nominee, I think they think that would all right as well, although of course there is some history for watching out what you wish for.

I remember the first campaign I covered in 1980 where the Carter people were so pleased that Ronald Reagan had the nomination. That didn’t turn out the way they had hoped.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Susan Page, Terry Madonna, thank you both very much.

SUSAN PAGE: Thank you, Jeff.

Article source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june12/campaign_02-20.html

1:00 AM

Papers: Center plans anti-global warming curriculum

Leaked documents point to behind-the-scenes efforts to spread doubt about global warming.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Leaked documents from a prominent conservative think tank show how it sought to teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming and planned other behind-the-scenes tactics using millions of dollars in donations from big corporate names.

Drops fall from an iceberg in Kulusuk, Greenland. Leaked documents purport to show the Heartland Institute sought to teach schoolchildren to doubt climate change science.

2005 File Photo/The Associated Press

More than $14 million of the money used by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute would come from one anonymous man, according to the leaked documents prepared for a meeting of the group’s board.

Heartland is one of the loudest voices denying man-made global warming, hosting the largest international scientific conference of skeptics on climate change. Several of its documents were leaked last week to the news media, showing the planning and money behind its efforts. Heartland said some of the documents weren’t accurate, but declined to be more specific.

As detailed in the papers, Heartland’s plans for this year included paying an Energy Department consultant $100,000 to design a curriculum to teach school children that mainstream global warming science is in dispute, even though it’s a fact accepted by the federal government and nearly every scientific professional organization. It also pays prominent global warming skeptics more than $300,000 a year and plans to raise $88,000 to help a former television weatherman set up a new temperature records website.

“The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on Jan. 17,” Heartland said in a statement. “The authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.” The institute singled out one of the six documents – claiming to be a summary of efforts on the issue of global warming – as a fake.

Because Heartland was not specific about what was fake and what was real, The Associated Press attempted to verify independently key parts of separate budget and fundraising documents that were leaked. The federal consultant working on the classroom curriculum, the former TV weatherman, a Chicago elected official who campaigns against hidden local debt and two corporate donors all confirmed to the AP that the sections in the document that pertained to them were accurate. No one the AP contacted said the budget or fundraising documents mentioning them were incorrect.

David Wojick, a Virginia-based federal database contractor, said in an email that the document was accurate about his project to put curriculum materials in schools that promote climate skepticism.

“My goal is to help them teach one of the greatest scientific debates in history,” Wojick said. “This means teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less.”

Five government and university climate scientists contacted said they were most disturbed by Wojick’s project, fearing the teaching would be more propaganda rooted in politics than peer-reviewed science.

Businesses and other interests often offer free curriculum materials to financially strapped schools, hoping that teachers will use them and help disseminate their views or promote their products.

Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said Wojick’s federal work has nothing to do with climate change and that the agency maintains that global warming is real and manmade.

Heartland also planned to spend $210,000 to help Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas tour the nation to speak about municipal debt, according to one document. Pappas lost to Barack Obama in the 2004 Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Pappas confirmed this in a phone interview, saying Heartland was exposing a “financial tsunami” of municipal debt.

The leaked document also discusses a new million-dollar Heartland initiative to promote the ability of patients to use experimental drugs that have not yet received federal safety approval, and efforts to support embattled Wisconsin Republican leaders in “Operation Angry Badger.” Those parts of the documents were not independently confirmed.

The documents also show Heartland has raised more than $2 million from large insurance companies and nearly half a million dollars from tobacco interests.

A person who emailed 15 media outlets and bloggers as “Heartland insider” sent six documents purporting to be from the think tank. “Insider” then killed the email account used to send the documents and could not be reached. Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely would not confirm or deny the claims made in the five documents that he did not call fake.

The most sensational parts of the documents – and much of what has been confirmed independently – had to do with global warming and efforts to spread doubt about what mainstream scientists are saying. Experts long have thought Heartland and other groups were working to muddy the waters about global warming, said Harry Lambright, a Syracuse University public policy professor who specializes in environment, science and technology issues.

“Scientifically there is no controversy. Politically, there is a controversy because there are political interest groups making it a controversy,” Lambright said.

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Article source: http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/papers-center-plans-anti-global-warming-curriculum_2012-02-19.html

WASHINGTON: The United States said on Thursday it will contribute $12 million to a six-country initiative to fight against climate change by low-cost programs, such as promoting clean cooking stoves.

Announcing the initiative, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the plan does not address carbon dioxide emissions, the primary cause of global warming that many governments are reluctant to cap.

The six-country coalition, which also includes Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, Sweden and Ghana, will tackle “short-lived” climate pollutants, highly potent greenhouse gases that contribute to one-third of global warming, according to the State Department.

Unlike carbon dioxide emissions, which remain in the atmosphere for a century, “short-lived” pollutants stay in the atmosphere for a few days to years.

Curbing black carbon, methane and HFCs, gases used in refrigerants and aerosols, can help the world achieve the U.N. goal pledged by nearly 200 countries of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) by 2050, Clinton said.

The United States is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, behind China. Several attempts to pass legislation to limit such emissions have failed in the U.S. Congress.

The new initiative will combine existing programs that address the pollutants, such as a global clean cooking stove initiative that tackles black carbon, or soot; and a global partnership led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to tackle emissions from methane in coal mines, agriculture and natural gas and oil systems.

The United States will contribute $12 million and Canada $3 million to the program’s start-up funding.

“We know of course that this effort is not the answer to the climate crisis. There is no way to effectively address climate change without reducing carbon dioxide, the most dangerous, prevalent and persistent greenhouse gas,” Clinton said.

Environmental groups applauded the initiative but warned that the coalition should not distract from the wider effort to tackle carbon emissions.

“Going after black carbon, methane and other short-lived climate forcers is no substitute for a strong, sustained effort to significantly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change,” said Eileen Claussen, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

WWF said the U.S. and Canada should not shift the focus on other countries to address climate change, especially because both countries have failed to enact global warming bills.

“While support for poorer countries is important, their primary responsibility should be to cut their own emissions and address the global challenges posed by climate change,” said Samantha Smith, leader of the WWF Climate and Energy Initiative.

The six countries launching the initiative will hold their first meeting in Stockholm in April.

Article source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/US-leads-low-cost-bid-to-curb-global-warming-pollutants/articleshow/11922948.cms

NixBCThe Sierra Nevada range.​If global warming is a serious problem making our summers hotter and our water sources drier, we’d certainly have felt it in California in the last 130 years, right?

But a new study that looks at the Sierra Mountains’ snowpack and other statewide precipitation in that span concludes that “over time snowfall in California is neither increasing nor decreasing.”

We’ll drink to that.

Well, not so fast:

The Sierra Nevadas provide much of California’s water. They feed L.A.’s need via the Owens Valley and the city Department of Water and Power’s aqueduct. (As a side note, see Chinatown and/or Inventing L.A.).

The Owens Valley (we’re to the bottom left, off the page).​

Researchers recently recorded “the driest December in 22 years” in California and a Sierra snowpack that has been measured as the lowest on record in nearly 50 years at certain locations.

Christy doesn’t seem worried:

You’ll see very large variations from one year to the next, lots of ups and downs. But you look across 133 years, and they’re bouncing around all over, with a mean level that doesn’t change. I think there are a lot of claims and worries about the Sierra snowpack, given claims about global warming. Is there some long-term change here? You just don’t see that effect on the Sierra.

His study concludes that ” … regional trends ending in the 2010/11 season for the
longest and most robust time series were not significantly different … “

Christy’s work on the environment has been called out in the past as “unscientific nonsense.” He’s also been name-checked as a global warming “denier.”

But the facts of his latest work are right here in black-and-white (link).

Christy’s study shows no long-term slide for snowpack.​

He argues:

Droughts will happen. You don’t have to conjure any excuse for them. But it appears the source of the water for California remains fairly steady overall.

Do you believe?

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Article source: http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/02/california_snowpack_drought_global_warming_water.php

by Opinion | February 12, 2012

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Editor’s note: This op-ed by retired ABC News diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore first aired on Vermont Public Radio.

As a consequence of Rick Santorum’s wins, he got much more air time on the cable news channels than he normally receives. So many viewers got a chance to hear what the former senator really feels about global warming. These are a few of his opinions, offered Monday to the Colorado Energy Summit.

Quote: “We were put on this earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the earth, to use it wisely but for our benefit, not the earth’s benefit. We are intelligent beings … we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped to create.”

Santorum said the claim that climate change is manmade is a “hoax … an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who saw this as an opportunity to create panic and a crisis — for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”

Santorum went on, “I for one understand from science that there are a hundred factors that influence the climate. To suggest that one minor factor — of which man’s contribution is a minor factor of a minor factor — is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling, is just absurd on its face.”

In the past, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich conceded climate change may be real. But in seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year, each has disavowed his previous positions. Gingrich went so far as to say his appearance in a TV ad with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that addressed climate change, was “The dumbest single thing I’ve done in five or six years.”

President Barack Obama is not a climate change denier. His decision to delay approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas was an apparent concession to environmentalists. He has promoted clean energy alternatives and significantly increased mileage efficiency in cars and trucks of the future. But as nearly all Republicans and more than a few Democrats in Congress remain skeptical about global warming, Obama has clearly opted not to force the issue.

You may have missed this, because hearings of Vermont Statehouse committees don’t get much attention. But also last week a House panel heard from Bill McKibben, author of one of the first major books on climate change and a recognized world expert on global warming. With memories of Tropical Storm Irene’s torrential floods still fresh on our minds, McKibben said Irene was “precisely what climatologists have been telling us what to expect.” He explained that a basically normal storm moving up the East Coast encountered record sea surface temperatures, causing it to soak up enormous quantities of moisture, much of which it then dropped on Vermont with devastating consequences.

A final thought. McKibben indicated that these ever-more frequent catastrophic weather events now occurring throughout the globe far exceed the dire climate change predictions he and others made 20 years ago.

Posted in Opinion | Tagged Barrie Dunsmore, Bill McKibben, climate change, Colorado Energy Summit, Rick Santorum | 1 Response

Article source: http://vtdigger.org/2012/02/12/dunsmore-climate-change-and-the-gop/

Hardly a week goes by that we aren’t reporting a story on concerns about global warming.

But, a growing number of people in the scientific community are coming forward to express doubts about the prevailing scientific opinions concerning global warming.

Recently, 16 respected scientists signed a letter, published in the Wall Street Journal, which indicated there is no need to panic about global warming, arguing there’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize‘ the world’s economy.

A few days after the letter appeared, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) released a study which finds human activity contributes to global warming.

The NASA study, “Earth’s energy imbalance and implications,” was recently published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The study was led by James Hansen, director of  GISS, a respected scientist who is well known for his work in climatology.

Data collected by Argo floats, such as this one, helped Dr. Hansen’s team improve the calculation of Earth’s energy imbalance. (Photo: Argo Project Office)

Many say it was his testimony on climate change before the US Congress in 1988, that was responsible for increasing awareness of global warming and climate change, bringing the issue to the forefront of the public’s consciousness.

At the heart of the new paper is an emphasis that greenhouse gases generated by human activity – and not changes in solar activity – are the primary force driving global warming.

The study calculated the balance of energy the Earth takes in from the sun, the amount of energy that’s absorbed by the surface of the Earth and compared it to what energy is returned from the Earth to space in the form of heat.

The researchers found, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, Earth continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a colleague of Dr. Hansen’s at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, tells us that basically, we’re putting greenhouse gases – which are primarily water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone – into the atmosphere, making it harder for energy coming in from the sun and processed by Earth’s climate systems to make it back out to space.

Schmidt says that their research showed that temperatures are changing because of increases in greenhouse gases.  The increased emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere keep more energy trapped near the ground than what would be considered normal.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt (Photo: NASA/GISS)

That imbalance – more energy coming into Earth than is leaving it – is part of the whole global warming story.

As far as other evidence supporting the theory of human-caused global warming, Dr. Schmidt points to conditions such as the temperature changes that scientists are recording around the world; the heat content changes in the ocean; stratospheric cooling, which he says is a “very clear signature of carbon dioxide;” as well as the spectral radiation scientists are measuring from satellites.

Dr. Schmidt says those along, with other signs to look for, such as sea ice, the phenology of plants and glacial melting, prove that the actual fact of warming is incontrovertible, that the planet has clearly warmed over the last 100 years and that the warming has increased over the last few decades.

Dr. William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton University is one of the 16 scientists who signed the Wall Street Journal letter, and he raises doubts about what has almost become conventional wisdom on global warming.

Dr. Happer also testified before Congress, in 2009, saying, “I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind.”

Dr. Happer says the Wall Street Journal letter is the result of a scientific examination of  global warming and increasing CO², which found “there’s more smoke than fire there,” and demonstrates that not all scientists think there’s a drastic problem that must be immediately addressed.

Dr. William Happer (Photo: Denise Applewhite, Princeton University Office of Communication)

The Wall Street Journal letter was directed toward “candidates running for public office in any contemporary democracy who may have to consider what, if anything, to do about ‘global warming.’”

The signatories of the letter said that they were speaking for “many scientists and engineers, who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate,” and that their basic message to the candidates was that, “there is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.”

Many people today believe that anthropogenic global warming is a cold, hard and irrefutable fact.  But, scientists such as Dr. Happer say this might not necessarily be true.

Dr. Happer describes climate change as happening all the time, that it’s been changing and that it has clearly warmed up over the last 200 years.  But Dr. Happer insists the current warming trend started from a very cold period at the end of what has been called the “little ice age”.

“Most of the warming you hear about and most of the glacier melting was over by 1900,” says Dr. Happer.

Dr. Happer finds it hard to believe the early phase of the warming, which he says is the biggest part, was all independent of CO2 because its levels hadn’t increased much before 1900.

In the Wall Street Journal letter, Dr. Happer points out there has been no warming for over 10 years.  He invites anyone to “look it up on the Internet.”

CO2 (Image: David Gaya/Generated with KPovModeler via Wikimedia)

“Just look at the graph of temperature versus time since the year 2000 and there has been no warming,” says Dr. Happer.

According to Dr. Happer, the data implies that the models, which predicted quite a lot of warming, have greatly exaggerated the effect of C02.

Dr. Happer thinks that most, if not all, of those who signed the letter believe  CO2 will cause some warming but that the amount has been enormously exaggerated.

You, of course, can find volumes and volumes of information and data that support both sides of this issue on the Internet or in your local library.

But, by sharing what Drs. Happer and Schmidt shared with us on this issue, we wanted to give you just a little “food for thought” so that you draw your own conclusions regarding global warming and whether or not it’s been primarily caused by human activity.

Both Dr. Gavin Schmidt, from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and, Dr. William Happer of Princeton University join us this weekend on the radio edition of “Science World.”

They’ll each give us their insight into the global warming/climate change issue. Tune in (see right column for scheduled times).

Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• Mating call of prehistoric katydid chirps again
• Pakistani fisherman reel in a big one – a 12-meter whale-shark
• President Obama holds science fair at White House
• Scientists: plants can talk to each other
• Russian scientists say they’ve drilled through thick Antarctic ice to reach freshwater lake
• Researchers reverse Alzheimer’s disease in mice
• Farming may have helped rainforests of Central Africa disappear

Article source: http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/2012/02/11/debate-over-global-warmingclimate-change-heats-up/

Image via Wikipedia

It’s too bad that airbags can’t save investments in automobile companies.  If they could, there might be some hope for taxpayers when Fisker Automotive, another one of Barack Obama’s “investments” in “green energy”, crashes and burns financially.

In May, 2010, the Department of Energy (DOE) approved $529 million in loan guarantees to Fisker to help finance development of battery-powered cars.  Fisker had drawn down $193 million of this money by February 7, 2012, when DOE announced that it was “freezing” disbursement of the loans because the company had not met agreed milestones.

Fisker responded by laying off 26 people who were working on preparing a plant in Delaware to produce a “plug-in hybrid” car to be called the Nina.  They also laid off 40 contract employees at their headquarters in Anaheim, Calif., where Fisker still employs 600 people.  Fisker is currently seeking to renegotiate the terms of its deal with the DOE so that it can resume drawing down taxpayer-guaranteed funds, but the prospects are uncertain.

At this point, taxpayers should be concerned their $193 million loan to Fisker will follow the $535 million loan to solar energy firm Solyndra, the $118 million grant to battery maker Ener1, and the $39 million loan given to Beacon Power down the economic rat hole called “alternative energy”.

In a sense, Fisker’s woes could be attributed to bad karma, because most of the taxpayer-guaranteed funds it has drawn down thus far went to help it develop its first car, the Fisker Karma.

The Chevrolet Volt, which was also developed at taxpayer expense, has not been selling well.  Despite $7,500 (or more) in taxpayer subsidies to every purchaser, it turns out that there is not a huge market for a small, cramped hatchback that lists for $49,000 and can, at best go 40 miles before it must switch from batteries to gasoline power.

Now, try to imagine the sales prospects for a car that has a smaller back seat than the Volt, a smaller trunk than the Volt, can only go 25 miles on pure electric power, is backed by a company that most people have never heard of, and lists for $103,000.

Fisker claims to have produced 1250 Karmas and to have sold about 250 of these.  Its business plan calls for selling 15,000 Karmas a year.  This is more than Lexus sells of its LS460 luxury sedan, which is similar in size, much roomier, considerably quicker, gets similar mileage under gasoline power, is backed by Toyota, and lists for only $67,630.

To be sure, the Fisker Karma is a beautiful car, perhaps the most beautiful 4-door sedan in the world.  It might have made more sense for Obama to funnel the $193 million to Fisker through the National Endowment for the Arts rather than the DOE.  Unfortunately, however, the Karma’s commercial viability will depend upon its virtues as an automobile, rather than as a piece of sculpture.

The Fisker Karma exemplifies the inherent problem with “alternative energy”.  Namely, what is alternative energy an alternative to?  It is an alternative to energy sources that make economic sense.  If an alternative energy project were capable of producing energy that was worth more than it costs, it would not need taxpayer subsidies.

Extending loan guarantees to alternative energy projects, as the Obama administration has done in droves, essentially guarantees a series of bankruptcies and scandals.  It will be interesting to see how many of these cans can be kicked down the road past the election, and how many will blow up before then.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/02/08/global-warming-alarmism-points-to-bad-karma-for-your-tax-dollars/