ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

CLAIM THAT US SATELLITE DATA SHOW DECLINING TEMPERATURES

    From the Times UK ("Christopher Booker's Notebook"):

The scare over global warming, and our politicians' response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.

This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.

LOS ANGELES MAYOR'S SEATTLE SPEECH BASED ON FAULTY INFORMATION

     The Post below is taken from my column ("Legal News You can Use") published weekly by the Warner Center Newsgroup (in the San Fernando Valley, California):

             Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles recently delivered a speech, “Global Warming and Local Responsibility,” to the 2007 Mayors Climate Protection Summit held by the US Conference of Mayors in Seattle.  With the constant refrain, “The heat is rising”, invoked throughout the speech, he touted “green” reforms both in process and promised—and which the taxpayers will, of course, have to fund.

            Whatever your views about “global warming”, we should all be able to agree that public policy needs to be based on fact, not erroneous or incomplete information.  The Mayor’s speech regretfully contained both.

            1.   Inaccurate statement 1. The Mayor proclaimed in Seattle: "Last year was the hottest on record."  Fact:  Per ABC News, August 25, 2007: "Was 1998 the hottest year in United States history, as most reporting on climate change has presumed? Or was that record set back in 1934 before ‘global warming’ became a scary household phrase?...  A corrective tweak to National Aeronautics and Space Administration's formulation shows that the hottest year on record in the United States indeed was back during the Dust Bowl days."

            2.  Inaccurate statement 2.   The Mayor warned his colleagues:  "It's [that is, temperature] rising in the Gulf of Mexico, where climatologists warn that for the foreseeable future, the escalating surface water temperatures will intensify the violence of approaching Atlantic storms."  Fact:  This past season was one of the quietest, not most violent, on record.  Fact:  The implication that "climatologists" in unison believe what the Mayor said is, quite simply, erroneous. Per the Sydney Morning Herald, October 14, 2007 : "One of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize ‘ridiculous’ and the product of ‘people who don't understand how the atmosphere works’. Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.”

            3.  Statement lacking scientific support.  The Mayor stated that "Last year in Los Angeles, we got just 22 percent of normal rainfall. As a result, we have been scorched by fire. Just last week, Californians could see and feel the heat of a warming planet right outside of our own doors and windows."  Fact:  I am aware of no scientific support for the proposition that our present drought is caused by global warming, or that the fires were caused thereby.  In fact, droughts have routinely occurred in our area as far back as there are records; and the fires in large part were caused by arson.

            4.  Statement of omission.  The Mayor proclaimed:  "In Los Angeles, we paved over our namesake, the river of the Queen of the Angels from which we draw our very identity."  Fact: While the Los Angeles River was put in concrete after the devastating flood of 1938, this was done to preserve life and property from a repeat of such devastation.  The Mayor’s speech did not mention the reason for such paving--or the risks that may reoccur if such flood-control improvements are destroyed.

            The debate over "global warming", whatever your views, is not helped wherever the debate is premised on wrong information. Such incorrect information is precisely what underlay the Los Angeles Mayor's speech in Seattle.

            

YELLOWSTONE, KRAKATOA SHOW ACTIVITY

     Environmentalists constantly worry about man-made activity allegedly causing climate change.  From a report of the Associated Press via Fox News about the ancient Yellowstone volcano and another such report about Indonesia's Krakatoa, however, we are again reminded how environmentalists unduly flatter the human race with tales of our power over the environment.

     Two of the world's historic super volcanoes, Yellowstone and Krakatoa, have recently shown signs of activity which could result in eruptions. Yellowstone has been rising at 3 inches per year over the last three years--three times normal. While the Yellowstone report quotes a geologist who reassures us that a Yellowstone eruption does not appear imminent (which is a good thing, because a massive eruption could devastate the entire North American continent) , the Krakatoa eruption appears imminent:

Krakatoa's massive 1883 blast, heard nearly 2,000 miles away in Australia, sent pyroclastic surges of gas and burning ash which, combined with a tsunami, wiped out 165 villages and killed at least 36,417 people.

     Yellowstone and Krakatoa remind us of man's somewhat paltry role in the world's environmental destiny.

WHY JOE LIEBERMAN REMAINS A DEMOCRAT

      On Thursday, November 1, 2007, Yahoo!News carried an Associated Press report that Sen. Lieberman has helped advance legislation in the U.S. Senate "that would impose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases from power plants, industrial facilities and transportation."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., pushed the legislation out of his global warming subcommittee by a 4-3 vote, agreeing to a number of changes aimed primarily at garnering the needed majority to advance it.

The bill calls for setting limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are emitted from power plants, refineries, factories and motor fuels. Polluters could exceed the limits by buying credits from companies whose emissions are under their allowable ceiling.

Lieberman called the vote "potentially a landmark event, the moment at which the United States finally began a serious fight against the threat of unchecked global warming."

     The quote above illustrates, in a nutshell, why Sen. Lieberman, though nominally an "Independent", votes with the Democrats to organize the Senate.  Domestically, he remains a "liberal" or "progressive" politician who favors an expanded federal role in --well, in just about everything.

     Of course, like Democrats (and many Republicans) in general, the Senator misses entirely the fact that "greenhouse gas" emissions could best be combated by promoting the best source of non-greenhouse gas energy-nuclear power.   Similarly, like most Democrats (and some Republicans), the Senator to my knowledge gives lip service to "energy independence" while failing to favor the surest way to such independence-- again, nuclear power combined with more domestic drilling for oil, both off shore and in Anwar.

     While, unlike some, Senator Lieberman recognizes the terrorist threat to America is real (thus sparking calls for him to change parties), one can readily see in issues such as "global warming" and the failure to promote energy independence just why such calls fall on deaf ears.