Wu Wei and Carbon Mania

Wu Wei is a wonderful philosophy alien to modern civilization, though at times we get a glimpse of it.

A rough translation is action by not acting. Westerners can't stand this one. We are so sure we can fix the universe.

We, armed our science and bucket of vague and filtered facts, are sure we can fix everything by tinkering and making plans. Sometimes, action is required, but often sitting and watching is better.

An old story provides advice for someone standing in a muddy pool who had dropped a thing of value - don't go walking and grabbing the mud. That will make things impossible to resolve. Rather, just stand quietly and wait. Your best chance will be when you can see the bottom, as the mud settles out. I suppose Wu Wei is related to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Flash forward to now.

The WSJ has a piece on what has happened after the geniuses in Washington signed into law sweeping and expensive legislation pushing ethanol and biofuels. Two studies were proffered to explain the switching to such fuels will INCREASE CO2 in the atmosphere. Click on the title to read the article in full. Yes, INCREASE. Don't fog over on me, here. Try to focus on negative feedback.

The first study is from ecologists at Woods Hole. Below, is the WSJ summary:

Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks. About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of "carbon sinks" that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use...

...In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it's not easy being green.

The second study:

The second study comes out of the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy and explores what the authors call the "carbon debt" when native ecosystems are converted to biofuel stock. Until the debt is repaid, biofuels from those fields will be greater net emitters than the fossil fuels they replace. The authors find that the debt for corn ethanol in the U.S. is between 48 and 93 years. In Indonesia and Malaysia, which have a 1.5% annual rate of deforestation to produce palm oil for Western European biodiesel, the debt is as high as 423 years. Yep, that's four centuries. Even Fidel Castro won't last that long.

It gets tiring pointing to the foibles of the well-intentioned green movement and sneering at the pandering politicians, so I give up. I won't say, "Told you so." It is almost pointless to bring this data to the zealot's attention as it never filters through to the brain. This is the clue that we are dealing with a religion.

Eventually, science will actually do its job, as people's reputations and long term careers can be short-circuited by being documented participants in our time's irrational tulip craze. The last blog entry, I think, demonstrated how some folks in Canada wanted to publish their concern that an ice age is coming, the ultimate warming heresy, Amen. (so give us funding - at least the causative impulse is the same. Left, Right, UP or Down - show me the money.) Don't think they published these reports without considering their academic positions.

The real problem is the politicians who have no sense of linear thought and bounce from opinion poll to opinion poll. They change the target when wrong (witness Senator Pelosi on Iraq) and forget what they said earlier on, knowing the media will never refer to their own archives.

There is no talking to them, either, so we need to just get them out. Forget about party denominations, get the weeds out of our garden. A weed is a weed is a weed.

I have developed a notion of a virtual term limit. After two terms, a Congress person, either house, now has the burden of proof of convincing constituents that they are worthy of keeping - a job review. IF the person does not come forward with convincing evidence of what they did in Washington, you vote against them. Period. It should not be up to us to cut through the vague crap to figure out what they did. Vagueness is their greatest weapon.

Anyway, non-ado is the heart of the Tao. Keep to the voice of nature, as you find it within you, and not much can go wrong. You won't make things much worse, for sure.

Leave nature alone, either as an abuser or fixer. The former is human ignorance and greed; the latter our arrogance and hubris. The answer is not in the stars, but within ourselves. It is up to us to find those stars within our own spirit.

It is certainly not found mob panic.

Its always something: Maunder Minimum and Schwabe Cycle stalking us

The rumblings that CO2 and warming are not the problem continue. As you have read here, the big concern should be over the sun's activity and the potential for a little or BIG ice age. I italicized parts of the article from the Investor's Business Daily editorial I received from Irene Wolfson. If you are a skimmer, you can catch enough in those sections to ruin your whole day and think about land in Texas.

The Sun Also Sets

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

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Related Topics: Global Warming

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Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

Old fashioned Republicans exist

From Richard Corveti: Another way to look at the free money we are paying for, after taxes and the government's vigorish:

STIMULUS BILL

Georgia Republicans unhappy about rebate

By BOB KEMPER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/09/08

Washington — President Bush is expected to sign a $168 billion economic stimulus bill next week, and about half of Georgia's congressional delegation will be applauding him.

But it won't be the Republican half. All seven Georgia Republicans in the House on Thursday voted against Bush's plan to stimulate the economy by sending checks to taxpayers in hopes they'll spend the money and kick-start a lagging economy.

(ENLARGE)

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland is among the seven House Republicans who voted against the Bush plan.

• Georgia's stimulus estimate: $3.6 billion • More Business news

"This legislation promises tax rebates, but it's not a tax rebate when we're borrowing money from China to write checks to ourselves," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Grantville Republican.

The Georgia Republicans said one-time tax breaks would drive up government debt while doing little to improve the economy. Republicans wanted to replace the rebate checks with permanent tax cuts that they said would do more good over the long term.

"If you were having trouble meeting your monthly budget, what would your reaction be if my advice to you was to start using your credit card to cover those bills?" said Rep. John Linder, a Duluth Republican. "It's not a very sound long-term economic solution."

Meanwhile, the state's six Democratic congressmen are hailing the package as a bipartisan effort that strategically injects money where it's most needed: the pockets of taxpayers and small-business owners....

WHOLE ARTICE (mostly boring) HERE

China basking in global warming

As I mentioned before, my favorite source for objective news is Xinha, the (communist) Chinese news agency. To get a feel for it and for the incredible winter disasters there, I recommend linking over: China Weather

To the right, see photo of stranded travelers in the a train station. Think we have troubles?

What is important to note is the recounting of all the assistance and messages of concern that China is receiving from world governments and NGOs. This is important as they begin to grow into maturity in the world community they may become better world citizens.

If you want a good snap shot of our election campaigns: Elections

All this stuff going on, all over the world, and we worry about dead and dying entertainers.

The missing news: global non-warming

I missed this one. I will do more homework on the background. According the article started below, Global Warming seems to have stopped seven years ago. The author is the BBC Science Writer and the rest of the article can be found by clicking the title. Notice the photo: a polar bear enjoying the best fishing in years.

SciTech

Has global warming stopped?

David Whitehouse

Published 19 December 2007

• 798 comments
• Print version
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'The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 and every year since 2001'. Plus read Mark Lynas's response

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.

But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly....

...But here it starts getting messy and, perhaps, a little inconvenient for some. Looking at the global temperatures as used by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK’s Met Office and the IPCC (and indeed Al Gore) it’s apparent that there has been a sharp rise since about 1980.

The period 1980-98 was one of rapid warming – a temperature increase of about 0.5 degrees C (CO2 rose from 340ppm to 370ppm). But since then the global temperature has been flat (whilst the CO2 has relentlessly risen from 370ppm to 380ppm). This means that the global temperature today is about 0.3 deg less than it would have been had the rapid increase continued

For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a sceptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact....

I have heard it said, by scientists, journalists and politicians, that the time for argument is over and that further scientific debate only causes delay in action. But the wish to know exactly what is going on is independent of politics and scientists must never bend their desire for knowledge to any political cause, however noble.

The science is fascinating, the ramifications profound, but we are fools if we think we have a sufficient understanding of such a complicated system as the Earth’s atmosphere’s interaction with sunlight to decide. We know far less than many think we do or would like you to think we do. We must explain why global warming has stopped.

Super Duper Twos Daze

A quick observation that may make you look smart tomorrow.

[Left: New Democratic Voters At Polls]

As in the last presidential election, the polls are not taking into account the sea of young voters, the twenty-moron-somethings, who do not have land lines, like me, a still fifty-something-savant.

So? you say.

There will be a jump in the Obama percentages that will surprise pundits, but not you, having been forewarned. This is based upon my assumption that young morons will vote for a nice looking, well spoken guy who doesn't come off like the devil incarnate (their moms) and they have not been polled via cell phones.

On the GOP side, the dimly-aware seem to think Mr. Type-A Egomaniac is a hero conservative, so Romney may not fare well, as the other conservative faker, Huckabee, is also syphoning conservative votes his way. Not that Romney is all that conservative, either, but, at least, he can add.

The important factor here is most of the states are not winner-take-all, so Romney will remain in the game. Massachusetts may give him a nice bunch of delegates. If he stays in to the convention, the freed voters of others running will make things interesting. Maybe we will have two old-fashioned conventions where the bosses can finally pick the best candidates, not the morons and savants.

Anyway, who cares. Its the bloods against the crypts.

Gene

Follow the NFP-Media Money

Today's offering is a long article from Real Clear Politics almost two years ago. Try to follow the money. Then, throw in the Ford Foundation and you have a hidden lobby and, frankly, NFP's that should have their charters pulled. All that said, the problem, as we watch the America of our parents vanish, is that we let our children be dumbed down and indoctrinated. I wonder if there is no critical thinking left to resist the mob being led about by the wealthy in pursuit of big business.

Also, keep in mind my earlier blog re the Bulgarian KGB officer whose book reports one of the KGB's greatest moments was inserting the anti-nuclear hysteria into American green organizations. Of course, maybe there is no KGB, no communists in Hollywood, no Marxist named Shanker running the teacher's union for decades, and no Easter Bunny.

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April 05, 2006

The Media and Reporting on the Environment

By David Mastio

Next time you read a magazine cover story like the one Time just published ("Be Worried. Be VERY Worried. Polar Ice Caps Are Melting ... More And More Land Is Being Devastated ... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame") you should remember one little fact: U.S. media companies, including Time Warner, donate more to the environmental movement than any other industry. Companies like The New York Times, Gannett, Tribune, ABC, CBS and NBC have donated more than a half-billion worth of ad space since the 1990s to raise money for some of the nation's most extreme environmental groups. And yes, that was billion with a B.

To put that number in perspective, America's media companies donate more to environmental groups every year than the much-feared Olin Foundation's spent annually in its effort to build the institutional foundation of the conservative movement.

The deal works like this: The Ad Council endorses and distributes ads that encourage people to give money to "Earth Share," a fundraising front group whose members include dozens of groups from the moderate Nature Conservancy to the radical Friends of the Earth. Media companies donate vast amounts of air time and ad space, assuming that Ad Council campaigns follow the charity's standards such as the rule that campaigns must be "non-commercial, non-denominational, non-partisan, and not be designated to influence legislation." (http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=319)

That rule may be important to our non-partisan media, but the Ad Council treats it like a joke. Earth Share's Fall 2005 newsletter, released at the same time as the latest round of Ad Council ads, brags that its members helped "defeat numerous efforts to pass legislation." (http://www.earthshare.org/news_resources/sharing_news.html)

Environmental ads' dubious facts

And the ads sponsored by Earth Share, endorsed by the Ad Council and fueled by media donations are not exactly examples of truth in advertising. Here's the text of one radio ad released last fall:

"Place your hand on your heart ... measure the beats ... 1...2...3...4...5... That's how long it takes to protect your child's life. Five heart beats. That's how long it takes to learn about the dangers of pesticides that could be in your child's classroom. Asthma, lower IQ scores and cancer have all been linked to prolonged exposure to these toxins ..."

Want to know the number of national medical and public health organizations that consider classroom chemical exposure a significant cause of cancer. Z-E-R-O. Want to know the number of scientific groups that blame classroom chemical exposure for asthma and low IQs? Yep, zilch. (Indeed, if you take the time to look it up, average IQ scores are rising.)

An agenda bigger than environmentalism

By giving free space to environmentalists' fundraising campaign, the press is not just broadcasting deceptive messages that stoke public anxiety, they're also laundering the image of environmentalism. The Ad Council name gives the fundraising a patina of non-partisanship. The Earth Share name gives the campaign a soft-focus that hides the full agenda of its member groups.

If you've given money to Earth Share, you might believe, as Harrison Ford says in some of Earth Share's Ad Council sponsored ads, there's "one environment and one simple way to care for it" - give some cash to Earth Share.

The reality is less simple. There may be one environment, but there are many other causes that can hijack your money: Efforts to stop missile defense testing (Union of Concerned Scientists), running attack ads against Senators who opposed campaign finance reform (Sierra Club) and derailing global trade negotiations or trying to give Bill Bradley the Democratic presidential nod instead of Al Gore (Friends of the Earth) are all causes supported by Earth Share members.

Earth Share members also tend to take a knee-jerk anti-technology stance, even when the new technology may benefit the environment. For instance, Earth Share's membership is almost universally opposed to biotechnology because "Frankenfood" genes may contaminate the environment or harm someone, somewhere, somehow. Who knows, they may be right. But while they raise these hypothetical concerns, they ignore concrete environmental benefits. Genetic engineering has significantly raised crop yields, allowing farmers to feed more people with less land. That leaves more room for wildlife. Genetic engineering also increases resistance to plant pests allowing farmers to slash their use of chemicals.

And now onto global warming

Which brings us to the latest news from the nexus between extreme environmentalism and the "non-partisan" Ad Council: The launch of a new campaign aimed at raising public awareness of our global warming crisis. The web site for the campaign (www.fightglobalwarming.com) makes things pretty clear: "Global warming is the most serious environmental issue of our time."

If those are the stakes, then the Ad Council would surely want the most persuasive messenger to bring this important information to the public, right?

And since "most respected scientific organizations have stated unequivocally that global warming is happening, and people are causing it ...," it should be easy for the Ad Council to find a non-partisan scientific messenger, then right?

Well, for some reason, no. The Ad Council has given us exactly the opposite: Their messenger is Environmental Defense (formerly known as the Environmental Defense Fund), a group with a reputation for crying wolf. Right now on their web page, ED asks parents to click to find out whether their children are in "danger" from dirty air. Nowhere can parents find the more comforting fact that, no matter where they live, kids today are breathing cleaner air than they did 50 years ago.

Just to add to their credibility, ED also has a reputation for partisanship, regularly adding its name to anti-Bush administration attacks ads and featuring the wife of the last Democratic presidential aspirant on its board.

And true to form, Environmental Defense takes a reasonable case - we should do something about global warming - and turns it into a joke: "While the world itself will not end, the world as we know it may disappear," ED intones in a Q & A on the site.

Saving the climate by stopping wind power

And that's where this whole Ad Council/Earth Share/Environmental Defense tangle gets impossible to follow.

We know, because the Ad Council tells us so, that "global warming is the most serious environmental issue of our time." The world as we know it is at stake. We also know, because the Ad Council tells us so, that there is "one simple way" to care for the environment - give money to Earth Share.

We also know, that in the short term, there are four kinds of energy society can use that are a) widely available and b) will lower our impact on the global climate: Hydro-electric, wind power, nuclear energy and natural gas.

Yet in every case, the Ad Council is using its vast resources to raise money that makes turning to those sources of power harder, not easier.

Earth Share members, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, have filed complaints asking the government to shutter dozens of nuclear power plants across the U.S., they're standing in the way of opening a central repository for nuclear waste and they're opposing regulatory changes that would streamline the permitting process so that the United States could add new zero-climate impact nuclear power for the first time in a generation.

Today, the United States is among the top three nations in the world in producing climate-friendly hydro-electric power. It might not stay that way. In an effort to protect endangered trout and salmon, Earth Share members, such as Defenders of Wildlife, have pushed repeatedly - and in some cases successfully -- to "breach" hydro-electric dams as a way to restore fish habitat.

Of fossil fuel power sources, natural gas is the cleanest and, because it is also the most efficient, it has the least impact on climate. Yet all over the United States environmental groups both local and national are fighting to stop its use. In the mountain West, Earth share members are fighting to stop exploration for and production of natural gas. If we can't produce natural gas in the United States, then we'll need to import it. That can't happen either because Ad Council-funded groups such as the U.S. PIRG, People for the Narragansett Bay and Save the Sound, are fighting to stop the infrastructure projects that would allow that.

Which brings us to the most bizarre case of all - wind power. If there's one thing you'd think would be mom and apple pie for environmentalists, wind power would be it, but its not.

For the most part, environmentalists are embarrassed by the fact that they can't even stomach the development of wind turbines. For that reason, environmentalists are letting the local NIMBY's do most of the heavy lifting, while national environmental groups such as Earth Share's Audubon Society quietly push for greater regulations under the cover of protection for endangered bats and birds. If you talk to wind power executives, they'll tell you that one-two punch of angry locals and quietly influential national groups have stalled and scaled bank wind farms from Vermont to California.

It may be true that every single one of the environmental concerns raised to block hydro-power, wind energy, nuclear plants and natural gas development are all valid. But if global warming is really, really the "most serious environmental issue of our time," shouldn't environmentalists be willing to put their other concerns aside until we deal with the dangers of runaway climate change?

Maybe if our largest television networks, newspapers and magazines weren't the largest fundraisers for these same environmental groups, they'd be in a position to ask.

David Mastio has been an environmental reporter for The Detroit News, a speechwriter for the Bush administration, an editorial writer for USA Today and one of the founding editors of The Washington Examiner. He is also the founder of InOpinion.com.

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