John Kerry Addresses Climate Change in First Policy Guidance as Secretary of State

    Even as the situation in Ukraine has some talking about the possibility of a new cold war with Russia, Secretary of State John Kerry issued his first Policy Guidance since assuming his position a little over a year ago. The subject: Climate change.  In a blog post entitled "We Need To Elevate the Environment in Everything We Do", Kerry expresses a desire to make climate change his signature issue much in the way his predecessor Hillary Clinton made women's issues a "top-tier diplomatic priority":

Leading the way toward progress on this issue [climate change] is the right role for the United States, and it’s the right role for the Department of State.  That’s why I’ve decided to make climate change the subject of my first Policy Guidance as Secretary of State.  I have been deeply impressed by the way Secretary Clinton  elevated global women’s issues as a top-tier diplomatic priority, and believe me, we’re committed to keeping them there.  When the opportunities for women grow, the possibilities for peace, prosperity, and security grow even more.  President Obama and I believe the same thing about climate change.  This isn’t just a challenge, it’s also an incredible opportunity.  And the Policy Guidance I’m issuing today is an important step in the right direction.

    Saying "there’s no time to lose", Kerry enumerated seven steps the State Department will take to carry out the "critical mission" of addressing climate change:

I.  Lead by example through strong action at home and abroad.
II.  Conclude a new international climate change agreement.
III.  Implement the Global Climate Change Initiative.
IV.  Enhance multilateral engagement.
V.  Expand bilateral engagement.
VI.  Mobilize financial resources.
VII.  Integrate climate change with other priorities.

   Kerry closed with a call to action for members of the State Department, telling them tackling this issue is part of their "mission as diplomats":

Climate change has special significance for the work we do here at State, and so do clean water, clean air, sustainability, and energy.  We’re talking about the future of our earth and of humanity.  We need to elevate the environment in everything we do.  There’s nothing I’m more proud of then when we send one of our diplomats somewhere to really get out in the field and engage, to solve a problem, and to make something happen.  I want all of you to feel empowered to think and operate that way on climate change.  That’s our mission as diplomats and that’s our call to conscience as citizens of this fragile planet we inhabit.  So let’s get to work. 

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard. 

The EPA and the New Scientific Method for Kids: Just Believe Us

    The Obama administration's position on "climate change" is hardly news, but a page on the EPA's website targeted at students is a particularly egregious example of how the concept of "science" has been corrupted for political purposes.  Under the heading "A Student's Guide to Climate Change" is the promising subheading "Think Like A Scientist."  The subheading continues with the exhortation to "Uncover the cause of today's global climate change."  Then comes the following paragraph where "science" heads swiftly downhill and off a cliff:

Did you know that thousands of measurements of the Earth's air, water, and land are taken every day? These measurements come from weather stations, airplanes, ships, satellites, and many other sources all around the globe. Taken all together, these measurements and other observations tell us that the Earth's climate is warming, people are the main cause, and impacts on society and the environment are already happening.

    Isn't science grand?  Three sentences and our scientific journey has led us to the inescapable conclusions that:

1. Earth's climate is warming
2. people are the main cause
3. impacts on society and the environment are already happening

Science!  We just scienced!

    If any students' minds are still open at this point, a visit to the page helpfully entitled "Ruled Out" should take care of that.  Despite the foregone-conclusion nature of the heading, students are invited to investigate.  "Can you rule out natural factors as the main cause of today's climate change?  Examine the facts by clicking on the images below [sun, Earth's orbit, volcanic eruptions], and then make your decision."  Clicking on the images provides a short paragraph of information and then a question, "Could the sun/volcanoes/Earth's orbit be responsible for today's climate change? Reveal answer." A click on "reveal answer," of course, brings up the reasons why these factors have been - you guessed it - ruled out.  Eureka! Just a few minutes and a few clicks and voilà! We've just scienced again! And plenty of time left to play a few hours of X-Box before lunch!

    For those in middle school interested in delving deeper into the subject, the EPA recently announced a video contest.  Not surprisingly, the EPA is not looking for students to do experiments and present scientific conclusions - too messy.  So the conclusions are provided for them:

1) The signs of climate change are all around us. 

Here a few of the signs of climate change we’re seeing now: 

Higher Temperatures
Wilder Weather
Rising Sea Level
More Droughts
Changing Rain and Snow Patterns 

Visit our Signs of Climate Change web pages to learn more about the signs of climate change, and see the trends over the decades. 

2) The climate you will inherit as adults will be different from your parents' and grandparents' climate. 

Climate change means serious impacts on… 

Our health...Through longer allergy seasons, increased number of heat-related illnesses, and increased air pollution that can worsen asthma. 

The spread of disease... Warmer temperatures can expand the ranges and lifespans of disease-spreading mosquitoes and ticks. 

Heat waves and droughts... Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of heat waves and droughts. Heat waves increase energy costs for households, lead to blackouts and brownouts, and threaten human health and safety. Droughts can drive up food prices, limit hydroelectricity supplies, and affect manufacturing operations that rely on water to run their businesses. 

Wildfires... With climate change increasing the likelihood of hot, dry weather in many parts of the country, the risk of wildfires is expected to increase. 

Storms... In much of the country, more precipitation will fall in intense, short bursts such as blizzards and downpours, which can lead to flooding. In addition, scientists expect that hurricanes will become more intense, with higher wind speeds and heavier rains. 

Learn more about how climate change will affect people and the environment 

3) Now is the time to act on climate change. 

Reducing carbon pollution, and preparing for the changes that are already underway, is key to solving climate change and reducing the risks we face in the future. A major way carbon pollution gets into the atmosphere is when people burn coal, oil, and natural gas for energy. Everyone uses energy so everyone can be part of the solution!

It would appear that climate change "deniers" need not apply.
    The deadline for the contest is March 10, so time is running out.  So, ready kids? Grab your video camera and your EPA talking points, and let's science!

The Return of Al Gore?

    The last time we heard from Al Gore, he was continuing his quest to see the refining and production of carbon-based fuels replaced with cleaner, renewable sources of energy. According to a recent speech by President Obama, Gore (who at times has been characterized as "wooden") has decided to get more personally involved:

    We’re launching a program that will bring together the nation’s best scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to figure out how more cars can be powered by natural gas, a fuel that’s cleaner and cheaper and more abundant than oil.  We’ve got more of that.  We don’t have to import it.  We may be exporting it soon.
    We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance -- Al G.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I'd better go back and check the transcript.

Al Gore's Current TV - The "Anti-Fox"?

    In a Newsweek piece at the Daily Beast reporting on Al Gore's struggles to keep his fledgling TV network alive, there is this paragraph:

Gore and partner Joel Hyatt, had finally come up with what could be a game-changing plan: to reinvent the station as a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week liberal cable-news outlet, a bastion for progressive ideas and politics on television, a way to harness and influence the Democratic Party—in short, as Hyatt says, the “anti-Fox.”

"We Decide, then Report."

The Silence of the Greens, Part II

    A post by Jazz Shaw at Hot Air reports on the recent revelation that Chesapeake Energy funneled $26 million to the Sierra Club to fund a campaign against coal-powered energy.  There is a quote from the original blogger at Time magazine (via the Daily Caller) that referenced the Sierra Club's deep concerns with hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking":

The Fracking Regulatory Action Center (or FRAC tracker) is a resource for activists to help secure strong safeguards for fracking. It tracks state efforts to update their rules to stay ahead of the fracking boom, and to blunt its most dangerous effects. It also collects a growing library of technical comments and reports on these rules, which activists can use in their own work.

The last time I wrote about fracking, it was in reference to the upcoming exploration at the dormant Newberry volcano in Oregon and the relative silence from the environmental movement and the media in general, despite the fact that a process similar to fracking was being used.  I speculated that since the Newberry volcano project involved "renewable" energy, the green movement might be giving it a pass.  At the time, I was unaware of the Sierra Club's FRAC tracker.  Now a general search of all Sierra Club websites for "fracking" returns 362 results.   But interestingly, although not surprisingly, conducting searches on the FRAC tracker for "Newberry" and "volcano" come up with zero results.
    A further internet search did yield some references to the project and the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club.  As far back as November 2007, the Juniper Group of the Oregon Sierra Club has been commenting on and opposing the Newberry project.  But in fact, it is only on the "oregon.sierraclub.org" portion of the Sierra Club's website where these references are found.  And despite the upcoming test this summer that will pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of the volcano, my research found that there have been no references to project on their website in at least a year.  Could it be that the Sierra Club's championing of geothermal energy is influencing its consistency on fracking?

Save the Polar Bears! Be Quiet!

   I received the following email today from the National Wildlife Federation:

Dear Jeryl, 

 Polar bears' survival depends on us slowing global warming--which is melting the ice they depend on to hunt for food. But, right now polluters are attacking the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to reduce the carbon dioxide that is threatening the livelihood of this beloved species.

In the last week, over 9,000 people like you took action to protect polar bears, but we can't stop there.
Polar bears need you to speak up for their future--please take action today! -Sue

Isn't speaking up just going to create more carbon dioxide?

Accu-Whether... or Not...

   The dire long-range predictions of "global warming" and the less dramatic but more nebulous "climate change" are dubious at best and conspiratorial at worst.  Some recent dire short-term predictions have the misfortune of being subject to comparison with reality, unlike forecasts of temperature increase by the year 2100, when the temperature of the forecasters themselves and most of humanity will be that of the room.
   In the case at hand, the optimistically-named AccuWeather had projected back in October 2011 that the 2011-2012 winter was likely to be "Another Brutal One."  Indeed, most of AccuWeather's meteorological colleagues were similarly confident about the havoc winter seemed poised to wreak.  However, as today's Los Angeles Times notes, not much wreaking has come to pass so far.  Drudge went so far as to proclaim with Drudgian hyperbole, "USA seems to have escaped winter!"  To be fair, we still have to get through February's proverbial dead-of-winter and then the volatile month of March, so there is plenty of time to salvage reputations and improve forecasting accuracy percentages.  But that is the whole point of climate change/global warming skepticism.  Inaccurate short-term computer models don't improve by moving the ending date further into the future.
   Anyone who had invested in the skiing industry based on the forecasts in October would currently be having some serious second thoughts.  Calls to invest $10.5 trillion to fight climate change based on models peering decades into the future are certainly worth some equally serious second thoughts.  Mark Twain famously said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."  And maybe that's the way it ought to be.

The Silence of the Greens

   President Obama expended no less than 700 words in his State of the Union speech last night discussing energy, although to be fair, many of those words were recycled.  And appropriately so, since "renewable" and "clean" energy consumed a significant percentage of those words.  The president emphasized his priorities by even roping the Navy into "purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year" using "clean energy."  (As an aside:  if one is using the Navy to make a point, wouldn't some quantitative measurement of power using "ships" instead of "homes" have been more apropos?)  In any case, the President made it clear that his administration will continue tout its green credentials loudly and often.
  So when the Drudge Report recently linked to a story outlining plans to try to harness heat generated by the inactive Newberry volcano in Oregon to produce power, the most remarkable thing about the story is what it has not generated, that being media attention.  A Google news search for "Newberry volcano" as of January 25th generated only 188 hits.  Contrast this with "Keystone pipeline" which generates 7,720 hits or "hydraulic fracturing" which returns 2,420 hits.  According to USA Today, the Department of Energy has put $21.5 million into the project, and a peer review on the DOE website dates all the way back to May 2010, so it is not as though this project is a secret.  And yet "Newberry" was not among those 700 words the president used to highlight his administration's most exciting developments in energy in the year's most prominent address to the American people.  What gives?
   Of all the recent ideas for developing new sources of energy, this volcano project is the one that sounds most like some junior high school boys pouring all the chemicals in the science lab into one beaker just to "see what will happen." Volcanoes and earthquakes remain two of the least predictable natural phenomenon in nature and are capable of truly cataclysmic consequences.  Wouldn't it seem reasonable that we'd hear from the usual The-Sky-is-Falling green groups when a seismologist says of the plan, "That's the $64,000 question.  What's the biggest earthquake we can have from induced seismicity that the public can worry about?"  And, though it may be a long shot, what if this exploration touches off a volcanic eruption?  Think of the air pollution, acid rain, greenhouse gases, and general mayhem that would result!  Talk about an Inconvenient Truth!
   So why the deafening silence?  Why does a search for "Newberry volcano Al Gore" return the disappointing "did not match any news results"?  The answer is found in the first two words of the third paragraph of the story: "Renewable energy".  The same phenomenon leads environmentalists to disregard the noise pollution and bird/bat deaths from windmills and the toxic chemicals that are by-products of solar panel manufacturing.  Unlike any energy production related to fossil fuels, the "renewables" get a pass on possible or even actual collateral damage.  But "hydraulic fracturing", which uses a process similar to the one employed in the volcano research but is used to extract natural gas and oil from rocks deep below the surface of the earth, has already suffered some setbacks due to fear of earthquakes.  It is said that when the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883 the sound was heard 3,000 miles away.  Is it not safe to say that if some oil company were planning a test to extract petroleum from under a volcano, a similar explosion would be heard from the environmentalists?
   Primitive societies have been known to throw virgins into volcanoes to appease the angry gods.  Is the environmental movement willing to risk sacrificing what remains of their own credibility in this case in hopes that their god Mother Earth, in spite of the risks, will finally deliver the goods on a practical, marketable, affordable source of energy that so far she has stubbornly and embarrassingly denied to her true believers?

The Doomsday Metaphor!

   From the Washington Post today:  “The Doomsday Clock, a figurative timepiece used as a barometer of humankind’s fate, was moved one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, the first time it has been nudged forward since 2007.”  
   Setting aside the substantive nonsense of the whole Doomsday prediction, how can anyone use a timepiece as a barometer?  Why not use a figurative weather instrument as a barometer?  Especially since Climate Change is now considered a factor in our collective doom by the “venerable board of scientists, Nobel laureates and others,” perhaps Doomsday Barometer would be more apropos.  
   Imagine how dramatic it would be:  “The Doomsday Barometer edged down another quarter of an inch today [or even better “8.5 millibars,” since it has that metric sound to it] symbolizing earth’s gathering perfect storm of human-caused cataclysm that threatens to end life on the planet.”  
   It would also create a natural media tie-in with the Weather Channel, which would run endless promos of a falling barometer with Katrina footage rolling in the background.  Besides, time can’t really be moved back and forth away from and towards midnight, but barometers naturally rise and fall.  
   And if all of these are not reason enough, the Washington Post would not have to use such a silly mixed metaphor when reporting the news.