-- Global Warming, Bali and Alternative Views Explained --

Arthur Lemay is a retired informatics executive and management consultant. He is a science graduate of Harvard, and writes extensively on scientific subjects. He was the systems architect for several world-wide information systems. In addition, he was President of several high-tech companies, both in computer services and manufacturing. His consulting clients included the U.S. Congress, several major banks in New York, venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and a major Japanese company. Lemay is an internationalist who spends almost 50 percent of his time travelling and living the European life style in Paris. Reach him at mailto:arthur@lemay.ws , and the Hawaii Reporter

It seems everyone in the world believes that cutting back, or eliminating, the use of carbon based fuels will stop global warming, or global climate change. Every single Environmental group believes this, and so does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, every news source, and the 170 signatories to the Kyoto Protocols.

The reason for this is because the theory of the greenhouse effect, considering the blanketing effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, has become the popular knowledge of the day. This theory has, in effect, displaced older theories that the climate is affected by the sun’s energy falling on the earth, and the distance, rotational, and angular irregularities of the earth’s orbit. There is a tremendous older literature describing long term cycles, the advent of ice ages, warm periods, and the effects of volcanoes, ocean currents, and other factors affecting the climate.

Prior to 1998, everyone saw dramatic warming, droughts, and storms, and, it seemed that the older theories were inadequate to explain the very unusual heat waves, outside anyone’s living experience, since the last heat waves of this magnitude were in the 1930’s. But, the thing which was most obviously different was the higher–than-historical level of CO2 gas in the atmosphere, and, so where did it come from? And, what did the future hold?

Many studies were made, and, there was a remarkable correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. So, the theory that man’s emissions were causing the warming because of the greenhouse effect became to believed, and therefore many people thought that if we could stop emitting so much CO2, the weather would go back to normal. This happens to fit with, and justify the Environmentalists’ and the Greens’ much older prescriptions of not using the earth’s non-renewable reserves of hydrocarbon based fuels, and instead using renewable wind, solar, hydro, bio fuel, etc., riding bicycles, using smaller cars, etc.

So, there was a built-in constituency for this idea which was more of an innate feeling, and almost a moral issue to save the earth for posterity. As Al Gore puts it, it is “a moral issue, not an environmental issue.” So the use renewable energy to cut the use of carbon-based fuels became very fashionable, and, as James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute, in testimony to the U.S. Congress, said “it was no longer necessary to exaggerate the effects of global warming.” The technique of exaggeration and fear-mongering is based on human nature; none of us wants to do unpleasant things unless there is a fear introduced that something bad will happen if we fail to act. And the weather seemed very unnatural to many. So, even scientists believed man was guilty as charged, and the press obliged by blaming everything unusual on global warming.

There are estimates that the funds spent on studying and supporting this theory now exceed 40 billion dollars, and all of it seems to have spent to endorse this theory, not to question it. But, not everyone believed this theory, and the skeptics raised a lot of embarrassing questions as they saw that the politicians were telling the scientists on the IPCC what to say. This is part of the written procedures for the 4th report of the IPCC!

An outsider might ask “what kind of a scientist could accept the task of changing his scientific findings to suit a political goal? That is why some scientists have resigned from the IPCC and joined the ranks of the skeptics. As John Maynard Keynes said “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Actually, most of the world’s climate change scientists are skeptics. Although the IPCC has over 2,000 scientists on panels, there are thousands more who have eschewed participating in the IPCC because they believe it is biased. And, 17,000 of them have signed the Oregon petition denying that man is causing global warming.

A group of Canadian statisticians (McKitrick, McIntire, and others) were able to gain access to the models and data files used to produce the famous “smoking gun” of man’s responsibility -- the “hockey stick” graph showing anomalous warming during the 20th century.

The author, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, refused to release it for years. There are no professional statisticians on the IPCC, and after analysis the Canadians proved that even a random string of temperature produced the same chart, and, most embarrassingly, they found the input data seemed to have suppressed historic data of warmer periods in the past to jigger the results. Did the IPCC not test this hypothesis?

Why did they permit Dr. Mann to refuse to share the data for peer reviews? Was there any validation of this work? Evidently there was not. This graph was dropped with no comment from the IPCC.

In addition, other well known scientists showed that the historical temperatures change occurs before the CO2 levels change, so how could CO2 possibly be causing the world to warm? This resulted in horrible personal attacks and purposefully difficult web site postings which continue to this day. The discussions are highly abstruse and for each charge, there is a counter charge, and counter-counter charge, it goes on and on -- even now.

Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian Professor, says “CO2 is only 4 percent of greenhouse gases and man’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels is 4 percent of that -- so, man is contributing 0.16 percent of greenhouse gases, and if we cut it in half it will be reduced by 0.08 percent! Now the IPCC would tell us that 0.08 percent of the total controls the climate? It boggles the mind to think anyone could believe it.

The reason this can possibly be believed is because the climate models do not consider water vapor in their calculations. Does anyone think the models can possibly predict anything accurately? Well they cannot. When run with early 20th century data, the models predict much higher temperatures than exist today. So, we are being told to base public policy on the basis of models which are inaccurate.

More recent and modern studies showed that there is far better argument for causation and correlation with the sun’s activities and cosmic rays which stimulate cloud formation than exists for the greenhouse gas theory. It seems that the older science of the sun’s and earth’s variability is highly relevant and useful, and this demonstrates that CO2 has little to do with the earth’s warming. And, common sense tells us that this is true because the 20th century warming was mostly before 1940, then we had a cooling phase until 1975, then warming again, peaking in 1998, but since then, no warming at all. A reasonable person would ask why.

Now, the skeptics point to this and ask if CO2 was responsible, why did the earth not warm during the period 1940 to 1975 since that was the period of rapid industrial growth and the emissions of CO2 really increased in this period? Why did the earth cool if CO2 concentrations went up? And, since we continued to add CO2 to the atmosphere, why did global warming stop in 1998? The sun’s activities and the classic science explain this, the CO2 theory cannot.

In science when observations contradict theory, the theory is wrong. That is what science is about.

Actually, most of the world’s climate change scientists are skeptics. Although the IPCC has over 2,000 scientists on panels, there are thousands more who have eschewed participating in the IPCC because they believe it is biased. And, 17,000 of them have signed the Oregon petition denying that man is causing global warming.

But, “my goodness” the believers must think: “if it really is natural causes which are largely responsible, how will the research grants be continued? The gravy train paying for thousands of scientists will stop. This is a disaster in the making!”

Now everyone who is a global warming believer has egg on his face: most don’t know it, but if they do, no one admits it. They cannot admit it. The politicians want to see the IPCC’s programs of mandatory restrictions on CO2, cap and trade schemes, and all the principles of the Kyoto accords extended and enhanced to validate their past work.

This latter, item 6, includes things like the predictions of tipping points where there are irreversible changes in the earth’s climate, widespread extinctions, run-away heating, floods, catastrophes of starvation, death, and misery. Well, we cannot prove this is wrong, but there is no record of it ever happening before, so now speculation and unsupported predictions and bogeyman fears replaced science.

Even though it is not clear to most reputable climate scientists that CO2 is responsible for warming, the IPCC and politicians want to restrict the emissions and reduce the use of carbon based energy with a cap and trade system where controls are put on operating entities. And if they fail to reduce their energy use they have to buy permits from those who bettered their cap levels. What level to use? Well, any arbitrary level if it sounds good. For example: let temperatures not go higher than 2 degrees C. Reduce CO2 emissions by 5 percent, of 15 percent, or, most popular, 80 percent, although there are people who feel 100 percent is a good number.

But, how on earth can any organization determine what the caps should be? If the caps are set too high the entities will not need to reduce CO2 and the traded permits will decline in value. If the caps are set too low the price of permits will be high and fraudsters will invent fictitious factories in China or other remote places or will plant fictitious trees. This is already happening.

The cap and trade systems often do not work. I note that Reuters reports that as much as 20 percent of the UN credits are fraudulent, and I note that there are hundreds of traders opening their doors to business and some say “this is a billion dollar profits industry!” Is it really? The UN will profit mightily to run the program, but evidently there is big money to be made in trading financial instruments as well. This is not good news for those forced to pay for these programs.

The larger problem is that those countries who have been fined for exceeding their CO2 emission limits, like Italy, Spain, and Japan ($33 billions) have discovered that it is not possible to command power stations, factories, and other CO2 emitters to reduce their CO2 because they are often private companies and the investment in this kind of technology has no payback to them. So, either the countries subsidize the private sector, or they buy credits, or they pay fines. But, at the end of the day, it is a gigantic sum and neither the private companies nor the state has any cash flow return on investment. So, in Europe, because of Kyoto, companies are closing, moving to other countries, or producing bad financial results to their owners, and, yes, people are losing their jobs, their homes, and their retirements.

Spain and other countries now realize that Kyoto CO2 reductions calling for a 5 percent reduction in CO2 emissions may not be possible. Here is an interesting quote in a Bloomberg article: “Our negotiators didn't have a clue what they were getting into” at Kyoto, [Compania Espanola de Petroleos SA] Cepsa. Chairman Carlos Perez de Bricio said at a conference in Madrid June 8. Now they are facing a $13 billion fine. It is hard to imagine what a larger reduction would cost.

True non-carbon producing energy sources, wind and solar power are just not able to provide base load power because they are intermittent. e.g. When the sun goes down, and the lights go on, solar power stops, and the power grid has no way of storing energy for future use. And, bio fuel, hydrogen, and other “magic bullets” all require power to produce them, and that usually means either carbon based power or nuclear. In France, nuclear stations produce 80% to 90% of the electricity, and they sell a lot of it to Germany who are phasing out their nuclear facilities because of political interference from the Greens.

And, in the U.S., our nuclear industry is stagnant because of political pressure against nuclear power. Yes, yellow cake uranium is not a renewable resource, but there is a lot of uranium in the world. And, of course, the Uranium can be re-processed and we can extract a lot more power from the same supply. Nuclear power is, after all, free of CO2 emissions. But, in the U.S. nuclear power is a non-starter for the same reasons as it is in Germany, but at least there is no plan to decommission the current reactors.

But, the no-carbon footprint technology is not ready to replace carbon based power and it is much, much more expensive than any carbon based energy source. Power producers will need to install traditional equipment, i.e. coal or gas, to provide base power when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. So, the capital needs are not reduced at all by alternative energy, they are doubled, or more.

And, the speculation about carbon removal from the atmosphere is just a pipe dream at this time, just like fusion power which has been only ten years away every year since 1950. Investments in energy and transportation infrastructure are long term investments and they cannot just be scrapped without financial justification, and under depreciation regulations they have lives of 15 to 20 years, but, in practice, some plants are 50 years old, or older. This means that it will take time, a lot of time, to go to a low CO2 economy -- far longer than most people realize.

The real issue is cost, and the tolerance of the consumer to pay 50% or more for electricity (as has already happened in Germany), but if laws require dual plants and very expensive equipment to synchronize intermittent, bad quality power to the power grid, there is no way to estimate just how much electricity rates might increase. I have read estimates as high as 300 percent increases.

But, growth is the real problem which compounds the problem and, if Kyoto is renewed with even more stringent reductions in energy, then the actual reductions become much more severe as a percentage.

Since the limits are based on absolute 1990s emission levels, normal growth will make it difficult to live with the levels of the caps which do not consider this. This is Japan’s problem: they were fined $13 billion dollars because of the growth of transportation and industry.

Of course, when Kyoto was first introduced in Europe, the local Governments set the caps unrealistically high (especially for the well-connected) and the price of the traded credits collapsed. This is a good lesson which points out that the cap and trade system responds to political pressure.

This solution is by its nature socialistic and, some observers like Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic says that Environmentalism is today’s replacement for Marxist command and control economies. The cap and trade solution requires an absolutely gigantic number of administrators, adjudicators, auditors, and is subject to political pressures, fraud, theft, bribes, influence peddling, and corruption. A carbon tax would be far easier to implement, but voters would detest it since they could sit down and figure out how much it is costing them. Cap and trade would affect the cost of goods and the costs would be invisible to the voter.

This means, for all practical purposes, the end of the freedom of capitalism. No longer could someone just start a business, he would have to get a permit and a “cap” certificate. What do the administrators do if the companies did not exist in 1990? What do they do about building new freeways, housing developments, and what if companies want to build new plants?

Now, if the country is facing heavy fines the administrators will just say no. And how will the caps be set? How many companies have any idea whatever what their CO2 emissions were in 1990, how many know what they are today, how many know what they might be after installing more efficient processes? Since there are no measurement instruments, how can anyone know? The answer is that the businesses will lie, and they will not invest in growth for the future if they are subject to some kind of energy audit and risk heavy costs for credits, or fines. This means that the Government controls the financial and economic factors in the economy.

Why would any country, or US state, want to do this? The costs and disincentives to start-ups and growth are staggering. Already huge fines are being assessed by the UN in charge of the program. And, in the U.S. California plans to control all large enterprises in 2009, and later all other enterprises including farms with animals who emit methane gas.

Marc Morano with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee says while the U.N. may claim the [4th IPCC report] summary speaks for 2,500 scientists, it is written by U.N. political delegates. Morano contends scientists have to alter their work to meet the U.N.'s political agenda as laid out in the summary.

He notes that in 2000, French President Jacques Chirac called the Kyoto Protocol the first step to "authentic global governance." "So the U.N. has that agenda," Morano contends. "[It] wants to be able to tax, regulate, and essentially be an international governing body over the developed world, particularly the United States. This is seen by many as an opportunity to get their hands on United States taxpayer wealth."

Now, in England, the system is far ahead of any other country. The average family pays over $800 a year in “green” taxes and the money is not used for environmental purposes, it is a tax on the family. And a recent Government letter leaked to the press says these taxes will be raised substantially, including taxes on cars on a sliding scale by size. Now, the British ask “why is the Government taking away my money to drive my car by putting taxes on the car, putting higher taxes on petrol, and not using the money to improve public transportation so I can buy food, bring children to school, and live a normal life? “

There is a level of anger over this in England because all the letters I read on the Internet say the people think the Government is lying to them and using “green” taxes just to raise money for non-environmental reasons.

This is like an austerity program for England, and, as we all realize, austerity programs bring down governments. In democratic countries, it will be very, very difficult to convince the people that their standard of living needs to come way down, puts their jobs, home and retirements in jeopardy, deprives them of the lives their parents have lived, and makes their children’s future lives look grim -- all done to prevent the temperature going up by 2 degrees C, but a hundred years in the future.

In England, that is a desirable result and not something to fear. And, besides, the IPCC’s predictions of hurricane activity in 2006, an exceptionally hot 2007, have been dead wrong -- so how can anyone believe what they say will happen in 50 or 100 years?

But, the skeptics will speak up, the people should be outraged, and I hope it will all end badly for those who think politics is more valuable than science. Those who want to profit from a system which is unacceptable to most, but transfers riches of developed countries to the pockets of bureaucrats, and to the developing world (where financial probity does not exist) must not win this battle. It is being waged by the bureaucrats, politicians, and their scientist-politicians with their own agenda against the free people of the world.

When the people understand the severity, and the pointlessness of these programs, I hope they will elect people who will rescind commitments to do these things on the grounds that it was a lie that it would cost only a tiny bit. This is not true; it will cause a worldwide recession or even a depression if the IPCC and the Kyoto-like programs are extended.

But, it is by no means clear that these commitments can be rescinded, or that we will escape from the momentum of this movement. The pundits are right, global warming is one of the greatest threats we are facing, not because of the climate, however. The real threat is from those well meaning politicians who would control everything we do and siphon off an income stream for doing very little. They are like V.I. Lenin’s “useful idiots” which Lenin praised for their help in putting the Bolsheviks in power in Russia in 1917. The big difference is that the Bolsheviks did not expect to gain huge economic rents.

The right answer is to adapt to climate change, as man has always done in the past and can again in the future. Why not? It is the height of arrogance to think that Kyoto and its successors could possibly control the world’s climate, or that there is even a “correct temperature” which is what we have today.

The IPCC has committed the sins of making predictions based on wishful thinking not science, telling the scientists to change their reports on their studies to agree with the politicians, and attempting to panic world policy makers into signing a Kyoto extension and expansion without due consideration.

The agenda of the IPCC is not environmental or scientific; it is the politics of the UN flush with new confidence since they have squashed the Oil for Food scandal and, now they want even more to be a world government. Let’s say no to Bali’s motivation to extend and enhance Kyoto and hurt both developed and developing countries.

Who elected these people to tell the world what to do, and how to run their economies?