Tag Archives: settled science

Settled Science?

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First of all there is no such thing as ‘settled science.’ The scientific method calls for constant questioning and re-evaluating. Second, if something is declared settled science, you can be sure that someone with a potential financial gain is promoting it (sorry for my cynicism).

On Sunday, WattsUpWithThat reported that the idea of net zero carbon is based on insufficient date. Wow. We are crippling some of the world’s major economies based on insufficient data.

The article quotes and article from The Telegraph posted on Saturday:

Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero.

“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data.

Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive. He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modelling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”

The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.

The article at WattsUpWithThat concludes:

It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.

In addition, the whole of the CC should now be disbanded. Unfortunately it is still required by law, but it should now be staffed by truly independent members, with a remit to prioritise energy security and cost/benefit goals. The ideological pursuit of Net Zero must not override the wellbeing of the British public, put its energy security at risk or make the public worse off.

But the current and past members of the CCC who have overseen this attempt to bamboozle and defraud the public must be held to account, and excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy.

So why are we even thinking about doing some of the things we are doing to bring down carbon?

Crony Capitalism Underwritten By Junk Science

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In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts signed the Global Warming Solutions Act. The stated purpose of the act was to make Massachusetts one of the first states in the nation to move forward with a comprehensive regulatory program to address Climate Change.

Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal posted an opinion piece on October 6th entitled, “Five Truths About Climate Change.”

Some basic facts pointed out in the article:

Here’s a reality check: During the same decade that Mr. Gore and the IPCC dominated the environmental debate, global carbon-dioxide emissions rose by 28.5%.

Those increases reflect soaring demand for electricity, up by 36%, which in turn fostered a 47% increase in coal consumption. (Natural-gas use increased by 29% while oil use grew by 13%.) Carbon-dioxide emissions are growing because people around the world understand the essentiality of electricity to modernity. And for many countries, the cheapest way to produce electrons is by burning coal. 

China’s emissions jumped by 123% over the past decade and now exceed those of the U.S. by more than two billion tons per year. Africa’s carbon-dioxide emissions jumped by 30%, Asia’s by 44%, and the Middle East’s by a whopping 57%. Put another way, over the past decade, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions—about 6.1 billion tons per year—could have gone to zero and yet global emissions still would have gone up.

The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Please follow the link to the Wall Street Journal to read the entire article. Global warming is NOT settled science.

Meanwhile, back to Massachusetts. Many of the solar and wind energy companies have received grants from the state and from the federal stimulus program. When you look at the officers of these companies, you find that many of them went from state government to ‘green energy’ and took government money with them. There are some questionable connections here. In March of this year, the Hawaii Free Press reported:

Paul Gaynor, CEO of First Wind stood comfortably with Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, Rep Mazie Hirono, and HECO CEO Dick Rosenblum at the grand opening of the Kahuku Wind energy project on Oahu’s North Shore Thursday.   As he should. 

First Wind–formerly known as UPC Wind–got its start in wind energy by launching Italy’s IVPC–a company now subject to a record breaking asset seizure by Italian police.  The Financial Times September 14, 2010 explains:

Please follow the links to read the entire story. Paul Gaynor was appointed by Governor Patrick to be Co-chair of “The Climate Protection Advisory Committee” under the Global Warming Solutions Act.

I think it’s time to re-evaluation the entire ‘green energy’ idea. We don’t need another place for politicians to line their pockets at the expense of taxpayers.

For more information on the ‘follow the money’ aspect of green energy, see rightwinggranny post of August 14, 2010. Also, please understand that Solyndra was counting on the passage of Cap and Trade legislation so that they could increase the price of their product and make a profit. If Cap and Trade had passed through Congress, we would probably have never heard of Solyndra. That may be one reason President Obama is attempting to virtually pass Cap and Trade by using EPA regulations to do the same thing.

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