Winning A Climate Bet

Predictions, Neils Bohr once said, are difficult, especially about the future. They are even more interesting however, when there is money at stake.

In December 2007 I wrote what I thought was quite a straightforward article for the New Statesman pointing out that it was curious that when so many voices were telling us that global warming was out of control, and that the global warming effect dwarfed natural fluctuations, the global annual average temperature hadn’t increased for many years. I wasn’t promoting any particular point of view just describing the data. The New Statesman jumped at it.

It caused quite a storm resulting in an Internet record number of comments that were complimentary by a large majority, although there were some less than supportive remarks. It evidently also caused quite a fuss in the offices of the New Statesman. Realclimate.com responded with, in my view, an unsatisfactory knock-down of my piece based on trend lines, which I had expected. Trend lines, especially of indeterminate length in the presence of noise, can tell you almost anything, and nothing.

The New Statesman environment correspondent Mark Lynas chipped in eventually with, “I’ll be blunt. Whitehouse got it wrong – completely wrong,” after saying he was initially reluctant to comment. He reproduced Realclimate.com’s trendlines argument and accused me of deliberately or otherwise setting out to deceive. It was a scientifically ignorant article which subsequent events, and peer-reviewed literature, emphasise. Moreover, when I asked New Statesman for redress against such an unnecessary, and in my view unprofessional insult, they declined, and stopped answering my emails. In doing so they missed out on an important, though perhaps inconvenient, scientific story.

More or Less

To my surprise interest in my article was worldwide, and eventually the BBC’s radio programme “More or Less” got in touch. The programme is about numbers and statistics and they set up a series of interviews. You can hear the programme here.

Almost at the last minute the programme-makers came up with the idea of a bet. It was for £100 that, using the HadCrut3 data set, there would be no new record set by 2011. It was made between climatologist James Annan and myself. His work involves analysing climatic data and validating climate models. He accepted enthusiastically as he has a perchant for taking on ‘sceptics.’ The presenter said that if the global temperature didn’t go up in the next few years, “there would be some explaining to do.”

Later today, January 13^th, “More or Less” returns to the bet, which I am pleased to say I won, though I note that this bet, or its conclusion, is not yet mentioned on Annan’s Wikipedia entry despite his other climate bet being discussed.

Writing shortly after the wager was placed James Annan said he believed it was a fairly safe bet, though not certain, as the trend since the current warming spell began, around 1980, was upward (showing those same trendlines!) He drew a straight line from 1980 to 2007 and projected it forwards concluding that sometime over the next few years HadCrut3 would rise above its highest point which was in 1998 (a strong El Nino year.)

The problem with this approach is that it destroys all information in the dataset save the gradient of the straight line. In climate terms 30 years is usually held to be the shortest period to deduce trends (though shorter periods are used often if the trend deduced is deemed acceptable) but that is not to say there is not important information on shorter periods such as volcanic depressions, El Nino rises and La Nina dips. Then there are the so-called, poorly understood decadal variations.

My view was that the information in the dataset was important, especially if projecting it forward just a few years when natural variations were clearly dominant. Looking at HadCrut3 it is clear that there isn’t much of an increase in the 1980s, more of an increase in the 1990s, then there is the big 1998 El Nino, followed by no increase in the past decade or so. It therefore seemed far more likely that the temperature would continue what it had been doing in the recent past than revert to an upward trend, in the next few years at least.

My approach was to listen to the data. The approach taken by James Annan was flawed because he didn’t. He imposed a straight line on the data due to theoretical considerations. I always wonder about the wisdom of the approach that uses straight lines in climatic data. Why should such a complex system follow a straight line? Indeed, the rise of HadCrut3 is not a straight line, but the past ten years is, and that in my view is very curious, and highly significant.

Why, I wonder start the linear increase in 1980? Obviously the temperature starts rising then, but why not start the straight line in 1970? The answer is that the temperature is flat between 1970 and 1980. It seems illogical to take notice of flat data at the start of a dataset but totally ignore it at the end!

When a record is not a record

During the recent interview for “More or Less” James Annan said that had other temperature databases been used he would have won. This is a moot point that also strongly reaffirms my stance. In NasaGiss 2010 is the warmest year, with a temperature anomaly of 0.63 deg C, only one hundredth of a degree warmer than 2005, and within a whisker of 2007, 2006, 2002, 2001 and 1998. Given the 0.1 deg C errors even Nasa did not claim 2010 as a record. Technically speaking 2010 was slightly hotter because of a strong El Nino. Otherwise, NasaGiss shows hardly any increase in the past decade.

During the “More or Less” interview the question arose of extending the bet to “double or quits” for the next five years. I was game for it with a proviso. Betting against a record for ten years raises a higher possibility that there might be a statistical fluctuation than betting for five years. Because of this I would like to see two annual datapoints, consecutively more than one sigma above the 2001 – date mean level. After all, that is the minimum statistical evidence one should accept as being an indication of warming. James Annan did not commit to such a bet during the programme.

It just has to start getting warmer soon.

Back in 2007 many commentators, activists and scientists, such as Lynas, said the halt in global temperatures wasn’t real. It is interesting that the Climategate emails showed that the certainty some scientists expressed about this issue in public was not mirrored in private. Indeed, one intemperate activist, determined to shoot my New Statesman article down but unable to muster the simple statistics required to tackle the statistical properties of only 30 data points, asked the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and the Met Office, to provide reasons why I was wrong, which they couldn’t.

What was true in 2007 is even more so in 2012. Since 2007 the reality of the temperature standstill has been accepted and many explanations offered for it, more than can possibly be true! We have seen predictions that half of the years between 2009 and 2014 would be HadCrut3 records (a prediction that now can’t possibly come to pass) which was later modified to half of the years between 2010 and 2015 (likewise.) The Met Office predict that 2012 -16 will be on average 0.54 deg C above the HadCrut3 baseline level, and 2017 -2021 some 0.76 deg C higher. Temperatures must go up, and quickly.

So how long must this standstill go on until bigger questions are asked about the rate of global warming? When asked if he would be worried if there was no increase in the next five years James Annan would only say it would only indicate a lower rate of warming! Some say that 15 years is the period for serious questions.

We are already there

In a now famous (though even at the time obvious) interview in 2010 Prof Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia confirmed that there was no statistically significant warming since 1995. There was an upward trend, but it was statistically insignificant, which in scientific parlance equates to no trend at all. In 2011 Prof Jones told the BBC that due to the inclusion of the warmish 2010 there was now a statistically significant increase between 1995 and 2010. Since 2011 was cool it doesn’t take complicated statistics to show that the post 1995 trend by that method of calculation is now back to insignificant, though I don’t expect the BBC to update its story.

The lesson is that for the recent warming spell, the one that begins about 1980, the years of standstill now exceed those with a year-on-year increase. It is the standstill, not the increase, that is now this warm period’s defining characteristic.

The nature of the anthropogenic global warming signal is that, unlike natural fluctuations, it is always additive. Sooner or later, it is argued, it will emerge unambiguously, perhaps at different times in different parts of the world, but it must emerge. Some argue that by the time it does it will already be too late, but that is another debate.

James Annan is keen on a “money markets” approach to forecasting global warming, and bemoans the reticence of so-called climate sceptics to put their money where their mouth is! I hope that his early-stage financial loss won’t be too much of a setback and a deterrence for potential investors, not that I will be among them.

Now that I am joining the ranks of those who have made money out of global warming (or rather the lack of it) I wonder where the smart money will be placed in the future.

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12 people have contracted it

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Another addiction for society to deal with

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The clam has a big gun. He also has hunting buddies hidden inside every central bank around the world.

The banks love this game called fucka you taxpayer.

They get to borrow money for nothing and buy up government paper paying them 3% or more. But it does not stop there.

No my friends they use this money to leverage themselves. Then they buy paper of the next best government. Then they leverage it once again to find even more leverage in commodity futures, currencies, and stock markets.

Only when the trade has to be reversed do we get a sell off. Then everyone cries deflation. But remember the clam and his friends can QE till you are dead and gone.

So once again my burlap suited bear friends;

YOU ARE FUCKING DEAD ! DOW 100, 000 by 2020

[youtube://http://youtube.com/watch?v=QBCAaAKBLFY 450 300]

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Read here:

Usually, trade shows are all about playing with prototypes and spotting future trends. But at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which opened Tuesday in Las Vegas, what’s creating the most buzz is what’s not there.

Of course, there are thousands of devices being introduced this week in the desert.

Nokia is back with Windows-based smart phones and is vowing to slay the Android giant. There are connected cars and smart refrigerators (yes, again). And computers. Ultra laptops–small, svelte, near-instant-on computers–are being pushed with several manufacturers announcing slick devices.

But what’s not at the show are two components that could stifle the ultra yawns: Intel’s new mobile processors, which won’t appear until the spring, and Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system with touch features, which wasn’t ready in time for a CES debut.

Instead, the big Microsoft news has been that it’s abandoning CES. This will be its final appearance at the trade show, and CEO Steve Ballmer’s desultory final CES keynote didn’t exactly inspire the technorati. The Kinect gesture and voice recognition game controller will now (officially) work with PCs, and Windows 8 will be out later this year, according to Ballmer. The CEO also promised that current Windows 7 PCs will be able to run the new Window 8 software (translation: if it works on existing hardware, it’s not much of an upgrade).

Also failing to make an appearance are new gaming console models, updates to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, or Nintendo’s Wii. Nintendo has promised a new model, and Microsoft and Sony are rumored to be preparing announcements for this summer.

However, it may be too little, too late as televisions continue to offer more features and power–including casual games and online entertainment.

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 (via)

Consumer Electronics Show: Complete coverage

The Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing now, with keynotes Wednesday focusing on some higher-level trends in the consumer technology world.

In the morning, Xerox, Verizon Communications and Ford will discuss innovation and its role in their companies’ success. In the afternoon, high-level marketing and communications officers from AT&T, General Electric, Hyundai, Facebook, Wal-Mart and Unilever will discuss marketing and branding on a global scale.

Hans Vestberg, president and chief executive of Ericsson, will also give a keynote address in the afternoon. The Swedish company is in a transition year. Ericsson ended its consumer electronics partnership with Sony but faces a greater demand for its mobile and wireless management services than ever before. The keynote speech should have some insights into the future of the mobile industry, even if it likely won’t have any flashy consumer product announcements.

This is also a day for policy at CES, with panels addressing a range of technology policy issues. Wednesday’s congressional panel features Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lee Terry (R-Neb.), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), and probably will address the thorny issue of online piracy and copyright. Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski is also speaking with the Consumer Electronics Association president, Gary Shapiro, while commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell will discuss spectrum and other policy issues on a panel moderated by The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang.

Related stories:

Privacy rights activists worry about potential abuse of high-tech devices featured at CES event

CES 2012: What is an ultrabook, anyway?

PHOTOS: Cool gadgets unveiled at CES

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Marijuana doesn’t harm lung function, study found.

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Wind-power: inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 emissions

Energy experts warn that unwarranted support for wind-power is hindering genuinely cleaner energy

The focus on wind-power, driven by the renewables targets, is preventing Britain from effectively reducing CO2 emissions, while crippling energy users with additional costs, according to a new Civitas report. The report finds that wind-power is unreliable and requires back-up power stations to be available in order to maintain a consistent electricity supply to households and businesses. This means that energy users pay twice: once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy sector continues to rely on. Contrary to the implied message of the Government’s approach, the analysis shows that wind-power is not a low-cost way of reducing emissions.

Electricity Costs: the folly of wind-power, by economist Ruth Lea, uses Government-commissioned estimates of the costs of electricity generation in the UK to calculate the most cost-effective technologies. When all costs are included, gas-fired power is the most cost-efficient method of generating electricity in the short-term, while nuclear power stations become the most cost-efficient in the medium-term.

 

All that wind takes a lot of gas

Wind-power is acknowledged to cost more than traditional fossil fuel power stations. But estimates from Government-commissioned reports suggest that, when the cost of CO2 emissions is included, onshore wind-power becomes one of the more cost-effective means of generating electricity. Offshore wind does not however. [See p. 12 – p. 23] Unfortunately, these estimates fail to factor in all the costs of wind-power. These costs are due to the fact that energy output from wind is unpredictable and rarely occurs in areas of most demand:

… wind-power is unreliable and requires conventional back-up generating capacity when wind speeds are, for example, very low or rapidly varying… [p. 14]

This means that wind farms need to be supported by conventional capacity including gas-fired power stations that can be switched on whenever the available wind fails to match demand for electricity. Lea cites research by Colin Gibson, former Power Network Director at the National Grid Group, who has produced some of the most comprehensive estimates for these ‘add-on costs’.

When these add-on costs are included, the resultant levelised generating costs (£ per megawatt hour) for the main electricity generating technologies are, for medium-term projects:

• Nuclear pressurised water reactors (PWR): £67.8 per MWh.
• Gas-fired combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT): £96.5 per MWh.
• Gas CCGT with carbon capture and storage (CCS): £102.6 per MWh.
• Coal (ASC) with CCS: £111.9 per MWh.
• Advanced supercritical (ASC) coal-fired power plants: £133.2 per MWh.
• Onshore wind: £146.3 per MWh (including ‘add-on costs’ of £60 per MWh).
• Offshore wind: £179.4 per MWh (including ‘add-on costs’ of £67 per MWh).

(Note: one megawatt hour can run approximately 1000 desktop computers for 8 hours)

The most cost-effective technologies are nuclear and gas-fired. Onshore, and especially offshore, wind technologies are inordinately expensive.

 

Pumping out more CO2

Besides the prohibitive costs, the report shows that wind-power, backed by conventional gas-fired generation, can emit more CO2 than the most efficient gas turbines running alone:

In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power, Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on “normal windy days” in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption, rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high-efficiency gas turbines. Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. [p. 30]

This means that the cost of having wind is not just carried by consumers but by the environment as well.

 

Caught in a cross-wind

The report explains how two competing environmental policies have generated a perverse set of priorities. The renewables targets have forced the energy sector to focus on more expensive, less reliable power sources, rather than those most likely to reduce emissions while keeping costs to the rest of economy competitive:

• The Climate Change Act 2008 requires that Britain’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions be cut by 80 per cent by 2050 compared with the 1990 level and by 34% by around 2020.
• The EU’s Renewables Directive (2009) commits the UK to sourcing 15% of final energy consumption (FEC) from renewables by 2020. Renewable energy sources include wind, hydro and biomass, but not nuclear power. [pp. 4-5]

This means that UK legislation separately specifies an outcome (reduced CO2 emissions) and a process, more renewable energy.

The outcome itself is substantial and threatens many Britons’ standard of life and employment prospects if not achieved efficiently:

… consultants Redpoint Energy point out “…meeting these targets will mean a radical change in the way the UK produces and consumes energy over the coming decades.” [p. 4]

Unfortunately, the legislated process is ineffective at reaching its supposed outcome. The result of forcing unreliable renewables on the energy sector is higher costs to consumers as well as more CO2 emissions than are necessary for maintaining the electricity grid.

One outcome of this micro-managed approach is that commercial and public sector energy users are, paradoxically, charged under the Climate Change Levy for their use of electricity generated by nuclear power stations (nuclear plants emit no CO2 after construction). The CCL is designed to encourage greater use of renewable energy sources even though wind-power can result in higher CO2 emissions than efficient gas turbines. [pp. 6-7]

The report concludes:

[Wind-power] is expensive and yet it is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions. If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive, wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating electricity or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated with the EU. [p. 30]

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Via WattsUpWithThat

From the University of Florida

Global warming caused by greenhouse gases delays natural patterns of glaciation, researchers say

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are disrupting normal patterns of glaciation, according to a study co-authored by a University of Florida researcher and published online Jan. 8 in Nature Geoscience.

The Earth’s current warm period that began about 11,000 years ago should give way to another ice age within about 1,500 years, according to accepted astronomical models. However, current levels of carbon dioxide are trapping too much heat in the atmosphere to allow the Earth to cool as it has in its prehistoric past in response to changes in Earth’s orbital pattern. The research team, a collaboration among University College London, University of Cambridge and UF, said their data indicate that the next ice age will likely be delayed by tens of thousands of years.

That may sound like good news, but it probably isn’t, said Jim Channell, distinguished professor of geology at UF and co-author.

“Ice sheets like those in western Antarctica are already destabilized by global warming,” said Channell. “When they eventually slough off and become a part of the ocean’s volume, it will have a dramatic effect on sea level.” Ice sheets will continue to melt until the next phase of cooling begins in earnest.

The study looks at the prehistoric climate-change drivers of the past to project the onset of the next ice age. Using astronomical models that show Earth’s orbital pattern with all of its fluctuations and wobbles over the last several million years, astronomers can calculate the amount of solar heat that has reached the Earth’s atmosphere during past glacial and interglacial periods.

“We know from past records that Earth’s orbital characteristics during our present interglacial period are a dead ringer for orbital characteristics in an interglacial period 780,000 years ago,” said Channell. The pattern suggests that our current period of warmth should be ending within about 1,500 years.

However, there is a much higher concentration of greenhouse gases trapping the sun’s heat in the Earth’s atmosphere now than there was in at least the last several million years, he said. So the cooling that would naturally occur due to changes in the Earth’s orbital characteristics are unable to turn the temperature tide.

Over the past million years, the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels, as recorded in ice core samples, have never reached more than 280 parts per million in the atmosphere. “We are now at 390 parts per million,” Channell said. The sudden spike has occurred in the last 150 years.

For millions of years, carbon dioxide levels have ebbed and flowed between ice ages. Orbital patterns initiate periods of warming that cause ocean circulation to change. The changes cause carbon dioxide-rich water in the deep ocean to well up toward the surface where the carbon dioxide is released as a gas back into the atmosphere. The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide then drives further warming and eventually the orbital pattern shifts again and decreases the amount of solar heat that reaches the Earth.

“The problem is that now we have added to the total amount of CO₂ cycling through the system by burning fossil fuels,” said Channell. “The cooling forces can’t keep up.”

Channell said that the study, funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S, and the Research Council of Norway and the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom, brings to the forefront the importance of atmospheric carbon dioxide because it shows the dramatic effect that it is having on a natural cycle that has controlled our Earth’s climate for millions of years.

“We haven’t seen this high concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for several million years,” Channell said. “All bets are off.”

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According to federally funded research the Gulf has now cleansed itself of the BP oil spill.

Full article

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Until the health effects are known some doctors are recommending a moratorium. They also feel the oil and gas industry should fund the studies.

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Flowers are sprouting in January in New Hampshire, the Sierra Mountains in California are nearly snow-free, and lakes in much of Michigan still have not frozen. It’s 2012, and the new year is ringing in another ridiculously wacky winter for the U.S. In Fargo, North Dakota yesterday, the mercury soared to 55°F, breaking a 1908 record for warmest January day in recorded history. More than 99% of North Dakota had no snow on the ground this morning, and over 95% of the country that normally has snow at this time of year had below-average snow cover. High temperatures in Nebraska yesterday were in the 60s, more than 30° above average. Storm activity has been almost nil over the past week over the entire U.S., with the jet stream bottled up far to the north in Canada. It has been remarkable to look at the radar display day after day and see virtually no echoes, and it is very likely that this has been the driest first week of January in U.S. recorded history. Portions of northern New England, the Upper Midwest, and the mountains of the Western U.S. that are normally under a foot of more of snow by now have no snow, or just a dusting of less than an inch. Approximately half of the U.S. had temperatures at least 5°F above average during the month of December, with portions of North Dakota and Minnesota seeing temperatures 9°F above average. The strangely warm and dry start to winter is not limited to the U.S–all of continental Europe experienced well above-average temperatures during December.

December 2011 jet stream pattern the most extreme on record
The cause of this warm first half of winter is the most extreme configuration of the jet stream ever recorded, as measured by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The Arctic Oscillation (AO), and its close cousin, the North Atlantic Oscillation (which can be thought of as the North Atlantic’s portion of the larger-scale AO), are climate patterns in the Northern Hemisphere defined by fluctuations in the difference of sea-level pressure in the North Atlantic between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. The AO and NAO have significant impacts on winter weather in North America and Europe–the AO and NAO affect the path, intensity, and shape of the jet stream, influencing where storms track and how strong these storms become. During December 2011, the NAO index was +2.52, which was the most extreme difference in pressure between Iceland and the Azores ever observed in December (records of the NAO go back to 1865.) The AO during December 2011 had its second most extreme December value on record, behind the equally unusual December of 2006. These positive AO/NAO conditions caused the Icelandic Low to draw a strong south-westerly flow of air over eastern North America, preventing Arctic air from plunging southward over the U.S. and Europe.

To read the rest and see all of the cool graphs, go here.

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Try to sell your house now…..

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via the Global Warming Policy Foundation

A careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling. Now it seems to be dead in the water.

In 2012, three years into President Barack Obama’s first term, green activists are asking, “What went wrong?” Where are all the new laws and regulations regulating energy use and the natural resource production? Where are the public-private partnerships signalling a new era of enironmentalist problem-solving? Where’s Al Gore? Shouldn’t he be lurking over President Obama’s shoulder, smiling, as the President signs yet another green jobs bill into law?

The question is a good one but one not easily answered. In the decades since the birth of the environmental movement, something’s clearly gone wrong. Other movements pushing for political and social change have altered the national discussion and elected candidates at every level of government.

Look at the Tea Party. Born only in 2009, it’s pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, forcing Congress to heel and almost sending the federal government into default.

But the environmental movement seems dead in the water.

Environmentalism Fails: Legislation

In late 2010 Al Gore offered three reasons why the U.S. Senate failed to enact into law a cap-and-trade bill: Republican partisanship, the recession, and the influence of special interests. He had a point. Despite endorsements from such Republican senators as John Warner, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, every effort to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during the preceding five years had floundered in the Senate.

In 2007 Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman (Independent) and Virginia Republican John Warner introduced a cap-and trade bill called the Climate Security Act. Their Lieberman-Warner bill was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee and sent to the floor by the committee chairman, Barbara Boxer of California. The bill’s advocates said “prompt, decisive action is critical, since global warming pollutants can persist in the atmosphere for more than a century.”

The Lieberman-Warner bill aimed to cap greenhouse gas emissions, lowering emission levels each year until 2050, when emissions were supposed to be down to 63 percent below 2005 levels. To achieve that goal, the federal government would issue right-to-emit permits to electric utilities and plants in the transportation and manufacturing industries. The bill also provided financial incentives to companies and families to reduce emissions.

The bill was doomed. Full Senate debate took place in the summer of 2008, when the average price of gasoline was well above $4 per gallon. Republican opponents successfully labeled it the biggest tax hike in history, one that imposed an enormous tax and regulatory burden on industries that would pass the cost burden onto consumers already struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.

Republicans beat the 2007 climate change bill because they argued that it would raise gas and home heating prices, cost jobs and cripple the economy. It didn’t help that 31,000 scientists rejected the notion of man-made global warming in a letter signed and circulated two weeks before the start of the Senate debate.

The next attempt came in the summer of 2009. On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey after its authors, Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts. For the first time a chamber of Congress passed a law meant to curb carbon emissions linked to climate change. Yet the Senate once again refused to follow through.

The Senate version of Waxman-Markey was shepherded by Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman. (Sen. Warner did not seek reelection in 2008.) Once again, a complex and messy mix of partisan politics, constituent pressures, and special interests combined to thwart passage of the bill.

Even though the Senate was controlled by Democrats, the sponsors of the bill knew they needed Republican votes, which required that certain bill provisions would have to be modified or weakened. But every tweak of the legislation designed to placate a Republican risked losing a Democrat, and every Democrat lost meant finding another Republican.

Kerry, Lieberman and Graham began bargaining with lawmakers. Some Republicans wanted guarantees that the bill would subsidize nuclear power. Lawmakers catering to agricultural interests wanted incentives or offsets for farmers who would be required to purchase emissions-reducing equipment.

Gulf Coast state politicians wanted to protect off-shore oil drilling, and politicians from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio refused to discuss anything that put restrictions on coal plants, which cap-and-trade does by definition. Every special interest had its own demands. For instance, the powerful Edison Electric Institute, which represents shareholder-owned electric power companies, wanted guarantees that carbon costs would never rise above a certain point. To cushion the blow of higher energy costs, it proposed that through the year 2030 electric power companies receive free emission credits worth billions of dollars.

The White House proposed a “grand bargain”: expand off-shore oil drilling in return for lawmaker support for cap and trade. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. A short time later an oil rig exploded into flames and the Deepwater Horizon well started gushing thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Under pressure from Senate Republican colleagues and his South Carolina constituents and suspicious of White House double-dealing, Senator Graham pulled his name from the bill, which eventually died without coming up for a vote.

Envirionmentalism’s Bright Beginnings Turn Pale

The sputtering of the environmental movement and the ignominious collapse of its signature legislation could not have been predicted. But a careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling.

Like the civil rights and antiwar movements, environmentalism’s origins lay in the 1960’s. In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio burst into flames. Toxic waste had so befouled the water that it ignited.

Only six months earlier the nation witnessed a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, the third largest oil spill in American waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. The imagery of burning rivers and miles of polluted beaches provoked public outrage and photos of dying sea birds covered in oily muck became a staple of nightly news coverage.

Highly visual incidents like the Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning Cuyahoga River didn’t create the modern environmental movement, but they were catalysts that thrust it into public awareness. Earlier, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring had claimed that man-made chemical pesticides like DDT were killing birds and other wildlife, and issues like air pollution and toxic waste aroused public anxiety. Groups like Get Oil Out! (GOO) and the Environmental Defense Center were created in the 1960s, and in 1972 California voters approved a ballot initiative creating the California Coastal Commission with vast powers to regulate economic activities and land use along the state’s coastline.

In April 1970 the first Earth Day was proclaimed by city mayors and celebrated on college campuses. Green activists established radical nonprofits like Friends of the Earth (1969), the Natural Resources Defense Council (1970) and Greenpeace (1971) which challenged older conservation groups to become more aggressive in lobbying politicians and harrassing corporations.

At the federal level President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order in 1970, and in that same year Congress authorized amendments to the Clean Air Act (passed in 1963) that imposed new regulations, the first of their kind, on industrial and mobile sources of air pollutants. The Clean Water Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973) followed.

By the late 1970s environmentalists were trying to maintain their early successes, but the movement was increasingly institutionalized and bureaucratized. Most groups were headquartered in Washington, DC, where they spent their energies in fundraising and adapting to political pressures. The Carter administration created a Department of Energy and mandated corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards to make cars more fuel-efficient. President Carter tried to set an example by wearing sweaters and installing solar panels on the roof of the White House, but most Americans did not like being told to lower their thermostats and buy smaller cars.

In the 1980s and 90s environmentalism began to lose its glamour and popular appeal. Ronald Reagan put energy policy on the back burner when he became president in 1981 and he tried with limited success to emphasize deregulatory policies. Federal agencies were embroiled in constant litigation and controversy whenever they tried to limit environmental rulemaking. A new set of difficult and often unpopular issues-the ozone hole, global warming and population growth-crowded onto the environmentalist agenda.

The War on Terror dominated the public agenda during the presidency of George W. Bush despite efforts by Al Gore and others to focus public attention on global warming. Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and his efforts to attribute Hurricane Katrina, melting ice caps and summer heat waves to man-made climate change failed to generate the crisis atmosphere needed to achieve social and political change.

These days surveys show Americans worry most about the issues of war and the economy. The environment is far down on the list of concerns. In 2010 a Gallup survey reported that 48 percent of respondents believed the threat of global warming is exaggerated.

Public skepticism has been growing steadily since 2006 when the Gallup poll first reported that 30 percent of those surveyed had doubts about global warming. (The figures increased to 33 percent in 2007, 35 percent in 2008 and 41 percent in 2009.) Similar results were recorded in a March 2011 Gallup poll that asked, “How much do you personally worry about global warming?” Only 51 percent said they worried a great deal or a fair amount, a big drop from the 66 percent in 2008 who were troubled by thoughts of melting glaciers and rising sea levels.

Another indicator of waning public interest in environmental issues is a 2011 Rasmussen poll that asked likely U.S. voters to consider what played a bigger role in global warming: solar activity or human behavior? Sixty percent said it was at least somewhat likely that solar activity plays a role in long-term climate change. Only 22 percent said it was unlikely. This gives no comfort to environmentalists like Al Gore who argue that human activity is the number-one cause.

The Movement Runs Out of Gas

Americans’ interest in taking action against global warming is waning, but environmental groups insist that public opinion plays no role in explaining Congress’s failure to enact comprehensive climate change legislation. Instead, green groups attribute the failure to achieve their goals to the money and power of their opponents. According to their reckoning, environmental groups are stymied by what amounts to a conspiracy of the oil industry, global warming deniers, and the Koch brothers’ vast right-wing network.

In the summer of 2011, Dr. Matthew Nisbet of American University released a pioneering 80-page report, which undermines this argument. Nisbet’s report, “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate,” rejects the argument that the environmental movement has been outspent by right-wing donors like the Koch brothers. It says the data is inconclusive on how much supporters and opponents of a cap-and-trade bill are spending to affect the outcome. For instance, Nisbet compared the budgets of the conservative movement (think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations) to national environmental organizations. He found that in 2009, major conservative outlets took in a total of $907 million in revenue, and spent $787 million. By comparison, green groups took in $1.7 billion that year and spent $1.4 billion. Another $394 million went specifically to climate-change related programs.

Nisbet also looked at lobbying. In the aggregate, conservatives spent a bit more: $272 million vs. $229 million. But in election spending, they far outspent environmentalists in 2010. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $33 million, the Karl Rove-advised American Crossroads spent $22 million and its affiliated Crossroads GPS spent $17 million in political contributions. By contrast, the League of Conservation Voters spent $5.5 million, Defenders of Wildlife spent $1 million and the Sierra Club only $700,000.

However, state ballot initiatives tell a different story. California’s Proposition 23 is a case in point. The 2010 initiative, heavily funded by Texas-based oil companies, would have halted California regulations on greenhouse gas emissions until there was a decline in the state’s rate of unemployment. Supporters of the measure raised about $10.6 million. But opponents raised $25 million, with significiant sums from environmental groups. The National Wildlife Foundation reported spending $3 million, the National Resources Defense Council $1.67 million, and the League of Conservation Voters $1.1 million.

Nisbet also looked at foundation funding for climate change projects. What he found confirmed a 2007 study, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which noted that philanthropists are strategic funders of environmental causes and seek to achieve specific policy goals.

It’s clear that overall, the environmental movement does not have a money problem. So what’s the problem? One prominent environmentalist, Daniel J. Weiss of Center for American Progress Action Fund, argues that the recession has played an outsized role in thwarting environmental goals. “It makes people more sensitive to the argument that various proposals will cost jobs,” says Weiss. “Oil and coal industries have made these arguments every timebut they’re falling on more receptive ears now.”

Tom Borelli, a climate-change skeptic at the National Center for Public Policy Research, agrees that a weak economy explains environmentalism’s downward spiral. “All along they were riding the wealth of our nation,” says Borelli. “Now the whole green bubble is exploding.” He points out that the movement’s energy agenda-the war on fossil fuels and the push for renewable energy-have always been unsustainable. “That’s where they failed.”

No One to Blame But Itself

But there’s yet another reason, one that activists are loathe to acknowledge, and it’s this: Their scare tactics have backfired. Environmental groups have done nothing but create enemies by labeling as “global warming deniers” anyone who dares to ask questions about man-made climate change. Critics like Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who in 2005 called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” remain a minority in Congress.

Far more typical is Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who in 2009 said, “The scientific aspect that I’m still reserving judgment on is the extent to which it’s manmade or natural.” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey actually agrees the data is “pretty clear” that there has been an increase in the earth’s surface temperature, but he adds that “the extent to which that has been caused by human activity I think is not clear. I think that is very much disputed and has been debated.”

Extremist rhetoric has badly damaged the environmentalist cause. The Danish environmental writer Bjorn Lomborg and two enlightened environmentalists at the Breakthrough Institute, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, put the blame squarely on the environmental movement. It has no one to blame but itself.

In his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg observes that that there are more important scientific problems to tackle than global warming. Activists should work to provide clean water and address public health issues around the world. By calling for government mandates costing billions of dollars in an implausible attempt to lower the earth’s temperature Lomborg says environmental activists are squandering the public’s goodwill and exhausting its patience.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger urged environmentalists to abandon their doomsday fantasies in “The Death of Environmentalism,” a 2004 paper they wrote for the Environmental Grantmakers Association. It made them outcasts in the environmental movement. Last February, in a speech at Yale University, they revisited the paper and concluded that the problems they identified had only worsened in the years since.

Nordhous and Shellenberger said that when Al Gore attacks Republicans for waging a war on science and calls on Americans to “change the way we live our lives,” he is undermining the public’s “need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order” and guaranteeing that millions of Americans will reject his counsel.

Greens reacted to these developments not by toning down their rhetoric or reconsidering their agenda in a manner that might be more palatable to their opponents. Instead, they made ever more apocalyptic claims about global warming claims that were increasingly inconsistent, ironically, with the scientific consensus whose mantle greens claimed.

In 2012, it’s clear that scare tactics and apocalyptic predictions have failed to persuade. The environmental movement is not gaining traction with either legislators or the public. As Tom Borelli puts it, “They’re now going to be playing defense. And they’re not used to that.”

Amanda Carey is a Washington, DC-based journalist and a frequent contributor to Green Watch.

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You’ll still have to pay taxes in 2013

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdc&feature=related 450 300]

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Funny read

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Media 101: How to Jump a Shark

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I’m sure if you play around with the search engine you can get a prediction for most anything.

Full article

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A special formula…

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