A number of news reports tried to reengage the climate change debate by reporting on a press release from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies that suggested 2010 tied 2005 for the warmest year on record. The Associated Press reports, “Indeed, the last three months have been particularly cool in the U.S. Southeast, even while worldwide readings were going on to tie 2010 with 2005 for the warmest year on record as climate change continues to affect the atmosphere.”

But the article fails to differentiate between warmest years in the United States … Continue Reading

In the January 12th Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin reported on a company that is launching a project to measure atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. She writes:

Robert Marshall, president and chief executive of Earth Networks, said the information the new sensors gather would be particularly valuable in a regulated market in which greenhouse gas emitters can buy and sell carbon credits. While the federal government is unlikely to adopt such a nationwide trading system anytime soon, states such as California and New Mexico are pressing ahead with such policies, as are many nations overseas.

This might have been true before November 2010, … Continue Reading

Time’s Bryan Walsh reports on a new study Nature Geoscience that discusses what increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could do all over the world – mostly lots of glacier melting, sea level rises and desertification. Walsh calls the study “an imperfect study, to say the least” but the real point of contention is the tipping point for the amount of carbon that can be in the atmosphere. Walsh writes:

As of 2100, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reach some 1,000 ppm—two and a half times the current level, and well above the 450 or 350

… Continue Reading

Arthur Max of the Associated Press wrote on November 20th about the dangers of permafrost melting and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He writes, “Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.” That may be a concern of some scientists but Max is wrong when he says “Most climate scientists, with a few dissenters, say human activities - … Continue Reading

In her November 7 article for the Washington Times entitled “Chilly wind blows against global climate pact”, reporter Kara Rowland describes “China, India and other rapidly growing economies” as “leading polluters” because of their carbon dioxide emissions. Such language plays right into the hands of the “global warming” industry by terming CO2, perhaps best thought of as plant food, as pollution.

A less biased portrayal of the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would note that the vast majority of the so-called “greenhouse effect” comes from water vapor, essentially all of which is naturally occurring. Of … Continue Reading

Chelsea Conaboy of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article on October 4th discussing the success of the northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI is a regional cap and trade system that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector 10 percent by 2018 and includes 10 northeastern states. While Conaboy accurately points out that one purpose of a cap and trade system is a revenue raiser (RGGI brought in $729 million in new revenue for the states), the program is not the driver for reduced emissions. The slumping economy is. Carbon … Continue Reading

Writing in Reuters on October 7th, Luca Nencetti, Kasia Duda, and Yuan Fang argue that the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is the least-desired climate change policy because of its command-and-control approach. This part is true. Regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act will burden the economy with higher energy costs, higher administrative compliance costs for businesses, higher bureaucratic costs for enforcing the regulations, and higher legal costs from the inevitable litigation. But authors make two glaring mistakes when they glorify the benefits of a cap and trade system … Continue Reading

Elizabath Rosenthal’s September 16th New York Times article “As Europe Kicks Coal, Hungarian Town Suffers” does contain some useful reminders about how wedded Europe still is to coal power. Specifically, she reports:

Determined to reduce Europe’s reliance on coal, the European Commission is fighting a complicated battle against the subsidies that have long sustained coal, an influential but polluting industry in Europe and in the United States. In May, the Brussels-based governing body for the European Union announced that economic bailouts and favors for coal mines and power plants were forbidden after this year, precipitating Vertesi’s demise.

But just how “determined” … Continue Reading

China makes inroads on emissions the headline over Juliet Eilperin’s September 13th Washington Post article reads. Eilperin goes on to report:

In the United States, many politicians are reluctant to impose mandatory curbs on heat-trapping gases, fearing a political backlash. But the Chinese government has begun to make some inroads into its greenhouse gas emissions by holding accountable local and provincial officials - as well as the nation’s top 1,000 emitters.

The rest of Eilperin’s article makes it seem like China has fully embraced the climate alarmist agenda. She reports: “[China] has set a more ambitious target for the next decade, … Continue Reading

In The Washington Post August 29th, David A. Fahrenthold had a good report on the environmental movement and its inability to pass comprehensive climate change legislation - even with a left-leaning Congress, a Democratic President and a record oil spill. The article nicely demonstrates how the public does not have an appetite for cap and trade or any other bill that will increase the cost of energy. Fahrenthold misleads readers when he says it was industry and the oil groups that stopped cap and trade in its tracks. Writing about the environmentalists, he says, “A … Continue Reading

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, appealed for aid from the international community telling reporters: “Climate change, with all its severity and unpredictability, has become a reality for 170 million Pakistanis. The present situation in Pakistan reconfirms our extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change.” The New York Times Nathanial Gronewold then added on August 20th:

Both Qureshi and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hinted that they would use the Pakistan crisis to spur the now-stalled international climate talks. At the very least, the disaster shows that massive funding is needed to make the developing world more resilient

… Continue Reading

Jim Kirk argues in the August 13th New York Times that since Congress is not moving forward with cap and trade legislation, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the nation’s only buyer and seller of carbon credits, is suffering. Kirk says, “Although carbon trading is robust in Europe, Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the Chicago Climate Exchange, painted a gloomy outlook for a robust cap-and-trade market in the United States.”

While is true absent a cap and trade policy, the future of the Chicago Climate Change is gloomy, Kirk is simply wrong to say that carbon trading is robust in … Continue Reading

On July 12th Coral Davenport reported for Politico:
Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

While Republicans and polluting industries will celebrate, most know their victory will be fleeting…
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out four rules that, in the absence of climate change legislation, eventually would give the executive branch command-and-control power to limit carbon pollution from power plants, factories

… Continue Reading

As Mark Twain told us, there are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. Unfortunately, Agence France-Press (AFP) reporter Marlow Hood reminds us of Twain’s truth in his April 29th article entitled “Sea ice loss major cause of Arctic warming.” Mr. Hood uses the typical statistic-manipulator tactic of cherry-picking data points and wording descriptions in a way likely to mislead the average reader.

Hood begins his article by claiming that “melting sea ice has dramatically accelerated warming in the Arctic” and continues to talk about data from 1989 to 2008, as if the present is irrelevant.

In fact, … Continue Reading

Stephen Dinan’s March 5th Washington Times article entitled “Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics” allows a climate alarmist  to assert that scientists “will never be able to compete with energy companies” when it comes to pushing their side of the debate.

The claim is false for several reasons:

• Energy companies have funded research on both sides of this debate, but spent more funding those “alarmists” who support claims of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (“AGW”).
• No

… Continue Reading

Writing about the mainstream climatologists’ attempt to restore their credibility on March 2nd, John Broder of The New York Times all but dismisses the flaws in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report:

No scientific body is under more hostile scrutiny than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiles the climate research of hundreds of scientists around the globe into periodic reports intended to be the definitive statement of the science and a guide for policy makers. Critics, citing several relatively minor errors in its most recent report and charges of conflict of interest

… Continue Reading

The November 27th Washington Post had a front page headline under a Juliet Eilperin article reading: “China sets target for emission cuts. Premier to go to Copenhagen. Moves could signal progress in climate talks.”

The theme of the story is a looming, possible and very significant policy development, in which the United States would commit to binding, steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions produced by combusting traditional energy sources (hydrocarbons or “fossil fuels”). This is a policy goal in favor of which the Post has aggressively editorialized. Other than massive expansion of nuclear power, there is no known way to … Continue Reading

The November 6th USA Today has an article by Dan Vergano titled, Gore’s book a toolbox for fixing climate crises, on former Vice President Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice, A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Included in the article is the following paragraph:

The book resulted from two years of ‘Solutions Summits’ with scientists, economists and engineers, and lists four pages worth of contributors as well as 25 independent reviewers. The fact checking follows jibes over small errors in An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary that turned Gore into an icon of climate change.

In fact, that film’s errors were … Continue Reading

Juliet Eilperin’s October 28th Washington post story Economics of Climate Change in Forefront reports:

In June, the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute predicted that a $150 billion annual public and private investment in clean energy would produce a net increase every year of 1.7 million jobs.

It’s true, CAP did release such a “study” in June of this year. But they also released a very similar study in September of 2008 showing that $100 billion in annual spending on clean energy would produce 2 million jobs. That is a … Continue Reading

A unattributed October 21st Associated Press article reports:

The industrialized world again in 2007 boosted, rather than reduced, its emissions of global-warming gases, the U.N. reported Wednesday, as international negotiators looked ahead to crucial climate talks in December.

But a search of the Web easily turns up news stories that show 2008 data, referring to numbers compiled by the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (“IWR”). This data, when compared to the IWR’s prior year data, shows that CO2 emissions from the “industrialized world” dropped substantially in 2008 versus 2007 (although the IWR goes out of their way … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin published a story September 30th on Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) “climate bill” which Eilperin reports:

aims to make deep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in the near and long term while setting a limit on the cost of carbon allowances, according to several sources and a close-to-final version of the bill obtained by The Washington Post.

The bill, which is still being revised, would make it easier for businesses to compensate for their carbon pollution by expanding the available pool of domestic offsets by 40 percent compared with the House-passed climate bill

… Continue Reading

Several days before key Senators introduce that body’s version of controversial global warming “cap-and-trade” legislation, and several months after EPA whistle-blower Dr. Alan Carlin drew attention to the fact that the recent published scientific literature presents a decided tilt against prevailing “global warming” scientific wisdom, the New York Times has run a piece diminishing Dr. Carlin’s stature and findings. The September 24th John M. Broder article reads:

Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.

In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the

… Continue Reading

The Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein published an article September 23rd, titled “NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening.” The story opens, “New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.”

Oddly, there is no mention of “runaway” in either the British Antarctic Survey’s press release or the research paper itself. Yet the lurid conclusion appears in the reporter’s first paragraph.

Although the paper at issue is already, as we see here, being spun as evidence of impending catastrophic sea level … Continue Reading

Reporting on President Barack Obama’s September 22nd address to the United Nations Climate Summit, USA Today’s Traci Watson writes:

The Earth isn’t waiting, scientists say.

If emissions keep increasing as they have, the planet’s average temperature will rise 3 to 7 degrees by 2100, according to the U.N. climate panel’s 2007 report.

But what Watson completely fails to tell her readers, is that the “3 to 7 degrees by 2100″ temperature increase is nothing but a estimate based on computer modeling. It does not reflect an actual observed rise in temperatures. Science is based on the collection observable evidence. And the … Continue Reading

The Washington Times published a story September 1st by Amanda DeBard under the header: “Climate Change Bill To Boost Nuclear Plants” which starts out good:

Nearly half of the nation’s nuclear power plants stand to earn a windfall if the climate-change bill passed by the House becomes law.

But then DeBard goes on to report:

The bill will cause an “increase in revenues to carbon-free power sources like nuclear, and this is exactly what is supposed to happen,” said John Shelk, president of the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA).
…
“The money isn’t really a ‘windfall profit,’ ” Mr. Shelk said. “Instead, it is

… Continue Reading

A unattributed August 18th Associated Press story titled China Mulls Climate Resolution (printed in the Wall Street Journal), reports that China might vow that it will, or at least should, begin reducing its greenhouse gas emissions possibly around 2050. Early in the piece is a one-sentence paragraph, sandwiched between two others:

China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and has not set a cap on its emissions, believing it needs to continue to expand its economy and lift millions out of poverty. The country’s stance is expected to be key to a successful December U.N. conference in Copenhagen, which

… Continue Reading

In the August 8th edition of The New York Times, columnist John M. Broder, who writes frequently for the paper on global warming issues penned a column titled, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security.” Broder reported on recent studies and exercises conducted by the military that looked at the security implications of global climate change. He then concluded:

a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus

… Continue Reading

On August 10th the BBC ran an image showing smog-choked streets accompanying a story originally titled “Bonn hosts climate change talks” – since updated to a more excited “Time ‘runs short’ on climate deal” – about negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

The context is inescapable: the photo caption below the choking pollution states “There are demands for China and India to commit to cutting emissions”, and the story is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The BBC implies it … Continue Reading

In the August 8th New York Times, John Broder reports:

Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.

Considering that this paragraph comes under an article titled “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. security”, one would hope Broder knew he was on solid ground here. Unfortunately he is not. The Arctic ice cap – which principally, and as referenced in this story, … Continue Reading

In their story August 3rd Cover story, Congressional Quarterly reporters Coral Davenport, Benton Ives and Phil Mattingly perpetuate a common mythology about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which surely will proliferate as reportage increases, with numerous international confabs scheduled to discuss an international treaty in coming months. Their piece, Carbon, From the Ground Up at least admits that “carbon dioxide [is] a naturally occurring by-product of human and animal respiration, and the principal gas breathed in by green plants”, but then goes on to state:

The more than 2,000 scientists on the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel

… Continue Reading