Energy Probe

China Dialogue review of global warming debate not objective, says author of environmental best seller

Posted on November 11, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon

November 11, 2008

China Dialogue fails to objectively review the scientific debate about global warming in the environmental best seller, The Deniers, by Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe, Canada’s top energy industry watchdog. Probe International calls the author’s response a “must read” for Chinese environmentalists, lawmakers, and scholars.

Response to China Dialogue review

In July of this year, China Dialogue, a London-based media website, prominently reviewed Lawrence Solomon’s The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (Lawrence Solomon is a colleague at Probe International’s sister organization, Energy Probe). To further the debate over the science of global warming, we at Probe International suggested to China Dialogue that its reviewer, George Marshall of www.climatedenial.org, and our Mr. Solomon, engage in a debate on China Dialogue’s website. China Dialogue declined the invitation. It also declined to grant Mr. Solomon equal space for a reply to Mr. Marshall’s review. To provide the response that we believe is warranted, we have asked Mr. Solomon to respond here. – Editors

Lawrence Solomon responds:

When China Dialogue commissioned a review of The Deniers, my book about the global warming views of many of the world’s most renowned scientists, I was grateful. While The Deniers has received considerable coverage in North America – it was for four months the #1 environmental best seller in both Canada and the U.S. – it has attracted little attention in China, now the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and thus the country that stands to lose most from ill-informed climate change policies.

Upon seeing the review, I was perplexed. China Dialogue’s choice of reviewer — George Marshall, whom it acknowledges runs a blog, www.climatedenial.org, that “regularly challenges climate skeptic arguments” — was unlikely to produce an objective review of the scientific debate. And China Dialogue’s choice didn’t.

Mr. Marshall does give me credit for relying only on scientists of the highest rank. “There are no dodgy hired guns here: pukka, medal-wearing scientific stars the lot of them,” he acknowledges. But he misleads China Dialogue readers by implying that these scientists ultimately subscribe to the consensus claimed by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — that global warming is occurring, that it’s manmade, and that, if unabated, it will likely lead to catastrophe.

“Solomon’s key witnesses actually are leading scientists who accept the core consensus but have some important and relevant reservations around the specifics of the causes and the impacts. By page 45 of his book, Solomon has admitted as much: “I noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers.”1

Remember page 45 – I will explain its significance shortly. Before I do, let’s consider Mr. Marshall’s claim that my scientists accept the man-made global warming thesis, albeit with a few “reservations.” Mr. Marshall fails to describe those reservations but China Dialogue’s readers deserve to know that , taken together, those “reservations” effectively destroy the theory that global warming is manmade and catastrophic.

The first “reservation,” by Dr. Edward Wegman, former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, involved the IPCC’s famous “hockey stick graph.” This graph, created by a computer model that relies on indirect, theoretical data, purported to show that the 1990s was the warmest decade of the warmest century of the last millennium. More than any other piece of research, this graph convinced the press and the public that global warming was real and manmade.

Dr. Wegman, one of the world’s top statisticians, determined that the scientists who produced the hockey stick graph had made an elementary error in their statistical model – with the result that their model would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of the data that was fed into it. In other words, there is no scientific evidence to prove that temperatures were warmer in the 1990s than in earlier decades of the 20th century2, or that the 1900s was the warmest century of the millennium. Dr. Wegman’s findings demolished one of the central pillars of the so-called climate change consensus — that temperatures today are unusual.

The second “reservation” that Mr. Marshall doesn’t tell readers about involves the Stern Review, the economic report that made banner headlines around the world by claiming that global warming could lead to a global catastrophe “on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.” These claims, according to Dr. Richard S. J. Tol, one of the world’s leading environmental economists, were based on numerous errors and were ultimately “preposterous … The Stern Review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent.” Dr. Tol (along with other leading economists3) thus demolished a second central pillar of climate change doomsayers — that global warming could lead to economic catastrophe.

The third “reservation” that Mr. Marshall trivialized involves hurricanes, which in 2004 and 2005 were widely blamed on global warming, in good part because IPCC scientists held a press conference that convinced the world to that effect. Dr. Christopher Landsea, the IPCC’s own hurricane expert, tried desperately to stop that press conference, saying “There are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity.” None of the IPCC scientists at the press conference had expertise in hurricanes. Dr. Landsea then resigned from the IPCC. His story demolished yet another pillar of the conventional wisdom on climate change — that global warming increases hurricane activity.

The fourth “reservation” involves Dr. Duncan Wingham, director of the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency’s Cryosat Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of Antarctica’s ice. Dr. Wingham’s satellite data demonstrates that Antarctica is not melting, as doomsayers, claim. Rather, it is thickening. Dr. Wingham thus demolishes a fourth pillar of climate change catastrophics — that Antarctica’s vast store of ice will melt, raise ocean levels, and flood low-lying coastal areas.

We are now at page 45 of my book, the page Mr. Marshall notes. “None of them were deniers,” he quotes me as saying, implying that all the scientists in my book actually support the climate change consensus. In fact, by page 45 I had only profiled four scientists and, by chance, they were not out-and-out deniers – they each objected to global warming claims made in their own spheres of knowledge but did not dispute scientific findings in other spheres. At page 46, my book begins to profile numerous scientists who entirely reject the IPCC consensus. These include:

Dr. Antonino Zichichi, Italy’s best known scientist. He is the discoverer of nuclear anti-matter, the former president of the European Physical Society, and the president of the World Federation of Scientists. Dr. Zichichi believes that global warming is almost entirely a natural phenomenon and that the UN models that show otherwise are “incoherent and invalid.”

Dr. Syun Akasofu, founder of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska. He is the discoverer of the origin of the storms of the aurora borealis, has been honored by the Royal Astronomical Society of London and the American Geophysical Union, and was twice named one of the “1000 Most Cited Scientists.” Dr. Akasofu notes that Earth has been warming at the same rate for more than three centuries because Earth has been climbing out of the last Little Ice Age.

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov is the head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Pulkovo Observatory, and of the Astrometria project on the International Space Station, which Russia shares with the U.S. He notes that global warming has been occurring on Mars and other planets as well as on Earth, and that all the warming is due to the same reason: they all share the same Sun.

Dr. Reid Bryson (who recently died), was a hero to the American environmental movement going back to the 1970s. Known as the “Father of Scientific Climatology,” he was a member of the United Nations’ Global 500 Roll of Honor and was judged “the world’s most cited climatologist” by the Institute of British Geographers. Dr. Bryson characterized global warming: as “a theory for which there is no credible proof.”

No fair-minded person can claim that the science is settled on global warming. Mr. Marshall has not only failed to be fair-minded, he has compounded the unfairness by attacking the integrity of many of the scientists who had the courage to speak out despite the repercussions that they faced — some have lost their funding, some their jobs, all have become subject to slander.

We simply do not yet know whether man has played a significant role in global warming. We do know that we will not find out by putting blinkers on ourselves and punishing the scientists who dare to speak out. And we do know that there are sensible, straightforward measures that we can and should take to protect the global environment, measures that make sense regardless of the scientific findings on global warming.

Governments in western and developing countries alike should stop subsidizing energy producing and energy consuming industries. Doing this would scale back energy consumption, along with uneconomic capital projects such as gas pipelines, nuclear plants, ethanol plants, pulp and paper mills, and smokestack industries. Greenhouse gas emissions, NOx, SOx, and nuclear wastes would then decline for economic reasons, energy conservation would soar, communities now poisoned by known pollutants would be relieved, and the stage would be set for an economically sustainable energy future.

If Mr. Marshall has objections to this, he’s welcome to reply.

Lawrence Solomon is Executive Director of Energy Probe, the chief critic of the energy industry in Canada.

——————————————————————————–

¹ “Deniers” is a pejorative term, used by supporters of the UN position to liken global warming skeptics to Nazi sympathizers, i.e., fascist extremists who are not accepted by the mainstream of society. I use this term ironically.

²Indeed, NASA recently revised its data, following the discovery of an error. It now reports that the 1930s was the warmest decade.

³ Another such economist is Yale University’s William Nordhaus, the world’s leading climate change economist. For a fuller discussion of how misguided Stern is, and the consequences for China, see the exchange between Nordhaus and Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson in the pages of the New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494.

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Green market risk

Posted on November 8, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
FP Comment
November 8, 2008

If you think the causes of the financial crisis are complicated, just wait until we start trading carbon.

Think that the causes of the current financial crisis are hard to figure out? Think that the Wall Street wizards went too far in creating sub-prime mortgages and asset-backed papers and hedges and off-setting derivatives and other financial instruments that few understood on their own, whose value no one could easily establish, and whose interactions no one on this planet could ever figure out, except maybe in theory? Think that central bankers have lost control of their currencies and that they are flailing about, as clueless as to what needs to be done as the governments that throw rescue package upon bailout package at the crisis, hoping that something, somewhere, somehow, will stick?

Think we have learned our lesson about creating artificial securities, divorced from the real world and highly leveraged, so volatile and inscrutable as to be capable of sending markets into even worse hells, and entire economies into real depressions?

Think again.

To the layers of confusion that now exist in our financial markets we are about to add another, as opaque and volatile as the others, and as unhinged from the real world — a carbon currency. President-elect Barack Obama wants it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants it and their European counterparts, to some extent, already have it.

Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the world’s largest trading exchange for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If ambitious Kyoto-style plans come to fruition, ETS will morph to account for, among other things, the carbon content of all industrial and biological processes, and the carbon carrying capacity of all the real estate on our planet. Because carbon is a building block of life, and because we live in a carbon-based planet, carbon prices will become more ubiquitous than the U.S. dollar. It would become, in effect, a globally traded currency tied to gaseous commodities that until recently were nowhere traded.

What might this commodity-based currency be like? A week ago, the commodity traded on the ETS — EU allowances of greenhouse gas emissions — plummeted in value by 20%, after falling 20% three months earlier. This comes just two years after the ETS exchange had its first major collapse — a 70% decline on rumours that some governments were about to give their industries extra emission rights, followed by even steeper declines that virtually wiped out the value of the allowances. Prior to the declines, the allowances had seen a steep climb in value.

The good news — and the reason no one much cares about these collapses — is that the carbon emissions market is in its infancy, a mere $64-billion last year, compared to the trillions trading hourly in international markets. A collapse in today’s carbon market roils international stock markets far less than, say, a collapse of the Thai bhat might, which is to say not at all.

But what will happen should carbon become a major currency, and a highly volatile one at that? For starters, every carbon-intensive business will need protection against the extreme changes seen in carbon prices. This protection — carbon-hedging mechanisms of various kinds — will themselves assume outsized proportions because the businesses subject to carbon fluctuations will vastly outnumber those that now hedge against fluctuations in fossil fuels — in addition to the energy industry, airlines, utilities and others that now need fossil fuel hedges, will be forestry, agriculture, real estate, deserts, dams and other land-based sectors.

How will the new financial sector that emerges to price these hedges determine values? The “marketplace” for carbon allowances will be one in which both supply and demand are set by governments, in which intense corporate lobbying for changes to both supply and demand is all but certain, and in which moral hazard — in the form of an expectation of a government bailout — is an absolute certainty. Valuing the toxic instruments created by Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, that corrupted the pool of debt securities, will seem like child’s play in comparison.

To avoid a future market meltdown of the likes we are now experiencing, almost all are agreed, we need to avoid opaque financial instruments that can’t be easily understood or valued. Carbon offsets, credits, allowances sinks and other instruments attempt to create pricing for vast stores of carbon dioxide — something that can’t be seen, that has no intrinsic commercial value, and that may prove to benefit rather than harm the environment. They are obscure and opaque, instruments both green and toxic.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

False hope for global unity

Posted on November 3, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
October 31, 2008

My American friends believe that, after Barack Obama becomes president, America will once again be loved around the world. They are wishful thinkers.

Anti-Americanism didn’t begin with George Bush and it won’t end with an Obama presidency. With rare exceptions, America has always inspired hatred and contempt, and for reasons that aren’t about to go away. Those who expect America’s haters to convert on November 4 need to get out more.

I first noticed anti-Americanism abroad as a teen from Canada living in Paris in 1967 – Americans were commonly held in contempt in the 5th Republic of Charles De Gaulle (1958-69), who glorified France by slurring the U.S., and who explicitly sought to undermine U.S. stature in the world. As was popular among French intellectuals, De Gaulle decried America’s “arrogance of power” and its soulless materialism.

Then I noticed anti-Americanism in a trip around the world in 1973, and so did the many Americans I crossed paths with in youth hostels and cafes. Their backpacks could be counted on to display the Canadian flag, the better to avoid unpleasantries (German youths, reviled for their country’s Nazi past, sported backpacks with Swiss flags). All told, I have visited some 60 countries over the last 40 years. With the general exception of the then-Communist countries, the sentiment – at least among the reform-minded people I tended to associate with – was overwhelmingly anti-American.

The bitter criticisms of the U.S. often confused me. Anil Agarwal, a prominent environmentalist (now-deceased) from India for whom I had the greatest respect, decried the “Coca Cola-ization” of the Third World (this was circa 1980 – today we would call this “globalization”). You can visit the poorest, most remote village, he lamented, and you will see Coca Cola signs, and people drinking Coca Cola, despite the expense.

But why blame Coca Cola or America?, I asked, particularly perplexed because Anil was inspired by the villager’s knowledge and resourcefulness, and was an outspoken proponent of individual and community control. If villagers voluntarily purchase Coca Cola, why would Anil object?

Anil never did answer in a way I found satisfying, other than expressing a discomfort that the U.S. had become too powerful, that its corporations’ reach had become too extensive, that the U.S. presence had gone too far. It was then common to decry “U.S. imperialism,” although the U.S. never sought or got much of a colonial empire, unlike Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, which between them militarily conquered and colonized much of Africa, Asia and the Americas. “U.S. imperialism” was short for “U.S. economic imperialism,” meaning that the U.S. was attempting to control the world marketplace through often nefarious non-military means, including covert support for dictators.

America’s military, of course, inspires resentment and hatred when it engages in war – witness the reaction today to the war in Iraq, or a generation ago to the Vietnam War. But America’s military also inspires contempt for its passivity. During the First World War, the German Kaiser repeatedly claimed that America would not fight, whatever the provocation; President Woodrow Wilson, with his policy of “watchful waiting,” bore him out for years, entering the war only at the end and after being attacked. Roosevelt, likewise, entered the Second World War late, and after America was attacked.

The view around the world that America doesn’t have the stomach for a fight remains – Muslim extremists took this lesson from Reagan’s flight from Beirut in 1984 and Clinton’s from Somalia in 1993. American restraint following the first World Trade Center attack, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole confirmed this analysis prior to 9/11, as did the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war, as does the anti-war movement now. Whether the loathing for America is greater when it fights or when it does not is arguable; not arguable is that the U.S. has been loathed regardless of its military stance.

The most enduring of the stereotypes that denigrate the U.S. is that of the Ugly American, a best-selling book that came out in 1958, and then became a Marlon Brando movie. This American is loud and tasteless, insensitive to other cultures. A boor, and not one in uniform, the ugly American came to represent the American tourist above all, but also corporate big-wigs and stay-at-home slobs. This characterization was nothing new, however. An earlier America hater, Charles Dickens, in 1844 painted Americans in an equally boorish light and America as “so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust.” Almost a century earlier still, the French had decided that the natural environment in the Americas was not conducive to producing hardy flora or fauna, and that humans who settled there would become degenerate. Voltaire was one exponent of this view, the French encyclopedist Abbe Raynal another: “America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science,” he concluded in 1770, setting off a debate among such men as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, who now had to defend themselves from attack by their more cultured critics across the sea.

Many, many scholars have examined the phenomenon of anti-Americanism, some likening it to a kind of secular religion that explains all the world’s evils, from poverty and injustice to wars and environmental destruction. My explanation is less complicated: America is an unparalleled success, and with success comes envy and resentment, especially of those who don’t have it.

The world has seen other great military powers – the ancient Romans, the Ottomans, the British. None has extended its military reach throughout the planet, as has the U.S. Neither has any one nation before so dominated the world economy – the U.S. represents 25% of world GDP. Neither has any one nation so dominated technological advancement – the U.S. soars in scientific achievements, whether measured by the number of Nobel Prizes won or the number of patents acquired. Neither, and most gallingly, has any one nation ever dominated culture so thoroughly. From Hollywood to Broadway to TV, from music to clothing to food, America is everywhere supreme. This Coca-Cola-McDonalds-Starbucks culture may be reviled but it cannot be disputed.

Finally, America is loathed because its brand of free-market capitalism remains ascendant, having outperformed European-style socialism and utterly defeated Communism, ideologies that attract many if not most of the world’s intellectuals. More than two centuries since its founding, the U.S. shows no sign of losing either its economic or military supremacy.

Will the world pay obeisance to U.S. superiority should President Obama take office? French president Sarkozy reportedly characterized Obama’s stance on Iran as “utterly immature” and comprised of “formulations empty of all content.” Worse, he believes, Obama is “arrogantly” displaying a willingness to act unilaterally in talking to Iran without preconditions, ignoring the consensus forged by France, Germany and other members on the UN Security Council. The EU’s trade commissioner called Obama’s advocacy of trade protectionism “irresponsible” and a “mirage,” the UK’s foreign secretary echoed trade concerns.

America will be America after Nov 4. Anti-Americanism is safe.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe.

Photo: Supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burn American flags. (Kareem Kaheem/Reuters)

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Letters to the Editor: The Deniers

Posted on November 1, 2008 by energyprbe

Reason magazine
November 1, 2008

Ronald Bailey (in Carbon: Tax, Trade, or Deregulate/Reason/July 2008) says that the science of global warming has finally lined up for him. He claims that perhaps more relevant than the “air of trumphalism” among attendees at the U.N. conference on climate change in Bali was the fact that a “lot of the climatologists who were there sounded very scared.” Neither trumphalism nor fear is a solid standard for evidence.

The Canadian environmentalist and columnist Lawrence Solomon, of the National Post, and the Toronto Financial Post, has written a series of columns in the last few years on the subject of scientists who have developed research data that refute many of the claims of the warming catastrophists. The series, called “The Deniers,” is available online and has been turned into a book of the same name this year.

Early on, after describing the views of several of these scientists on such topics as the (in)famous hockey stick graph, hurricanes, and Antarctic ice sheets, Solomon tells us that all of them assume global warming is real and is caused by human activity – based on the reports of other scientists. They each know that the evidence they have observed refutes specific claims for anthropogenic global warming in their area of expertise.

That says a lot. The evidence relating to climate issues comes from many highly specialized areas of scientific research. If each, or most, or even a significant subset of the evidence for warming is questionable and justifiably disputed by reputable scientists, then having everyone assume that everyone else knows what he is doing in claiming dangerous warming is like seeing a forest when no individual trees are in evidence.

John Kannarr

Glendale, AZ

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A study of water and sediment quality as related to public health issues, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta

Posted on October 22, 2008 by energyprbe

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The dark side of biofuels

Posted on October 22, 2008 by energyprbe

As the world seeks alternatives to fossil fuels (petrol, oil, diesel) that have caused climate change, the focus is gradually shifting to biofuels that are believed to be efficient and friendly to the environment. Biofuels are being billed as the “best replacement of fossil fuels” in the efforts by industrialised countries to cut down emissions and reduce the impacts of climate change. Obviously, by cultivating these oil plants, one would imagine that there would be an opportunity for rural communities to improve their livelihoods while at the same time contributing to the efforts to combat climate change.

However, alarm bells have been rung in regions that have developed biofuel industries; that just as the discovery of fossil fuel in Niger Delta, Nigeria, and elsewhere in Africa brought a ‘curse’, the biofuel or agro-fuel industry could be even a worse curse in places where it has gained foothold. From sugarcane plantations in Brazil to Indonesia’s palm plantations, the reality is that biofuel industry, without strict regulation, can be as catastrophic as the fossil fuel industry is in Africa.

While local production on a small scale of biofuels, like ethanol, can contribute to local energy sovereignty, the international market can completely destroy the opportunities for sustainable production. As millions of acres worldwide are converted to corn, Jatropha, palm oil, soy, etc, it is becoming clear that we could be making climate change even worse, driving more species into extinction, and at the same time, threatening food production in developing countries.

The new biofuel revolution being subsidised by rich countries, led by the United States of America and the European Union could be buoyed by inability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions domestically as well as increased prices of crude oil. The question in the lips of many, however, is whether biofuels will help solve global energy crisis and reduce climate change at the same time. A number of NGOs have urged African delegates to the Climate Change Convention, where the issue of biofuels is increasingly gaining currency, to be cautious of biofuels as possible ways to achieve fast growth or more efficient fuel conversion under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Biofuels, they argue, may exacerbate the problems of social inequality and poverty, particularly in Africa, as well as climate change, including environmental degradation.

While African countries are beginning to explore the possibilities of farming biofuel crops for local household and domestic grid energy use, the consequences of growing biofuel for export to the wealthy countries so that they may maintain their energy intensive lifestyles, instead of growing food for consumption by Africans could be severe. Using potential agricultural land and later to grow biofuels instead of food for domestic consumption will have a detrimental effect on food security in the continent that is already struggling to feed its more than 800 million inhabitants.

To demonstrate that biofuels offer very little carbon saving and low energy saving, studies in the US found that the amount of fossil fuel energy required to produce and process biofuel crops such as Soya and maize (fertilizer, farm machinery, processing and transport) is almost as much as the amount of energy contained in the fuel produced. In addition, the studies show, the amount of grain required for one tank of bioethanol in a 4×4 SUV vehicle would feed one person for one year. Biofuels will open up commodity markets to increased speculation. In 2006, an increase in the use of grain worldwide for conversion to biofuels led to a 60% increase in global grain prices and speculator interest in what had previously been a stably priced commodity. After environmental activists successfully stopped Ugandan government from allocating thousands of acres of Mabira forest to a private developer who had an intention of establishing sugar
plantations, large areas of tropical forest in Kangala islands are being converted into BIDCO palm plantations, which will be used to produce biodiesel. BIDCO is currently lobbying the government of Uganda to be able to further expand their plantations into other forested areas.

Large-scale production of biofuels, certainly, will cause serious environmental challenges for the entire planet, starting with the clearance of forested land for plantations.

But, even more serious, will be converting pastoralist lands for biofuel production. Pastoralist communities need those vast lands for cultural survival. Though poor countries in Africa could benefit from using their biofuels more efficiently without destroying their ecosystem, a global biofuel regulatory system should be put in place first. And to protect vulnerable communities in the developing countries from the predatory and profit-driven multinational companies that are likely to invade new business opportunities in the biofuel industry, mandatory regulatory schemes and standards should be put in place without further delay. Such regulations should be based on objective scientific assessment, which looks at impacts on local communities, food security, soils, water and animals.

Author: Grace Akumu (Ms)

Executive Director

Climate Network Africa

E-mail: gakumu@yahoo.com

Posted in Cogeneration | 1 Comment

Wal-Mart environmentalism

Posted on October 17, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
FP Comment
October 17, 2008

The next commodity to collapse will be mass-marketed environmentalism, which will come to be disdained.

Stock market indexes have plummeted from their inflated peaks. Oil and other commodities have likewise plummeted. The next commodity to tumble from unsustainable peak levels: environmentalism.

In part, I am making this prediction because, in my 30 years as an environmentalist, I have never seen so many governments and so many corporations so profusely espousing so many environmental causes. Where promoting environmentalism was once seen as daring and counter-cultural, today it has become banal, no longer the exclusive preserve of a Body Shop chain, but of every retailer down to Wal-Mart. For the same reason that clothes go out of fashion after the masses embrace them, mass-marketed environmentalism will come to be disdained. That won’t sell for long.

I am predicting a collapse of today’s Wal-Mart environmentalism for another reason, too: Much of it is misguided, based on misunderstanding and vacuity. Global warming is by far the biggest such example.

Those who have been following my Denier series in these pages know that large numbers of distinguished scientists dispute the conventional wisdom on climate change, making absurd the claim that the science is settled on climate change. And yet government and corporate propaganda — in global warming and elsewhere — strip away all subltety and uncertainty in their public relations programs, portraying environmental problems and proposing environmental solutions in cartoon-cutout simplicity that, more often than not, accomplish nothing good or make matters worse.

While governments and industry discount major environmental issues that affect crown corporations and crown resources (nuclear power, forestry), they stir up concerns in consumer areas that have high visibility and often pose few true hazards. The results are often perverse: Blue Box recycling programs that promote waste; ethanol blends for automobiles that benefit the farm lobby while depleting the land and fouling the air; bans on incandescent bulbs that ignore consumer preferences but please light bulb manufacturers seeking lucrative new markets; public transit systems that run near-empty buses along low-density routes; “Right-to-Farm” laws that legalize polluting practices; demonization of private water systems, including bans on water bottles, when private systems have a superior safety and environmental record — in short, most of the environmental policies that governments put before the public are wrong-headed.

A third reason for my prediction that environmentalism has peaked is the instinct for self-preservation among the political leadership. Thinking they could raise revenues while appearing green, opportunistic politicians have been promoting environmental taxes without having a credible case to make. The result, increasingly, is political ruin. The federal election results this week are, in good part, a testament to Liberal leader Stéphan Dion’s failure to sell his Green Shift — the Liberals obtained the lowest share of the vote since Confederation. In England, where citizens face the world’s highest burden of green taxes, the ruling Labour Party received a miserable 3% of the vote in by-elections earlier this year and London’s mayor, the greenest in Europe, was thrown out of office. Across Europe, once-green politicians are now backing away from their earlier commitments to push green agendas.

In stock and commodity markets, when values fall from unrealistically high levels, they often fall further than justified. When environmentalism falls from its high values on the realization that many concerns have been oversold, it too will likely fall further than justified. Environmentalism will then need to reestablish public trust before real environmental gains can be made.

As history shows, after being burned in the stock market, investors often stay away for years, fearful of being burned again. The lack of trust harms the greater economy. We have no history of what happens when citizens feel taken in by false environmental claims. But we may soon find out.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

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Lawrence Solomon nominated for book award

Posted on October 16, 2008 by energyprbe

September 30, 2008

Energy Probe’s Lawrence Solomon has been recognized by the Annual Heritage Toronto Awards with a nomination for his 2007 book, Toronto Sprawls.

The Heritage Awards celebrate outstanding contributions by individuals and community organizations, as well as industry professionals and associations, in promoting and conserving Toronto’s history and heritage landmarks. Award recipients will be announced at a ceremony on Monday, October 27th at the historic Carlu.

This year, nominations were solicited from the public in four categories: the William Greer Architectural Conservation and Craftsmanship Award; Book; Media; and Community Heritage. Independent juries reviewed the nominations and recommended the award recipients. In each category (except the Community Heritage Award, which is a cash prize) there are two possible levels of award: Award of Excellence (the highest) and Award of Merit.

The Heritage book award recognizes well-written non-fiction books published in 2007 that explore Toronto’s archaeological, built, cultural and/or natural heritage and history.

More information about the Annual Heritage Toronto Awards and the awards ceremony is listed on the Heritage Toronto website.

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The Linear No-Threshold Theory of Radiation Carcinogenesis Should Be Rejected

Posted on October 1, 2008 by energyprbe

Bernard L. Cohen
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 13, Number 3
October 1, 2008

It is commonly stated that “any radiation dose, no matter how small, can cause cancer.” The basis for that statement is the linearno threshold theory (LNT)–which might more appropriately be called “linear-no threshold hypothesis”—of radiation carcinogenesis. According to LNT, if a 1 Gy (100 rad) dose gives a cancer risk R, the risk from a dose of 0.01 Gy (1 rad) is R/100, the risk from 0.00001 Gy (1 millirad) is R/100,000, and so on. Thus the cancer risk is not zero regardless of how small the dose. However, over the past several years, many radiation health scientists have come to regard risk estimates in the low-dose region based on LNT as exaggerated or completely negligible.

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The Linear No-Threshold Theory of radiation carcinogenesis should be rejected

Posted on October 1, 2008 by energyprbe

(Oct. 1, 2008) It is commonly stated that “any radiation dose, no matter how small, can cause cancer.” The basis for that statement is the linearno threshold theory (LNT)–which might more appropriately be called “linear-no threshold hypothesis”—of radiation carcinogenesis.

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