“Imagine if an industry-funded government contractor had a hand in writing a major federal report on climate change. And imagine if that person used his position to misrepresent the science, to cite his own non-peer reviewed work, and to ignore relevant work in the peer-reviewed literature. There would be an outrage, surely . . .”
– Roger Pielke Jr. on Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (June 2009)
The U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program (CCSP) report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is a major disappointment, particularly for some of us who labored to not only correct the small things but to get the big picture right. The political side won with stubbornness and persistence. Reality lost with an overall description that many of the impacts from climate change are greater (worse) than the best science allows.…
Longtime MasterResource readers know of Chip Knappenberger’s post on the negligible climatic effects of unilateral adherence to Waxman-Markey. Across the board, the response from supporters of Waxman-Markey was not to deny Knappenberger’s calculations, but rather to insist that the U.S. had to show leadership. The (perhaps unspoken) premise was that if the whole world adopted the steep emission cuts proposed in Waxman-Markey, then the climatic benefits would clearly outweigh the economic costs.
In an earlier post, I tried to show that this view is simply false. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)–the very document showing the “consensus” on the physical science basis of manmade climate change–the best estimates of climate change damages do not justify the aggressive limits contained in the current Waxman-Markey bill.…
In its Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Sections 202(a) of the Clean Air Act , the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) places six greenhouse gases into one basket. All are treated as equal, primary culprits in the anthropogenic enhancement of the earth’s greenhouse effect, and thus the EPA proposes to find that they “endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The six are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.
But for many reasons, one of these gases is not like the others and should be considered separately. That gas is carbon dioxide.
The Green Greenhouse Gas
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to life on earth as we know it. It is a necessary ingredient in the photosynthetic recipe that produces the oxygen that we breathe as well as the carbohydrates that we eat.…