https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_go_co/climate_congress
Vote on climate
bill is blocked in Senate
By H. JOSEF HEBERT,
Associated Press Writer 56 minutes ago
WASHINGTON -
Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill
that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases,
pushing debate over the world's biggest environmental concern
to next year for a new Congress and
president.
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Democratic leaders fell a
dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican
filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote,
prompting Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the legislation
from consideration.
The Senate debate focused on bitter
disagreement over the expected economic costs of putting a
price on carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas that comes
from burning fossil fuels. Opponents said it would lead to
higher energy costs.
The 48-36 vote fell short of a
majority, but Democrats produced letters from six senators —
including both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John
McCain — saying they would have voted for the measure had they
been there.
"It's just the beginning for us,"
proclaimed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of
the bill, noting that 54 senators had expressed support of the
legislation, although that's still short of what would be
needed to overcome concerted GOP opposition.
"It's
clear a majority of Congress wants to act," Boxer said at a
news conference.
She and other Democrats said this now
lays the groundwork for action on climate change next year
with a new Congress and a new president that will be more
hospitable to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.
Both
Obama and McCain have called for capping carbon dioxide and
other emissions linked to climate change. President Bush has
opposed such measures and said he would have vetoed the Senate
bill if he had received it.
The bill would have capped
carbon dioxide coming from power plants, refineries and
factories, with a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions
by 71 percent by mid-century.
"It's a huge tax increase,"
argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a
prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the
proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon
emissions allowances would produce "the largest restructuring
of the American economy since the New
Deal."
Supporters of the bill accused
Republicans of muddying the water with
misinformation.
"There is no tax increase," Sen.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., one of the bill's chief sponsors
said. She said the emissions trading system would provide tax
relief to help people pay energy prices. And supporters
disputed that it would substantially increase gasoline
prices.
Four Democrats joined most Republicans in
essentially killing the bill.
Obama and McCain, as well
as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward
Kennedy, D-Mass., who is recovering from cancer surgery, were
absent, although they each sent a letter supporting the
bill.  |
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free
government ought to be to trust no man living with power to
endanger the public liberty.
John Adams, Journal,
1772 | | |
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Climate Findings
Were Distorted, Probe Finds
Appointees in NASA Press
Office Blamed
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 3, 2008; Page
A02 An investigation by the NASA inspector
general found that political appointees in the space agency's
public affairs office worked to control and distort public
accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for
at least two years, the inspector general's office said
yesterday. The probe came at the request of 14 senators
after The Washington Post and other news outlets reported in
2006 that Bush administration officials had monitored and
impeded communications between NASA climate scientists and
reporters. James E. Hansen,
who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and has
campaigned publicly for more stringent limits on greenhouse
gases that contribute to global warming, told The Post and the
New York Times in September 2006 that he had been censored by
NASA press officers, and several other agency climate
scientists reported similar experiences. NASA and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are two of the
government's lead agencies on climate change
issues. ( To find out WHO is censoring WHO, read
the post below - Ken )https://www.nzcpr.com/guest101.htm
Research Professor at James Cook University,
Queensland, Australia.
NZCPR Guest Forum
Professor Bob Carter
8 June 2008
RESEARCH REPORT
PDF (link below)
2006 CLIMATE CHANGE AND GOVERNANCE
CONFERENCE:
Hansenism in the
cause of "command and control" climate
politics
Following the failure of the Kyoto
Protocol, powerful political forces are now being applied to
voters in western democracies "to do something about global
warming".
In late 2005 and early 2006, three major
climate conferences were convened in Australasia, namely
GREENHOUSE 2005: Action on Climate Change, 13-17 November 2005
in Melbourne; Climate Change & Business - 2nd
Australia-New Zealand Conference, 20-21 February 2006 in
Adelaide; and Climate Change and Governance Conference, 28-29
March 2006 in Wellington.
The three conferences shared
the features of widespread pre-meeting publicity, and of
sponsorship by major science organisations (CSIRO, Bureau of
Meteorology, Royal Society of New Zealand), government
departments (governments of Victoria, South Australia and New
Zealand, foreign embassies (U.K., Holland), Greenhouse
organisations and lobby groups (Australian Greenhouse Office,
Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for Nature, Pew Center for Climate
Change), and a wide range of companies and business
organisations.
The press coverage before and during
each meeting often gave the impression that the science of
climate change was to be the focus, but in fact the
conferences were dominantly concerned with greenhouse politics
and governance.
I present here an analysis of the face
that was presented to the public by the Wellington conference,
Climate Change and Governance. The conclusions that I draw
are, however, applicable also to the Melbourne and Adelaide
meetings and to others of like kind. I assess the intentions
of the Wellington conference organizers, the degree to which
the general and policy discussions were informed by an
adequate understanding of the science of climate change, the
role played by the media in informing the public, and assess
the outcomes.
Troublesome ethical issues emerge, the
most important of which include the role in society of
scientific organisations and universities, and the way in
which government-employed and other scientists are today
constrained in the public comment that they can make on
controversial issues of the day. Another major concern is the
way in which scientific results are now routinely deployed
into the public domain with a clear propaganda
intent.
That human activities are causing dangerous
global warming is unproven and unlikely. Assertions towards
that end are based on circumstantial evidence and unvalidated
computer modelling. Present-day public discussion of climate
change is dominated by self-interested scaremongering against
a background of inculcated social guilt.
Yet against
this background of strong and complex uncertainty, the
Wellington Climate Change and Governance conference succeeded
in reinforcing the already strong public impression that
dangerous human-caused climate change is occurring, and that
this change can be prevented by limiting human emissions of
greenhouse gas.
However, to the degree that the
conference was intended to contribute to a balanced public
debate on human-caused global warming, it failed.
The
major sponsors of the conference included organisations whose
charter includes the disinterested presentation of
high-quality science, and civil social responsibility; these
organisations failed in their duty of public care.
In
addition, media coverage of the conference was "balanced" in
only the most superficial way; news reports concentrated
heavily on climate alarmism, and failed to follow up on the
caveats which were expressed by the more responsible speakers
at the conference.
These major conclusions about the
Wellington climate conference apply also to many other similar
climate meetings that are held around the world, including the
recent meetings in Melbourne and Adelaide. In fact, future
natural climate change is inevitable and attempts to stop it
are both futile and scandalously expensive. Fanning public
hysteria over hypothetical human-caused global warming - as
the Wellington, Melbourne and Adelaide conferences did - is
particularly damaging because it diverts attention from the
need to develop plans to manage future natural climate events
as and when they occur, both warmings and the more dangerous
coolings.
Our modern societies will be much the poorer
if we do not protect the key principles of:
1.
Fearless, independent and
impartial advice from civil servants and expert committees to
their political masters;
2.
The scrupulously disinterested pursuit of
research by scientists; and
3.
The even-handed reporting of scientific results
to the public.
Both the UN's Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, and the Wellington climate conference,
display clearly the unacceptable price that society pays when
it allows science to be corrupted by politicization. The
future assessment of complex scientific and technological
issues like climate change needs to be much more rigorously
bias-proofed. At the very least this will require the routine
use of counterweight and audit panels for rigorous
verification of all major policy recommendations
Human
causation aside, compelling scientific evidence exists that
natural climate change, both warmings and coolings, present a
future hazard to mankind.
=======================================
Professor
Carter's full analysis of the Conference has been published by
the NZCPR as a research paper:
https://www.nzcpr.com/Researchpaper_carter(2).pdf
(this is a 39 page scientific document - see
link)
7 JUNE 2008
THE 2006 CLIMATE
CHANGE AND GOVERNANCE CONFERENCE, WELLINGTON,
NZ:
HANSENISM IN THE CAUSE OF "COMMAND AND CONTROL" CLIMATE
POLICIES
By Robert M. Carter James Cook
University,
Townsville email: bob.carter@jcu.edu.au
=======================================
Professor
Robert (Bob) M. Carter (Bio)
Bob Carter is a marine geologist and
environmental scientist with forty years professional
experience, with degrees from the University of Otago (New
Zealand) and Cambridge University (England). He has held
academic positions at Otago University and the University of
Adelaide, and is currently a Research Professor at James Cook
University (Queensland), where he was Head of School of Earth
Sciences between 1981 and 1999. He is a former Director of the
Australian Office for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), the
premier, world-best-practice research program for
environmental and earth sciences.
Bob has served on
many national and international research committees, including
the Australian Research Council. He is a former Chairman of
the Marine Science and Technologies Award Committee and the
National Committee on Earth Sciences. He is an overseas
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New
Zealand.
Bob Carter's current research on climate
change, sea-level change and stratigraphy is based on field
studies of Cenozoic sediments (last 65 million years) from the
Southwest Pacific region, especially the Great Barrier Reef
and New Zealand, and includes the analysis of marine sediment
cores collected during Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 181 in
the South Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand.
Bob's
research has been supported by grants from competitive public
research agencies, especially the Australian Research Council
(ARC) who in 1998 awarded him a Special Investigator grant. He
receives no research funding from special interest
organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies
or government departments.
Bob Carter has published
more than 100 papers in international refereed science
journals. He is also an established opinion writer for
newspapers such as The Australian, The Brisbane Courier Mail,
The Financial Review and The Sunday Telegraph, and makes
regular appearances on radio (ABC Science Show; Michael Duffy,
John Laws, Alan Jones and Glen Beck radio shows) and
television. Bob has acted as an expert witness on climate
change for the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment and Public
Works (Washington, 2006) and for the U.K. High Court (London,
2007; Dimmock v. the Queen). |
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free
government ought to be to trust no man living with power to
endanger the public liberty.
John Adams, Journal,
1772 | | |
| sailboi
|
https://www.nzcpr.com/midweek28.htm
Dr Ron Smith is
Director of International Relations
and Security Studies
at the University of Waikato,
where he has been in one
capacity or another for
thirty years. He has a
particular interest in nuclear
policy and, more generally,
in energy and security
issues. Tertiary qualifications in
both Chemistry and
Philosophy also underpin an interest in
the interface
between science and
society.
NZCPR Mid-week Politics
Dr Ron
Smith
4 June 2008
Science, Politics
& Climate Change
Science does not proceed on the basis of
consensus. The history of science is full of cases where a
minority (or even single individuals) turn out to be right and
the majority turns out to be wrong. The German
scientist, Wegener, provides a Twentieth Century example,
through the response of the scientific community to his notion
of continental drift. For some sixty years the theory was
derided by the majority of the geophysical community and
papers supporting it were declined for publication by leading
journals. Minorities, particularly, have a problem where there
are strong ideological pressures towards conformity. In these
cases, some fortitude is required to maintain what is seen to
be a deviant or heretical view. Apart from the obvious example
of Galileo the situation of biological scientists in the
Soviet Union, subjected to the dominant (and erroneous) dogma
of Lysenko about the inheritability of acquired
characteristics, might be cited.
In the contemporary
world of public financing of intellectual activity, there are
also more subtle pressures towards conformity. One of the many
baleful consequences of directed or 'performance'-based
research funding is the extent to which it privileges the
prejudices and paradigms of those holding power in the system
at any time. The result is to favour for research support and
publication those who follow the party-line. This
characteristic, and the dominating connection between this
activity and promotion, ensures the production of vast
quantities of mediocre and repetitive material in our
universities and like establishments and discourages the
long-term and more speculative activity that used to be their
academic glory. It is to the continuing shame of all the New
Zealand universities that this is so. In this connection it is
noteworthy that in the UK the panels making these systemic
judgements about academic worth have now been instructed to
destroy all the notes on which the judgements were
made.
All this has important implications for our
contemporary concerns about climate change and about what our
response ought to be to claims that a major crisis is looming
and, as a consequence, certain social, political and economic
steps should be taken. As is well-known, there is serious and
persistent scepticism in regard to both the magnitude and the
direction of climate change and the degree to which it may be
said to be anthropogenic. This might be a largely 'academic'
question were it not for the fact that measures of taxation
and regulation are proposed that have the potential to cause
significant harm to the economic well-being of New Zealand.
Unlike the Wegener case, the consequence of suppressing the
deviant view may not be simply that we remain in ignorance. It
may be that we embark on policies that are likely to be very
damaging to us and only marginally advantageous (if at all) to
the wider global community.
With the hindsight of
history, it is hard to believe that the diplomats and various
experts who came together in Rio (in 1992) and, again, in
Kyoto (in 1997), would have agreed to a global mitigation plan
under which only a quarter of the world's states had any
obligations to do anything, had they realised how the
economies of India and China, and other Asian states, would
grow in the years that followed. The argument that developed
states achieved their relative prosperity without any
restraints on their greenhouse emissions and that it would
thus be wrong to impose any restraints on those still
developing, may have seemed appealing at the time (and may
still seem appealing to some) but if there is anything in the
claim of climate crisis to come it is patently too
simplistic. And then, of course, there is the fact that,
by all present signs, many of the states that have accepted
commitments will (in varying degrees) fail to meet them.
Germany provides an interesting example here, since apart from
the general slippage characteristic of European states, it is
intending to make its problem infinitely worse by continuing
with a minority-driven phase-out of its nuclear generation
capacity. Pathetically, the German government is
intending to ask Brussels for a dispensation in regard to its
Kyoto targets on this account.
Given that the world
will very likely continue to increase its production of
greenhouse gases (and in the light of the earlier-expressed
doubts about the causation and extent of any climate change)
there should surely be some thorough-going review of the facts
before New Zealand, to its very considerable detriment, elects
to fulfil what it sees as its Kyoto commitments. There is a
need for a substantial and wide-ranging debate and this must
surely mean that at least one of the political parties
contesting the up-coming election must offer an alternative to
the prevailing un-wisdom on climate. Most desirably, this
should be the National Party. The central issues are very
consistent with what National has stood for but the leadership
of the Party is very clearly intent on offering only what it
perceives to be consensus policies and is unlikely to make a
stand on principle when expediency is doing so well.
This,
really, only leaves ACT. For them, to give New Zealand voters
a clear policy choice at the election later this year could be
seen as not only a moral obligation but also a political
opportunity; an opportunity for national second thoughts. And
it is surely consistent with core principles. In the light of
the inevitable negative impact of the proposed Kyoto changes,
this could be welcomed by a significant proportion of the
electorate. To be sure, there may be some risk in such a
policy to the main-stream support which, through the election
of Rodney Hide in Epsom has ensured the Party's place in
Parliament. On the other hand, there may be little long-term
virtue in maintaining a two-member party. This might be an
opportunity to go for broke and offer a radically different
approach to what is clearly shaping to be a major political
issue. This, after all, is what Party-founder, Roger Douglas,
offered in a different context, nearly a quarter of a century
ago.
If ACT took up this
challenge, it would offer an explicit commitment to oppose any
legislation or regulatory measure, bearing on supposed climate
change, until the evidence for such change and its
anthropogenic character had been the subject of a formal
commission of inquiry. This inquiry would also examine the
likely social and economic implications for New Zealand of the
various proposed mitigation measures. In relation to
this latter point, it may be that even if we satisfied
ourselves that the scientific data pointed (with whatever
degree of certainty) to undesirable change, caused by human
activity, we still might conclude that we should not proceed
with measures now proposed on the grounds of the damage that
these will cause to New Zealand interests, both collective and
individual.
The principle here is a familiar
one. In the context of international relations, governments
have a particular responsibility to protect the interests of
their own citizens. Particularly, they may not to be
self-sacrificing in respect of those interests, so that even
if it were clear that the climate-mitigation measures
envisaged for New Zealand would benefit humanity as a whole
(another matter on which the proposed commission would be
asked to report) it is not clear that it would justify the
harms likely to be inflicted locally. Of course, individual
citizens may be self-sacrificing with their own interests. In
the present context, this would mean that they could volunteer
to pay (say) carbon charges in relation to their own
fossil-fuel usages or make other changes in their life-style
and behaviour. It is just that the government would not impose
such things upon them. |
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free
government ought to be to trust no man living with power to
endanger the public liberty.
| | |
