Having gotten the important news out there into the computer, let us have a look also at the Wall Street Journal of today:

The front page starts a funny article by James T. Areddy – “In Shanghai, the Autumn Game Just Isn’t Cricket Anymore.” But to me it was less funny when I read the sub=title: “As Bug Fighting Goes Year Round, Fans Bemoan Role of Performance-Enhancing Drugs, Money.” I found it less funny because of the fighting creatures, but also because I smelled there the unmentioned effect of climate change – a longer crickets season.

The OPINION PAGES hat two articles intended as strong anti-climate fighting pieces:

(A) Bret Stephens in his “Climategate: Follow the Money” piece, with a picture of Al Gore and Pacchauri looks at the gifts by ExxonMobil to institutions looking at climate change. He wants us to think that $125,000 given to the Heritage Foundation and The National Center for Public Policy – two conservative think tanks that pile on us dissenting views “until what recently was called – without irony – the climate change  ‘consensus”’ was peanuts out of a $7 million of contributions to all sorts of policy institutions that he calls a “grab-bag.” Assuming that he thought the three most decent institutions in this grab-bag were the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society, and Transparency International, and that is why he mentioned them, I would like to suggest humbly that the Asia Society is not exactly what we are lead to think. They do indeed have a climate change study head, Journalist  Orville Schell, but he does not seem to pursue real goals of sustainable energy. If the Asia Society can open some business channels well oiled – they will jump right into it – otherwise they will just talk about cultural issues and human rights.-

(B) Richard S. Lindzen is Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T. very impressive, but we know of another professor emeritus at M.I.T. who 25 years ago used to testify on behalf of the oil industry at Congressional hearings, when the idea was to use ethanol as the best octane-enhancement in gasoline, at the time that by law the US was going to switch to unleaded gasoline. I know what I write here – this because of the fact that I ended up telling at the hearing – on the record – that if you want to measure the capability to fry an egg on top of your motor-vehicle engine, you use calorimetry numbers, but if you want to measure the performance of the liquid as a motor-vehicle engine you measure it in miles per gallon. This was simply my attempt to tell him that honesty calls for disclosure of octane values in that particular case – not just calorimetry values. He, and the oil lobby still say today that ethanol has only 2/3 the calorimetry value of gasoline but forget to say it has 1.4 times the octane value.

So what is the half page article about? In short, the heavy-weight Professor is dismantling the IPCC study by saying such bright things like – you cannot summarize a 1,000 page study in 20 pages, or “Even if the IPCC’s  iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about a tenth of a degree ….It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about,” he continued.

Oh well, yesterday they had Bjorn Lomborg on – it is self evident that the Wall street journal is on a vendetta and as we suspect there must be a pay master to bankroll such an altruistic chain of events.

But wait – it is not as simple as that!

“Richard Siegmund Lindzen, 69, is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers. He was the lead author of Chapter 7, ‘Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,’ of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists. He hypothesized that the Earth may act like an infrared iris; increased sea surface temperature in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth’s atmosphere. This hypothesis suggested a negative feedback which would counter the effects of CO2 warming.”

The facts are thus that he was made a US contribution to the panel while it was known that he will not support the majority of that panel’s thinking. The panel is not as scientific as we are lead to think because of appointments via the UN, that are basically political. The original panel was formed by a Swede (Bert Bolin) then headed by a British scientist (Robert Watson) who was removed and replaced with Mr. Pachauri because the Bush Administration did not like his way operating the panel, and then new American appointments were less into the subject then their European counterparts – and draw whatever conclusions you want from this – but it is obvious that Professor Lindzen did not have many fans on the panel.   In fact he did not get even his own panel convinced by his policy approach, and further, the panel’s findings are too low in impact data and were overruled by the great majority of the scientists that deal with the subject.

To get some more insight to the way the Bush Administration maneuvered the IPCC membership see further:

Andrew Revkin writing for the New York Times described Watson as an “outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions – mainly burning coal and oil – are contributing to global warming and must be changed to avert environmental upheavals.”
In April 2002 the United States pressed for and won his replacement by Rajendra Pachauri as IPCC chair. According to New Scientist, “The oil industry seems to be behind the move.” The industry campaign to oust Watson had begun days after George W. Bush’s inauguration in January 2001, with a memo to the White House from Randy Randol of oil giant ExxonMobil asking “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?”

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Industrial groups warn over US climate law
By Hal Weitzman in Chicago
Published: November 30 2009 23:01 | Last updated: November 30 2009 23:01
Industrial companies operating in the US are warning that they will face a heavy regulatory burden should US Congress fail to pass climate change legislation.

The companies fear that without legislation, the US Environmental Protection Agency would impose its own rules on greenhouse-gas emissions or states would introduce different carbon pollution regimes.

Peter Molinaro, head of government affairs atDow Chemical, the largest US chemicals group, told the Financial Times that the proliferation of such initiatives would present “an enormous administrative burden” for companies that operate across different regimes.

“Manufacturers are having enough trouble in this country competing with foreign companies,” Mr Molinaro said. “We’d be adding administrative and cost burden where we shouldn’t.”

Alison Taylor, vice-president of sustainability for the Americas at Siemens, the German engineering group, said businesses needed to know the price of carbon for planning reasons. “How do you have one price of carbon if you’ve got four or five different regimes?” she said.

President Barack Obama had hoped that Congress would pass cap-and-trade legislation before next week’s United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen.

However, the focus on healthcare and the economy means he will arrive in Denmark empty-handed.

Nevertheless, Mr Obama is expected to pledge that the US will cut carbon emissions.

A climate bill was squeezed through the House of Representatives in June, but a bipartisan proposal that could be presented in the Senate as soon as this week faces an uphill battle.

“The chances of getting a bill passed continue to be very uncertain,” said David Brown, head of federal affairs at Exelon, the biggest operator of nuclear power plants in the US.

That raises the prospect that US states or regions could initiate their own mandatory regimes or that the Environmental Protection Agency could impose greenhouse-gas emissions limits.

The US already has one mandatory regional cap-and-trade programme in the form of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which includes 10 north-eastern states.

Without federal legislation, similar schemes are likely to spring up elsewhere.

California last week announced a plan for its own cap-and-trade system.

The climate change issue has split the business world.

Trade associations such as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and big energy groups such as ConocoPhillips and Chevron oppose the climate bill that passed the House, saying it will kill off US manufacturing jobs.

That stance has alienated companies that support the measure.

Nike and Apple are among the businesses that have withdrawn from the US Chamber of Commerce over its stance on the issue.