The climate hoax is itself a hoax. The comments below change nothing in the actual data or actual findings of actual climate science right now in this decade.

Sure, there is a big uproar in England---but the numbers of hits on some website do not constitute scientific evidence of anything but runaway emotionalism. As is happening in England, this bucket of chum dumped into rising waters is luring hungry anti-climate-science sharks out of the closet.

To reiterate, climate science---even more so than other areas of scientific study---is done by a consensus of scientists all over the World. That’s why there is no way I am going to defend some indiscreet British scientists’ Email utterances that would have been blasted out of consideration by other scientists had they been openly presented at a scientific meeting.

As much as I respect science, I wish climate change was a hoax. I wish the Planet wasn’t warming quickly or at least that it was a natural cycle and we could say that we had nothing to do with it and there is nothing we can do about it.

I’d rather be writing about black holes or string theory---this climate change thing has taken a lot of my time. But I am writing about climate change because this is where I live!

I will be posting part six in the climate change series when it’s ready. There will be another interim posting just for a change of pace.

Rudy Wittshirk

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I’m really pissed off about the Emails hacked from the so-called “Hadley CRU” (climate research unit) and the resultant claims of some great climate “hoax.“

I don’t care that the Hadley Centre was hacked or if that was legal or not---I’m pissed off because I try not to get careless with my Email communications and would expect scientists to be even more careful. If I were any kind of researcher or scientist I would take it for granted that my Emails---especially on some institution’s server---would be hacked. But then, if I were the captain of an oil tanker leaving the port of Valdez, Alaska, I would stay on the bridge until that ship reached open waters---not be off dozing in my cabin after too many drinks in town.

Here’s what I know so far. The site that was hacked is not called the Hadley CRU---it’s called the Met Office Hadley Centre. It is, however, a pretty important place according to the Met Office web site itself: 'It is beyond dispute that the Met Office Hadley Centre occupies a position at the pinnacle of world climate science and in translating that science into policy advice.'

That said, there is, so far, is no smoking gun in the hacked Emails---just a bunch of ambiguous and cherry-picked quotes. And, since it is to be assumed that the most inflammatory words have already been quoted, I see no change whatsoever to the already stated findings of the climate science community resulting from these hacked Emails. The climate is still warming. If anyone out there has actual evidence that actual data was falsified please let us all in on the details.

What really pisses me off is that this incident will result in even more public skepticism about climate change and about science. Scientists and science writers are now having to explain why the contents of those leaked Emails read the way they do. Those who are defending the content of the leaked Emails say that scientists are human too and that their debates are not pretty, etc. I await further explanations but I’m not going into the finer points of their elucidation. While these leaked Emails apparently do not change the science one bit the damage has already been done to public perception.

Again, there is no evidence of a worldwide climate conspiracy, no evidence of falsified data. There is not even evidence of a little conspiracy. It is to be expected, however, that the blogosphere and those against the idea of climate change will run this “hoax” thing into the ground. I notice that an oblique mention of this matter has already been referenced in a column in the 12-2-09 Anchorage Daily News (“You have your opinion; they have theirs,” Rod Dreher). George Will has already misquoted one Email quote on George Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” show, which had “climate-gate“ as it‘s subject of discussion.

I still haven’t finished part six of my climate change series. I don’t foresee making any drastic changes but am going to let the dust settle before going ahead with the posting. Maybe that’s the real reason I am so pissed off---I’ve been going on about climate change and now comes this claim of some great scientific “hoax.” All because people who are supposed to be real careful have become too careless or ambiguous in the wording of some of their Emails which, apparently, are not peer-reviewed like actual scientific findings.

Rudy Wittshirk

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Climate change (part five) - A Corporate State Of Affairs

The climate change crisis is intimately connected to all our other troubles. All those things we could be doing to mitigate Global Climate Breakdown are things we should already be doing to mitigate social, military, political, economic and energy woes.

A corporatist oligarchy has deployed it’s extensive economic resources, political influence and media control to spread confusion and disinformation regarding the predatory role of industry and finance in our lives.

WHO IS DOING WHAT TO WHOM? -

Polluting SUVs, high-energy light bulbs, extra-long showers and all the other facets of our individual lifestyles consume only about 25 percent of energy---corporations eat up the other 75 percent.

Waste production by municipalities in the US comprises about 3 percent of the total production of effluents. Human households and municipalities utilize only 10 percent of our water---agriculture and industry suck up the other 90 percent.

It is the economic system and structure of our industrialized world economy that needs to change in order to stop the massive discharge of greenhouse gases plus the wide variety of pollutants and poisons that pour into the atmosphere, the waters, the lands and the bodies of Humans and other living things everywhere. Changing light bulbs is admirable, efficient and money-saving---but we can’t save our narrow life-support system by individual acts alone.

But the corporatists are selling the environmental crisis (to the degree they will admit it’s existence) as a matter of personal choice instead of a need for deep social and economic reform. The really big polluters are spending huge amounts of money on media confusion campaigns to convince the public to go green---while those same industries continue to blast greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the environment and plan to keep on doing so until they run out of fuel. Bear this in mind as you read the following.

PEAK OIL AND EMPIRES OF ILLUSION -

“Key Oil Figures Were Distorted by US Pressure, Says Whistleblower - Watchdog‘s estimate of reserves inflated says top official“ - The Guardian/UK, 11-10-2009, by Terry Macalister:

“The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.”

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog agency to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

From the article: “The IEA was established in 1974 after the oil crisis in an attempt to try to safeguard energy supplies to the west. The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.”

According to a senior IEA source, one rule of thumb inside the agency was the "imperative not to anger the Americans." "We have entered the 'peak oil' zone,” stated this former IEA member, “I think that the situation is really bad."

Official estimates of the World’s oil reserves have been overstated in order to stop panic buying, keep the stock market from panicking, to keep the public from panicking, and to satisfy American desires for at least the illusion of oil supremacy regarding US power derived from access to oil resources.

“John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government [and, obviously, US government] energy policy.”

“He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. ‘Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on,’ said Hemming.”

“‘This all gives an importance to the Copenhagen [climate change] talks and an urgent need for the UK to move faster towards a more sustainable [lower carbon] economy if it is to avoid severe economic dislocation,’ he added.”

THE LEGACY INTERESTS -

Again, according to the Terry Macalister article:

“Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry expert, has long questioned the decline rates and oil statistics provided by Saudi Arabia on its own fields. He has raised questions about whether peak oil is much closer than many have accepted.

“A report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) last month said worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could "peak" and go into terminal decline before 2020 – but that the government was not facing up to the risk. Steve Sorrell, chief author of the report, said forecasts suggesting oil production will not peak before 2030 were ‘at best optimistic and at worst implausible‘.”

What this means is that the international agency charged with keeping track of oil supplies world-wide stands accused of deliberately overestimating world oil reserves. In other words, the rate at which we are now burning oil is unsustainable and it makes sense to make plans now to get off oil. The reason this idea is being resisted is obvious: the oil-producing nations, oil-producing states and the oil-based industrialists want to get the maximum profit out of an aging infrastructure of pipelines, refineries, tankers and trucks---before they are forced by outright depletion of resources to switch to new technologies. Obviously, if peak oil has already occurred it makes sense to think about and implement a changeover to other (renewable) forms of energy.

Saudi Arabia has long been suspected of overestimating it’s own oil reserves in order to maintain the illusion of it‘s own international power and influence. Saudi Arabia is especially dependent upon money and military support from the US. America supports this despotic, misogynist, repressive regime for one reason only---oil.

But the rich are always looking out for themselves. Saudi Arabia---a rich country to be sure---has already asked that it be compensated for any reduction of oil consumption due to global warming mitigation. That is the theme of any political, industrial or economic change---not just energy. The health care and insurance industries have hired lobbyists (6 lobbyists per Congressman) and bought off our politicians in order to make sure that the government never competes with and never reduces their flow of wealth. That’s why the public will never get a health care plan for reasonable cost because any reform will force people to buy their health insurance from health insurance companies who don‘t want to give up one cent of profit and hope to get even more.

It’s exactly the same situation for the banksters who wrecked our economy---they have their suction hoses into our dollar supply and are sucking away for all they are worth. And to make certain the profit stream remains uninterrupted they are liberally funding and lobbying US Congresspersons to make sure there is no effective regulation of their noxious activities. And that’s aside from the revolving door system enjoyed by finance executives between their positions in the finance industries and their top positions in the government supposedly charged with regulating those same finance industries.

In like manner, any mitigation of global warming will be forced to include provisions to pay off the already rich energy companies and energy-producing states if even the slightest sacrifice of fossil fuel consumption is called for.

How can these powerful, legacy interests get away with doing what has obviously resulted in disaster across a broad front of Human activities---from Health Care to the Climate?

Because Americans are whipped, ideologically-stunned, demoralized and unable to face realities. Since Americans still haven’t yet figured out to turn around and see who is actually screwing them, I have no doubt they will not adequately support---indeed will be unable to sufficiently recognize the need for---any meaningful efforts to head off climate change. The public is now emotionally and ideologically as well as physically addicted to oil. And our politicians are too beholden to the status quo.

EARLY WARNINGS IGNORED, SUPPRESSED OR DENIED -

Clear energy shortage warnings by the Carter Administration were actively discouraged by the Reagan Administration---the first thing they did was to remove the solar panels that President Carter had installed in the White House. That was kissing oil-company butt and we are paying for it now. But there’s plenty of oil, right? Maybe not (see above).

Those who gave early warnings about US military mis-involvements, the economy and the climate, weren’t always sure what forms the disasters would take---but they warned of them early on and were ignored, suppressed, denounced, denied and vilified. And, as the noose of reality tightens, the corporatist denials continue with renewed vigor.

As I will outline in my upcoming 23-part series on the economy, there were people who were smarter than “the smartest people in the room” (Enron)---except they were not allowed in the room because they had the audacity to correctly point out how the economic system would eventually fail.

Some warnings were very clear and very explicit. The energy shortage thing was as obvious as anything could be. Now we are still being lied to about our petroleum reserves so that the last of them can be fully exploited for full profits---and isn’t that what all these problems boil down to? The rich corporatists lying and buying political influence for profit, greed and oil.

BURN, BABY BURN---THE SELLING OFF OF ALASKA -

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn (ret) (“Alaska is set to lead in renewable energy,” Anchorage Daily News, 10-4-2009). The Admiral knows his climate change and renewable energy---but he doesn’t know Alaska and Alaskans. Sure, we are on the frontiers of climate change---but we are also hooked on “developing” (extracting) and selling fossil fuels until they run out or the seas begin to boil (“Energy development talk starts with oil,“ State Representative John Harris, Anchorage Daily News, 10-3-2009).

Alaska, just like the nation itself, is influenced, directed, controlled, dominated by the energy companies. As an energy-producer, Alaska is doomed to boom and bust---just like any third-world resource state. From Ted to Frank to Lisa to Don to Mark and virtually the entire State Legislature---the oil industry influences Alaska politicians.

During the infamous “corruption” trials only the most obvious bribes were actually brought to light---but even then some Alaskans still couldn’t or wouldn’t grasp the concept of “conflict of interest.” Greenback cash was videotaped changing hands in a Juneau hotel room but some Alaskan saps still believe it was “just loans between friends.”

THE LEADERSHIP WE DESERVE -

An article in the 11-13-2009 Anchorage Daily News deserves to be partly quoted here:

“President urges nation to diversify economy - MOSCOW---Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Thursday for a bold overhaul of his nation’s economy, saying that Russia must remedy it’s ‘primitive economy‘ and ‘humiliating dependence on raw materials.’

‘Medvedev ticked off…changes that Russia should undergo to diversify beyond oil and gas such as funding high-tech companies, combating corruption and making Russian goods more competitive on the world market.”

Now, take this article and substitute “Alaska” for “Russia” and enter Parnell, Murkowski, Begich, Hickel or Palin for Medvedev and you will hear what real leadership sounds like. Real vision. Real innovation. Real forward thinking.

Sure, real leadership starts at the top. But I am willing to bet that that Alaskan public would never vote for a political leader who doesn‘t stand ready to gut our resources right down to the last remnants. We are a short-sighted, greedy people who debate---in the Letters to the Editor---about the alleged political snubs and counter-snubs about who appeared and who did not appear at the President’s brief Elmendorf refueling stop. Meanwhile, the country is being lied to big time and Alaskans are oblivious---squabbling over trifles while straining to keep their hands outstretched for just one more boom time. Just like their political leaders---just one more “loan between friends.”

Alaska seems destined to remain a greedy and glorified third-world economy---certainly, in no way shape or form is Alaska a leader in the mitigation of global warming or the development of new technologies to capitalize on a changing energy climate. It seems Alaska is doomed to suck itself dry before doing anything economically progressive.

BOTH SIDES NOW -

Aside from the deniers of climate change---and the deniers of human caused climate change---there is also the “both sides now” contingent.

Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski knows that her constituents---as well as her campaign contributors---want to milk all the fossil fuels possible for a maximum payoff (“Murkowski wants hold on gas emission rules,” Anchorage Daily News 9-22-09).

The Senator has, however, stated that she wants to “responsibly develop” Alaska’s offshore oil deposits.

What she really means is that the oil companies will try real hard not to spill any oil into Arctic Seas. What she really infers is that this time we won’t let a drunken tanker captain run aground and dump a huge glob of crude oil overboard.

That wad of Exxon Valdez oil is still around, still lurking under rocks and still affecting the area. The once bountiful herring shoals---a keystone species and the very basis in the food chain for what was once a great fishery---may never recover.

And even if oil does get spilled in the Arctic, the corporatist-dominated Supreme Court has taken the threat of punitive damages off the table with it‘s generous treatment of Exxon in final rulings in the, long, drawn out oil-spill claims trials.

What Sen. Murkowski really infers is that any oil-spill damage to local areas won’t be denied by the State and federal governments as it was in the case of the fishing community of Cordova (among others)---a community made dysfunctional by the Great Black Spill.

What Sen. Murkowski really infers is that oil drilling companies won’t have a blowout that pours crude oil right into Arctic Seas like the one they just had in Australia‘s Timor Sea.

Furthermore, even if they do dump oil into Arctic waters, the oil companies assure us that: “Icy oil spill easier to clean, say scientists, …funded by oil interests…” Anchorage Daily News, 11-18-2009.

“This (research) does nothing to reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic oil spill,” pointedly noted a critic in the same article.

The problem is, even if petroleum substances are “responsibly” sucked out of the ocean floor and not dumped into the ecosystem, there is little regulation to ensure they will be “responsibly” burned.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski represents a large segment of the population that wants to suck out and use up every last drop of oil and then---and only then---begin serious attempts to curb greenhouse emissions. It‘s “Burn, baby, burn.”

In my opinion, drilling for oil in Arctic seas and creating huge coal and other mining areas in the heart of salmon spawning grounds is reckless greed running wild. Unfortunately, no politician can get elected in Alaska without implying that the development frenzy will never end until every last drop of oil is sucked from the ground, every last lump of coal mined and every last forest leveled in a money-losing, road-building subsidy of the wood chip/pellet industry.

It’s all very traditionally Alaskan---and if any wild animals still survive, the pay from those “jobs” that have been created by reckless resource development can go to buying more fossil-fueled vehicles to hunt down and kill those animals---just as was done during the oil pipeline heyday---because it’s a “right,” it’s “subsistence” and it flies in the faces of those “outside” animal rights and environmentalist interests who are always trying to tell us how to run our lives.

The further criminality of this argument is that Alaska has yet to rid itself of the third-world mentality that sells off all resources without adding any value. That is, creating true “added value,” in-state manufacturing industries. This attitude has ruined Nature and is intimately and inextricably tied in to the climate breakdown problem.

DIRTY, STINKING COAL

Wealthy industrialists, bankers and railroad magnates have long funded strip mining for coal---and then funded and bought political influence in order to blast the tops off hundreds of mountains in the Appalachians. Remember “acid rain?“ Google these subjects to see the devastating horror visited upon the people, the land, the air and the waters by the raw lust for coal profits.

Be aware that big coal still makes big contributions and still meets with politicians to make it’s industrial desires known. All those centuries worth of remaining coal supplies keep calling to the profiteers---like dollar signs with angel voices. Congress is seeking lax regulations to get at ever more of this poisonous substance. US Senator James Inhofe from oil-soaked Oklahoma has already declared climate change “a hoax.” He is now seeking to loosen the regulations on the burning of coal.

MERCURY POLLUTION FROM COAL -

Mercury is a heavy metal spewed into the atmosphere mostly by electric utilities and especially by coal-fired plants. Falling to Earth in rain, mercury enters waterways, is changed by bacteria into methylmercury, a cause of brain damage and developmental problems in fetuses and children. Methylmercury is filtered up through the water in the food chain and concentrates in large fish like tuna which poisons Humans, particularly pregnant ones. The EPA states that dangerous blood mercury levels were found in 630,000 newborn children in the US in 1999-2000.

But hey, the coal barons are generous with their political contributions. That’s why our politicians are still messing around with this dirty, legacy technology.

DEATH FACTORIES -

NASA‘s Professor Jim Hansen---a leading climatologist who first blew the whistle on climate change under the Bush Administration---refers to coal-fired utilities as "death factories." He has demonstrated that atmospheric carbon concentrations over 350 parts per million are incompatible with maintaining the biosphere of the “planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.”

In the US, coal continues to supply half of our electricity. But Hansen has calculated that the world must stop burning coal by 2030—and the large industrial nations well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the Planet back down below that 350 number.

But the soot-stained politicians are mobilizing. Meet Dr. John S. Theon---who calls himself “in effect” a former supervisor of Hansen’s and has been trotted out by Rep. Inhofe to make the claim that Hansen was not “muzzled” by the Bush Administration as claimed.

It turns out that Dr. Theon was not really in a direct line to be Hansen’s “boss”---and he retired from NASA in 1994, which is where his notions of climate modeling still reside. This is the kind of “scientist” that oil-soaked politicians like Inhofe love to quote to keep their greedy “debate” alive.

KEEPING IT UNDERGROUND -

My own local State Senator Charlie Huggins and Representative Mark Neumann and a Native organization are touting the burning of coal under the ground in order to produce a combustible gas and keeping the pollution buried. They call it a “promising” technology.”

This technology just hasn’t happened yet. Let’s call that what it is---an unproven technology of dubious promise. Thousands of underground coal fires are now burning and are notoriously difficult to extinguish. There are coal seams in the Eastern US that have been burning for decades that we can’t extinguish. (Just Google the subject.)

Although I would surely hope we could burn off coal seams underground in Alaska and capture the clean-burning gases without poisoning groundwater, I am not “excited” about the idea like my State representatives. This technology must be proven to work first.

NOT ONLY IN AMERICA -

In Britain, coal-mining has increased 15 per cent over last year. In Europe, funding to develop solar power is fading. Q-Cells, Germany's largest solar company, has had a 90% decline in it’s stock. Spain, another solar energy leader, has also experienced a retreat from investments.

The World Bank, which we support with our taxes, is pushing the black, mercury-poisoned cloud of coal development all over the World. The World Bank just put out five billion dollars to build power plants for third-world countries that will devastate them. The largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the Planet---a coal-fired plant in Gujarat, Western India---was just funded by the World Bank.

US and European governments are now officially fantasizing that emissions from smoke-stacks of coal-fired plants can be "cleaned" ("scrubbed") and the carbon can then be stored somewhere forever.

One of the biggest “clean coal” pilot plants now operating is the Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Hazelwood is the dirtiest power station in Australia and the most polluting power station in the industrialized world. It produces over 5% of Australia's total carbon dioxide emissions and 9% of Australia's total CO2 from electricity generation.

Victoria's 5-star energy efficient homes standard is a program that will prevent the emission of 200,000 tonnes of greenhouse gasses per annum. But as a result of the extension of Hazelwood's operation to 2031, those savings in emissions will be 'canceled out' by four days of Hazelwood's operations. Hazelwood, one of the largest "clean coal" pilot plants in operation, captures only 0.05 per cent of its carbon emissions.

Professor Howard Herzog is a noted authority on this technology. When he was asked what the chances were that this technology would achieve the needed cuts in CO2 emissions, his answer was "Zero!"

But a small number of people make a lot of money on coal and oil and gas. Obviously, any major changeover to renewable sun, wind, water and geothermal technology would impact their profits. That’s why they will pay billions to politicians and for public misinformation programs in order to keep the system tilted in their favor.

The US is a leader in climate misinformation and political foot-dragging. The political system reeks of oil.

The House of Representatives has passed a "Cap and Trade" bill, which, in theory at least, would cut emissions by 6% (from levels in 1990). But that won't happen. Permits the oil companies are supposed to pay for are going to be given away free, resulting in no reductions. And even this fake of a bill probably won’t make it through the Senate.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The environment is devastated because that‘s how it works in a system dominated by business where the bottom line, the profit, the interests of shareholders---and especially the interests of the executives---are all that matter. Big money buys big political control.

It wasn’t Islam, communism, socialism, or terrorism. It wasn‘t even the government---the government was made weak and bankrupt according to conservative strategy formulated under Reagan by his corporatist advisors.

Americans are still stuck right there thirty years ago as if nothing ever happened---still echoing the words of the great communicator Ronald Reagan: government is the enemy.

But the government doesn’t belong to the People anymore---government belongs to someone else because the People took their eyes off the politicians. Government doesn’t have the power anymore but the People now can’t keep their eyes on the corporatist owners of the corporate state either.

SUSTAINABILTY -

The corporatists control the fight against environmental regulations as ruthlessly as they have fought against financial regulation. And the two---the economy and the environment---are intricately, inextricably intertwined. Corporatists view all of material reality---from Humans to Wildlife to Nature---as commodities to be economically exploited.

Over-consumption and over-exploitation of Nature drives corporate profits. Unfortunately, over-consumption---meaning consumption fueled by unsustainable debt and not future earnings---has artificially inflated the economy and put a terrible strain on the natural environment by carelessly sucking up wasteful and ruinous amounts of resources. Now, instead of planning for a more sustainable future, we are trying to figure out how to get back to wasteful, destructive over-consumption. In other words we haven’t learned a thing.

Next: Part six - Future Awareness Lost