As an addendum to Abe’s excellent post, it would be interesting to see a poll that asked people where American CO2 emissions are today relative to where they were when Bill Clinton was elected president. I’m confident that most people would think they are higher or much higher, when in fact they are about the same, thanks to a steep fall beginning in 2007. Good environmental news, especially if it’s due to the free market instead of bureaucrats, just doesn’t fit the narrative. The New York Times, for instance, did not see fit to print this story.
But as John Hinderaker over at Powerline points out, at least as big a problem is lousy data and the dishonest used of it by climateers and politicians. Governor Jerry Brown of California recently said that, “Global warming’s impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented.” But it turns out that the data supporting that claim comes from just one weather station, which has measured an increase beginning about 1980. No other weather station in the area shows any increase in average temperatures, so why does this one? Because a local janitor was for years burning refuse in a barrel located only a few feet from the station and a tennis court was built not much further away in about 1980. The tennis court, of course, absorbs heat all day long and then slowly emits it all night. You can find pictures and charts here.
As American cities have grown, they have often engulfed weather stations, subjecting them in the urban heat island effect in the process. What was a potato field in 1925 is today a parking lot outside a strip mall. This is not taken into account. Also, hundreds of the weather stations no longer conform to NOAA standards, such as avoiding local conditions that might affect the data they collect, such as nearby asphalt surfaces and air conditioning exhaust fans.
If the Republicans win in November, they would do the country a big favor by requiring NOAA to bring its vast network of weather stations into conformity with its own standards for collecting good data.
The dishonesty on the left is mind boggling/
Joel Kotkin says that Jerry Brown is truly this delusional. The urban specialist has had a number of conversations with the governor over the past 30 years. He is a true breathing extremist regarding the so-called global warming threat. The man believes his own nonsense. And yet, Californians reelected him. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
The free market play in the reduction of carbon emissions is important, since consumers were easily able to choose cheaper fuels and drive down costs. However, the reduction in emissions is a secondary effect because these cheaper fuels happen also to be cleaner. In a free market system, we must also accept that the opposite phenomenon may be observed in the next turn of the market; if dirtier fuels become cheaper, carbon emissions will rise.