Noticeboard: EPA law suit interview today, Watts Up Tour starts tomorrow!

Anthony Watts Tour of Australia

The Case Against the EPA, 10am CDST USA


Join Mark Gillar on Global Cooling Radio as he interviews Shannon Goessler the executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. SLF has recently filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States to keep them from attempting to regulate greenhouse gasses as pollution. The call-in number is 646-727-3170.

To learn more about her organization’s efforts to prevent the EPA from overstepping its legal authority, visit any of the following sites:  epalawsuit.com/, Bio, or  SoutheasternLegal.org.

Here is a recent video appearance with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News: Goessler comes in at the 2:15 mark. Click for Shannon Goessler’s Bio.

Don’t miss out! The Great Anthony Watts Tour of Australia starts in Sydney on Sunday, Townsville, Monday…

Sydney NSW: Sunday 13 June 2010, 6:30 pm

Rockdale Town Hall, 448 Princes Highway (corner Bryant Street).
Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Tim Curtin.
$25 per person, $20 if you make a booking or are a pensioner
Contact: Bill Koutalianos 0407 076 982

Townsville QLD: Monday 14 June 2010, 7:00 pm

Ignatius Park College Assembly Hall, 368 Ross River Rd, Cranbrook.
Anthony Watts, David Archibald, Peter Ridd and Bob Carter.
$20 per person
Contact: Michael Rowley 0407 727 163

Brisbane QLD: Tuesday 15 June 2010, 7:00 pm

Tara Ballroom, The Irish Club, 175 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane
Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Bob Carter
$25 per person, $20 if you make a booking or are a pensioner
Contact: Tony Gomme 0413 100 055

See the other 18 towns itinerary.

9.3 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

29 comments to Noticeboard: EPA law suit interview today, Watts Up Tour starts tomorrow!

  • #
    janama

    I’ll be at the Gold Coast meeting – hope to see you there 😉

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  • #
    Speedy

    Janama –

    Sorry I can’t join you. I’ve been reading your posts for a while and you’ve always got a point to make.

    Hope you enjoy it! Please let us know how it goes.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    20

  • #
    PJB

    AND MAKE SURE THAT YOU TAKE VIDEO AND POST IT SOMEWHERE…..THE WORLD WILL BE WATCHING!

    Thanks.

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  • #

    MattB:
    June 12th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
    Lastly – Eddy – I’d love you to quote where I rely on the IPCC – I saw you quote one the other day but it was tongue firmly in cheek when I said it.

    Wow Matt, you know how much I love to cut and paste, don’t you?

    MattB:
    February 11th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
    I am willing to bet that the science used by the IPCC uses the best that science has to offer when it is considering how the oceans will react to increasing atmospheric CO2 in terms of what proportion will end up in the ocean vs the atmophere.

    MattB:
    February 11th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
    sorry Eddy makes sense to me. The key is that the IPCC don’t “do” science, so they use science someone else has done, and I assume that science uses the best science that science has to offer if it made the grade.

    MattB:
    February 11th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
    But the science that goes in to the IPCC does not just make up emissions projections – this numbers are not controversial are they?

    MattB:
    February 16th, 2010 at 12:53 am
    Surely you assert that your paper has been ignored by the IPCC? Sure they are my words but this whole issue is that you think they didn;t use best available science in omitting your paper? No?

    MattB:
    February 16th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
    But here I am, in direct conflict with your opinions of “warmists”, willing to have a genuine look at your paper and the IPCC to reach a sensible opinion on whether or not the IPCC should have taken it in to consideration as part of the “best that science has to offer.”

    MattB:
    February 10th, 2010 at 11:18 am
    And Humbug – how about you just get in touch with the IPCC instead of whinging on this blog?
    MattB:
    February 22nd, 2010 at 5:17 pm
    Tell you what, I’ll do everything in my life based upon assuming the scientific consensus is always right, and you can do everything in your life based on assuming that scientific consensus is always wrong, and we’ll see who lasts longer
    MattB:
    January 29th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
    You say Monckton has done those calcs… but if they are as per his equation above then they can;t be much different to the IPCC predictions can they? So why not just use them?

    Shall I continue, Matt?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    hmm Eddy I think you are confusing blind faith in the IPCC with “using the term IPCC in a sentence”.

    10

  • #
    Girma

    Richard Feynman’s Caltech 1974 Commencement Address

    … we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards.
    ….
    Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.
    ….
    In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

    Has the IPCC followed any of Feynman’s advices?

    10

  • #
    Ross

    Question : Has the EPA regulated (or propose to regulate) all greenhouse gases as pollutants or just CO ? I understood it was just the latter. If not then it means they thibk water vapour is a pollutant , does it not.

    10

  • #
    Jack Walker

    Title should be Heads Up Watt’s Up. Just a suggestion.

    10

  • #
    Mark

    Good read from an ex-Greenie:

    http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/8979

    The last paragraph is particularly salient.

    10

  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    Thanks for that Mark @ 9. From the article:

    As it turned out, at the very beginning of the UN discussions, Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, and a leading expert appointed to the committee because of his meteorological expertise, was saying precisely that: the amplification effect asserted cannot be relied upon to increase warming because the vapour could turn into cloud. This needed to be proved before basing assumptions on it. But Lindzen was overruled. Despite still being a key part of the IPPC process, he is now vilified by the press and by the environmental movement.

    Basically, the IPCC is saying “Water vapour can’t turn into clouds”.

    WTF!? How else do you get clouds, fog, dew etc.? The IPCC is clearly NOT a scientific body..

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  • #
    co2isnotevil

    The EPA is acting for the political goals of the current administration and in no scientific manner where the goal is to ‘save the planet’. As a consequence, there’s no sense in trying to figure out WTF they are thinking and/or look for rational logic in their policies. Clearly, if GHG regulation was important to save the planet, water vapor would need to be regulated, as its atmospheric absorption, on average, contributes about 2x as much as CO2. This means that things like fuel cells, whose only waste product is water vapor, would not be ‘green’. When you consider the effects of complete combustion, two water vapor molecules are produced for each CO2 molecule, so the water vapor from combustion is more potent, relative to GHG induced climate change! On a molecule per molecule basis. CO2 and H2O have about the same amount of GHG effect.

    The reason they disregard this is because of the general tendency to ignore the fact that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. There’s no sense bringing this up, because it only serves to undermine the importance of GHG variability on the climate, besides, it’s obvious and need not be brought up anyway …

    They often also use the argument that water vapor is in constant flux and changes would be absorbed by the system. I like this, because of all the things warminsts claim, this is the most correct. I just find it ironic that the CO2 flux in and out of the oceans and bioshpere, which is known to be large enough to matter, isn’t acknowledged to have the same effect.

    George

    10

  • #

    5MattB:
    June 13th, 2010 at 9:01 am
    hmm Eddy I think you are confusing blind faith in the IPCC with “using the term IPCC in a sentence”.

    Typical MattB non sequitur B.S.!

    Matt, my post at #4 was in response to

    MattB:
    June 12th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
    Lastly – Eddy – I’d love you to quote where I rely on the IPCC

    Reread post # 4 Matt! As usual when cornered you start pretending to be an idiot. Any lettered person possessing at least average intelligence can see from the examples I cited that you do rely on the authority of the IPCC. Look at the dates, those were just a few from a two month period. Perhaps you should review the intellectual ass kicking you received from Richard Courtney at Not FOUR degrees, 1.4 degrees. You kept droning on about E&E not being good enough for the IPCC. Are you some kind of intellectual sado masochist? Do you get pleasure from being intellectually pummeled on a regular basis?

    10

  • #
    Ken Stewart

    I’m off to Emerald next Saturday night. Rug up if you’re going. I was in Clermont today and I’m glad I’m not a brass monkey. Didn’t get above about 15 or 16 all day- high cloud and a lazy wind. I don’t know how the southerners stand it- I’ve been looking at data from SA and the annual mean for many places doesn’t get over 14 or 15. No wonder the gray nomads head north.
    Enjoy the tour!
    Ken

    10

  • #
    Mark

    For once I disagree with you Eddy. Matt is not pretending to be an idiot.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Mark, 🙂

    10

  • #
    Paul

    For your general amusement, a Google search came up with the following from Yahoo Answers that I thought was worth sharing. For the record, my search had nothing to do with AGW, but this popped up anyways, and it gave me a chuckle.

    “What is the strongest evidence of climate change?

    Personally I think it’s the cooling upper atmosphere. As a consequence of an enhanced greenhouse effect, more heat is trapped in the lower atmosphere, which results in the cooling of the upper atmosphere. It’s a key signature of human-caused global warming. If global warming were due to the Sun, for example, we would expect to see all layers of the atmosphere warming. Instead we have indeed observed the upper atmosphere cooling.”

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100420123307AAphwlh

    10

  • #
    janama

    The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony

    .

    http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/13/the-ipcc-consensus-on-climate-change-was-phoney-says-ipcc-insider/

    10

  • #

    Went to the Sydney talk last night – really great – well worth the time and encourage as many as possible to go and take your family and friends.

    10

  • #
    val majkus

    for those of us who love carbon the Carbon Sense Coalition is looking for help – visit the website at http://carbon-sense.com/about/ for general info and to see how you can help go to http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/press-on.pdf

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Eddy

    While Anthony Watts does his tour around Australia, our very own MattB will be embarking on a voyage of discovery of his own. En route to Coral Bay, in WA, (road transport of course, preferably carbon neutral pushbike) he will no doubt drop into Hamelin Bay to see the Stromatolites. Stomatolites are living fossils, and regarded as some of the earliest forms of plant life. They were responsible for converting the earth’s CO2 in the atmosphere to O2, which would indicate that the atmosphere had a lot of CO2 at the time – like 25% or 250,000 ppm! Funny enough, no runaway greenhouse and we had life forming, not dying. And the oceans weren’t so acidic as to dissolve the little guys either.

    MattB will observe that the stromatolites exist at sea level and that they, like corals, grow to the waterline. They have thereby coped with variations in sea level of some several metres over the eons. Just like the coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvulu, which are in no danger of drowning (but the locals do know a good scam when they see one.)

    Just up the road, MattB may also get to see the massive Banded Iron Formations (BIF’s) around Mt. Tom Price and Whaleback. These formed when the earth’s atmosphere became oxygen-rich (courtesy of stromatolites, see above) and caused the iron in the oceans (present as ferrous iron) to precipitate as ferric (magnetite actually, which is a 50:50 ferrous ferric mix.)

    I expect MattB to return home to Perth refreshed and enlightened by the evidence revealed by his own eyes and his keen intelligence.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    I’m not wasting any precious time to look at the stromatolites (again). May as well look at the concrete ones in King’s Park Speedy.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    MattB

    I agree that Stromatolites aren’t the most rivetting creatures but they did literally change the face of the earth.

    Anyway, Coral Bay will be quite pleasant this time of year – enjoy! A bit of “warming” isn’t such a bad thing, is it?

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Eddy/Matt

    My bad! Magnetite is actually 2 ferric iron to 1 ferric ion.

    What was I thinking???

    And, of course, the magnetite (Fe3O4) eventually oxidises to haematite (Fe2O3) which is what a lot of the Pilbara landscape is made from. This process is still going on in the deeper deposits, especially around Geraldton.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Aren’t the Stromatolites your relatives?

    Please be more kind to your family!

    10

  • #
    Bulldust

    Magnetite: Fe3O4 equivalent to FeO.Fe2O3 = one part ferous (FeO) and two parts ferric (Fe2O3). I think that is what you meant to say 🙂

    While all the producing mines in WA are based predominantly on producing Fe2O3 or haematite ore, notably the CITIC Pacific operation will be exploiting magnetite (Fe3O4). While it is more energy intensive to produce magnetite concentrate than haematite direct shipping ore, the overall life-of-process to iron metal energy consumption is lower for magnetite ores than haematite ores.

    This is another case where a product (magnetite) would be less attractive to extract in Australia to the concentrate stage under an ETS, as we would bear the brunt of the energy consumption of producing the concentrate while the energy savings (and hence emission savings) would be captured overseas… just like the case for LNG.

    These things are never simple… unintended consequences everywhere.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Bulldust

    Thanks again – its 1 part ferrous and 2 parts ferric.

    Magnetite processing is expensive because of the amount of energy (and grinding media) required to liberate the magnetite from the siliceous gangue. However, this same energy is required in processing haematite fines if they are to achieve pellet grade. And, as you say, there is an energy credit for the oxidation of magnetite to haematite, but this credit would be received by the purchaser of the concentrate.

    It strikes me that the carbon credits accounting process would be akin to arguing about the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead. It is so incredibly vague!

    My calculations on the CO2 content of the atmosphere didn’t factor in the amount of CO2 dissolved in the oceans – that would probably taken a good portion of it, given cold water at pressure can hold a lot of CO2. (As anyone who has poured a beer will know :)) But the atmospheric CO2 content is still likely to be greater than the 8000 ppm measured in the earlier paleohistory.

    It’s a sad day when you’ve got to do your own trolling at this site… 😉 To quote CJ Dennis (The Silent Member) “He’d stand before a looking glass and argue with his self.”

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    10

  • #
    Ian Hill

    I have some trouble considering a pushbike rider as carbon neutral Speedy (@20). They have to breathe harder and exhale more CO2 than they would otherwise. I estimate that over the past 30 years I have put 25% more CO2 into the atmosphere from my running activities than someone who hasn’t exercised. There must be some flaw in my reasoning but I can’t figure out what it is!

    I can imagine a whole department being formed at the Ministry of No Good to work out the carbon cost of being excited at sporting events. Ten cents per person per goal, eight cents for a point – if you are an opposition supporter. A sub 3 hour marathon will cost you $15 but if you take 4 hours that’s $25 thanks. An Olympic Gold Medal – that’s $50 per head of population. Cash register rings. Oh the things going through one’s mind on a training run.

    Looking forward to the Watt’s Up talk in Adelaide on the 24th.

    10

  • #

    The US Supreme Court needs to put an injunction on its earlier ruling giving the EPA the power to write regulation and the entire case needs to be reheard since the climategate letters show the evidence used in the case is now legally invalid in US courts.

    10

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Speedy @20,

    Your narrative concerning MattB reminded me of our own dearly beloved Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi who — believe it or not — publicly stated her fear that those same islands you named might tip over if sea level was to rise.

    I kid thee not!

    10