(I thought I'd post this while it's snowing. I live at the beach. You know, Sea Level. So, when you think about it, having snow, at the beach, at Sea Level in the last full week of April, it's...well, it's not ordinary. It should be warmer. Mebbe not 75 degrees. But, not snowing.
(Here's a reason why I won't buy the Oregonian. In an April 11 article, headlined Soaring temps, sunshine will last the weekend, we learn that a weather system will "push highs Saturday in Portland to near 75 degrees, and to 65 degrees on Sunday, a full five degrees above the average high of 60 degrees."
(Global Warming, right? Well, not really. Here's the meat of the article, way down at the bottom:
("Since March 1, Portland has seen a normal or above normal high temperature on just ten days out of 41."
...
("'The February numbers showed that the water temperatures in the Central Pacific were the coldest since 1950, which is the coldest on record,' said George Taylor of the Oregon Climate Service. 'It's clearly an extreme La Nina. But the forecast models are pretty bad at recognizing transitions.'"
(So, weather is colder than normal. It's in the article. So, back to our regularly scheduled posting.)
A funny thing happened on the way to Saturday's presentation of Al Gore's " An Inconvenient Truth."
To get there, I would have had to drive through snow, and then head through Timber to get there. This is not a trip you take in the snow, unless you have need. As much as I wanted to hear Secretary of State--One of Fifty--Bradley give his presentation on the AlGoreManBearPig Hypothesis, and associated remarks by Jim Cathcart, he of specious wool-gathering and thinking.
If you haven't read Dr. Cathcart's opus "Carbon Accounting: Determining Carbon Offsets from Forest Projects", you can read it here. ("Carbon Report", Chapter Nine, pdf.) While a supposedly original work, Dr. Cathcart's efforts seem to be largely derivative from an earlier work by the fella pictured above. For a paper so dependent upon someone else's work, one would hope that the previous work and author would be cited by the current author. This is not the case here, but you can look at the original work here. ("Getting It Right: Emerging Markets For Storing Carbon In Forests", Michael Totten, World Resources Institute, 1999.)
Now, I assert that carbon cap and trade is a sham and a shakedown. For the moment, I can't get you any closer to this ineluctable conclusion than Cathcart and Totten. Which is why I've included two pictures of the same man. Seemingly, the same pic. Until you click on the pic. Then you get two entirely different pictures of the man.
The pic on the Left is of Michael Totten, Senior Director, Water & Climate, with The Center For Environmental Leadership In Business. At this link, we find out that Mr. Totten is a flim-flam man, the shakedown artiste, boasting of no more credentials than that of a degree in English from Yale (with Honors). Oh, and he has a teaching certificate.
The pic on the Right is of Michael Totten, Senior Director Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services, with the The Center for Environmental Leadership in Business at Conservation International. At this link, the fact that the man has no credentials is totally avoided. But we do find out that this man, with no training in the sciences, no training in meteorology and no training in climatology has written a "12-title, 250-page Global Warming Prevention Act, which was co-sponsored by one-third of the House of Representatives". Remember, the guy's an English teacher. I'm sure his spelling was spot on.
Interestingly, his work has far reaching effects for Oregonians, statewide and locally.
For citizens of the North Oregon coast, it was Totten's plan for carbon offsets, through carbon sequestration effected by a process the experts call "aforestation" that created demand for LNG to be delivered to its area ports.
The scam was simple. Propose a power plant. Full of evil demons, like pollution. What to do? Offer to plant trees to offset the negative impact of the evil power plant. Simple? Simple-minded. But the grist for Cathcart's restatement of Totten.
Known as the Klamath Cogeneration Project, the city was able to get around pernicious state siting requirements, to build a 484-megawatt power plant in Klamath Falls. Of course this project hasn't been without problems.
"Fitch Downgrades Klamath Cogeneration Project to 'B-'; Removes from Watch Negative.
"NEW YORK -- Fitch Ratings has downgraded the rating on the City of Klamath Falls, OR (the city) senior secured revenue bonds due 2025 to 'B-' from 'BB+' and removed the Rating Watch Negative. The bonds are secured solely by the revenues of the 484-megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired Klamath Cogeneration Project (KCP) and other KCP assets.
"The rating action incorporates the expectation of continued depressed financial performance due to on-going reduced plant utilization, attributed to high natural gas prices. Specifically, high natural gas prices have led KCP's primary off-takers to reduce their dispatch of the facility, as allowed under their respective purchase power ... " (Highbeam Research, January 12, 2006.)
Which is why, I'm fairly sure, that K-Falls decided to get out of the energy business, transferring the cogeneration unit to PPM. Cities should stick to what they do best. English teachers should stick to what they do best. And state foresters should not take whole cloth from an English teacher, turn around and present the work as original.
There are some other interesting tidbits that can be picked up in other chapters of the Carbon Report. Here's one of the more interesting statements, that at the time didn't anticipate the cringe that must occur to the report's authors, as it does today:
"Another key question for the IPCC analyses is:are globally observed 20th-century warming trends the result of natural processes or human influences via greenhouse gas emissions? This question is now answered with high confidence: the trends in global climate since about 1975 can only be explained by non-natural forces." (Climate Change at Multiple Scales, Millar, Nielson, Bachelet, Drapek and Lenihan, "Carbon Report", Chapter Three.)
Sadly, as temperatures drop, Man Made Global Warming has morphed into Man Made Climate Change. Or, anthropomorphic climate change. Pseudo-science loves long, greeky words. And English teachers are known for their various pomposities.
Don't overlook Chapter 4. If you haven't heard of George Taylor, you haven't been following this issue very well. Take a look at what he says.
We have a lot to be thankful for. And Mr. Totten, Yale University: B.A., Literary Analysis (with Honors) is one of them.
2 comments:
What's in a name?
Can't be, I said. Not Michael Totten, Portland, trusted objective journo of middle east conflicts. Whew. It's not. The good guy is Michael J. Totten.
Similar to the unfortunate similarities in name between Mark Helprin and Mark Helperin.
I've been a reader of Michael J. Totten for years, long before his rise--justly due--to national attention.
I wish he still had links available to his first stuff. It is my belief that Michael didn't start out as a "neo-conservative" writer. It would be, in my opinion, fairer to say the Michael was a fairly common breed of Portlander, basically "liberal" but with a strong urge to write. (Writers write to their audience, but do it for themselves.)
9/11 mugged that reality. And I wish that I could point you to the posts where he chronicles his discovery of the world outside Portland. Being "old enough to be his dad", I read his words with a parent's pride, as he slowly opened himself up to a world outside of slogans and Leftist impulses. And I don't think he intended to chronicle those changes. It was just there, in his words.
But, in my research into where the hell this carbon credits thing came from, I was stopped when I saw the name. And, I was framing an e-mail to Michael, until I was able to find "the guy" behind all this nonsense. And, to be honest, Michael sometimes gives you a view of where he was--the personal stuff--before 2001. But that was never the issue. Of what he was, or where he was coming from.
What was great was to watch "where he is" and watch that transformation to where he is today. If a standard, boiler-plate Liberal like Michael can make the transformation he has made, then I have increasing hope that more significant changes can be made to the body politic in general in Oregon. That the Oregonian continues to refuse him what should be a natural job on the state's only daily newspaper, speaks loads about the editorial (?) direction being followed by that publication.
Thanks for stopping by.
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