How is this for a hard-hitting opening graph in a Washington Post article, sure to induce an instant ulcer in the cult-like climate change industry:
The world’s policymakers and scientists have made a critical error in how they count biofuels’ contribution to human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
The full article in the journal Science can only be viewed by subscription, in case you want to delve into this. Here are some highlights, as reported in the Post:
“We made an honest mistake within the scientific framing of the debate, and we’ve got to correct it to make it right,” said Steven P. Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the paper’s authors.
The method undercounts the global-warming contribution of some bioenergy crops, the team of 13 researchers wrote, because it doesn’t factor in what sort of land-use changes might occur to produce them.
When calculating the greenhouse-gas emissions limit, government officials in the United States, Europe and elsewhere do not count the carbon that biofuels release when they are burned. But carbon is released when a producer clears and burns trees, even to grow a crop destined for the biofuels market. Officials also established a legal system that limits emissions from energy use but not from land-use activities such as clearing forests.
In recent months, researchers have begun to worry that bioenergy crops could replace the world’s forests and savannahs on a huge scale unless climate policies start to take full account of how these crops’ production affects greenhouse-gas concentrations. None of the major climate regimes — including the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union’s carbon market and the House-passed climate bill — account for the carbon released by changing land use for biofuels.
The idea that this was simply the result of an ”honest mistake,” and not at least partially the result of a breathtaking level of denial, bias, the need to crush dissent and delegitimize reasonable alternative scientific points of view, along with a heavy dose of groupthink among the climate change zealots, is ludicrous.
Many other important voices of reason have been trying to focus attention on this very phenomenon, including that venerable, highly-technical, cutting-edge scientific journal Rolling Stone Magazine , back in 2007.
Loved the reaction of the spokesperson from the (parasitic) ethanol industry group, a line of business that only exists at all because it is completely dependent upon government subsidies:
Tom Buis, chief executive of the ethanol trade association Growth Energy, said his group opposes a change in accounting procedures.
And how is this line in the Washington Post story for understatement?:
Changing the accounting system poses a political challenge, as evidenced by the criticism bioenergy producers heaped on the report.
Make sure to check your major papers and mainstream media outlets for stories on this; you know they will be above the fold, lead stories tonight….NOT! (The Washington Post story was on page A10).
Filed under: Budget, Energy, Environment, In The News, Pork, Reform, Regulation, Taxes, Technology
