Ted Turner -- A Big Chicken Little

Whatever happened to the Scientific Method? When it comes to Globa Warming, it seems that a lot people think method of developing and validating scientific hypotheses is just hot air.

In short, Global Warming is a conclusion based on hypothesis that has never been tested. It's too complex to test. It's so complex we cannot identify and factor in all the components that are supposed to bring us to the Global Warming conclusion. In other words, the conclusion that Global Warming will destroy life on Earth is a guess. A wild one. And it's as valid as the recent Doomsday Rapture prediction. Or Y2K. Silliness. Utter silliness.

When it comes to predictions of mass death and global catastrophe, the predictors have a bad record. They're 0 for, well, you pick the number of predicted Doomsdays. I suppose the Global Warmists remind themselves that even a broken watch is right twice a day. But even that old bit of sophistry has failed them.

The Global Warming believer, Ted Turner, thinks the reason people fail to grasp the issue is due to its complexity. He's got it backwards. To validate a hypothesis predicting Global Warming means that scientists would have to correctly predict the outcome of every action -- every change -- occurring on Planet Earth for decades to come. It's impossible. We are incapable of such a feat. The Environment is too complex.

Ted Turner: Climate Change ‘Most Serious ... Problem Humanity Has Ever Faced’

June 24, 2011

Ted Turner and members of the board of UN Foundation. (Photo: UN Foundation)
(CNSNews.com) – Media mogul Ted Turner says climate change is “probably the most serious--and, in all fairness, the most complex--problem that humanity has ever faced.”

He added: “It is really easy to understand how some people don’t get it, because it’s so complex and complicated.”

Turner took part in a telephone news conference on Thursday, held by his United Nations Foundation on the island of Svalbard, one of the northernmost regions of Norway.

His comments came in response to a question posed by reporter Sunny Lewis of the Environment News Service about how to change the minds of climate change skeptics.

“A few climate skeptics and deniers seem to be holding up action to curb climate change,” Lewis said. “What can be done to convince and persuade these holdouts as to actually realize what so many scientists know and are telling us in urgent terms?”

Turner applauded the question.

“That’s a very good question," he said, "and if we knew the answer to it, we’d already have an energy policy in the United States. You know, my good friend Boone Piockens points out, and absolutely correctly, that the United States, in its history, has never had an energy policy including during the Arab oil shocks of the ‘70s, and we still don’t have (one), and we need to.

“The only thing I can think of, is we just have to keep working, just like we are doing now, and get as much publicity as we possible can for the issue, and increase the amount of the debate, and persuade people with both the evidence, which is overwhelmingly in favor of climate change being a serious problem, probably the most serious--and in all fairness--the most complex problem that humanity has ever faced,” Turner said.

Referring to climate change skeptics, Turner added: “It's really easy to understand how some people don’t get it because it’s so complex and complicated. But that doesn’t mean we have to do, all of us, do what we can to try to convince people to do the right thing and then motivate them to take the action.”

Turner is the founder and chairman of the United Nations Foundation, and presided over the organization’s semi-annual meeting, which took place June 19-25 in Oslo.

Cars, Cars Everywhere

Do Americans want small inexpensive cars? We shall see. Tata, the leading automobile company of India is expected to start selling its cheapest vehicles here. Its Nano model is small, goes 50 miles on a gallon of gas and is expected to cost 20% less than the Hyundai Accent, which sells for $10,000.

What does the arrival of this car mean? It means the number of cars on the road will increase -- a lot. The Global Warming alarmists have many problems. Among them is their difficulty with math.

Tata Motors wants to put 100 million new Indian drivers behind the wheel. One Hundred Million New Drivers -- One Hundred Million New Cars. One Hundred Millon New Consumers of Gasoline. The Global Warming Alarmists hate cars, but they want new cars to get better and better gas mileage. Okay.

But somehow they fail to understand aggregate numbers. They hate Hummers. But they accept cars like the Nano. But there are few Hummers in the world. However, considering India's population of 1.3 Billion, Tata's Nano can become the Model T and sell 100 million units. Thus, the world's fleet of Nanos will consume far more gasoline than all the Hummers ever built.

In short, increases in prosperity are reflected in many ways, including the number of cars on the road. Thus, a richer world is a world with more cars.

Today, the fleet of vehicles in the world totals about 750 million. But as a result of increasing prosperity in China, India and many emerging nations, the number of cars in the world is expected to reach 3 Billion by mid century. By that time the population of humans is expected to hit 9 Billion.

Therefore, aggregate oil consumption will increase. Consumption of almost everything will increase. But Global Warming Alarmists want to hold back the tide of humanity and restrict human desires. On the other hand, Tata Motors will do its best to give people what they want.

Cheap car from India could cost $8,000 in US

Ultracheap Nano could come to US in 3 years with $8,000 price tag

DETROIT (AP) -- The world's cheapest car is being readied for sale in the U.S., but by the time India's Tata Nano is retrofitted to meet emissions and safety standards, it won't be that cheap.

Tata Technologies Ltd., the global engineering arm of the Tata group conglomerate, brought the tiny car to Detroit as a publicity stunt for the engineering group.

Tata officials, while maintaining that they couldn't speak for Tata Motors, maker of the $2,500 Nano, said they were involved with the Nano from concept until it launched last July in Mumbai.

They wouldn't say when the Nano might arrive in the U.S. or how much it might cost here, although Ratan Tata, chairman of the group of Tata companies, has said it should be ready for U.S. distribution in about three years.

Tata Motors already has made a European version of the four-seat car that will cost about $8,000 when it debuts in 2011, and a Tata Technologies official said privately that the U.S. version is expected to have a comparable price. The official did not want to be identified because the price has not been made public.

Warren Harris, Tata Technologies president, would only say that the price would be more than the roughly $2,500 charged in India.

"The structural changes that would need to be made, the changes that would be required as far as emissions are concerned, and some of the features that would be appropriate to add to the vehicle for the North American market, obviously that would drive up the price point," he said.

Tata Technologies could be involved in bringing the car up to U.S. standards, said Tony Jones, associate vice president of the global automotive practice.

Before it can be sold here, the car's two-cylinder, 623cc engine would have to be engineered to meet stronger U.S. pollution standards, he said. Airbags would have to be added, the roof strengthened and the front bumper lengthened to meet U.S. requirements to limit damage in a 5-mph crash.

The Spartan interior, with flat bucket seats, three knobs, a horizontal switch and a steering wheel, also would have to be changed to comply with U.S. safety standards that limit movement of passengers not wearing seat belts.

Jones said the Nano Europa has airbags and has passed European safety tests with flying colors.

The Nano, with 12-inch diameter tires, electric windows in the front and crank windows in the back, gets 50 mpg on the highway and has a top speed of 65 mph.

If the $8,000 price tag holds true, it would cost far less than the $9,970 Hyundai Accent, currently the car with the lowest base sticker price in the U.S., according to the Edmunds.com automotive Web site. The price excludes shipping

Gasbag Environ-Mental Cases

The fabulous debate over wind power on Nantucket Sound.

For all the hype about the Bush Administration's oil-and-gas energy bias, one of its last official acts was to give the go-ahead to what could be America's first offshore wind farm -- thus enraging more than a few self-deputized environmentalists. Such are the ironies of the wilderness of mirrors known as the Cape Wind project.

For the last seven years and counting, the green entrepreneur Jim Gordon has been trying to build a fleet of wind turbines in federal waters near the upscale seascapes of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The site seemed ideal, given the stiff ocean breezes and the eco-friendly politics in Massachusetts. The company says its 130 towers could meet 75% of the region's electricity needs and reduce carbon emissions by some 734,000 tons every year.

The sort of people who can afford to use "summer" as a verb are in favor of all that. Completely in favor, really. But they did want to raise one quibble. Unfortunately, the wind farm would create "visual pollution" in Nantucket Sound, particularly the parts within sight of their beachfront vacation homes.

Mr. Gordon went ahead anyway, and the opposition rose to gale force. Supposedly the wind farm will lead to everything from the disruption of seabird habitats to "desecrating ancient American Native burial sites," in the words of Glenn Wattley, the head of an antiwind outfit funded by the likes of Bunny Mellon. But what really upsets these well-to-do Don Quixotes is the thought of looking at windmills that would appear about as tall on the horizon as the thumbnail at the end of your outstretched arm.

Then there is the political saga, with the Kennedy family as the Hyannis Port Sopranos, supplying the muscle. While Ted Kennedy was castigating President Bush for destroying the environment, the Senator was working furiously behind the Congressional scenes to kill Cape Wind. He even had the inspiration of getting former GOP colleague Ted Stevens of Alaska to slip wording into a spending bill that would have handed a veto to then-Governor Mitt Romney, another aesthetically minded opponent. Robert Kennedy Jr., a Time magazine "hero of the planet," tried to get the Sound designated as a national marine sanctuary to bar development.

Incredibly enough, this political sabotage has so far failed. And last week the Interior Department issued its long-awaited regulatory study, mostly finding "negligible" environmental impact -- apart from a "moderate" impact on the scenery. If the Obama Administration signs off, construction could begin next year.

Mr. Kennedy blustered that the report was rushed out: amusing, considering it runs to 2,800 pages. Bill Delahunt, the windy Cape Democrat, also denounced the action as "a $2 billion project that depends on significant taxpayer subsidies while potentially doubling power costs for the region."

Good to see the Congressman now recognizes the limitations of green tech, such as its tendency to boost consumer electricity prices -- but his makeover as taxpayer champion is a bit belated. Green energy has been on the subsidy take for years, including in 2005 when Mr. Delahunt was calling for "an Apollo project for alternative energy sources, for hybrid engines, for biodiesel, for wind and solar and everything else." The reality is that all such projects are only commercially viable because of political patronage.

Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf ran the numbers and found that the effective tax rate for wind is minus-163.8%. In other words, every dollar a wind firm spends is subsidized to the tune of 64 cents from the government. The Energy Information Administration estimates that wind receives $23.37 in government benefits per megawatt hour -- compared to, say, 44 cents for coal. Despite these taxpayer crutches, wind only provides a little under 1% of U.S. net electric generation.

We'd prefer an energy policy that allows markets to shape the sources that predominate -- which would almost certainly put Cape Wind out of business. But President Obama seems determined to unload even more subsidies on green developers as he seeks to boost renewables to 10% of the U.S. electricity mix by the end of his first term and 25% by 2025; their share today is about 9% (5.8% of which is hydropower).

We wouldn't be surprised to see the President's green future wrestled to the ground by the likes of Mr. Delahunt, the Kennedys and other anticarbon Democrats. Environmentalists love the idea of milking Mother Nature for power, but they hate the hardware needed to make it work: huge windmills, acres of solar panels, high-voltage transmission lines to connect them to the places where people live. Of course, they still totally, absolutely, wholeheartedly support green energy -- as long as it gets built where someone else goes yachting.