The European Union’s dream of using vegetable-based diesel fuel in cars to cut oil imports and the pollution that causes global warming is turning sour.

The bloc made a big bet on biodiesel fuels in 2003, agreeing that its governments would phase in tax breaks and rules to encourage their production and use.

The bet seemed to make sense. Most Europeans drive diesel cars, making ethanol—the U.S. clean fuel of choice for gasoline-powered cars—impractical. Biodiesel can be mixed with regular diesel fuel and, when blended, doesn’t need any special pumps or engine-design changes.

Mirroring the U.S. experience with ethanol, European companies rushed to make biodiesel out of a range of things, including rapeseed crops and used McDonald’s frying oil. Low raw-material costs and generous tax breaks meant margins were high. By last year, Europe’s annual capacity to make the fuel had climbed to 10 …

Handelsblatt: Haben Politik und Öffentlichkeit begriffen, was beim Klimawandel auf uns zukommt? Oder herrscht inzwischen Klimahysterie?

Richard Tol: Es herrscht Klimahysterie. Das Klimaproblem ist viel kleiner als oft behauptet; ein bisschen Klimawandel bringt sogar Vorteile für Wirtschaft und Gesundheit. Wir haben und brauchen ein Jahrhundert, um das Klimaproblem zu lösen. Die heutige Klimahysterie hat dazu geführt, dass die Europäer nicht ganz ernst genommen werden in Peking, Delhi und Washington. http://www.handelsblatt.com/News/Default.aspx?_p=303503&_t=ig_p&ig_xmlfile=hb_umweltoekonomen.xml&ig_page=5

As is well known by now, a passel of climatologists in the 1970s, including such personalities as Stephen “It’s OK to Exaggerate To Get People To Believe” Schneider, tried to get the world excited about the possibility, and the dire consequences, of global cooling.

From the 1940s to near the end of the 1970s, the global mean temperature did indeed trend downwards. Using this data as a start, and from the argument that any change in climate is bad, and anything that is bad must be somebody’s fault, Schneider and others began to warn that an ice age was imminent, and that it was mainly our fault.

The causes of this global cooling were said to be due to two main things: orbital forcing and an increase in particulate matter—aerosols—in the atmosphere. The orbital forcing—a fancy term meaning changes in the earth’s distance and orientation to …

Over at Gristmill, Andrew Dessler complains about the list of 400 sceptical scientists who seem to challenge the “scientific consensus”:

“The question is: does their opinion matter? Should you revise your views about climate change accordingly?”

The question is then, should scientific opinion matter? But in order to stop this question being turned back to the “consensus” scientists, Dessler makes an exception for them:

“To understand why Inhofe’s claims are fundamentally bogus, consider the following scenario: imagine a child is diagnosed with cancer. Who are his parents going to take him to in order to determine the best course of treatment?”

Dessler goes on use the tragic image of a hypothetical child with cancer, by saying that you would not take the child to any old doctor, but a specialist of a specialism.

“Expertise matters. Not everyone’s opinion is equally …

In Bali gab er den Umweltaktivisten, zurück in Deutschland hat sich Sigmar Gabriel zum Cheflobbisten der heimischen Automobilindustrie gewandelt. Ihre mögliche Abwanderung in Schwellenländer kann er jetzt der Androhung der EU-Komission, hohe CO2-Emissionen zu bestrafen, anlasten.

Noch in Bali bei der Klimakonferenz konnte es Sigmar Gabriel nicht verbindlich genug haben. Mit einigem Furor griff er die Bremser an, die klare Minderungsziele beim Treibhausgas blockierten. Kaum zu Hause, bekommt der Bundesumweltminister nun eine Verbindlichkeit um die Ohren gehauen, die ihm die Zornesröte ins Gesicht treibt. Hinter den Vorschlägen der EU-Kommission für Strafzahlungen, die die Autohersteller bei zu hohem CO2-Ausstoß zahlen sollen, wittert er nur noch „einen Wettbewerbskrieg“ in der Autobranche zugunsten der italienischen und französischen Autohersteller, zulasten der Deutschen.

Es mag so sein. Gabriels harte Reaktion zeigt aber auch eines: Der Regierung des Klima-Musterknaben Deutschland dürfte langsam dämmern, dass die eigenen, immer schärferen Vorgaben beim Klimaschutz eben …

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest luxury carmaker, will scale back its workforce under a plan announced three months ago to boost profit with 6 billion euros ($8.6 billion) in spending cuts.

The carmaker will eliminate “several thousand’’ jobs by not replacing people who leave and through contract agreements on work-time flexibility, said Mathias Schmidt, a spokesman at Munich-based BMW. Schmidt wouldn’t confirm a report today in German magazine Der Spiegel’s online edition that 8,000 positions will be cut next year. ...

Rising costs for raw materials, as well as research into new technologies to reduce emissions and boost fuel efficiency, are a burden on profit, Reithofer has said. The European Union proposed rules Dec. 19 that would force BMW and competitors to reduce their cars’ carbon-dioxide emissions under a planned cap to fight climate change by encouraging lighter autos.

The rules mean …

Shell and StatoilHydro have scrapped plans to build a green power plant that would capture and store carbon dioxide because the project was found to be uneconomic.

The decision to shelve the gas-fired power project, which was to be built at Tjeldbergodden in Norway, casts further doubt on the financial viability of power schemes that capture and safely store greenhouse gases.

In the UK, BP was forced to scrap plans to build a carbon-capture and storage scheme at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, citing inadequate assurances of financial support from the British Government.

Shell and Statoil first announced their plans in March 2006, when Shell hailed the Tjeldbergodden scheme as “an important milestone towards our vision for greener fossil fuels”.

The Tjeldbergodden project would have captured carbon dioxide emitted from an 860 megawatt gas-fired power station, which would then have been injected into two …

What is there to say about Bali?

There have been rumours of punch-ups, singing and drinking and dancing, weeping delegates, and Mea Culpa’s from failed US presidential candidates on behalf of the entire USA. It was, in this sense, like any other industry’s Christmas party - an expenses-paid event, which went on too late, at which the tired staff, drunk on their own self importance, became emotional, and fell out with each other. Office politics, writ really bloody large. So much ado about nothing.

The media lapped up the hysteria nonetheless, and gave it ‘meaning’. What has emerged are unsatisfied eco-activists, disgruntled at the failure of the world’s politicians to achieve a “legally binding framework” to reduce green house gases in the atmosphere. These responses tell us more than Bali itself.
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2007/12/great-big-bali-beano-ding-dong-roadmap.html