Yesterday we speculated about the news coverage of a new British study that claims global warming will cause a catastrophic economic catastrophe. Catastrophically speaking. Would there be a balanced examination of the study, including reporting of those who question its methods, assumptions and conclusions?

Wearily, we laugh.

LONDON Global warming is now a reality and the debate about its existence is over, Britain’s environment minister said Sunday, before the release of a report on the economic cost of climate change.

Environment Secretary David Miliband said international action was needed to curb the emission of greenhouse gases that scientists say are warming the planet.

“I think that the scientific debate has now closed on global warming, and the popular debate is closing as well,” Miliband told Sky News television.

We were one of the first on the Cuba story, i.e., that while we prevent ourselves from tapping our own offshore resources, Fidel Castro is hard at work drilling 50 miles off the Florida coast. Well, here’s this story, developing the plot a little further. Not only is Cuba drilling, but it looks like they’ve got a subset of the UN down there — Canada, Spain, Norway, Malaysia and India — fixin’ to drill there as well.

While your elected representative is home campaigning, ask them if they plan on allowing us to tap our own resources, or whether they’d rather just sit idly by and let Castro do it for us.

Thanks to both NRO and the Business and Media Institute for pointing this one out to us. Newsweek has apparently run a correction 31 years late.

In our discussion of global warming, we have noted repeatedly in this space that in the 70′s, both Time and Newsweek ran cover stories on global cooling. It spurred a hysteria of its own back then, way before the global warming hysteria took prominence over it in the climate hysteria race.

So in an effort to erase this inconvenient truth from three decades ago — a club that the skeptics are using to beat the hysterics — Newsweek has issued an official, “Do over”, a “What were we thinking?!?,” a “Pay no attention to the global cooling expert behind that curtain!!” This is, in a word, hilarious — and a joy to behold.

You must read the Newsweek apologia, standing as it does as a testament to pretzel logic everywhere. Said the NRO, Newsweek’s claiming more consensus this time around. Consensus, as you may know, isn’t really a relative concept. It’s consensus. You can’t really have more or less of it. And, as we’ve pointed out many times, there ain’t a lot of it around on global warming these days anyway.

So we applaud Newsweek for its Houdini-like efforts to escape the straitjacket of reason, and purge any record of bad global cooling from its archives. It was clearly wrecking the global warming buzz. Nice of them to set the record straight. Can’t wait to read the next correction thirty years from now when the locusts come.

The NAM’s recent study, The Escalating Cost Crisis, is shaping the public debate on government policies. As it should. When government policies add 31.7 percent to the cost of manufacturing in the United States, something’s wrong.

The issue has emerged most recently in Rhode Island:

Many Rhode Island manufacturers have argued that operating in the United States puts them at a disadvantage when competing against foreign trade partners.

A recent National Association of Manufacturers study shows they are right. The study, published last month, suggests that structural, non-production costs add 31.7 percent to U.S. manufacturers’ total production costs, relative to the trade-weighted average costs of production for nine major U.S. trading partners.

This puts U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage when competing in the global marketplace. “We have 32 percent more costs because we are in the U.S.,” said Al Lubrano, president of Technical Materials Inc. in Lincoln. “And that’s just in structural costs.”

Good story by Providence Business News’ Natalie Myers.

We linked earlier to the reprints of the excellent Wall Street Journal series on U.S. manufacturers succeeding in the United States. The series also excited the attention of the Greenwood Commonwealth, the Mississippi newspaper that serves the home community of Viking Range Corp.

Viking Range Corp. has once again attracted the attention of the world’s most widely read business publication.

The Wall Street Journal in its Wednesday edition published a wide-ranging article on the history of the company and its commitment to manufacturing in the United States.

The article, headlined “Home on the Range,” was written by Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel, who visited Greenwood to do research for the story.

This is not the first time that Viking has landed within the pages of the Journal, whose print and online U.S. editions have a combined paid circulation of about 2.1 million.

In the past 15 months alone, Viking has been mentioned in Journal stories at least five other times. This week’s 1,100-word piece, though, is one of the most extensive treatments Viking has received since it began manufacturing its upscale ranges in Greenwood in 1989.

Just interesting. Major news operations reporting on local business/politicians/social trend often prompts local news coverage in smaller states or media markets, appropriately so.

Especially if they get the story right.

The United States better get into this game.

China plans $8-billion nuclear power plant

BEIJING — China plans to build a nuclear power plant worth the equivalent of $8.5-billion in a central province, adding to a boom in its nuclear power industry, a news report said Thursday.

The latest plant is planned for Yueyang, a city in Hunan province but no construction date has been set, China’s Xinhua News Agency said, citing local officials.

Xinhua didn’t say whether it would use Chinese-made or imported equipment — a key issue for U.S., European and Russian suppliers, who are looking to China to drive sales at a time when few other countries are building nuclear plants.

China’s government plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants in coming years as it tries to ease mounting power shortages cause by its economic boom. Beijing looks on nuclear power as a clean alternative to China’s abundant but dirty coal resources.

Just in time for Sunday’s Marine Corps Marathon, we have a video this week on how running shoes are made (amazing how we time these videos, eh?).

The NAM actually has an interest in this race, as one of our very own, Patricia Navin-Greenfield, will be running the marathon tomorrow. Good luck Patricia! The Blogger’s Apprentice plans on running 8-10 miles of the race as well (along side a first-time runner friend.

For a description of this week’s video, we turn to another runner-extraordinaire, the NAM’s J.P. Fielder, who has this to say about this week’s video:

26.2, it may be an arbitrary number to some but it’s a goal to many. The 26.2 miles of a marathon leave runners depending on one item, their shoes. Twenty-five different New Balance employees construct each of their shoes from 27 different components to provide a lightweight cushion throughout a race. Shorten the distance or eliminate all of the pain but it will put that goal within reach. The cutting and stitching has to be perfect, if it’s off by even a few millimeters the shoe won’t fit right.

In this video you’ll see not only the history of the company but also how each shoe is put together: from the cutting, print fit, embroidery, clothing and finally the assembly area. The video interviews a number of people on the manufacturing line, one of which remarks that their passion is, “turning dreams into reality.” Sounds a lot like Dream It. Do It., eh? You’ll also see some pretty sophisticated CAD designers helping make the shoes (yeah–there’s a place for graphic designers in manufacturing too!).

Click here to see this week’s video on how New Balance Shoes Are Made and feel the running manufacturing vibe.

On your mark, Get Set. Go!

You can expect heavy news coverage next week upon the formal release of a new British study that proclaims global warming to be an economic catastrophe waiting to happen. Soon. Very soon. And really catastrophic.

Climate change could push the world into the worst recession since the Great Depression, with many countries facing economic ruin, a comprehensive British report on the effects of global warming will warn next week.

The report, written by the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern and commissioned by the British Treasury, seeks to overturn conventional wisdom by insisting that fighting climate change will save – not cost – governments money.

We wonder, somewhat wearily, if news coverage of this study will examine the study’s expected assertion, that the science on global warming is settled. Fox news commentator and Junkscience.com publisher Steven Milloy comments:

Considering these points — along with news of recent research into cosmic rays impacting global climate, the limited physical capability of carbon dioxide to impact global temperature and other various greenhouse myths propagated by climate alarmists — it’s no wonder that Sir Nicholas, Al Gore and their brethren keep chanting that the “overwhelming weight of scientific opinion” supports the need for, what in reality would be, economy-killing greenhouse gas regulation.

Their mantra is best described as another wishful positive feedback mechanism to justify their faith in unreliable models.

The bottom line here is that the Stern report is unwittingly correct in one aspect. Stern says that the science shapes the economics. True enough, except that it’s Gore’s junk science shaping Stern’s junk economics.

Milloy’s column includes a valuable discussion of the assumptions and limitations of climate models, the kind of discussion that any balanced news coverage should include when reporting on the new U.K. study.

So, what do you think? When the new study is released Monday, will it produce balanced reporting, including coverage of the doubters and critics, or more ominous, one-sided warnings of warmings?

Experience would tell us…..(he said, somewhat wearily).

Host Mike Hambrick interviews Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez in anticipation of his leading a business development mission to China next month. Secretary Gutierrez also covers recent political developments leading up to the November 7th elections.

Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Hitt and the NAM’s Christopher Wenk follow up with a discussion of what a Democratic take-over in Congress would mean for U.S. trade policy.

Dan Gainor of the Business and Media Institute offers a trenchant analysis of the major media’s tendency to emphasize negative news when it comes to business and the economy.

South Dakota newsman Bob Mercer and Jay Bender of Falcon Plastics, Inc., in Brookings examine Amendment E, an initiated constitutional amendment known as the “Judicial Accountability Initiative Law.” The measure would make judges and other elected officials subject to personal lawsuits for their official decisions, opening up the state to a flood of business-hostile litigation. (NAM’s Amendment E webpage is here.)

Renee Giachino of the American Justice Partnership considers the latest in “legally insane” and tort reform news, and the NAM’s Hank Cox treks into the past with “The Way it Was.” NAM President John Engler’s “The Last Word” closes with a reminder of the elections’ importance to manufacturing.

To listen to this week’s “America’s Business,” please click here.

And….big news for the program! “America’s Business” can now be heard on more stations, more often!

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 27, 2006 — The National Association of Manufacturers’ public affairs radio program, America’s Business with Mike Hambrick is now being aired on 71 radio stations around the country on weekends. In some markets, the program is being aired twice — once on Saturday and once on Sunday — on the same station. The program is being aired 90 times each weekend.

Schedule note for D.C.-area listeners: WTNT — 570 AM — is certainly not being cavalier about the program, but a UVA football broadcast has compelled “America’s Business” to move to the 7-8 a.m. Saturday slot this week.

We’ll conclude our week with Shell by noting the exciting, if hard to imagine, news that the company intends to drill for oil in ultra-deep water in the Gulf of Mexico, a development that could cost as much as $4 billion:

[The] Perdido project is notable because it marks one of the first times an oil company has moved beyond the discovery and planning stages to commit to actual production in super deep water. “This is a major development even by Shell’s historical standards,” Russ Ford, a Shell vice president with the company’s exploration and production division, said in a conference call Thursday with the news media.

The Perdido hub design is known as a “spar,” — the platform will float on a huge sunken cylinder that is moored to the sea floor. It will sit in 8,000 feet of water, making it the deepest spar production facility in the world, Shell said.

This major investment is expected to produce eventually about 130,000 barrels of oil per day and marks a possible trend of oil companies investing more heavily in domestic production. Good news, made possible by advances in drilling technology and by, dare we say, those much-maligned oil company profits.