"I
know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest
complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and obvious truth if it be such
as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have
delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to
others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their
lives." Tolstoy
“All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.
It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake. In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Phil Chapman is an Australian
geophysicist and astronautical engineer. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352241,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/naturalscience
********************************************
Earth Day 2008: Predictions of environmental disaster
were wrong [ITEM #2]
Global warming? IBD: Don't worry about it. It's over.
[ITEM #3]
Distorted energy policies hurt the economy [ITEM #4]
Europe switches to coal – never
mind Kyoto. Is the US lagging behind?
[ITEM #5]
Green vs Green: Bird life vs wind energy. The rejection of the Lewis wind farm in Scotland highlights how environmentalists are lining up against each other [See also ITEM #6]
Newsweek: The average voter does not care about Global
Warming. We say: GOOD!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/133652/output/print
**********************************************
Finally,
a listing of papers skeptical of "man-made" global warming. How’s that for a lack of ‘consensus’? See the list of peer-reviewed papers that do
not accord with climate alarmism, all ignored by Naomi Oreskes. [From Peter Risdon
<prisdon@gmail.com>]
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2008/04/peer-reviewed-articles-skeptical-of-man.html
#################################################
1.
WILL THE ECONOMY KILL GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA?
The Daily Bayonet, 21 April 2008
http://dailybayonet.blogs.com/the_daily_bayonet/2008/04/will-the-econom.html
Al Gore is avoiding the press and spending $300 million 'promoting awareness'
of global warming. Are these the actions of a man that thinks he's
'winning' hearts and minds to his 'cause'?
It's been 2 years and a Nobel Prize since his disaster movie launched the
worldwide panic attack that is responsible for deaf fish as well as
everything else wrong in the world. Yet, Anthony Watts of Watt's Up With
That? has noticed that exactly 0% of Americans consider global warming to be a
problem of immediate concern to them.
It seems that the slowdown in the US economy, the worries over the sub-prime
mortgage fallout and the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs overseas have
occupied the minds of Americans far more than Al's myth ever has. It
seems that real people are able to distinguish real problems from fake ones,
and that is bad news for Big Al.
When reality bites close to home, it is human nature to look to your basic
needs for self and family. Global warming was a crisis for the feel-good,
fuzzy times when it was cute to think that changing a light bulb or driving a
Pious would save the planet. Now that those good times are winding down
for a cycle of harder living, no-one wants to hear fictional doom and gloom
scenarios about how much more they'll have to pay in 'carbon taxes'.
Gore and his global warming crusade is just about done; he doesn't know it yet
but the blowhard doomsayer lost that debate that he claimed was over. It'll
take a while yet, but with the combination of the slower economy and the actual
weather - people will soon see that man-made global warming was nothing but hot
air. Courtesy CCNet
***************************************
2.
EARTH DAY 2008: PREDICTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER WERE WRONG
Another Earth Day has passed, so this is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet, says the Washington Policy Center (WPC).
Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975.
More predictions of impending disaster:
o "...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind," biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
o By 1995, "...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
o Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor "...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born," Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
o The world will be "...11 degrees colder in the year 2000 (this is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age)," Prof. Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, Apr 19, 1970.
More fearsome prognostications:
o "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
o "By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half..." Life magazine, January 1970.
o "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Source: Press Release,
"Earth Day 2008: Predictions of Environmental Disaster Were Wrong,"
Washington Policy Center, April 22, 2008.
http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/pressroom/pressreleases/4_22_2008.html
******************************************
3.
THE CHILL IS ON
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY,
April 04, 2008
Global warming? Don't worry
about it. It's over. No longer does Al Gore have to fly around the world in
private jets emitting greenhouse gases to save the world from - greenhouse
gases.
The United Nations World Meteorological Organization is reporting that global temperatures have not risen since 1998. That would be the same temperatures that models from the U.N.'s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change said would be scorching the earth into an unlivable wasteland - except for those coastal areas flooded by seas gorged with water from melting ice sheets.
Of course the IPCC spins the news. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, "and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming." His explanation for the cool spell is the effect of the Pacific Ocean's La Nina current, "part of what we call 'variability.' " If that's the case, then why can't the Pacific's El Nino current, which played a large part in the warm reading for 1998, simply been seen as a "variability" and not part of a greater warming trend? Because it doesn't fit the agenda?
Were the IPCC not dedicated to spreading fear, it would admit its climate models, on which much of the global warming madness is based, are flawed. While pandering politicians, media sycophants and Hollywood dupes desperately seeking significance have lectured us about our carbon dioxide emissions, real temperature changes measured over the past 30 years have not matched well with increases predicted by the IPCC's models.
This is not some gas-guzzler's fantasy but the finding of a credible study published last year in the International Journal of Climatology. Looking at the data, four researchers concluded "the weight of the current evidence . . . supports the conclusion" there is no agreement between the models and the observation temperatures. That means that projections of future warming are too high, that the entire global warming assumption is suspect, and that Gore should find something more productive to do with his time.
It also proves that Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, was correct in describing the machinery of the climate model-hysteria industrial complex as one that takes "garbage in" and spits "gospel out." The global warming debate is not over. Indeed, the debate is beginning to favor the skeptics.
****************************************************
4. BACK TO THE '70s?
Wasn't it two years ago that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi vowed, if her party took over Congress, to cut energy prices -- especially gasoline? Since then the cost of energy is up more than 70 percent, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).
Under Pelosi's
"common-sense plan" Congress has achieved nothing. Actually, less than nothing, considering
that what little has been done has hurt, rather than helped the United States
to become more energy self-sufficient, says IBD:
o This year alone, we'll spend $431 billion to buy 3.7 billion barrels of imported oil to run our economy.
o And in so doing, we are enriching some of the world's most unsavory regimes.
Ironically, we have plenty of oil:
o At least 10 billion barrels in Alaska's National Wildlife Reserve.
o 30 billion or so offshore.
o 1.2 trillion in Rocky Mountain oil shale.
Unfortunately, Democrats' extreme green ideology keeps us from drilling for it. Clean coal technologies likewise have been put out of bounds. So has the most logical answer to our energy problem -- nuclear power plants that can be run safely with spent rods reprocessed. France already does this to meet 80 percent of its energy needs.
Democrats have focused instead on a global warming plan that would cost $1.2 trillion. Meanwhile, subsidies and other breaks for biofuels have helped send food prices soaring. As in the 1970s, this is a human-made crisis -- one that has solutions. But it's the Democrats, along with a few equally misguided Republicans, who steadfastly refuse to implement them, says IBD.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Editorial, "Back to the '70s?"
Investor's Business Daily, April 23, 2008.
Courtesy NCPA
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=293842906547200
*******************************************
5.
EUROPE SWITCHES TO COAL – NEVER MIND KYOTO
Winningreen, April 24, 2008
Several countries in Europe, such as Italy and Germany, are building new
coal-fired electric plants because of the high cost of imported oil and gas
from Russia, lack of reliable alternative sources, and the abundance of
coal. In addition, new nuclear power plants are banned in Italy and
Germany where electricity prices have risen 151 percent since 1996, according
to the NY Times.
In spite of the fact that the new coal plants will be much more
efficient than older plants by converting some emissions and byproducts into
products that can be sold to other industries, many residents are not in
favor of new coal plants. Carbon emissions
remain a worry in Europe, and technology has not provided a method for
successfully capturing carbon dioxide. James E. Hansen, a leading
climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has made a
personal fortune with the global warming scare, told the Times, “We need a moratorium on coal now, with
phase-out of existing plants over the next two decades.”
Comment 1: Finally Germany and Italy are coming to their senses: its
better to have a reliable source of electricity than none at all.
Comment 2: We may need to thank the Europeans for adding to carbon
emissions, which will protect us all from the coming ice age.
Background and links: The Times reports that of 151 new coal
plants proposed in the U.S. last year, 60 have been dropped because of local
opposition, blockage by states governments, such as in Kansas, or are involved
in lawsuits. Read ‘Europe turns back to
coal, raising climate fears’ at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/europe/23coal.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
***************************
******************************
7. TIME FIGHTS CARBON EMISSIONS; MILITARY FIGHTS EVIL
By Dennis
Prager realclearpolitics.com,
April 22, 2008
The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's cover of Time magazine. The already notorious cover takes the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima and substitutes a tree for the flag. Why Time's editors did this explains much about contemporary liberalism.
The first thing it explains is that liberals, not to mention the left as a whole, stopped fighting evil during the Vietnam War. As I wrote in my last column, whereas liberals had led the fight against Nazism before and during World War II, and against Communism after the War, the liberal will to fight Communism, the greatest organized evil of the post-War world, collapsed during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War did to American liberals what World War I did to most Europeans -- it rendered them anti-war rather than anti-evil.
That is why liberals have gone AWOL in the fight against Islamic totalitarianism. As during the post-Vietnam Cold War, when liberals fought anti-Communists much more than they fought Communists, they fight anti-Islamists much more than they fight Islamists. Thus, Democrats routinely dismiss the Bush administration's talk about the threat of Islamic terror as "scare tactics."
But -- and this is a primary reason for Time's cover -- liberals know that they have largely opted out of the fight against Islamists; their only passion on this matter is abandoning the war against Islamists in Iraq. But like nearly all people who believe in a cause, they know that they have to fight some evil -- after all, the world really seems threatened by something. So they have channeled their desire to fight threats to the world to fighting an enemy that will not hurt them or their loved ones -- man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas.
The Time cover is cheap heroism. It is a liberal attempt to depict as equally heroic those who fight carbon emissions and those who fought Japanese fascists and Nazis.
Second, for much of the left, the cover reflects the primacy of environmental concerns over moral concerns. For example, the left seemed never to care about the millions of Africans who continued to die from malaria -- largely because of the environmentalists' worldwide ban on the use of DDT as pesticide. The same holds true for another leftwing environmentalist fantasy. Changing corn into biofuels is causing a surge in food prices throughout the world. The European Union continues this policy despite warnings from even some environmentalists that food shortages, starvation and food riots are imminent. But human suffering is not as significant as environmental degradation.
Third, the left is far more internationalist -- global, if you will -- in its orientation than national. As the Time article states, "Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?" Whereas, for most Americans patriotism remains red, white and blue, for much of the left it is green.
Fourth, the further left you go, the more inclined you are to hysteria. From the threat of DDT to the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America to that mass killer secondhand smoke, the left believes and spreads threats that, unlike the threat of Islamic terror, really are "scare tactics."
Years from now, Time's cover will be regarded as another silly media-induced fear. But, as with Time's 1974-article warning its readers about "another ice age" and its many articles on the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America, Time will just let public amnesia deal with credibility problems. Until then, however, one fact remains: Today, conservatives fight evil and liberals fight carbon emissions. That's what this week's cover of Time is about.
********************************************
8.
STOP THE CO2 SCARE, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/20/do2002.xml
By Christopher Booker, The London Sunday Telegraph, 20/04/2008
Stop the CO2 scare, writes Christopher Booker One of the central flaws in
the IPCC's case is its reliance on computer models
As President Bush finally caved in
to international pressure last week and committed the US to spending untold
billions of dollars on "the fight against global warming", I happened
to be in Washington at the same time, talking on the same subject to more than
a dozen very lively and opinionated radio shows. I was there with my co-author Richard North, at the invitation of
an enterprising Washington think-tank, the Independent Women's Forum, to launch
our book Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming, Why Scares are Costing
Us the Earth.
Speaking to audiences across the
country, for up to an hour at a time, we were impressed by how well informed
-and sceptical about global warming - were the array of presenters who
interviewed us. We told them it would have been unthinkable to have such
intelligent conversations on this subject on any BBC programme back in Britain.
But the highlight of our
visit was dinner with Dr Fred Singer, a distinguished US scientist, formerly
professor at two universities, and founder of the US satellite weather service.
He has done more than anyone in the scientific counter-attack against the
ruthless promotion of global warming orthodoxy by the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Dr Singer played a key part in last
month's scientific conference in New York organised by the Non-governmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), and gave me an advance copy of
its new report (which is now available online - just Google "sepp"
and "NIPCC").
The report - Nature Not Human
Activity Rules the Climate - presents a devastating analysis of the IPCC's
case. Intended for a lay audience and signed by scientists from 15 countries,
it takes all the key points of the IPCC's "consensus" case and tears
them expertly apart, showing how the Intergovernmental Panel has either
exaggerated, distorted or suppressed the evidence available to it, or has
imputed much greater certainty to its findings than is justified by the data.
One of the central flaws in the
IPCC's case is its reliance on computer models, based only on those parts of
the evidence which suit its chosen "narrative", omitting or
downplaying hugely important factors which might produce a very different
picture. These range from the role played by water vapour, by far the most important
of the greenhouse gases, to the influence of solar activity on cloud cover.
The NIPCC report's most startling
passage, however, is one that examines the "fingerprint" of warming
at different levels of the atmosphere which the computer models come up with as
proof that the warming is man-made. The pattern actually shown by balloon and
satellite records is so dramatically different that, even on the IPCC's own
evidence, the report concludes, "anthropogenic greenhouse gases can
contribute only in a minor way to the current warming, which is mainly of
natural origin".
The significance of this can
scarcely be overestimated. At just the moment when, thanks to the overwhelming
pressure generated by the IPCC, the world's politicians, led by the EU, are
committing us to spending untold trillions of pounds, dollars and euros on
measures to "mitigate" the claimed effects of man-made warming, here
is a galaxy of experts producing hard evidence that - if the problem exists at
all - the official explanation for it is oriented in wholly the wrong
direction. Furthermore the consequences
of that warming and of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have, on
balance, been wholly beneficial, by increasing plant growth.
The real danger, the report warns,
is not a continued warming but that temperatures and agricultural production
might drop as the world faces its worst food shortage in decades (now being
made worse by the crazed rush to give over farmland to biofuels). And if that
is the way the evidence lies, how much are any of our politicians doing to
prepare for a crisis already upon us?
**************************************
9.
GLOBAL WARMING IS OVER
Cardinal George Pell, Sunday
Telegraph (Australia), April 20, 2008
http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/STC/2008/2008420_382..shtml
Canada has just experienced the coldest winter and the heaviest snowfalls since 1970-71, which was called a once-in-1000-years event. Another 18cm of snow would set an all-time record. A Kingston newspaper had a marvellous cartoon of a tough old Canadian, rugged up against the cold and hacking the ice off the windscreen of his car. The caption read: ``Global warming my a**''!
In China, the Chinese New Year coincided with a fierce cold snap and snowstorms, which prevented many city workers returning to their villages for the celebrations. Police had to deal with the ensuing riots. London has just experienced snow at Easter.
The world is much bigger than both China and Canada combined, which might be the exceptions to the new rule of man-made global warming, but they are inconvenient facts for the climate-change bandwagon. And it is an intolerant bandwagon with loud, exaggerated claims that the issue is settled and that an unchallenged consensus among scientists confirms the hypothesis of dangerous, human-caused global warming. In fact, the issue is far from settled.
Politicians sceptical of these claims would need unusual courage to resist the strong tides of public opinion. However, the rest of us are not so constrained and we should consider all information.
Three points are of some significance.
Last December, more than 100 international scientists, some of them members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned the UN that attempting to control climate was ``ultimately futile''. So did 500 experts in Manhattan in March. Fighting climate change was distracting governments from helping the most vulnerable citizens adapt to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever they might prove to be. Futile attempts to prevent global climate change would be a tragic misallocation of resources, they claimed.
Secondly, none of the natural changes observed with glaciers, sea levels and species migration is outside the bounds of known variability, including the warming of 0.1C to 0.2C per decade, in the late 20th century. But the 1930s decade was warmer than the 1990s. Most importantly, the global temperature has not increased since 2001. Global warming has ceased (New Statesman, 19/12/2007). This finding invalidates the global-warming hypotheses because the amount of carbon dioxide continues to increase and the temperature should be increasing, too. It isn't.
The last point is that today's computers cannot predict climate over long periods, as there are too many unknowns and variables. We should never forget that while computers are miracles of human ingenuity, they are also limited, cannot think for themselves, and are totally obedient to their last human master. More than this is needed to predict the future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cardinal Pell is Australia's most
senior Catholic cleric.
======================================================
THE POPE CONDEMNS THE CLIMATE CHANGE
PROPHETS OF DOOM
By SIMON CALDWELL -13th December
2007
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.
The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid, it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement. His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks.
The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind. "Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message entitled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace".
"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.
"If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.
"Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken."
Efforts to protect the environment should seek "agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances", the Pope said.
He added that to further the cause of world peace it was sensible for nations to "choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions" in how to cooperate responsibly on conserving the planet.
The Pope's message is traditionally sent to heads of government and international organisations. His remarks reveal that while the Pope acknowledges that problems may be associated with unbridled development and climate change, he believes the case against global warming to be over-hyped.
A broad consensus is developing among the world's scientific community over the evils of climate change. But there is also an intransigent body of scientific opinion which continues to insist that industrial emissions are not to blame for the phenomenon. Such scientists point out that fluctuations in the earth's temperature are normal and can often be caused by waves of heat generated by the sun. Other critics of environmentalism have compared the movement to a burgeoning industry in its own right.
In the spring, the Vatican hosted a conference on climate change that was welcomed by environmentalists. But senior cardinals close to the Vatican have since expressed doubts about a movement which has been likened by critics to be just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion.
In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees celsius. "The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that," he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.