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There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. Mark Twain
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To view: Go to www.sepp.org
Click on Publications
The NIPCC press release is shown below as ITEM #1
Who's Really To Blame For $100 Oil [ITEM #2]
Ethanol policy threatens to starve the world [ITEM
#3]
The coming of a New Ice Age [ITEM #4]
Our global warming 'Animal Farm' {ITEM #5]
Global warming alarmists knew cooling was coming, were
hoping to secure restrictions on economic activity first [ITEM #6]
Global warmists try to stifle debate [ITEM #7]
Cold water on ‘Global Warming’: The Heartland climate
conference in NYC [ITEM #8]
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Excerpt: The most provocative idea,
personal carbon trading, would grant all residents a "carbon
allowance," setting a limit on carbon-dioxide emissions from their
households and transportation. In the model of the industrial "cap and
trade" system, guzzlers who exceeded their allowance would need to buy
extra shares. People who conserved energy, meanwhile, could sell their leftover
shares and ride their bikes all the way to the bank. This is not just a fantasy
floating around in the greenest reaches of the blogosphere. In 2006, the UK's
environment secretary, David Miliband, endorsed the idea, and the British
government has commissioned a study to explore the policy's feasibility.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/24/brother_can_you_spare_a_carbon_credit/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed4
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An interesting link to Danish Netavisen
You Tube about a Vestas windmill that exploded and folded while being
filmed.
http://www.180grader.dk/nyheder/L_bsk_vindm_lle_eksploderede.php
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A common-sense discussion: Why won’t the warm-mongers debate?
http://www.johnhuntspace.com/warming.html
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Worth pondering
"As climate change warms the nation, giant
Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the USA, from San Francisco across
the Southwest, Texas and the South and up north along the Virginia coast,"
reports USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-20-burmese-pythons_N.htm
Wow, that's the most terrifying thing we've heard
since the "killer bees" scare of the 1970s! The bees, you may recall, turned into a
hilarious running sketch for "Saturday Night Live." As for the snakes, it's too bad Monty Python
is no longer with us. [Courtesy
Dow-Jones ]
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■ ANOTHER GREAT SITE – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: http://www.icecap.us/
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And finally: Heartland Institute’s
Climate Conference in NY City, March 2-4, with hundreds of GW skeptics [See
TWTW of Feb 9], including also Dr Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech
Republic, and Dr. Yuri Izrael, science adviser to President Putin. This momentous event will be difficult to
ignore. For final program, see
http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/ConferenceProgram.pdf
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1.
PRESS CONFERENCE FOR THE RELEASE OF THE
SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS OF THE
NIPCC REPORT
Monday, March 3, 2008,
Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel
===================================================================
The Summary for Policymakers of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is being officially released at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, taking place in New York City on March 2-4. Editor Dr. S. Fred Singer will deliver a keynote address on Monday, March 3 and will be available to discuss the Report, along with nearly a dozen scientists who contributed to the Report.
The NIPCC is an international panel of nongovernmental scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. Because its members are not predisposed to believe climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, they are able to look at evidence overlooked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC). And because they do not work for any governments, they are not biased toward the assumption that greater government activity is necessary.
The Summary for Policymakers, titled Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate, is a concise digest of more than a dozen technical papers being edited for publication as part of the complete NIPCC report. Highlights of the report include:
■¦ Evidence from actual observations shows that the contribution to current climate warming from increasing greenhouse gases is not significant;
■¦ Evidence for anthropogenic (man-made) GW, put forward by the IPCC is very weak
■¦ Evidence is far more robust that the causes of the current warming are natural;
■ Computer models have not been validated, over-estimate the human contribution, and are therefore unreliable guides to future climate conditions;
■ Sea level rise is not significantly affected by rise in greenhouse gases;
■ Understanding of the atmospheric carbon dioxide budget is incomplete; and
■ Higher levels of CO2 are likely to be beneficial to plant and animal life, and to human health.
According to Dr. Singer:
Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled. This, in turn, means proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive.
NIPCC strongly rejects the current public hysteria and alarmism about anthropogenic global warming. It finds that an increase in greenhouse gases is not a threat to humanity or to nature, and that a warmer climate would actually benefit the biosphere and most human activities, especially agriculture and forestry. In any case, since natural climate change is unstoppable, adaptation, not emission reductions, is the only sensible response - to both warming and cooling of the climate.
The NIPCC report will be formally released following remarks by Dr. Singer in a plenary session of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, beginning at Noon on Monday, March 3, at the Marriott New York Marquis Hotel, 1535 Broadway, New York, NY.
For more information on the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, please visit http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm
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Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules
the Climate
Summary for Policymakers by NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change)
About NIPCC:
When errors were observed in the initial drafts of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) set up a 'Team B' to produce an independent evaluation of the available scientific evidence. The group first met in Milan in 2003, then was activated after the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers appeared in February 2007. The team changed its name to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and organized an international climate workshop in Vienna in April 2007. The present report stems from the Vienna workshop and subsequent research.
The first report of the NIPCC includes contributions by the following scholars:
Warren Anderson United States
Dennis Avery United States
Franco Battaglia Italy
Robert Carter Australia
Richard Courtney United Kingdom
Joseph d'Aleo United States
Fred Goldberg Sweden
Vincent Gray New Zealand
Kenneth Haapala United States
Klaus Heiss Austria
Craig Idso United States
Zbigniew Jaworowski Poland
Olavi Karner Estonia
Madhav Khandekar Canada
William Kininmonth Australia
Hans Labohm Netherlands
Christopher Monckton United Kingdom
Lubos Motl Czech Republic
Tom Segalstad Norway
S. Fred Singer United States
George Taylor United States
Dick Thoenes Netherlands
Anton Uriarte Spain
Gerd Weber Germany
About S. Fred Singer:
Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished scientists in the US. In the 1960s, he established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his technical leadership. In the 1980s, Singer served for five years as vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) and became more directly involved in global environmental issues. Since retiring from the University of Virginia and from his last federal position as chief scientist of the Department of Transportation, Singer founded and directed the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). SEPP's major concern has been the use of sound science rather than exaggerated fears in formulating environmental policies. It is an independent nonprofit research organization, supported principally by donations from private individuals.
Key Findings:
■ Principal conclusion: Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled. This, in turn, means proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive.
■ Manmade global warming: The claim that man is the primary cause of the recent warming is not supported by science. The scientific evidence cited by the IPCC is largely contradicted by observations and analysis.
■ Natural causes of climate change: There now is little doubt that solar-wind variability is a primary cause of climate change on a decadal time scale. Once the IPCC comes to terms with this finding, it will have to concede that solar variability provides a better explanation for 20th Century warming than GH effects.
■ Computer models are unreliable: The climate models used by the IPCC do not depict the chaotic, open-ended climate system. They cannot make reliable predictions and should not be used in formulating government policy.
■ No sea-level rise: That there has been an insignificant amount of acceleration, if any, in sea-level rise since 1900 - in spite of temperature changes. It is unlikely that sea-level rise will increase above its historic rate in the future.
■ Carbon cycle is not well understood: There remains considerable uncertainty about the origins and fate of carbon dioxide from natural as well as human sources. Until this is better understood, predictions about the levels of human carbon-dioxide emissions are premature.
■ Human emissions are not well understood: The IPCC has exaggerated future emission trends and ignored scientific literature showing that rising carbon dioxide concentrations and warmer temperatures have more beneficial than detrimental effects on plants, wildlife, and human well-being.
■ Policy implications: Human greenhouse-gas emissions are not a significant contributor to current warming and pose no danger to future climate stability. Policies adopted and called for in the name of 'fighting global warming' are unnecessary, costly, and disruptive for energy security.
Title, Citation, and
Availability of the Report:
S. Fred Singer, ed., Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2008.
The study is available for free online at www.sepp.org and www.heartland.org. A limited number of print copies are available from the Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Heartland Institute at the following prices:
1-10 copies $5.95
per copy
11-50 copies $4.95
per copy
51-100 copies $3.95
per copy
101 or more $2.95
per copy
About the Publishers:
The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) was founded in 1990 by atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer on the premise that sound, credible science must form the basis for health and environmental decisions that affect millions of people and cost tens of billions of dollars every year. A nonprofit, 501(c)3 educational group, SEPP's mission is to clarify diverse problems and, where necessary, arrive at effective, cost-conscious solutions. SEPP has been tapped by both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill for objective, science-based information on global warming, ozone depletion, chemical risk, clean air standards, and other issues. It has been cited hundreds of times by the major news media, including the Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Detroit News, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Memphis Commercial-Appeal, Seattle Times, New Straits Times (Malaysia), and Finanz und Wirtschaft (Switzerland), among many others. Its website is www.SEPP.org.
The Heartland Institute is an independent national nonprofit organization based in Chicago. Founded in 1984, it has 2,700 donors and supporters, more than 100 academics and professional economists serving as policy advisors, and approximately 500 elected officials representing all 50 states serving as legislative advisors. Heartland provides research and commentary on a wide range of public policy issues to the nation's 8,300 state and national elected officials and some 8,400 local officials. The Heartland Institute is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. For more information, call 312/377-4000 or visit our Web site at www.heartland.org.
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2.
WHO'S REALLY TO BLAME FOR $100 OIL
By Investor's Business Daily | Posted Wednesday,
February 20, 2008
A refinery burns in Texas while politicians fiddle
in Washington. As oil goes over $100 a barrel, we don't have to worry about
Hugo Chavez restricting supply. We have the Democrats in Congress to do that.
Suppose you had a ton of money sitting in your bank account but you decided to max out your credit cards anyway. That's the energy policy of the United States as fashioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
At these prices, we have a trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under a section of frozen tundra the size of Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. We could go get it. Instead we prefer to shovel billions of our dollars to thugs like Chavez while the same politicians who lock up our domestic energy praise him when he offers "cheap" home heating oil to states in the Northeast.
Chavez has said he's changed his mind about cutting off supplies to the U.S., but it's because he'd have a hard time selling Venezuela's heavy crude — which requires special refining — anywhere else. He's not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, neither is the U.S. Senate.
Oil futures closed above $100 for the first time Tuesday after Monday's explosion at Alon USA's refinery in Big Spring, Texas. It could be shuttered for two months. Yet NIMBYs won't let new refineries be built, and the greenies won't let the domestic oil be refined.
The heads-in-the-tundra crowd is led by Hillary Clinton. She has voted no fewer than nine times to block drilling in a tiny, frozen part of ANWR. Her husband first blocked ANWR development in 1995. After Hurricane Katrina disabled offshore oil platforms, revealing our energy vulnerability, Mrs. Clinton said: "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the Gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."
Never mind that the caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, which recently delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil through the Alaska pipeline. Oil from ANWR could meet all of New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, yet the state's junior senator opposes getting it.
"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "New York for 34 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years." It could also supply Washington, D.C., a place where there's no shortage of hot air, for 1,710 years.
In 2005, the Senate voted twice by narrow margins on amendments authorizing ANWR drilling to a budget resolution bill (March 16) and a budget reconciliation bill (Nov. 3). Forty-one Democrats voted against both. Twenty-three of them were around to have voted against ANWR in 1995.
Barack Obama, who has voted twice against drilling in ANWR, has noted that a "large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes." Still, he says that "we cannot drill our way out of the problem." Call this the audacity of helplessness.
In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama writes: "Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1% of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and infrastructure."
Yet he'd subsidize the ethanol industry, which contributes to rising food prices and hurts the environment through increased agricultural runoff. He would feed the world, but he'd have us put ears of corn in our cars.
We are not against alternative energy. America is going to need all the energy it can produce — from all sources. We just don't like leaving energy in the ground.
The Democrats promise hope and change. Let's hope we develop our domestic energy sources, starting with ANWR. Now that would be a real change.
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3. ETHANOL POLICY
THREATENS TO STARVE THE WORLD
By Ernest Istook, WorldNet Daily, February 23, 2008
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=57062
Drought. War. Poverty.
These are leading causes of hunger, according to the United Nations. Soon we
may add another.
Ethanol.
Across the globe, people are discovering it's a new contributor to world
hunger. Led by the United States, governments are paying companies billions to
make ethanol from corn and other crops. The result: these crops are diverted
from the food supply, creating artificial shortages and higher prices.
Even record harvests haven't suppressed food prices. Instead, prices are
soaring to all-time highs.
Corn that traded around $2 a bushel just two years ago is now well over $5 a
bushel. The impact ripples through the food chain of milk, butter, eggs, flour,
pasta and everything else, because dairy cattle, beef cattle, poultry and swine
depend on the corn for their feed. When chicken feed doesn't cost chicken feed
anymore, then neither does anything else.
Other grains, like wheat, are also at record highs because farmers are planting
less wheat and more corn, thanks to the ethanol incentives. Less supply, plus
more world demand, means higher prices for wheat products, too, from flour to
bread to pasta.
Full-scale food riots may arise in some parts of the world, as more and more grain
is diverted into fuel production. The Earth Policy Institute reports that
ethanol-related food protests occurred last year in Mexico, Italy, Pakistan and
Indonesia. A price-driven stampede killed three and injured 31 at a supermarket
in China.
"We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of
history," the EPI proclaimed in January. "The United States, in a
misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for
cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before."
Roundup
This problem became five times worse in December when the new "energy
bill" became law. It dictates that Washington will pay a 51-cent-a-gallon
subsidy on 36 billion gallons of ethanol each year, up from the previous 7.5 billion
gallon limit. Even before this incentive expanded, official U.S. Department of
Agriculture reports showed that ethanol was "eating up" 20 percent of
the corn grown in America in 2006 up from 6 percent in 2000 a figure expected
to rise in 2008 to 25 percent.
A 2007 report from International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPRI,
concludes that "Biofuel production currently adversely affects the poor
through price-level and price-volatility effects." IFPRI's report also
noted, "Since the beginning of 2000, butter and milk prices have tripled,
and poultry prices have almost doubled."
EPI's president, Lester R. Brown, says, "We're putting the supermarket in
competition with the corner filling station for the output of the farm. The
result is that more people will go hungry."
As a Purdue University study noted, "This leap in corn prices is leading
to an emerging opposition to ethanol subsidies on the part of animal
agriculture, export markets and other corn users." Those groups have
created a coalition to spotlight the ever-widening costs of ethanol, including
a website at http://www.balancedfoodandfuel.org/.
As oil prices approached $100 per barrel, market incentives for producing more
ethanol increased dramatically. But that wasn't enough to satisfy the subsidy
lobby. Hence they pressed Washington to decree that we must use five times more
ethanol and pay them for the privilege. That will raise the annual
taxpayer-paid subsidy to over $18 billion per year, even though they're already
profitable thanks to high oil prices. The energy bill converts ethanol
manufacturers' simple profits into super-profits, at taxpayer expense. Yet
somehow they've escaped headlines and the outrage oil profits attract.
Gradually, however, the media are "discovering" that ethanol
subsidies are sending the worldwide cost of food through the kitchen ceiling.
USA Today reported, "In a bid to reduce oil dependence, many countries are
requiring additional use of biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. That, in
turn, competes with food destined for the table and increases the prices of
what consumers eat."
Americans won't starve because we have better supplies than the Third World
does. But as the Christian Science Monitor recently reported, "As usual,
it is the poorest people in the world who suffer most, because food takes up a
bigger share of their daily shopping bill than it does for richer people."
That prompted the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization to issue
"warnings about the dangers of turning too much food into fuel."
Their conclusion? "The era of cheap food is over."
Ethanol advocates are also promoting other biofuels whose cellulose can be used
in place of corn. But the "food vs. fuel" problem isn't solved if
farmers remove acreage from corn production to plant these instead. The ethanol
lobby claims that the higher costs of food are being pushed mostly by the
higher costs of energy. Of course, subsidizing ethanol while suppressing
domestic oil and gas drilling and halting construction of oil refineries and
nuclear power plants is a big reason why energy costs keep climbing!
As usual, free enterprise offers the best solution. As The Heritage
Foundation's Ben Lieberman and others have suggested, we should be repealing
the ethanol mandate instead of expanding it.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2020.cfm
Taxpayers would save billions that now flow out of the federal Treasury, plus
our food would be more affordable. And the Third World wouldn't face as many
food shortages.
Ending the subsidy is easier said than done, of course. As the New York Times
has noted, the ethanol lobby is now "an entrenched political force."
Years of multi-billion dollar subsidies have turned a small group into a
wealthy and effective lobby on Capitol Hill.
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Ernest Istook is recovering from serving 14 years in Congress, and is now a
Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
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4. THE COMING OF A
NEW ICE AGE
http://www.winningreen.com/site/epage/59549_621.htm
By Gerald E. Marsh
CHICAGO — Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age.
What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended.
How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth’s surface? Less than a hundred years or several hundred? We simply don’t know.
Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within natural variations over the last few thousand years.
While an enduring temperature rise of the same size over the next century would cause humanity to make some changes, it would undoubtedly be within our ability to adapt.
Entering a new ice age, however, would be catastrophic for the continuation of modern civilization.
One has only to look at maps showing the extent of the great ice sheets during the last Ice Age to understand what a return to ice age conditions would mean. Much of Europe and North-America were covered by thick ice, thousands of feet thick in many areas and the world as a whole was much colder.
The last “little” Ice Age started as early as the 14th century when the Baltic Sea froze over followed by unseasonable cold, storms, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland and the loss of grain cultivation in Iceland. Harvests were even severely reduced in Scandinavia And this was a mere foreshadowing of the miseries to come.
By the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, wiping out farms and entire villages. In England, the River Thames froze during the winter, and in 1780, New York Harbor froze. Had this continued, history would have been very different. Luckily, the decrease in solar activity that caused the Little Ice Age ended and the result was the continued flowering of modern civilization.
There were very few Ice Ages until about 2.75 million years ago when Earth’s climate entered an unusual period of instability. Starting about a million years ago cycles of ice ages lasting about 100,000 years, separated by relatively short interglacial periods, like the one we are now living in became the rule. Before the onset of the Ice Ages, and for most of the Earth’s history, it was far warmer than it is today.
Indeed, the Sun has been getting brighter over the whole history of the Earth and large land plants have flourished. Both of these had the effect of dropping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to the lowest level in Earth’s long history.
Five hundred million years ago, carbon dioxide concentrations were over 13 times current levels; and not until about 20 million years ago did carbon dioxide levels dropped to a little less than twice what they are today.
It is possible that moderately increased carbon dioxide concentrations could extend the current interglacial period. But we have not reached the level required yet, nor do we know the optimum level to reach.
So, rather than call for arbitrary limits on carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps the best thing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climatology community in general could do is spend their efforts on determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide needed to extend the current interglacial period indefinitely.
NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth’s climate. Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age?
We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp.
----------------------------------
Gerald Marsh is a retired physicist from the Argonne National Laboratory and a former consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology and policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration. Readers may e-mail him at gemarsh2005opeds@yahoo.com.
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5. OUR GLOBAL WARMING
'ANIMAL FARM'
By Ed Iverson, Lahontan Valley News, January 9, 2008
In one of his incomparable essays, C. S. Lewis criticized man's often insolent determination to control the forces of nature. He remarked that man's control of nature was frequently nothing more than man's control over other men - with nature as the instrument.
Nothing explains the mad obsession with global warming quite so pointedly. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the global warming panic has little to do with temperature change and everything to do with man's control of other men with climate as the instrument.
The global warming hoax is a dream come true for the global bullies intent on imposing their repressive regulatory regime upon a willing world of useful idiots. With an ozone hole here and a stranded polar bear there, here an oink there an oink, everywhere an oink, oink, Old Napoleon Gore had a farm; and pretty soon all the animals were explaining to themselves why the rules were constantly changing to advance the agenda of the swine who had assumed control in the house. The "chosen" go to Bali. The rest of us schmucks go meekly to our secure stalls in the barn. As the self-appointed dungeon masters softly close the iron gates, the plastic faces in Hollywood form a cheering chorus line. As we labor under increasingly onerous regulations, faint-hearted academics fearful of losing their grants gravely announce the absolute necessity of the new rules.
There are signs, however, that the tide is running out for popular support of Napoleon Gore's contrived crisis. The myth of scientific consensus is evaporating like the hazy aura of Clintonian inevitability. Even the New York Times is starting to dither and dissemble about the grimness of the emergency. A recent editorial openly questioned the data supporting the exaggerated claims of Napoleon Gore and the biased reporting of the "Squealer" media. According to an article recently run by Newsmax.com, New York Times columnist John Tierney "took a close look at the global warming debate and found that the climate change scenario being peddled by Mr. Gore and his legion of followers is anything but the settled scientific fact they claim."
In his column, Tierney noted that last January, weather experts in England confidently predicted that the buildup of greenhouse gases would make 2007 the "hottest year on record." Tierney then illustrated the fanatical commitment to global warming that we of the great unwashed see all the time. He wrote "even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record (it was actually lower than any year since 2001) the BBC confidently proclaimed, '2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.'"
Global warming is not a scientific fact. Shoot, global warming does not even rise to the level of scientific theory. In order to qualify as a scientific, a theory must in principle be falsifiable. There must be some conceivable means of disproving it. By rendering global warming bulletproof, devotees have transferred global warming to the unassailable regions of faith.
Examples of this sort of thing are everywhere. According to satellite imaging, ice in the Arctic has thinned. Good old Squealer (the sycophant media) trumpeted this as an indication that the entire planet was warming. However, when the same technology revealed that ice in the Antarctic increased to the highest level ever recorded, Squealer totally ignored the data.
Remember the hand wringing and chest beating indulged in by Napoleon after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? A sure sign of the terrible hurricanes our overheated planet would generate in the coming years, he bellowed. He never mentioned the last two quiet seasons while accepting the Nobel Prize.
In a recent report to the a senate subcommittee, more than 400 climatologists cast doubt upon the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming is a threat to the planet. Many of the scientists were members of the IPCC.
If it was about science, real scientists would welcome the minority report. Instead, dissenting scientists are ostracized and accused of industrial collusion. Now, here is the truth: Global warming has nothing to do with a verifiable warming of our planet. It has everything to do with man's control over other men with "science" as the tool.
-------------------------------------
Ed Iverson is a former Fallon resident.
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6. GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS
KNEW COOLING WAS COMING, WERE HOPING TO SECURE RESTRICTIONS ON ECONOMIC
ACTIVITY FIRST
By Alec Rawls (economist and author of CrescentOfBetrayal.com) February 18, 2008
Every climate scientist in the world has known beyond any doubt, for at least several years now, that late 20th century warming was driven almost entirely by the very high levels of solar activity between 1940 and 2000 (details below). They also know the corollary: that when solar activity drops into a down phase, the earth will get cold, possibly even precipitating the next ice age (due any century now).
Not only is this the real and impending threat, but solar activity has been low for several years now, and sharp global cooling is already being detected. At the same time, the current lull between 11 year solar cycles is unusually quiet and long, reminiscent of earlier downturns in solar activity that led to dramatic global cooling.
It seems certain at this point that we are in for at least a substantial dip in global temperature. In addition to the weak sun and the already falling temperatures, this winter's record snow cover is reflecting an unusual amount of solar radiation back into space, and we are also in the middle of a major La Niña event (where cold pacific waters rise to the surface).
If global cooling is known to be the real and impending danger, why is it that even with the onset of cooling, most climatologists are raising hysterical alarms about global warming? Because they are not actually concerned about global temperature at all. They are environmental religionists who believe that human economic growth is gobbling up the natural world.
Blaming late 20th century warming on fossil fuel burning was just an opportunity for these religionists to try to impose restrictions on economic activity, and in that way “save the planet” from human encroachment. Global warming alarmism never did have anything to do with climatology.
If only the sun had stayed aboil for one more solar cycle, the religionists would have succeeded. When the inevitable cooling did come, it would still pull the curtain off of their global warming hoax, but by then it would be too late. Economic restrictions would already be fixed in place, under UN bodies that the religionists control.
Alas, it was not to be. The fake bride was almost to the altar, but Mother Nature put her foot down on the bridal veil, leaving the hairy ogre standing in front of the congregation in his stuffed bra and BVDs. Fake minister Al Gore must be furious, but to no effect. Their game is up.
Even a temporary dip in global temperatures will be enough to expose the scare about human and CO2 based global warming as a fraud. There hasn’t been any dip in CO2, so a dip in temperature will explode the alarmist claim that global temperature is CO2 driven.
More at http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2008/02/global-warming-alarmists-knew-cooling.html
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You'd
think this would be a rich time for debate on the issue of climate change. But
it's precisely as sweeping change on climate policy is becoming likely that
many people have decided the time for debate is over. One writer puts climate
change skeptics "in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial,"
another envisions "war crimes trials" for the deniers. And during the
tour for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore himself belittled
"global warming deniers" as unworthy of any attention.
Take
the reaction to Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, "Cool
It," which calls for a reasoned debate on global warming. Mr. Lomborg
himself leans left, and he opens his book by declaring his belief that
"humanity has caused a substantial rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide
levels over the past centuries, thereby contributing to global warming."
But he has infuriated environmentalists by saying it is necessary to debate
"whether hysterical and head-long spending on extravagant CO2-cutting
programs at an unprecedented price is the only possible response." To do
so, he says, it will be necessary to cool the doomsday rhetoric, allowing a
measured discussion about the best ways forward. "Being smart about our
future is the reason we have done so well in the past. We should not abandon our
smarts now."
Mr.
Lomborg's solution is to avoid discredited cap-and-trade programs, in which
developing nations limit economic growth while they fruitlessly try to convince
booming economies such as India and China to do the same. His alternative:
"Let's focus on research and development. Let's focus on
noncarbon-emitting technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, energy
efficiency and also, let's realize the solution may come from nuclear fission
and fusion." He laments that the climate change issue has been demagogued
by ideological groups on both sides, "and the ones who are making panicky
or catastrophic claims simply have better press." At the end of the day,
he ruefully acknowledges that potential progress and the sorts of solutions he
advocates "are just boring things."
* * *
Let's
hope Mr. Lomborg is wrong in his fear that the media are uninterested in
showcasing a real debate on climate change. The proof may be found next week,
when hundreds of scientists, economists and policy experts who dissent from the
"consensus" that climate change requires radical measures will meet
in New York to discuss the latest scientific, economic and political research
on climate change. Five tracks of panels will address paleoclimatology,
climatology, global warming impacts, the economics of global warming and
political factors. It will be keynoted by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who has
argued that economic growth is most likely to create the innovations and
know-how to combat any challenges climate change could present in the future.
(Information on the conference is here.)
The
conference is being organized by the free-market Heartland Institute and 49
other co-sponsors, including a dozen from overseas. Heartland president Joseph
Bast says its politically incorrect purpose is to "explain the
often-neglected 'other side' of the climate change debate. This will be their
chance to speak out. It will be hard for journalists and policy makers to
ignore us."
I
wonder. Already, environmental groups have sent out their opinion to their
media friends that the conference is simply a platform for corporate apologists
and can safely be ignored. One group alleges the conference will have "no
real scientists" present despite an impressive array of speakers such as
Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State
Climatologists, and Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics.
Critics
point out that ExxonMobil gave nearly $800,000 to Heartland between 1998 and
2005 and that the group's board of directors include several people with ties
to energy companies. The authors of the blog Real Climate don't engage the
issues raised by the conference but instead attack it as stuffed with shills.
When Heartland experts tried to respond to those charges, they were blacklisted
from the comments section of the Real Climate Web site.
All this has led the Western Standard, a Canadian magazine sympathetic to the global warming skeptics, to predict that "the gathering will be completely ignored, even though it's being held in the news media capital of the world." Let's hope not. Global warming is too important a subject to not to debate, and we in the U.S. may rue the day we rushed pell-mell into expensive and shortsighted solutions when much more rational and cost-effective ones were readily available.
***********************************************
8.
COLD WATER ON 'GLOBAL WARMING'
By Thomas Sowell, National Review online,
February 28, 2008
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/tsowell/2008/ts_0228p.shtml
It has almost become something of a joke when
some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a
snowstorm or bitterly cold weather. But
stampedes and hysteria are no joke -- and creating stampedes and hysteria has
become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis." They mobilize like-minded people from a variety
of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that
"all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis. Their biggest argument is that there is no
argument.
A
whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government
agencies who get appropriations, politicians who get publicity, and the
perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in
school instead of teaching. Those who
bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called
scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are
specialists in climate. But who bothers
to check facts these days?
A new
and very different conference on global warming will be held in New York City,
under the sponsorship of the Heartland Institute, on March 2nd to March 4th --
weather permitting. It is called an
"International Conference on Climate Change." Its subtitle is
"Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" Among those present will be
professors of climatology, along with scientists in other fields and people
from other professions.
They
come from universities in England, Hungary, and Australia, as well as from the
United States and Canada, and include among other dignitaries the president of
the Czech Republic. There will be 98
speakers and more than 400 participants.
The theme of the conference is that "there is no scientific
consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming."
Many
of the participants in this conference are people who have already expressed
skepticism about either the prevailing explanations of current climate change
or the dire predictions about future climate change. These include authors of such books as
"Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years" by Fred Singer and
Dennis Avery, and "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J.
Michaels.
This
will be one of the rare opportunities for the media to hear the other side of
the story -- for those old-fashioned journalists who still believe that their
job is to inform the public, rather than promote an agenda.
The
subtitle of the upcoming conference -- "Global Warming: Truth or
Swindle?" -- is also the title of a British television program that is now
available on DVD in the United States.
It is a devastating debunking of the current "global warming"
hysteria.
Nobody
denies that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect. If there were not, the side of the planet
facing away from the sun would be freezing every night. There is not even a lot of controversy over
temperature readings. What is
fundamentally at issue are the explanations, implications and extrapolations of
these temperature readings.
The
party line of those who say that we are heading for a global warming crisis of
epic proportions is that human activities generating carbon dioxide are key
factors responsible for the warming that has taken place in recent times. The problem with this reasoning is that the
temperatures rose first and then the carbon dioxide levels rose. Some scientists say that the warming created
the increased carbon dioxide, rather than vice versa. Many natural factors, including variations in
the amount of heat put out by the sun, can cause the earth to heat or cool.
The
bigger problem is that this has long since become a crusade rather than an
exercise in evidence or logic. Too many people are too committed to risk it all
on a roll of the dice, which is what turning to empirical evidence is. Those who have a big stake in global warming
hysteria are unlikely to show up at the conference in New York, and
unfortunately that includes much of the media.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.