http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/023057.html
****************************
THIS WEEK
House
Democrats to Let Ban on Drilling Expire: "Congressional Democrats bowed to political
pressure yesterday and agreed to let the ban on offshore oil drilling expire, a
decision that would allow exploration just three miles off the Atlantic and
Pacific coastlines unless the next president reinstates an executive branch
order that prohibits drilling. Democrats said they gave in to White House
demands rather than risk a showdown over the 'continuing resolution' Congress
must pass to fund the federal government through March. A new drilling
moratorium would have been included in that wide-ranging measure.” Paul Kane
reports for the Washington Post Sept 24, 2008.
-----------------------------------------
In a stunning defeat, congressional Democrats were forced to allow the quarter-century-old offshore drilling ban to expire. But the fight has only begun, with the struggle now shifting to state legislatures. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307147578179972
****************************
SEPP Science Editorial #6 (9/27/08)
I
have tried to follow the active discussion of the paper by Douglass and Christy
(DC) in Energy & Environment Aug 2008.
If I read it correctly, it appears to give some implicit support for the
IPCC -- albeit at a lower value of climate sensitivity (CS) [conventionally
defined as the temperature rise from a doubling of CO2]. Here are some comments:
1. One should exercise great caution before
accepting any value for climate sensitivity (CS) obtained by a comparison of
current climate models with observations.
The reason quite simply is that the IPCC models do not incorporate all
of the important forcings. They do
include the forcing from increasing greenhouse gases based on actual
atmospheric measurements. However, the reported
CS depends on many arbitrary parameters fed into the models. For example, Stainforth et al [2005] quote
values for CS between 1.4 and 11.5 degC (as I recall), depending on choices for
just six microphysical cloud parameters, said to be selected by ‘expert
judgment.’
2. Aerosol effects are assumed to be unimportant
by DC, although this has not been demonstrated.
There has been a reported solar dimming and brightening in the past 30
years, likely related to changes in the aerosol content. But the published data do not distinguish
between absorption and reflection. There
have also been changes in “earthshine” although I’m not aware of any direct
interpretation or explanation.
3. The DC analysis arrives at essentially zero
net feedback, with some kind of negative feedback (a la Lindzen?) just
canceling the positive WV feedback incorporated in all IPCC models. Such a coincidence would seem to be unlikely.
4. More to the point, perhaps, the IPCC neglects
any natural forcing from the variability of solar activity. Based on what we know of the performance of
the sun, based also on current measurements of sunspots, of the 'aa' index,
etc, one must assume that there have been some changes in the past 30 years and
that these have been influencing global temperatures. This would also influence any determination
of climate sensitivity.
5. Summing up, I believe that getting a reliable
numerical value for climate sensitivity (CS) is rather difficult. Perhaps we can all agree that CS is
greater than zero but small enough – well below the lower IPCC limit (as
already found by Douglass, Christy, Pearson, Singer IJC/RoyMetSoc 2007) – so
we don’t need to worry about Global Warming.
****************
1. Biden commits a
gaffe on coal
4. Permafrost
may not thaw even during Global Warming
5. 'Global
warming is a hoax': New Zealand MP
6. BBC series
counter-attacks climate skeptics
7. Lord
Monckton’s responds to a ‘thermista’ (a.k.a. global warmist).
*****************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
Sarah Palin is the only major candidate who has expressed doubts about manmade global warming>
PBS has a short video on their website, including a
poll that asks: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be VP? As of Sept 25, 42% percent had voted YES, 58%
NO. Let's turn this around. You don't have to give your name or email
address in order to vote. Here's the
link:
<http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html>
After you vote, please pass this message to your friends.
***********************************************
NASA Science News, Sept 23, 2008: Solar physicists have announced that the
solar wind is losing pressure, hitting a 50-year record low for the Space Age.
This development has repercussions across the solar system. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm?list24812
********************
“Climate Change Re-examined” by Prof (emeritus) JOEL
M. KAUFFMAN
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ccr.pdf
Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, pp.
723-749, 2007. 0892-3310/07
**************************
Mark Kinver, "Britain 'faces power cuts threat in
5 years'," BBC News, September 17, 2008;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7618840.stm
Based upon: A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK, Fells Associates, August
2008.
http://fellsassociates.awardspace.com/site/LinkedDocuments/Pragmatic%20Energy%20Policy1.pdf
***********************
Coal power
stations must have carbon capture and storage, UK Environment Agency says.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/25/eacoal125.xml
The
Environment Agency (EA), in its response to the Government's consultation on
CCS, said building power stations which could have carbon-capture 'bolted on'
at a later date should not be an option.
Lord Chris Smith, EA chairman, said: "Building a new generation of
coal fired power stations without capturing the carbon emissions would lock the
UK into using high carbon technology for decades to come - this is not an
environmentally sustainable way of generating power given the challenges we
face with climate change." But
Minister Hutton said emissions were already capped under EU agreements and any
extra emissions from new power stations would have to be made up
elsewhere. In an uncompromising message
he angered green groups by claiming: "No coal plus no nuclear equals no
lights. No power. No future."
*************************
Arctic ice INCREASES
by nearly a half million square miles over same time period in 2007 - July 18,
2008 -Excerpt: the latest information on Arctic ice conditions is just in from
the National Snow and Ice Data Center <http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/>:
Arctic sea ice extent on July 16 stood at 8.91 million square kilometers (3.44 square miles). While extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average of 9.91 square kilometers (3.83 million square miles), it was 1.05 million square kilometers (0.41 million square miles) above the value for July 16, 2007...
====================================
Sea surface temperatures along the Alaska, Chukchi,
and Beaufort sea coasts are 2 to 8 degrees Celsius colder this year than at the
same time last year. [...] Significant ice will begin developing along the
Alaska coast north of 70n within the next 10 to 14 days.
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/marfcst.php?fcst=FZAK80PAFC
**************************
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=book&ID=440
*************************
UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE
http://www.gt.se/nyheter/1.1303869/goteborg-forbjuder-kolsyrat-vatten
****************************
High Divorce Rate Contributing Towards Global Warming? A study to understand this aspect has come up with some startling facts. As the divorce rate spirals out of control, it is creating more and more families with lesser number of individuals composing the given families. This is the obvious corollary of the family break up following divorce. http://www.skynewswire.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6042
***************************
CNN Claims: Polar bears resort to cannibalism as
Arctic ice shrinks
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/23/arctic.ice/index.html
Excerpt: Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving
Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one
documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's
den and killed her.
------------------------------
So did this male polar bear eat the
female polar bear or just kill it; which would seem to be appropriate if you
were trying to reduce the competition for seals. But that was in
2004. So what is the murder rate up to these days (among polar bears)?
#############################
1. BIDEN'S COAL
SLAW
WSJ, Sept 25,
2008
The classic definition of a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth, and specialists like Joe Biden can work wonders with the form. On Tuesday Barack Obama's running mate blew an easy question about coal, revealing volumes about liberal energy politics.
Working the rope line in Maumee, Ohio, the Senator was asked by an environmentalist why he and Mr. Obama support "clean coal." "We're not supporting clean coal," Mr. Biden responded. Then, riffing on China's breakneck construction of new coal plants, he continued, "No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they're going to build them, over there."
Coal happens to be the indispensable workhorse of the U.S. power system, providing about 50% of the country's electricity. Many Democrats nonetheless despise coal -- because of pollution before the era of scrubbers, but especially now because of carbon emissions. Al Gore favors an outright moratorium on coal-fired power in the name of climate change. Meanwhile, any scheme to tax and regulate carbon -- like the cap-and-trade program backed by Mr. Obama and John McCain -- would hit coal first and hardest, effectively banishing it from the U.S. energy mix.
Mr. Biden, then, only stated an obvious if politically unutterable truth. The real costs of green ambitions won't be paid by well-heeled coastal liberals, but will fall disproportionately on the Southern and Midwestern states that depend on coal for jobs and power. The blue-collar voters of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and so forth will get hurt most -- notwithstanding Mr. Biden's campaign reinvention as the scrapper from Scranton.
As for "clean coal," the Obama campaign actually supports it. But this too is a political bait-and-switch, perhaps explaining Mr. Biden's confusion. In theory, clean coal would require capturing greenhouse gas emissions, compressing them into liquid and then pumping it underneath the earth. -Even if the technology were ready for commercial deployment tomorrow, to sequester just 25% of yearly U.S. CO2 emissions would mean moving volumes more than twice as large as the world's current oil pipeline system can handle. That will require an enormous amount of money, and generations to build.
That an eminence like Mr. Biden is clueless about coal suggests how little official Washington has thought through the consequences of its anticarbon agenda. His blunder is also notable because it exposed the realities that politicians prefer not to voice amid an election campaign. Coal-state voters should be watching what their politicians really have planned for them come January.
********************
By Michelle
Nichols, Sept 24, 2008
NEW YORK
(Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged
young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the
construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon.
The former U.S. vice president, whose climate change documentary "An
Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award, told a philanthropic meeting in
New York City that "the world has lost ground to the climate crisis."
"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking
at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the
stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of
new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore
told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.
"I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying
public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great
represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material
fact," he said. "I hope these state attorney generals around the country
will take some action on that."
The government says about 28 coal plants are under construction in the United
States. Another 20 projects have permits or are near the start of construction.
Scientists* say carbon gases from burning fossil fuel for power and transport
are a key factor in global warming.
*only some “data-challenged” ones
Carbon capture
and storage could give coal power an extended lease on life by keeping power
plants' greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere and easing climate change.
But no commercial-scale project exists anywhere to demonstrate the technology,
partly because it is expected to increase up-front capital costs by an
additional 50 percent.
So-called geo-sequestration of carbon sees carbon dioxide liquefied and pumped
into underground rock layers for long term storage.
(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Christine Kearney and
Xavier Briand)
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE48N7AA20080924
*****************
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/corrupted_science_revealed.html
Outsiders familiar with the proper workings of science have
long known that modern Climate Science is dysfunctional. Now a prominent
insider, MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and
his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole
branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report
entitled "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer
questions?" His answer: A resounding "NO!"
Detailing the corruption, he names a series of names. Until reading this
I did not know that
"For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore." Page 5
Although a bit lengthy, this very important report is
highly readable and revealing. While some of the paragraphs are a bit
technical, I encourage AT readers to wade through them because their purpose is
to provide specific examples of how a radical cabal is forcing scientists to
ignore or amend measurements that undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global
Warming. Scientists are literally forced to include sentences in their papers
that indicate their support of AGW, even if these sentences are non-sequiturs,
or even if they conflict with the overall thrust of the paper. In this way, Al
Gore's uneducated political commissars are able to deliver the
"consensus" he so craves.
How is this possible you might ask? Prof. Lindzen gives considerable
background history.
However, having been an undergraduate and graduate student in the hard
sciences, and later a research collaborator with dozens of industrial
scientists and university professors, perhaps I can shed some further light.
Today's scientists get to the top of their field by extreme dedication to their
specialty involving inordinate focus and concentration that cannot tolerate
distractions. The best scientists are constantly "at home" at their
lab bench, with their instruments, analyzing data, teaching a few promising
students and preparing publications. Most scientists interact intensively
only with other specialists in allied fields ("geeks").
Many scientists are naturalized citizens from Asia and Eastern Europe,
unfamiliar and intimidated by American politics and government, to which they
are dependent upon for visas and grant support. Although all stereotypes
are unfair to individuals, there is some truth to the one of the shy, retiring,
absent-minded professor. His or her absent-mindedness is most likely due
to intense cogitation on a difficult scientific problem. Their dealings
with one another are only possible by maintaining extreme standards of honesty,
integrity and open-mindedness to scholarly debate in search of the truth. The
very qualities that make them good scientists and scholars thus leave them
ill-equipped to deal with the raucous, underhanded, disrespectful,
politically-motivated radicals unleashed upon them by Al Gore and his fifth
column for a "hostile takeover" of their scientific institutions.
I naively thought that the National Academy of Sciences could impose some
quality-control on an errant
discipline. Prof. Lindzen notes that event this august body has
been penetrated by eco-activists by exploiting loopholes in its nominating
procedures.
Fortunately, in science "truth will out". The long term faith
of the American public in science, a trust built up since WWI is at stake. Next
it will be important to see whether a prominent scientific journal publishes
this revelation.
As an aside, for those who have wondered how leftist cabals were able in the
60's and 70's to take over our universities' humanity departments, the National
Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities, Prof
Lindzen's report lays bare the template for radicalization.
***************************************
4. PERMAFROST MAY
NOT THAW EVEN DURING GLOBAL WARMING
By Henry Fountain,
NYT, Sept 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/science/23obsperm.html?ref=science
One of the potential consequences of a warmer world, according to scientists who study such things, is the deep thawing of the permafrost. Thawing could release huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, as vegetation, bones and other organic material, long locked up in the deep freezer that is the permafrost, decompose. But a study published in Science suggests that the impact of warming on the permafrost may not be as bad as forecast. The evidence comes in the form of a wedge of ancient ice found at an old mining site in the Yukon in Canada. Ice wedges form in permafrost when the ground cracks because of cold, and spring meltwater seeps in and freezes. Over hundreds of years, the wedge builds up, like an in-ground icicle. Duane G. Foresee of the University of Alberta, the lead author of the study, said ice wedges could provide clues to the long-term stability of the permafrost. The problem is figuring out how old they are. In this case, the top of the wedge was a couple of yards deep in the permafrost, and the researchers found volcanic ash on its top surface. By dating the ash (which presumably came from eruptions in what is now southeastern Alaska), Dr. Froese and his colleagues were able to say how long the ice has been there: about 740,000 years. Because the ash had to have been deposited after the wedge formed, that's "very clear proof," Dr. Froese said, that the ice is at least that old. That means the ice survived through several warming periods, including the last major one, 120,000 years ago. "The general view is that everything would have melted out back then," Dr. Froese said. The new finding suggests that wasn't the case, and that models of future melting need to be rethought.
****************************************
5. 'GLOBAL WARMING
IS A HOAX'
-Rodney Hide, MP, in NZ Parliament, 2 September
2008,
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=337&Itemid=1
"The entire climate change - global warming
hypothesis is a hoax, the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, Al Gore
is a phony and a fraud on this issue, and the emissions trading scheme is a
worldwide scam and swindle." On
Climate Change (Emissions Trading & Renewable Preference) Bill
I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science. It is not that that should count, but I think that it is significant for what I am about to say -- that is, that the entire climate change - global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phony and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle.
Enacting this legislation will cost New Zealanders dear-that is the point of it -- and it will drive up the costs of basic goods and services for New Zealanders probably by at least $500 or $600 a year. It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business, and put farmers off their farms. And it will do all this for no impact on world weather, for no environmental gain, and for no conceivable advantage to New Zealand or to the world.
Yes, it is bad that we are rushing this legislation through in the dying days of a teetering regime, propped up by a *Minister of Foreign Affairs who is under investigation for serious and complex fraud.
That is bad, but it is the impact that this legislation and this policy will have on New Zealanders that is so truly shocking. All we have in this is a computer model. That is notoriously difficult, because the answers are written in the assumptions. Let me give members just one example.
The problem for the first two Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change reports was what was called the medieval warming period, where a thousand years ago the Earth was warmer than it is now.
Then, magically, an obscure physicist in the US came up with a new bit of analysis - the hockey stick - that showed world temperature to be flat and then rising dramatically as the world became industrialised. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change grabbed this, put it on the front of its document, and repeated it five times.
Researchers all around the world were puzzled by this, because it did not fit any of their data. Eventually they got hold of that computer model and they discovered this: any numbers fed into that model would produce the hockey stick.
We could take the Wellington telephone directory, feed it into the model that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used in 2001, and we would get the hockey stick that saw the world running scared, that saw policy-makers running scared, and saw Al Gore make his movie based on it.
The science was rubbish, because a computer model is not science. Science is about theories, hypothesis, and the testing of these against the facts. That is not what has happened in the basic science here. That is bad enough, but what is worse is the policy rationale underpinning this legislation. The Minister would come before the select committee and talk about a "cap and trade" but, when asked, would say: "Yes, there is no cap." We are creating a market in hot air, without any quantified amount.
**********************
6. BBC SERIES
STITCHES UP SCEPTICS IN COUNTER-ATTACK OVER CLIMATE CHANGE
By Christopher Booker, Sunday
Telegraph, 21/09/2008
As informed questioning of the global warming
orthodoxy rises on all sides, the BBC's three-part series Climate Wars, ending
tonight, bears all the marks of a carefully planned counter-attack.
BBC science producers were apoplectic at the attention given last year to
Martin Durkin's Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle,
featuring a galaxy of the world's more sceptical climate scientists. This is
their riposte.
Last week, against a range of far-flung locations from Greenland to California,
the presenter, Dr Iain Stewart, tackled three of the main arguments of Durkin's
film.
In each case the technique was the same. After caricaturing the sceptics'
point, with sound bite clips that did not allow them to develop their
scientific argument, he then asserted that they had somehow been discredited.
For example, doubts had been raised over the reliability of satellite
temperature records, which do not show the same degree of warming as surface
readings. Dr Roy Spencer, who designed NASA's satellite system for measuring
temperatures, was allowed to admit that a flaw had been found in the system.
But his interview ended before he could explain that, when the flaw was
discovered in 1998, it was immediately corrected (although it made little
difference to the results).
Likewise, there is a growing case for a correlation between global temperatures
and solar activity. Dr Stewart accused Durkin's programme of cutting off a
graph which illustrated this at a point when the data failed to support the
thesis. Then he did exactly the same himself, not extending his own graph to
2008 in a way that would reinforce the thesis.
Most hilarious of all, however, was a long sequence in which Stewart defended the
notorious "hockey stick" graph, which purports to show that
temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level on record.
The BBC had a huge blow-up of this "iconic" graph carted triumphantly
round London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace, as if it were proof that the
warming alarmists are right.
There was no hint that the "hockey stick" is among the most
completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to
the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's creators
had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape
whatever data were fed into it.
There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or
obscure some vital fact. Yet the "impartial" BBC is sending out this
farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the "march of the
lie" continues.
*****************************************
7. LORD
CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON’S ANSWER TO AN EMAIL FROM A ‘THERMISTA’ IN THE CANADIAN
CIVIL SERVICE
Dear Sir Humphrey - The "Abundance of scientific
statements" that you mention is no sound or logical basis for deciding or
believing anything. The question is whether the scientific statements have any
rational justification, and whether those making them are in effect making
statements that are political rather than scientific -- rent-seeking rather
than objective. After all, this is the age of reason (or it was). Therefore,
one should not accord to "scientists" the status of infallible high
priests merely because they mumble a hieratic language with which one is
unfamiliar. There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major
conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion's constantly-changing Holy Book, are
based on evidence that has been fabricated. The "hockey stick" graph
that purported to abolish the Mediaeval Warm Period is just one example. So let
me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of
"Global Warming" and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.
Let us begin with the "devastation of New Orleans" that you mention.
Even the High Priests of your Church are entirely clear that individual
extreme-weather events such as Hurricane Katrina cannot -- repeat cannot -- be
attributed to "global warming". Even the Holy Book makes this
entirely plain. There was one priest -- Emmanuel (a good, religious name) of
MIT -- who had suggested there might be a link between "global
warming" and hurricanes; but he has recently recanted, at least to some
extent. Very nearly all others in the hierarchy of your Church are clear that
ascribing individual extreme-weather events to "global warming" is
impossible. Why? Well, let's take the question of land-falling Atlantic
hurricanes such as Katrina. The implication of your attribution of Hurricane Katrina
to "global warming" is twofold: that "global warming" is
happening, and that in consequence either the frequency or the intensity of
tropical weather systems such as hurricanes is increasing. Neither of these
propositions is true. Yes, there has been "global warming" for 300
years, since the end of the 60-year period of unusually low solar activity
known as the Maunder Minimum (after the celebrated Astronomer Royal who studied
it). But there has been no net warming since 1998, and Keenlyside et
al, in the theological journal Nature a few months ago, say they do
not expect a new record year for global temperatures until 2015 at the
earliest. If these theologians are correct, there will have been a 20-year
period of no net "global warming" even though the presence of the
devil Siotu in the ether grows inexorably stronger. And, secondly, the
number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall has actually fallen throughout
the 20th century, even as temperatures have risen. Indeed, some theologians
have argued that warmer weather actually reduces the temperature differential
between sea and sky that generates hurricanes, reducing their frequency, and
that the extra heat in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system increases wind-shear
in tropical storms, tending to reduce their intensity. Certainly the frequency
of intense tropical cyclones has fallen throughout the 30-year satellite
record, even though temperatures have increased compared with 30 years ago.
Also, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was chiefly caused by the failure of
the Democrat-led city administration to heed repeated warnings from the Corps
of Engineers that the levees needed to be strengthened.
Next, you mention the recent flooding damage at Galveston, and you imply that
this is something new and terrible. Perhaps you would like to do some research
of your own to verify whether the High Priests of your Church, some of whom
have blamed the Galveston incident on the wrath of the devil Siotu, are
likely to be telling the truth. And how, you may ask, may a non-theologian such
as yourself argue theology with your High Priests? Well, the Galveston incident
will give you just one indication of the many ways in which a lay member of the
Church of "Global Warming" may verify for himself whether or not the
Great Druids of his religion are speaking the truth from their pulpits in the
media. Cast your eye back just over a century, to 1906, and look up what
happened to Galveston then. Which was worse - Galveston 2008 or Galveston 1906?
Next, check the global mean surface temperature in 1906: many theology
faculties compile surface temperature data and make it publicly available to
the faithful and to infidels alike. Was the global mean surface temperature
significantly lower or significantly higher in 2008 than in 1906? What
implications do your two answers have for your proposition that Galveston 2008
can be attributed to "global warming"?
Next, you mention fires in California. Once again, you can either sit slumped
in your pew, gazing in adoration at the Archdruids as their pious faces flicker
across your television screen, or you can do a little research for yourself. It
may, for instance, occur to you to ask whether droughts were worse in the
United States in the second half of the 20th century than they were in the
first half. Once again, you may want to check with your local theological
faculty to obtain the answer to this question. Or you may like to pick up a
copy of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. And you may want to
verify whether temperatures in the second half of the 20th century were warmer
than in the first half. Once again, what are the implications of your two
answers for your proposition that "global warming" is causing forest
fires? You could also talk to the Fire Department in California and obtain its
data on the causes of forest fires. You might be mightily surprised by the
answers you get.
Next, you talk of beetles in your forests destroying natural resources. Here,
you could ask the Druids just a couple of simple questions. What evidence do
they have, if any, that whichever species of beetle you have in mind has
not wrought havoc in the forests before? And, even if your clergy think that
they have evidence that the beetle-damage is new, what evidence do they
have, if any, that the beetle-damage is greater because of "global
warming" than it would otherwise have been? Of course, you could ask them
the wider question what evidence there is that anthropogenic "global
warming", as opposed to solar warming, is the reason for the temperature
increases that have occurred over the past 300 years. The more honest parish
priests will admit that for 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred
warming can be attributed to human industry. They will also be compelled to
concede, if you press them, that the warming of the most recent 50 years has
not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that
it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the
temperature record.
Next, you talk of people migrating from one place to another because in some
places water has become scarce. Once again, it is easy for a layman, whether a
true believer such as yourself or not, to verify whether such migrations are as
a result of "global warming". For instance, you could ask whether
there have been changing patterns of drought and flood before in human history.
Once you have collected some historical data - most theological faculties have
quite a lot of this available, though you may have to dig a little to get it -
you could compare previous migrations with those of which you now speak. And
you could also ask your local parish priest whether a theological phenomenon
known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation mandates that, as the atmosphere
warms, the carrying-capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water
vapor decreases, remains static, or increases near-exponentially. Once you have
found the answers to these not particularly difficult questions, you may like
to spend some of your devotional time meditating on the question whether, or to
what extent, the changes in patterns of flood and drought that have occurred in
the past give you any confidence that such changes occurring today are either
worse than those in the past or attributable to "global warming",
whether caused by the increasing presence of the devil Siotu in the
atmosphere or by the natural evolution of the climate. During your meditation,
you may like to refer to the passage from the 2001 edition of the Holy Book of
the IPCC that describes the climate as "a complex, non-linear, chaotic
object" whose long-term future evolution cannot reliably be predicted.
If you are willing to reflect a little on the questions I have raised - and,
with the exception of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, I have done my best to
avoid anything that might be too technical for a layman to find out for himself
- you will perhaps come to realize that there is very little basis in
scientific fact for the alarmist, hellfire preaching in which your clergy love
to indulge. And you may even find your faith in your new religion beginning to
weaken a little in the face of the truths that you will have unearthed by the
not particularly difficult process of simply checking those statements of your
clergy that you can easily and independently verify. There are, of course, many
environmental problems posed by the astonishing recent success of humankind. If
you were concerned, for instance, about deforestation, or the loss of species
whose habitats have been displaced by humans, then your concerns would have a
good grounding in fact. But, given the abject failure of global temperatures to
rise as the Druids had forecast, it must surely be clear to you that the
influence of the devil Siotu on global temperatures - your theologians
call this "climate sensitivity" - must be a great deal smaller than
your Holy Book asks you to believe.
Finally, you may wonder why I have so scathingly described your pious belief in
your new religion as founded upon blind faith rather than upon the light of
reason. I have drafted this email in this way so that you can perhaps come to
see for yourself just how baffling it is to the likes of me, who were educated
in the light of TH Huxley's dictum that the first duty of the scientist is
skepticism, to see how easily your hierarchy is able to prey upon your naive
credulity. I do not target this comment at you alone: there are far too many
others who, like you, are in positions of some authority and whose duty to
think these things through logically is great, and yet who simply fail to ask
even the most elementary and blindingly obvious questions before sappily,
happily, clappily believing in, and parroting by rote, whatever the current
Establishment proposes. I do not know whether you merely believe all that you
are told by the Druids because otherwise you will find yourself in conflict
with other true believers among your colleagues or, worse, among your
superiors. If you are under pressures of this kind, I do sympathize. But if you
are free to think for yourself without penalty, may I beg you - in the name of
humanity - to give the use of reason a try?
Why "in the name of humanity"? Because, although the noisy preachers
from the media pulpits have found it expedient not to say so, there have been
food riots all round the world as the biofuel scam whipped up by the High
Priests of your religion takes vast tracts of agricultural land out of food
production. Millions are now starving because the price of food has doubled in
little more than a year. A leaked report by the World Bank says that fully
three-quarters of that doubling has occurred as a direct result of the biofuel
scam. So your religion is causing mass starvation in faraway countries, and is
even causing hardship to the poorest in your own country. Can you, in
conscience, look away from the sufferings that your beliefs are inflicting upon
the poorest and most helpless people in the world? -- Monckton of Brenchley
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