Friday, July 11, 2008
The End is Near
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming
A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that:
1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that
2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that
3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly;
4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings;
5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and
6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.
Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Al Gore's Hot Air -- Not so Hot. . .
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The "Live Earth" Self-Deceit Show
One obvious irony of this past weekend's Live Earth concerts is that it took an event that increased energy usage to get people around the world to participate in "saving the Earth."
This was no accident - the majority of enjoyable human activities require the generation of energy. For the First World, these activities might include transportation, computers, TVs, heating and air conditioning. For the Third World, it might mean simply having electricity to refrigerate food and so prevent deaths due to food-borne illnesses.
When Al Gore told us that 2 billion people on seven continents might hear the concerts, he didn't mention that nearly 2 billion more lack electricity, let alone the Internet or TV. Where's the concert to campaign for electricity for all?
Instead, folks in the developed world who feel guilty about pollution decide it's time to do something drastic - like throw a worldwide-rock concert.
Of course, Gore could have helped to raise awareness of global warming by asking people to walk, not ride, to concerts where all acts would be during the daytime (no lighting required), and all music would be acoustic. But who would come? It's much more interesting to watch Madonna have simulated sex with electric guitars and amplifiers.
We love our conveniences, which in three short generations have gone from being extravagances to basic human rights. Would you rather go to a banquet to raise awareness of world hunger, or go for three days without eating instead?
Gore asked those attending Live Earth to sign a seven-point pledge to do things that will decrease our greenhouse gas emissions and thereby reduce global warming. But how many of us really know what that means?
Sure, we can put pressure on our elected representatives to enact laws that will reduce emissions - but how many of us know that we are, in the process, agreeing to pay the extra costs?
Gore tells us that a few simple lifestyle changes will prevent 100 million tons of carbon emissions. What he doesn't spell out is that that's enough to prevent future warming by one thousandth of a degree.
The inconvenient truth is that it's easier to talk green than to be green.
It is a matter of simple physics and basic economics that, no matter how much you think the world will warm in the future, there is nothing substantial we can do about it without new energy technologies. The global demand for energy is simply too great.
Switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs and hybrid cars; turning off the light when we leave a room - these are attractive options because we can do those things. We believe we are thereby earning our salvation from the eternal fires of some global-warming hell. We can pat ourselves on the back and say we are "doing something" worthwhile. Really. Al Gore said so.
For issues that really matter, pop-science subjects like global warming are dangerous. When politicians exaggerate scientific theories to convince people to divert part of their wealth to one kind of activity, it's at the expense of other, more beneficial activities.
In fact, Gore asks his disciples to help force policy changes that will, in the end, hurt the poor the most - both here and in the Third World. Interested in helping humanity? Then campaign for clean water for all. It is vastly cheaper. Or demand that all poor African countries be allowed to use DDT to eliminate malaria (without the threat of economic sanctions), just like America and Europe did a century ago.
If it makes you feel better to perform energy-saving rituals, go right ahead. But don't be deceived into thinking you're doing anything that will help humanity.
If we're really interested in a carbon-free future, we should support technological progress: safer nuclear power, carbon sequestration during the burning of coal and the eventual development of new energy sources.
But energy technology research requires wealth, and wealth requires access to abundant, affordable energy in the context of free markets. Contributions to Al's Church of Carbon Offsets might be tax-deductible, but investment in technological progress will earn far greater dividends for all of humanity.
Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His book "Climate Confusion" is due out this winter.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
It's Irrational
Stephanie Stein / Standard-Freeholder
The current debate about global warming is "completely irrational," and people need to start taking a different approach, say two Ottawa scientists.
Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson said global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet.
Patterson said much of the up-to-date research indicates that "changes in the brightness of the sun" are almost certainly the primary cause of the warming trend since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the late 19th century. Human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of concern in most plans to curb climate change, appear to have little effect on global climate, he said.
"I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," said Patterson. "The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."
Patterson explained CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential plant food.
Billions of taxpayers' dollars are spent to control the emissions of this benign gas, in the mistaken belief that they can stop climate change, he said.
"The only constant about climate is change," said Patterson.
Patterson said money could be better spent on places like Africa.
"All the money wasted on Kyoto in a year could provide clean drinking water for Africa," said Patterson. "We're into a new era of science with the discussion of solar forces. Eventually, Kyoto is going to fall by the wayside. In the meantime, I'm worried we're going to spend millions that could have been spent on something better like air pollution."
Tom Harris, executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project - an organization that attempts to debunk some of the popular beliefs about climate change - supported Patterson's findings.
Global warming assertions are based on inconclusive evidence put forth in science reports that had not been published yet, he said.
"The media takes (inconclusive) information that only suggests there could be a climate problem and turns it into an environmental catastrophe," said Harris.
"They continually say we only have 10 years left, and they've been saying it for 20 years, and it's ridiculous," he said. "The only reason I got involved in talking to media is that I think our resources are being mismanaged.
"Go after something real and tangible like air pollution."
After hearing a second scientist say climate change is part of a natural cycle, Elaine Kennedy - a local environmental activist - is interested in investigating the issue further.
She looks forward to examining scientific reports that will be published in a couple of months by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The problem may not be climate change, but the problem is still pollution," said Kennedy.
She's not alone in her assertion global warming is a pollution problem.
David Phillips, a senior government environment expert, believes there is more than one contributing factor to global warming. There's a human element, as well as natural cycles.
Difficult to convince
"I'm a man that's difficult to convince," he said. "What convinces me is the large body of evidence, and highly reputable people promoting global warming, who are not lobbyists, but only seeking truth in science. They say the the earth is warming up faster and greater now than in the past."
People who are contradicting the global warming reality, Phillip thinks, have their own motives for doing so.
"These skeptics are keeping the debate alive (for their own interests). They try to confuse people into inaction," said Phillips.
Phillips believes global warming is solvable.
"We solved the ozone and acid rain problem. With effort, and a new way of doing things we could solve this one too," said Phillips.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Top Forecaster Blasts Gore on Global Warming
A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.
"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.
A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday; he did not immediately respond to Gray's comments.
Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.
Over the past 24 years, Gray, 77, has become known as America's most reliable hurricane forecaster; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.
Gray's statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.
Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.
Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has helped fuel media attention on global warming.
Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor who had feuded with Gray over global warming, said Gray has wrongly "dug (his) heels in" even though there is ample evidence that the world is getting hotter.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Gore's Faith Is Bad Science
Al Gore likes to present himself as a tribune of science, warning the world of imminent danger. But he is more like an Old Testament prophet, calling on us to bewail our wrongful conduct and to go and sin no more.
He starts off with the science. The world's climate, he reports, is getting warmer. This accurate report is, however, not set in historic context. World climate has grown warmer and cooler at various times in history. Climate change is not some unique historic event. It is the way the world works.
Not this time, Gore says. What's different is that climate change is being driven by human activity -- to wit, increasing carbon dioxide emissions. Which means, he says, that we have to sharply reduce those emissions. But what the scientists tell us is that some proportion of climate change is caused by human activity and some proportion by natural causes -- and that they can only estimate what those proportions are. The estimates they have produced have varied sharply. The climate change models that have been developed don't account for events of the recent past, much less predict with precision events in the future.
To which the prophet replies, with religious intensity, that all debate should be over. Those scientists with inconvenient views should be defunded and silenced. We should replace scientific inquiry with faith. We should have faith that climate change -- "global warming" -- is caused primarily by human activity. And we should have faith that the effects will be catastrophic, with rising oceans flooding great cities and pleasant plains and forests broiled by a searing sun.
Even The New York Times bridles at this. After Gore won the Academy Award for his film on climate change, the Times printed an article in which respected scientists -- not Republicans, not on oil company payrolls -- charged that Gore has vastly exaggerated the likelihood of catastrophic effects.
When you read the fine print of even the scientific reports that Gore likes to cite, you find the same thing. Gore foresees a 20-foot rise in sea level -- 240 inches. The IPCC panel report foresees a maximum of 23 inches. Gore says that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this." Geologist Don Easterbrook says there have been shifts up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."
Science says that we should learn more about possible bad effects of climate change and calculate rationally how we can mitigate them. As the economic journalist Robert Samuelson points out, there is little that we can feasibly do in the short term to reduce carbon emissions, though over the long term we may be able to develop substitutes for carbon fuels.
As the environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg points out, the Kyoto Treaty that Gore helped to write (but which the Clinton administration never asked the Senate to ratify) would produce very little reduction in climate change at very high cost.
But religious prophets are not concerned about costs. Gore calls for an immediate cessation of new carbon-burning facilities. In other words, stop economic growth. But stopping economic growth in the developing world means consigning millions to miserable poverty. And we know what stopping economic growth in the developed world can mean.
Read the history of the 1930s: fascism, communism, world war. There are worse things than a rise of 1 or 2 degrees Centigrade.
The natural human yearning for spirituality has produced in many people educated in secular-minded universities and enveloped in an atmosphere of contempt for traditional religion a faith that we vulgar human beings have a sacred obligation not to inflict damage on Mother Earth. But science tells us that the Earth and its climate have been constantly changing.
Gore and his followers seem to assume that the ideal climate was the one they got used to when they were growing up. When temperatures dropped in the 1970s, there were warnings of an impending ice age. When they rose in the 1990s, there were predictions of disastrous global warming. This is just another example of the solipsism of the baby boom generation, the pampered and much-praised age cohort that believes the world revolves around them and that all past history has become irrelevant.
We're told in effect that the climate of the late 1950s and early 1960s was, of all those that have ever existed, the best of all possible climates. Not by science. But as a matter of faith.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Taking a Closer Look at Al Gore's Truth
The post-Oscar attacks on Al Gore for living in a mansion that consumes 20 times as much energy as the average American house were enjoyable, but unfair.
Gore's consumption of fossil fuels has nothing to do with the arguments he has been advancing about climate change. After all, his thesis is empirical, not subjective.
It doesn't matter a lick whether Al Gore is a hypocrite. What matters is whether or not he is right.
Gore proposes essentially four assertions, which build conditionally:
(1) Earth's climate is getting warmer; (2) man is responsible in substantial part for this change;
(3) this change will result in net harm; and (4) this change can be reversed by man.
Let's take them in order.
Here is what we know for certain about climate change: In the last 100 years, the average temperature on Earth has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit.
This is not unprecedented. Throughout history, the planet has gone through temperature cycles. There have been "warm periods" and ice ages.
To take just one example, Swiss climatologists believe that the glaciers in the Alps have melted into near nothingness 10 times in the last 10,000 years.
As recently as the 1970s, global cooling was considered by many scientists to be a major imminent threat, with the book The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age doing the work of today's An Inconvenient Truth.
Given the history of fluctuations in temperatures, to what degree is man responsible for the current rise? That depends on whom you ask and when you ask them. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it believes that human activity has been a primary driver.
But this verdict is not final: The IPCC recently explained that its initial work on climate change overestimated man's impact by as much as 25 percent. Who knows how it will change its estimates in the future.
Meanwhile, other scientists say they believe the sun is responsible.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany note that the sun has seemed to be burning more brightly for the last 60 years, which may account for the increase of 1 degree.
But as British scientist Nigel Calder notes, theories about climate change that don't finger man as the culprit are met with hostility or blank stares in the parts of the scientific community most heavily invested in Gore's theses, such as the IPCC.
Which brings us to the third part: If global warming is real, what would the net effect be? Gore says it would be very bad indeed. Taking his cue from the former vice president, the announcer of the Academy Awards telecast gushed that "Davis Guggenheim and the cast were scheduled to shoot in New Orleans the night before Hurricane Katrina hit, an event that brought home the threat - and the impact - of global warming." If global warming causes more storms like Katrina, that would be trouble.
But as a recent piece in Slate acknowledges, "the hurricane-warming link isn't settled at all. Rather, it's a very contentious debate between two groups of scientists - computer-modeling atmospheric scientists versus meteorologists."
Gore, however, goes further. In promoting the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, he told the press, "I hope this movie will provide many opportunities for in-depth conversations about what this issue is really all about."
The movie depicted a series of super storms that cause a near apocalypse and bring about, in a matter of days, a new ice age.
Given this promiscuous doomsaying, it's no surprise that some scientists have begun to quietly complain about Gore. A number of them went on record with their complaints to the New York Times last week.
Kevin Vranes, a University of Colorado climatologist, worried that Gore had been "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."
Gore warns about a 20-foot rise in sea level; the IPCC panel estimates "that the world's seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches - down from earlier estimates."
Ever apocalyptic, Gore says that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this." But Don Easterbrook, a geology professor from Western Washington University, notes that within the last 15,000 years there have been shifts up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."
What's more, some broad historical evidence, such as that presented by Thomas Gale Moore in his book Climate of Fear, suggests that Earth's "warming periods" have been accompanied by advances in human civilization. As the saying goes, past performance is not an indication of future gains. But if the climate were to warm gradually, it's not obvious why man wouldn't adapt and flourish again, as we have in the past.
Of course, none of that matters if the final condition of the Gore hypothesis doesn't hold. Can man stop the changing of the climate?
Again, the science is conflicted. Gore certainly believes we can. Others are less certain. Climate-change alarmist Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian minister of defense, recently said he believed advanced technology from extraterrestrial civilizations offered the best hope to "save our planet" from the perils of climate change.
Art Bell and Whitley Strieber take a backseat to no one in their worries about climate change. They wrote the book The Coming Global Superstorm, on which The Day After Tomorrow was based, and they, too, fear it may be too late. Bell is host on a radio show about UFOs and the paranormal. Before hooking up with Bell, Strieber wrote five nonfiction books about having been abducted by aliens.
Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. We all have to believe in something.
But when you compound the probabilities, the claims of environmentalists such as Gore begin to look less and less certain. In fact, in their unwillingness to brook dissent or countervailing theories, they seem less like scientists and more like the fundamentalists they otherwise scorn.
Monday, February 26, 2007
And the Blatently Liberal Propoganda Award Goes to. . .
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:
Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.
Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.
The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.
Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.
Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.
Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.
“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.
In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.
Nice to see Big Al is as full of hot air as he claims the atmosphere is. . .
Monday, February 19, 2007
Global-warming theory and the eugenics precedent
"Global Warming" had a precursor in capturing the hearts and minds of the world. Michael Crichton, in his novel "State of
Believers in eugenics argued that we could improve the human race by controlling reproduction. The most respected scientists from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other bastions of intellectual rigor retreated to a complex on Long Island named
The "science" was not lacking important public supporters. Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson were enthusiastic believers. The theory won approval of Supreme Court justices, leaders in higher education and Nobel Prize winners. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was one of the most vocal adherents. She established the first "birth control" clinic in 1916.
They believed that "the best" human beings were not having as many children as inferior ones -- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, Blacks, degenerates, the unfit and the "feeble minded." Sanger said "fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste." H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens."
Twenty-nine states passed laws allowing sterilization. Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were sterilized -- some legally. The Germans were the most progressive. They had help. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists, one of whom was Josef Mengele.
Ultimately the "mental defectives" in
But not everyone went away. As recently as July 24, 2003 Tony Platt testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee on S.R. 20 relative to eugenics. He agreed that the state should apologize for its actions.
One must ask, "How in the world did university researchers come to conclusions that defended this outrageous affront to society?" A look back at the research concluded that the researchers adjusted their outcomes to support the theory of those paying for the research. This is not unusual. It is very easy to believe that the settled science regarding climate change is just as suspicious, and indeed may be another example of pseudo-science capturing the imagination of politicians, actors and the media elite who have a desperate need to embrace some "science" which may force us to change the way we live our lives. H. L. Mencken once wrote, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." We see pictures of huge blocks of ice crashing into the sea from the
We are told today that human activity is causing a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide levels that is responsible for "global warming." While a congressional delegation was visiting the Antarctic expedition in January of 2003 we were shown the results of the Vostok ice-sheet cores where temperatures and CO2 levels were measured as far as 400,000 years ago. At that time, the level of CO2 was 280 parts per million parts of atmosphere (ppm), about what it was 20 years ago. The levels of CO2 and temperature rode up and down in consonance over 400,00 years. "Who," I asked, "was burning the fossil fuels 400,000 years ago?" I was treated as though I was rude.
It has been known for years that most CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. It is called "carbon sinking." The oceans typically contain 60 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. It is also known that colder waters dissolve more CO2 than warm waters. Which do you think is cause and which is effect? We currently have CO2 levels of about 380 ppm. A recent study completed at UC Davis concluded that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere 300 million years ago was on the order of 2,000 ppm. Then this, "the same increase that experts expect by the end of this century as remaining reserves of fossil fuels are burned." If it is a given that human burning of fossil fuels is what will cause an increase of CO2 levels up to 2,000 ppm in the next 93 years, don't they owe us an explanation as to who burned those fossil fuels 300 million years ago? In fact we are being treated to a modern scientific shell game. The most prevalent and efficient greenhouse gas is not CO2; it is water vapor, which accounts for about 60 percent of the heat-trapping gases while CO2 accounts for about 26 percent. So, why are we being served a daily diet of our destroying the environment with our behavior as it relates to CO2? Because our behavior has little to do with the amount of water vapor, so it is a non-starter when it comes to those whose principal goal is ruling our lives.
In order to focus on you and what you are doing to increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, which, as everyone knows will destroy the globe, we do not discuss the activities of termites. Fifteen years ago it was estimated that the digestive tracts of termites produce about 50 billion tons of CO2 and methane annually. That was more than the world's production from burning fossil fuel. Additionally, cattle, horses and other ruminant animals are huge producers of both CO2 and methane, but, being unable to respond to our demands on this issue, their activity is ignored.
When it comes to methane, another greenhouse gas, termites are responsible for 11 percent of the world's production from natural sources. Seventy-six percent comes from wetlands, which provide habitat conducive to bacteria, which produce 145 million metric tons of methane per year during the decomposition of organic material. It is curious that the very alarmists on climate change are alarmists on saving and increasing wetlands.
It becomes clear from the literature -- not to mention documentary films -- produced by the alarmists, that if human beings do not change the way we live the planet is doomed. This is not the first charge against human behavior. Many of you will remember the "scientific" studies 30 years ago about the destruction of the ozone layer, particularly at the poles, that would reduce the atmosphere's ability to stop infrared rays from the sun. We would see increasing incidence of skin cancer and increasing temperatures. It was theorized that this was caused by the increased production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were used -- as Freon -- in refrigeration units.
When Freon was invented it was considered a miracle gas. It replaced, in refrigeration units, a combination of toxic gases that, if released, actually killed people. But the settled science concluded that human activity was a threat to the planet. We outlawed the production of CFCs and thousands of people across the world died from eating rancid food due to the loss of refrigeration.
The world's production of CFCs peaked at 1.1 million tons per year. If 100 percent of that was released it would have added 750,000 tons of chlorine into the atmosphere. That is insignificant compared to the 300 million tons the oceans yield annually by the evaporation of seawater alone. But that couldn't be controlled so the alarmists went after us.
Indeed, the eruption of
Today, if there is a settled science, it is adduced by climatologists who have been observing and studying the world for decades. Many are retired and not seeking government grants for research and thus not inclined to reach outcomes that are politically popular. Most have been through more than one alarmist cycle of doom. The predictions by scientists in Time magazine's "Another Ice Age?" in 1974 and Newsweek's "The Cooling World" in 1975 come to mind. The latter article stated that scientists "are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climactic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic."
But wise old heads believe that we are going through normal cycles of heating and cooling that we have seen over hundreds of millions of years as the earth heats and cools when the activity of the sun changes. The earth is heated by the sun. The sun is impacted by magnetic forces creating outbursts called sunspots, which increase the heat it imparts. During the coldest period in the Little Ice Age, which ended near the end of the 19th century, sunspots almost completely disappeared for 70 years. The earth cooled. Sunspot activity has been declining for a number of years and is expected decline by 40 percent over the next decade. The world is about to enter a cooling period. Be prepared to change your lifestyle.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Meteorologists Skeptical of Global Warming
Sure, a panel of 2,500 scientists this month declared that it is "unequivocal" that global warming is occurring and at least 90 percent certain that humans are responsible.
And, yes, the international report predicted that world temperatures will rise from 3.2 to 7.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and that sea levels could rise from 7 to 23 inches, leading to worldwide catastrophe.
OK, fine -- but don't get too worked up over it.
That was the consensus among five Northeast Ohio meteorologists at a panel discussion Tuesday at Landerhaven in Mayfield Heights.
It's not that Mark Johnson, Dick Goddard, Mark Nolan, Jon Laufman or former Cleveland weatherman Don Webster disbelieve the data entirely.
But they're skeptical, and they don't believe that it's necessarily our fault or that we should panic over it.
"We have maybe 100 years of data on a rock that's 6 billion years old," said Johnson, a WEWS Channel 5 weatherman. "Mother Nature tends to even herself out, and the fact is, the Earth is cyclical."
Goddard, WJW Channel 8 meteorologist, said scientists have flip-flopped on the matter: "I have a file an inch thick from 30 years ago that says the planet was cooling," he told the crowd of several hundred.
They cautioned listeners not to put too much stock in what they said was an insufficient history of warming.
"The term global warming' strikes fear in the heart of people every time you say it, but it's simply a rise in temperature over time, and it's happened before," said Nolan, meteorologist at WKYC Channel 3. "I'm not sure which is more arrogant for humans: to say we caused it or to say we're going to fix it."
Laufman, who has free-lanced for WOIO Channel 19 and taught meteorology courses at several local colleges, including Case Western Reserve University, also referenced history.
"There was also a significant spike in world temperatures during the 1400s -- and that was well before the Industrial Revolution," he said "We haven't studied it long enough to know what causes global warming."
Even Webster, who now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., but flew in this week to moderate the discussion, was flippant.
"Where's Al Gore now?" he joked with the audience, referring to the former vice president and his documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which argues the case for global warming. "You can bet he's not in New York, where they've got nearly 12 feet of snow right now."
Monday, February 12, 2007
Global Warming Turns Ugly
The debate over global warming has turned hysterical in the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress and the most recent United Nations report asserting a 90% likelihood of human-caused climate change. And anybody who disagrees had better be prepared for attacks on their scientific credentials, their honesty, and even their right to speak out.
Case in point — the singularly nasty attack by the left-wing Guardian newspaper of England a week or so ago attacking a distinguished American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C., for soliciting scholarly papers that might disagree with the so-called global warming consensus. "Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study," the Guardian breathlessly headlined its story last week.
AEI, described as a "lobby group," was said to be offering $10,000 — plus, wait for it, travel expenses — to scientists and economists for essays that showed the "limitations of global climate models." In the second paragraph the Guardian described AEI as an "ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush administration."
Never mind that scientists on both sides of the issue take "cash" to study global warming. And never mind that AEI isn't a "lobby group" — under American tax law, organizations like AEI are expressly prohibited from lobbying. Or that ExxonMobil funding is less than 1% of AEI's total budget, or that a recent AEI research paper called for a tax on carbon, an idea that is hardly in line with ExxonMobil's financial interests.
When the left is out to smear an opponent, any brand of tar will do. Consider Vice President Gore's mantra, which has been picked up by much of the press, that global warming skeptics are "deniers" — as in Holocaust deniers. You might expect that liberals would be leery of attempts to liken an opponent to the nuts who deny that Hitler murdered 6 million Jews. "Are you now or have you ever been a denier?" But no, the moral paragons of Beverly Hills appear set to deliver an Oscar to Mr. Gore for his bravery in telling supposedly inconvenient truths.
Mr. Gore has been caught at this sort of thing before. In 1994, Ted Koppel disclosed on "Nightline" that Mr. Gore had called to suggest he investigate various global warming skeptics for their ties to the coal industry and other interests. Mr. Koppel said he had refused. He went on to chastise Mr. Gore publicly for "resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis."
Just so. But Mr. Gore and others still seem unable to restrain their bile. The Washington Post recently quoted Mr. Gore as referring to a prominent Republican senator as a "denier." All of which makes one wonder: Do these people have as much confidence as they pretend to have in their theories about why the globe may be heating up? Maybe there is good reason for AEI and others to ask for a closer look at those computer models claiming to show a meltdown of the earth in coming decades.
The late Karl Popper, one of the 20th century's most eminent philosophers, wrote and spoke often of the glories — and dangers — of the Enlightenment's faith in science. " … the theory that truth is manifest not only breeds fanatics — men possessed by the conviction that all those who do not see the manifest truth must be possessed by the devil — but it may also lead … to authoritarianism."
You may think that's overwrought. But remember that just last week on February 9, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that government would have to impose a mandatory cap to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50%, a move that would bring government ever more deeply into the heart of the economy. And that, global warming enthusiasts add, would just be a first step. For, after all, it is the point of the whole global warming agitation to begin with.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Taranto: Denying the Future
The Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman starts off a column about global warming on a loopy note:
"On the day that the latest report on global warming was released, I went out and bought a light bulb. OK, an environmentally friendly, compact fluorescent light bulb."
Wow, Ellen, thanks for sharing! But a few paragraphs later she tries to make a serious point and ends up making a serious moral and intellectual error:
"I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."
No, Ellen. Let's not "just say" it. Before we make a truly invidious comparison, let's think a bit, shall we?
On our shelf sits a book called "The House That Hitler Built." It is a 380-page study of Nazi Germany, written by Stephen H. Roberts, a professor of modern history at the University of Sydney. Roberts spent 16 months in Germany and neighboring countries between 1935 and 1937. "My main aim," he explains in the preface, "was to sum up the New Germany without any prejudice (except that my general approach was that of a democratic individualist)."
The substance of the book is alarming, although the tone is calm and detached--so much so that it is eerie to read with the knowledge of what happened in the years after October 1937, when it was published. One 10-page chapter is devoted to "The Present Place of the Jews." At the time Roberts wrote, the persecution of Jewish Germans was well under way:
"At present, the German Jew has no civil rights. He is not a citizen; he cannot vote or attend any political meeting; he has no liberty of speech and cannot defend himself in print; he cannot become a civil servant or a judge; he cannot be a writer or a publisher or a journalist; he cannot speak over the radio; he cannot become a screen actor or an actor before Aryan audiences; he cannot teach in any educational institution; he cannot enter the service of the railway, the Reichsbank, and many other banks; he cannot exhibit paintings or give concerts; he cannot work in any public hospital; he cannot enter the Labour Front or any of the professional organizations, although membership of many callings is restricted to members of these groups; he cannot even sell books or antiques. . . . In addition to these, there are many other restrictions applying in certain localities. The upshot of them all is that the Jew is deprived of all opportunity for advancement and is lucky if he contrives to scrape a bare living unmolested by Black Guards or Gestapo. It is a campaign of annihilation--a pogrom of the crudest form, supported by every State instrument."
When Roberts published his book, Kristallnacht was more than a year away; the ghettoes and death camps were further still in the future. Roberts described what he witnessed as "a campaign of annihilation," but he did not foretell the multiplication of its brutality in the ensuing years. Had he somehow managed to do so, he would be a prophet today, but he might well have looked like a crank at the time.
Which brings us back to Ellen Goodman. Imagine if someone in 1937 had foreknowledge of the Holocaust and began sounding the alarms, describing in detail what was going to happen just a few years later. Most people probably wouldn't believe him. They would be, to use Goodman's phrase, denying the future. But would they be "on par" with people who deny the Holocaust after it has happened?
That seems a stretch. There's an enormous difference between doubting an outlandish prediction (even one that comes true) and denying the grotesque facts of history. Because we are ignorant of the future, we can innocently misjudge it. Holocaust deniers are neither ignorant nor innocent (though extremely ignorant people may innocently accept their claims). They are falsifying history for evil purposes.
This columnist is skeptical of global warming. We don't have enough scientific knowledge to have anything like an authoritative opinion--but neither does Ellen Goodman, who bases her entire argument on an appeal to authority, namely the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We lack the time, the inclination and possibly the intellect to delve deeply into the science. No doubt the same is true of Goodman.
Our skepticism rests largely on intuition. The global-warmists speak with a certainty that is more reminiscent of religious zeal than scientific inquiry. Their demands to cast out all doubt seem antithetical to science, which is founded on doubt. The theory of global warming fits too conveniently with their pre-existing political ideologies. (Granted, we too are vulnerable to that last criticism.)
Above all, we can't stand to be bullied. And what is it but an act of bullying to deny that there is any room for honest disagreement, to insist that those of us who are unpersuaded are the equivalent of Holocaust deniers, that we are not merely mistaken but evil?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Bad Research, Worse Reporting on Global Warming
In trying to prove that the Bush administration is throttling research into global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists rolled out some breathtakingly bad science.
The group unveiled a supposedly scientific survey of more than 1,600 federal climate scientists as evidence that the administration was engaged in "wide-ranging political interference in research related to global warming."
"The new evidence shows that political interference in climate science is no longer a series of isolated incidents but a system-wide epidemic," Dr. Francesca Grifo, Director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program, said in a press release. "Tailoring scientific fact for political purposes has become a problem across many federal science agencies."
Grifo obviously doesn't' appreciate the irony when he trots out a poll that is so flawed that it is manifest evidence of exaggeration, incompetence or dishonesty on his group's part.
You don't have to be a social scientist to understand that the survey was deceptive, for example, when it lumped into the same category scientists who said they actually experienced the alleged tampering and scientists who simply "perceived" that it happened to someone else. For example, the group's press release said "Forty-three percent of respondents reported they had perceived or personally experienced changes or edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their scientific findings." But turn to the study's appendix, and you'll find that only 15 percent of the respondents said that they had actually experienced such interference.
Other examples abound: 43 percent perceived or experienced "fear of retaliation for openly expressing concerns about climate change outside my agency." Actually, only 14 percent personally harbored such a fear; the other 29 percent apparently thought they saw it in others. Notice, the question didn't ask how many actually experienced retaliation, instead of just fearing it.
When the survey finally got around to asking how many scientists actually received "requests by officials for scientists to provide incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information to the public," only 12 scientists (4 percent of respondents) did. Let's see, 12 out of the 1,630 scientists who received the survey amounts an underwhelming 0.7 percent. Hardly the kind of statistic that supports the claim of a "wide-spread epidemic" of interference.
Explaining the problem in more detail was the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a non-partisan a watchdog at George Mason University that tries to correct misinformation in the media springing from bad science, politics or ignorance.
STATS said that by lumping together scientists who actually experienced interference with those who only perceived it, the survey "creates a statistical phenomenon that artificially inflates the impression of a hostile work environment. Consider an agency that contains 10 scientists. One tells the other nine that he has encountered interference. When they are surveyed, all ten report that they have 'perceived in others and/or personally experienced' interference. So one act of interference is counted as ten acts that are 'perceived' or 'experienced'; ten percent of the scientists have been interfered with, but 100 percent report 'perceiving in others and' or personally' experiencing interference. If the agency contains 100 scientists, the interference experienced by one becomes 'perceived' interference by the other 99, and so forth."
The survey's "most obvious problem" STATS said, was the low response rate of 17 percent. "This means we don't know the views and experiences of the other 83 percent...Any professional survey researcher...will tell you that a 17 percent response rate is inadequate to draw conclusions about the group being surveyed, in the absence of other information demonstrating that the sample is representative." STATS quotes Harris Poll chairman Humphrey Taylor as saying a small response rate is more damaging than a small sample, noting that many peer-reviewed academic journals will not accept papers relying on samples smaller than 50 percent.
The survey also may be infected with a "selection bias," meaning that "the scientists who took the time and effort to fill out and return the questionnaire might be precisely those most upset about perceived interference."
STATS also refers to "a great deal of social science evidence" that such perceptions often are wrong. "The tendency to believe that others will be influenced by forces to which we ourselves are immune (e.g., by misleading advertising or partisan rhetoric) is so common that sociologists have a name for it--the 'third person effect.'"
"Finally," STATS said, "the researchers assume that all these responses refer to officials' efforts to alter certain kinds of findings about global warming. But that is not specified in the questionnaire." For example, a scientist could find a change in working conditions without it having anything to do with global warming.
The original research was bad enough, but the reporting of it was horrendous. No telling where NBC's Andrea Mitchell got the figure that "nearly half [the scientists] were pressured to eliminate the words' climate change' or 'global warming,' but it clearly wasn't from the survey, which said no such thing. Not to be outdone in the patently wrong department, the New York Times reported that 60 percent of the scientists "personally experienced" interference. ABC's Jake Tapper said, "scientists say their work on global warming has been watered down and twisted by the White House..." even though such hyperbole is not a conclusion warranted by the survey.
Naturally, editorial writers, egged on by faulty science and faulty reporting, raised the usual alarms, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune's "Bush's blatant abuse of climate scientists."
One explanation for such appalling journalism is the industry's willingness to be spoon-fed by the likes of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who gladly sanctified the bad science by giving it a platform on his Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "It appears there may have been an orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change," Waxman said.
And if anything makes Bush look bad, some in the media will show up. Like NBC's Brian Williams, for example, who intoned on his nightly newscast: "The question in Washington was this: did the Bush administration...try to cook the books on the topic of global warming?"
Of course, scientists ought not be pressured or made to change their research to suit a political or ideological agenda. I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere down the line tried, but I also don't buy the whining by some scientists about how delays in the "release of websites, press releases, reports, or other science-based materials" demonstrated some sort of conspiracy to shut them up. What do they think, that they're not working in a government bureaucracy?
I'm not surprised, but I can't excuse, how the Union of Concerned Scientists, the inexhaustibly liberal and self-appointed guardians of scientific purity, can try to corrupt science for its own ends. But I never can get over how so many of my media colleagues allow themselves to be so easily manipulated by junk science.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.
What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?
Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.
I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.
Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.
No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.
I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.
In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?
Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.
I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.
Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.
I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.
As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.
Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.
Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.
I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.
Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Climate of Opinion
Wall Street Journal
Last week's headlines about the United Nations' latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled.
The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result.
More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming.
Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.
Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.
U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.
The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise.
Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming.
All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.
While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change.
The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science.
George F. Will: Inconvenient Kyoto Truths
Enough already. It is time to call some bluffs. John Kerry says that one reason America has become an "international pariah" is President Bush's decision to "walk away from global warming." Kerry's accusation is opaque, but it implies the usual complaint that Bush is insufficiently enthusiastic about the Kyoto Protocol's binding caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. Many senators and other experts in climate science say we must "do something" about global warming. Barack Obama says "the world" is watching to see "what action we take."
Fine. President Bush should give the world something amusing to watch. He should demand that the Senate vote on the protocol.
Climate Cassandras say the facts are clear and the case is closed. (Sen. Barbara Boxer: "We're not going to take a lot of time debating this anymore.") The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets: 1. Global warming is happening. 2. It is our (humanity's, but especially America's) fault. 3. It will continue unless we mend our ways. 4. If it continues we are in grave danger. 5. We know how to slow or even reverse the warming. 6. The benefits from doing that will far exceed the costs.
Only the first tenet is clearly true, and only in the sense that the Earth warmed about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the 20th century. We do not know the extent to which human activity caused this. The activity is economic growth, the wealth-creation that makes possible improved well-being—better nutrition, medicine, education, etc. How much reduction of such social goods are we willing to accept by slowing economic activity in order to (try to) regulate the planet's climate?
We do not know how much we must change our economic activity to produce a particular reduction of warming. And we do not know whether warming is necessarily dangerous. Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there? Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?
It could cost tens of trillions (in expenditures and foregone economic growth, here and in less-favored parts of the planet) to try to fine-tune the planet's temperature. We cannot know if these trillions would purchase benefits commensurate with the benefits that would have come from social wealth that was not produced.
In 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol's essential provisions were known, a "sense of the Senate" resolution declared opposition to any agreement that would do what the protocol aims to do. The Senate warned against any agreement that would require significant reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States and other developed nations without mandating "specific scheduled commitments" on the part of the 129 "developing" countries, which include China, India, Brazil and South Korea—the second, fourth, 10th and 11th largest economies. Nothing Americans can do to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will make a significant impact on the global climate while every 10 days China fires up a coal-fueled generating plant big enough to power San Diego. China will construct 2,200 new coal plants by 2030.
The Senate's resolution expressed opposition to any agreement that "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States," which the Senate correctly thought Kyoto would do. The Senate said any agreement should be accompanied by "a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement" it, and an analysis of the agreement's "detailed financial costs and other impacts" on the U.S. economy.
The president is now on the side of the angels, having promised to "confront" the challenge of climate change. The confronting is one reason for his fascination with new fuels. (Another reason, he says, is U.S. imports of oil from unstable nations. Our largest foreign source of oil is turbulent Canada. Our second largest is Mexico, which is experiencing turbulence because of the soaring cost of tortillas. They are made from corn, which is ... well, read on.)
Ethanol produces just slightly more energy than it takes to manufacture it. But now that the government is rigging energy markets with mandates, tariffs and subsidies, ethanol production might consume half of next year's corn crop. The price of corn already has doubled in a year. Hence the tortilla turbulence south of the border. Forests will be felled (will fewer trees mean more global warming?) to clear land for growing corn, which requires fertilizer, the manufacture of which requires energy. Oh, my.
President Clinton and his earnest vice president knew better than to seek ratification of Kyoto by a Senate that had passed its resolution of disapproval 95-0. Fifty-six of those 95 senators are still serving. Two of them are John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. That is an inconvenient truth.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Why I am Skeptical about Man-Made Global Warming
A 21-page report from something called the "Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change" has been released today...in Paris, no less...and as expected, it's predictions are dire. According to the report: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Yeah right...we've heard all this before.
But the biggest bombshell here is this one: no matter what we do, global warming will not be reversed. It will go on for centuries, according to this report. The sea levels will continue to rise as polar ice caps melt. So I guess if Al Gore wins his Nobel Peace Prize, we'll still experience global warming. So much for riding to work everyday in your hybrid car...it's not doing a thing. The situation is futile, according to this report.
But really, it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this conclusion. After all, global warming is a religion. The anti-capitalist enviro-nazis don't ever want the problem to be solved. After all, if global warming were to be solved tomorrow, what would they blame the United States for? They'd have to find some other reason.
Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare:
* The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.
* Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.
* Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.
* The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?
* It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.
* It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age?
* How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening.
* Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether.
* The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.
* The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies.
* Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.
* Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.
* What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?
* Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?"
* Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?
* In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.
* There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.
* Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.
* Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.
* Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.
* Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.
* During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased.
* Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?
* Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?
* On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."
Hey ... I could go on. There's much more where that came from. But I need to get ready to go on the air. Just know that many of the strongest proponents of this "man-made" global warming stuff are dedicated opponents to capitalism and don't feel all that warm and fuzzy about the United States.
