SEPP’s initial conference will be on
Saturday, Jan 10, 10AM to Noon, at the Crystal
Tower Building at 1600 S. Eads St, directly across the street
from the Marriott Gatewy Hotel in Arlington, VA. It's quite close to the Crystal City Metro
stop (Blue and Yellow line). Free
parking: Crystal City Underground. It
looks like we will have about 50 people attending. There is no further need to reply.
“The NIPCC
Report: Nature,
Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”
Philosophical Society of Washington -- Retiring
President's lecture by Kenneth A. Haapala
Friday,
Jan 9, 2009 at 8:30 PM. Powell Hall,
Cosmos Club, 2121 Mass Ave NW, Wash, DC
http://www.philsoc.org/2008Fall/2247abstract.html All are welcome
Citizens' Alliance for
Responsible Energy will hold Townhall-Style Meetings with James
Taylor
"Climate
Change Policy and the Economic Issues It Creates"
January 13
in Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Museum, Auditorium, 200 Mountain Road, NW, Albuquerque
January 14 in Santa
Fe, State Land Office, Morgan
Hall,310 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe
5:00-7:00
PM. All are welcome! Brought to you by CARE
and The
Rio Grande Foundation
We wish you a Happy New Year!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
“He who refuses
to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.” —John McCarthy (computer
pioneer, Stanford
Univ)
********************************
THIS
WEEK
In Washington, Congress comes back -- as we await the Inauguration of Barack Obama
and confirmation hearings of his Cabinet appointments: Much discussion of prospects of tax cuts,
concern about massive budget deficits, but little talk about GW
***********************
SEPP Science Editorial #2-09 (1/10/09)
IPCC reports, and particularly their Summaries for Policy Makers (SPM), are noted for their bias in support of the political goal of control of fossil fuels in order to fight alleged anthropogenic global warming AGW).
The most blatant example is the Second Assessment Report (SAR), completed in 1995 and published in 1996. Its SPM contains the memorable phrase “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
This ambiguous phrase conveys a mental picture of climate scientists, preferably with gray beards, sitting around a table judging both human and natural influences, looking at published scientific research, and carefully weighing their decision. Nothing of the sort has ever happened. The IPCC has consistently ignored the real natural influences on climate change and has focused almost entirely on human causes, especially GH gases -- and more especially on carbon dioxide, which is linked to industrial activities and therefore bad almost by definition.
How then does the IPCC-SAR arrive at this “balance?” It was done by carefully removing references to any doubt that human influences are the major or almost exclusive cause of warming. I will quote here from the WSJ (August 13,1996) article, written by the late Professor Frederick Seitz. He compared the draft approved by the authors of IPCC-SAR Chapter 8 (Detection and Attribution) and the final printed text. He noted that key phrases had been deleted from the approved draft before printing.
This IPCC
report, like all others, is held in such high regard largely because it has
been peer-reviewed. That is, it has been read, discussed, modified and approved
by an international body of experts. These scientists have laid their
reputations on the line. But this report is not what it appears to be--it is
not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the
title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific
community, including service as president of both the National Academy of
Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more
disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to
this IPCC report.
A comparison
between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published
version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and
accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. The scientists
were assuming that the IPCC would obey the IPCC Rules--a body of regulations
that is supposed to govern the panel's actions. Nothing in the IPCC Rules
permits anyone to change a scientific report after it has been accepted by the
panel of scientific contributors and the full IPCC.
The
participating scientists accepted "The Science of Climate Change" in
Madrid last November; the full IPCC accepted it the following month in Rome.
But more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report--the key chapter setting
out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over
climate--were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining
this question had accepted the supposedly final text.
Few of these
changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints of the
skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are
having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in
particular.
The following
passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from
the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:
·
“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can
attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in
greenhouse gases."
The reviewing scientists used this original language
to keep themselves and the IPCC honest. I am in no position to know who made
the major changes in Chapter 8; but the report's lead author, Benjamin D.
Santer, must presumably take the major responsibility.
IPCC reports are often called the
"consensus" view. If they lead to carbon taxes and restraints on
economic growth, they will have a major and almost certainly destructive impact
on the economies of the world. Whatever the intent was of those who made these
significant changes, their effect is to deceive policy makers and the public
into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing
global warming.
If the IPCC is incapable of following its most basic
procedures, it would be best to abandon the entire IPCC process, or at least
that part that is concerned with the scientific evidence on climate change, and
look for more reliable sources of advice to governments on this important
question.
In addition to these text changes there are also two key graphs that were doctored in order to convey the impression that anthropogenic influences are dominant.
You may recall that this dishonest 1996 IPCC report played a key role in the political deliberations that led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The persons responsible for making these alterations bear a heavy responsibility for misleading the Kyoto conference and for the subsequent economic damage.
****************************************************************
1. Obama WH: Split
views on GW --NYT
2.
Greens plan to set Obama agenda –Tom Randall
3.
Science perverted
in the WH? – Alan Caruba
4. Sea level rise in Holland
just normal – Hendrik Tennekes
5. Poznan and the EU – Hans Labohm
6. A primer on CO2 – Alan
Caruba
7. ‘Consensus and Debate’ –
John Brignell
***************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
The Heartland
Institute will host its second International Conference on Climate Change, to
be held once again in New York City, March 8-10. I am pleased to announce that
SEPP is a co-sponsor, and having participated in the conference last year, I
highly recommend that you attend this year’s meeting. Heartland’s theme this
year is, Global Warming: Was it Ever Really a Crisis?
The conference will feature presentations by over 70 scientists who are
skeptics of the (dwindling) public perception that the world is inevitably
headed towards global warming-driven catastrophe, absent mitigation of
greenhouse-gas emissions. Among the top scientists who will speak will be the
last living astronaut to have walked on the moon, Dr. Jack Schmitt.
Other speakers from the U.S. and around the world include Dr. Robert Balling
(Arizona State University), Dr. Stanley Goldenberg (NOAA), Dr. William Gray
(Colorado State University), Dr. Yuri Izrael (IPCC), Dr. Patrick Michaels
(University of Virginia), Dr. Paul Reiter (Institut Pasteur, Paris), Dr. S.
Fred Singer (Science and Environmental Policy Project), Dr. Willie Soon
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), and Dr. Roy Spencer (Univ of
Alabama, Huntsville).
Visit Heartland’s website to learn more: http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
**************************************
In Dec 008 the
Northeastern region conducted its second carbon credit auction, raising $106
million to be divvied up this month among 10 states in the area and then used
to promote clean energy technologies. That process is being viewed by the
incoming presidential administration as a possible national prototype. Most were purchased by electric utilities
[which will pass the cost to ratepayers]
****************************
Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice
levels now
equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Michael Asher, Daily Tech, 1 January 2009
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834
********************
Dr. Patrick Frank
has written a great article for Skeptic magazine:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html
And here's the URL for the Supporting Information, where all the analysis can
be found:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01resources/climate_belief_supporting_info.pdf
*****************************
Read Jim Peden’s
opus magnum http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
.
*************************************
UNDER THE BOTTOM
LINE
An attack on
Gore? In the Huff Post? You must read to believe this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html?view=print
The alarmists are apoplectic and confused http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/6/82954/04643
*************************************
BTW, has anyone seen
Al Gore lately?
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/07/uk-starts-paying-subsidies-for-record-colds/
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/01/brrrr-record-snow-cold-causing-snow.html
****************
Global Warming
Horror Flick Put on Ice Due to Cold Temps? Newsbusters.org
Excerpt:
How embarrassing is it when you produce a horror movie based on global warming
and when the time comes to release it, the planet is experiencing some of the
coldest weather in decades? Such is the case with The Thaw starring Val Kilmer.
Filmed in Canada last summer, it should be ready for release by now but even
though the trailer
has been produced, no specific release date has been announced. Perhaps the
producers realize how much of a laughingstock this movie would become if a
movie based on the premise of global warming were released when their potential
audience is freezing. [H/t Marc
Morano]
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/01/08/global-warming-horror-flick-put-ice
****************************
More spin from
World Meteorological. Org: 'We mustn't confuse the current weather that we're
seeing with global warming' - Europe shivers, but world is getting hotter [H/t
Marc Morano]
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKTRE5082S720090109
*************************************************************
‘roo-burgers, anyone? http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090104/sc_afp/australiaclimatefood
###################################**
1. IN
OBAMA'S TEAM, TWO CAMPS ON CLIMATE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/washington/03enviro.html?_r=1&ref=science
By JOHN
M. BRODER, January 3, 2009
WASHINGTON - In the
fall of 1997, when the Clinton administration was forming its position for the
Kyoto climate treaty talks, Lawrence H. Summers argued that the United States
would risk damaging the domestic economy if it set overly ambitious goals for
reducing carbon emissions.
Mr. Summers, then
the deputy Treasury secretary, said at the time that there was a compelling
scientific case for action on global warming but that a too-rapid move against
emissions of greenhouse gases risked dire and unknowable economic consequences.
His view prevailed
over those of officials arguing for tougher standards, among them Carol M.
Browner, then the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and her
mentor, Al Gore, then the vice president.
Today, as the
climate-change debate once again heats up, Mr. Summers leads the economic team
of the incoming administration, and Ms. Browner has been designated its White
House coordinator of energy and climate policy. And Mr. Gore is hovering as an
informal adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.
As Mr. Obama seeks
to find the right balance between his environmental goals and his plans to
revive the economy, he may have to resolve conflicting views among some of his
top advisers.
While Mr. Summers's
thinking on climate change has evolved over the last decade, his views on the
potential risks to the economy of an aggressive effort to limit carbon
emissions have not. But he now works for a president-elect who has set
ambitious goals for addressing global warming through a government-run
cap-and-trade system.
It may once again
prove to be Mr. Summers's role to inject a rigorous economist's reality check
into the debate over the scope and speed of an attack on global warming.
According to a
transition official familiar with Mr. Summers's thinking, he is wary of moving
very quickly on a carbon cap, because doing so could raise energy costs, kill
jobs and deepen the current recession. He foresees a phase-in of several years
for any carbon restraint regime, particularly if the economy continues to be
sluggish, a slower timetable than many lawmakers and environmentalists are
pressing.
Mr. Summers and
Peter R. Orszag, the economist whom Mr. Obama has designated director of the
White House budget office, have both argued that a tax on carbon emissions from
burning gasoline, coal and other fuels might be a more economically efficient
means of regulating pollutants than a cap-and-trade system, under which an
absolute ceiling on emissions is set and polluters are allowed to buy and sell
permits to meet it.
But Mr. Obama and
Ms. Browner have ruled out a straight carbon tax, perhaps mindful of the
stinging political defeat the Clinton administration suffered in 1993 when,
prodded by Mr. Gore, it proposed one.
Mr. Obama was asked
in a television interview last month whether he would consider imposing a stiff
tax on gasoline, whose price has now fallen to below $2 a gallon after cresting
above $4 a gallon last summer.
He replied that
while American families were getting some relief at the pump, they were hurting
in other ways, through rising unemployment and falling home values. "So
putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is a
mistake," he said. At least for the
present, then, the idea of a carbon tax has been shelved, and Mr. Obama's
economic and environmental advisers are working, along with Congress, to devise
a cap-and-trade system.
But difficult
debates lie ahead within the White House, between the White House and Congress,
and within the Democratic Party, whose deep divisions on climate change break
down along ideological and geographical lines.
The fight in
November between two Democrats, Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and
Henry A. Waxman of California, for the chairmanship of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee was a preview. It pitted lawmakers from auto- and coal-producing
states against liberal lawmakers from California and the East Coast, Blue Dog
fiscal conservatives against environmentalists, pro-business moderates against
regulatory activists. Mr. Waxman, with the tacit support of the Obama camp and
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, won, but narrowly.
That was just a
taste of the broader and potentially more bitter fight over global warming and
energy legislation, which will have profound implications for the American
economy, the environment and foreign policy. Both sides - those seeking strict
enforcement of emissions limits and those concerned about higher energy costs
and potential job losses - will find receptive ears in the new White House,
Obama aides and outside analysts said.
"There is a
diversity of opinion among Democrats over the best way to contain costs
associated with a climate change plan," said Scott Segal, a utility
lobbyist in Washington, who cited rival approaches pushed by Senator Barbara
Boxer of California, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee,
and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, chairman of the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee. "I think there
is room within the current range of administration advisers to accommodate all
those points of view," Mr. Segal said.
The Obama transition
did not make Ms. Browner or Mr. Summers available for on-the-record interviews.
A spokesman, Nick Shapiro, said that Mr. Obama had appointed advisers with
differing views but that ultimately he would set policy. "At the end of the day," Mr. Shapiro
said in an e-mail statement, "the advisers will be charged with
implementing President-elect Obama's strong targets that set us on a course to
reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80
percent by 2050. However, the president-elect appointed a cabinet with diverse
views and looks forward to strong debate within the cabinet on how best to
achieve those outcomes."
Emissions of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the United States in 2007 were about 15
percent above 1990's level, according to the Department of Energy.
In past public
statements and writings, Ms. Browner and Mr. Summers have wrestled with the
difficult choices posed by global warming and at times have come to different
conclusions on how to minimize the impact on the economy.
Ms. Browner has
been a forceful advocate for strict carbon limits for years and has said that a
comprehensive cap-and-trade system is the best way to achieve swift and certain
reductions in emissions. She has said that the plan could include flexibility
for carbon-emitting businesses by allowing them to bank and borrow permits, but
she has not supported setting a maximum price or "safety valve" cost
in case permits become prohibitively expensive, as Mr. Summers and Mr. Orszag have.
She has urged
Congress to take up the issue quickly in the new year. In September, in
testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Ms. Browner pointedly
noted that the Supreme Court had given the E.P.A. authority to regulate
greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. She implied that if Mr. Obama was
elected, the new administration might unilaterally seek to curb carbon
emissions should Congress not act. "Given the magnitude of the problem,
and the scale of the solution required," she said, "I believe it is
important that Congress provide national leadership on this issue."
Mr. Summers
believes a cap-and-trade program can be a workable solution, provided it
includes some sort of escape clause if prices rise too quickly, according to
several articles he has written in the past two years. He has also expressed a
belief that developing nations must also adhere to carbon limits, or
manufacturing jobs will migrate to countries without them.
In a forum at the
Brookings Institution a year ago, Mr. Summers said the current moment on
climate change was analogous to that on health care in 1992: Everyone agreed
that the current system was unsustainable, but there was less agreement on how
to address the complexities and costs. There was a general expectation that
with the inauguration of a new Democratic president, something would be done.
"In the end," Mr. Summers said, "what everyone agreed needed to
happen didn't happen in 1993."
=====================================================================
SEPP
Comment: Someone needs to educate Larry
Summers (and others) about the lack of scientific evidence for AGW – and that
carbon mitigation is pointless and counter to economic recovery
**********************************
2. GREEN GROUPS SET OBAMA
AGENDA (Part I of II)
By Tom Randall, January 6, 2009
It has long been clear that the leadership of the major environmental groups
has no interest in the environment; rather, their focus is on international
governmental control of all aspects of economic and personal life. They
have now joined together to produce an environmental agenda that is set to
drive the Obama White House and advance international control of all phases of
public policy.
The 391-page plan, titled Transition to Green, employing Doublespeak in
ways George Orwell never dreamed of, will use the economy to pursue their
central-government-control agenda making their new regulations and legislation
in the guise of economic stimulus. This guise will be used to sell
regulation and legislation that would otherwise be unacceptable to the public.
You can link to the entire 391-page plan at: http://www.winningreen.com/site/epage/71946_621.htm
***************************************************
3. WITNESSING A PERVERSION OF SCIENCE
By
Alan Caruba
http://www.anxietycenter.com/warning/main.htm#topstory
Here’s part of what
Barack Obama had to say when he announced the appointment of Dr. John P.
Holdren to be his science adviser:
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing
resources—It’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that
facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.”
The problem with
this is not that it is true but that Obama has appointed the most ideologically
committed team of people to oversee the “science” his administration will
champion. Here’s what Dr. John D. Holdren had to say in a commentary published
in the Boston Globe:
“The few
climate-change ‘skeptics’ with any sort of scientific credentials continue to
receive attention in the media all out of proportion to their numbers, their
qualifications, or the merit of their arguments...The extent of unfounded
skepticism about the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse
gases is not just regrettable, it is dangerous. It has delayed and continues to
delay the development of the political consensus that will be needed.”
What Dr. Holdren
does seem to understand or even care about is that science does not operate by
consensus. That’s why a “political consensus” on global warming or as the
Greens now call it—climate change—is the real danger.
The only people
disinterested in the truth about the Earth’s climate are people like Dr.
Holdren, Al Gore, and the rest of the crowd that has devoted itself to
trumpeting completely discredited “scientific” proof that global warming is
happening. The problem for them is that (a) what warming that occurred since
the end of the last Little Ice Age in 1850 was completely natural, (b) there is
zero proof that any element of that warming was the result of
human—anthropogenic—activity, and (c)Dr. Holdren has a long track record of
being wrong.
As New York Times
writer, John Tierney, noted in a December 19 blog post, “Does being
spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your
chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging
by reports…that Barack Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor.”
Along with fellow alarmist, Paul Ehrlich, Dr. Holdren accepted a wager with
Julian Simon during the “energy crisis” of the 1980s to name several natural
resources which would they said cost more in ten years due to scarcity. At the
time, Dr. Holdren was co-director of the graduate program in energy and
resources at the University of California. Suffice it to say that he and
Ehrlich lost the wager concerning every resource they named.
When Bjorn Lomborg
published “The Skeptical Environmentalist” in 2001, Dr. Holdren, according to
Tierney, “joined in an extraordinary attack on the book in Scientific
American—an attack that I thought did far more harm to the magazine’s
reputation than to Dr. Lomborg’s.”
The many—they now
number in the thousands—of scientists that have come forward to oppose the lies
behind “global warming” or “climate change” have been continually attacked, not
because the science they advance is wrong, but because it is politically wrong
in the view of alarmists like Dr. Holdren.
One such brave soul
is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who, along with 23 other contributors, some of whom are
among the most respected atmospheric scientists, authored a rebuke to the years
of falsified data put forth in reports by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Its summary is titled “Nature, Not Human Activity,
Rules the Climate.”
Recently, two
full-time abusers of the truth, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt, attacked Dr.
Singer and the study that found the United Nations’ IPCC reports, the basis for
the Kyoto Protocol and “global warming” alarms, were filled with errors and
distortions.
As Joseph Bast and
James M. Taylor of the Heartland Institute point out, Mann is the author of a
“hockey stick” temperature graph that was used by the IPCC to fuel
global-warming hysteria, “but which a Congressionally appointed panel of
experts found was not supported by scientific data.” Schmidt, a climate modeler
for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies “has in recent weeks been
frantically trying to explain why his organization falsely reported that
October 2008 was the warmest October in recorded history.”
That’s how these
global warming folks operate. If they can’t get the science to support their
grand hoax, they work to get themselves close to people of power where they can
use the power of government to continue their lies and attack the
truth-tellers.
President-elect
Obama is totally committed to the global warming hoax. He has now surrounded
himself with a who’s who of environmental loonies and a perversion of science
will be the predictable outcome.
**************************************
4. HOLLAND INUNDATED? NO WAY!
Guest Weblog by Hendrik Tennekes (former director of
research, Dutch Meteorological
Institute) http://climatesci.org/2008/12/12/holland-inundated-no-way-guest-weblog-by-hendrik-tennekes/
My weblogs
of 28 October and 7 November, and an incisive two-page centerfold article by
Karel Knip in the November 8 issue of NRC/ Handelsblad**, Rotterdam’s
counterpart to the New York Times, finally received a clear response from KNMI,
the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
In a
November 10 message to the director-in-chief of KNMI, I suggested that the
Institute should contemplate issuing a low-end
estimate for sea-level rise, in order to balance the alarmist furore sweeping
the country. This is exactly what KNMI decided to do. In an op-ed piece in the
December 11 issue of NRC/Handelsblad, Wilco Hazeleger, a senior scientist in
the global climate research group at KNMI, writes:
“In the past century the sea level has risen
twenty centimeters. There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise.
It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures. It is wise to
adopt a flexible, step-by-step adaptation strategy. By all means, let us not
respond precipitously.”
[SEPP:
This opinion, of course, chimes with the statement by NIPCC]
“Fortunately, the time rate of climate change is slow compared to the
life span of the defense structures along our coast. There is enough time for
adaptation. We should monitor the situation carefully, but up to now climate
change does not cause severe problems for our coastal defense system. IPCC has
given lower estimates for the expected sea level rise in four successive
reports.”
As far as I
am concerned, this settles the matter. KNMI has spoken. It has spoken clearly.
There is no imminent danger of accelerated sea-level rise.
-----------------------------------
**http://www.nrc.nl/binnenland/article2089560.ece/KNMI_nuance_ontbreekt_in_plan_Deltacommissie
******************************************
5.
POZNAN REDUX
The
following appeared on Jan. 5th
in the “Financieele Dagblad”, the Dutch equivalent of Canada’s Financial Post.
The author is economist-columnist Hans Labohm who keeps the torch of Climate
Scepticism high in the Netherlands. The
piece gives a more objective look at the results of last month’s meetings in
Poznan and Brussels than the releases by the organisers of those events.
The agreement was indeed historic, but in a different way than suggested by the Minister. In the “small print” which is part of the compromise, the EU said farewell to its isolated position in the world of climate management. Indeed, important sectors of European industry will be exempted from the compulsory purchase of CO2 -emission permits, in order not to be disadvantaged against foreign competitors who will not participate in the Kyoto Protocol.
Even more important is the inclusion of a revision clause in the agreement, as a reaction to German, Italian and Polish objections. This clause subjects the European goals to the results of the worldwide UN Climate Conference which will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009. If no agreement were to be achieved there – which is probable – the provisional EU-compromise will also be opened up again.
In climate discussions, holding back crucial information is common practice. Average world temperature has decreased over the past ten years and astronomers expect further cooling. Those who depend exclusively on the official climate information are not aware of such facts. There is an urgent need for the climate-establishment to provide honest information on the climate “problem” to the public and politicians.
It is questionable whether this Minister is as yet capable of making this turn-around. She is so caught up in her own virtual reality that it will be most difficult to extract herself from it.
---------------------------------------
Translated from the
Dutch by Albert Jacobs (Calgary)
***************************************
6. THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT GLORIOUS CARBON DIOXIDE
Okay, children, let’s all sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about carbon dioxide (CO2).
Why do we need to know about CO2? Because the President-elect, several of his choices for environmental and energy agencies, the Supreme Court, and much of the U.S. Congress have no idea what they are talking about and, worse, want to pass legislation and regulations that will further bankrupt the United States of America.
Do I have your attention now?
For the purpose of the lesson, I will be borrowing heavily from a paper on CO2 written by Robert A. Ashworth [http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/No_Evidence.pdf]. It requires some understanding of science, but anyone with a reasonable education and common sense should be able to read it on their own. Ashworth is a chemical engineer.
Suffice it to say that if any of the nitwits babbling about CO2 and global warming ever went to any of the several dozen excellent websites that provide accurate scientific data and analysis, they would cease from their abusive manipulation of the public and perhaps find honest work.
To begin at the beginning; at the heart of the global warming hoax is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While it purports to represent the views of thousands of scientists, it does not. As Ashworth notes, “Most scientists do not agree with the CO2 global warming premise. In the United States 31,072 scientists, including the author, have signed a petition rejecting the Kyoto global warming agreement.” An additional 1,000 scientists are being verified to be added to the list. Thousands more exist who find the assertion that CO2 will destroy the Earth totally absurd.
Here’s what you need to know: If an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) is directly related, i.e. causes changes in the Earth’s temperature, there would be a direct correlation between the two. As CO2 rose, we would see a comparable rise in the Earth’s temperature. This correlation does not exist.
Global warming liars, however, insist that CO2 builds up on the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is untrue. “Every year around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere,” notes Ashworth, “and the reduction continues until around mid-to-late August when plants start to go dormant.”
“It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon dioxide.” Farmers call this the growing season, followed by the harvest season, followed by snow and cold during which nothing grows. Modern civilization, beginning about 5,000 years ago, is predicated on the ability to provide food to both humans and livestock, all based on these obvious seasonal cycles.
The ancient Egyptians and Mayans understood the seasons, but they are apparently too difficult a concept for today’s many ex-politicians, some PhD’s, United Nation’s flunkies, and high-school teachers.
Warming and cooling cycles are well known throughout human history, reaching back to the days of ancient Rome. There were Viking settlements in Greenland because they arrived in warmer times. By 1410 the place froze up. Shakespeare lived during a Little Ice Age when the Thames would freeze too. The man-made emissions of CO2 had nothing, zero, to do with these climate events.
The IPCC, however, with its agenda to tax and control energy use that produces CO2, is not based on either the obvious or more complex science involved. Its “data” is the invention of computer models that are deliberately manipulated to produce false results which, in turn, can be announced worldwide.
In March 2008, The Heartland Institute brought together more than 500 climatologists, meteorologists, economists, and others for two days of seminars and addresses that totally destroyed the IPCC’s lies. It will do so again for a second time, March 8-10 of this year in New York City. Suffice it to say that the mainstream media did its best to ridicule or ignore the event and will no doubt do so again.
Here, then, is a fundamental fact about CO2 you need to commit to memory. “Nature absorbs 98.5% of the CO2 that is emitted by nature and man.” Nature is a totally self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to “control” the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline-fueled lawn mowers, not to forget fireplaces where logs glow or just about any human activity you can name, including exhaling two pounds of the stuff every day!
“Further,” says Ashworth, “no regulation by man is necessary because CO2 is not a pollutant; it is part of the animal-plant life cycle. Without it, life would not exist on Earth. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases plant growth, which is a very good thing during a period of world population growth and an increasing demand for food.”
“Taxing carbon,” Ashworth adds, “would do absolutely nothing to improve the climate but would be devastating hardship to the people of the world.” For example, U.S. Representative John Dingell’s plan to tax carbon would add 13% to the cost of electricity and 32% to the cost of gasoline; just what we need during a Recession that threatens to become a Depression.
Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, recently asked, “How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions, and evidence of incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility? CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant.”
It is time to rebuke everyone attempting to foist the global warming hoax and carbon taxes on the United States and the rest of the world. It is time let Congress and the White House know that Americans will not be ruled by laws that have no scientific merit.
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Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
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7. CONSENSUS AND DEBATE
Excerpts from Prof. John Brignell’s ‘Numberwatch’ http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm
This is a word redolent of the state of contemporary science. It is a political word, not a scientific one. Most of the great innovations in science have been by individuals, or very small groups, striking out from the prevailing opinion to establish new frontiers. As Einstein is reputed to have remarked, when the Nazis published a book in which one hundred German scientists pronounced him wrong, “It only needed one of them to be right.”
There was indeed a “consensus” in physics at the start of the twentieth century that “the science is settled”, but that was blown apart by Einstein and his contemporaries. Most of the great breakthroughs in science are made by those who are in a minority of one. The moral pressure to join the consensus and support the establishment view is substantial, even carrying the threat of dismissal. Such things have no place in a free society. This is not persuasion, it is enforcement.
Research funding is exclusively given to proponents of establishment theories and denied to opponents. It is a remarkable tribute to the human spirit that so many dare stand up to the bullies and accept the contemptuous label of “denialist” (not that the general public ever get to hear of them). Others, who have family responsibilities, have to preserve their reservations for private conversation.
As for the accompanying slogan “The science is settled”, if it is settled it is not science and if it is science it is not settled.
DEBATE: A crucial
component of real science is debate. At the 1927 Fifth Solvay International
Conference, the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the new quantum
theory. Einstein found himself defending classical physics against his good
friend Niels Bohr. Einstein, dissenting from new concepts such as Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle, remarked "God does not play dice." Bohr
replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do." Ultimately,
seventeen of the twenty-nine participants were Nobel Prize winners.
That is the way science solves its great
controversies. A conference is held, at which the opposing factions question
each other’s position, and in the end a solution is reached. Propagandists,
however, do not like debate.
In 2005 in the UK two conferences occurred. One was a modest affair organised by scientists for scientists. Most participants were there under their own financial steam. The speakers were distinguished real scientists (as opposed to "climate" scientists), who presented evidence - numbers, charts and photographs. The other was a lavish three-day, politically-inspired festival subsidised by the Government, with an elaborate banquet and not a dissenting voice. Such evidence as was presented was highly selective, though most of the claims arose from computer models. Guess which one received coverage by the environmental editors.
Then there is pseudo-debate, in which the
BBC specialises. A believer is put up against a non-believer, then scrupulous
editing ensures that one looks like the fount of wisdom and the other looks
foolish.