The Destruction Of The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

No, it's not about the "Al Gore Effect" causing the current record-setting snowfall and blizzard conditions in Washington, D.C., it is not about partisan politics, it is about the public recognition and for many, the begrudging acceptance that the idea of man-caused global warming, or climate change is utter and complete rubbish.

It is also about corruption and fraud on a massive national and international scale that has cost taxpayers Billions of dollars, Euros, Pounds and every other currency over at least two decades. It is about a corrupt and dysfunctional United Nations. It is about unethical, naive, and gullible, if not corrupt scientists, in America, and around the world. All this and more is coming to light as the house of cards that was the concept of man-caused global warming comes crashing down.

Should we be angry? Was it just a mistake? Was Al Gore just uneducated and stupid to believe the trash coming from these "climate scientists"? Do we pass this off as just "politics" as usual?
Or, as I say, we had better take what is happening as a wake up call. We had all better become skeptical and questioning about what our political leaders tell us. We had better question every decision, every claim, every policy decision, whether domestic or foreign. We had better not simply blindly assume that they have our best interests in mind. Let this be everyone's wake-up call!
Peter

The great global warming collapse

FROM-The Globe and Mail

Margaret Wente

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.....
Read entire article here

Osama Bin Laden Joins Forces With Al Gore

Oh, this is good. Osama Bin Laden has joined forces with Al Gore, The United Nations, Barack Obama and others who seem determined to bring down America and destroy western civilization. The next thing you know Osama Bin Laden will be financing the campaigns of liberal Democrats running for election in America......if he isn't already.
Peter

Bin Laden blames U.S. for climate change

New tape from terror leader says global warming is 'an actual fact'

NBC News and news services

updated 7:35 a.m. CT, Fri., Jan. 29, 2010

CAIRO - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and said that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.

He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."

Bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warning in past messages, but the latest tape was his first dedicated to the topic.

Climate change an 'actual fact'
The speech, which included almost no religious rhetoric, could be an attempt by the terror leader to give his message an appeal beyond Islamic militants.

"This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions, intentionally or unintentionally, and about the action we must take," he said.

"Speaking about climate change is not an intellectual luxury, the phenomenon is actual fact."

He pointed out that former President George W. Bush had not signed the Kyoto emissions agreement although most industrialized countries did.

Grave ramifications
Bin Laden targeted the U.S. economy in particular in the recording, calling for a boycott of American products and an end to the dollar's domination as a world currency.

"We should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible," he said.

"I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America."

He argued that such steps would also hamper Washington's war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.

The Associated Press and NBC News contributed to this report.

Mann-Made Global Warming

What a scandal! Billions of dollars wasted on a hoax and a fraud. That is exactly what the modern science is that has created the myth of man-caused global warming. Every one of us has been lied to and cheated. Read on.
Peter

Climategate Scandal Broadens

Certified consulting meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo of Icecap.us and a computer programmer from San Jose, Michael Smith, have written an expose of extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the federal government’s National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City. D’Aleo says in the report, “NOAA is seriously complicit in data manipulation and fraud…CRU’s Director at the time Phil Jones acknowledges that CRU mirrors the NOAA data. ‘Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center.’”

John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, aired a special last night on KUSI-TV covering their discoveries: A 14-minute video segment is available here. The report’s four key revelations:

1. NCDC is no longer monitoring many actual temperature stations. Coleman explains, “In the transition to a computer averaging system, the National Data Climate Center deleted actual temperatures at thousands of locations throughout the world as it evolved to a system of global grid boxes. The number that goes into each grid box is determined by averaging the temperatures of two or more weather observation stations nearest that grid box.” This method is inaccurate according to D’Aleo because “temperatures are not linear over space, but instead vary enormously because of differences in terrain, elevation, vegetation, water versus land and urbanization." It also makes an apples and oranges situation, comparing today’s averaged grid boxes to past actual station temperatures.

2. The number of weather stations NCDC uses was reduced 75%, from approximately 6,000 to 1,000 stations.

3. The vast majority of the stations cut from the record were from the cooler higher latitudes and altitudes. Smith says, "The more I looked, the more I found patterns of deletion that could not be accidental. Thermometers moved from cold mountains to warm beaches; from Siberian Arctic to more southerly locations and from pristine rural locations to jet airport tarmacs. The last remaining Arctic thermometer in Canada is in a place called 'The Garden Spot of the Arctic,’ always moving away from the cold and toward the heat.”

4. Temperatures then were altered by “homogenization,” a process which always seemed to result in higher readings. According to the report,”the data centers then performed some final adjustments to the gathered data before final analysis. These adjustments are in some cases frequent and undocumented. Examining raw data versus processed final data shows numerous examples where the adjusted data shows a warming trend where the raw data had little change.”

MSNBC Censorship

MSNBC and NBC and General electric has closed down our excellent Discussion Board on the Environment, and broken many friendships and buried much valuable information. The site is shut-down but still accessible to read what has been posted for years. This is availbable here:

http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/board.aspx?BoardID=781


Many people who were on this board have migrated here:
http://boards.msn.com/UKNewsboards/board.aspx?BoardID=809

join us.
Peter

Family Feud At General Electric

As has been pointed out here (do a search on General Electric) many times, General Electric Corporation (GE), which owns NBC, MSNBC, "Newsweek Magazine", The Weather Channel and the Discovery Channel, is accused of broadcasting misinformation about global warming for their own monetary benefit.

In other words, this large corporation which manufactures and sells things such as wind turbines, solar panels, fluorescent light bulbs, "clean coal technology", and nuclear power plants, and has a huge stake in the "cap and trade" carbon hustle---- this same corporation operates and maintains its own propaganda machine. They have been pouring out a consistent stream of inaccurate "news" about the catastrophes awaiting us all if we do not immediately act to prevent global warming and climate change. Interestingly, the things they propose to save us, all come back to buying GE products or having the government grant them subsidies, tax credits, or outright grants, loans, and now "economic stimulus" money.

This has been reported on here and elsewhere in the non-mainstream media, but now it seems even NBC affiliates are beginning to smell the rot and stink of GE activity. Hopefully this will all be brought out into the fresh air for the public to see.
Peter

NBC Affiliate Meteorologist Rips MSNBC for Apocalyptic Global Warming Special

Michigan affiliate's chief meteorologist slams disingenuousness of MSNBC's 'Future Earth' special; GE's financial stake in cap-and-trade passage.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute
4/27/2009 4:19:36 PM

NBC Universal and its networks have been criticized for the global warming alarmism it parades on a regular basis. However, now the criticism is coming from its own affiliates.

Prior to its April 26 airing on MSNBC, shows on NBC had been promoting the first part of the climate special “Future Earth” – an MSNBC program that used computer animation to show the possibilities of a polar icecap melting. That prompted Bill Steffen, a meteorologist for NBC’s Grand Rapids, Mich. affiliate, to call out MSNBC for that special.

Steffen challenged several premises of “Future Earth: Journey to the End of the World,” on his WoodTV.com blog. Steffen debunked the entire series premise that is posted on the MSNBC Web site: “Find out why Earth’s climate machine — the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast. Learn about our planet’s future, and how you can stop its decline.”

“First, the North Pole is not ‘Earth’s Climate Machine,’” Steffen wrote. “There is far more heat and area in the Tropics than at the North Pole. Second, YOU can’t stop its decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big - you personally are insignificant compared to nature. Don’t you wish you had the power to control icecaps! If you don’t mind some profanity, check out George Carlin’s take on ‘Saving the Planet.’ Third, MSNBC does not know ‘our planet’s future.’”

Steffen rebutted claims of the MSNBC special saying that ice in the Antarctic has actually been expanding and that polar ice melting alone would not cause sea level to rise as depicted in the “Future Earth.”

“Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean,” Steffen wrote.

Steffen also pointed out, as many others have, the financial stake NBC Universal’s parent company General Electric (NYSE:GE) has invested in cap-and-trade becoming law.

“One last point, MSNBC is owned by General Electric,” Steffen wrote. “GE is already making money off the issue with their Carbon Credit Master Card (link from ‘Treehugger,’ no less). Here’s CNN’s story on the new credit card.”

Steffen even showed how much GE has spent lobbying for environmental causes, originally reported by the Washington Examiner on March 3.

“Interesting note: In the fourth quarter of 2008 as GE/NBC stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Steffen wrote. “In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying. Reviewing their lobbying filings, GE’s specific lobbying issues included the ‘Climate Stewardship Act,’ ‘Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,’ ‘Global Warming Reduction Act,’ ‘Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,’ ‘Low Carbon Economy Act,’ and ‘Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.’ Do you think this ‘big business’ is just concerned about the environment?”

The Climate AND Attitudes Are Changing!

Things sure get interesting when the mainstream media allows questions to be asked about the causes of the climate climate change phenomena usually blamed on man-caused global warming. In this case the common periods of draught in Australia receive an alternate explanation. Then given a chance, the fears of dying coral reefs, drowning polar bears, increased hurricanes, flooding, and heat waves will all be shown to be part of a natural, not man-caused, pattern of climate change.

Let us hope the following article is an example of a shift in attitude from one of Al Gore and Jim Hansen-type climate alarmism, to one of reason and common sense.
Peter

The climate sure is changing when doubt gets an airing
Written by Andrew Bolt, Melbourne Herald Sun
Tuesday, 21 April 2009

HMM, I could be wrong. Maybe the climate is changing after all. The intellectual climate, I mean. For years it's been a social crime to doubt man is heating the world to hell.

But suddenly the ice is cracking - and no, not the ice around Antarctica, which has actually grown. Take a few signs from last week alone. Australia's pre-eminent academic geologist, Prof Ian Plimer, published Heaven and Earth, challenging the gospel that the world is warming dangerously and that human-caused gases are to blame.

In fact, says Plimer, what warming we saw until a decade ago was not unusual, not dangerous and most likely caused mainly by solar activity. What's more, temperatures now seem to be falling.

While true, this kind of talk has been enough - until recently - to get you defamed as crazy or corrupt. Only last November, Plimer had a leper's bell rung over his head when he appeared on the ABC's Lateline Business, with presenter Ticky Fullerton warning he was "a geologist, not a climatologist" who "by definition works closely with the mining industry". Cross yourselves!
(When did the ABC last warn viewers that Al Gore "is an ex-politician, not a climatologist", and Tim Flannery "is a mammal expert, not a climatologist"?)

Then came Fullerton's "how-corrupt-are-you" question: "You are a greenhouse heretic . . . Is this scepticism genuine, or it it also about economic self-interest?"
(Has the ABC asked Flannery: "Is your warming belief genuine, or is it also about the $50,000 speaking fees?")

So what's changed? Perhaps not that much, but Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan, long a warming alarmist, did last week praise Plimer's book to the cooling heavens, and confess he could have been wrong in his own warming faith.

On Wednesday, another shock. The ABC's evangelical PM program did, true, report stock predictions of doom from alarmist scientists, but not before giving air time to two sceptical ones who'd given evidence to a Senate inquiry into the Rudd Government's planned emissions trading scheme.

And so listeners heard environmental engineer Prof Stewart Franks, say the West "has been railroaded into this notion of disastrous climate change for which there is no empirical evidence".

They also heard environmental geologist Prof Bob Carter warn that even if the world resumed warming, the Rudd scheme would at best cut temperatures by a thousandth of a degree, but at an insane cost.

And on Saturday came the final straw in the wind - even the ABC's AM gave Plimer an interview, albeit not without some alarmist at the end to "balance" his views as Flannery's never are.

By then Plimer's publisher had already sold an extraordinary 5000 copies of Heaven and Earth in just a week to a public clearly having second thoughts about all the warming hype.

By then, too, other researchers had given yet another reason to doubt.
The University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre has now found that our Big Dry is not unusual and not caused by global warming (as the Government insists), announcing: "The causes of southeastern Australia's longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.

"A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole - a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water - dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia."
This explanation "challenges the accepted understanding of the key drivers of Australia's climate", the centre added. No kidding?

I hope the example of last week's three sceptical scientists - and of the NSW climate change researchers - inspires others to now cry that the emperor has no clothes. Or, rather, that he's wearing a jumper, it's got so cool.

You see, in just one week this month, I talked to three federal frontbenchers (two Labor), one prominent union leader and two media stars who all doubt man is warming the planet dangerously, but do not dare tell you. Indeed, I'd now reckon a quarter of Labor's frontbenchers and more than half of the Liberals' are closet sceptics.

It is tragic that so many smart people are too scared to say what they believe, especially when it's true. I blame most our crusading don't-argue media.

I wonder how much public opinion would turn against the warming scare if such sceptics came out and declared themselves. What a blow they'd strike not just for this country, but for reason.

But for now we still remain the prey of warming priests, carpet-baggers and the barking mad. The climate may be changing, but not enough for many sceptics to yet dare step outside.
Source

Top Earth Scientist Says Global Warming NOT Caused By Man

The following commentary and book review comes from The Sydney (Australia) Herald and sums up and validates much of what I've been posting on this blog from the beginning. Geologists (or Earth Scientists) are the first climate scientists and as such are best able to understand the meaning and significance of the current international anxiety and debate about global warming and climate change.

It is refreshing to see a prominent geologist like the author of "Heaven And Earth" write about global warming and climate change. I have not read the book, but the following excerpted quotations clearly show Professor Ian Pilmer does not even remotely accept the myth of man-caused global warming. I think we will be hearing more about this book and the ongoing debate.
Peter


Beware the climate of conformity
Paul Sheehan April 13, 2009 - 11:59PM (source)
(A new book) questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see.

The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.

The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."

The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone."

Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)

Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change - and this column is not about Australia's water debate - but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists, who have a different perspective on time. "It is little wonder that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times … and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves. It is currently in an ice age."

If we look at the last 6 million years, the Earth was warmer than it is now for 3 million years. The ice caps of the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland are geologically unusual. Polar ice has only been present for less than 20 per cent of geological time.

What follows is an intense compression of the book's 500 pages and all their provocative arguments and conclusions:

Is dangerous warming occurring? No.

Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No.

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."

Over time, the history of CO2 content in the atmosphere has been far higher than at present for most of time. Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature rise. It does not create a temperature rise. CO2 is not a pollutant. Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and longer life.

The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology. "But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis."

Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen computer-generated climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered. Natural systems are far more complex than computer models.

The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists."

Ian Plimer is not some isolated gadfly. He is a prize-winning scientist and professor. The back cover of Heaven And Earth carries a glowing endorsement from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Numerous rigorous scientists have joined Plimer in dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy.

Heaven And Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/beware-the-climate-of-conformity-20090412-a3ya.html

Japanese Scientists Rejecting Global Warming Myth

Three prominent Japanese scientists, working independently, are now openly rejecting the myth of man-caused global warming. They also say many of their colleagues think the same way but have been reluctant to speak out and risk being politically incorrect and creating a threat to their continued funding. This sounds just like what has been going on in American universities and undoubtedly around the world.

The Japanese are also expressing regret for having created and signed the Kyoto Treaty, forced them to spend Billions buying offsets for creating carbon dioxide emissions when that can not possible stop global warming or climate change. Hopefully American politicians are listening and follow the Japanese lead, before it is too late.
Peter

Japanese scientists cool on theories
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent March 14, 2009
Article from: The Australian

THREE senior Japanese scientists separately engaged in climate-change research have strongly questioned the validity of the man-made global-warming model that underpins the drive by the UN and most developed-nation governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

"I believe the anthropogenic (man-made) effect for climate change is still only one of the hypotheses to explain the variability of climate," Kanya Kusano told The Weekend Australian.
It could take 10 to 20 years more research to prove or disprove the theory of anthropogenic climate change, said Dr Kusano, a research group leader with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science's Earth Simulator project.

"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth," writes Shunichi Akasofu, founding director of the University of Alaska's International Arctic Research Centre.

Dr Kusano, Dr Akasofu and Tokyo Institute of Technology geology professor Shigenori Maruyama are highly critical of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's acceptance that hazardous global warming results mainly from man-made gas emissions.
On the scientific evidence so far, according to Dr Kusano, the IPCC assertion that atmospheric temperatures are likely to increase continuously and steadily "should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis".

Dr Maruyama said yesterday there was widespread scepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century "is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

When this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, he said, "the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report".
Dr Maruyama studies the geological evidence of prehistoric climate change, and he thinks the large influences on global climate over time may be global cosmic rays and solar activity.

Like Dr Akasofu, Dr Maruyama believes the earth has moved into a cooling period, and while Japan is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon credits to hedge against global warming, the country's greatest looming problem is energy shortage, particularly oil.

"Our nation must pay huge amounts of money to buy carbon discharge rights," he said. "This is not reasonable, but meaningless if global cooling will come soon -- scientists will lose trust."
Dr Maruyama said he was uncomfortable, given the scientific uncertainty of man-made climate-change theory, that Japan had taken a leading position in the crusade for global greenhouse emission targets.

The scientists and two others -- Seita Emori, of the National Institute of Environmental Studies, and Kiminori Ito, of Yokahama National University -- contributed to a paper titled "The scientific truth of global warming" that was published in January by the Japan Society of Energy and Resources.

Professor Emori is a firm supporter of man-made climate-change theory and Dr Ito is generally for it, although with reservations about the scientific rigour of the IPCC approach.
The doubters, particularly Dr Kusano and Dr Akasofu, are being widely cited by greenhouse-sceptic websites, after their sections of the paper were translated by The Register, a London-based online publisher.

However, the paper's co-ordinator said the JSER's position on anthropogenic global warming was neutral.
"This paper represents the views of the individuals and not of the society," said Hideo Yoshida, of Kyoto University. "The purpose is to stimulate debate among scholars and readers, and let them form their own judgment."
The Japan Society of Energy and Resources is an academic group that promotes co-operation between industry, academic research and government.

Dr Maruyama said many scientists were doubtful about man-made climate-change theory, but did not want to risk their funding from the government or bad publicity from the mass media, which he said was leading society in the wrong direction.

A Very Serious Business

As I have been saying as long as I've been posting on this blog, the issue of man-caused (or anthropogenic) global warming and climate change is far, far more than a mere academic issue. It is now being used as a rationale for an enormous revamping of the American economy. The following is well-written and one of many essays appearing all over the Internet questioning the wisdom of the Obama Administration's proposals. Let us hope this kind of questioning is not, as they say, "a day late, and a dollar short".
Peter


The Green Energy Fantasy
By Keith Lockitch FrontPageMagazine.com 2/26/2009 (source)
Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new president. Apparently a booming green economy with millions of new jobs is just around the corner. All we need is the right mix of government “incentives.”

These include a huge (de facto) tax on carbon emissions imposed through a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, as well as huge government subsidies for “renewable,” carbon-free sources. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today’s pitiful “green energy” industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today’s fossil-fuel-dominated industry.

This view is a fantasy -- one that could devastate America’s economy. The reality is that “green energy” is at best a sophisticated make-work program.

There is a reason why less than two percent of the world’s energy currently comes from “renewable” sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines, occupying tens of thousands of acres, to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that’s if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven “smart grid.”

Or consider the “promise” of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly -- around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with the life-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California’s state quota requiring 20 percent “renewable” electricity by 2010.

More than 81 percent of world energy comes from fossil fuels, and half of America’s electricity is generated by burning coal. Carbon sources are literally keeping us alive. There is no evidence that they have -- or will soon have -- a viable replacement in transportation fuel, and there is only one in electricity generation, nuclear, which “green energy” advocates also oppose.

We all saw the ripple effects last summer when gas prices shot above $4 per gallon, and higher transportation costs drove up prices of everything from plane fares to vegetables. If green policies cause a permanent, and likely far greater, hike in the cost of all forms of energy, what shockwaves would that send through our already badly damaged economy?
We don’t want to find out.

Regardless of one’s views on global warming -- and there is ample scientific evidence to reject the claim that man-made carbon emissions are causing catastrophe -- the fact is that kneecapping the fossil fuel industry while diverting tax dollars into expensive, impractical forms of energy will not be an economic boon, but an economic disaster.

We in developed countries take industrial-scale energy for granted and often fail to appreciate its crucial value to our lives -- including its indispensable role in enabling us to deal with drought, storms, temperature extremes, and other climate challenges we are told to fear by global-warming alarmists.

If we want to restore economic growth and reduce our vulnerability to the elements, what we need is not “green energy” forced upon us by government coercion but real energy delivered on a free market.

Keith Lockitch is a Ph.D. in physics and a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA.

AAPG Position Statement On Anthropogenic Global Warming

Here is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) position statement on man-caused (anthropogenic) global warming and climate change. It is far from the fantastic alarmism promoted by the followers of James Hansen and Al Gore.
Peter


Since you raised the subject of the AAPG position statement, here it is in full: dpa.aapg.org/gac/statemen...Read this, and then the first 15 page chapter of the AAPG heavyweight introductory climate text is here:http://www.aapg.org/committees/gcc/geoPerspectivesGCC.pdfRead and digest this thoroughly and you will find out what the real professional scientists consensus is, and its not what you were told it was, by a very long chalk.


AAPG Statements on:
Geologic Carbon Storage
Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf Resources
Hydraulic Fracturing
Preservation of Geological and Geophysical Data
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Access
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Access
United States National Energy Supply
Climate Change
Tax Reform
Natural Gas Supply Concerns
Reformation of the Endangered Species Act
Reformation of the Clean Water Act -- Wetlands Access
Offshore OCS Access
Research and Development Needs
Oil and Gas Workforce Needs in the 21st Century

Climate Change (PDF)
Issue:
In the last century growth in human populations has increased energy use. This has contributed additional carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases to the atmosphere. Although the AAPG membership is divided on the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO2 has on recent and potential global temperature increases, the AAPG believes that expansion of scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate is important. This research should be undertaken by appropriate federal agencies involved in climate research and their associated grant and contract programs.

Background:
Geologists study the history of the earth and realize climate has changed often in the past due to natural causes. The Earth’s climate naturally varies constantly, in both directions, at varying rates, and on many scales. In recent decades global temperatures have risen. Yet, our planet has been far warmer and cooler than today many times in the geologic past, including the past 10,000 years.

Certain climate simulation models predict that the warming trend will continue, as reported through NAS, AGU, AAAS, and AMS. AAPG respects these scientific opinions but wants to add that the current climate warming projections could fall within well-documented natural variations in past climate and observed temperature data. These data do not necessarily support the maximum case scenarios forecast in some models. To be predictive, any model of future climate should also accurately model known climate and greenhouse gas variations recorded in the geologic history of the past 200,000 years.

Learn more:
Read AAPG's publication that further discusses worldwide climate. The first chapter of Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change is provided here as a PDF.
You may order this book edited by Lee Gerhard, William Harrison, and Bernold Hanson through the AAPG Bookstore.

Statement:
AAPG supports expanding scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate specifically including the geological, solar and astronomic aspects of climate change. Research should include understanding causes of past climate change and the potential effects of both increasing and decreasing temperatures in the future.

AAPG supports research to narrow probabilistic ranges on the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on global climate.

AAPG supports reducing emissions from fossil fuel use as a worthy goal. (However, emission reduction has an economic cost, which must be compared to the potential environmental gain).

AAPG supports the premise that economies must retain their vitality to be able to invest in alternative energy sources as fossil fuels become more expensive.

AAPG supports thepursuit of economically viable technology to sequester carbon dioxide emissions and emissions of other gases in a continuing effort to improve our environment and enhance energy recovery.

AAPG supports measures to conserve energy, which has the affect of both reducing emissions and preserving energy supplies for the future.

The Great Global Warming Hoax: Who Is To Blame?

Everyone with any interest in global warming and so-called climate change, and the monumental and costly efforts being taken to "control" these phenomena, should read the following comments very carefully. I don't think it is an exaggeration to state that the myth of man-caused global warming is the biggest hoax of all time.
Peter

On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
Below is the introduction to a paper being circulated by Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University and AMS Fellow, Charney Award recipient, and a member of AMS for over 50-years. The full paper can be obtained from Prof. Gray: Gray@Atmos.ColoState.Edu

I am appalled at the selection of James Hansen as this year's recipient of the AMS's highest award - the Rossby Research Medal. James Hansen has not been trained as a meteorologist. His formal education has been in astronomy. His long records of faulty global climate predictions and alarmist public pronouncements have become increasingly hollow and at odds with reality. Hansen has exploited the general public's lack of knowledge of how the globe's climate system functions for his own benefit. His global warming predictions, going back to 1988 are not being verified. Why have we allowed him go on for all these years with his faulty and alarmist prognostications? And why would the AMS give him its highest award?

By presenting Hansen with its highest award, the AMS implies it agrees with his faulty global temperature projections and irresponsible alarmist rhetoric. This award, in combination with other recent AMS awards going to known CO2 warming advocates, is an insult to a large number of AMS members who do not believe that humans are causing a significant amount of the global temperature increase. These awards diminish the AMS's sterling reputation for scientific objectivity.

Hansen previously studied the run-away greenhouse warming of Venus. He appears to think that man's emittance of CO2 gases, if unchecked, will eventually cause the Earth to follow a similar fate. Hansen's arrogance and gall over the reality of his model results is breathtaking. He has recently warned President Obama that our country has only 4 years left to act on reducing CO2 gases before the globe will reach a point of irretrievable and disastrous human-caused warming. How does he know what thousands of us who have spent long careers in meteorology-climatology do not know?

Hansen's predictions of global warming made before the Senate in 1988 are turning out to be very much less than he had projected. He cannot explain why there has been no significant global warming over the last 10 years and why there has been a weak global cooling between 2001 and 2008. Hansen and his legion of environmental-political supporters (with no meteorological-climate background) have done monumental damage to an open and honest discussion of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) question.

He and his fellow collaborators (and their media sycophantic followers) are responsible for the brainwashing of a large segment of the American public about a grossly exaggerated human-induced warming threat that does not exist. Most of the global warming we have observed is of natural origin and due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in the globe's deep ocean circulation resulting from salinity variations (see the Appendix for scientific discussion). These changes are not associated with CO2 increases.

Hansen has little experience in practical meteorology. He apparently does not realize that the strongly chaotic nature of the atmosphere-ocean climate system does not allow for skillful initial value numerical climate prediction. Hansen's modeling efforts are badly flawed in the following ways: His upper tropospheric water vapor feedback loop is grossly wrong. He assumes that increases in atmospheric CO2 will cause large upper-tropospheric water vapor increases which are very unrealistic. Most of his model warming follows from his invalid water vapor assumptions.

His handlings of rainfall processes are, as with the other global climate modelers, quite inadequate. He lacks an understanding and treatment of the fundamental role of the deep ocean circulation (i.e. Meridional Overturning Circulation - MOC) and how the changing ocean circulation (driven by salinity variations) can bring about wind, rainfall, and surface temperature changes independent of radiation and greenhouse gas changes. He does not have these ocean processes properly incorporated in his model.

He assumes the physics of global warming is entirely a product of radiation changes and radiation feedback processes. This is a major deficiency.

Hansen's Free Ride.
It is surprising that Hansen has been able to get away with his unrealistic modeling efforts for so long. One explanation is that he has received strong support from Senator/Vice President Al Gore who for over three decades has attempted to make political capital out of increasing CO2 measurements.

Another reason is the many environmental and political groups (including the mainstream media) who are eager to use Hansen's modeling results as justification to push their own special interests that are able to fly under the global warming banner.

A third explanation is that he has not been challenged by his peer climate modeling groups who apparently have seen possibilities for research grant support and publicity gains by following Hansen's lead.

Yet another reason has been the luck of his propitious timing. His 1988 Senate testimony occurred after there had been global warming since the mid-1970s and we were experiencing a hot summer. And the global warming that occurred over the next 10 years (to 1998) gave an undeserved justification to his CO2 warming claims. Had Hansen given his Senate testimony in the 1970s or today (since we have seen weak global cooling since 2001) his alarmist rhetoric would have been taken much less seriously.

I anticipate that we are going to experience a modest naturally-driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years. This will be similar to the weak global cooling that occurred between the early-1940s and the mid-1970s. It is to be noted that CO2 amounts were also rising during this earlier cooling period which was opposite to the assumed CO2 temperature relationship.

Global Warming Alarmists And Their SCARE Tactics

Feb 05, 2009“They like to Scare You…Blame the People”
Heartland Institute
See full size video here.
“Scare,” a two-minute video highlighting the scare tactics of global-warming alarmists was produced for the Heartland Institute. Heartland released the video in the wake of former vice president Al Gore’s claim before a U.S. Senate committee January 28 that “scientists are practically screaming from the rooftops” about the threat of global warming.
The first part of “Scare” shows President Barack Obama asserting that “the science is settled” on global warming and alarmist predictions of death and destruction. The voice-over suggests some of the alarmist propaganda is backed by “corporations heavily invested in so-called green technology.”
With video footage of social and political unrest flashing, the video warns that the “cost of force-feeding these technologies into every corner of our lives could bankrupt a world already teetering on financial ruin.”
The second half of the video features several science-based facts about climate change, including that the Earth has been cooling in recent years and global temperatures have been warmer than today for most of the past 10,000 years.
It concludes by inviting viewers to attend the International Conference on Climate Change, where they can learn the Earth isn’t in crisis, and the presenters “have the science to prove it.”
“This is a provocative video on one of the most important public policy issues of day,"said Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute. “Heartland has distributed more than 1 million videos and books presenting scientific and economic facts that show global warming is not a crisis. We hope this video and the conference it is helping to promote are the final stake in the heart of global warming alarmism.”
The video is available on several sites on the Web, including YouTube, Heartland’s Facebook page, and at www.heartland.org.
Also is Al Gore telling the truth about global warming? Watch Heartland Institute’s “Snowjob” to get the facts.
See full size video here.
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Obama Calls For Action On Global Warming: Is He Crazy?

Here it is a mere two weeks after the Election and Obama is already talking nonsense about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. He is proposing what is essentially an increase in taxes (we all know any increased cost of producing energy, i.e. carbon credits, or cap and trade) will be passed on to the consumer. This will not just harm those producing electricity from the burning of coal, it will cost everyone, substantially. He is then proposing to take that money, tax-payer's money, and use it to fund the development of "alternative" forms of energy.

It is clear that Obama has fallen for the myth of man-caused global warming, hook, line, and sinker. This does not bode well for the future of Obama's reign in office.
Peter

Obama seeks immediate action to curb emissions
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2008

(11-18) 17:46 PST LOS ANGELES -- In his first speech on global warming since winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama promised Tuesday to set stringent limits on greenhouse gases, saying the need is too urgent for delay.
Many observers had expected Obama to avoid tackling such a complex, contentious issue early in his administration. But in videotaped comments to the Governors' Global Climate Summit in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, he called for immediate action.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all," Obama said. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high, the consequences too serious."

He repeated his campaign promise to create a system that limits carbon dioxide emissions and forces companies to pay for the right to emit the gas. Using the money collected from that system, Obama plans to invest $15 billion each year in alternative energy. That investment - in solar, wind and nuclear power, as well as advanced coal technology - will create jobs at a time of economic turmoil, he said.

"It will ... help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating 5 million new green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said.
Many people listening to Obama's speech Tuesday had waited years to hear it.
Schwarzenegger 'very happy'

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convened the Global Climate Summit along with the governors of Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Wisconsin - states that have been developing their own global warming policies rather than waiting for federal action. Schwarzenegger clashed repeatedly with the Bush administration on climate policy and complained that the White House was dragging its feet on a looming crisis. He told the conference Tuesday that he welcomed a new approach from Washington and will work with Obama.

"Of course I am very, very happy," Schwarzenegger said. "This is so important for our country, because we have been the biggest polluters in the world, and it is about time that we as a country recognize that and that we work together with other nations in order to fight global warming."

Obama touted the idea of companies paying to emit greenhouse gases, a system known as "cap and trade," during the campaign. But many people had doubted he would make it an early priority as president.

Under such a system, the government would set an overall limit on greenhouse gas emissions and let companies buy and sell the right to emit specific amounts. The limit would decline over time.

Such systems are complicated to create. They're also controversial. Critics say they amount to a tax on energy use that would hurt businesses and consumers at a time when the economy is floundering.

But one business group threw its support behind Obama on Tuesday.
The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes San Francisco's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. as well as several environmental organizations, started calling for government action on global warming two years ago. The group wants a cap and trade system as soon as possible, even though many of its members - such as oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips - emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.

"We stand united behind President-elect Obama's statement earlier today," said James Rogers, chief executive officer of Duke Energy, one of America's largest electric utilities. "Delaying this further doesn't make sense. And using the economy as an excuse is wrong. ... We can solve our economic and environmental crises simultaneously."

Paying for emitting carbons
A cap and trade system forces companies to pay for emitting greenhouse gases, effectively putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, alternative energy technologies should become more cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

"At its core, it's very simple - we need a price on carbon," said David Crane, chief executive officer of NRG Energy, another Climate Action Partnership member. "We own coal-fired power plants. That's what we do for a living. We've been developing low- or no-carbon technologies as we look to the future. ... But again, we need a price on carbon, because it's not cheap."

Obama's four-minute, videotaped speech largely repeated elements of his energy plan from the campaign trail, saying the nation must cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

He repeatedly linked the fight against global warming to reviving the economy, saying the investment in alternative energy would put Americans to work.

Nuclear power, 'clean coal'
Obama also made a point of backing technologies that many environmentalists despise - nuclear power and "clean coal," which involves trapping and storing underground the emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Obama told participants at the governors' climate conference that he would work with any country, state or business that wanted to fight climate change. Brazil, Canada, China, Chile, Mexico, India, Indonesia and the United Kingdom all sent representatives to the two-day conference.

"I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House," he said. "Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that is willing to join the cause of combatting climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/19/MNBE146VPK.DTL

A Very Bad Idea: Following Europe's Lead On Climate Change

These are dangerous economic times. I hope we don't make things worse by following Europe's example of trying to control "global warming" and climate change. Consider the following:
Peter



Following Europe's Lead on Climate Change
Paul Driessen Saturday, October 11, 2008 (source)http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulDriessen/2008/10/11/following_europes_lead_on_climate_change?page=1
Environmentalists, journalists and politicians say tough climate legislation is a moral imperative. Global warming science is settled, the United States is out of step with other nations, America must follow Europe’s lead to prevent climate chaos.

It’s great rhetoric. But which European lead should we follow? And how is it morally responsible to enact climate legislation that kills jobs and punishes families and businesses, to reduce global temperatures by perhaps 0.2 degrees?

There is no “consensus” on the “problem” or “solution.” Over 32,000 scientists, including hundreds of climate scientists, vigorously disagree with the assertion that human carbon dioxide emissions will cause a climate cataclysm.

Long ago ice ages and interglacial periods, the Sahara’s shift from verdant valleys to parched desert, and protracted droughts in the Yucatan and American Southwest had nothing to do with humans, they note. Sunspot counts are now at a 50-year low, indicating reduced solar activity and possibly explaining why planetary temperatures haven’t risen in a decade, despite soaring CO2 levels, say solar experts. Some computer models predict major climatic shifts, but they don’t include solar and other natural factors.

Hydrocarbons provide 85% of all US energy. They are the foundation of an economy that has been shaken to its core and may be entering a recession. Wind and solar represent less than 0.5% – and provide only intermittent auxiliary power. The new “Lights out in 2009?” study warns that the United States “faces potentially crippling brownouts and blackouts,” beginning in 2009, especially in regions that experience prolonged hot spells during summer months, due to insufficient generating capacity.

A bank that wanted to install solar panels found it would cost $850,000 – but would cut only 12% off its electricity bill. That meant it would take 90 years to pay off panels would last only 30 years. Fiscal and technological realities must remain the foundation of “social responsibility.”
House Democrats are nevertheless promoting new cap-and-trade legislation that could be even more punitive than Warner-Lieberman, which even sponsors admitted would cost nearly $7 trillion. They oppose oil and gas drilling, and new coal, nuclear and hydroelectric plants. Many want to “transform” our energy and economic system – from one that works to one based on heavily subsidized technologies that aren’t ready for prime time, and may not exist for decades.
We have to do our part, they insist, and join other nations in “saving the planet.” But which “responsible” leaders should we follow?

* Countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol and agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions to 7% below 1990 levels? Or those whose actual emissions are well above their Kyoto targets: eg, Portugal 12% above, Italy 17% above, Spain 22% above, Denmark 25% above, Canada 27% above?

* A European Union that solved this predicament by agreeing to slash emissions 20% by 2020 – and presumably 30% by 2030 (or 40 by 40) when this new promise also proves too difficult or painful?

* Angela Merkel 2006, who promised to eliminate coal and nuclear power in Germany – or the chancellor of today, who wants to build new coal-fired power plants and shield chemical, steel, manufacturing, cement and automotive industries, by reducing emission goals or providing free cap-and-trade permits.

* Poland and other former Eastern Bloc nations, which intend to block a new EU climate change agreement, because they depend on coal for up to 90% of their electricity and on Russia for up to 97% of their natural gas, were held back for 50 years under Communist dictators – and now are loathe to be kept from developing by dictates from Brussels?

* EU companies that received “climate care” plaudits a few years ago – but now threaten to move jobs overseas, unless they receive preferential treatment under onerous emission controls?

* Britain, where politicians are being pummeled because climate taxes and skyrocketing energy prices have forced 5.5 million households to live in “fuel poverty”?

* Canada, where 78% of the citizens feel they have been mislead about the costs and benefits of Kyoto, and want fair and objective information from the media and politicians?

* The Australia of 2007, which supported taking action on climate change by a 55% margin? Or the Down Under of 2008, which opposed such action by 55% before the global financial meltdown?

* China and India, which put reducing rampant poverty, with its high human and environmental costs, ahead of the speculative effects of future climate change – and say they will be better able to adapt to climate changes (natural or human) if they are rich and technologically advanced?

* Countries that want to help impoverished nations develop abundant, reliable, affordable energy to reduce lung and intestinal disease and death, by bringing prosperity, safe water, refrigeration and modern hospitals? Or those that tell African and other destitute countries they must be satisfied with pitiful amounts of intermittent energy from “sustainable” sources like wind and solar?

* Al Gore, the prophet of ecological doom? Or Al Gore who flies only private jets, owns a fancy houseboat, and uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year?

* Bureaucrats, scientists and politicians who seek open, robust, honest debate on climate change? Or those who use global warming hysteria to secure research grants, control every aspect of our energy and economic lives, and attend conferences at four-star resorts in Bali?

* Or perhaps three Italian ministers, who called the EU climate action plan “politically correct garbage” that “would kill any economic improvement” and “achieve very modest environmental benefits,” in a period of international economic difficulties that call for prudent decision-making?
California gets much of its electricity from coal-fired power plants located 600 miles from Los Angeles – enabling it to claim it’s “a leader” in curbing carbon dioxide. (It also gets substantial electricity from a nuclear power plant in Arizona, and most of its oil from Alaska.) Utah, on the other hand, generates most of its electricity from coal-fired plants within the state.

How many states can outsource their power and pollution? Which ones have more affordable electricity and gasoline, enabling poor families to live better on lower incomes – and still have money left for college, retirement, healthcare and charity? Which states are the more socially responsible leaders?

Morality, environmental justice and corporate social responsibility are too often defined by narrowly-focused environmental ideologies. They are too often winner-takes-all contests, pitting rich countries and eco-elites against poor families and nations that must worry more about immediate life-or-death concerns than speculative human-caused climate chaos. They too often replace rough-and-tumble debate over science and economics with intimidation and dogmatism.
We need to protect our economies, jobs and planet. We need conservation and all forms of energy – whatever works best, at lowest cost, for particular cities, states, regions and nations.

Will we follow politicians and activists who offer fear-mongering and utopian promises, as they lead us lemming-like off an economic cliff? Or will we follow leaders who offer honest, unflinching analysis and sound judgment – and stop us short of the precipice?

Now Call It The MYTH Of Man-Caused Climate Change

We are no longer simply facing the dangers of supposed man-caused global warming, now it is being called "climate change", and anything harmful, or dramatic about the weather, from record snowfall and cold in the winter, to record heat and rainfall and flooding is now being blamed on the burning of fossil fuels and the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As illogical as this seems, it is not a joke. This gross distortion of reality is being almost gleefully reported by our sensationalist mainstream media. Beware.
Peter

Environmentalists Take Advantage of Natural Disaster - Blame Midwest Floods on Global Warming

(source)

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
In the latest in a series of predictable news stories gobbled up by an all too willing media, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, “Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin,” forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.
Alarmists have adopted the can’t lose position that all extremes of weather - cold, warm, wet or dry are all due to global warming. They blamed the frequent tornadoes of the late winter and spring on global warming even though the number was not at all atypical of a La Nina year. Southern Wisconsin and much of the Midwest has had a rough winter and spring but it has been the antithesis of global warming.
Wisconsin had its 33 coldest winter on record, nearby Iowa its 19th coldest in 114 years. The cool weather continued into the spring with the 22nd coldest spring on record in Wisconsin and 24th in Iowa. Madison, Wisconsin had the snowiest winter on record, topping 100 inches for the first time ever.

See more including larger map here
The record snows, severe weather and heavy rainfall has been the result of rapid COOLING in the northern tier of the United States and Canada not global warming. The flooding exceeded the floods of 1993 when rapid cooling following the eruption of Pinatubo produced a similar kind of cooling with a strong suppressed jet stream that brought a steady stream of storms and flooding.
Rapid warming as took place in the 1930s and again around 1980 leads to drought and record heat. The alarmist movement is reeling after the warming stopped in 1998 and cooling began in 2002, accelerating in the last year. Their claims have now morphed from warming to focusing on the extremes typical of La Nina and the colder decades to try and keep their hoax alive.

See larger map here.
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Man-Caused Global Warming On Thin Ice....

Here is an opinion worth taking seriously. Does any politician know everything about everything? This man, Mr. Wilde, makes sense....that is all that matters.
Peter


Jun 07, 2008The Death Blow to Anthropogenic Global Warming
By Stephen Wilde, Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society

The influence of the sun has been discounted in the climate models as a contributor to the warming observed between 1975 and 1998. Those who support the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), now known as anthropogenic climate change so that recent cooling can be included in their scenario, always deny that the sun has anything to do with recent global temperature movements. The reason given is that Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) varied so little over that period that it cannot explain the warming that was observed. I don�t yet accept that TSI tells the whole story because it is ill defined and speculative as regards it’s representation of all the different ways the sun could affect the Earth via the entire available range of physical processes. Despite the limitations of TSI as an indicator of solar influence I think there are conclusions we can draw from the records we do have. Oddly, I have not seen them discussed properly anywhere else, especially not by AGW enthusiasts.

This link shows a larger graph of TSI from 1611 to 2001.

Throughout the period 1961 to about 2001, there was a steady cumulative net warming effect from the sun. The fact that the TSI was, on average, level during that period is entirely irrelevant and misleading. It is hardly likely that such a high level of TSI compared to historical levels is going to have no effect at all on global temperature changes and indeed during most of that period there was an enhanced period of positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation that imparted increasing warmth to the atmosphere.

This link contains details of my view that the sun drives the various oceanic oscillations which in turn drive global temperature variations with all other influences including CO2 being minor and often cancelling themselves out leaving the solar/oceanic driver supreme.

Does anyone really think that the CO2 we produce is effective enough to reduce that risk to zero when we have plenty of astronomic evidence of an imminent reduction in solar activity? And, moreover, the real world temperature movements are currently a good fit with the solar driver theory both as regards to warming spell, the subsequent stall and the recent turn downwards. The AGW risk analysis process (if anyone ever bothered with one) is seriously flawed. Read more here.
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Climate Security Act? Or Global Economic And Environmental Catastrophe

Mr. Solomon points out how wrong the perception is that the United Nations IPCC climate report represents a "consensus" of climate scientists. Many people believe a majority of climate scientists are in support of the concept of man-caused global warming, specifically due to carbon dioxide emissions. The other commonly-held belief he destroys is that limiting carbon dioxide emissions will be a good thing for humanity, whether it stops global warming and climate change or not.

He concludes that 1) There is no scientific consensus, and he documents why. 2) Limiting carbon dioxide emissions will have no affect on global warming, and 3) the actions being taken and proposed to limit carbon dioxide emissions are and will be an economic and humanitarian disaster.
Peter



Selective Precaution: How does the third world insure itself against Lieberman-Warner?
By Lawrence Solomon
(source)
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.) and John Warner (R., Va.) base their proposed Climate Security Act legislation on two fundamental premises: That there is a scientific consensus on global warming and that, even if the scientists are wrong and the global-warming risk never materializes, we will at least have aided the environment. Both premises are wrong. Not just wrong. The premises could well have it exactly backwards. First, consider the alleged scientific consensus. Nearby you’ll find the cover page from the 2006 press announcement from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body coordinating the worldwide effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The cover page offers this impressive claim:
2500 SCIENTIFIC EXPERT REVIEWERS
800 CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS AND
450 LEAD AUTHORS
FROM 130 COUNTRIES 6 YEARS WORK
1 REPORT2007

Impressive, isn’t it? You may be even more impressed if you see the accompanying press materials. And you can forgive the press for being impressed, too, at the intellects assembled to establish that global warming is real and manmade. After all, 2,500 expert scientists can’t be wrong. That figure of 2,500 scientists received saturation media exposure, and then it was amplified by environmental groups, bloggers, and others. A Google search of “IPCC” and “2500” produces almost 250,000 results, the vast majority of them references to the scientific consensus. Senators Lieberman and Warner can be forgiven for believing, as the press did, in the existence of a consensus.

But what did those 2,500 scientists actually endorse? To find out, I contacted the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and asked for the names of the 2,500. I planned to canvas them to determine their precise views. The answer that came back from the Secretariat informed me that the names were not public, so I would not be able to survey them, and that the scientists were merely reviewers. The 2,500 had not endorsed the conclusions of the report and, in fact, the IPCC had not claimed that they did.

Journalists had jumped to the conclusion that the scientists the IPCC had touted were endorsers and the IPCC never saw fit to correct the record. There is no consensus of 2,500 scientist-endorsers. Moreover, many of those 2,500 reviewers turned thumbs down on the studies that they reviewed — I know this from my own interviews with them, conducted in the course of writing a book about scientists who dispute the conventional wisdom on climate change.

From my interviews, it also became clear to me that, if a consensus exists, it exists on the other side. For instance Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, a former peer reviewer for the IPCC’s work on the spread of malaria and other diseases due to warming says, “I know of no major scientist with any long record in this field who agrees with the pronouncements of the alarmists at the IPCC.” Other scientists also told me that, in their particular discipline, the IPCC’s position was the outlier, far from the mainstream.

“So what?” many say. “Even if there is great uncertainty about the science of climate change, what harm will come of reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide? If it turns out that global warming is a natural phenomenon, we will have gained for ourselves cleaner air and less dependence on foreign oil.” As Sen. Lieberman put it in a PBS interview, “we ought to buy an insurance policy to deal with it. You know, I buy an insurance policy on my house. I don’t know there’s going to be a fire or a pipe is going to break, but I spend the money on it because the consequences of not having insurance are worse. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

This view finds favor with people across the ideological spectrum. Environmentalists, public-health advocates, and planners recognize an opportunity to lower emissions while promoting lifestyle changes; security hawks seize on the prospect of energy self-sufficiency; others see an opportunity to make common cause with Europe. All justify the expense of meeting Kyoto’s emissions targets as an insurance policy of sorts.

The problem is that far from being an insurance policy, Kyoto represents the single greatest threat to the global environment today and its scheme for using carbon credits and carbon offsets to reduce CO2 emissions comes with horrible human costs. When we in the West purchase carbon offsets, typically someone, or some government, in the third world is paid for providing a “sink” for the carbon we’re emitting. Often that sink will be an industrial eucalyptus plantation, planted on what had been farmland or old-growth forest. Apart from the environmental amenities lost, personal tragedies abound. The former inhabitants of that land — either peasant farmers or forest peoples — will have been evicted from their lands, generally without fair compensation.

Mass evictions are also the rule with new large-scale hydro dams, which can appear to become economically feasible only because of carbon credit schemes. China’s Three Gorges Dam, touted for being carbon-free, is uprooting some two million peasants and townsfolk. Nuclear power, too, is enjoying a renaissance due to carbon pricing — nuclear reactors have never been commercially viable without subsidies, and coming back now only because of a perceived carbon crisis.

The third-world suffers from Kyoto in other ways. With farm lands in the west converted to ethanol and other biofuels, world grain prices have doubled, leading to food riots in Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, and elsewhere. While many have criticized the economic costs of Kyoto, the treaty’s cruel social and environmental consequences represent far greater tragedies.

Environmentalists could once be counted on to insist that sound science be brought to bear on projects or policies that carried the potential for social harm, often through open processes called environmental assessments. In the rush to solve a carbon-dioxide problem that may not exist, many environmentalists have abandoned the science they once held dear and thrown precaution to the wind.—

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group, and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud, and those too fearful to do so (Richard Vigilante Books). His next book The Carbon Catastrophe is due out from Richard Vigilante Books in January 2009.