By Art Horn, The Energy Tribune
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over"…Joseph Goebbels.
The leaders of the modern environmental movement learned their lessons well from the notorious Nazi. For more than three decades they have been indoctrinating us through endless repetition that we humans are a parasite on mother earth. We are to blame for everything bad that offends nature. We are exposed to a daily drumbeat of words and images that imprints in our collective minds the message that because of our methods of achieving prosperity we will, in the end destroy nature and ourselves.
To be sure there were bad things happening to our planet that needed to be stopped in the past. Unchecked dumping of hazardous materials into rivers, the ocean and air are not only dangerous for wildlife but to ourselves. The early environmental awareness to these issues brought about positive results and today we do have significantly cleaner air and water, though problems do continue. Our world will never be squeaky clean. Just as a winning team will always suffer injuries on their way to victory, there will always be negative consequences to our biosphere as industrialized civilizations strive to make life better for their people. It is how we manage these consequences reasonably in the future that will help determine the quality of our continued advancement economically, environmentally and socially.
The tempered successes of the environmental movement of the past have now diverged to the reckless abuses of the movement in its present form. Reasonable environmental policies of the past have devolved into radical environmental extremism. In every respect of the word the environmental movement in the United States is at war with our energy companies. They are well funded. Recently Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York donated $50 million dollars to the Sierra Club to close coal fired power plants across the country. Why would the mayor of our largest city and home of great wealth and prosperity give such a vast sum of money to a radical organization that wants to ultimately destroy that wealth? I suggest that Mayor Bloomberg has been beaten over the head so many times by the environmental drumbeat of the past 20 years that the message has finally been pounded in. After all a man of his position would always want to be seen as someone who is a leader to “save the planet.”
In the 1994 Greenpeace released a publication called “The Climate Time Bomb Catalogue”. In it they state categorically that the burning of fossil fuels will cause all kinds of disasters. As you will see, all of these “disasters” and “unprecedented” weather events are not new and have occurred many times in the near and distant past. The Climate Time Bomb predictions of the awful consequences of global warming have failed. Even in light of these failures organizations like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and many others continue to pump out scary storm stories, animal extinction dramas and dangerous sea level rise predictions. They rely on people’s ignorance of historical weather events to sell their predictions of doom. What you will find as you read on is that nearly 20 years ago, environmentalists were using exactly the same propaganda scare stories we hear today. As Goebbels said “It (in this case the environmental movement) must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”. Here is a list of some of the “Climate Time Bombs” listed in 1994 by Greenpeace. They will all sound very familiar.
Climate Time Bomb Claim in 1994…Greenpeace claimed a significant increase in global average temperature in the last 140 years is due to burning fossil fuels. The proof is that eight hottest years on record have all occurred since 1980. BOMB DEFUSED: The average temperature of the earth has been rising unevenly since the bottom of the “Little Ice Age” around 1700. Analysis of temperature reconstructions from proxies reveal that earth’s temperature was as warm or warmer than today 1,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago. Temperature reconstructions from ice cores in Greenland reveal that most of the last 10,000 year were warmer and at times much warmer than today. The southward movement of the tree line in Siberia indicates that earth average temperature was much warmer than today 3 to 9 thousand years ago. Since 1945 the global average temperature has only increase during one period, from 1977 to 1998. There was a slight cooling from 1945 to 1976 and there has been no warming since 1998. The rate of warming since 1850 is consistent with previous warming periods during the last 2,000 years. Today environmental groups continue to chant that the last few years have been “the hottest on record”. The story never changes but to the young and uninformed it sounds like something new and scary.
Climate Time Bomb Claim in 1994…Unusually intense (tropical) Cyclones have hit the Caribbean and the Pacific in recent years. August 1992 hurricane Andrew devastates the Caribbean and southeast coastal US. BOMB DEFUSED: There have always been devastating hurricanes. Galveston Texas, September 1900, 8,000 drowned in massive hurricane, largest loss of life ever from a hurricane or anything else in the US. In September 1935 over 400 killed in Florida Keys by hurricane with winds near 200 miles per hour. September 1938, the “Great New England Hurricane” kills more than 600 in the northeast with winds gusting to 160 miles per hour. Increases and decreases in the numbers and strength of hurricanes in the Atlantic come and go in response to a cycle of warming and cooling of Atlantic Ocean water temperature known as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. Since 1970 there has been no increase in the number of global tropical storms or hurricanes. Recently the intensity of hurricanes around the world has been the lowest since 1960. Claims that hurricanes would become more intense and more frequent were wrong and the opposite has been the trend. Today the environmentalists continue to insist that global warming is making hurricanes worse.
Climate Time Bomb Claim in 1994… Many climate scientists expect that global warming will increase the intensity and severity of storms in the middle latitudes. December 1992: “The Great Nor’ Easter of 1992” wreaks havoc along more than 900 kilometers of US coastline and floods the New York subway system. March 1993, The “Storm of the Century” causes hurricane force winds and 2 to 4 feet of snow in the Appalachian Mountains along with severe damage from Cuba to New England. BOMB DEFUSED: The 1950 “Super Storm” brings wind gust of 108 miles per hour at Newark New Jersey and 110 miles per hour to Concord New Hampshire. La Guardia Airport in New York flooded by storm surge from hurricane force winds. The storm causes massive forest blow down and 2 to 3 feet of snow in the Midwest and Appalachian Mountains. The “Blizzard of 1888” brings hurricane force winds and two feet of snow to New York City. Hundreds die as temperature falls below zero. Up to 4 feet of snow bury Southern New England with hurricane force winds. The claim that mid-latitude storms are becoming more severe is not supported by historical facts. There have always been severe mid-latitude storms.
Climate Time Bomb Claim in 1994…Best guess forecast of the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for sea level rise is a global average of 3-10 millimeters per year. As more than 70 percent of the world’s population live on coastal plains, the potential for massive personal, economic and physical dislocation becomes clear. BOMB DEFUSED: Tide gauges from around the world show that sea level has been rising for more than a century. The rate averages out to about 8 inches per century and that rate is not accelerating as the environmental movement claims. Satellite measurements of sea level rise since 1993 show a rate of 3 millimeters per century but that has slowed to 2 millimeters per century in the last 6 years. Any estimate about climate and its effect on sea level rise from the United Nations can’t be trusted. In November of 2010 a leading UN IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer said in an interview “But one must say clearly that we (the UN IPCC) re-distribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” He went on to say “One has to free ones self from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost northing to do with environmental policy anymore.” Anything that comes out of the UN’s IPCC is tainted by its political advocacy and its use of global warming fear to propel their Agenda 21 forward. There is no real world evidence that the rate of sea level rise is changing.
Climate Time Bomb Claim in 1994…Global warming would reduce global food production, increase prices and cause new uncertainties about food supplies. BOMB DEFUSED: The environmentalists can only see the negative side of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, they are blind to its benefits. “Thousands of laboratory and field experiments have demonstrated that atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment (increases) significantly enhances plant growth and water use efficiency. And because those benefits have positively impacted crop yields in the past, there is ample reason to believe that future increases in carbon dioxide concentrations will produce increases in crop yields.” There will also continue to be scientific innovations that will increase food production. Bad policy decisions based on fear of global warming have increased food prices by using corn to make ethanol.
Do not be fooled the next time you hear or read that global warming or climate change is accelerating the temperature upward. Don’t be tricked into believing that hurricanes are getting bigger and more frequent. Remember that sea levels are not rising at an alarming rate. Do remember what an infamous Nazi said about the use of propaganda more than 70 years ago.
The New Nostradamous of the North
Nobody is denying that there has been some extreme weather in the US and elsewhere, this year. And the fact that some people - so far maybe “a couple of dozen” in the US - probably have died of reasons related to the heat wave, is of course sad. But it is also very sad to seee that global warming alarmists, like e.g. the paleantologist Peter Ward, have totally lost their sense of proportions when describing recent weather events:
Scientists have been predicting for years that global warming would produce record-breaking extremes on either side of the thermometer. This past winter, America survived its so-called snowpocalypse, and now that summer has arrived, we’ve got a heat dome.
If you’re wondering what the hell that is—it’s just another obvious climate change assassin that we could see coming miles away, if some of us were paying better attention. If you’re looking for a more technical definition, according to National Geographic a heat dome is a seasonal high-pressure system of dense hot air, albeit one with a highly unusual (for now) strength and size, stretching one million square miles from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. It’s already killed a couple dozen people, adding to a swelling death toll resulting from recent tornadoes and floods that bedeviled the nation this year.
Even the scientists are starting to crack under the pressure. University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward, who is continuing his study of planetary mass extinction this summer by studying the 500-million-year-old living fossil Nautilus in the remote Pacific, is severely pained by his ability to be right on the data but wrong on people actually caring enough about it to awake from their mediated, medicated stupor.
“I wrote a book in 1994 called The End of Evolution: A Journey in Search of Clues to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Earth that said, within in a decade or two, we’d be seeing these monumental destructions, and people laughed at it,” he told AlterNet. “I wrote just last year about sea-level rise in The Flooded Earth saying that things look pretty desperate for the next 60 to 80 years, and got almost no reviews. Luckily, I’m not going to be alive to see the worst of it. But the sad thing is that it’s horrible to be right, just horrible. Somebody gave me the foresight to see what’s coming, and I don’t like it.”
We’re headed toward a great extinction, McKibben told AlterNet. “The only question is how great. That still remains within our ability to influence. Job one is to stop pouring more carbon into the air.”
The other job? Stop pouring more people onto the planet.
“The single driver going on here is the increase in human population,” added Ward. “Everything goes back to that. It explains every one of these phenomena: Global warming, marine extinction, changes in living patterns and even in the economies of the world. Way too many people, way too fast. And it’s running away.”
And so here we sit in the barely new decade of our barely new century, quagmired in game theories above our head, governed by a global elite who have little care for our welfare or even our going-broke cities. To think they’re not as invested, literally, in our ignorance of climate change’s myriad massacres as they are in pulling the plug on our social safety net is suicide on a global scale. Drowning in debt, deceit, natural catastrophes—what’s the difference?
If we don’t start seriously sweating the existential crisis of climate change and ignoring the small-time drama of terrorism and partisan sellouts, then we’re finished.
Read the entire article here
PS
“The talk about “climate change’s myriad massacres” and “suicide on a global scale” is clearly a case for a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, these scaremongerers do not have the faintest idea about the possible damage they cause to e.g. young people, who happen to read - and, in the worst case, believe - this nonsense. “ H/T Marc Morano
ICECAP NOTE: If all this sounds familar. This echoes the predictions of the imminent devastation predicted by Erlich etal in the 1970s...then due to global cooling and the population explosion. Erlich preicted millions would die from starvation in the United States in the 1980s.
By Marlo Lewis
More deaths, less choice, pricier cars. And of course, no upside.
President Obama today announced a deal with 13 automakers to boost new-car fuel economy standards from 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 54.5 mpg in 2025. Obama claimed the new standards will save Americans $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of vehicles and $8,000 per vehicle by 2025.
But you’ve got to wonder, if the fuel-saving technologies requisite to meet the new standards are such a great bargain, why do we need a law forcing automakers to adopt them? After all, auto companies are in business to make money, they compete for customers, and there’s not a consumer alive who enjoys pain at the pump.
What we can likely expect from the new fuel economy standards is more costly vehicles that impose net losses on consumers, lighter vehicles that provide less protection in collisions, and a less competitive auto industry.
The U.S. government’s 40-year-old corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) program is a case study in unintended consequences. During its first 25 years, CAFE boosted domestic sales of Japanese and European imports, which typically had a 50% higher mpg rating than American automobiles in 1975. Partly as a consequence of CAFE, the U.S. market share of foreign-designed vehicles increased from 18% in 1975 to 29% in 1980 and 41% in 2000 (National Research Council, p.15). Few members of Congress anticipated or desired such disastrous results when they created the CAFE program in 1975.
There are two main ways to increase a car’s fuel economy: (1) downsize the vehicle and (2) add new technology. Adding new technology raises new car prices, “forcing some consumers, especially those with low incomes, to hold on longer to their old cars,” observes my colleague Sam Kazman. In general, old cars are more polluting than comparable newer vehicles. In any event, lawmakers did not think they were voting to keep clunkers on the road when they created CAFE.
In addition, Kazman notes, CAFE “restricts consumer choice, since manufacturers are forced to pay more attention to what the law requires rather than to what consumers want.” Indeed, CAFE destroyed the market for what once was America’s most popular family car - the large station wagon. Automakers could not comply with CAFE and produce millions of large, low-mpg station wagons. In 1975, how many members of Congress knowingly voted to kill the family car?
A related unintended consequence was the much-derided SUV boom of the 1990s. No longer able to purchase big wagons, consumers started buying trucks with car-like body designs. Fuel economy zealots decried what they called the “SUV loophole” in the CAFE rules. But to millions of consumers, the supposed loophole was an escape hatch. The caption of a New Yorker cartoon on bureaucratic myopia should be required reading on Capitol Hill: “These regulations will fundamentally change how we get around them.”
Last and certainly not least, CAFE kills. This is hard for some folks to swallow, but it’s a matter of physics. Fuel economy regulation restricts the sale of larger, heavier vehicles. Such vehicles get fewer miles to the gallon than similarly equipped smaller vehicles, but they provide more protection in collisions. Heavier vehicles have more mass to absorb collision forces, and larger vehicles provide more space between the occupant and the point of impact.
A 2002 National Research Council study (p. 26) estimates that in a typical year (1993), CAFE contributed to 1,300-2,600 additional auto fatalities and ten times as many serious injuries.
We’re often assured that the reformed CAFE program established via the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) fixed the problem (often by the same folks who denied there was a trade-off between fuel economy and safety under the original CAFE program). However, even under the reformed program, which supposedly constrains down-sizing in favor of technological innovation, EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimate that achieving fuel economy standards of 47 to 62 mpg will require weight reductions of 15% to 30% (Interim Joint Technical Report, p. 3-8).
Automakers will undoubtedly incorporate new technology to meet the 54.5 mpg standard. Nonetheless, Kazman explains, “No matter what fuel-saving technologies we put into the car of the future, adding weight to the car will both lower its fuel efficiency and increase its safety.” Inevitably, fuel economy standards prevent people from buying all the vehicle safety they’re willing to pay for.
Why did automakers agree to the deal? “Government Motors” has to be careful about defying a White House that props them up financially. Auto companies also feared ending up with something even worse: a 62 mpg standard enforced via a “patchwork” of state-by-state fuel economy regimes spearheaded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Auto industry analyst Henry Payne notes another reason:
“We’ll agree to anything that’s 15 years out,” a highly-placed auto industry insider told me today about the fairy tale 54.5 mpg-by-2025 mandate for America’s auto fleet that Barack Obama and Big Auto execs finally - officially - announced Friday in Washington.
The rule has no grounding in reality. An engineering rule of thumb is that gas engine efficiency improves by 1.5 percent a year (a gain that, in the cheap gas U.S. market, has traditionally gone to power upgrades rather than mpg improvements). The EPA’s rule will mandate that light trucks gain 3.5 percent a year and cars, 5 percent. Really.
Environmental groups claim there’s no problem because automakers could comply even with a 56 mpg standard just by selling lots of hybrids. But according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the market share for hybrids would have to increase from less than 3% in 2011 to 76% by 2025 - almost eight times higher than the projected market share. And mass reductions of at least 15% would also be required, reducing vehicle safety in crashes.
CAR estimates that a 56 mpg standard would impose on consumers a net loss (sticker price increase minus fuel savings) of $2,858 over five years if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon. The 62 mpg that CARB, green groups, and (very likely) Obama preferred would impose a net loss of $6,525. Without regulatory coercion limiting our options, most consumers would avoid this “bargain.”
Fuel economy standards compel automakers to please government planners rather than satisfy consumers. That’s a recipe for an auto industry with lower sales, reduced profits, and fewer jobs.
Team Obama and their green allies undoubtedly think it is great fun to gamble with other people’s assets and livelihoods, even if it means imposing safety risks on motorists. If we were living under a constitution of liberty, that sort of mischief would not be allowed. PJM
More deaths, less choice, pricier cars. And of course, no upside.
July 29, 2011 - 11:33 am - by Marlo Lewis
President Obama today announced a deal with 13 automakers to boost new-car fuel economy standards from 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 54.5 mpg in 2025. Obama claimed the new standards will save Americans $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of vehicles and $8,000 per vehicle by 2025.
But you’ve got to wonder, if the fuel-saving technologies requisite to meet the new standards are such a great bargain, why do we need a law forcing automakers to adopt them? After all, auto companies are in business to make money, they compete for customers, and there’s not a consumer alive who enjoys pain at the pump.
What we can likely expect from the new fuel economy standards is more costly vehicles that impose net losses on consumers, lighter vehicles that provide less protection in collisions, and a less competitive auto industry.
The U.S. government’s 40-year-old corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) program is a case study in unintended consequences. During its first 25 years, CAFE boosted domestic sales of Japanese and European imports, which typically had a 50% higher mpg rating than American automobiles in 1975. Partly as a consequence of CAFE, the U.S. market share of foreign-designed vehicles increased from 18% in 1975 to 29% in 1980 and 41% in 2000 (National Research Council, p.15). Few members of Congress anticipated or desired such disastrous results when they created the CAFE program in 1975.
There are two main ways to increase a car’s fuel economy: (1) downsize the vehicle and (2) add new technology. Adding new technology raises new car prices, “forcing some consumers, especially those with low incomes, to hold on longer to their old cars,” observes my colleague Sam Kazman. In general, old cars are more polluting than comparable newer vehicles. In any event, lawmakers did not think they were voting to keep clunkers on the road when they created CAFE.
In addition, Kazman notes, CAFE “restricts consumer choice, since manufacturers are forced to pay more attention to what the law requires rather than to what consumers want.” Indeed, CAFE destroyed the market for what once was America’s most popular family car - the large station wagon. Automakers could not comply with CAFE and produce millions of large, low-mpg station wagons. In 1975, how many members of Congress knowingly voted to kill the family car?
A related unintended consequence was the much-derided SUV boom of the 1990s. No longer able to purchase big wagons, consumers started buying trucks with car-like body designs. Fuel economy zealots decried what they called the “SUV loophole” in the CAFE rules. But to millions of consumers, the supposed loophole was an escape hatch. The caption of a New Yorker cartoon on bureaucratic myopia should be required reading on Capitol Hill: “These regulations will fundamentally change how we get around them.”
Last and certainly not least, CAFE kills. This is hard for some folks to swallow, but it’s a matter of physics. Fuel economy regulation restricts the sale of larger, heavier vehicles. Such vehicles get fewer miles to the gallon than similarly equipped smaller vehicles, but they provide more protection in collisions. Heavier vehicles have more mass to absorb collision forces, and larger vehicles provide more space between the occupant and the point of impact.
A 2002 National Research Council study (p. 26) estimates that in a typical year (1993), CAFE contributed to 1,300-2,600 additional auto fatalities and ten times as many serious injuries.
We’re often assured that the reformed CAFE program established via the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) fixed the problem (often by the same folks who denied there was a trade-off between fuel economy and safety under the original CAFE program). However, even under the reformed program, which supposedly constrains down-sizing in favor of technological innovation, EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimate that achieving fuel economy standards of 47 to 62 mpg will require weight reductions of 15% to 30% (Interim Joint Technical Report, p. 3-8).
Automakers will undoubtedly incorporate new technology to meet the 54.5 mpg standard. Nonetheless, Kazman explains, “No matter what fuel-saving technologies we put into the car of the future, adding weight to the car will both lower its fuel efficiency and increase its safety.” Inevitably, fuel economy standards prevent people from buying all the vehicle safety they’re willing to pay for.
Why did automakers agree to the deal? “Government Motors” has to be careful about defying a White House that props them up financially. Auto companies also feared ending up with something even worse: a 62 mpg standard enforced via a “patchwork” of state-by-state fuel economy regimes spearheaded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Auto industry analyst Henry Payne notes another reason:
“We’ll agree to anything that’s 15 years out,” a highly-placed auto industry insider told me today about the fairy tale 54.5 mpg-by-2025 mandate for America’s auto fleet that Barack Obama and Big Auto execs finally - officially - announced Friday in Washington.
The rule has no grounding in reality. An engineering rule of thumb is that gas engine efficiency improves by 1.5 percent a year (a gain that, in the cheap gas U.S. market, has traditionally gone to power upgrades rather than mpg improvements). The EPA’s rule will mandate that light trucks gain 3.5 percent a year and cars, 5 percent. Really.
Environmental groups claim there’s no problem because automakers could comply even with a 56 mpg standard just by selling lots of hybrids. But according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the market share for hybrids would have to increase from less than 3% in 2011 to 76% by 2025 - almost eight times higher than the projected market share. And mass reductions of at least 15% would also be required, reducing vehicle safety in crashes.
CAR estimates that a 56 mpg standard would impose on consumers a net loss (sticker price increase minus fuel savings) of $2,858 over five years if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon. The 62 mpg that CARB, green groups, and (very likely) Obama preferred would impose a net loss of $6,525. Without regulatory coercion limiting our options, most consumers would avoid this “bargain.”
Fuel economy standards compel automakers to please government planners rather than satisfy consumers. That’s a recipe for an auto industry with lower sales, reduced profits, and fewer jobs.
Team Obama and their green allies undoubtedly think it is great fun to gamble with other people’s assets and livelihoods, even if it means imposing safety risks on motorists. If we were living under a constitution of liberty, that sort of mischief would not be allowed. PJM
By Steve Goddard, Real Science
John Cook posted the picture above (enlarged).
Some minor problems. Over the last decade, winter temperatures have been plummeting. (Enlarged)
“Nights warming faster than days”
That is known as the Urban Heat Island effect.
Less heat escaping into space.
Not according to NASA satellites.
Pattern of ocean warming
Not according to NOAA buoys.
The rest of Cook’s points related to CO2, not warming. What a ridiculous excuse for science.
By James Taylor
For a good Wednesday morning laugh, check out the Huffington Post article here. In the article, Kelly Rigg dances an end-zone jig about a supposedly “independent review” of BBC news coverage regarding global warming. The review, responding to complaints that BBC was biased in its coverage, concludes that BBC was not biased.
So, just how “independent” was the BBC review? BBC itself selected the reviewer, Steve Jones. For more on Jones’s lack of objectivity, here is what I attempted to post in the “Comments” section after the Huffington Post article:
“It speaks volumes that Steve Jones is the Huffington Post’s most credible, non-partisan source. Jones recently wrote that when he found himself sitting next to Margaret Thatcher at a formal dinner, he had to search desperately for a conversation topic ‘that would not end up with one of us pouring a bowl of soup over the other.’ Hmmm...only people on the fringe lunatic left would have such a reaction when finding themselves sitting next to one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century.
“And regarding global warming? Before taking on the task of evaluating BBC’s alarmist global warming coverage, Jones wrote:
“‘Nobody in their right mind can deny the frightening increase in the level of carbon dioxide … Nobody, that is, apart from those whose ideas about how science works come from some remote part of the solar system, rather than here on Earth.’
And:
“Regarding global warming tipping points, ‘Most of those ingredients are evident today, but millions insist that the warming story is made up. It’s enough to make a frog laugh.’
“Do these sound like the words of an objective, nonpartisan referee? If you say ‘yes,’ then you just may be a fan of the Huffington Post. If you say ‘no,’ then you must be a ‘denialist.’
Rigg also criticizes the Heartland Institute for not allowing alarmists to freely post, edit, and change - without oversight - entries in the Heartland Institute’s ClimateWiki. This is especially amusing because the source she quotes criticizing the Heartland Institute policy praised Wikipedia and Michael Mann’s Real Climate Wiki (two wikis that do not allow skeptics to post, edit, and change entries without oversight). Pretty ironic, eh?
Even more ironic and amusing, I said I “attempted” to post the above comments at the end of Rigg’s article because when I hit the “Post Comment” button, I received a message saying “Our moderators screen these comments before they are published.” Ironically, after Rigg railed about the alleged lack of openness in the Heartland Institute’s ClimateWiki, the Huffington Post never published my comments.
Anyway, here is a link to her article. Perhaps the Huffington Post will allow you to post comments where they have blocked me from doing so.
Review by Dr. Gordon Fulks of Daily Mail story
“Climate change sceptics will get less of a hearing on the BBC because they are at odds with the majority view among scientists, a report reveals. The corporation’s governing body is set to change the way the BBC covers the issue by urging it to focus less on those who disagree with the majority ‘consensus’. The BBC Trust report, out today.”
The article demonstrates clearly how the media operates today. Management sets very clear editorial policies, in this case support for a presumed climate ‘consensus’ and directs all their journalists to favor the perspective they want promoted. Some balance may be provided to give the appearance of impartiality, but readers are always reminded what conclusions they should draw. That is why most people sense little difference between the editorial and ‘news’ pages of a newspaper in terms of bias. As to factual content, editorials are sometimes better than news stories, because they are less formula driven and don’t pretend a mythical fairness.
How should the media cover science? First of all, they need to understand a little about it, enough to realize that claims of a ‘consensus’ are completely bogus. The earth is believed round, not because a consensus of scientists says so (or the National Academy of Sciences certifies it as such) but because we can present logic and evidence to prove it. For instance, we might show photos of the earth taken from the moon.
Quite frequently a majority of scientists have been terribly wrong and tried to enforce their views through intimidation of skeptics. When two medical researchers proposed a new theory that ulcers were caused by a bacterium, they were heavily ridiculed by their peers who preferred the older “stress theory.” When these researchers isolated the bacterium and demonstrated its disease potential, opposition melted away, and the researchers were appropriately awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In clear recognition of the very bad behavior of their peers, the Nobel Committee noted the unwarranted and inappropriate opposition they had faced. Responsible news coverage of their efforts would have looked for the all important logic and evidence and avoided the endless attacks from those defending the older ideas. It might also have considered why some scientists vigorously resist new ideas. They have a lot invested in the status quo.
The media does not need a detailed understanding of the science they report (although that certainly would not hurt) but at the very least an understanding that ALL science flows from logic and evidence. Every great scientist has realized that “the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual,” to quote Galileo. It is a pity that very, very few journalists are sufficiently literate in science to recognize this most elementary aspect of science.
Haunting the Library
If there’s a knock on your front door when you’re back from work tomorrow, don’t ignore it. It might be an “adviser” from the government to talk to you about sustainable travel. As The Independent reports:
Have you had a call from a personal travel adviser yet? In some parts of the country, they are knocking on doors and offering tips on responsible travel. It is a government initiative, financed by the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, and its aim is to encourage more of us to leave the car at home when we shop, or go to work.
I don’t know about you, but any government official coming round to visit me to “encourage” me to leave my car at home when I go to work is going to get a few choice words about the state of the railways before being unceremoniously shown the door.
Isn’t this just typical of the whole approach to global warming though? Rather than actually deal with the state of the roads and rail, the Government’s solution is to send out officials to lecture us (you don’t really believe that “advice” line do you?) on how we can be more “sustainable”. Like government initiatives on tobacco, alcohol, and food, it will start with “advice” and “tips” before the inevitable calls come for legislation to help people make the right choices. All in our own best interests of course.
By F. Swemson, American Thinker
Nobody has ever offered a more succinct indictment of the global warming hoax than H. L. Mencken, who said: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
While Americans are rightfully focused on the unemployment situation and the debt limit negotiations, we’ve pretty much forgotten about global warming as an issue ever since Obama failed to pass his Cap & Trade bill. As a result, we’re becoming complacent once again about the huge threat we face from the progressive’’ attempts to control the world’s energy industry based on the greatest scientific hoax in human history. In reality, however, nothing’s changed, as Obama is still imposing his will on us through the EP’’s regulation of CO2.
This hoax still threatens our economy, while advancing the UN"s “Agenda 21” in more ways than one. It’s also the foundation of Obama’s “green jobs” approach to the unemployment issue, since the very concept of “green jobs” is just as bogus as the idea of a “carbon footprint.”
With Fox anchors and conservative bloggers arguing that those “green” jobs are simply far too few to fuel a strong recovery, the fact that they’re based on junk science, and aren’t economically viable on their own, gets little if any mention.
The truth is that CO2 is a beneficial trace gas that exists in such small quantities in our atmosphere, that the idea of it playing any significant role in determining our climate is simply silly. CO2 comprises less than half of 1% of our atmosphere, and only 4% of it comes from human activity. That’s 16ppm, or 1 part in every 62,500 parts of our atmosphere. CO2 is plant food, and a key component in all life on earth. Plants need CO2 to grow and produce oxygen. They feed animals (including ourselves). Animals in turn consume oxygen and plant-based foods, and exhale CO2. Without CO2, nothing could be green! This brief video showing the effect on plants of increasing atmospheric CO2 is quite striking.
Ironically, the audacity of their lies about CO2 are overshadowed by the most obvious part of the Hoax. The fact is that warming is good! Throughout history, man, as well as all other living creatures, has thrived during the earth’s warm periods, and suffered and starved during the cold ones, a lesson that we’re about to be reminded of in the coming years.
The Roman civilization arose when the earth was much warmer than it’s been recently. And it’s no coincidence that just as the earth was entering the 400-year-long “Little Ice Age,” the Roman Empire was overrun by the Huns. The Egyptians also built the pyramids when it was much warmer than today, and the beginning of the industrial revolution coincided with the end of the Little Ice Age. If global warming is such a problem, doesn’t it seem odd that mankind has always flourished during the earth’s warmest periods?
And if increases in atmospheric CO2 are the primary cause of warming, why, from the 1940’s through the mid 1970’s, was the earth cooling when increases in our use of fossil fuels were at their greatest?
And why is it that Mars and Jupiter, and Neptune’s moon Titan, have all followed the exact same warming and cooling cycles as the earth during the 20th century? Does anyone think that our SUVs and power plants are causing the same climate change on other planets and moons in our solar system, or is it more likely that the changes there were caused by the fact that we’re all in the same solar system? I.e., “It’s the sun, stupid!”
To me, the most worrisome aspect of this problem is that we simply aren’t debating this issue properly.
In 1974, in an article in Time Magazine entitled “Another Ice Age?,” the same alarmists suggested that the (then-)coming ice age was being caused in part by the same vehicular emissions that they’re now blaming for global warming.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
But then it stopped cooling and started warming again. This has been happening throughout history (see Global Warming: Exposing the Far Left’s Lies).
Now, since the warming stopped 12 years ago, the alarmists are finally beginning to admit that the earth has started cooling again. And what are they telling us is the reason why? In what’s got to be one of the most mind-boggling displays of chutzpah ever seen, they’re actually saying that the reason that it hasn’t been warming for the last 12 years is that China and India are now burning such a massive amount of coal, that it blocks the sun’s rays from reaching the earth and warming it. That’s right! Our use of fossil fuels is warming the earth, while China’s is cooling it?
How stupid and gullible do they think we are? Australia just announced that they’re going ahead with a carbon tax on their power companies, rather than a Cap & Trade system. But no matter what they call it, they’re still fleecing the same victims, the people, who’ll be paying this new tax in the form of higher utility bills, and higher prices on everything they buy. And while this insanity unfolds, we’re still paying lip service to this absurd lie by continuing to make reference to the virtues of reducing our “carbon footprint.” Every time we hear that preposterous phrase, we should laugh at it, and then explain why we find it so funny if anyone asks. Years of constant repetition is what sold the lie in the first place. It may take years of constant repetition of the truth to counter it.
Our primary argument against Cap & Trade and the EPA’s CO2 regulations has been that they would be bad for the economy. Of course they would be, but by attacking them on those grounds, we’re granting our sanction to the underlying premise - that CO2 is dangerous. But it’s not. And there never were any benefits to be had from Cap & Trade, regardless of its cost.
There are millions of smart people out there who have been bombarded with this global warming nonsense for so long that they’ve actually come to believe it. The old adage that if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth happens to be true, especially when the people don’t get to hear other points of view, something our mainstream media has made sure of over the last few decades.
But even though people are slowly growing skeptical about it, and turning away from the mainstream media, we can’t afford to let our guard down about this scam. And we’ll never truly defeat it for good by arguing against it based on the enormous costs involved. Whether it’s global warming, or global cooling, or ocean acidification, we need to denounce this madness as the outrageous lie that it is, if we’re ever going to defeat this hydra in all of its various guises.