In March 2007 the UK’s Channel 4 broadcast a biting documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. It debunked most of the major arguments of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning video, An Inconvenient Truth.  The Chinese word for crisis is a combination of the two ideograms Wei, which means “danger” and Ji, which means “opportunity.” In the past several months, a new “crisis” has heated up the controversy over man-made global warming.

A few major-media writers and TV personalities are actually reporting statements by credible scientists who are challenging the assumption that carbon dioxide is the primary force causing global warming. There’s a real possibility that big-name journalists will break ranks and pursue their next Pulitzer Prize by exposing the lack of scientific consensus on CO2 as a planet-heating pollutant. That would create a crisis of confidence among the activists, researchers and global-governance apparatchiks who want a global carbon tax to build their political and financial power base.

As an agricultural journalist, I find this a fascinating new development in the climate controversy. I’ve studied weather and climate for more than 50 years. In the early 1970s, I wrote a short book, Tomorrow’s Wild Weather, which warned what could happen if there was a long-term continuation of the cooling trends in the mid-latitudes since the 1930s. As climatologist Reid Bryson advised me at the time, a cooler climate in temperate zones would have been serious for world agriculture: Westerly winds would intensify, making U.S. weather more extreme. Africa’s Sahel desert would expand much farther southward, spreading famine across northern Africa. The data looked ominous: Average temperature in the 48 U.S. states had fallen by more than six-tenths of a degree Celsius since 1930. This cooling attracted widespread press coverage and even some political pressure-to reduce “aerosols” or fine particles of pollutants which must be making our atmosphere more opaque. But the “New Ice Age” scare faded as more refined data emerged and the longer-term, slow recovery from the Little Ice Age resumed.

I’ve continued to follow the climate controversy, especially since the 1997 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since that conference, billions of dollars in government funding have generated floods of research data, a myriad of computer models, political posturing and the Kyoto Protocol. Read more here.

Suppose that the pessimistic forecasts of global warming are accurate. Suppose that the planet’s temperature rises according to the high-end scenario of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we experience the economic and social impacts (like hunger, malaria and coastal flooding) projected by the much-publicized Stern Review sponsored by the British government. Does that mean our best course of action is to quickly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases?

That’s the question addressed in a new report by Indur Goklany for the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank that has taken issue with many of the dire predictions about global warming. “The surprising conclusion using the Stern Review’s own estimates,” Dr. Goklany writes, “is that future generations will be better off in the richest but warmest” of the I.P.C.C.’s scenarios. He concludes that cutting emissions will do much less good than encouraging sustainable development in poor countries and policies of “focused adaptation” to deal with disease and environmental problems like coastal flooding. For a fifth the cost of the Kyoto Protocol, he calculates, these adaptation policies could yield more immediate and also long-term benefits than would a policy that entirely halted global warming (which would cost far, far more than Kyoto).

He argues that this path isn’t merely an economic but also a moral imperative: For the foreseeable future, people will be wealthier-and their well-being higher-than is the case for present generations both in the developed and developing worlds and with or without climate change. The well-being of future inhabitants in today’s developing world would exceed that of the inhabitants of today’s developed world under all but the poorest scenario. Future generations should, moreover, have greater access to human capital and technology to address whatever problems they might face, including climate change. Hence the argument that we should shift resources from dealing with the real and urgent problems confronting present generations to solving potential problems of tomorrow’s wealthier and better positioned generations is unpersuasive at best and verging on immoral at worst.

The Washington Post recently ran a shocking above-the-fold article warning us of “Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica.” A new paper by Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a net loss of ice where most scientists thought the opposite would occur. The Post went full-bore with this one, spreading the article on to an entire interior page. The piece ends by noting that Rajenda Pachauri, head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is so concerned that he’s is personally going down to inspect the situation.

He should. Before he even gets to Antarctica, Pachauri is going to see something even more surprising than Rignot’s finding. Despite a warming Southern Ocean, the amount of ice surrounding Antarctica is now at the highest level ever measured for this time of the year, since satellites first began to monitor it almost thirty years ago. This represents a continuation of the record set last winter (our summer).

One of the tired tropes that reverberate throughout global warming reporting is that inconvenient facts get left out. In this case, it’s blatant. Midway through the Post’s page-long article comes a statement that “these new findings come as the Arctic is losing ice at a dramatic rate.” Wouldn’t that have been an appropriate place to note that, despite a small recent loss of ice from the Antarctic landmass, the ice field surrounding Antarctica is now larger than ever measured? See full story here.

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

A roughly linear global temperature increase of about 0.5C per 100 years seems to have occurred from about 1800, or even much earlier, to the present. This value may be compared with what the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists consider to be the manmade greenhouse effect of 0.6C per 100 years. This long-lasting linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change.

One possible cause of the linear increase may be Earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age. This trend (0.5C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. Thus, there is a possibility that only a fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities. This conclusion is contrary to the 2007 IPCC Report, which states that “most” of the present warming is due to the manmade greenhouse effect.

See full size image here

The public is greatly alarmed and thus concerned about climate change largely because of such misinformation and misunderstanding.

I am concerned about the inevitable backlash against science and scientists, when the public eventually learns the correct information about climate change. Even if the IPCC is not directly responsible for the present confusion, they should take the necessary responsible action to help rectify the confusion. I request that the IPCC make an appropriate statement in this regard before the next G8 meeting in May 2008. Read more here.

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, was the founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks from its establishment in 1998 until January of 2007. He has been professor of geophysics since 1964 and has published more than 550 professional journal articles. In 2002, he was named one of the “1000 Most Cited Scientists.” His full paper on the Little Ice Age is available as a PDF download.

Who’s our congressman?” asked mama polar bear during a light lunch on an ice floe somewhere off Alaska. “Beats me,” said papa polar bear. “Pass the walrus calf.”

“I want to send a letter complaining about Joey being attacked again by those government wildlife scientists,” said mama polar bear. “Let it go,” said papa polar bear. “Your brother still stinks of humans. But at least the sedation’s taking longer to wear off this time, so he hasn’t been his usual testy, cranky self.” “You’d be stressed too if you were chased by a helicopter, shot with a tranquilizer dart and had ‘X19788’ tattooed on the inside of your mouth when you were only 5 years old,” said mama polar bear. “At least now he can no longer claim that first encounter was an alien abduction,” said papa polar bear. “Cool it, kids,” said grandpa polar bear. “Those scientists are just doing their job—like the ones we saw on ‘60 Minutes’ two weeks ago. “If it weren’t for their longitudinal studies, we wouldn’t know how many of us live up here or that anthropomorphic global warming is a threat to our iconic existence.” “Well, I’m sick of being harassed,” said mama polar bear. “For my entire life they’ve been drugging us, weighing us, checking our fat content—poking into our sex lives. Now they’ve got Scott Pelley of CBS flying around with them.” “At least they’re not putting radio collars on us or painting numbers on our backs,” said papa polar bear.

“Or shooting us anymore,” reminded grandpa polar bear. “In my day, we had a lot more than mad scientists, biased TV reporters and melting pack ice to worry about. We were daily target practice for sports hunters or bored sailors. “I bet there weren’t 8,000 of us left in the whole Arctic in 1970. Now that we’re protected, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates we’re up to 25,000—though 60 percent of us live in Canada, those hosers.”

“Quit griping, son,” said grandpa polar bear. “Our species has finally hit the jackpot. Humans were our only enemy. Now we’re the official mascots of the climate-change industrial complex. We’re as charismatic as whales. We’ve got lobbyists all over Washington.” “It won’t last,” said papa polar bear. “Wait till everyone finds out the ice cap naturally gets thinner or thicker all the time. Wait till they all realize we can swim 30 miles before breakfast. Wait till they see two-thirds of us haven’t died by 2050 because of a little global warming. “But what if ‘60 Minutes’ turns on us and catches us eating baby seals?” asked mama polar bear. “Don’t be such alarmists,” said grandpa polar bear. “Al Gore will never let it happen. “The mainstream media, politicians and school kids have been completely suckered. We’re apex victims of modern mankind. Senators from New Jersey are working to put us on the Endangered Species list. Congress is talking about doing a study to make sure we won’t be hurt before they allow those new oil and gas leases to be auctioned in the Chuckchi Sea. It’s only a matter of time before we get Pell Grants for polar bears. “So stop worrying, kids,” said grandpa polar bear, slipping off the ice floe for a little five mile swim. “We’ve never had it so good.” Read more here.

Last autumn the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left. Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.

This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km. See link.

A second graph, ”Global Ice Area”, shows a similar pattern repeated every year since satellite records began in 1979; while a third, ”Southern Hemisphere Ice”, shows that sea ice has actually expanded in recent years, well above its 30-year mean. See story here.

Excerpts: And this leads to the repugnant behavior of the attack dog climate scientists who otherwise would like to be taken seriously. By engaging in the character assassination of people who happen to find themselves on Senator Inhofe’s list, they reinforce the absurd notion that scientific claims can be adjudicated solely by head counts and a narrow view of professional qualifications. They can’t. (See this enlightening and amusing discussion by Dan Sarewitz of leading experts arguing over who is qualified to comment on climate issues.) But by suggesting that knowledge claims can be judged by credentials the attack dog scientists reinforce an anti-democratic authoritarian streak found in the activist wing of the climate science community. Of course, from the perspective of the activist scientists such attacks may be effective if they dissuade other challenges to orthodoxy, but surely climate scientists deserving of the designation should be encouraging challenges to knowledge claims, rather than excoriating anyone who dares to challenge their beliefs.

The climate science community or at least its most publicly visible activist wing seems to be working as hard as possible to undercut the legitimacy and the precarious trust than society provides in’support of activities of the broader scientific community. Senator Inhofe is a politician, and plays politics. If activist climate scientists wish to play the Senator’s game, then don’t be surprised to see common wisdom viewing these activists more as political players than trustworthy experts. If this is correct then maybe the Senator is a bit more astute than given credit for.  See Roger’s full blog here.

South Africa is experiencing an energy crisis that has all the dimensions of a national disaster. Last Friday all South Africa’s gold, platinum, diamond and some coal mines closed. This was because of the dangers to miners during unexpected power failures. This is only one of the consequences of the energy crisis. There are many examples of how the crisis is affecting all aspects of life in this country. Our national economy has already been adversely affected. On two occasions I visited local shopping centres. The lights were out, doors were closed, and the staff were waiting in the corridors for the power to come on again.  In order to overcome the problem, the authorities intend imposing severe reductions in electricity use. These will be in place for the next five years at least.

The South African authorities have acknowledged that the crisis is the result of not taking heed of warnings issued in 1998 that this would happen if our power generation network was not expanded to meet the growing demand. There is some suspicion that the delay was also the result of pressures from environmental activists. This is a very good example of what will happen to the fragile economies of other developing countries with large disadvantaged populations. It also demonstrates the consequences when developing countries are forced to comply with compulsory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions imposed by developed counties such as the EU for example. The UK sent Nicholas Stern and David King to South Africa in order to persuade the South African authorities to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and to persuade other developing counties to follow suite. Now we see the result.

Now the South African public will directly experience the consequence of these measures long proposed by climate alarmists. There is little prospect of South Africa meeting its goals of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. Economists are also predicting that we will not achieve the targeted 6% annual economic growth within the foreseeable future. Read more here.