According to Michael Shaw “As often happens-especially these days with Web-based media-contentious issues such as global warming become politicized to the point that the discourse trivializes to an alarming extent. Indeed, all one seems to hear about climate change are essentially useless debates between believers and skeptics, along with unrealistic and grotesquely draconian proposals that would force us back into the Stone Age in an effort to mitigate carbon dioxide production,” says Michael Shaw. He adds, “Assertions by zealots and politicians, who should really know better, that climate change is the ‘most important environmental problem facing the world,’ ought to be subjected to the cold light of reason. Before untold resources are spent, shouldn’t we at least compare climate change to other problems facing mankind?”

Let’s look at some of these other problems facing mankind. Ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today include: access to education, climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, corruption and governance, financial instability, hunger and malnutrition, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. The Copenhagen Consensus explored opportunities for addressing these issues. This group, organized by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, is an attempt by leading economists (including three Nobelists) to set priorities for spending using traditional cost-benefit analysis. They were asked to address the challenge areas and to answer the question: ‘What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?’

Challenge papers, commissioned from acknowledged authorities in each area of policy, set out more than thirty proposals in descending order of desirability. In ordering the proposals the panel was guided predominantly by consideration of economic costs and benefits. The results? Compared to other issues such as communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and water, and the rest, climate change ranked last on the list. Read more here.

A Plymouth-born explorer has been forced to abandon his bid to become the fastest man to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole. Ben Saunders, 30, is to be rescued after his equipment failed in ‘appalling’ ice conditions. The main bolts which attach the binding of his boots to his skis sheared off and the damage was beyond repair. He said: “To have an expedition that is the culmination of seven years training, preparation and experience forced to a halt due to an equipment failure is incredibly disappointing, particularly as I am still in excellent physical condition. “I came here well prepared and believe that the daily distances I have achieved to date - in my first four days I covered 29.4 nautical miles - show that setting a speed record was within my reach.

“The ice conditions I have encountered have been the worst I have ever seen, and worse than I could have imagined.” Mr Saunders, now based in London, dragged his 65kg sledge over ridges of ice and snow the same height as a two-storey building. Since he was dropped at the starting point on Ward Hunt Island on the coast of Canada on March 26 he has covered 60 miles. But he still had more than 400 miles to go. He had hoped to complete his expedition in just 30 days. Rescuers are arranging to pick him up from the ice. 

Ideologies tend to have long staying power. And in the case of nuclear power, it is now enjoying a renaissance thanks largely to another ideology, this one an environmental ideology, and it, too is couched and promoted in high-minded grandiloquent prose. You know it well. I am speaking specifically of global warming.

Al Gore, as everyone knows, is the chief spokesman for this new ideology. Some of you may have seen him Sunday on 60 Minutes, where he was asked about those who don’t subscribe to the view that global warming spells doom for mankind. They’re often called “deniers.” “It’s a tiny, tiny minority,” he told Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, comparing those who hold this view to people who believe the earth is flat. These are people who believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie set in Nevada, he said.

I found it ironic that Gore would compare these deniers to those who don’t believe in space travel. One of those deniers is Michael Griffin, the head of NASA. Another is Habibullo Abdussamatov. He heads research on the Russian half of the International Space Station. A third is Eigil Friis-Christensen, the head of the Danish Space Agency. A fourth is Freeman Dyson, one of the best known scientists on earth today. The furtherance of space flight are among his many accomplishments. He developed nuclear pulse propulsion for the Orion project. He also developed the TRIGA, the research reactors used in hospitals and university labs around the world to produce isotopes. He does have a connection with movie sets, however. Dyson’s theories about space travel inspired the Star Trek series.

Michael Griffin, the head of NASA believes that global warming isn’t a problem worth wrestling with. This is an interesting viewpoint from the man who oversees the world’s single biggest climate change research budget - $1.1 billion per year. Here is what he told National Public Radio in the US last year: “First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.” Was Griffin entitled to express his viewpoint? He holds a PhD in aerospace engineering. He holds five masters degrees. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics. He was unanimously confirmed to head NASA by the United States Senate. No sooner did he express his opinion than he was called an “idiot” and said to be “in denial.” He was called a “fool” and “surprisingly naive.” He was called either “totally clueless” or “a deep anti-global warming ideologue.” He then apologized and wasn’t heard from again on the subject. And that’s probably why you haven’t heard about him. Read more here. Lawrence Solomon has a new book called the Deniers. See in this story why he wrote it.

You could have heard a pin drop at the Hong Kong conference designed to persuade the airline industry to cut back on its production of so-called greenhouse gases to fight “global warming.” The “Greener Skies 2008” conference had just heard from David Archibald, a solar scientist asserting that climate change is mostly dictated by solar cycles, not carbon dioxide levels, as conventional wisdom suggests.

Archibald didn’t just tell the group not to worry about carbon dioxide emissions. He told those gathered they should figure out ways of increasing CO2 output. “In a few short years, we will have a reversal of the warming of the 20th century,” Archibald warned, according to CargoNews Asia. “There will be significant cooling very soon. Our generation has known a warm, giving sun, but the new generation will suffer a sun that is less giving, and the earth will be less fruitful. Carbon dioxide is not even a little bit bad - it’s wholly beneficial.”

One observer at the February conference said there would have been fewer jaws dropping had Archibald stripped off his clothes before the assembled. “Plant growth responds to atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment,” he continued. “In a world of higher atmospheric carbon dioxide, crops will use less water per unit of carbon dioxide uptake. Thus the productivity of semi-arid lands will increase the most.” But the real shocker was not just his unorthodox view of carbon dioxide. Unlike most of those in the conference, Archibald doesn’t see a future threat of global warming, but an imminent and dire future of global cooling. Read more here.

Thanks to Robert Schwartz for passing on this excerpt from Chapter IX: The State of Germany till the Invasion of the Barbarians, in the Time of the Emperor Decius (around 250BC) of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon originally published in 1776. The so-called Roman Warm Period peaked around 100-200 AD and was followed by a rapid cooling reported here.  At the time of Gibbon’s work (1776), Europe had emerged from the “Maunder Minimum - Little Ice Age” but as the author noted land use changes may have played some role in the relative warmth. Even then historians were noting the importance of land use changes on climate as Roger Pielke Sr. has been documenting.

See full size image here

Some ingenious writers have suspected that Europe was much colder formerly than it is at present; and the most ancient descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm their theory. The general complaints of intense frost and eternal winter, are perhaps little to be regarded, since we have no method of reducing to the accurate standard of the thermometer, the feelings, or the expressions, of an orator born in the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall select two remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal nature.

1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enormous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous armies, their cavalry, and their heavy wagons, over a vast and solid bridge of ice. Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon.

2. The reindeer, that useful animal, from whom the savage of the North derives the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a constitution that supports, and even requires, the most intense cold. He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the Pole; he seems to delight in the snows of Lapland and Siberia: but at present he cannot subsist, much less multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic. In the time of Caesar the reindeer, as well as the elk and the wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland. The modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays of the sun. The morasses have been drained, and, in proportion as the soil has been cultivated, the air has become more temperate. Canada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient Germany. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest provinces of France and England, that country experiences the most rigorous cold. The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the great river of St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice. Read more here.

The only useful measure of the value of journalism is the degree to which an article informs the public with objective truth.  On that basis, the recent article by ABC (Global Warming Denier: Fraud or ‘Realist’? Physicist Says Humans Will Benefit From Warmer Planet - Dan Harris, Felicia Biberica, Elizabeth Stuart and Nils Kongshaug contributed to this report.) scores an abysmal zero.

The article begins, His fellow scientists call him a fraud, a charlatan and a showman ... which is neither true nor objective.  Further, it is a smear as it fails to identify any of the claimed “fellow scientists” (how very convenient!). The article continues: Singer, an 84-year-old Princeton-trained physicist, is the grandfather of the global warming skeptics who dispute the established scientific consensus that global warming is real, that it is caused by the pollution humans are pumping into the atmosphere, and that it will be catastrophic if measures are not taken immediately.

Why is age important here?  Is ABC’s intent to put Dr. Singer in a box labeled “old fool”?  If so, then it’s failed to consider that his age suggests wisdom and subject-matter knowledge far beyond that evidenced by the writers of this article.  While Dr. Singer is certainly a key player in the scientific effort to inject perspective and sanity into the global warming issue, I suggest the characterization of Dr. Singer as the “grandfather of the global warming skeptics” is inaccurate because the truth is (that terribly inconvenient “truth") that real science, historic climate, and the scientific method are the principal foundation upon which skepticism of the IPCC/Gore theory are built.  As a scientist (mathematician) who has had a strong fascination and interest in both meteorology and climatology for over 50 years, I have studied paleoclimatology and earth sciences throughout my adult life.  As anyone with a similar background in the scientific method and scientific inquiry would understand, virtually any nominal interest and associated knowledge in these areas is sufficient to cast serious doubt on the theories professed by policymakers of the IPCC and Mr. Gore that Dan Harris supports.  Then there is the inconvenient science that completely debunks the unsustainable conclusions of the IPCCs Summary Reports (note that March 1, 2007 through February 29, 2008 was the coldest global 12 months in many decades, losing nearly 1 degree C).

The paragraph under scrutiny also contains several conjectures that are simply not true.  First, of course, being that Dr. Singer is the “grandfather” of skeptics when, in fact, science and truth are the grandfather of skeptics.  Second is the brazen statement that there is “scientific consensus” that humans are causing global warming.  That is an oft-repeated claim whose veracity is simply not reflected in any true assessment of the positions of subject-matter experts (i.e., those trained in climatology, meteorology, and/or atmospheric science).  Next is the totally unsupportable claim that human “pollution” pumped into the atmosphere will cause catastrophic warming.  First, climate warming has historically been associated with advances in human civilization (the Minoan warm period, the Roman warm period, and the Medieval warm period - each of which were warmer than anything we’ve experienced in the 20th-21st centuries - are all testimony to that truth).  When climate cools, civilization struggles.  Witness the demise of settlers of Greenland (no longer “green").  It is preposterous to claim that greater plant yields, longer growing seasons, and more benign weather will increase human strife.  Would ABC prefer lesser plant yields, shorter growing seasons, and more severe cold?

ABC’s story is a classic case of disinformation, distortion, smearing, and journalistic abuse.  It is a shining example of why our Fourth Estate has become the new Fifth Column.  It is virtually devoid of any truth.  It is presented with a highly biased viewpoint.  It is close-minded.  It is, quite frankly, mere propaganda.  The complete lack of scientific credentials of anyone named in the story (other than Dr. Singer) or any of the story’s authors, demonstrates the ABC story is a fraud.  Read much more here.

Pity poor Al Gore. The former presidential candidate has a trophy room Tiger Woods would envy. He’s got the Nobel Peace Prize, an Emmy, even an Oscar. But much like his failed presidential campaign, Gore can’t win the big game. Gore’s big game is climate change. He’s been trying to force America to embrace his apocalyptic vision for years and Americans still don’t agree. His failure is almost stunning - like Woods losing at miniature golf.

He’s been completely set up for an easy victory: The mainstream media long ago fully embraced everything he says about global warming. They rarely even give anyone a chance to present a different view. By Gore’s own calculation, people who oppose his global warming consensus “are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view.” He told “60 Minutes” March 30 that those who dare to challenge him are “almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, and those who believe the Earth is flat.”

There are so few of them that Gore is committing $300 million to convince them he is right. That’s right. Gore is such a pathetic pitchman that even with the entire global news media on his side; he still has to pay $300 million to buy ads to further hector Americans about our lifestyles.  The new campaign is called The We Campaign. Three hundred million dollars. The ad agency that brought us the Geico Gecko and the Caveman. And all they come up with is a campaign that sounds like an old “Bugs Bunny” cartoon complete with a “We” flag. See post here.

See what Limbaugh had to say in this excerpt.

Democrats running for President and those residing in their easy chairs in Congress, took time out from the hard work of proclaiming National Harriet Tubbs Week and keel halued the CEO’s of “Big Oil” companies today, publicly humiliating them and their “windfall Profits”. They are really keelhauling YOU and me.

Gas prices are at historic highs because demand is at historic highs and these same polar bear hugging loons have forbidden in increase in the supply. As the accompanying graphic shows “Big Oil” profits as a % of gas sales are about 1/4 of what the same loons, call them the hydrocarbon mafia, take. Why not put Congress on trial instead?

With an assist from those loveable but smelly, bark humping weirdoes at the Sierra Club, we have been lied to and court ordered into not building new gas refineries in the U.S.A. Not one has not been built since Pamela Sue Anderson played Nancy Drew on ABC (1977). Is it fair to conclude that we could get along with the amount of Cell Phone Towers we had in 1977 or 1987 or 1997? No?

If the U.S. Senate’s Lieberman-Warner CO2 - Cap And Trade scheme were implemented to “cut our greenhouse gas emissions and trade the excess” (that means sentencing 3rd world people’s to electricity depraved lives and certain death in many instances) the results would be staggering but hey, you gotta go green right my friends? (When John McCain lectures me about global warming he is NOT my friend).

You were supposed to promote awareness of the Climate Crisis by turning your lights off for an hour, thereby not consuming electricity and extending Earth’s stay on Climate CPR by 60 minutes.  This reminds me that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il should be in line to succeed Al Gore at the Nobel Prize Awards, his “green collar jobs” program is going so well, the whole country goes dark every night!  So cheer up America and celebrate $7.00 a gallon gasoline, gas lines, rolling brownouts and yes falling temperatures you have earned the privilege of experiencing witch burnings and plagues in person. Welcome to the new old dark Ages. Welcome to truly becoming green.  Read more and see chart here.