By Tony Hake, Denver Climate Change Examiner
A bogus press release fooled CNBC and Reuters into believing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had changed its stance on climate change legislation.The United States Chamber of Commerce has long stood against the proposed climate change legislation that was passed by the House of Representatives and is now being considered in the Senate. That is, until today if you believe CNBC and Reuters as both organizations fell for a fake press release saying otherwise (see the document here).
Both news organizations reported Monday that the Chamber of Commerce had made a major change in its stance and was going to be backing the cap and trade legislation.
A press release purportedly released by the Chamber said, “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing its weight behind strong climate legislation, a spokesman for Chamber President Tom J. Donahue announced today at the National Press Club.”
CNBC ran a banner announcing “Breaking News” as reporter Hampton Pearson excitedly read portions of the false press release (video below). A CNBC host on the cable network later suggested that the White House might be behind the release.
Reuters issued a story announcing, “The Chamber of Commerce said on Monday it will no longer opposes climate change legislation, but wants the bill to include a carbon tax.” The Washington Post and New York Times followed suit and posted the story to their sites before it was retracted.
The press release misspelled Tom Donohue’s name and the email address and phone numbers listed as media contacts listed on it were not valid. It is being reported that liberal activist group AVAAZ Action Factory was responsible for the hoax press release.
By John Reid, physicist
The less a thing is known, the more fervently it is believed. - Montaigne
In effect a new religion has grown out of secular humanism. Global warming is the central tenet of this new belief system in much the same way that the Resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity. Al Gore has taken a role corresponding to that of St Paul in proselytising the new faith.
There are major differences, however. Whereas it is not possible to call oneself a Christian without entertaining the central belief in the Resurrection, it is certainly possible to be deeply concerned with the order and condition of humanity and so call oneself a humanist without entertaining a corresponding belief in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Belief in a Resurrection which supposedly occurred some 2000 years ago is a matter of personal faith, whereas AGW is a scientific hypothesis which can and should be tested by observation. Imagine the consequences both to science and to secular humanism should this hypothesis turn out to be untrue and the dire predictions of the climate models fail to materialise.
The quasi-religious nature of AGW is evidenced by the rancour which is generated when people like me express scepticism about the theory. Scepticism is an essential part of science which has, until recently, been a “small-l liberal” pursuit in which the opinions of doubters were respected. Now we sceptics are called “deniers” and, by implication, lumped in with neo-Nazis who question the Holocaust. The accusation that we are somehow in the sway of the oil companies and similar big business interests is commonplace and indeed is the chief argument of non-scientist supporters of the AGW theory. This echoes the “work of the Devil” argument of fundamentalist Christians; it is a mental trick by which the faithful avoid facing the real issues.
Why then do a majority of scientists support the theory? I believe it is largely a matter of loyalty. Very few of us physicists know enough genetics to justify our belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection but most of us support it because we believe it to be the outcome of rigorous scientific processes similar to those carried out in our own discipline. Most scientists would support the AGW theory for much the same reason.
By accident of history I find myself in the opposing camp. I was trained as a physicist and was granted a PhD for my postgraduate work in upper atmosphere physics. In the early 1980s I joined the CSIRO’s Division of Oceanography and worked in surface gravity waves (ocean waves) for a time. Much of the theoretical side of oceanography entails fluid dynamics which, because of its heavy mathematical load, is regarded as a sub-discipline of applied mathematics rather than of physics. Because of this, in my view, many practitioners of oceanography and climatology have a cavalier disregard for experimental testing and an unjustified faith in the validity of large-scale computer models.
Later in my career I was involved in running and refining numerical fluid dynamical models, so I gained some insight into how this modelling is done and how rigorously such models need to be tested. Naval architects and aerodynamical engineers do such testing in wave tanks and wind tunnels.
Meteorologists regularly test model “skill”. Climatologists don’t seem to have a concept of testing, and prefer to use the term “verification” instead - that is, they do not seek to invalidate their models; they only seek supporting evidence. My scepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field.
Back in the early 1990s when I was still working for the CSIRO and the early versions of the AGW theory started to gain currency, I was rather bemused by the passions which were aroused in my colleagues and the gullibility with which predictions of future climate disaster were accepted. Surely the jury is still out, I thought. I remained agnostic about the theory. More recently, after reading the literature and looking in detail at the output of one well-known climate model (HadCM3) I have changed my stand. I now believe it is nonsense for the following reasons.
First there is the argument, commonly used by Al Gore and others, that carbon dioxide forms a layer like a blanket or greenhouse window pane high in the atmosphere which traps long-wave infra-red radiation, thus making the surface of the earth warmer. This is misleading. Certainly carbon dioxide is an infra-red absorber but, like most infra-red absorbing gases, its absorption rate depends on concentration and pressure and is at a maximum at the ground. The atmosphere is a gas, not a solid, and bits of it move up and down, carrying heat as they move. As a meteorological balloon climbs higher in the atmosphere, the measured temperature falls off with increasing height. This phenomenon, referred to as the lapse rate, has been known and described for more than a century. The lapse rate is determined by the thermodynamic properties of the gases that make up the atmosphere and has little to do with radiation. The convection term completely dominates the radiation term in the relevant equation.
Second there are the climate models themselves. In discussions with colleagues, arguments always seem to come down to “But the models show...” Those who use this argument seldom have modelling experience themselves and share the lay public’s naive faith in the value of large computer models.
I have been a fluid dynamical modeller and I know how flaky numerical models can be for even a relatively small chunk of fluid like the Derwent Estuary. The models are highly unstable and need to be carefully cosseted in order to perform at all realistically. One reason for their inherent instability is that the mesh size of the model grid (typically hundreds of metres to hundreds of kilometres) is always much larger than the scale at which friction and molecular diffusion operate (millimetres or less). These are the forces which act to damp down oscillations by converting free energy to heat. In order to get around this difficulty, in order to keep a model stable, it is common practice to set certain parameters such as eddy viscosity unrealistically high to compensate for the absence of molecular friction. This is reasonable if we are using the model to gain insight into underlying processes, but it means that fluid dynamic models are not much good at predicting the future. There is no exact correspondence between model and reality, and the two soon part company. Fluid mechanics and celestial mechanics are very different disciplines.
This country and the world at large have many real political, demographic and environmental issues to contend with. We do not need to create problems where none exist. The present hysteria diverts money and attention away from problems which do need to be solved. In my view, terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and pandemic disease are far bigger threats to my family’s comfort and security than are global warming and putative “tipping points”.
There is a danger that conservation failures will be blamed on “climate change”. This happened recently when the removal of feral cats caused a rabbit population explosion on Macquarie Island. Incompetent environmental management resulted in such massive erosion problems that eleven species of birds are now threatened. Climate change has provided a convenient alternative view of the cause of this disaster. Likewise the flooding of oceanic islands by “rising sea levels” has more to do with the removal of coral reefs for construction projects than with global warming.
Over the last few years, with remarkable rapidity, AGW theory has gone from a scientific curiosity to a politically-correct catechism. Nowadays it is not merely politically correct, it is politically essential. Somehow this nineteenth-century oddity has outlasted Das Kapital to become the banner of millions of environmentally concerned Westerners. It seems to fulfil a human need for sacrifice, a need to “put something back”. It is the ancient myth about guilt and sin and redemption in a new guise.
People are entitled to entertain whatever apocalyptic view of the future they choose, but such ideas have nothing to do with science. Climate prediction is not science, it is pseudo-science, and sooner or later more real scientists are going to wake up to this fact.
In the conduct of human affairs it is surely preferable that we base our actions on reason and evidence rather than on piety and myth. Read full essay here.
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, UK Guardian
Gorilla dung could conceivably be the salvation of the planet. A leading UK wildlife expert today said protecting the large primates he called the “gardeners of the forest” could provide the easy fix for global warming envisaged by international reforestation programmes.
A mountain gorilla in Parc Nacional des Volcans, Rwanda. Photograph: Andy Rouse/Corbis
America and other industrialised countries are looking to reforestation programmes in Africa, South-east Asia and South America to help contain the effects of climate change. But Ian Redmond, the UN ambassador for the year of the gorilla, said the industrialised countries would be making a mistake if they did not commit specific funds to protecting the gorillas as part of the discussion on reforestation efforts at the climate change negotiations at Copenhagen next December. “If we save the trees and not the animals then we will just see a slow death of the forests,” Redmond said. “What I am urging the decisionmakers at Copenhagen to consider is that the gorillas are not a luxury item. If you want a longterm healthy forest you have to take action to protect them.”
The gorillas - or “gardeners of the forest” as Redmond called them - were crucial to fighting climate change, he said. Gorillas, which are herbivores, feed on fruid and plants. The digested food, as it passes through their systems, helps seeds to germinate. The full extent of the gorillas’ role in propagation is unclear. But Redmond said a number of plant species could not flourish without them, or wild elephants, the other large mammal crucial in germination.
The gorillas - caught up in the region’s civil wars, preyed on by poachers, and crowded out of their homes by mining and logging industries - are already endangered across Africa. But Redmond’s argument could help give the animals a new level of protection.
The world’s forests act as a natural trap for carbon emissions, sucking up some 4.8bn tonnes of carbon a year. Economists such as Lord Stern have said that spending some $15bn a year on reforestation programmes would be the cheapest way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In the run-up to the meeting on climate change in December, there has been a growing focus on reforestation programmes in Africa, South-east Asia and South America. However, there has been no direct recognition of the role played by large animals - such as gorillas - in propagating plants on the jungle floor.
Redmond said gorillas were crucial in maintaining the lifecycle of the rainforests in the Congo basin. The forests themselves suck up more than 1bn tonnes of carbon every year. “This is what the species are for. They are not ornaments. They are not just interesting things to study. They are part of an ecosystem,” he said. All of the big apes are now considered endangered. Nearly 20 years of civil war in the Great Lakes region of Africa have seen an explosion in illegal mining and logging by militias seeking money for guns. Read more here.
World Climate Report
Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
“The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.”
Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters: “A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008-2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980-2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008-2009 melt season.
Figure 1. Standardized values of the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009 Enlarged here (adapted from Tedesco and Monaghan, 2009).
Cryosphere today ice anomaly image as of October 6, 2009. Enlarged here.
The silence surrounding this publication was deafening. It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs). But not a peep.
But such is not always the case - or rather, such is not ever the case when ice melt is pushing the other end of the record scale. For instance, below is a collection of NASA stories highlighting record high amounts of melting (or in most cases, simply higher than normal amounts in some regions) across Greenland in each of the past 3 years, as ascertained by Marco Tedesco (the lead author of the latest report on Antarctica):
NASA Researcher Finds Days of Snow Melting on the Rise in Greenland
“In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observation.”
NASA Finds Greenland Snow Melting Hit Record High in High Places
“A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average. In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland is the equivalent of more than twice the surface size of the U.S.”
Melting on the Greenland Ice Cap, 2008
“The northern fringes of Greenland’s ice sheet experienced extreme melting in 2008, according to NASA scientist Marco Tedesco and his colleagues.”
And lest you think that perhaps NASA hasn’t had any data on ice melt across Antarctica in past years, we give you this one:
NASA Researchers Find Snowmelt in Antarctica Creeping Inland
“On the world’s coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves. In a new NASA study, researchers [including Marco Tedesco] using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at higher altitudes than ever and increasingly melting on Antarctica’s largest ice shelf.”
But this time around, nothing, nada, zippo from NASA when their ice melt go-to guy Marco Tedesco reports that Antarctica has set a record for the lack of surface ice melt (even more interestingly coming on the heels of a near-record low ice-melt year last summer). So, seriously, NASA, what gives? If ice melt is an important enough topic to warrant annual updates of the goings-on across Greenland, it is not important enough to elucidate the history and recent behavior across Antarctica?
(These are not meant as rhetorical questions)
Reference:
Tedesco M., and A. J. Monaghan, 2009. An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.
See post here.
ARCTIC ICE RECOVERY
See also in this New York Times post with seasonal summary from NSIDC how this year the arctic showed a substantial increase in second year ice. According to the center, second-year ice this summer made up 32 percent of the total ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, compared with 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.
By Harold Ambler, Talking about the Weather
Things get stranger and stranger with the United Nations’ world-class, cream-of-the-crop science compendium published two weeks back.
First, it was learned that the alarming graph indicating temperature for the past 1,000 years had been taken from Wikipedia, where it had been deposited by a non-climatologist. Now, it comes to light that the report features a photograph purporting to show Arctic icebergs melting, when the actual image is of Antarctica.
A misidentified image of “Arctic Icebergs” used by the United Nations Environment Program. (Source: Shutterstock)
As I looked through the updated report yesterday, in which the Wikipedia graph has been removed, I noticed that an image looked to have been misidentified. Fortunately for me, the UN had purchased the image on Shutterstock.com, where about an hour’s worth of sleuthing revealed that indeed this was not a picture from the top of the world, but rather from the bottom.
Some will say that it doesn’t matter. I think it does. Of course, global warming alarmists, including those employed at the United Nations, have been using both polar ice caps’ melt as evidence of runaway global warming for years now. Meanwhile, though, Antarctic sea ice has continued to increase in extent throughout the satellite era, and temperatures at the South Pole have slowly fallen.
Nonetheless, the fear-mongers in the media and at the United Nations strive to frighten the credulous into believing that Earth’s southernmost continent is on the verge of catastrophic melt. As for the Arctic misrepresented by the UN’s photograph, how many of the report’s editors even know that sea ice increased in 2009 in the Arctic for the second year in a row? At the United Nations Environment Program, the answer is evidently: none. A map with a list of “climate anomalies” from the last year indicates that 2009 was the second most significant melt in the Arctic. In fact, it was the third lowest melt and may very well represent a turnaround. Only time will tell. Even The New York Times has an article today addressing the seeming good news.
See enlarged image here.
As for that list of “Significant Climate Anomalies from 2008/2009,” the great majority of items listed are weather, rather than climate. An example: the four passages of Tropical Storm Fay across Florida’s coastline. While interesting, Fay’s behavior does not have an apparent, or hidden, relationship to rising CO2 levels according to any reputable scientist, nor does it cloak 2008’s quiet Atlantic tropical cyclone season. (For those keeping track at home, 2009’s has been quieter still.)
The recovery from 2007’s record sea extent minimum in the Arctic has continued for a second straight year. Only time will tell whether it marks the beginning of a meaningful, long-term recovery. Another error in the UN report should give any follower of climatology pause: the Mauna Loa CO2 record is shown as “Keeling 2009.” While the graph is rightly referred to by climate professionals as the Keeling Curve, Dr. Keeling has been unable to author any new articles of late, as he passed away in 2005. (Like the other misattributed graph in the report, this one has tell-tale signs that it was simply pulled from Wikipedia.)
The last mistake in the UN report that I will delve into today features a photo of the Hawaiian Islands with a menacing caption about sea levels - trouble in paradise! Here is the text from the caption: “In Hawaii, as the ocean continues to rise, flooding occurs in low-lying regions during rains because storm sewers back up with saltwater and coastal erosion accelerates on beaches. Source: L. Carey.”
There are a few problems here. One: “L. Carey” does not exist, at least not according to the author of the caption. That would be Chip Fletcher, director of the Coastal Geography Group at the University of Hawaii. Reached for comment, Fletcher said that he was flattered that the United Nations report had found his statement in an internal department newsletter to be useful. Two: Fletcher also acknowledged that all of the flooding described by his statement takes place in areas of landfill that are subsiding.
Did Fletcher think that it might be a good thing for the United Nations to note the landfill subsidence when using a single image, and a single statement, to convey the reality of “climate change” in the islands? “Listen, the world is a big place,” Fletcher said. “I have other things to worry about than that.” Were there other locations in the islands that saw such flooding? “Parts of Waikiki have,” Fletcher said. Aren’t those parts of Waikiki also landfill, though?
“Actually, they are.” See more here.
CNBC Interviews Peabody Chairman and CEO Gregory Boyce
Peabody Energy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregory Boyce on CNBC’s Squawk Box
Peabody Energy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregory Boyce highlights long-term coal growth in Asia-Pacific markets and enormous progress being made to advance clean coal technologies in an exclusive interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box with Erin Burnett and Mark Haines.
“We think there is going to be a new age for new coal,” says Greg. “When you look at energy demand globally, we need all types of fuel in the energy mix. And we need to build new coal facilities. They are being built around the world at a record pace.”
“The numbers globally for electricity demand are staggering when you look at today’s forecast. And that still assumes that over half of the world’s population does not have access to low-cost, affordable electricity.”
Greg says that China and India are driving strong demand for thermal and metallurgical coal in the Asia-Pacific region that is expected to increase at a 7.5 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years or more.
China, the fastest-growing coal market in the world, has imported coal at a record pace through the first eight months of this year as it advances infrastructure development through its stimulus program. India is the fastest-growing importer of coal and will require as much as 200 million tons of coal per year within five years. Both economies are driving strong GDP growth that is expected to increase next year.
Globally, Greg notes that carbon capture and storage projects are advancing, with carbon dioxide used for enhanced oil recovery or stored deep underground. The oil industry has been using carbon dioxide to increase production for 50 years.
Carbon storage is a natural part of the carbon dioxide cycle, which has been occurring since the earth was formed.
Long term, Peabody continues to expand its business platform to serve emerging Asia growth markets.
“In terms of coal markets, the Pacific Rim is very, very strong,” says Greg.
Learn more about clean energy solutions for the 21st Century at CoalCanDoThat.com
See the interview here.
By Matthew Moore, UK Telegraph
Waters around the North Pole are absorbing carbon dioxide at such a rate that they will soon start dissolving the shells of living sea creatures. The potentially disastrous consequences for the food chain have been highlighted by Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso of the National Centre for Scientific Research in France. His team of oceanographers have produced startling predictions about the acidity of the Arctic Ocean after research carried out on the Svalbard archipelago, a group of islands half way between Norway and the North Pole, revealed that the problem is more advanced than scientists thought.
Their forecasts suggest that by 2018, 10 per cent of the ocean will be corrosively acidic, rising to 50 per cent in 2050. By 2100 the entire Arctic Ocean will be inhospitable to shellfish, they predict. See post here.
Alan Sidons calls attention to the following chart (enlarged here):
Alan continues: “Cold water absorbs CO2, right? And warm water releases it. So, on the premise that CO2 forms an acid in water, cold water should generally be more acidic and warm water be more basic. But one observes precisely the opposite: polar waters are generally more basic and equatorial waters more acidic! I draw two conclusions from this alone.
1. That Tom Segalstad is correct about CO2 being a very weak acid against the near-infinite buffering capacity of sea water, and
2. That Dr Floor Anthoni is correct, for aquatic life seemingly creates acidic conditions, in which it thrives
The more acidic the water, the higher biological productivity becomes, and the denser the amount of life. In the sea this is borne out by the observed fact that highly productive upwelling areas are more acidic. In other words, acidic seas are a good thing.
Indeed, given what the chart indicates, it can’t be the relative dearth of CO2 in warm water that drives the pH down; it has to be something else. And it can’t be the abundance of CO2 in cold water that makes it more basic. Biology is the key factor here, not chemistry and Henry’s Law.
Anthoni again:
Nothing in the sea works as expected: its physics, chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, biology and ecology do not work as thought; truth is often opposite to intuition. The sea is weirder than we can possibly imagine. To learn about the sea, forget what you were taught at school, open your mind and begin from scratch. “
See also this SPPI and CO2Science story by the Idso’s on CO2, warming and the coral.
“… as with all phenomena involving living organisms, the introduction of life into the ocean acidification picture greatly complicates things. Considerations of a suite of interrelated biological phenomena, for example, also make it much more difficult to draw such sweeping negative conclusions as are currently being discussed. Indeed, as shown in the next section, they even suggest that the rising CO2 content of earth’s atmosphere may well be a positive phenomenon, enhancing the growth rates of coral reefs and helping them to better withstand the many environmental stresses that truly are inimical to their well-being.”
The IPCC and the world scientists whose research is biased to confirm preconceived ideas need to start from scratch.
By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
The media, polls and even scientists suggest the global warming scare is all over but the shouting. The great global warming scare is over - it is well past its peak, very much a spent force, sputtering in fits and starts to a whimpering end. You may not know this yet. Or rather, you may know it but don’t want to acknowledge it until every one else does, and that won’t happen until the press, much of which also knows it, formally acknowledges it.
I know that the global warming scare is over but for the shouting because that’s what the polls show, at least those in the U.S., where unlike Canada the public is polled extensively on global warming. Most Americans don’t blame humans for climate change - they consider global warming to be a natural phenomenon. Even when the polls showed the public believed man was responsible for global warming, the public didn’t take the scare seriously. When asked to rank global warming’s importance compared to numerous other concerns - unemployment, trade, health care, poverty, crime, and education among them - global warming came in dead last. Fewer than 1% chose global warming as scare-worthy.
The informed members of the media read those polls and know the global warming scare is over, too. Andrew Revkin, The New York Times reporter entrusted with the global warming scare beat, has for months lamented “the public’s waning interest in global warming.” His colleague at The Washington Post, Andrew Freedman, does his best to revive public fear, and to get politicians to act, by urging experts to up their hype so that the press will have scarier material to run with.
The experts do their best to give us the willies. This week they offered up plagues of locusts in China and a warning that the 2016 Olympics “could be the last for mankind” because “the earth has passed the point of no return.” But the press has also begun to tire of Armageddon All-The-Time, and (I believe) to position itself for its inevitable attack on the doomsters. In an online article in June entitled “Massive Estimates of Death are in Vogue for Copenhagen,” Richard Cable of the BBC, until then the most stalwart of scare-mongers, rattled off the global warnings du jour - they included a comparison of global warming to nuclear war and a report from the former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, to the effect that “every year climate change leaves over 300,000 people dead, 325-million people seriously affected, and economic losses of US $125-billion.” Cable’s conclusion: “The problem is that once you’ve sat up and paid attention enough to examine them a bit more closely, you find that the means by which the figures were arrived at isn’t very compelling. The report contains so many extrapolations derived from guesswork based on estimates inferred from unsuitable data.”
The scientist-scare-mongers, seeing the diminishing returns that come of their escalating claims of catastrophe, also know their stock is falling. Until now, they have all toughed it out when the data disagreed with their findings - as it does on every major climate issue, without exception. Some scientists, like Germany’s Mojib Latif, have begun to break ranks. Frustrated by embarrassing questions about why the world hasn’t seen any warming over the last decade, Latif, a tireless veteran of the public speaking circuits, now explains that global warming has paused, to resume in 2020 or perhaps 2030. “People understand what I’m saying but then basically wind up saying, ‘We don’t believe anything,’” he told The New York Times this week.
And why should they believe anything that comes from the global warming camp? Not only has the globe not warmed over the last decade but the Arctic ice is returning, the Antarctic isn’t shrinking, polar bear populations aren’t diminishing, hurricanes aren’t becoming more extreme. The only thing that’s scary about the science is the frequency with which doomsayer data is hidden from public scrutiny, manipulated to mislead, or simply made up.
None of this matters anymore, I recently heard at the Global Business Forum in Banff, where a fellow panelist from the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change told the audience that, while she couldn’t dispute the claims I had made about the science being dubious, the rights and wrongs in the global warming debate are no longer relevant. “The train has left the station,” she cheerily told the business audience, meaning that the debate is over, global warming regulations are coming in, and everyone in the room - primarily business movers and shakers from Western Canada - had better learn to adapt.
Her advice was well accepted, chiefly because most in the room had already adapted - they are busy trying to cash in by obtaining carbon subsidies, building nuclear plants, or providing services to the new carbon economy. My assessment for those wondering where we’re at: Yes, the train left the station some time ago. And it is now off the rails. Read post here.