Eugenics pioneer, Francis Galton, defined eugenics as “the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.” Global warming can be defined as: “The study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the environmental quality of future generations.” The eugenics movement and the global warming movement are similar in many respects. Both ideas were introduced by scientists, advanced by politicians, popularized by the media, embraced as a moral necessity, resulted in severe consequences and eventually rejected as harmful hogwash.

Scientists, politicians, preachers and ordinary people who doubted the doctrine of eugenics were outcasts, subject to ridicule and worse. Scientists, politicians, preachers and ordinary people who doubt the doctrine of global warming are outcasts, ridiculed and worse. The eugenics movement, carried to its logical conclusion by Hitler, killed millions of innocent people.

Global warming, when carried to its logical conclusion, will kill far more people than eugenics, and cause incomprehensible agony to people who desperately need affordable energy to survive and prosper. The goal of the global warming movement is to end the use of fossil fuel. Proponents of this movement claim that fossil fuel use is “killing God’s green Earth,” as one popular TV ad declares. They claim that the use of alternative energy will save the planet for future generations.

Eugenics proponents claimed that selective breeding would constantly improve society by eliminating the lower classes destined for perpetual poverty. They were wrong. Global warming proponents are also wrong in their claims. The use of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide which certainly does not kill God’s green Earth - it enhances it. Carbon dioxide is to vegetation what oxygen is to people - essential to life. It is an indisputable fact that vegetation growth and production is enhanced in direct proportion to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. The idea that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is “killing God’s green Earth” is as preposterous as the idea that society would be better if it consisted only of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans.

The more than 31,000 scientists who reject this vision are outcasts, and are ridiculed by the elite politicians who are caught up in the global warming movement. More than 650 climate scientists, many of whom have been a part of the U.N. global warming studies, have publicly renounced the claims of the global warming movement. These people too, are outcasts, ridiculed by the Obama global warming elite. The tragedy is that the consequences of the proposed global warming policies will be as painful as the consequences of eugenics policies. People will die. Many more millions will be denied access to energy that could provide affordable life-saving refrigeration, heat, transportation and energy for industry. These consequences are unnecessary.

Fossil fuel energy is affordable and available for at least another century. Laws that arbitrarily deny use of this available resource are as unconscionable as the laws that forced sterilization 100 years ago. Society was not made better by the eugenics movement; the planet will not be made better by the global warming movement. From all the studies produced by billions of dollars of research in the last two decades, the only thing that has been learned for sure is that climate change is a natural function that the human race has not begun to comprehend. Science has barely scratched the surface. It is the height of arrogance to think that Congress can enact laws that nature will obey. As it always has, the climate will change according to the dictates of the architect of the universe, not according to the dictates of Barack Obama, Al Gore, Carol Browner, the U.S. Congress, or even the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change. The climate change movement is, indeed, quite similar to the eugenics movement. In a generation or two, people will look back and wonder what on Earth was wrong with this generation to get caught up in such foolishness. Read more here.

As a meteorologist who has worked in the television news business for 25 years I’ve had the good fortune to work with many street reporters. Given my length of service and the significant turnover of reporters that I have observed in that span of time I have worked with hundreds of them. Some remain on the local level for their entire careers and a few climb the ladder an make it all the way to the network level. In many cases there is very little if any difference in the ability of those who make it to the top to those who stay local. It is my observation that those who make it to the network level are simply those who network management feels can help generate the largest audience. This is fine, after all if you have a circus and there is no one under the tent than there is no circus.

The vast majority of these reporters are just trying to do the job presented to them each day. It is difficult to be an expert on everything. The reporters job is to get the facts (as well as can be determined in a very short period of time) shoot some video and then organize all of that into a story that might be a minute and a half long. My point here is that to examine an issue as complex as global warming takes much more time than most reporters are given to do a story. With tighter budgets and reduced staff reporters are being asked to do more with less in less time. This does not lend one to look deeply into most issues especially one as deep as global warming. An added complication to this is the lack of science education given to reporters in college. Based on my experiences with news reporters most if not all have almost no background in science.

This is not their fault and it is not my intention to slam reporters because the required courses in college were not geared to evaluating science issues. But when it comes to global warming stories most reporters and add to this news anchors because most anchors started as reporters, simply don’t understand the fundamental science involved. So if you’re a reporter what do you do? Well the first thing is to do the story in a way that advances you’re career. That means don’t tick off the news director or the general manager. These managers have to answer to the bosses at the network or corporate level.

Television networks and their affiliated stations are owned by corporations. Many of these corporations are invested in “going green” to attract more advertisers. Of course anytime you see “going green” on television or in print or on some product it’s 1984 code speak for “We believe in manmade global warming and our product will help cure that sin”. So as a reporter it is not a wise move to advance any thinking that might bring into question who or what is behind global warming, especially that it might be a natural cycle of the sun and oceans. This could be the fastest way to ending any career moves upward. So is there pressure on reporters and anchors to keep their mouths shut and go along with the environmentalists gloom and doom predictions? Yes.

Many television meteorologists have expressed their concern about the one sided global warming reporting. And many of them have been called into the news directors office and been told to clam up or move out. This is fact but of course this is news that will never be reported. Only those in the business and who know the meteorologist personally know this. This is the strange “climate” will live in. As the world temperature continues to go down (also never reported) reporters and anchors both at the local and national level are in a difficult position. They don’t have the science background to understand the issue and pressure from above could spell disaster to their careers if they question the corporate dictates and motivations. See PDF here.

There has been quite a bit of commentary on the web with respect to the current absence of continued freeze up of Arctic Sea ice as monitored by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 

See full size image here

NSIDC’s Mark Serreze has graciously permitted Climate Science to post the explanation for this lack of increase. His comment follows:

“We’ve been getting a lot of questions about this. We are quite certain that the almost complete lack of increase in ice extent since about December 10 is real. Satellite-derived ice extent from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwaver/Imager) used to create the time series on our website was checked against extent based on the AMSR (Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer) instrument. AMSR shows the same pattern.  This gives us independent confirmation.

The past 10 days has seen a very unusual atmospheric pattern.  It has been very warm over the Arctic Ocean, and wind patterns have favored a compact ice cover.  While the lack of increase in ice extent is certainly quite unusual as well as interesting, we would not read too much into it right now, at it is just weather. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.  [The] issue with Chapman’s site (Cryosphere Today), apparently, is that they are looking at area (concentration weighted) versus extent (part of ocean covered with ice with at least 15% concentration) The compaction that seems to be going on could give a flat line in extent but still a rise in area.  In other words, the issue may be that we are looking at two different measures of ice conditions. Also, it’s not clear (I’ll have to check) how current Chapman’s data are.  We had a delay in posting for awhile because of some data dropouts. “

See full size Cryosphere tracking here.

See full post here. See also this Watts Up With That post which noted NSIDC has found an error in their documentation that affects NSIDC’s own trend graph, and they are considering how to handle it.

Few people in the late 20th century realized that humans have never known Earth’s typical climate, or even had the slightest notion that the climate they were accustomed to was sharply colder than Earth’s typical climate. It would have shocked most people at that time to learn that the entirety of human civilization was embedded in an Ice Era that began roughly 60 million years earlier and that Earth’s typical climate is considerably warmer than anything humans have ever experienced.

The early 20th century experienced cooling temperatures that had some scientists concerned about a return to ice age conditions. Then, from about 1920 through 1940, a shift to warmer weather had scientists fretting about the dramatic warming. The decade of the 1930s remains the warmest in the relatively short US temperature history as does the year 1934. Then concerns about global warming faded as patterns again shifted around 1940 and global cooling prevailed. As glaciers and polar ice expanded, concerns grew among some scientists that coal burning added particulates to the atmosphere that blocked incoming solar radiation to reduce global temperatures.

However, just as concerns peaked about a possible human-induced new ice age, another natural warm cycle began. During the last few decades of the 20th century, Earth experienced a natural warming cycle related to normal shifts in oceanic and atmospheric circulations and solar cycles. Nevertheless, some scientists became alarmed about increasing global temperatures, dubbing this warming episode “global warming” and, noting an upward trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide, presumed it to come from human activity. These scientists ignored historic climate trends and leapt at a theory - “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW), that tried to explain global warming as catastrophic to the planet’s future and caused by humans burning fossil fuels!

Ironically, in the entire reconstructed history of Earth’s climate, there has never been a time when climate change was driven by changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases! Then as the 21st century began, Earth’s climate managed to grab the headlines from the scientists. Once again the forces that create short-term climate variability worked to switch back to a cold phase. Ocean and atmospheric circulations moved to cold phase and solar activity dropped to an unusually low level that promised to be of extended duration. These factors led to a prolonged cooling trend whose effects are still being played out at this date! As global cooling replaced warming, the flawed AGW theory was rejected in favor of more research into natural climate variability and planning so humans could adapt to climate change.

During concerns about late 20th century “global warming” few asked the questions, “What should Earth’s global temperature be?” and “How do you measure global temperature with sufficient accuracy to know what it is?” Had these two questions been seriously considered, it is unlikely that efforts to postulate a human cause for such shifts would have succeeded. Humanity learned a valuable lesson in humility as it’s understanding of natural climate change matured and we became better prepared for inevitable climate changes. See article here.

Weather officials around the world still declare the Pacific Ocean as in a neutral phase, but the atmospheric pattern in the region for weeks has been, in fact, of a La Nina event. After the moderate to strong La Nina event of the last boreal winter, the waters warmed somewhat in all four Nino regions during this year. In this second half of 2008, the Southern Oscillation Index monthly values skyrocketed to reach numbers not seen since the strong Nina of 1988. The North Pacific remains very cold and the PDO, according to the University of Washington, is negative for 15 months in a row. Subsurface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific reach even -5C near the surface and the cooling trend continues.

See larger image here.

See heat content in tropical Pacific reflect recooling.

See larger image here.

Climate forecast models predict La Nina conditions during the first months of 2009 and some even point to a moderate cool event. The overall pattern in the Pacific will probably cool the globe further or maintain the recent level of global temperature early in 2009. It seems the Earth temperature will not present a marked rise in the near future, so the initial months of 2009 may be a continuation of the “near flat line” of this decade with a cooling trend not ruled out. Besides that, the sun is still in quiet mode and the minima period gets more astonishing every day we count of lowered activity. Based on the best estimates, apocalypse by global warming will be cancelled again in 2009, at least in the first half of the year, as models disagree on a warming trend of the Pacific later in 2009.

See larger image here.

Read full pdf here.

Doctors once prescribed bloodletting to eliminate impurities that they believed caused disease. When George Washington was stricken with malaria and a throat infection in December 1799, his physicians bled a quart of blood from his weakened body, and followed that with laxatives and emetics. A few hours later, Washington died - from a cure far worse than the disease.

Today, our nation is in a recession. Millions are unemployed. The financial services, housing and stock market meltdown has hammered incomes, consumer spending, savings, profits, tax revenues, charity, remittances and foreign aid in America and across the globe. Congress and the White House have responded with promises to spend $1 trillion or more, to bail out banks, homeowners, taxpayers, auto makers and other beleaguered groups; fix roads and bridges; and weatherize buildings, develop renewable energy and create “green jobs.” The economic situation is so dire, says President-Elect Obama, that we can’t worry about deficits. The “patient” needs a large “blood infusion” stimulus to “get the economy moving.”

Worse, there is a real danger that the stimulus actions will be followed by the economic equivalent of medical practices that killed our first president. Precluding access to oil, gas, coal and uranium would deprive America of fuels that produce 93% of the energy that makes jobs, living standards, food, health and transportation possible. It would force us to continue spending our children’s inheritance on imported energy - and forego trillions of dollars in leasing, royalty and tax revenues that could help pay for stimulus, defense, renewable energy, low-income energy assistance and other programs.

Some want even more extreme bloodletting administered in the name of global warming. Mr. Obama wants a stringent cap-and-trade program, to slash carbon dioxide “impurities” by 80% by 2050. He says any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant will be “bankrupted” by greenhouse gas fees.

If Congress fails to act expeditiously on cap-and-trade, the Obama Administration could unleash the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed rules - and regulate virtually our entire economy under the Clean Air Act. Those rules would immediately impose even more draconian restrictions on carbon dioxide and methane released from almost every office and apartment building, power plant, factory, farm, hospital, school, car maker and dealership, train and airline in the nation. Raise the rates - and manufacturers, businesses, communities and families will be battered. Destroy our wealth-generating capability, and there will be little left to redistribute or invest in renewable energy.

Restrict hydrocarbon energy use, and millions will lose their jobs. Black, Hispanic and Native American families will see their economic opportunities and civil rights rolled back. Many families will be forced to choose between heat, food, medicine, gasoline, and saving for college and retirement. People will die, if they cannot afford proper heating, air-conditioning, nutrition and medical care. A cap-and-trade bill like Warner-Lieberman would cost 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and $7 trillion in lost GDP, as the bills slap increasingly heavy taxes on hydrocarbon energy, the Heritage Center for Data Analysis calculates. The EPA regulatory regime would be even more onerous and costly. Either action would drain the energy lifeblood from our economy, prolonging the recession and killing jobs, for little environmental gain.

Americans everywhere should demand solid evidence, robust debate, honest congressional hearings, and responsible energy and environmental decisions. We need to prevent further economic bloodletting, preserve freedom and opportunity, and restore our nation’s prosperity. Read more here.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

In a story on the New York Times, Andy Revkin used Hansen’s global temperature plot to blog “Cooler Year on a Warming Planet”.

A better title would have been “A cooler year on a cooling planet.” The Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched from its warm mode (1977-1998) to its cool mode in 1999 and we’ve had global cooling since. Each time this has happened in the past 100 years we’ve had three decades of cool global climate. We switched from the Pacific cool mode to the warm mode in 1977 (The Great Climate Shift) and that ended in 1998 with the switch to the Pacific cool mode. We’re going to have three decades of global cooling, just like we’ve always had when this happens. CO2 has nothing to do with it.

See larger image here.

We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, long before atmosphere CO2 increased from human emissions. The isotope record from the Greenland ice core (see below) confirms the 25-30 years oscillating pattern between warm and cool. We are right on schedule for 30 years of global cooling.

See larger image here.

Download pdf of this post here.

Recently I commented on CO2 concentration as a function of temperature. This paper is my attempt to answer comments and reactions for which I am grateful. I wrote: It appears that CO2 concentrations follows temperature with approx 6-9 months. The interesting part is off course that the CO2 trends so markedly responds to temperature changes.

To some, this is “not possible” as we normally see a very smooth rise on CO2 curves. However, the difference in CO2 rise from year to year is quite different from warm to cold years, and as shown differences are closely dependent on global temperatures.

See larger image here

The relatively rough relationship between CO2 growth per year and global temperatures (UAH) is:

1979: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3.5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 0.7
2008: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3.5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 1.2
1979-2008: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3.5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 0.95

For 2007, a UAH temperature anomaly near - 0.32 K should lead to CO2 rise/year = 0 , that is, CO2-stagnation.

These equations are useful for overall understanding, but so far they don’t give a fully precise and nuanced picture, of course. On the graph, I have illustrated that there is a longer trend difference between CO2 and Temperature. Thus, the “constant” of the equation should be a variable as it varies with time (1979: 0.7 2008: 1.2).

The trend difference means, that from 1979 to 2008 the CO2-rise per year compared to the global temperatures has fallen 0.5 ppm/year, or the other way around: It now takes approx. +0.15 K global temperature anomaly more to achieve the same level of CO2 rise/year as it did in 1979. How can this be? The CO2 rise/year now takes higher temperatures to achieve? With the human emissions rising in the time interval 1978-2008, one could imagine that it would be the other way around, that CO2 rises came with still smaller temperature rises needed. But no, its becoming “harder and harder” to make CO2 rise in the atmosphere.

So generally, the human emissions effect appears inferior to other effects in this context at least. Which effects could hold CO2 rise/year down as we see?The fact that we today have higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere than in 1978 does not favour more CO2 release from the oceans. However the fact that we approx 500 million years ago had almost 7000 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere implies that the 385 ppm today hardly makes a difference. Read much more here.