![WeatherShop.com Gifts, gadgets, weather stations, software and more...click here!\](http://www.clixtrac.com/banner/31785.jpg "\\"WeatherShop.com")
By Chris Horner, Planet Gore
The Bret Stephens piece that Ed Craig excerpts below also brings to mind the work of Leon Festinger, whose pioneering work on cognitive dissonance theory is so applicable to a movement whose noisiest champions often lead the most incompatible lifestyles imaginable. Festinger co-wrote (with Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter) the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled a fairly typical cult following: a housewife claimed to be receiving doomsday messages from aliens, who nonetheless offered hope for those who listened to their counsel. (Quick, someone check James Hansen’s immigration status, and bone up on the Alien Tort Claims Act climate litigation.)
Festinger et al. detailed how the failure of a prophecy to come about can often yield the opposite effect of what the rational person would expect: the cult following gets stronger and its adherents ever more convinced of their truth. One reading of Festinger, as to why the rational response should not follow in that situation, is that such prophesying is not rational, or the act of rational beings. We should not have been surprised with the current mantra, of “Cooling? Why, that’s just another sign of warming.” It is the logical next step of a movement neatly captured by Greenpeace’s Steven Guilbeault’s incantation, “Global warming can mean colder; it can mean drier; it can mean wetter; that’s what we’re dealing with.”
Beam me up.
Festinger deliciously penned the following assessment about this phenomenon: A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks. But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
As a meteorologist colleague commented to me last night about a recent manifestation of precisely this, “these people are no different than the guys sitting around waiting for the spaceship.”
Chris Horner is author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism”
See Chris’s blog here. See Wall Street Journal editorial ”Global Warming as Mass Neurosis” by Bret Stephens. See earlier Icecap Post On “Why Bringing Sanity Back on Climate Change Won’t Be Easy” here.
Questioning ScienceMainstream Media Surprise: Australian Ch. 9 TV hosts global warming debate!
The theory of anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming has become an unchallengeable fact, a piece of black letter law almost unique in the world of science. Proponents of the theory say the time for scientific debate is over. It would irresponsible to fund any further research into counter views on the relationship between elevated levels of carbon dioxide and a rise in temperatures since the mid-1970s. It’s regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming, let alone deny the orthodox consensus view as adopted by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However, there is a school of thought that our knowledge of climate systems is as yet insufficient to be so conclusive on the causes of global warming. Today Sunday examines the political consensus building that has portrayed global warming as the most urgent crisis humankind has ever faced. Skeptics point to the gaps in the knowledge base and the flaws in the measurement of vital climate and weather data upon which the consensus is based. Social researchers also highlight the dangers of conducting science as a form of religion, divided into believers and deniers.
They warn that as governments prepare to make expensive policy decisions, such as carbon emissions trading schemes, this consensus may not reflect the best science. See this story here.
See part 1 video here. See part 2 video here. See also Andrew Bolt’s ”Warming Priests Defrocked on Sunday”.
By Patrick J. Michaels
This week marks 20 years since NASA’s James E. Hansen testified before a joint Congressional hearing that there was a strong “cause and effect” relationship between “current” climate conditions and emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Current conditions in 1988 were a big heat wave and drought in the eastern U.S. The public bit. Two days later, 70 percent of the respondents to a CNN poll agreed with the proposition that 1988’s misery was caused by global warming. Yet in fact, no climate scientist can ever blame an individual weather event, like a heat wave or drought, on global warming.
Hansen’s testimony that year included a graph of annual temperatures, with a dramatic spike on the last point, the January-May temperatures. He knew, as does any scientist, that a sample of monthly data will vary much more than year-to-year temperatures, and that monthly data could give a false impression of extremely hot (or cold) conditions, compared to annual temperatures. Hansen has long employed stagecraft for political gain. On June 23, 1988, he delivered his testimony in an unusually toasty hearing room. Why was it so warm? As then-Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.), told ABC’s Frontline: “We went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room . . . it was really hot.”
Every climate scientist knows there’s been no - zero - net change in surface temperatures in the last ten years, as shown in the climate history of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. None of Hansen’s valid 1988 models predict what’s actually happened. He simply predicted too much warming, especially for the last ten years. Why should we believe what he forecasts for the rest of the 21st century?
Hansen’s 1988 predictions were flatly wrong about the extent of global warming. Yet on the 20th anniversary of his original testimony, Hansen said that people “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature” for spreading doubts about the promised global warming holocaust. He named names, too: the CEOs of ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy. Excuse me, Inquisitor Hansen, but what exactly are their crimes against humanity? Being demonstrably wrong about climate science?
Speaking of crimes, what about the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from electioneering? In the hotly contested state of Iowa, on October 26, 2004, Hansen gave a public speech in which he stated that “John Kerry has a far better grasp than President Bush on the important issues that we face.” Kerry lost Iowa by a mere 10,000 votes. Yet Hansen persists. He recently said “the 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen,” maybe we’ll be able to save the planet from the doom he envisions this century. Hansen also wants to tax fossil fuels, making them much more expensive than they are already. So even though he predicted too much global warming, and his numbers couldn’t explain the ten-year hiatus we’ve experienced, Hansen keeps trying to sway presidential and congressional contests. And he wants to incarcerate any CEO (or scientist, probably) who casts doubt on his vision in public.
The fact of the matter is: Hansen is out of control. NASA employees aren’t supposed to call for tax hikes, endorse candidates, or attack businessmen. Any other federal employee would be warned for doing so, and if he continued, fired (or worse). You have to hand it to him, though: he’s a single, scientific outlier, terrorizing the American people. Read more here.
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute.
By Brian Sussman, The American Thinker
Monday, James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), addressed Congress and brought a new twist to his tired global warming song and dance routine. Hansen now seems to be calling for the chief executives of Big Oil to be tried for high crimes against humanity. Their crime? Spreading doubt about global warming.
Actually, it is Hansen who is guilty. Guilty of abusing the public trust. Examine the largess culled by Hansen.
In 2001, the Heinz Foundation “awarded” James Hansen with a payment of $250,000 for his work on global warming. According to the foundation: “It was Dr. Hansen who, in the sweltering, drought-scorched summer of 1988, went where few scientists were willing to go-before Congress, to explain just how serious the potential for global warming truly was.” The Heinz Foundation, directed by the wife of U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate, John Kerry, is widely known for its support of liberal causes. Is it any surprise that James Hansen also endorsed John Kerry for President in 2004? The quarter of a million was just a tease of additional monies to come.
In 2007, Hansen split a $1 million prize from the Dan David prize category of “Future Quest for Energy” (layman’s translation: a world without oil). In addition he also reported to have acted as a consultant to Gore’s global whining slide show, which was the impetus to the Prince of Peace’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In fact, in 2006 Hansen had the gall to appear on a New York City stage with Mr. Gore to promote the then upcoming film-though he did reportedly inform the audience, “I’m not speaking as a government employee.”
Topping it all, Hansen has allegedly received hundreds of thousands of additional dollars to further politicize the issue of global warming. According to Investors Business Daily, “How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely ‘NASA whistleblower’ standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by [George] Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI), which gave him ‘legal and media advice’? That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship ‘philanthropy’ by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s ‘politicization of science’ program.” Hansen denied any relationship with OSI, but Investor’s Business Daily refused to back off on their story, “claiming the funding first passed through the Government Accountability Project, which then used it to package Hansen for the media.”
With that kind of cash allegedly lining his pockets, do you think that Hansen will ever allow the data that he is charged with maintaining to point to anything but disaster? In talk-radio such conflicting activities would be deemed “payola” with the guilty party booted out the door. For the sake of truth, and the proper use of the taxpayer’s dollar, James Hansen needs to be relieved of his NASA duties. Show Mr. Hansen the door—for the sake of humanity. Read much more here.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
On June 23, 1988 James Hansen, Astronomer by degree but climatologist by self appointment testified in front of congress. It was an orchestrated testimony coordinated by Senator Al Gore and a Senator from Colorado, Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation) who admitted they picked the day after calling the National Weather Service to ensure it was a hot day. He admitted proudly later they opened all the windows the night before, making air conditioning ineffective and making sure all involved including Hansen would be seen mopping their brow for maximum effect. Hansen testified “Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”
See in the story below how hard Hansen has worked to try and make his prognostication verify by manipulating data. By his own comments to the UK Guardian “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.” Well the disinformation that comprises the GISS data then by his own words is a crime, and in his own words he “should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature”.
Here is the plot of actual NASA global satellite monthly temperatures since June 1988. Note the anomaly in May 2008 was lower than in June 1988 by nearly 0.3C. Of course, we don’t have June 2008 numbers yet. Please note I am not saying that cooling began in 1988. Satellites show clearly that since 1979 there was a moderate warming which peaked in 1998. A cooling has taken place the last 6 to 7 years. Global station and ocean data with all its warts shows the warming from the early 1900s to the 1930s, cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s then warming again peaking in 1998. I am just making an observation that it is ironic that 20 years after his first testimony about global warming, it is half a degree F oooler globally, not supporting the drastic measure he advocates. Also we can explain not only the trends but each spike or dip with some natural phenomena as we have shown in recent posts.
See larger image here
His testimony will no doubt include reference to upcoming or ongoing dangerous rises in sea level and ignore the data. His radio interview today on the Diane Rehm show this AM on WAMU in Washington DC, (audio links here) provides a preview of what he will tell congress.
See larger image here
He will also no doubt repeat his claim he is being muzzled. He confuses a muzzle with a megaphone as shown by this table of actual Hansen media references by year (thanks to Roger Pielke Jr. on Prometheus).
See larger image here.
Today unlike in June 1988, temperatures will be near normal in DC with temperatures in the 70s and 80s with thunderstorms. The last two weeks have averaged 2 degrees below normal. See much more on Hansen and history with this movement here.
Correct the Corrections: The GISS Urban AdjustmentBy Ken Gregory of Friends of Science
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) publishes a global temperature index. The temperature record is contaminated by the effects of urban development and land use changes. NASA applies an “urbanization adjustment” to adjust the temperature histories to eliminate these effects. The resulting GISS temperature index is supposed to represent what the temperatures would have been in the absence of urbanization and land use changes. Most scientists assume that these adjustments are done correctly. The index is used to show that CO2 emissions are causing climate change.
An audit by researcher Steve McIntyre reveals that NASA has made urban adjustments of temperature data in its GISS temperature record in the wrong direction. The temperatures in urban areas are generally warmer than in rural areas. McIntyre classified the 7364 weather stations in the GISS world-wide network into various categories depending on the direction of the urban adjustment. NASA has applied a “negative urban adjustment” to 45% of the urban station measurements (where adjustments are made), meaning that the adjustments makes the warming trends steeper. The table below shows the number of negative and positive adjustments made to the station temperature trends.
See full size image here
The urban adjustment is supposed to remove the effects of urbanization, but the NASA negative adjustments increases the urbanization effects. The result is that the surface temperature trend utilized by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is exaggerated.
See full size image here
Satellite data is free of urbanization effects and provide truly global coverage continually. Previous problems with satellite drift affecting temperature calculations have been corrected. Newer satellites have station keeping capability and do not drift. The satellite data is much superior to land measurement. The satellite global temperature trend from 2002 to May 2008 is a decline of 0.25 Celsius per decade, significant global cooling for over 6 years. Read Ken’s full report here. See this informative post by Steve McIntyre here on the NASA urban fiasco. Also other reasons why GISS is warmest here.
By Ken Gregory of Friends of Science
The paper, Greenhouse Effect in Semi-Transparent Planetary Atmospheres by Ferenc M. Miskolczi shows that the current greenhouse effect equations are incomplete because they do not include the correct boundary conditions. The new theory presented in this paper shows that the atmosphere maintains a “saturated” greenhouse effect, controlled by water vapor content. There is no physics, no equations in the models that determines the strength of the greenhouse effect. Parameters are just set to obtain the observed temperature. The greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapour, so how it changes with increasing CO2 is critical. All the General Circulation Models (GCM) or more commonly called Global Climate Models just set: Relative humidity = constant (or various parameters to achieve the same effect.)
There is no physics in support of this assumption, and no way to calculate its value from first principles. This assumption means that if temperatures increase for any reason, the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere increases. But water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, so the greenhouse effect becomes stronger and temperatures increase more. The current theory does not determine this - it is only an assumption.
Here is a graph of global average annual relative humidity at various elevations in the atmosphere expressed in milli-bars (mb) from 300 mb to 700 mb for the period 1948 to 2007. The data is from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory here.
See larger graph here
Indeed a NASA-funded study here found some climate models might be overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms. They found the increases in water vapor were not as high as many climate-forecasting computer models have assumed. In most computer models relative humidity tends to remain fixed at current levels. “The increases in water vapor with warmer temperatures are not large enough to maintain a constant relative humidity,” Minschwaner said.
Dr. Roy Spencer’s article Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat here, describes the role of precipitation systems in controlling the greenhouse effect. It is an extension of extension of Richard Lindzen’s “Infrared Iris” hypothesis. Dr. Spencer says we don’t know why the greenhouse effect is limited to its current value. The new Miskolczi theory of the greenhouse effect provides the detailed explanation of why the greenhouse effect is limited to its current value for a constant external Sun forcing. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere just replaces an equivalent amount of water vapour to maintain a constant greenhouse effect.
Read much more of this detailed review here.
By Beth Bragg, Anchorage Daily News
After solstice today, it’s all downhill to winter. At 3:59 this afternoon, the sun will reach its northernmost point above the celestial equator and we’ll mark the official summer solstice. Many calendars note the solstice by calling it the first day of summer, but Alaskans know better. Today at 3:59 p.m., Alaska will make a U-turn and head straight toward winter as days start getting shorter.
Which is a shame, seeing how summer so far has been Missing in Action.
We are deep in June and, as of Thursday, the temperature has yet to hit 70 degrees at the National Weather Service’s observation point near the airport, where daily highs and lows are recorded. It hit 67 on Tuesday near the airport, the highest official. We haven’t had to wait this long for a 70-degree day since 1993, when the mercury hit the 70s for the first time on June 19th. Welcome to a record-breaker. Rah.
Beth Schlabaugh, president of the Alaska Master Gardeners Association’s Anchorage chapter, said lots of green things are off kilter because of summer’s delay."Definitely we’re seeing a much later season this year,” she said. “Everyone has talked to me about things being two to three weeks behind schedule.” Roses have been late to break dormancy, she said. Irises and lilacs are only now showing up, and not everywhere. Seeds are slow to germinate.
The cool weather will be a blessing to runners who will spend Saturday morning running 26.2 miles in the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon. “Probably the best weather is somewhere between 40 and 60 degrees,” said Will Kimball, a two-time winner of the marathon. “You want cool.” Kimball is calling this “the summer of the cold breeze.” “Often it looks pleasant,” he said, “but that breeze has got a cold nip to it.”
See full time image here.
By Red Cavaney, Wall Street Journal
A bill introduced in Congress this week would “compel” oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not. These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren’t using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced - and this should include many members of Congress - knows that claims of “idle” leases are a diversionary feint.
Our companies have made tremendous strides in developing cutting-edge exploration technology. But they are not magicians. They cannot produce oil or natural gas where it does not exist. A significant percentage of federal leases simply may not contain oil and natural gas, especially in commercial quantities. As I’ve often said, the first step in our business is called “exploration” for a reason. Exploration is time consuming, very costly and involves a great deal of risk. And it happens in the minds of those who use the undeveloped-lease argument as a smokescreen to mask their intent to keep America’s vast energy resources locked up underground, despite increasingly strong consumer demand for oil and natural gas. For exploration to take place, our companies need access to the areas - offshore and onshore - that we know have the potential to produce the oil and natural gas consumers will need, if ours is to remain a viable economy in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
Today’s short-term need was yesterday’s long-term opportunity. If Congress had acted on that opportunity years ago, America would not be in the energy bind it finds itself in today. Working with industry, Congress now has the opportunity to help secure America’s energy future. It should not miss the chance again. Read more here.
Mr. Cavaney is president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association that represents America’s oil and natural gas industry.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
All the data sources have now reported for global May temperatures with Hadley coming in today. University of Alabama MSU was the coldest with a -0.18C. RSS MSS was a close second with -0.083C. Hadley had a +0.278C and NASA GISS came in at +0.36C.
UAH and RSS MSU satellite data uses a base period (period over which monthly climatological averages are computed for the purposes of then determining departures from normal for any given month) of 1979-1998. NASA GISS uses the coldest period of the last century 1951 to 1980. Hadley uses 1961 to 1990 as a base period (with two cold decades and one increasingly warm). NCDC in their USHCN uses the entire period of record (back to 1895), in my mind probably the most reasonable since it includes two cold and two warm periods. Your local NWS uses the latest three complete decades (1971 to 2000) for it averages and to compute departures from normal. That is the long established standard for the local offices. You see there are no agreed to standards for the longer term records, so at least for anomalies, we are always comparing apples with oranges with pears with plums.
Obviously satellite provides the best coverage of the all but the polar land and oceans. The other data bases in addition to their differences in base periods, are at the mercy of the country governments data collection and have huge holes in the data over land and very spotty imperfect ocean temperature measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere.
There are other major issues with the global data bases. 2/3rds pf the world’s station dropped out after 1990 and the number of missing months in places like Asia and Africa increased tenfold. Siting has been shown so well by Anthony Watts at http://surfacestations.org to ba an issue with more than 2/3rds of the United States stations poorly sited. The importance of urbanization is underestimated thanks to the flawed research of Peterson and Parker in all the global surface data bases. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have shown that surface data bases may overestimate warming by up to 50%. And then there is the issue of the oceans which each of the data centers treat differently and now will likely change the data to better reflect a more gradual changeover from buckets to ship intakes. See more on that issue in Steve McIntyre’s Lost at Sea here.
See larger image here
All four plotted data sets, yes even GISS, shows a decline since 2002. GISS has the largest positive anomaly because it uses the coldest base period. Satellites, the coldest since, their base period (by chance) was in the warmest decades (of the positive PDO with most El Ninos). Note how well the temperature variations have tied to the variations of ENSO (El Nino) in just the last decade, in this case using the Mulitvariate ENSO Index (MEI) of CDC’s Wolter. ENSO and the longer term PDO are the real drivers for decadal climate change, used to support the greenhouse gang from 1979 to around 2002 but now has them on the defensive. If the cooling continues as we believe it will, they will have to resort to even more creative data manipulation to keep the hoax alive. But this will become increasingly apparent because they have no control over the satellite measurements.
See larger image here
NASA Mission Seas
Icecap Note: You will note the Hansen influence on this story. Instead of just reporting the facts, they have to repeat the talking points of the alarmist agenda. We support NASA’s and NOAA’s technology attempts and the work of Willis et al. We hope the data from the new satellites is not subject to the so called “quality assurance” adjustments GISS and NCDC are so famous for with their outlier GISS/GHCN data bases. Let the data speak for itself.
Global sea level has risen 20 centimeters (eight inches) in the past 100 years, and the rate of rise is predicted to accelerate as Earth warms. Melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica could raise sea level more than one meter (three feet) over the next century. One obvious threat is inundation, or loss of land to rising water. Other consequences are more complex, but equally problematic--a warmer ocean can fuel more intense storms; environmental changes can adversely affect ocean life, such as coral reefs and fisheries; and alterations in ocean currents can trigger radical changes in Earth’s climate.
The best hope for anticipating the future is to understand the past and present. For global sea level, the first step has been to measure it accurately, a challenge in itself. Records of global sea level in the past come from averaging tide gauge readings from many locations. But since the launch of Topex/Poseidon in 1992, followed by Jason-1 in 2001, scientists have had a precise measurement of the height of the global ocean every 10 days. Now the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, scheduled to launch June 20 from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, will continue this critical task.
For a closer look at ocean heat, scientists turn to temperature and other measurements made by the thousands of Argo floats. “The Argo profilers give us a good representation of the upper 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) of the ocean,” Chambers said. “And since altimeters and Grace measure the total ocean, using what we know about the upper ocean from Argo gives us an idea about what’s going on below in the deep ocean, about which we have little data.”
“We know the basics of sea level rise very well,” said JPL oceanographer and climate scientist Josh Willis. But several critical elements still need to be resolved, he stressed. “Everything doesn’t quite add up yet.” For example, in a recent study, Willis, Chambers and their colleague Steven Nerem of the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research in Boulder, compared the amount of ocean warming during 2003 to 2007 observed by the Argo buoys with the amount of warming calculated by combining Grace and Jason-1 altimeter data. While the two measurements closely matched with regard to seasonal ups and downs, they didn’t agree at all on the total amount of warming. In fact, the Argo data showed no warming at all, while the combined Jason and Grace data did.
See NASA graph. Notice downturn in last year. See larger image here
See larger image here
Again this may be the result of the ocean cooling the last year from the flip of the PDO and La Nina which causes compression and/or growth of the Antarctic and maybe even Greenland ice sheets.
By John Coleman - As Presented to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance. That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance. With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Here is my rebuttal. There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
It is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming? If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.
My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth. Read John’s full speech here. Update: See this video on Red Eye interviewing John Coleman here.
John Coleman was the original founder of cable TV’s The Weather Channel and has been a television meteorologist in Chicago, New York and now San Diego.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
In the latest in a series of predictable news stories gobbled up by an all too willing media, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, “Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin,” forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.
Alarmists have adopted the can’t lose position that all extremes of weather - cold, warm, wet or dry are all due to global warming. They blamed the frequent tornadoes of the late winter and spring on global warming even though the number was not at all atypical of a La Nina year. Southern Wisconsin and much of the Midwest has had a rough winter and spring but it has been the antithesis of global warming.
Wisconsin had its 33 coldest winter on record, nearby Iowa its 19th coldest in 114 years. The cool weather continued into the spring with the 22nd coldest spring on record in Wisconsin and 24th in Iowa. Madison, Wisconsin had the snowiest winter on record, topping 100 inches for the first time ever. See summary and map here
The record snows, severe weather and heavy rainfall has been the result of rapid COOLING in the northern tier of the United States and Canada not global warming. The flooding exceeded the floods of 1993 following the eruption of Pinatubo which produced a similar cooling with a strong suppressed jet stream that brought a steady stream of storms and flooding.
Rapid warming as took place in the 1930s and again around 1980 leads to drought and record heat. The alarmist movement is reeling after the warming stopped in 1998 and cooling began in 2002, accelerating in the last year. Their claims have now morphed from warming to focusing on the extremes typical of La Nina and the colder decades to try and keep their hoax alive.
See larger map here.
By John Brignell
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal
It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now have a firm grip on the world at large. Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man.
The activists now prefer to call it “climate change”. This gives them two advantages: It allows them to seize as “evidence” the inevitable occurrences of unusually cold weather as well as warm ones. The climate is always changing, so they must be right. Only the relatively elderly can remember the cynical haste with which the scaremongers dropped the “coming ice age” and embraced exactly the opposite prediction, but aimed at the same culprit - industry. This was in Britain, which was the cradle of the new belief and was a response to the derision resulting from the searing summer of 1976. The father of the new religion was Sir Crispin Tickell, and because he had the ear of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was engaged in a battle with the coal miners and the oil sheiks, it was introduced into international politics with the authority of the only major political leader holding a qualification in science. The introduction was timely yet ironic since, in the wake of the world’s political upheavals, a powerful new grouping of left-wing interests was coalescing around environmental issues. The result was a new form of godless religion. The global warming cult has the characteristics of religion and not science for the following reasons.
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not like its methods. They promote slogans such a “The science is settled” when real scientists know that science is never settled. They were not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord Kelvin famously stated, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed. Read the other reasons and much more of this essay here.
By Robert M. Carter, James Cook University, Townsville
The Wellington Climate Change and Governance conference succeeded in reinforcing the already strong public impression that dangerous human-caused climate change is occurring, and that this change can be prevented by limiting human emissions of greenhouse gas. However, to the degree that the conference was intended to contribute to a balanced public debate on human-caused global warming, it failed. The major sponsors of the conference included organisations whose charter includes the disinterested presentation of high-quality science, and civil social responsibility; these organisations failed in their duty of public care.
In addition, media coverage of the conference was “balanced” in only the most superficial way; news reports concentrated heavily on climate alarmism, and failed to follow up on the caveats which were expressed by the more responsible speakers at the conference. Troublesome ethical issues emerge, the most important of which include the role in society of scientific organisations and universities, and the way in which government-employed and other scientists are today constrained in the public comment that they can make on controversial issues of the day. Another major concern is the way in which scientific results are now routinely deployed into the public domain with a clear propaganda intent.
The Wellington climate conference displayed clearly the unacceptable price that society pays when it allows science to be corrupted by politicization. The future assessment of complex scientific and technological issues like climate change needs to be much more rigorously bias-proofed. At the very least this will require the routine use of counterweight and audit panels for rigorous verification of all major policy recommendations. These major conclusions about the Wellington climate conference apply also to many other similar climate meetings that are held around the world.” Read more here.
