I have given many lectures about the myths, misconceptions and outright lies in the global warming arena. After an hour of graphs, charts and pictures detailing how a tiny trace gas, carbon dioxide, has no relationship to whatever warming and cooling has occurred I get the inevitable statement from someone in the audience. “How can you deny that man made global warming is real when 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it is true?” At this point I have to explain that the 97 percent figure is not what it appears to be.

Let’s start with where this number comes from. One of the most quoted sources is the result of an online survey that was published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman from the University of Illinois. The survey was sent to 10,257 scientists. It was intended to be very easy to respond to and was supposed to take only two minutes to complete. As a result 3,146 scientists responded to the survey.

There were nine questions in all but the two primary questions in the survey were these. Question number one: When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? Of the 3,146 respondents 90% said risen. Herein lies one of the flaws in the survey. This is a loaded question. During the past 2,000 years the earth has had well documented swings in average temperature. At the beginning of the Roman Empire the earth was as warm or warmer than today. This warm spell is known as the “Roman Warmer Period” and extended from about 250 BC to 450 AD. Rome fell during an era when the temperature was turning colder, know as “The Dark Ages Cold Period” from about 450 AD to 950 AD. This cold spell finally gave way to a more agreeable temperature rebound known as the “Medieval Warm Period” from about 950 AD to1400 AD. Hundreds of peer reviewed papers have confirmed that this warm period was as warm or warmer than today’s temperature. After this warm spell the earth cascaded into a prolonged cold era know as “The Little Ice Age” that lasted from about 1400 to 1850 AD. Studies indicate that the bottom of this cold period was around 1700 AD. Since that time the global average temperature has risen. I know of no meteorologist, climatologist or anyone involved in the study of the earth’s temperature who would argue this point.

The survey question: When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant, was intentionally worded to elicit the response the authors wanted to hear. It was the intent of the question to get a response of “risen”. A loaded question if I have ever seen one. Amazingly the response was not 100%! In fact only 90% of the 3,146 answered “risen” to question one.

Question number two is even more suspect. The question is: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? Of the 3,146 respondents only 82% answered yes to this question. This means that taken together the percentage response to the survey was not 97% but 86%, a significant majority but not nearly as impressive as a 97% figure.

Question two has several vague areas. First is just what constitutes “human activity”? The burning of fossil fuels to make energy is one. The changing of land surfaces to make cities, farmland and deforestation is “human activity” that can change temperature as well. Changing mean temperature can be accomplished by changing the environment around a climate recording station. This is also “human activity”. As rural climate recording stations are gradually surrounded by urban sprawl and eventually larger buildings and infrastructure, the temperature of the site will warm due to the “Urban Heat Island (UHI)” effect. This has nothing to due with fossil fuel use increasing the efficiency of the green house effect but is a significant “human activity” that can change the temperature of a recording station over time. The results from the survey do not address the variety of just what constitutes “human activity”. A “yes” response to question two implies the responder is referring to fossil fuels but that is not necessarily the case. It is however, what the survey likely wanted to convey.

Question number two also does not address what the word “significant” means to each individual respondent. What constitutes “significant” can be very different from person to person. To some a 50% human influence on the temperature increase of the last 150 years would be significant. To another scientist a 25% human contribution to the temperature increase would be significant. And to another a 10% increase in the global temperature due to human activity would be significant. This range of possible interpretations to the word “significant” makes the 82% response more suspect.

The 97% figure from the survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientist are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%). How this number is not 100% is very strange. As to question two 75 of 77 answered “yes” (97.4%). As I have shown above this response does not necessarily mean that the respondent was attributing the significant human activity to the use of fossil fuels. Additionally a “yes” response does not quantify the degree of significance that human activity has on climate change. This can range significantly from person to person.

It is interesting that of the 36 meteorologists who responded to question number two, only 23 of 36 or 64% thought that human activity was a “significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”. The authors dismiss this group of trained atmospheric scientists outright even though their size is almost half of the 79 climate scientists used in generating the 97% figure! Apparently the 64% number was not convincing enough. If the authors of the survey had combined the results of the meteorologists and the climate scientists the “yes” response to question two would have been 98 out of 113 or 87%. That number just doesn’t have the same impact as 97%.

The Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by 31,487 scientist including 9,029 with PHDs in their fields. The petition states that: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”. It would appear that there are many well educated people who do not agree with the survey and its 97% figure.

This year, 2012, is a critical period in the history of the United States. The choice of who will lead us to or from energy freedom and economic prosperity will come this November. If we go in the wrong direction or in other words, the direction we are heading in now, by 2016 it may be too late to recover. The fear of man made global warming is being used to shape a dangerously flawed energy policy. If voters make their choices based in part on misleading surveys like the one above we will fail. The result will be national and world wide upheaval that could have devastating effects for everyone. We must be allowed to develop our fossil fuel resources here at home. Abundant, affordable energy is the key to prosperity and peace.

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This weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine will feature a gargantuan, 3600 word homage to rabid environmentalism in the form of a profile on 350.org founder Bill McKibben. The piece and President Obama’s disastrously short-sighted decision Wednesday to reject permitting for Transcanada’s Keystone XL pipeline are both symptomatic of a much larger ailment plaguing liberal politicking in general and the Obama administration in particular: a continual willingness to sacrifice the well-being of the majority for an elite, hypocritical minority.

The Keystone project, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect decent-paying American jobs and reduce our dependency on the oil of despotic, anti-western nations with questionably sane leaders. But radical environmentalists like McKibben - a second generation jailed protestor and disciple of John Kerry - seem either not to know or else don’t care what real poverty looks like. And he is among the leaders of the voting contingent to which our president is pandering - purely for political reasons.

The Harvard-educated McKibben, who was among the 1,252 people arrested during protests against the pipeline outside the White House last year, is on a mission to “end the tyranny of oil” and coal. Along with his worship of the false god of climate change, McGibben like many leftist elitists is committed to “social justice” according to the Globe.  What McGibben and his ilk overlook is that real social justice begins with a job, the dignity of work, and the ability to care for and feed one’s own family. McGibben & Company’s quest is anti-jobs and therefore anti true social justice. 

According to analysis released just this week by the Brookings Institution, child poverty has risen 4% in the past five years - an addition of 3 million impoverished kids, most of them added in the time Obama has been in office. The state with the highest rate? Mississippi, in the Gulf Coast - the very region in which many of the Keystone XL’s quarter-million jobs would have been created, and where the Obama administration’s six-month deepwater drilling moratorium cost Americans tens of thousands of jobs. T.V. talk show host - and Obama supporter - Tavis Smiley said recently, “Many of the ‘new poor’ are the former middle class.”

Obama claims to be “all in” for domestic energy production and job creation, but when handed a no-brainer like Keystone, he choose to side with a radical minority of his base.  Why?  As Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club said, “it shores up the base, definitely”.

On Capitol Hill there has been almost universal silence from Congressional Democrats who apparently are listening to that same “base.” So, what does that say about what agenda really drives the Democratic Party?  Politico.com says that according to a “top Democratic fundraiser” the issues driving the party donors are “Keystone and gay marriage.”

Obama and the Democrats may soon grow to regret the Keystone decision. There are about 25 million Americans unemployed, under employed, or that have given up even trying to find a job.  If you’re out of work or struggling to get by, a politician focused on killing jobs and promoting gay marriage probably doesn’t sound like one that has your best interests at heart.

Besides all jobs we now stand to lose out on, we also face a considerable new security challenge in the form of a bolstered China. As Rep. Steve King of Iowa said this week: “If we block [the pipeline] that oil will certainly go to China. It will enrich their economy.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper has no intention of waiting for the United States to reverse this wrongheaded move; his goal is to see Canada at the forefront of the energy game. Harper will travel to Beijing next month, where he will likely take part in talks on selling his country’s vast oil supplies to the Chinese government. And China is serious about quenching its thirst for oil.

“Chinese firms aren’t just buying stakes, they’re buying whole operations,” reads a piece this month in Canada’s daily Globe and Mail. “It’s a new phase of China’s step-by-step Canada strategy. It will change not just the oil patch but Canada’s foreign policy. And a game of international energy politics is afoot in Canada’s West.”

When Obama finally turns around for a gander at his fellow Washington backers on this latest political choice, he will see he has precious few.

The academic face of the anti-fracking movement - Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth - increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce.

Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows - and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.

Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings - but now he’s doubled down.

Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher - an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.

Here’s the backstory. Shale gas is acknowledged as an ideal “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future. It’s become cost-attractive thanks to fracking: a proven extraction technique used for decades, technologically tweaked to mine shale gas - notably the Marcellus Formation beneath a large swath of New York.

Thanks to fracking, America is poised to transform itself from a fuel pauper, dependent upon the whims of Mideast madmen and Russian oligarchs, into an energy exporter.

But hard leftists have always opposed any energy other than wind or solar. That’s where Howarth and the anti-fracking Park Foundation come in.

In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.

The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.

“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either “delivered to sales” with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”

Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”

Almost every independent researcher - at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams - has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.

The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 - ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving.

Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” - meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.

Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.

Bottom line, almost all nonindustry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.

Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.

Jon Entine is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University/STATS.

Some one or some organization is attempting to influence the upcoming annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

According to WCTV-TV’s story Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts” (emphasis added).

A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

Enlarged.

“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”

The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine. The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).”

And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine. Here’s his Facebook page.

The web site describes CEL as: “a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”

But as we see elsewhere, in the green incubator building description of CEL at the David Browner Center at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, that “non-partisan” claim doesn’t match this description:

So much for the “truth in advertising”.

They also go to trouble to obfuscate their website domain, here is the WHOIS results for forecastthefacts.org and .com:

Interesting thing though, is that when you check to see what other web servers are at the same domain IP address, you discover a whole flock of political activist websites.

READ MUCH MORE AND SPREAD THE WORD.

UPDATE: Forecastthefacts.org (operated by Citizen Engagement Lab) is a George Soros funded activist website. Here’s the proof (h/t to WUWT reader Jan). See.

While on extended leave in New York, I often pondered conditions in this huge city, versus in Uganda and most of Africa. Perhaps most of all, I reflected on electricity and the economic activity, modern living standards and improved health that this amazing technology makes possible. I thought about that as I read articles about climate change “reparations” and other foreign aid, oil and gas discoveries in Africa, and impediments to African electricity and economic development.

Several European and US energy companies recently announced major natural gas discoveries in East Africa, both onshore and offshore. Other companies are using hydraulic fracturing to unlock natural gas from the continent’s shale rock formations.

There is a lot of talk about building LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals to ship gas overseas. “I’m convinced that in 10 years’ time Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya will together form a major gas hub for Asian and Far Eastern markets,” Cove Energy CEO John Craven told the Wall Street Journal.

There is a lot of gas in West Africa too, especially in Angola and Nigeria, and companies are often criticized for “flaring” gas - burning it off at the wellhead, instead of using it for something productive. (The same thing happened in the United States, until people figured our how to use this previously unwanted byproduct of oil production to heat homes, generate electricity, and make fertilizers, plastics and chemicals.)

Why should this valuable energy resource be flared? In fact, why should we just talk about sending it to Asia, the Far East and other markets? Why aren’t we talking more about using it right here in Africa?

Why aren’t we talking more about using it right here in Africa?

East African gas could easily be used all over the Great Lakes region to generate electricity for homes and businesses, hospitals and schools, jobs and economic growth - turning dreams into reality. All we’d need to do is provide legal, tax and other incentives to attract investors who could build a few gas-fired generating plants and pipelines to connect them to gas fields.

There would still be plenty of gas for export, but the reliable, affordable electricity would launch an economic boom unlike anything we have ever seen.

That’s what happened in the southeastern United States, when the Tennessee Valley Authority began building hydroelectric dams and other projects. One of America’s poorest regions was transformed into an economic powerhouse. Dams built in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest regions of the USA during the Great Depression did the same thing.

Recognizing the immense value of electricity, South Africa is racing to build the Medupi coal-fired power plant and many other generators and transmission lines. In just one example, when an electrical line finally reached a remote area of the country, two furniture makers were able to install power equipment, hire local workers, sell far more furniture of much higher quality - and help launch a local economic revolution that has enabled families to improve their living standards greatly.

Just imagine what could happen if people all over Africa could have access to affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

Meanwhile, Ghana is building a 130-MW gas-fired power plant, even though the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support the $185-million project. Other investors stepped forward, the plant is being built, the country will send some of its abundant natural gas to the plant, and numerous Ghanaians will finally enjoy the blessings of modern living through electricity.

Just imagine what could happen if people all over Africa could have access to affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

As Zambian Dambisa Moyo and South African Leon Louw have often said, foreign aid causes more harm than good- whether it is traditional aid or new-fangled “climate reparation” aid. Most of it ends up in just a few hands. Poor families see little or no improvement in their lives. And people have few incentives and little money to make investments, launch businesses or improve their homes and communities.

Foreign aid keeps people alive, but barely. It ties them to international welfare, in perpetual poverty, with little or no chance to become middle class.

Let them eat cake!

Access to electricity changes everything. It puts people in charge of their future. It unleashes the human spirit, and people’s innovative and entrepreneurial instincts. It gives people one of the most important tools they need: affordable, reliable energy for lights, refrigerators, computers and machinery - along with good jobs, so that they can afford electricity, more nutritious food, healthcare and other basics.

Some say putting more carbon dioxide into the air from burning natural gas will affect the climate. However, many scientists say CO2 plays only a minor role in climate change - and Africans already put millions of tons into the air by burning wood, grass and dung, which are far less efficient fuel sources and cannot generate electricity.

The rest of the world - especially Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Indians – are burning enormous amounts of coal and natural gas to generate the electricity that runs their countries. Why shouldn’t Africa? Besides, carbon dioxide makes plants grow better, even in droughts, and companies like General Electric are developing cleaner, more efficient gas turbine technologies that African nations could purchase.

Kenya, Uganda and other African countries would not need extensive gas pipeline systems. They just need to build a few pipelines to carry gas to large generating units that would provide electricity for homes, hospitals, schools, shops, factories and water treatment plants. Miracles would happen.

As my wife, businesswoman and fellow malaria and economic development activist Fiona Kobusingye, has pointed out, “Not having electricity means millions of Africans die every year from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.”

All that would change if our countries had electricity.

The modern world runs on electricity. It’s time for Africa to take its rightful place among the healthy and prosperous nations of the world. Our growing supplies of natural gas could help make that happen.

Cyril Boynes, Jr. is co-chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality - Uganda.