Back in 1990 when I founded The National Anxiety Center as a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy, I was mainly concerned about the torrent of lies about global warming.

Their beginning is usually dated to an appearance by James E. Hansen before a congressional committee in 1988 in which he claimed that global warming would destroy the earth. To this day Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and has held that position since 1981. There is no rational reason why he continues to be employed by the U.S. government.

Global warming has been widely discredited thanks to the November 2009 release of thousands of emails between UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “scientists” that revealed their collusion to rig the data that supported the fraud.

GLOBAL WARMING. Climate alarmists are already worrying that the public has grown so tired of their idiotic claims that huge blizzards are caused by “warming” they are beginning to pour money into the education of a new generation of “environmental journalists” to ensure that more such lies make it to the front page of your daily newspaper or via other media.

Meanwhile, billions of taxpayer’s dollars have been flushed down the federal government rat hole to fund “research” guaranteed to support the hoax. It gets worse. Despite the defeat of the Cap-and-Trade bill based on the Big Lie that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases cause global warming, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is attempting an end-run around Congress to impose limits on the carbon dioxide emissions of utilities and every form of manufacturing and business in America.

The EPA is engaged in a perversion of science, but what else is new? Americans have been ill-served by the alphabet soup of government agencies supposedly in place to protect the food we eat, medicines we take, the air and the water. In the process they are just as often stripping Americans of the protection afforded by pharmaceuticals and beneficial chemicals.

VACCINES v. AUTISM. A case in point is an article in the British Medical Journal that “accused a disgraced British doctor of committing an ‘elaborate fraud’ by faking data in his studies linking vaccines with autism.”

The result of that fraud was to convince thousands, if not millions, of parents that vaccines to protect their children against measles and mumps were a threat to their health. The ancillary question is why Andrew Wakefield’s paper was published in 1998. Science journals are expected to peer review such papers and determine if the data presented is valid. If it cannot be reproduced, it fails that test.

DDT. Starting in 1972, an EPA ban essentially ended its use anywhere in the nation and other nations followed suit. A year later a court upheld the EPA and that is an object lesson in what happens when matters of science are decided by men and women, lawyers, with no training or background in science. The DDT hoax continues to cause malaria deaths, particularly in Africa and mostly affecting women and children.

The U.S. is experiencing an outbreak of the bed bug population, eliminated decades ago, because the EPA has banned or limited the use of virtually every pesticide to exterminate them.

ALAR. Recall, too, the fraud perpetrated by environmental groups against Alar, a chemical that was widely used by apple growers to ensure that the crop would ripen in a fashion that permitted an efficient harvest. The Alar hoax cost American apple growers millions in lost revenue until it became known that Alar posed no health threat whatever.

SACCHARINE. Though cleared of charges dating from the 1980s that saccharin was a cancer-causing substance, it took until the 1990s to get it removed from the 9th edition of the “Report on Carcinogens” and it took until mid-December 2010 for the EPA to finally admit what everyone knew by then. You can thank “consumer” groups for foisting this fraud on everyone and agencies of the U.S. government for maintaining it until they no longer could.

BPA. A similar campaign exists to ban BPA, bisphenol-A, a chemical used to line plastic bottles and containers. It is literally a worldwide effort and it too is without any scientific merit. In the same way the claim that linked vaccines and autism, BPA is under attack, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. I have written about this in the past and intend to follow this to demonstrate how these “scientific” frauds debase all science in the process.

Aside from the fact that these claims always begin with a dubious “scientific” study and then escalate as other “scientists” climb on the funding bandwagon, the other element is always the role that the mainstream media plays in keeping the fraud alive until the sheer weight of evidence makes it impossible to do so.

Ultimately, this destroys the trust we normally accord to legitimate scientists, exhausting our ability and willingness to embrace the science that has prolonged and protected the lives of millions. Read more here.

Those aren’t my words - it’s the title of a 2005 article, brought to my attention by Cal Beisner, which uses probability theory to “prove” that “...most claimed research findings are false”. While the article comes from the medical research field, it is sufficiently general that some of what it discusses can be applied to global warming research as well.

I would argue that the situation is even worse for what I consider to the central theory of the climate change debate: that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere causes significant warming of the climate system. Two corollaries of that theory are that (1) the warming we have seen in recent decades is human-caused, and (2) significant warming will continue into the future as we keep using fossil fuels.

The first problem I see with scientifically determining whether the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is likely to be true is that it is a one-of-a-kind event. This immediately reduces our scientific confidence in pinpointing the cause of warming. The following proxy reconstruction of temperature variations over the last 2,000 years suggests global warming (and cooling), are the rule, not the exception, and so greenhouse gas increases in the last 100 years occurring during warming might be largely a coincidence.

Enlarged here.

Twice I have testified in congress that unbiased funding on the subject of the causes of warming would be much closer to a reality if 50% of that money was devoted to finding natural reasons for climate change. Currently, that kind of research is almost non-existent.

A second, related problem is that we cannot put the Earth in the laboratory to run controlled experiments on. Now, we CAN determine in the laboratory that certain atmospheric constituents (water vapor, water droplets, carbon dioxide, methane) absorb and emit infrared energy...the physical basis for the so-called greenhouse effect. But the ultimate uncertainty over atmospheric feedbacks - e.g. determining whether cloud changes with warming reduce or amplify that warming - cannot be tested with any controlled experiment.

A third problem is the difficulty in separating cause from effect. Determining whether atmospheric feedbacks are positive or negative requires analysis of entire, quasi-global atmospheric circulation systems. Just noticing that more clouds tend to form over warm regions does not tell you anything useful about whether cloud feedbacks are positive or negative. Atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems involve all kinds of interrelated processes in which cause and effect must surely be operating. But separating cause from effect is something else entirely.

For example, just establishing that years experiencing global warmth have less cloud cover letting more sunlight in does not prove positive cloud feedback…simply because the warming could have been the result of - rather than the cause of - fewer clouds. This is the subject that Andy Dessler and I have been debating recently, and I consider it to be the Achilles heel of AGW theory.

After all, it is not the average role of clouds in the climate system that is being debated - we already know it is a cooling effect. It’s instead how clouds will change as a result of warming that we are interested in. Maybe they are the same thing (which is what I’m betting)...but so far, no one has found a way to prove or disprove it. And I believe cause-versus-effect is at the heart of that uncertainty.

A fourth problem with determining whether AGW theory is true or not is closely related to a similar problem medical research has - the source of funding. This has got to be one of the least appreciated sources of bias in global warming research. In pharmaceutical research, experimentally demonstrating the efficacy of some new drug might be influenced by the fact that the money for the research came from the company that developed the drug in the first place. This is partly why double-blind studies involving many participants (we have only one: Earth) were developed.

But in global warming research, there is a popular misconception that oil industry-funded climate research actually exists, and has skewed the science. I can’t think of a single scientific study that has been funded by an oil or coal company.

But what DOES exist is a large organization that has a virtual monopoly on global warming research in the U.S., and that has a vested interest in AGW theory being true: the U.S. Government. The idea that government-funded climate research is unbiased is laughable. The push for ever increasing levels of government regulation and legislation, the desire of government managers to grow their programs, the dependence of congressional funding of a problem on the existence of a “problem” to begin with, and the U.N.’s desire to find reasons to move toward global governance, all lead to inherent bias in climate research.

At least with medical research, there will always be funding because disease will always exist. But human-caused warming could end up to be little more than a false alarm...as well as a black eye for the climate research community. And lest we forget, possibly the biggest funding-related source of bias in climate research is that research community of scientists. Everyone knows that if the AGW “problem” is no longer a problem, their source of research funding will disappear.

Sometimes I get accused of being a conspiracy nut for believing these things. Well, whoever accuses me of that has obviously not worked in government or spent much time dealing with program managers in Washington. There is no conspiracy, because these things are not done in secret. The U.N.’s Agenda 21 is there for all to read.

The bottom line is that there could scarcely be a more ill-posed scientific question than whether global warming is human-caused: a one of a kind event, the Earth can’t be put into a laboratory to study, cause and effect are intermingled, and the political and financial sources of bias in the resulting research are everywhere.

So, when some scientist says we “know” that warming is human-caused, I cringe at the embarrassing abundance of scientific ignorance on display. No wonder the public doesn’t trust scientific predictions - just as suggested by the 2005 study I mentioned at the outset, those predictions have almost always been wrong!

With Russian ships still trapped in the Sea of Okhotsk, in ice of two-metre thickness, Republican American blogger Steve Macoy recalls a 2006 symposium on global warming.

Illustrated were findings that that a large warming area existed in the western part of the Sea of Okhotsk, and a warming trend widely extended toward the western North Pacific. It was thus “widely believed” that the global warming was recently proceeding and the East Siberia region just north of the Sea of Okhotsk was one of the most sensitive areas to the global warming in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Sea of Okhotsk turns out to be quite an important area from the warmist perspective, this paper reporting that it plays a role as the pump of the North Pacific - thus having a significant effect on the climate of the region. It forms a significant ice factory for the whole region and there are said to be ”clear indications of global warming” around the sea.

This report in 2006 claimed a dramatic shrinkage of ice (illustrated), and a shortening ice season - with dire economic consequences. And it was this paper which reported on the area of the sea being “a sensitive area to the current global warming”, despite cyclical effects being reported elsewhere.

With the region now experiencing thick - and evidently unexpected [ ice, this is clearly of more importance than just the trapping of a number of ships. The ice in the whole region is something of a warmist poster child, and another one that has suddenly lost its appeal.

As the reducing ice extent has been used as evidence of global warming, so can we assume that the rapid increase in ice may be an early sign that the warming is over?

See post here.

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500 seamen stranded in icebound Russian ships

MOSCOW – A Russian icebreaker labored Monday through howling winds and heavy snow as it tried to reach icebound ships in the Sea of Okhotsk where more than 500 seamen are trapped.

Three of the vessels have been trapped since Friday in ice estimated to be two meters (6 1/2 feet) thick. The state news agency RIA Novosti said two more ships became stuck on Monday.

The Sea of Okhotsk is an arm of the northern Pacific to the west of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

A statement from the Transport Ministry said there was no immediate danger to the crew on the three ships stuck since last week, who have sufficient food and water. The Ministry said an icebreaker was expected to reach their vicinity early Tuesday.

RIA Novosti cited a local coast guard official as saying winds on the sea were up to 30 meters per second (more than 65 mph).

The three ships that have been trapped since Friday - a fishing vessel, a refrigerated freighter and a scientific research ship - are in a tight convoy. The two others are about 20 nautical miles (35 kilometers) away.

See post here.

Melting ice will cause blasts of cold air to be funnelled over Britain during winter months

Britain will be hit by longer and colder winters in coming years because of global warming, scientists have said. Melting Arctic Sea ice has changed wind patterns in the northern hemisphere - bringing blasts of colder air across the UK.

Scientists believe the changes could be why we have been experiencing such a bitterly cold December.

Arctic conditions: A bus tries to make its way through Tunbridge Wells, Kent, as bad weather sweeps across the country

In future we are three times as likely to be hit by bitterly cold winter months because of the changing climate. Vladimir Petoukhov, who conducted the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact in Germany, said the disappearing sea ice will have an unpredictable impact on the climate.

‘This is not what one would expect. Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea-ice won’t bother him could be wrong,’ he said.

There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism. ‘Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it.’

Colder winters: Warming of the polar ice cap could give us regular freezing Decembers in the future

Rising temperatures in the Arctic - increasing at two to three times the global average - have peeled back the region’s floating ice cover by 20 percent over the last three decades. As the Arctic ice cap has melted the heat from the relatively-warm seawater escapes into the colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure.

That creates clockwise winds that sweep south over the UK and northern Europe. The study was completed last year - before Britain was hit by a freezing winter and heavy snowfall.

Chilly: A car drives carefully in a blizzard in North Tyneside, as the current cold spell continues to grip the country.

Scientists say we are three times as likely to have cold winters in the future

Scientists said it was too early to say if the freezing conditions this year and last year were caused by changes in the Arctic. But as the ice continues to melt, Britain will begin to have warmer than average winters - but not for another half a century.

Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the ocean at the Potsdam Institute, said: ‘If you look ahead 40 or 50 years, these cold winters will be getting warmer because, even though you are getting an inflow of cold polar air, that air mass is getting warmer because of the greenhouse effect. ‘So it’s a transient phenomenon. In the long run, global warming wins out.’

The paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last month (shows you how corrupt the AGU which publishes the JGR has become).

See post here.

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When prophecies fail

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Hadley Climate Centre 2003: “89% Less Snow for Scotland”
Posted on December 29, 2010 by hauntingthelibrary

Don’t you just love that: “89%”? Gives it that touch of pseudo-scientific accuracy and certainty.

This one comes from The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, which is part of the UK Met Office, and is dated 2003. The Hadley Centre had produced a report for the British-Irish council which found that

“average snowfall could decrease by up to 89%”

This gave Dr Richard Dixon, Head of Policy for WWF Scotland an opportunity to speculate that:

“It even begins to answer the question of whether life itself will be tenable in the Scottish Islands in 100 years time.”

Quite why the absence of snow and a rise in temperature of between 1.8 and 2.2 degrees would make Scotland’s highlands and islands less habitable rather than more is not quite clear. Perhaps he was concerned that the “highlands” might be flooded.

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James Hansen 2008: Warm Winters “Clear Sign” of Global Warming.
Hauntingthelibrary

I won’t waste any time or space on a lead-up to this one, it speaks for itself:

Hansen’s visit to London last week was partly inspired by the decision to approve construction of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
This, Hansen wants to warn us, is a recipe for global warming disaster. The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a clear sign that the climate is changing, he says. See post here.

And the recent excruciatingly cold winters? No doubt they’re also a sign of global warming.

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IPCC 2007 forecast failing in every way
By Robert Scheaffer via Marc Morano

The UN’s “Nobel Prize Winning” IPCC Report in 2007, predicted “warmer northern winters” for Europe. As summarized in this UN Press Release of April, 2007, we should expect to see “the ongoing thawing of European glaciers and permafrost, the delayed winter freeze of rivers and lakes, the lengthening of growing seasons, the earlier spring arrival of migratory birds… In addition to warmer winters, Europe’s northern regions will experience more precipitation and run-off. The expansion of forests and agricultural productivity will be accompanied by greater flooding, coastal erosion, loss of species and melting of glaciers and permafrost.” UNEP report link.

A classic case of a “failed prediction.” Theories making predictions that fail are called “refuted.”

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Meteorologist in 2007 - reduced arctic ice will mean warmer, delayed winters. In 2010, reduced arctic ice will mean colder winters.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters Can’t Keep his Scientific Rubbish Straight! Masters in 2007: ‘If you say it’s going to be warmer than normal, you’re almost always right these days’— Making it up as he goes along! ‘In 2007, Masters blamed the late, warm winter on a lack of polar ice. Now he blames the cold, early, snowy, winter on a lack of polar ice’

Masters 2007: ‘The fact that so much of the polar ice cap melted this summer. That’s going to slow down the arrival of winter...When you don’t have a full set of polar ice covering polar waters, it’s harder for big air domes to form and bring us our arctic outbreaks’

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Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model (1999)
Northern Climes, Buffeted By Stronger Winds, 7 To 10F Hotter

A team of scientists from Columbia University has shown that warm winters in the northern hemisphere likely can be explained by the action of upper-atmosphere winds that are closely linked to global warming.

Global mean surface temperatures have increased in the range of 0.6 to 1.2F since the late 19th century. But far more severe warming has taken place over wide regions of northern Eurasia, Canada and Alaska, with temperatures averaging 7 to 10F warmer in the last 35 years, according to data previously compiled by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

The research, which appears in the June 3, 1999 issue of the British journal Nature, offers no predictions on what temperatures future winters will bring, but suggests a continuation of the current trend for three to four more decades.

If warming trends continue, said Drew Shindell, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research and lead author of the report, northern regions of Europe and Asia and, to a lesser extent, North America, can expect winters that are both warmer and wetter, with increased rain and snow.

“Based on this research, it’s quite likely that the warmer winters over the continents are indeed a result of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Dr. Shindell said. “This research offers both a plausible physical mechanism for how this takes place, and reproduces the observed trends both qualitatively and even quantitatively.”

Other authors of the Nature paper were Gavin A. Schmidt, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research; Ron L. Miller, associate research scientist in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia, and Lionel Pandolfo, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Drs. Shindell, Schmidt and Miller also maintain an affiliation with the NASA Goddard Institute.

The physical mechanism the authors suggest is a redistribution of heat closely related to recent changes in atmospheric wind patterns, an indirect consequence of greenhouse warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat at the Earth’s surface, while cooling the stratosphere, a region of the atmosphere that extends from about seven to about 30 miles above the planet’s surface. This cooling has increased the speed of the stratospheric jet stream and has strengthened a lower atmosphere vortex of west-to-east, counterclockwise winds that naturally forms over the polar region each winter.

During the winter, the ocean retains heat better than the land. So when the dominant west-to-east winds increase, they carry warmer air from the oceans to the continents, and colder continental air to the oceans. In North America, the Rockies intercept the warmer winds, so the effect is stronger west of the mountains and is mitigated in central and eastern portions.

The Columbia team used several versions of the NASA Goddard Institute’s general circulation model, a computer construct that predicts the Earth’s climate when certain inputs are varied. Model simulations suggest that much of the increase in surface winds and in continental surface temperatures during the winter months is induced by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the model, increasing greenhouse gas emissions lead to a warmer surface and, at the same time, a colder stratosphere. The large wintertime continental temperature increases produced in the model correspond quite well with what scientists actually observe. But when the researchers used a version of the climate model that did not adequately represent the stratosphere, the results did not jibe as well with reality.

Colder polar temperatures in winter, and warmer temperatures in the middle latitudes, are actually part of a natural cycle of climate variability, which made the warming trend more difficult for the scientists to isolate. The temperature differences are reflected in sea-level pressure, which decreases in the Arctic region and increases at the middle latitudes; this cycle is called the Arctic Oscillation and is second only to El Niño in its effects on global weather. In the NASA Goddard Institute simulations, increasing greenhouse gases caused a preference for one phase of this cycle over another, with stronger west-to-east surface winds at the Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes, leading to the increased surface temperatures over land.

“Despite appearing as part of a natural climate oscillation, the large increases in wintertime surface temperatures over the continents may therefore be attributable in large part to human activities,” Dr. Shindell said. “The impact of greenhouse gases on climate through surface wind changes may be as large as, or in some areas larger than, the more direct impact of global warming.”

The research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Now alarmists claim that cold winters are caused by the greenhouse effect. The mark of a truly dishonest religion. See Steve’s post here. H/T Marc Morano.

Recent Coloradoan Soapbox articles by Dave Swartz (Nov. 27) and J.K. Peterson’s (Dec. 13) discuss their beliefs that human-induced climate change is a serious problem that must be confronted.

I doubt that Swartz and Peterson have the detailed technical background to make reliable judgments in how human-induced carbon dioxide increases will affect climate. I view Swartz and Peterson as representative of a large group of intelligent and concerned citizens who have been (or allowed themselves to be) brainwashed by what they have heard over and over again for the last 20 years from an uncritical mainstream media.

The mainstream media have not well served the public on this topic. They have yet to dig deep and ask the tough questions.

As guardians of openness and the truth, the mainstream media have let the public down by not presenting the other side of the warming issue. They have primarily echoed the continuous self-serving carbon dioxide climate degradation statements emanating from our country’s scientific, environmental, and political elites.

These statements mostly have been unsupported climate speculations, exaggerations and untruths.

Warming groups have a vested interest in the carbon dioxide warming threat. Scientists can garner federal grants. Environmentalists can use global warming to exert greater pressure on corporations.

Politicians can use the warming scare to increase their control over our lives, elevate the role of the government and increase their power. A broad ranging “group think” or “herd mentality” has developed.

If I had not spent 57 years (last 49 at Colorado State University) studying, forecasting and teaching meteorology-climate and only knew about climate from what I’ve read/heard in the mainstream media and in government pronouncements, I likely would have had similar warming concerns as Swartz and Peterson and millions of other Americans whose climate knowledge has been shaped by mainstream media.

But the knowledge I have accumulated during a long career does not permit me to accept these carbon dioxide induced warming pronouncements as being realistic.

I know of other more plausible nature processes which give more credible explanations of the global climate changes which have occurred during the last 150 years.

Thousands of our country’s older and more experienced meteorologists have similar opinions as mine. There has yet to be a broad, open and honest scientific debate of the likely influence on climate by rising levels of carbon dioxide by our country’s most knowledgeable specialists.

I am not saying that a doubling carbon dioxide, by the end of the 21st century will have an influence on our global climate, however. Doubling carbon dioxide should cause an increase in the globe’s hydrologic cycle (precipitation) of 3 percent to 4 percent.

But we should experience little global warming. Certainly not the 2 to 5 degrees Celsius warming projected by the global models whose handling of the globe’s hydrologic cycle is greatly flawed and causes them to simulate grossly unrealistic high warming numbers.

The climate changes induced by carbon dioxide are likely to be more beneficial than detrimental for humankind at least for the next 50 to 100 years.

See post and comments here.

William M. Gray is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU

ICECAP NOTE: Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation warned:

California as usual is leading the states in spiraling the drain and with 12.4% unemployment, people and corporations are leaving the state so rapidly, they are affecting the wind patterns. See much more in Dr. Singer’s story here.