EPW Minority Blog Press Release

Senator Presents Groundbreaking Senate Minority Report of More Than 650 Scientists Dissenting from Climate Fears and Profiles Left of Center Scientists & Environmental Activists Who Are Now Skeptics.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today delivered a global warming speech entitled: “Global Warming ‘Consensus’ in Freefall: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.” Inhofe presented his ground breaking new global warming report detailing the More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims to Congress on the Senate Floor.

Inhofe also detailed the growing number of left of center scientists and environmental activists who are speaking out to reject man-made climate fears.
Selected Highlights of Inhofe’s Speech:

Inhofe: Many politically left-of-center scientists and environmental activists are now realizing that the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming is not holding up. The left-wing blog Huffington Post surprised many by featuring an article on January 3, 2008 by Harold Ambler, demanding an apology from Gore for promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post article accused Gore of telling, “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind,” because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The Huffington Post article entitled “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted” adds, “It is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers,” not skeptics. Again, it is not Jim Inhofe saying this about Gore, it is the left-wing blog Huffington Post saying these things. The Huffington Post article continues, “Let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.”

Another left-of-center atmospheric scientist who has dissented on man-made climate fears is the UK’s Richard Courtney. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant, is a self-described socialist who also happens to reject man-made climate fears. Joining Courtney are many other progressive environmentalist scientists:

Former Greenpeace member and Finnish Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a lecturer of environmental technology and a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland who has authored 200 scientific publications, is also skeptical of man-made climate doom. Ahlbeck wrote in 2008, “Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since 1995 and this is shown by two completely independent datasets. But so far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.”

Life-long liberal Democrat Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. “As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science,” Hertzberg wrote. Read Full Speech Section Here: Politically Left Scientists Now Rejecting Climate Fears.

By Robert L. Bradley, Houston Chronicle

The new century has cooled the case for climate alarmism. Global warming has stalled - not accelerated as expected. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, but temperatures have been flat for the last eight years and have slightly fallen since 1998’s El Nino-driven temperature spike. If the cool-off continues until 2015, as could be the case according to a study published in Nature magazine, we will have had a see-saw of global warming (1900-45), global cooling (1945-75), global warming (1975-98), and flatness (1998-2015). Where does all of this leave us coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-18th century — and after a century of greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere? Today’s temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer, and in a naturally warmer climate cycle. Compare this to Al Gore’s scary talk about an 11-degree man-made temperature rise this century under business as usual. One decade does not end the debate. But it is yet another data point against treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant and stringently regulating today’s consumer-chosen energy economy. And it explains the desperation of those who accuse critics of climate catastrophism as being “deniers” (as in Holocaust deniers) and “flat earthers.”

Of course the climate is changing - always has and always will - and there may very well be a distinct human influence on climate. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent, as are the other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But the good news is that so far the observed climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is much less than what some climate models predict. And the news gets better. A moderately warmer and wetter world, natural or man-made, coupled with the carbon dioxide fertilization effect on plants and agriculture, has distinct benefits, not just costs. As a climate specialist at the U.S. Department of Interior has calculated, a 600-fold increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the last two centuries has accompanied an eight-fold increase in population, a 75-fold rise in manufacturing and a 60-fold increase in global economic output. This is why climate economists are much more optimistic than many climate scientists about the future of climate and the economy.

The retreating climate scare has direct policy implications for the new Congress and the Obama administration. The federal deficit should not be swelled by quixotic “green jobs” - public-works programs justified as a “climate policy.” Wind and solar power are the least efficient energies and translate into more cost and less reliability for energy users. Rationing carbon dioxide via a cap-and-trade program is all pain and no gain. And blocking increased access to public lands for oil and gas drilling as a climate policy throws away an economic stimulus that would actually raise revenue for the U.S. Treasury and would help consumers worldwide. The 20-year climate alarm has run into a much needed reality check. Real problems must be addressed instead of speculative ones. One hopes that President-elect Obama is not a puppet on the alarmists’ string, for economic recovery requires free-market energy, not inferior politically chosen energy.

Bradley is chairman and founder of the pro-free-market Institute for Energy Research in Houston, is author of “Climate Alarmism Reconsidered” and, most recently, “Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy.”

By Steve Quinn, AP

Ted Johnson planned on using a set of logs to a build a cabin in Alaska’s interior. Instead he’ll burn some of them to stay warm. Extreme temperatures - in Johnson’s case about 60 below zero - call for extreme measures in a statewide cold snap so frigid that temperatures have grounded planes, disabled cars, frozen water pipes and even canceled several championship cross country ski races. Alaskans are accustomed to subzero temperatures but the prolonged conditions have folks wondering what’s going on with winter less than a month old.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Brown said high pressure over much of central Alaska has been keeping other weather patterns from moving through. New conditions get pushed north or south while the affected area faces daily extremes. “When it first started almost two weeks ago, it wasn’t anything abnormal,” Brown said. “About once or twice every year, we get a good cold snap. But, in this case, you can call this an extreme event. This is rare. It doesn’t happen every year.”

Temperatures sit well below zero in the state’s various regions, often without a wisp of wind pushing down the mercury further. Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero. The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren’t coming in and they’re starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks. Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He’s been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence. “I’ve never seen it this cold for this long,” he said. “I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half.” Read more here.

Icecap Note: This frigid air will make its way southeast into the lower 48 the next 10 days or so. Snowstorms are likely along the edges. We will making the news like Europe and Alaska/Canada has in recent weeks. Could make things interesting come Inauguration Day.