By Gary S. Urich, BoliviaMoNews
What the mainstream media has been feeding our nation on the issue of global warming is more hype than heat and more scam than science. Thus, for a change, we shall look at the facts. First question: Where is the heat? Scientist Robert Balling Jr., director of the Laboratory of Climatology at Arizona State University, examined the temperature records from European ground stations over the last 250 years. What were his findings? He said, “There had been no warming in Europe during the past 65 years. Europe warmed only .58 degrees Celsius during the past 250 years, with all of the warming taking place between 1890 and the mid-1930s and at the same time as an increase in the output of the sun. An in-depth study released by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine states: The average temperature of the Earth has varied within a range of about 3 degrees Celsius during the past 3,000 years. It is currently increasing as the Earth recovers from a period that is known as the Little Ice Age. Compiled U.S. surface temperatures have increased about 0.5 degrees Celsius per century, which is consistent with other historical values of 0.4 to 0.5 degrees Celsius per century during the recovery from the Little Ice Age. Three intermediate trends are evident, including the decreasing trend used to justify fears of “global cooling” in the 1970s.
Second question: Where is the science? In 1996, The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, a United Nations Organization, released its report “The Science of Climate Change 1995.” It addressed the issue of the human impact on the earth’s climate and was hailed by the media as the latest and most authoritative statement on global warming. Soon after its release, there was a protest by some scientist of the handling of this document and the version of it that was released to the media. The Wall Street Journal carried this article titled “A Major Deception on Global Warming” by Frederick Seitz. In the editorial, Seitz had this to say: “In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”
The truth is, there has been scientific manipulation of the facts for a desired outcome. That is the reason Dr. Frederick Seitz and several other credible scientists started the “Petition Project” that states that global warming is not a crisis and that we should all oppose higher energy tax schemes as well as the Kyoto Treaty. How many have signed this “Petition Project”? More than 31,000 American scientists have signed the Petition!
Where is the heat? It is little, normal and natural. Where is the science? It is limited and manipulated, to be certain, and used to promote a certain political and economical outcome. I, therefore, stand for common sense and sound science in this day of political and scientific manipulation. Read more here.
Lauren Morello, ClimateWire reporter
Five years after complaints about data quality quashed the first federal assessment of climate change in the United States, an industry group is resurrecting the tactic. On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the government to withdraw a major Climate Change Science Program report released in May. The group argued that the analysis violates a federal law that requires agencies to employ “sound science” because it relies on unpublished information.
Environmental groups blasted the move, calling it an attempt to cast doubt on climate science. But chamber officials maintained that the report includes references to unpublished federal climate studies which leave the public unable to determine whether its conclusions are valid.
“The public cannot presently judge the reliability and objectivity of the synthesis report, because the public cannot access the underlying documents on which the synthesis report is based,” the group wrote in official comments it filed Friday with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the lead agency that produced the analysis. The report—the second national climate assessment—predicts that the United States will “very likely” experience rising sea levels and increasing droughts, heat waves, intense storms and resulting illness and premature death over the next century as climate change intensifies. The document also concludes it is “likely that there has been a substantial human contribution to surface temperature increases in North America.” Bill Kovacs, the chamber’s vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, said the group wants the federal government to withdraw the report until the unpublished studies are completed and publicly available. Some of the studies—a series of 21 reports planned by the Climate Change Science Program—are not scheduled for release until November. “We’re asking them to withdraw until such a time as they can put everything out as a comprehensive whole,” he said. “They can withdraw it, finish the publication and put it back out. It’s not a permanent action.”
Industry criticisms run deep. But Kovacs also hinted that the industry group’s complaints run deeper, extending to the scientific validity of climate models and peer-reviewed studies cited in the report. In addition to work by the Climate Change Science Program, the report references analyses published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and scientific journals. “We’re viewing this as part of the scientific evidence that is going to be put in the public record” as part of EPA’s ongoing rulemaking process that will determine whether the agency regulates carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act, he said. “It’s all the same science that’s being relied upon.”
Environmentalists who participated in a lawsuit last year that forced the Bush administration to publish the report said they believed the Chamber of Commerce’s aim is to suppress findings designed to help policymakers at the federal, state and local levels plan for climate change."The Chamber of Commerce is pursuing a last-century, head-in-the-sand strategy to suppress climate information,” said Brendan Cummings, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They are doing a disservice to all the businesses and communities they purport to represent. Climate models have been the best available science for decades now.” Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace USA, called the request to withdraw the climate report “more of the same.""The chamber and its allies have been trying for over a decade to slow down the uptake of climate science,” he said. “Now we have a clear signal from the Bush administration that there are identifiable local impacts from climate change.”
At the heart of the chamber’s withdrawal request is the Data Quality Act. Also known as the Information Quality Act, the law requires federal agencies to ensure the integrity of the information they use and distribute. It also allows outside parties to petition to force the correction of information they believe is wrong. Between 2000 and 2003, the Competitive Enterprise Institute used the act to successfully challenge the first national climate assessment, released in 2000, which it called “junk science.” The group said the report’s reliance on uncertain climate computer models rendered its conclusions useless and argued that it was not subject to certain laws governing the convening and conduct of advisory panels. In the end, the Bush administration settled the group’s legal challenges by agreeing to place a disclaimer on the national assessment report Web site stating the document was not subject to Data Quality Act guidelines (Greenwire, Oct. 3, 2006). Environmentalists said they see echoes of that effort in the challenge to the new report.
“They’re essentially recycling the same climate denier arguments that CEI used eight years ago,” said Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity. “That strategy worked for the first national assessment. We don’t believe it can work here. Global warming has become so severe and so impossible to deny that even under the Data Quality Act, these arguments should go nowhere.” The comment period on the report ends Aug. 14.
Wall Street Journal
Hell—otherwise known as Congress—has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production. Or even a mere debate about energy. The Democratic leadership is stonewalling any measure that might possibly relax the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they would lose if a vote ever came to the floor, and they’re desperate to suppress an insurrection among those Democrats who are pragmatic about one of the top economic issues. Behind this whatever-it-takes obstructionism is an ideological commitment to high energy prices. The rulers of the Democratic Party want prices to keep rising.
The Senate is locked down over its own antispeculation bill. Majority Leader Reid briefly agreed to allow four amendments on GOP policy alternatives, but he withdrew the offer after he was subjected to the fury of the environmental lobby and Ms. Pelosi. To prevent a vote on offshore drilling this week, Senate Democrats also let fail a bill providing home heating assistance for the poor. Same thing for tax subsidies for wind and solar energy. Other liberal inspirations, including suing OPEC and a windfall profits tax on the oil industry, also ended up in the Congressional dumpster. And of course Democrats long ago shut down the normal budget process in both the Senate and the House to avoid any vote.
The Democratic leadership isn’t oblivious to this man-at-the-pump reality. But Al Gore’s vision of the apocalyptic tides of climate change perfectly expresses their mentality: Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid see soaring prices as a public good—the mechanism that will force energy enlightenment on the U.S. If anything, they think the price of gas is too low. As recently as June, the Senate debated a multitrillion-dollar carbon tax-and-regulation scheme that was designed to boost energy costs. A new version will be a priority in the next Administration.
If nothing else, this summer’s oil drilling stonewall is giving voters an insight into this ideology, which recoils at any oil, natural gas or coal production—oh, and nuclear besides. That puts 93% of all U.S. energy off limits for expansion. Back in the real world, and barring a cold fusion or other miracle, the U.S. will remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades. A fresh round of domestic oil-and-gas exploration would ease the long-term pressures that supply and demand are exerting on prices, plus bolster energy security. But the leadership won’t bend even a bit, and so Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have spent the summer using every parliamentary deception to evade debating the issue that the American public cares most about. Short of cutting off the air conditioning on Capitol Hill, Democrats won’t get the message until voters make them—perhaps in November.
Read full op ed here.