By James Kerian, Wall Street Journal
In the late 19th century, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer developed what would come to be known as yellow journalism. By disregarding what had been standard journalistic methods, particularly in regards to the verifying of sources, these two publishers were able both to push their country toward war with Spain and dramatically increase the circulation of their respective newspapers.
Scientists, like journalists, are called upon to plumb the depths of the unknown and to fairly and objectively report their findings to their own professional community as well as the general public. Scientists, like the journalists of yesteryear, have specific methods for ensuring that the public trust placed in them is not abused. The most fundamental of these methods is the well-known, if not so creatively named, scientific method. The essence of the scientific method is the formulation of hypotheses (ideas) and the using of these hypotheses to make predictions that can be experimentally tested. In the words of Sir Thomas Eddington in “The Philosophy of Physical Science,” “Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.”
Nevertheless, over the past several decades an increasing number of scientists have shed the restraints imposed by the scientific method and begun to proclaim the truth of man-made global warming. This is a hypothesis that remains untested, makes no predictions that can be tested in the near future, and cannot offer a numerical explanation for the limited evidence to which it clings. No equations have been shown to explain the relationship between fossil-fuel emission and global temperature. The only predictions that have been made are apocalyptic, so the hypothesis has to be accepted before it can be tested.
The only evidence that can be said to support this so-called scientific consensus is the supposed correlation of historical global temperatures with historical carbon-dioxide content in the atmosphere. Even if we do not question the accuracy of our estimates of global temperatures into previous centuries, and even if we ignore the falling global temperatures over the past decade as fossil-fuel emissions have continued to increase, an honest scientist would still have to admit that the hypothesis of man-made global warming hardly rises to the level of “an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.” Global warming may or may not be “the greatest scam in history,” as it was recently called by John Coleman, a prominent meteorologist and the founder of the Weather Channel. Certainly, however, under the scientific method it does not rise to the level of an “item of physical knowledge.” Read more here.
PRNewswire
Two studies released today show that federal ethanol mandates have placed significant pressure on food prices, while any effect on gasoline prices has been “almost too small to measure.” Dr. Thomas Elam of FarmEcon LLC, and Keith Collins, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, submitted their new analyses to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today is the end of EPA’s public comment period on a request from Texas Gov. Rick Perry to partially suspend the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) in light of serious economic harm caused by the current policy.
“The 2008/2009 increase in fuel production made possible by the RFS is almost too small to measure against the global energy market, but the effects on food prices and security are huge,” Elam notes. “The U.S.
government should re-examine and reduce the RFS in light of the damage it can do to our food production capacity and the overall welfare of the country.” Elam’s study concludes that ethanol actually has had little effect on
gas prices—only about 4 cents per gallon.
Dr. Elam’s study also describes the expected impact of crop shortages on commodity and food prices if congressional food-to-fuel mandates remain at their current levels. The study concludes that maintenance of the current RFS in light of recent flooding in the Midwest would prove “devastating” to livestock and poultry farmers and would increase the burden of food prices for American consumers.
A recent Goldman Sachs analysis predicted that 2-4 million acres of corn may be lost in the wake of the Midwest flooding. The USDA is expected to provide a detailed estimate of losses in the coming weeks and has already revised down its expected crop yield data. The Collins study, “The Role of Biofuels and Other Factors in Increasing Farm and Food Prices,” indicates that unless the RFS is suspended or revisited, U.S. grain stocks—already pushed to dangerously low levels—will fall even further as ethanol consumes a larger share of the dwindling corn supply. “Government support for corn-based ethanol ensures a permanent, significant, and increasing demand for corn,” Collins said. “These policies interfere with the normal price rationing function of markets when supplies are short such as in 2008, with production being reduced by flooding and excess moisture.
Read more here.
By Chris Horner, CEI on Planet Gore
Today’s unhinged exhibition occurs in the context of commemorating Hansen’s testimony 20 years ago, which kicked off the modern global-warming alarmist movement ten years into the warming spell - on the heels of 30 years of cooling - and ten years before that warming peaked. And Ed Craig is right to look to Hollywood for parallels, since the Left media has openly celebrated Hansen’s dog-and-pony show as well-managed “stagecraft” - a story I chronicle in my forthcoming book, “Red Hot Lies” (a volume that surely guarantees my own trial for enviro-war crimes).
Specifically, the PBS series Frontline aired a special in April 2007 that lifted the curtain on the sort of illusions that politicians and their abettors employed to kick off the campaign. Frontline interviewed key players in the June 1988 Senate hearing at which then-Senator Al Gore rolled out the official conversion from panic over “global cooling” to global warming alarmism. Frontline interviewed Gore’s colleague, then-Sen. Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation). Comforted by the friendly nature of the PBS program, Wirth freely admitted the clever scheming that went into getting the dramatic shot of scientist James Hansen mopping his brow amid a sweaty press corps. An admiring Frontline termed this “Stagecraft.”
Sen. TIMOTHY WIRTH (D-CO), 1987-1993: We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So we called him up and asked him if he would testify.
DEBORAH AMOS: On Capitol Hill, Sen. Timothy Wirth was one of the few politicians already concerned about global warming, and he was not above using a little stagecraft for Hansen’s testimony.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that 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. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
WIRTH: Dr. Hansen, if you’d start us off, we’d appreciate it. The wonderful Jim Hansen was wiping his brow at the table at the hearing, at the witness table, and giving this remarkable testimony.[nice shot of a sweaty Hansen]
JAMES HANSEN: [June 1988 Senate hearing] 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.
Read more here.