Dear Alan Leshner,
As an AAAS Fellow since 1994, I am appalled by the AAAS’ decision (neither consulting its membership nor the AAAS Fellows) to issue “a BLANKET ENDORSEMENT of ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming’ (CAGW) by this entire Professional Society”.
Any “REAL scientist” (who has <
CAGW has nothing to do with The hypothesis-driven Scientific Method, but instead relies completely on computer-simulation models, and it seems that no one can admit that “prediction by any of these models has been proven (even one time) to be correct”. Yet, more than $20 billion to $30 billion in the U.S. alone has been spent per year since the end of the 1980s...on this bogus science field (to pay for salaries and more research money to “perform further computer simulations"). JUST THINK how much further the health of each American might improve, if this money ($500 billion to $750 billion) could be channeled into true, meaningful basic and clinical scientific research !
In the Science journal, there should be some venue for discourse on this issue...among AAAS Fellows, or all of AAAS, or all scientists of the Western World. If there is no such opportunity, my plans are to resign as an AAAS Fellow and stop subscribing to the Science journal, which unfortunately has become increasingly little more than a political rag these past several years.
Sincerely,
Daniel W Nebert, MD
Professor Emeritus, Dept of Environmental Medicine; Center for Environmental Genetics
Professor Emeritus, Dept of Pediatrics & Molecular Developmental Biology, Division of Human Genetics
University of Cincinnati Medical Center, P.O. Box 670056, Cincinnati OH 45267
Affiliate Faculty, Oregon State University, Corvallis OR 97331
Faculty Consultant, Yale University School of Public Health, New Haven CT 06520
Dear Dan,
BRAVO!
Thanks so much for your efforts on behalf of legitimate science.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has become a disgrace under its present leadership. It is amazing that they refuse to consult their membership, let alone their most honored members, their Fellows, on matters of great consequence.
It is therefore important for you and the other Fellows of wayward scientific societies to make their objections known. Thank you very much for doing so.
Gordon
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
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Keep up the good work, Dan.
I let my membership in AAAS lapse some years ago when the likes of Holdren, Lubchenko and Leshner took over. I suppose they still count me as a fellow. Roger Cohen led an attempt to rewrite the American Physicial Society’s statement on climate a few years ago. The initial effort was crushed with a brutal cynicism any totalitarian state would envy. But perhaps some good will come of it eventually.
In the mean time, much damage has been done to the reputation of science.
Will Happer
Physics, Princeton
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CO2 data shows nobody’s dead from a little carbon dioxide
A little CO2 won’t hurt you. A lot of CO2 won’t hurt you. You breathe out 40,000 ppm with every breath. Do you worry about California banning YOU from breathing out?
I want to clarify my comments. I recently wrote that my CO2 meter said I should be dead in San Diego while exhaling. That was a CO2 spoof, folks. I was having some fun, and I’m still quite alive as I write.
But let me be perfectly clear: I really do have a CO2 meter, and it really did squawk when I blew my exhale into it. Because I’m a CO2 engine, just like you.
Real data
What I’m about to say isn’t a spoof. It’s the result of research and discussions with scientists working in the field. For all of you who need the data, I’ll give them in summary, but you go look up the mountain of references, do some research for yourself, even get a meter if you like. You’ll believe the numbers below better if you discover them on your own. And you won’t need to believe me when I say “I told you so.”
The following summarizes levels of CO2 under various conditions:
40,000 ppm: The exhaled breath of normal, healthy people.
8,000 ppm: CO2 standard for submarines
2,500 ppm: CO2 level in a small hot crowded bar in the city
2,000 ppm: The point at which my CO2 meter squawks by playing Fur Elise
1,000 to 2,000 ppm: Historical norms for the earth’s atmosphere over the past 550 million years
1,000 to 2,000 ppm: The level of CO2 at which plant growers like to keep their greenhouses
1,000 ppm: Average level in a lecture hall filled with students
600 ppm: CO2 level in my office with me and my husband in it
490 ppm: CO2 level in my office working alone
399 ppm: Current average outdoor level of CO2 in the air
280 ppm: Pre-industrial levels in the air, on the edge of “CO2 famine” for plants
150 ppm: The point below which most plants die of CO2 starvation
(all of these data vary a little with size of the space, ventilation, wind, and the like)
What does it mean?
There’s a lot more data out there, but this simple list says it all. Carbon dioxide is present in our outside air at about 400 ppm.
A little less than that and our plants start to suffer.
A little more and there’s little effect on people while plants proliferate.
A lot more and there’s still not much effect on people.
Nowhere in the list of numbers do people get dead. Well, except for those submarines that never surface. You get the point.
Above average is a good thing
Above ambient levels of 390 ppm is where plants start to thrive. Remember your science: it says plants take in CO2 and output O2; people take in O2 and output CO2. We’ve got a good thing going with the plants, not to mention that they grow into what we eat. Having more to eat is a good thing in my book...and in the book of the world where so many people still don’t have enough food.
What happens with less?
But the powers that be namely Gov. Schwarzenegger and the AB32 crew want to lower the levels of CO2 in the air. If those regulations succeed, we will have targeted the plants for destruction. Then what will we eat? Each other?
Leave nature alone
Left on its own, nature has seen much higher levels of CO2 in times when human beings weren’t exhaling in numbers or driving cars. How about we leave well enough alone and let nature and people do their own thing. If that means a little more CO2, we can take it and take it well.
By Boris Konon, Meteorologist and Storm Chaser
Here are the most recent U.S. tornado statistics from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC).
October U.S. tornado count average is 61 (69 preliminary) and November averages is 58 (27 preliminary). Preliminary number for December so far is 29 and average is 24. That essentially appears to be it for the year. The 29 preliminary count this month is about 10 less for a final count when you remove duplicate reports from 12/23. Yearly U.S. average is 1253.
I estimate the final count for 2014 will be ~835. That is an extraordinary deviation from the mean. 67% of average, 6% lower than 2013 and 8% lower than 2012! This is the lowest count since 1988 when 702 tornadoes occurred. 1989 is second with 856.
Here is a graphic that shows “detrended” tornado counts over the years. This helps to account for the better detection and documentation of tornadoes over time. Not perfect, but better than just the raw numbers. Look at 2014...about two standard deviations below average!
In the last 15 years, we see more well below than well above average years. Another way of looking at it, there are more wild swings in the past 15 years. True, but the door swings both ways and unlike say precipitation (too wet or too dry) the lack of tornadoes is a good extreme regardless of how you look at it. So with tornadoes, the more wild swing hypothesis due to climate change cancels things out more or less in the long run. Yes, there will be big years and devastating outbreaks, but that is part of normal climatic variation. As we have seen, for some reason the very occurrence even a single tornado is somehow “unusual” and makes national headlines routinely, even if it hits nothing or does minor damage with no harm to anyone. When about 1250 tornadoes occur in the U.S. a year, a tornado is quite a typical event, not unusual.
Another item, this is the third year in a row where U.S. tornado fatalities have decreased. It is not just regression to the mean either due to the very high toll in 2011. In the last three years, the numbers have been 70, 55, and 46. This has more due to with random chance than climate, as we know all it takes is one badly placed intense tornado to make it a well above average year (i.e.
Joplin), but to level the playing field on an argumentative and prevailing public mindset level, a decrease is a decrease, and that is a good thing. Contrast if it went up 2012-2014, then the klaxons would probably be sounding and this would be utilized as “proof” the weather/climate is getting worse, even though as I said, this is random chance, either way! Mesoscale event placement is so far below mean large scale climate it is basically irrelevant to the issue. Another way of looking at it is that fatalities have resumed the typical in the last 3 years to what has been
occurring in most years going back to 1975.
Two main things at work here,
1) watches/warnings for tornadoes has improved considerably in the last 40 years, and
2) the number of people in this country has increased considerably, from about 216 million in 1975 to 316 million in 2014. So you have one item that decreases the risk of fatalities and one item increasing the risk of fatalities. You can crunch the numbers all you want here, but overall it at worst appears to be status quo in the long term mean.
One more item, although the number of total tornadoes per year is going up overall (and that is more a better detection/documentation fact than anything), the number of F3/EF3+ has shown a slight decrease in trend. These are the ones that do the most damage and cause the most fatalities, and what we should be most concerned with.
Bottom line there is reasonable evidence currently that tornadoes in this country both from a meteorological and fatality point of view are not getting worse. The U.S. represents only 6.6% of the land on the globe, but is the tornado capital of the world, and has a very extensive tornado database, so looking at tornado trends here is better than anything else we currently have to measure
overall activity.
Radical global warming campaigners trespass on treasured Inca cultural sites
Craig Rucker, CFACT
Greenpeace likes to pretend it’s on the side of local people, especially indigenous peoples. But time and again they demonstrate a shocking degree of cultural boorishness.
Now Greenpeace activists have Peruvians up in arms, after trespassing all over treasured Incan cultural sites at Machu Picchu and Nazca, while doing ridiculous publicity stunts to highlight their claim that tiny amounts of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide are causing “dangerous” planet-wide climate change.
The Times of London’s Ben Webster says a Peruvian prosecutor investigating the incident was angry that the activists had caused “irreparable damage” to a large area of the “Nazca lines,” an ancient monument that UNESCO lists as a World Heritage Site. The “lines” are a series of ancient glyphs in the country’s southern desert region. Hundreds of figures include stylized fish, hummingbirds, lizards, monkeys and spiders. Archeologists believe they were created by the Nacza culture 1360-1615 years ago.
The damage affects some 1,600 square meters (0.4 acres) next to a hummingbird etched into the desert soil. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor said that, under Peruvian law, damaging the historic site could be punishable by a prison sentence of three to six years. The Peruvian cultural ministry is also considering suing Greenpeace for damages, Webster said.
I challenged the inconsiderate Rainbow Warriors inside the UN climate confab, during their press conference. You can watch the exchange here. A year ago, Russia jailed another band of Greenpeaceniks for trespassing on one of its oil rigs. It will be interesting to see how Peruvian authorities punish these thoughtless desecrators of Incan cultural sites. Stay tuned to our www.CFACT.org website.
Big Green and other Leftist ideologues are blind to the harm their actions cause. As blind as so many people in Southeast Asia will be if Greenpeace propaganda succeeds in denying them access to the GMO “Golden Rice” that their diets need to ensure good visual health.
Eco activists cry a river for plants or bugs, but think nothing about parents and children dying from malaria, because of their opposition to insecticides and the powerful spatial repellant DDT; going blind from Vitamin A deficiency, because of Golden Rice boycotts; or getting sick and dying from lung and intestinal diseases, because these radical greens also oppose large-scale electrical generating plants
.
The huge letters the Greenpeace gang used to desecrate this sensitive cultural site are plastic! Which is made from petroleum! Which Greenpeace denounces as evil and planet-destroying! The “go solar” slogan on the mountains above Machu Picchu was projected using equipment that was powered by hydrocarbons. What hypocrites these campaigners be!
CFACT representatives had an opportunity to speak with some Inca people at their sacred places, and with local Peruvian leaders in Lima. We visited with respect and forged friendships. That’s what happens when you care about people.
Many politicians and business people are afraid to stand up to Big Green bully groups. CFACT is unafraid. We have challenged Greenpeace and Big Green at every opportunity, such as here, here, here and here. We are committed to working for people, as well as nature.
Greenpeace has hundreds of millions of dollars a year at its disposal for its fight against human freedom, health and prosperity. We have a tiny fraction of that. But we make it count - not just on educational efforts, but for programs that directly support and assist poor indigenous villages and people.
Meanwhile, also in Peru, our Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow was holding a press conference during the latest United Nations meeting on climate change. It featured the notable skeptic of “dangerous manmade global warming” NASA Apollo VII astronaut and American hero Col. Walt Cunningham, along with me and CFACT director of communications Marc Morano. As is always the case with events at the UN climate confabs, we had been given a 30-minute slot to present our entire program. It was one of a very few “skeptical” presentations during the entire week-long gabfest.
But then, barely 18 minutes into our presentation, we were abruptly told we were being booted off the stage, to create a platform for a photo op for newly arrived U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the UN talks to promote a new UN climate treaty. This is the same John Kerry who said in October that, “if skeptics are wrong: catastrophe… Life as you know it on Earth ends.” Kerry has also declared that climate change “may be, in fact the most serious challenge we face on the planet” - posing even “greater long-term consequences” than Islamic State, terrorism or Ebola.
Kerry was scheduled to do a talk in a different room, but supposedly needed our press room for his photo op. CFACT’s speakers politely left as requested and then the room remained empty for at least another 35 minutes. Col. Cunningham’s informative talk was interrupted for no just or valid reason.
This was outrageous. We are one of the few voices of reason at the conference. To interrupt and abruptly end our press conference smacks of censorship. It was particularly obnoxious since the room remained vacant for more than a half hour after we left. But as others have noted, in Massachusetts people have long called Mr. Kerry “John Live Shot,” because he eagerly crashes other people’s events to get on camera.
Before being told to leave, Col. Cunningham had slammed the UN climate Summit for perpetrating “one of the biggest frauds in the field of science.” Our panel also featured Marc Morano, editor of our hugely successful Climate Depot.com news and information service, who told the gathered media that, “the UN climate process will do nothing for climate change and is completely designed to enrich the UN.”
CFACT’s delegation at the UN climate talks did not break stride. We got right back to work. Selected highlights of our shortened press conference can be read and viewed here.
The UN climate process needs more voices like CFACT’s, presenting reason, sound science and concern for the world’s poor. The UN bureaucrats could surely have allowed us the courtesy of concluding our presentations during our last 12 minutes – which would still have left 23 minutes of vacant space before Secretary Kerry’s photo op!
Turning energy policies over to callous, inefficient, arrogant and unaccountable UN bureaucrats should certainly anger people who are struggling with skyrocketing energy prices – or with the abject poverty, disease and premature death that comes from not having any access to reliable, affordable energy. These are just a few of the many reasons for opposing any new UN climate treaty, which Greenpeace, President Obama and IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri want to impose without our consent.
As we have seen all too often, the road to hell is paved with “good intentions” as though purportedly good intentions can in any way make up for the horrid, destructive results that are actually imposed.
In reality, Greenpeace and outfits like it typically represent two kinds of people: sincerely worried and gullible young followers, who want to salve their guilt for enjoying modern living standards and callous, arrogant leaders, who understand all too well the lethal consequences of their policies, but take advantage of the naivete and good intentions of their followers, to drive their agenda forward.
CFACT will continue to educate the former, while blasting the latter.
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Note how the Friends of Science in Canada are doing battle with the eco fanatics at the Sierra Club in this release.