By Dr. Roy Spencer

It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops. Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the wrath of the gods of nature.

Our environmental protection practices have already caused the deaths of millions of people, mainly in poor African countries. By far the most humans - mostly women and children - have been sacrificed in the mistaken belief that the use of any amount of the pesticide DDT would harm the environment. As a result, the preventable disease malaria has continued to decimate Africa. Only recently has this genocide disguised as environmentalism been partly reversed through the reinstituted practice of twice-yearly DDT treatments of the entryways to homes. While most environmentalists continue to insist that there is no connection between international bans on DDT and human deaths, such protestations really are like denying that the Holocaust ever happened.

Now, the Senate is preparing to debate the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which aims to limit carbon-dioxide emissions in the belief that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is disrupting the Earth’s climate and ecosystems. Since we now have the scientific method, we rely on computer models to predict these future catastrophes rather than on our fears and prejudices. While this gives the illusion of modern objective precision, the truth is that all we have done is enlisted one of our modern idols - the computer - to justify what we want to believe anyway. And that fundamental belief is that anything mankind does to nature is inherently evil.

To be sure, the scientific method can help us understand the physical world… something the ancients could not do. But global-warming theory, unfortunately, is out of the realm of being a legitimate, testable scientific hypothesis. For instance, to be a valid scientific hypothesis, there should be some kind of climate behavior observable in nature that would be inconsistent with the theory that mankind is responsible for global warming. But instead, everything we observe has now become consistent with the theory. Floods and droughts. Too much snow and too little snow. More hurricanes and fewer hurricanes. It is sometimes pointed out that a theory that explains everything really explains nothing.
Read more here.

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Icecap Note: Also note the revolts in the UK to the green policy’s effects on the costs of energy and food. See also these two videos from the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth on Lieberman Warner

By Madhav Khandekar, IPCC Reviewer

Has the IPCC exaggerated adverse impact of Global Warming on human societies? Yes, Certainly! Let me explain: While reviewing the IPCC WGII (Working Group II) Chapter “Assessment of observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems” (Chapter 1, WGII IPCC, 2007) as an external reviewer, I felt time and time again that there were areas where the chapter authors highlighted adverse impact of GW (Global Warming) on human societies, while downplaying possible beneficial impacts. The IPCC authors referred to several publications which projected adverse impacts while ignoring many excellent studies which have questioned these projections.

Throughout the text of this important chapter of WGII, there were many instances where adverse impact was highlighted or exaggerated, while possible beneficial impacts were totally ignored. Further, IPCC authors while assessing observed changes in natural systems chose to highlight only those changes which support the GW hypothesis while completely ignoring other observed changes which did not conform to the human-induced GW hypothesis and change. Such cherrypicking of observed climate change to bolster claims of human-caused g;pbal warming and climate change is disingenuous and does not help understand the real cause of how and why the earth’s climate has changed in historical and geological times.

A detailed reading of the Chapter left me with an impression that the deleterious impact of GW on human societies was so imminent and overwhelming that unless something is done right away (to curb the warming), human societies world over are about to perish!

The exaggerated claim of GW impacts by the IPCC has led to a distortion of the reality of climate change and its future impact. The earth’s climate has changed and is changing continuously, a fact accepted by most climate scientists on both sides of the present debate. Is the present climate change deleterious to human societies? Are there beneficial aspects of climate change that have been overlooked? Do adverse impacts outweigh beneficial impacts? We do not have all the answers yet. There is a definite need to carefully analyze climate change impact on world-wide human societies. The IPCC assessment is far from objective and needs to be critically re-assessed.

Read full paper here.

Icecap Note: Madhav is an IPCC reviewer. As this story in the First Post noted: “...serious science-based pressure is building on the IPCC to admit its objectives are political not scientific. Sir John Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC, acknowledged as much when he stated: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”

By Matthew McKenzie, Information Week

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by “hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.” The point: the group wants to “help Americans break free from the ‘carbon footprint guilt’ being imposed by Climate Alarmists.”

Grassfire.org says it’s skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions—from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants—are raising the Earth’s temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. “It’s time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us,” Elliott said.

Grassfire.org said it chose June 12 as the day it wants Americans to rev up their SUVs because it coincides with expected debate in Congress over a $1.2 billion carbon tax rebate program. “Carbon Belch Day will have at least as much impact on the so-called ‘planetary emergency’ of man-made global warming as the goofy save the earth mandates telling us to turn our lights off for an hour,” said Elliott.

Cities around the world went dark for an hour on March 31 to mark “Earth Hour,” an event created by the World Wide Fund for Nature to inspire people to find ways to use less energy. Grassfire.org is the latest group to question whether global warming is a real phenomenon, or whether it’s as severe as portrayed in Gore’s film. London’s Daily Telegraph this week called environmentalism “the new secular faith.”

The paper said the United Kingdom’s carbon credits program for industry is “just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution.” Read more here