By Marc Morano, EPW Blog
New scientists have come forth and been added to list of scientists who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man’s activities. In addition, there is a whole new section on inconvenenient studies for promoters of man-made climate fears.
The expanded list includes Dr. Klaus P. Heiss formerly of Princeton University and Mathematica, and a space engineer who has worked with NASA, the US Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research. Heiss received the NASA Public Service award for unique contributions to the US Space Program and is a member of the International Astronautics Academy. Heiss dissented from what he termed the “alleged climate catastrophe” in 2007.
Physical chemist Dr. Peter Stilbs, who chairs the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm has authored more than 165 scientific publications in refereed journals since 1970. Stilbs coordinated a meeting of international scientists and declared his skepticism about man-made climate fears. Stilbs wrote on December 21, 2006, “By the final panel discussion stage of the conference, there appeared to be wide agreement” about several key points regarding man-made climate fears. Stilbs announced that the scientists, concluded: “There is no strong evidence to prove significant human influence on climate on a global basis. The global cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 is inconsistent with models based on anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Actual claims put forward are that an observed global temperature increase of about 0.3 degrees C since 1970 exceeds what could be expected from natural variation. However, recent temperature data do not indicate any continued global warming since 1998.” Stilbs also noted, “There is no reliable evidence to support that the 20th century was the warmest in the last 1000 years. Previous claims based on the ‘Mann hockey-stick curve’ are by now totally discredited.” Stilbs concluded by noting that the team of international scientists concluded: “There is no doubt that the science behind ‘the climate issue’ is far from settled.”
Meteorologist Thomas B. Gray is the former head of the Space Services branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a researcher in NOAA’s Space Environment Laboratory and Environmental Research Laboratories. Gray also served as a meteorologist for the United States Air Force. Gray asserted that “climate change is a natural occurrence” and dissented from the view that mankind faces a “climate crisis” in 2007. “Nothing that is occurring in weather or in climate research at this time can be shown to be abnormal in the light of our knowledge of climate variations over geologic time,” Gray explained. “I am sure that the concept of a ‘Global Temperature’ is nonsense,” he added. “The claims of those convinced that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is real and dangerous are not supported by reliable data,” Gray concluded.
Read comments from more scientists and see the expanded list of papers here.
Read some blog reactions here and here.
By James Lewis, American Thinker
Scientists like money. (It’s true --- be still, my heart.) Big Science is a Big Business, supporting nearly half the budgets of our major universities. Science professors are only hired if they can swing enough Federal grant money to pay for their labs, hire a gaggle of graduate assistants, and let the universities skim up to forty percent off the top for overhead. And besides, it’s nice to get fat salaries. So the professional scientist union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has ads headed AAA$. They aren’t shy about it.``The trouble is that money means politics, and politics means shading the truth. As a result, we get politicized science, which corrupts real science. Any kind of Politically Incorrect science therefore becomes very hard to publish. So the cult of PC has invaded the pristine halls of science.
The past week’s Science magazine is a study in the way science can be ruined. The scare cover shouts Reef TROUBLE, to support the idea that our coral reefs are dying. It’s like the National Enquirer. Donald A. Kennedy is the editor of Science, with a dubious reputation from his years as president of Stanford University. Turns out that President Kennedy spent millions of Stanford research funds to rebuild his personal residence; “feathering your own nest” is more than a metaphor at Stanford. The scandal led to his resignation. Fortunately Kennedy did not end up on the bread line. He was able to jump to become editor-in-chief of the flagship journal of the AAAS, Science magazine.
In the last issue of Science Donald Kennedy has an editorial endorsing the Democrat candidate for president. Not exactly in so many words, but it’s unmistakable. No doubt Kennedy is a fire-breathing liberal. But he’s also hoping for lots of global warming money from Hillary or Obama. (For a good cause, of course. Perhaps his roof needs repairs).
Read more here.
Update: Note this New York Times Story from January 24, 1991 on how Stanford University said that it would refund about half a million dollars of Government research money used for the upkeep of university-owned homes for the university’s president, Donald Kennedy, and two other administrators.
Noted on a more positive and encouraging note, Donald Kennedy, announced earlier this year that he would be retiring. Kennedy has served as editor-in-chief since 2000. Bruce Alberts, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and president emeritus of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has been named the next editor-in-chief of Science. A prominent cell biologist best known for his work on the protein complexes that allow chromosomes to be replicated, Alberts has focused in recent years on public issues, especially the improvement of science education. Alberts, 69, earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1965 will take over the editorship on 1 March 2008.
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Climate Change: A Senate minority report lists 400 reputable scientists who think the only melting ice we should really fear was in the cocktail glasses of attendees at the recent global warming conference in Bali.
Many of the 400 scientists have taken part in the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose climate change reports tout consensus but which critics charge are heavily edited to support pre-defined conclusions. Among the IPCC’s warming “deniers” is atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute. “I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting—a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number—entirely without merit,” he said. “I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: Just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached.”
Physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing tools for clients like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says: “Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling—all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by cyclical variations in solar output.” Brosnahan says he has “not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case.” Those models, he says, leave out too many variables. Read more here.