September 12, 2011 by Steven Goddard
In order to win an election, a candidate needs to have carefully thought out, well-rehearsed one-liners to respond to difficult questions. Obama was very good at that in the 2008 elections - “I don’t feel responsible for what Bill Ayers did when I was seven.” “They call me a socialist because I shared my sandwich in elementary school.” Completely irrelevant non-sequiturs, but they did the trick.
Suppose you are a candidate and are asked “which climate scientists don’t believe in global warming?”
All scientists believe that the climate changes and that man has some effect on the climate. But how much? Richard Lindzen is MIT’s top climatologist, and he doesn’t believe that humans are having a catastrophic impact on the climate. Same for Freeman Dyson, the world’s most brilliant living physicist. There are tens of thousands of others who do not believe that we are having a catastrophic effect on the climate.
Hurricanes are getting worse, how do explain that?
In the year 1900, the city of Galveston was flattened by a hurricane, and 8,000 people died. Do you think that Hurricane Irene was worse than that?
The US has been hit by only one hurricane during the last 36 months - one of the quietest three year periods in history. It has been six years since a major hurricane hit the US. But in the year 1888, the US was hit by seven hurricanes - including two majors. Why do you think hurricanes are getting worse? Did Al Gore tell you that?
Fires are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In the year 1871, dozens of cities around the Great Lakes burned to the ground along with millions of acres of forest. Thousands of people burned to death in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. Chicago burned to the ground. Do you think the fires in Texas this year were worse than that?
Heatwaves and droughts are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In June 1934, every region of the country was over 100 degrees, and 80% of the country was suffering drought. Do you read your Steinbeck in high school? You should know this already.
Floods are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In 1927, Vermont had their worst flood on record. That same year, the Mississippi River had it’s worst flood in history. In 1931, three million people died in a flood in China. Do you think this year’s floods were worse?
Tornadoes are getting worse, how do explain that?
NOAA data shows that severe tornadoes have declined since April 1974, which was the worst month in history for severe tornadoes. 24 of the 25 deadliest US tornadoes occurred prior to 1956. Tornadoes are certainly not getting worse.
What about other countries?
Australia has been having severe droughts and floods for as long as people have lived there. Pakistan had much worse floods in the 1970s. They blamed it on global cooling at the time.
Is this the worst year in history?
There have been many years with comparable or worse weather in the 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1970s. We have recently been blessed with a long spell of mild weather, and just don’t remember.
"Last October, on 10/10/10, the activist group 10:10 has become notorious for their No Pressure video in which the lives of climate skeptics and even the lives of insufficiently excited alarmists (including two school kids, three secretaries, a soccer star, and an X-Files actress) were ended. The video opened the eyes of many viewers who hadn’t previously understood that global warming alarmism was the Nazism of our time. What has Al Gore learned from this event?”
Read what from Dr. Lubos Motl. We are back in the Dark Ages.
--------------
A sad and twisted story: Stealing the limelight from real problems in the real world
By Nils-Axel Morner, Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden, morner@pog.nu
Ban Ki Moon and the Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum have recently claimed that serious sea level rise problems occur both in Tuvalu and Kiribati. This is what two misguided politicians may say. But what is the reality, we must ask.
The answer is clear and straight forward: the is no sea level rise going on - at least for the last 18 years - either in Tuvalu or in Kiribati.
Over and over again, have I tried to demonstrate (Mörner, 2007; 2010, 2011) that sea is not at all in a rising mode in Tuvalu judging from the only information there is; i.e. the tide gauge records. The same has been done by others, especially Gray (2010). This is illustrated in Figs 1 and 2, where there are no signs of any sea level rise.
Fig. 1. The total tide gauge record from 1978 for Tuvalu (from Mörner, 2010). Since 1985 there are no signs of any sea level rise. Three major ENSO events with significant drops in sea level are recorded in 1983, 1992 and 1998.
Fig. 2. The SEAFRAME tide gauge record from Tuvalu with no sign of any ongoing sea level rise (redrawn from Gray, 2010).
So, if our observational facts say: no rise in sea lever, why are people continuing to drive the sea level rise illusion. It doesn’t become better (rather the opposite) if you are the Secretary-General for the United Nation or Pacific Island Forum. It is simply wrong. But what is worth; it steals the limelight from real problems in the real world.
The same is true for Kiribati. It lies in an area of the SW Pacific where satellite altimetry proposes a sea level rise in the order of 5 mm/year. Gray (2010) showed that this does indeed not concur with the last SEAFRAME tide gauge record from Kiribati (Fig. 3). The record spans 17 years. Still, it does not record any long-term sea level rise; just a stability.
Fig. 3. The SEAFRAME tide-gauge record from Kiribati (redrawn from Grav, 2010) (Enlarged) provides no documentation of any long-tern sea level rise; just a stability of the past 17 years.
Vanuatu is another famous site in the sea level debate. Here, too, there is a total absence of indications of any sea level rise over the past 17-18 years (Mörner, 2007, 2011; Gray, 2010). The list can be enlarged over wider (the Indian Ocean with places like the Maldives and
Bangladesh) and wider (spots all over the globe; not least northwestern Europe where it all can be put at a test; even so in Venice).
Obviously, there is a major clash between scenario based computer simulations and reality in the form of observational based facts and observations in nature itself. Therefore, there are all logical reasons to turn away from the propaganda information and concentrate all attention and interest on observational facts. In this case, those facts give a very clear and irrefutable message; there is no alarming sea level rise either in Tuvalu or Kiribati.
Ban Ki Moon and his friend from the Pacific Islands Forum should both feel ashamed of their claims and statements with respect to Tuvalu and Kiribati.
References
Gray, V., 2010. The South Pacific Sea Level: A reassessment. SPPI Original Paper, p. 1-24.
Morner, N.-A., 2007. The Greatest Lie Ever Told. 1st Edition, 2007, P&G print, Stockholm.Also: What Sea Level Rise? 21st Century Science & Technology, Fall 2007, Front, p. 25-29, 30-34.
Morner, N.-A., 2010. Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International, 221, 3-8, doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2009.10.044
Morner, N.-A., 2011. The great sea level humbug. There is no alarming sea level rise. 21st Century Science & Technology, Winter 2010/11 issue, p. 7-17.
See also this sea level piece in SPPI and Master Resource by Chip Knappenberger.
-------------
Back to Gore and the equally misguided but probably more honest Bill McKibben of 350.org who will rally this month after the Gorathon.
350: The most brain-dead campaign of your life
By Tom Nelson
The stupidity in the campaign mentioned here is absolutely breathtaking. Excerpt:
The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.
Take a careful look at the black line in this graph (enlarged):
If you see any reason to panic when CO2 is over 350 ppm, please let me know immediately…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Contact: Paul Chesser, Executive Director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Dr. Michael Mann, lead author of the discredited “hockey stick” graph that was once hailed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the “smoking gun” of the catastrophic man-made global warming theory, has asked to intervene in American Tradition Institute’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that seeks certain records produced by Mann and others while he was at the University of Virginia, for the purpose of keeping them hidden from the taxpayer.
Specifically over the weekend ATI’s Environmental Law Center received service from two Pennsylvania attorneys who seek the court’s permission to argue for Dr. Mann to intervene in ATI’s case. The attorneys also filed a motion to stay production of documents still withheld by UVA, which are to be provided to ATI’s lawyers in roughly two weeks under a protective order that UVA voluntarily agreed to in May. Dr. Mann’s lawyers also desire a hearing in mid-September, in an effort to further delay UVA’s scheduled production of records under the order.
Dr. Mann’s argument, distilled, is that the court must bend the rules to allow him to block implementation of a transparency law, so as to shield his sensibilities from offense once the taxpayer - on whose dime he subsists - sees the methods he employed to advance the global warming theory and related policies. ATI’s Environmental Law Center is not sympathetic.
“Dr. Mann’s late-hour tactics offer the spectacle of someone who relies on the media’s repeats of his untrue claims of having been ‘investigated’ and ‘exonerated’ - that is, when he’s not sputtering ad hominem and conspiracy theories to change the subject,” said Christopher Horner, director of litigation for ATI’s Environmental Law Center. “Mann has tried whatever means possible to ensure he remains free of any serious scrutiny, and this just appears to be his last gasp.”
Dr. Mann’s move is therefore gratifying, and ATI will agree to his out-of-state lawyers’ motion to appear. But ATI will ask the court to uphold Virginia’s abundantly clear law, that Dr. Mann has no interest in records that are purely the property of the taxpayer.
ATI will present to the court how Dr. Mann understood, as an unambiguous and agreed-upon condition of his employment, that he had no expectation of privacy when he used UVA’s public email system. ATI therefore looks forward to seeing if, given the opportunity, UVA will defend the idea that any of its own policies be upheld in court. Since Dr. Mann has no property interest in the taxpayer-owned records sought by ATI, he has no standing and therefore should not be entered in the case. Dr. Mann wants, after the fact, for UVA to throw out policies he accepted as a condition of living off of taxpayer dollars, in order to cover up public information and to evade scrutiny.
To the extent Dr. Mann, the university, or their obstructionist backers like Union of Concerned Scientists continue to argue he has been “cleared” or “exonerated,” or that any substantive investigation has taken place, those pleadings are undermined by their persistent efforts to squelch inquiry. As a result, all the public sees is an effort to sweep Climategate revelations under the rug in order to preserve the biggest taxpayer-financed gravy train for science and academia in decades. Hence we see the Rasmussen Reports poll last month that showed a strong majority of the public believes scientists who study climate change have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs.
“Virginia’s courts do not brook conspiracy theories as the basis for intervention in run-of-the-mill Freedom of Information Act litigation,” said Dr. David Schnare, director of ATI’s Environmental Law Center. “Dr. Mann - having failed to prevail in the court of public opinion - cannot now strut into court, soap box in hand, and expect a warm welcome.”
See case documents, press releases, media coverage, commentary, broadcast interviews, etc. pertaining to ATI v. University of Virginia by clicking here: http://bit.ly/mLZLXC
For an interview with Environmental Law Center director Dr. David Schnare or director of litigation Christopher Horner, email paul.chesser@atinstitute.org or call (202)670-2680.
Follow ATI on Twitter: http://twitter.atinstitute.org
Facebook: http://facebook.atinstitute.org